Conan had plotted shrewdly to eliminate the chances of an ambush in the forest by either party. But, as far as Belesa could see, he had failed utterly to safeguard himself against the treachery of his companions. He had disappeared into the woods, leading the two captains and their thirty men, and the Zingaran girl was positive that she would never see him alive again.
Presently she spoke, and her voice was strained and harsh to her own ear: “The barbarian has led the captains into the forest. When they have the gold in their hands, they’ll slay him. But when they return with the treasure, what then? Are we to go aboard the ship? Can we trust Strombanni?”
Valenso shook his head absently. “Strombanni would murder us all for our shares of the loot. But Zarono secretly whispered his intentions to me. We will not go aboard the Red Hand save as her masters. Zarono will see that night overtakes the treasure party, so they shall be forced to camp in the forest. He will find a way to kill Strombanni and his men in their sleep. Then the buccaneers will come on stealthily to the beach. Just before dawn, I will send some of my fishermen secretly from the fort, to swim out to the ship and seize her. Strombanni never thought of that, and neither did Conan. Zarono and his men will come out of the forest and, together with the buccaneers encamped on the beach, fall upon the pirates in the dark, while I lead my men-at-arms from the fort to complete the rout. Without their captain, they will be demoralized and, outnumbered, fall easy prey to Zarono and me. Then we shall sail in Strombanni’s ship with all the treasure.”
“But what of me?” she asked with dry lips.
“I have promised you to Zarono,” he answered harshly. “But for my promise, he would not take us off.”
“I will never marry him,” she said helplessly.
“You shall,” he responded gloomily, without the slightest touch of sympathy. He lifted the chain so that it caught the gleam of the sun, slanting through a window. “I must have dropped it on the sand,” he muttered. “He has been that near …on the beach…”
“You did not drop it on the sand,” said Belesa, in a voice as devoid of mercy as his own; her soul seemed turned to stone. “You tore it from your throat, by accident, last night in this hall, when you flogged Tina. I saw it gleaming on the floor before I left the hall.”
He looked up, his face gray with a terrible fear; she laughed bitterly, sensing the mute question in his dilated eyes. “Yes! The black man! He was here! In this hall! He must have found the chain on the floor. The guardsmen did not see him, but he was at your door last night I saw him, padding along the upper hall way.”
For an instant she thought he would drop dead of sheer terror. He sank back in his chair, the chain slipping from his nerveless fingers and clinking on the table.
“In the manor!” he whispered. “I thought bolts and bars and armed guards could keep him out, fool that I was! I can no more guard against him than I can escape him! At my door! At my door!” The thought overwhelmed him with horror.
“Why did he not enter?” he shrieked, tearing at the lace upon his collar as though it strangled him. “Why did he not end it? I have dreamed of waking in my darkened chamber to see him squatting above me, with the blue hell-fire playing about his head! Why …”
The paroxysm passed, leaving him faint and trembling.
“I understand!” he panted. “He is playing with me, as a cat with a mouse. To have slain me last night in my chamber were too easy, too merciful. So he destroyed the ship in which I might have escaped him, and he slew that wretched Pict and left my chain upon him, so that the savages might believe I had slain him. They have seen that chain upon my neck many a time. But why? What subtle deviltry has he in mind, what devious purpose no human mind can grasp or understand?”
“Who is this black man?” asked Belesa, a chill of fear crawling along her spine.
“A demon loosed by my greed and lust to plague me throughout eternity!” he whispered. He spread his long, thin fingers on the table before him and stared at her with hollow, weirdly luminous eyes, which seemed to see her not at all but to look through her and far beyond to some dim doom.
“In my youth, I had an enemy at court,” he said, as if speaking more to himself than to her “A powerful man who stood between me and my ambition. In my lust for wealth and power, I sought aid from the people of the black arts …a sorcerer who, at my desire, raised up a fiend from the outer gulfs of existence. It crushed and slew mine enemy; I grew great and wealthy, and none could stand before me. But I thought to cheat the wizard of the price a mortal must pay who calls the black folk to do his bidding. He was Thoth-Amon of the Ring, in exile from his native Stygia. He had fled in the reign of King Mentupherra, and when Mentupherra died and Ctesphon ascended the ivory throne of Luxur, Thoth-Amon lingered in Kordava though he might have returned home, dunning me for the debt I owed him. But, instead of paying him the moiety of my gains as I had promised, I denounced him to my own monarch, so that Thoth-Amon must needs willy-nilly return to Stygia in haste and stealth. There he found favor and waxed in wealth and magical might until he was the virtual ruler of the land.”
“Two years ago in Kordava, word came to me that Thoth-Amon had vanished from his accustomed haunts in Stygia. And then one night I saw his brown devil’s face leering at me from the shadows in my castle hall. It was not his material body, but his spirit sent to plague me. This time I had no king to protect me, for upon the death of Ferdrugo and the setting up of the regency, the land, as you know, had fallen into factional strife. Before Thoth-Amon could reach Kordava in the flesh, I sailed to put broad seas between me and him. He has his limitations; to follow me across the seas he must remain in his human, fleshly body. But now this field has tracked me down by his uncanny powers even here in this vast wilderness. He is too crafty to be trapped or slain as one would do with a common man. When he hides, no man can find him. He steals like a shadow in the night, making naught of bolts and bars. He blinds the eyes of guardsmen with sleep. He can command the spirits of the air, the serpents of the deep, and the fiends of the night; he can raise storms to sink ships and throw down castles. I hoped to drown my trail in the blue, rolling waves …but he has tracked me down to claim his grim forfeit…”
The weird eyes lit palely as Valenso gazed beyond the tapestried walls to far, invisible horizons. “I’ll trick him yet,” he whispered. “Let him delay to strike this night, and dawn shall find me with a ship under my heels, and again I will cast an ocean between me and his vengeance.”
“Hell’s fire!”
Conan stopped short, glaring upward Behind him, the seamen halted …two compact clumps of them, bows in their hands and suspicion in their attitude. They were following an old path made by Pictish hunters, which led due east. Although they had progressed only some thirty yards, the beach was no longer visible.
“What is it?” demanded Strombanni suspiciously. “Why are you stopping?”
“Are you blind? Look there!”
From the thick limb of a tree that overhung the trail, a head grinned down at them: a dark, painted face, framed in thick black hair, in which a horn-bill feather drooped over the left ear.
“I took that head down and hid it in the bushes,” growled Conan, scanning the woods about them narrowly. “What fool could have stuck it back up there? It looks as if somebody were trying his damnedest to bring the Picts down on the settlement.”