The three men looked at the woman as if she had just grown a long purple tail. Then they looked at one another.
Bethina laughed. "In truth, the men with me—and I am grateful that they were not slain—were there to help me be taken captive. When they are found, they will show where I fell down into a crevice. I will be thought dead, at least for long enough that we may ride north safely."
Conan nodded. It seemed the politest thing to do. It also occurred to him that Bethina's allegiance was even more of a gift than it had seemed. If he remembered correctly, the Ekinari's lands were well to the north—toward the Kezankian Mountains, if not actually bordering on their foothills.
They might know more than most about the mysteries of those mountains.
Bethina nodded graciously, as the heiress of some great house might have nodded to three upper servants. "I look forward to riding with you gentlemen, for I see in you wisdom and strength."
Then she vanished into the murk, so swiftly and silently that for a moment Conan wondered if she was a spirit. But then he saw footprints, even now filling with windblown sand, and heard laughter like the tinkling of temple bells from behind a rock.
The three men looked at one another again, and all spoke a single word, each in his native tongue.
"Women!"
They rode out as soon as the sandstorm died enough to allow traveling, but before there was too little wind to cover their tracks and too little sand in the air to hide them. They put several hours of desert between them and the Girumgi, then found a patch of rough, scrub-grown ground and went to earth like so many foxes.
As daylight drained from the sky and a spangling of stars took its place, they mounted and were once more on the move.
Riding by night and resting up by day, it took them five days to reach Ekinari lands. Or at least these were lands where one was more likely to encounter riders of the Ekinari than those of any other tribe.
The Ekinari were hardly a peaceful people—in the desert as in Afghulistan, no lover of peace at any price lived long enough to breed sons. But as Bethina pointed out, they had more good wells and safe places for their women and children than many tribes.
"Our warriors do not need to ride across every patch of ground and cleanse it of enemies, that the tribe may live," Bethina said. "We can look beyond today's blood-feuds. That is why Doiran will not prevail in the end."
"That might be so, if he stood or fell by what the Ekinari will do for him," Conan pointed out. "With the warriors and the gold of the Girumgi behind him, he will think that he can do as he pleases. He may even be right."
"That is not the brother I knew," Bethina replied. "You are saying that he is ready to make slaves of his own people, if he can be their master under the Girumgi?"
"Good men have done worse things when ambition fuddles their wits," Conan said sharply. "Besides, it's not hard to find tribesmen to follow you if you say you seek to hurt Turan. Turan has not been just in its dealings with the desert folk, and they have long memories for grievances."
Bethina gave Conan a radiant smile, and Khezal gave him a sour look. Farad carefully looked at the desert, but the Cimmerian could see a smile curving the man's lips under his beard.
Under the stars, they rode toward the Kezankian Mountains.
The Kezankian Mountains did not tower as high as the Ibars range in Turan, let alone the Himelias in northern Vendhya. Those were mountains that seemed fit to hold up the very sky, or pierce it and thrust their snow-clad peaks into the abyss beyond.
However, from the direction Conan and his companions approached them, the Kezankians leaped almost straight from the desert. Eagles nesting halfway up the mountain faces looked as tiny as doves, even to the Cimmerian's keen eyes. Birds flying any higher were as invisible as if they had been mag-icked.
Meanwhile, the desert wind itself grew cooler, and its flutings and pipings around the rocks set more than one man's teeth on edge.
"It's as if the wind itself knows this is a place to avoid," Farad said.
"Ha," Conan said. "I thought you would be feeling more at home than you have since we—"
"Fled Afghulistan?" Farad said. His grin showed all his teeth, but there was no mirth in his black eyes. Then he shook his head.
"I know what my homeland's mountains may hold—"
"Bandits, sheep, and lice," Bethina said. Farad stared at her, then laughed loud enough to raise echoes.
"Not so wrong, lady," Farad said. "But even the lice are—I won't call them friends, but at least no strangers to a man. Everyone is a stranger to these mountains, and they look like the sort who treat any stranger as an enemy."
Looking up at the gray walls before them and listening once more to the wind, Conan could not find it in his heart to disagree.
They found the remains of the camp the next morning, soon after they themselves had made camp for the day. Out hunting with Farad, Conan was the first to see the patch of soot in the middle of the trampled ground.
While Farad kept watch, the Cimmerian squatted by the trampled ground and studied it. He sifted soil between his fingers, sniffed the ashes, and finally rose.
"You look like a hound seeking a scent," Farad said.
"Close enough," the Cimmerian replied. "Now let's be finding their midden-pit. I'd wager this camp held at least forty men, tribesmen and others. Something they left in the pit has to tell us more about who they are."
"If we can find it and dig it up," Farad said.
"Oh, I think we can find it. As for digging it up, I'll do it myself if there's no other way."
"I can spare you that, my chief."
As it happened, Khezal's orders spared both Conan and Farad the dirty chore. A gang of Greencloaks set briskly to work with knives, hands, and the odd spade. (Cavalry were not much for building field-works or carrying digging tools with them.) The rubbish they unearthed told Khezal and Conan much the same.
"Two score bandits—what the tribes call loose-feet," Khezal said. "They're commonly a desperate, vicious lot."
"Then who left this?" Conan said, holding up a blackened square of metal.
"A Khorajan left his cloak pin," Khezal said. "In truth, a Khorajan captain, or at least a man of rank. That's silver with a relief of the king, as far as I can judge under the soot."
"Are you sure serving Mishrak never tempted you?" Conan chaffed the Turanian. "You have a good nose for spy's work."
"Also a tender conscience about it," Khezal said. He lowered his voice. "More so since Yezdigerd's accession, and I'd wager I'm not the only one."
Conan had no doubt of that. There were as many honest folk in Turan as anywhere, and more than in some lands he had traveled (and mostly departed as swiftly as he'd come). But as long as Yezdigerd's promise of empire dazzled their eyes with glory and filled their hands with gold, many Turanians might be less honest than they would be otherwise.
Turan might profit from his quest with Khezal, but the Cimmerian intended to end it far from Turan with the jewels at his belt, bound once again for Koth.
"Best we mount a good guard," Khezal said. "Forty loosefeet with a civilized captain leading them might do some mischief if they surprised us."
Conan nodded. "Perhaps. But we might do them more, if we surprised them."
Khezal frowned. Conan gave a gusty laugh.
"You Turanians still think like the plains horsemen who were your ancestors. You should never go to war without a hillman or few along, to tell you what to do when the land's at a slant."
Khezal threw the Cimmerian a weary look. "Very well, my friend. You speak and I will listen. But by all the gods, for every needless word you say, I will take one jewel from that bag before I return it to you. Talk me deaf, and you will ride empty-pursed for Koth."