Something cool and soft was touching Amalric's face with gentle persistence. He groped blindly, and his hand closed on something warm, firm, and resilient. As his sight cleared, he looked into a soft, oval face, framed in lustrous black hair. As in a trance, he gazed unspeaking, hungrily dwelling on each detail of the full, red lips, the dark, violet eyes, and the alabaster throat. With a start, he realized that the vision was speaking in a soft, musical voice. The words were strange, yet possessed of an elusive familiarity. A small, white hand, holding a dripping bunch of silk, was passed gently over his throbbing head and his face. Dizzily, he sat up.
It was night, under star-splashed skies. The camel still munched its cud; a horse whinnied restlessly. Not far away lay a hulking figure with its cleft head in a horrible puddle of blood and brains.
Amalric looked up at the girl who knelt beside him, talking in her gentle, unknown tongue. As the mists cleared from his brain, he began to understand her.
Harking back into half-forgotten tongues he had learned and spoken in the past, he remembered a language used by a scholarly class in a southern province of Koth.
"Who. Are. you, girl?" he asked in slow and stumbling speech, imprisoning a small hand in his own hardened fingers.
"I am Lissa." The name was spoken with almost the suggestion of a lisp. It was like the rippling of a slender stream. "I am glad you are conscious. I feared you were not alive."
"A little more and I shouldn't have been," he muttered, glancing at the grisly sprawl that had been Tilutan. The girl, shuddering, refused to follow his glance. Her hand trembled and, in their nearness, Amalric thought he could feel the quick throb of her heart.
"It was horrible," she faltered. "like an awful dream. Anger … and blows … and blood …"
"It might have been worse," he growled.
She seemed sensitive to every changing inflection of voice or mood. Her free hand stole timidly to his own.
"I did not mean to offend you. It was very brave for you to risk your life for a stranger. You are noble as the northern knights about which I have read."
He cast a quick glance at her. Her wide dear eyes met his, reflecting only the thought that she had spoken. He started to speak, then changed his mind and said another thing.
"What are you doing in the desert?"
"I came from Gazal," she answered. "I … I was running away. I could not stand it any longer. But it was hot and lonely and wearying, and I saw only sand, sand … and the blazing blue sky. The sands burned my feet, and my sandals were quickly worn out … I was so thirsty; my canteen was soon empty. And then I wished to return to Gazal, but one direction looked like another. I did not know which way to go. I was terribly afraid and started running in the direction in which I thought Gazal to be. I do not remember much after that; I ran until I could run no further. I must have lain in the burning sand for a while. I remember rising and staggering on; and, toward the last, I thought I heard someone shouting and saw a black man on a black horse riding toward me. Then I knew no more until I awoke and found myself lying with my head in that man's lap, while he gave me wine to drink. Then there were shouting and fighting …" She shuddered. "When it was all over, I crept to where you lay like a dead man and tried to bring you to."
"Why?" he demanded.
She seemed at a loss. "Why?" she floundered, "why … you were hurt … and … it is what anyone would do. Besides, I realized that you were fighting to protect me from these black men. The people of Gazal have always said that the black people are wicked and would harm the helpless."
"That's no exclusive characteristic of the blacks," muttered Amalric. "Where is this Gazal?"
"It cannot be far," she answered. "I walked a whole day … and then I do not know how far the black man carried me after he found me. But he must have discovered me about sunset, so he could not have come far''
"In which direction?" he demanded.
"I do not know. I traveled eastward when I left the city."
"City?" he muttered. "A day's travel from this spot? I had thought there was only desert for a thousand miles."
"Gazal is in the desert," she answered. "It is built amidst the palms of an oasis."
Putting the girl aside, he got to his feet, swearing softly as he fingered his throat, the skin of which was bruised and lacerated. He examined the three blacks in turn, finding no life in any of them. Then, one by one, he dragged them a short distance out into the desert Somewhere, the jackals began yelping.
Returning to the water hole, where the girl patiently squatted, he cursed to find only the black stallion of Tilutan with the camel. The other horses had broken their tethers and bolted during the fight.
Amalric returned to the girl and proffered her a handful of dried dates. She nibbled at them eagerly, while the other sat and watched her, an increasing impatience throbbing in his veins.
"Why did you run away?" he asked abruptly. "Are you a slave?"
''We have no slaves in Gazal," she answered. "Oh, I was weary … so weary of the eternal monotony. I wished to see something of the outer world. Tell me, from what land do you come?"
"I was born in the western hills of Aquilonia," he answered.
She clapped her hands like a delighted child. "I know where that is! I have seen it on the maps. It is the westernmost country of the Hyborians, and its king is Epeus the Sword-wielder."
Amalric experienced a distinct shock. His head jerked up, and he stared at his companion.
"Epeus? Why, Epeus has been dead for nine hundred years. The king's name is Vilerus."
"Oh, of course," she said with embarrassment. "I am foolish. Of course Epeus was king nine centuries ago, as you say. But tell me … tell me all about the world!"
"Why, that's a big order!" he answered, nonplussed. "You have not traveled?"
"This is the first time I have ever been out of sight of the walls of Gazal," she declared.
His gaze was fixed on the curve of her white bosom. He was not, at the moment, interested in her adventures; Gazal might have been Hell for all he cared.
He started to speak; then, changing his mind, caught her roughly in his arms, his muscles tensed for the struggle he expected. But he encountered no resistance. Her soft, yielding body lay across his knees, and she looked up at him somewhat in surprise but without fear or embarrassment She might have been a child, submitting to a new kind of play. Something about her direct gaze confused him. If she had screamed, wept, fought, or smiled knowingly, he would have known how to deal with her.
"Who in Mitra's name are you, girl?" he asked roughly. "You are neither touched with the sun nor playing a game with me. Your speech shows you to be no simple country lass, innocent in her ignorance. Yet you seem to know nothing of the world and its ways."
"I am a daughter of Gazal," she answered helplessly. "If you saw Gazal, perhaps you would understand."
He lifted her and set her down in the sand. Rising, he brought a saddle blanket and spread it out for her.
"Sleep, Lissa," he said, his voice harsh with conflicting emotions. "Tomorrow I mean to see Gazal."
At dawn they started westward. Amalric had placed lissa on the camel, showing her how to maintain her balance. She clung to the seat with both hands, displaying no knowledge whatever of camels. This again surprised the young Aquilonian. A girl raised in the desert, who had never before been on a camel; nor, until the preceding night, had she ever ridden or been carried on a horse.