"We are followed. Many more than we are, from the dust they make."
Conan turned to look eastward. Farad's eyes were keen and his judgment sound. The riders behind had to be at least fifty, though probably not more than a hundred—which hardly mattered, as even fifty was four times the strength of Conan's band.
Nor did it matter much who they were, unless by some improbable chance they were a caravan gone astray or Zamboulans. Neither was likely to be found in this stretch of desert; more likely by far were nomads or Turanians, and neither would meet Conan and his men as friends.
In some nomad dialects the word "stranger" was also the word for "enemy." Among every nomad tribe, anyone who had wealth to take and no kin to avenge their death was fair game. The horses and weapons of Conan's band would be enough to sign their death warrant with any nomads numerous enough to take them, to say nothing of what Conan bore in a small pouch next to his skin.
That small sack of jewels was all his profit from two years among the Afghulis. That and a whole skin, which he supposed was more than many kept who went among the Afghulis in their native mountains.
Binding the scattered, brawling tribes of the Afghulis into a single host had at first seemed like a good idea. Conan knew his own skill and the prowess of the Afghuli warriors, likewise the weaknesses of every neighboring realm. A united Afghuli people could take their pick.
The Afghulis did not seem to care overmuch for this bright vision. If it meant fighting beside a man whose great-grandfather had insulted theirs, they would rather fight the man (or perhaps the towering foreigner who suggested that they forgive the insult).
It was Conan's luck, not to mention ready blade and stout thews, that kept his hide intact. With little but what he had on his person and no friends but those who owed him blood-debts, he had fled the mountains. Fighting their way through bandits and bears alike, they came to hear rumors of war in Koth.
Westward they rode, the Afghulis as eager as Conan to try their hand at winning loot and glory from the troubles of Koth. They had to ride well clear of the borders of Turan, however, for in that realm there was a price on Conan's head. Under King Yildiz's mild reign, few Turanians would have cared to gamble their lives on taking Conan's. Yezdigerd was not his father, and knew how to use both fear and greed to make men bold, even foolhardy.
Conan looked eastward again. He thought he saw a second dust cloud on the horizon, but after a mo-ment knew it was only a dust devil, a creature of the wind. But the first cloud had grown larger, and now he thought he saw the glint of sunlight on steel.
The nomads wore no armor. In this land, armored riders were most likely Turanians. Conan looked westward, studying the ground with a practiced eye. He had fought in every kind of land from glacier to jungle, and knew what each offered to a hunted band.
To the west, the desert rolled away under the sun, offering little but sand and scrub. Anywhere in that emptiness, Conan's band would stand out like a pea on a platter. Once in bowshot, the enemy would have easy prey, unless night came—and it was only early afternoon.
To the north, however, a sprawling gray mass thrust its rocky head above the sand. Any who reached this ridge might lurk in its cracks and crevices until nightfall dimmed the enemy's sight, then slip away. At worst, it offered shelter for archery and ambushes, likewise high ground for a last stand if the odds against escape grew too long.
Conan grinned at the prospect of giving King Yezdigerd a few more widows' pensions to pay. This was the kind of fight that made his blood sing and that had made his name in all Hyborian lands and more than a few others. Long odds, a need for both cunning and strength, and stout brothers-in-arms to tell the tales afterward or keep him company in death if that was his fate.
No one worthy of the name of warrior could complain about the battle Conan faced.
His only remaining problem was to be sure that the battle would be on his chosen ground, not that of the
Turanians. A good deal of open desert lay between Conan's men and the ridge, bare of cover but likely full of holes and cracks that could catch a horse's leg and doom its rider.
Conan had read a few books on the art of war, and thought most of them tried to make into wizardry something that was for the most part common sense. In none of them had he found one maxim he knew to be true: The horse that has never stumbled before will stumble when you are riding for your life.
He waved toward the ridge, while turning in the saddle to shout at the Afghulis. "We'll perch there until nightfall. Archers, to the rear, but I'll gut the man who wastes arrows." The Afghulis were mostly not the finished horse-archers of Turan, among the best in the world; but their pursuers would make a large target.
The archers reined in a trifle, the rest dug in spurs, and dust swirled around Conan's band as it re-formed for its last ride. Dust also swirled, higher and thicker than before, to their rear. Conan cast a final look behind him, thought he recognized Turanian banners, then put his head down and his heels in to ride for his life.
In a bare rock chamber in the wall of the Valley of the Mists, a woman sat cross-legged and alone on a bearskin thrown across a Turanian rug. Before her stood a tall wine cup of gilded bronze, with four handles and a broad base displaying archaic, even ancient runes known only among sorcerers and talked of in whispers even among them.
The Lady was as bare as the chamber, save for a necklace, bracelets, and coronet of fresh mountain creeper. A Maiden had plucked it in the night and brought it to the chamber before dawn, where it had remained in cool shadows. It was still so fresh that the last drops of dew trickled from the crinkled gray-green leaves down between the Lady's breasts.
The Lady of the Mists—she did not choose to remember any other name—reached under the bearskin and drew out a heavy disk of age-blackened bronze. One could barely make out under the patina of centuries the sigil of Kull of Atlantis.
The Lady knew not whether some potent Atlantean spell still lurked in the bronze. She only knew that nothing else that had come into her hands so readily let her work her own.
That was as well. Workers in magic did best and lived longest (if they cared for that, as the Lady did) if they worked most with the magic they knew and commanded—as well as any mortal could command power from the realms of night.
She shifted her position with the languid grace of a cat half-roused from sleep, until she could reach the cup. She set the bronze disk atop the cup, so that it rested a hairsbreadth below the rim, completely covering the cup.
The movement sent more dew trickling between her breasts. No living man would have gazed on those breasts unstirred, nor did the rest of the Lady's form repel the eye any more than her breasts. She could have filled her bed more readily than most women, had she sought that—or had her eyes been other than they were.
They were of human size and shape, but of a golden hue seen in no race of men. She also had the vertical pupils of a cat, and these were a nightmare black against the yellow.
Any man seeing the Lady's form would have judged her human, and judged truly. Then, coming closer, a glimpse of her eyes would have changed his mind and likely sent him fleeing, faster than anything but the Lady's laughter could pursue. Or, if she took offense, the Lady's magic.
The Lady pressed a finger to the cup, moving it to see if its bronze seal was well in place. No rattle greeted her. She smiled, and her eyes narrowed, like those of a cat looking, as they so often do, into a world beyond human knowledge.
Then she rested both hands lightly on the bronze and began to sing. The cup quivered at first, then steadied, but around cup and Lady alike a crimson light began to spread.