“He might have passed before they set up their ambush, or they might have been following him when they turned to trap us. I think he's still ahead of us.”
A mile further on they heard faint sounds of pursuit. Then they came out into a natural bowl walled by sheer cliffs. From the midst of this bowl a slope led up to a bottleneck pass on the other side. As they neared this pass, Conan saw that a low stone wall closed the gut of the pass. Sassan yelled and jumped down from the horse as a flight of arrows screeched past. One struck the horse in the chest.
The beast lurched to a thundering fall, and Conan jumped clear and rolled behind a cluster of rocks, where Sassan had already taken cover. More arrows splintered against boulders or stuck quivering in the earth. The two adventurers looked at each other with sardonic humor.
“We've found Zyras!” said Sassan.
“In an instant,” laughed Conan, “they'll rush us, and Keraspa will come up behind us to close the trap.”
A taunting voice shouted: “Come out and get shot, curs! Who's the Zuagir with you, Sassan? I thought I had brained him last night!”
“My name is Conan,” roared the Cimmerian.
After a moment of silence, Zyras shouted. “I might have known! Well, we have you now!”
“You're in the same fix!” yelled Conan. “You heard the fighting back down the gorge?”
“Aye; we heard it when we stopped to water the horses. Who's chasing you ?”
“Keraspa and a hundred Kezankians! When we are dead, do you think he'll let you go after you tortured one of his men? You had better let us join you,” added Sassan.
“Is that the truth?” yelled Zyras, his turbaned head appearing over the wall.
“Are you deaf, man ?” retorted Conan.
The gorge reverberated with yells and hoofbeats.
“Get in, quickly!” shouted Zyras. “Time enough to divide the idol if we get out of this alive.”
Conan and Sassan leaped up and ran up the slope to the wall, where hairy arms helped them over. Conan looked at his new allies: Zyras, grim and hard-eyed in his Turanian guise; Arshak, still dapper after leagues of rid ing; and three swarthy Zamorians who bared their teeth in greeting. Zyras and Arshak each wore a shirt of chain mail like those of Conan and Sassan.
The Kezankians, about a score of them, reined up their horses, the bows of the Zamorians and Arshak sent arrows swish ing among them. Some of them shot back; others whirled! and rode back out of range to dismount, as the wall was too high to be carried by a mounted charge. One saddle was emptied and one wounded horse bolted back dow the gorge with its rider.
“They must have been following us,” snarled Zym “Conan, you lied! That is no hundred men!”
“Enough to cut our throats,” said Conan, trying his sword. “And Keraspa can send for reinforcements whenever he feels.”
Zyras growled: “We have a chance behind this wall, I believe it was built by the same race that built the red god's temple. Save your arrows for the rush.”
Covered by a continuous discharge of arrows from four of their numbers on the flanks, the rest of the Kezankians ran up the slope in a solid mass, those in front holding up light bucklers. Behind them Conan saw Keraspa's red beard as the wily chief urged his men on.
“Shoot!” screamed Zyras. Arrows plunged into the mass of men and three writhing figures were left behind on the slope, but the rest came on, eyes glaring and blades glittering in hairy fists.
The defenders shot their last arrows into die mass and then rose up behind the wall, drawing steel. The mountaineers rolled up against the wall. Some tried to boost their fellows up to the top; others pushed small boulders up against the foot of the wall to provide steps. Along the barrier sounded the smash of bone-breaking blows, the rasp and slither of steel, the gasping oaths of dying men. Conan hewed the head from the body of a Kezankian and beside him saw Sassan thrust his spear into the open mouth of another until the point came out at the back of the man's neck. A wild-eyed tribesman stabbed a long knife into the belly of one of the Zamorians. Into the gap left by the falling body the howling Kezankian lunged, hurling himself up and over the wall before Conan could stop him. The giant Cimmerian took a cut on his left arm and crushed the man's shoulder with a return blow.
Leaping over the body, he hewed into the men swarming up over the wall with no time to see how the fight was going on either side. Zyras was cursing in Corinthian and Arshak in Hyrkanian. Somebody screamed in mortal agony. A tribesman got a pair of gorilla-like hands on Conan's thick neck, but the Cimmerian tensed his neck muscles and stabbed low with his knife again and again until with a moan the Zezankian released him and toppled from the wall.
Gasping for air, Conan looked about him, realizing drat the pressure had slackened. The few remaining Kezankians were staggering down the slope, all streaming blood. Corpses lay piled deep at the foot of the wall. All three of the Zamorians were dead or dying, and Conan saw Arshak sitting with his back against the wall, his hands pressed to his body while blood seeped between his fingers. The prince's lips were blue, but he achieved a ghastly smile.
“Born in a palace,” he whispered, “and dying behind a rock wal! No matter ... it is fate. There is a curse on the treasure - all men who rode on the trail of the bloodstained god have died...” And he died.
Zyras, Conan, and Sassan glanced silently at one another : three grim tattered figures, all splashed with blood. All had taken minor wounds on their limbs, but their mail shirts had saved them from the death that had befallen their companions.
“I saw Keraspa sneaking off!” snarled Zyras. “He'll make for his village and get the whole tribe on our trail. Let us make a race of it: get the idol and drag it out of the mountains before he catches us. There's enough treasure for all.”
“True,” growled Conan. “But give me back my map before we start.”
Zyras opened his mouth to speak, and then saw that Sassan had picked up one of the Zamorians' bows and had drawn an arrow on him. “Do as Conan tells you,” said the Iranistani.
Zyras shrugged and handed over a crumpled parchment. “Curse you, I still deserve a third of the treasure!”
Conan glanced at the map and thrust it into his girdle. “All right; I'll not hold a grudge. You're a swine, but if you play fair with us we'll do the same, eh, Sassan?”
Sassan nodded and gathered up a quiverful of arrows.
The horses of Zyras' party were tied in the pass behind the wall. The three men mounted the best beasts and led the three others, up the canyon behind the pass. Night fell, but with Keraspa behind them they pushed recklessly on.
Conan watched his companions like a hawk. The most dangerous time would come when they had secured the golden statue and no longer needed each other's help, Then Zyras and Sassan might conspire to murder Conan, or one of them might approach him with a plan to slay the third man. Tough and ruthless though the Cimmerian was, his barbaric code of honor would not let him be the first to try treachery.
He also wondered what it was that the maker of the map had tried to tell him just before he died. Death had come upon Ostorio in the midst of a description of the temple, with a gush of blood from his mouth. The Nemedian had been about to warn him of something, he thought ... but of what?
Dawn broke as they came out of a narrow gorge into a steep-walled valley. The defile through which they had entered was the only way in. It came out upon a ledge thirty paces wide, with the cliff rising a bowshot above it on one side and falling away to an unmeasurable depth below. There seemed no way down into the mist-veiled depths of the valley far below. The men wasted few glances in this direction, for the sight ahead drove hunger and fatigue from their minds.