Conan was now as careful not to look to his rear as any Aquilonian knight leading a charge. He did not do it for the knight's reasons of not wishing to show doubt that those sworn to him would follow steadfastedly in his wake.
The Cimmerian kept his eyes to the front or the side because there lay the ridge that offered the only hope of safety, as well as any number of hidden dangers. The holes of burrowing rodents to snap a horse's leg like a rotten twig, soft sand to bring horse and man down together, nests of asps to give a lingering death if disturbed—these could end the race as thoroughly as being overtaken by the Turanians.
So could nomads or Turanians lying in ambush.
The nomads held no love for the Turanians, and even less now in the face of Yezdigerd's growing strength. That would not stay their hands for a moment if they thought they could buy a Turanian captain's goodwill with the heads of the Cimmerian and his following.
This was no land for any man who cared to live without eyes in the back of his head and his hand close to the hilt of his sword. Conan had lived no other way for more years than he had fingers, and in their feud-ridden land the Afghulis sucked in wariness with their mothers' milk.
"Conan!" The call rose above the thunder of hooves. "The Turanians send a band ahead, faster than the rest!"
Conan recognized the voice. It was Farad, first man among the Afghulis. He shouted back, without turning his head.
"They think to wolf-pack us. Time for the archers to make them think again."
"Or stop thinking at all!" Farad shouted back, battle-joy in his cry.
"Wolf-packing" was a pursuer's sending one band after another to force the pursued to a pace their mounts could not sustain. In time the pursued would have stumbling, foaming, dying mounts, at the mercy of the last fresh riders of the pursuer.
It suggested that the Turanians were regularly sworn horsemen of the host, or at worst the better sort of irregular, such as Conan himself had led during his service in Turan. Neither was often found this far into the desert—or rather, had not been found here before Yezdigerd took the throne of Turan, with ambitions to take everything else he could lay his hands on.
The ground began to rise before Conan's eyes. He studied it. Was there a ravine off to the right that led to the base of the ridge and offered shelter from arrows? The Cimmerian slowed to a trot, patting the neck of his foam-flecked horse reassuringly.
"Not much farther, lady," he muttered to the horse. Not much farther to at least brief safety or a swift death. They would find nothing else under this desert sun.
The ravine was narrow and its floor studded with rocks thrusting up wildly, as if flung down by a mad giant. No passage there, at least no swift one—and while the Afghulis were threading their way through the rocks, the Turanians could seize one side of the ravine and send down a hail of arrows.
Conan's men would reach the rocks in the open or not at all.
The Cimmerian's spurs went in again. The mare whickered in protest, blew foam from her mouth, and gathered her legs under her.
"Come on, you sons of dogs!" Conan roared. "Or are you going to lie down for Turanians, of all the pox-ridden folk on earth!"
On staggering horses, some leaving trails of blood, the Afghulis followed. Conan risked a look behind and saw that the first band of the wolf pack had fallen back. Fallen back, moreover, onto ground already well adorned with fallen men and horses. Some still struggled, as the rest of the Turanians rode on past or sometimes over them.
The ridge loomed ahead. Conan drove spurs deeper. The mare responded with what had to be the last of her strength. Gravel and sand flew up about her hooves, like foam from the ram of a war galley.
Another look back. The center of the Turanians was advancing in a solid mass, but on either flank bands were breaking off.
So they were going to surround the ridge, were they? No one but a fool would fail to do that, and fools did not command Turanian horsemen all that often. More than one captain and more than one book on war had told Conan what his own sense said: Never trust your enemy to be a witling.
The thud of the mare's hooves on the ground changed pitch. The ground was harder now, with rock just under the sand and gravel. The other riders reached the hard ground, and half a hundred hooves drummed their way toward the rough ground.
Behind, the Turanian horns gave tongue again, and this time a drum joined them. Conan spat from a desert-dry and dust-filled mouth. The drum was no good news; often as not, the Turanians used it to summon up reinforcements.
Let them summon all the host of Turan. We can still give them a battle those who survive it will not forget.
The vanguard of the Turanians breasted the slope, and sunlight flamed on mail sleeves as half a score of archers nocked and drew as one man.
The crimson glow spread from the cup until, to one looking into the chamber, the Lady might have seemed embedded in the heart of a gigantic ruby. Only her lips moved with the murmuring of her spell, and her breast with her shallow breathing. A keen eye might have seen a tremor in a finger or the muscle of one bare and supple thigh, but otherwise the Lady might have been the image of a sorceress at her magic, carved by a master sculptor.
A low-pitched thrumming began, at first seeming remote, then drawing closer, as if men bore toward the cave a great drum on which they were beating softly. The sound swelled until one would have said there was more than one drum.
Then came soft footsteps and what might have been a muffled cough. Two of the Maidens entered, leading between them one of the captives. The captive was a man of middle years, a hard-faced peasant with the hooked nose of the Kezankian hill folk and little hair on his parchment-hued scalp.
The captive's hands were bound behind his back with a rough but stout cord of marsh grass. Otherwise he wore nothing—not even the aspect of one awake and aware. His eyes were as vacant as a newborn babe's, shifted about altogether at random, and showed no animation even when their gaze fell upon the splendid form of the Lady of the Mist.
The Maidens themselves had now cast off their warriors' garb and wore only white silk loin-guards and, draped over one shoulder, long cords of the same marsh grass. Woven among the grass were amber-hued vines and woolen thread in all the colors ever imagined in the rainbow, let alone seen.
The Lady of the Mists now flung up both hands. A waterfall of sparks poured from her fingertips, silver blazing amidst the crimson. The sigil of Kull on the lid of the cup drew the sparks as a lodestone draws iron. They poured down upon it and vanished into it.
Another gesture by long-fingered, slender hands. The lid rose from the cup. Within lay fire of a crimson yet brighter than the glow filling the chamber. It might have been a blacksmith's forge heated to the utmost, yet neither smoke, heat, nor flame rose from the cup.
The Maidens saw the cup's fire with waking eyes, and blinked. The captive saw nothing, and only the gods knew what passed through as much of a mind as the potion had left him.
If, that is, the gods had not altogether forsaken this cave, its invoking of ancient powers, and its tampering with the laws of both gods and men.
The sigil-marked lid rose higher, wafting toward the ceiling of the chamber as light as thistledown on the breeze, for all that it weighed more than a steel battle helm. A beckoning gesture from the Lady, and the captive took a step forward. Another gesture, another step.
Now he stood almost above the cup. The fire within it tinted his skin until he seemed a bronze statue. A third gesture, and the bindings unknotted themselves and fell to the floor. One of the Maidens stopped to pick them up.