With the back of his hand, Conan wiped sweat and dust from a scarred, muscle-corded neck that had in its time known a slave's collar as well as silken robes and the golden chains of honor. If fresh horsemen came up to replace the score or more dead or past fighting, the Turanians might do as they intended.
How best to draw them into an attack that would reduce their numbers and courage further? Conan examined the rocks at the mouth of the cleft with as much care as he would have considered the body of a woman waiting in his bed. Perhaps more—the rocks would not grow impatient if he looked too long without acting.
He counted the rocks that were loose, counted others that were small enough to lift or even throw, found some that were both. He turned his gaze to the slope. Then he lay on his back behind a rock that a battering ram could not have moved, cupped his hands about his mouth, and called to Farad.
"How fare you?" He spoke in a tongue of northern Vendhya not unknown to Farad or many other Afghulis, but rarely spoken in Turan.
"Well enough, Conan. We are only short of Turanian dogs we can kill easily."
There spoke the Afghuli warrior who would die rather than admit a weakness—one of many reasons why the Cimmerian found the Afghulis kindred spirits. The rocks aloft had to be hotter still than the slope, and the Afghulis had only a single water bottle apiece. Conan vowed that once the Turanians had been further bloodied enough to learn caution, he would search the cleft for some trace of a spring.
"I hope to do something about that before any of us are much older. How many do they have on the far side of the rocks?"
The sun was a trifle lower in the sky before Farad answered. It appeared that no one had thought to count the enemy behind. Conan hoped that the men above had at least a sentry or two watching their rear. One fault the Afghulis had, and one reason they did not rule in Vendhya and Iranistan at least, was despising anyone not a hillman. They would not readily be-lieve a Turanian could climb rocks, until he did so and opened their throats with a keen blade.
From Farad's answer, it seemed likely that the Turanians had lost one in three of their number in the chase, to say nothing of foundered horses and men bearing wounds that would drain strength if not life. If they lost as many again, their captain (if he lived) might not be able to hold them here long enough for help to arrive.
Even if they held, they would be spread thin. Too thin, the Cimmerian suspected, to resist a stealthy attack at night by men who were masters of fighting in the dark more than almost any other form of war.
Conan waited, as motionless and patient as if he had been one of the rocks himself. He wanted sun, thirst, wounds, and fear to play on the Turanians until their wits and limbs alike were less sound than before.
The sun had sunk beyond the crest of the rocks before Conan judged that the enemy was ready for his bait. Sheathing his sword and dagger but leaving bow and quiver, he crept farther into the cleft, close to the horses.
Even without water, the shade had done them some good. They stood quietly, staring at the Cimmerian. His mare raised her head with an all but human look of curiosity and boredom.
'Time to sing," Conan said. He raised his voice in a sharp, wordless command that any horse bred in these lands could understand. The mare tossed her head, dried foam flew, and she let out a sharp neigh.
By twos and threes, the other mounts joined in.
Conan bared his teeth, white in his dust-caked face, and scrambled back to his watching post.
The grin widened as he saw the Turanians coming to life, some of them leaping up as if they'd lain on ants' nests. The Afghulis above held their fire.
The Turanians knew where the bait was. Now, to get them to take it.
Three
The four Maidens bearing the wine cup marched in step ahead of the Lady of the Mists. This was not easy, as their feet were as bare as the rest of them, but they neither stumbled nor missed a step.
The punishments for Maidens who transgressed were not as grave as those for common folk. The Lady knew that she needed the Maidens' wits and steel alike on guard against her enemies. The Maidens knew that the Lady valued them, and they in turn valued her rewards even more than they feared her punishments.
The peace between the Lady of the Mists and those who served her was uneasy, as often as not. But its uneasiness had not ruined it in three years. No one expected a civil brawl in the valley now, when rumor had it that the Lady's dreams were close to fruition.
Dreams that would make all her friends powerful, even wealthy beyond mortal dreams, and her enemies tormented, shrieking souls beyond all mortal fears.
The Lady walked behind the Maidens, her hands clasped before her slim waist. She was clad as she had been while she drew the life essence of the captives into the cup. She walked with a dignity that seemed to dare the rocks to bruise her bare feet, or the breeze that crept into the valley with the lengthening shadows to chill her bare skin.
She and the Maidens alike walked as if the presence or absence of clothing was beneath their notice and should be likewise beneath the notice of any who saw the women pass. Once only had some foolish soldier ventured a bawdy remark at this procession of well-formed women. His tongue had quite literally cleaved to the roof of his mouth, and only when it was black and stinking did the spell binding it break.
By then, of course, the festering in his mouth had reached his brain. He died raving, and those who heard him lived on with a new respect for the sorcerous power and woman's willfulness of the Lady of the Mists.
The path from the cave ran straight back along the north wall of the valley for some seven furlongs. In places it ran along a ledge carved from the living rock of the Kezankian Mountains. In other places the ledge was built up upon the rock. Sometimes it was built of stones as large as a shepherd's hut, holding together without mortar. In other places curiously thin bricks rose, layer upon layer.
One did not need to count the patches of lichen and hardy vine, silver-shot moss and ancient trees, dwarfed by wind and cold and gnarled by poor soil, to tell that the path was ancient work. An outsider who entered the valley and lived to study it might have offered many different notions about the builders of the path. All would have been partly right, all likewise partly wrong.
At the far end of the path, a flight of wooden steps led down a near-vertical slope, some eighty paces high. Beside the steps a stout wooden beam with a pulley and ropes dangling from it projected out over the drop. The Maidens tied the wine cup, poles, netting, and all, to the pulley, then two of them descended the steps. Their mistress followed, then the cup, lowered on the pulley, and at last the two remaining Maidens, after they had wound in the rope.
All five women ignored the images carved on a smooth rock face just above the wooden beam. All had seen them a score of times, and the Maidens were ignorant of their meaning.
The Lady of the Mists was not ignorant. She knew the marks of the long-dead Empire of Acheron, whose magic yet lived in barbaric corners of the world or in the hands and spells of the mad and the unlawful. She did not care to dwell too long on what these Acheronian carvings might mean.
The Lady of the Mists had many vices, but she was not so foolish as to cast spells with a mind unsettled by shadows of ancient evil.
The women gathered at the bottom of the steps. From where they stood, a path of gravel bordered by more of the curiously thin bricks led off along the floor of the valley. The Maidens lifted the cup and fell into step, while the Lady cast a quick glance into a narrow cleft in the rock at the foot of the stairs.