The words seemed to escape the man's understanding, but the tone and the gestures carried enough meaning. Also, the man was short and lean even for a desert tribesman. The Cimmerian could have carried a man of that size under each arm, and the man seemed to prefer using his own feet to such a fate.
They made a good pace back to shelter. The enemy above seemed to be wholly lost in their shouting contest. Conan prefered to rejoin his comrades before the shouting turned back to shooting. As for the men below, the ground was against them, but numbers were for them. Their not coming on was another mystery, and two mysteries on the same battlefield were two more than the Cimmerian enjoyed facing.
Battles were confusing enough when everybody did what he was supposed to. When he did not, only a god could see some pattern in the chaos of a battle.
If he had owed nothing to comrades, the Cimmerian would have been using the enemy's confusion to show them all a clean pair of heels. When others' lives hung on your continued presence, however—
Farad was the first to greet Conan, and motioned quickly to a low cave whose mouth had been dug free while Conan was garnering the prisoner. It was too shallow to be much of a last refuge, and held no water—not that the battle was likely to exhaust even the single water bag apiece Conan's band was carrying.
"No attacks?" the Cimmerian said.
Farad looked at the sky. "Would we be here if there had been? And who is this aged boy?"
Again the man understood Farad's tone rather than his Afghuli words, and drew a dagger. Conan promptly slapped it out of his hand, then retrieved it and thrust it into his own belt.
"You are lucky to be alive," he said. "I will keep this knife until you have told us what is happening uphill. Why do you fear the Girumgi?"
The man began babbling a hasty explanation, of which Conan understood possibly two words out of three. He found more sense in the man's tale when he remembered that the Girumgi were one of the more powerful of the desert tribes.
Before the man had finished his explanation, Conan heard the shouting atop the hill die away. As it did, he thought he also heard Turanian war horns, but so far away that it was impossible to tell whether it was a trick of the desert wind moaning around the rocks.
Conan signaled with his hand to Farad: Make ready for an attack. Farad nodded and undid his belt, to bind the prisoner's hands. The man's eyes rolled up until only the whites showed.
Conan glared. "He will cut your throat if you do not submit, and I will not stop him."
"No—I fight—I friend you—I fight Girumgi—" he said, with frantic gestures uphill and toward the right.
That told Conan that the Girumgi had been pressing the attack more vigorously, but not enough else to dispel the mystery. He nodded to Farad, who looped the thong around the man's wrists and started to pull it tight.
Then demons seemed to break loose on the hill above. Fifty men at least were screaming, in defiance, terror, or mortal agony. Above the screaming rose unmistakable Turanian war horns, this time not far away at all. Even better, some of the war cries were also Turanian.
Conan looked at the prisoner, who had fainted. Then he looked at Farad, who returned a "Do you take me for an oracle?" expression.
The Cimmerian shifted to the nearest position that might allow him to see what was going on uphill, or tell where he could send an arrow without skewering a friend!
Muhbaras did not expect another life in another world, for he had served too many bad masters for far too long. He also did not expect anyone to speak well of the manner of his death, or compose about it a poem that would be sung in the halls of Khorajan nobles for centuries or even moons to come. He did expect that his death would make amends to Danar's spirit, if it did not end his torment.
What Muhbaras did not know about sorcery and witchcraft would fill several long and closely written scrolls. He did know, however, that the presence of cold iron, such as a sword blade, could hinder many spells.
All this whirled through Muhbaras's thoughts in the heartbeat between his lifting the sword and its entering the fire. Then he staggered backward as the tongue of fire jerked upward, snatching the sword from his hand so violently that the shagreen grip left his palm bloody.
Like a mortally stricken serpent, the tongue of fire writhed wildly in the air. The Lady of the Mists braced her legs and clutched at her end of it like a drowning man clutching at a rope. Muhbaras heard her chanting, then screaming, loud enough to be heard over Danar's agony, but was too surprised at still being alive to look closely at the Lady's face.
Too surprised, and also too fearful that if she took serious notice of him, his death would be next and in a form that made Danar's look mild. He had not fallen dead the moment his sword pierced the fire. He judged this to mean that something far worse awaited him.
Then Danar's cry ended. The fire around him vanished, and only gray ash remained, drifting down into the valley on the evening breeze, past life, past pain, past fear.
The Lady chanted on, and the tongue of fire now lashed about like the tail of an immense cat. Everyone gave it ample room, except the Lady who commanded it and Muhbaras. He stood as if his feet had turned to stone and joined with the balcony. Indeed, he had to look down to be sure that this had not happened.
He was alive, but knew this could not last long. Since he was a dead man who yet stood, he would not fling aside the dignity of this last moment by seeking to run.
Perhaps his death would not pass unnoticed—at least among the Maidens. Some of them had the souls of women rather than witches. Danar had proved that. They might not be such ready tools for their mad mistress with the example of Muhbaras's death in front of them.
Suddenly the tongue of fire shrank from the height of a tree to the height of a man in a single instant. Then it shrank further, into a sphere no larger than an apple, and fell to the stone. As it struck, it vanished—but smoke rose where it struck, and Muhbaras saw stone bubble and fume as it ran liquid.
They stood, sorceress and mercenary, staring at one another across a patch of cooling lava no wider than a footstool but seemingly as wide as the valley itself for all that either could cross it. The silence around them seemed as solid as bronze or stone, encasing their limbs so firmly that the mere thought of movement seemed futile.
Only the rise and fall of the Lady's breasts told Muhbaras that she yet lived. He could not have told why he knew that he lived, yet he did—and as the moments flowed one into another, he began to wonder if he might go on living.
Do not hope. Death that snatches away hope is the harshest.
That was an old lesson, in books any boy born to be a soldier knew almost as soon as he could mount a horse. Muhbaras clung to it, but he also clung to the thought that he had done something the Lady of the Mists could not have expected, and did not know what to make of it.
As long as she doubted, Muhbaras might live.
It did not occur to him to try to escape while the Lady stood bemused and doubting, perhaps for the first time since she bent the valley to her will. Had he been able to form the reason for this completely, it would have been that any movement by him would break this fragile truce, and make the Lady lash out wildly.
His own death was certain, a death he had faced to end Danar's torment. He would not bring death to the Maidens if he could contrive otherwise.
A sound broke the silence—the clang of steel on stone. Muhbaras still did not move. He did not need to. Without so much as moving his eyes, he saw his sword lying on the stone between him and the Lady.
He had expected the sword to be a blackened, twisted relic of itself. Instead it gleamed as if the finest armorer in the world had lavished entire days bringing out the luster in the steel. Jewels winked in the hilt where only a few disks of silver had shone before—but they did not make the weapon useless.