As if her curse had been a spell, the thing seemed to find new strength. It lunged at Conan, and the Cimmerian had to break into a run to stay ahead of it. The jaws clanged and clashed, and the beast swung toward the tunnel from which Conan and Valeria had entered the cavern.
It swung toward the opening, then charged with single-minded frenzy, as if the answer to all of its woes lay in that tunnel. The charge carried it across the cavern faster than Valeria could have run, and she caught only a brief glimpse of Conan staying ahead of the jaws.
Then Cimmerian and monster together reached the mouth of the tunnel. Conan's war cry, the creature's last challenge, and the rumble of falling rock blended into one ear-torturing din. Echoes stormed about the cavern, doubling and redoubling themselves.
Valeria knelt and watched a vast cloud of dust belch from the tunnel. Nothing remained visible outside it but the tip of the beast's tail, thrashing feebly. Then the thrashing subsided to a twitching, and even the twitching ended.
Valeria commanded her hands to stop shaking and her knees to hold her up, and walked toward the fallen tunnel. She had no clear idea of what she would do when she reached it, other than seek Conan's body. If it was only caught under the beast and not under the fallen stones, she might be able to carve a way through the beast's flesh—
A massive, dark form took shape out of the dust cloud.
Valeria crammed her free hand into her mouth to stifle a scream. Her sword rose in the other, as much good as it might be against a spirit—
"Valeria!"
Valeria's mouth opened, but no sound came out. She did not drop her sword, and she was still rooted to the spot when Conan reached her.
His arms around her were so comforting that she wondered by she had not asked for them many times already. After a little while, she stopped shaking, and after a while longer, she found her voice again.
"It's as well I didn't need to go after you a second time. I've hardly a rag to spare, and that beast's hide looks too tough to cut up for garments."
Conan shrugged. "I've told you what your best garb is. If you won't believe me, that's only proof that you don't trust men."
"I give men all the trust they deserve," Valeria said with dignity. She held her thumb and forefinger about a hairbreadth apart. "At least that much." She was relieved to see that her hand was steady.
"We'd best be on our way before this uproar draws all our friend's kin," Conan said. "But there's no going back the way we came. It's solid with fallen stone where it isn't solid with dead beast."
It did nothing for Valeria's spirits to see that the only other way out of the cavern sloped sharply downward. But at least there was light as far ahead as she could make out, and a dampness in the air that hinted of water.
She turned, to see Conan slicing off a clump of fungi as large as a hunting dog. "Rations for the journey?" she asked. Her stomach wanted to heave at the thought, but she was hungry enough that it rumbled instead.
"Why not?" Conan replied, tossing the fungi to her. "If it killed quickly, I'd be dead along with that beast. If I'm still alive at our next halt, I'll say it doesn't kill at all."
Valeria tucked the mass of fungi under her arm and sheathed her sword. "Conan, you have too cursed many ways of making a woman wish to keep you alive!"
FIVE
Conan led the way down the tunnel. If danger should arise, it would most likely come from another beast, drawn by the din of the first one's death. It could also come with the Cimmerian's blessing, if it waited until he and Valeria were safely out of its path!
The tunnel sloped steadily downward, and the air grew damper. It was not as foul as one would have expected, though, as far underground as it lay, and with so much death and rottenness about.
Conan found small relief in that. Ancient magic must be all about them here, shedding light, cleansing the air, and giving life to who-knew-what monstrosities besides those they had already met. A sword and the untamed jungle before him would be his choice, but every step they took seemed to take them farther into the bowels of this warren.
Clearly, the beast and its kin had passed this way many times. Even the hardest rock of walls and floor was scored by claws and scales. Loose scales in half a score of hues had drifted like autumn leaves into crannies and windings of the tunnel. In one place, a bronze post the thickness of Conan's arm had bent almost double under the onrush of something swift, strong, and massive.
Once the tunnel branched, and Conan thought he saw a slight upward slope in the floor of the branch, at the very limits of his vision. This proved no trick of the light, but fifty paces farther on came a bend, and just beyond that, a dead end.
Nor was the dead end a natural rockfall. An enormous door of stone slabs set in what seemed to be a frame of gilded bronze blocked the way. Conan saw that it slid to and fro in bronze grooves that led into niches on either side of the tunnel.
The least of the slabs had to weigh more than the Cimmerian, and the thinnest metal rods of the frames were thicker than Valeria's legs. Some of the rods were wrought in the shape of serpents, and more serpents writhed across the slabs, some of them painted in tiny jewels, others cunningly carved.
Conan did not care to think what spells might be needed to move this door. Spells, or perhaps some device that would rival those of drowned Atlantis and make a siege-engine of Khitai seem a child's toy.
"Some of those serpents have green eyes," Valeria whispered. The awe of this place and its ancient works was in her, too. "Are they meant to be the Golden Serpents?"
Conan studied the shapes. The gilding was worn in places and tarnished in more, but, in truth, the eyes of all the serpents, carved or painted, were tiny green jewels. Studying them yet more closely, he saw that the jewels seemed to glow from within like the fire-stones they had seen in Xuchotl.
"Ha! Perhaps we've found where the Golden Serpents laired in ancient times," he said. "They would be cause enough for a door like this. It would stop a galley's ram."
"Then let us hope it does its work until we are out of these caves," Valeria said.
"Woman, where is a true pirate's heart?" Conan scoffed. He thrust a forefinger against Valeria's ribs.
She lightly batted his hand away. "Down in her boots, I confess, although I'll geld you if you breathe a word of it." She rubbed her stomach. "Her stomach's about to follow." She looked at the fungi under her arm. "Are these really fit to eat?"
"They haven't killed me yet."
"Just let me eat my fill, and no doubt you will writhe and die the moment afterward."
The bronze door would have guarded their backs nicely, but who could say what lay on the other side? Also, if one of the beasts should catch their scent and come down the branch tunnel, they would be trapped.
So they returned to the junction of the tunnels to eat. "Tastes like raw sea slugs," Valeria said after a few mouthfuls.
"And how are they? I've heard of them, but also that they're poison if not cooked."
"It's not the cooking that takes out the poison. There's a spot in the head that needs cutting out, or one slug can kill a ship's crew. A cunning hand with a knife can do the work, though, and then the slug's called a rare treat in some lands. Mostly farther south than we've sailed, but during one hot summer, the slugs spawned farther north than usual."
They finished as much fungus as seemed wise, in a silence that was almost companionable. Conan vowed that if he and Valeria lived to reach a land with civilized eating-houses, he would buy her a meal she would not soon forget.
Meanwhile, they had traveled long enough and far enough to be weary. They tossed a piece of fungus for who kept first watch, and Conan won the honor.
"Need we keep watches at all?" Valeria asked. She pressed a hand lightly against the Cimmerian's battered ribs. He drew a deep breath, but not from any pain her touch gave him.