Conan's brows drew together in a vast frown. He picked up a heavy table and heaved it against the new obstacle. With a crashing impact, the ungainly missile burst open the shattered door. He tossed the remains of the table aside and strode through.
At a table in the middle of the lamplit room stood a tall, powerful man of middle age. Conan knew him by description as Veziz Shah. Silken divans and tables laden with delicacies stood about on the rug-covered floor. On one table rested a flagon of wine with two filled goblets.
A woman rested on the divan. Her sheer silken gown revealed her charms. Conan gave a start. This was the girl who had accosted him in Khanyria and almost led him to his death!
No time now to mull over such matters. With a curse, the governor unsheathed his jeweled scimitar and advanced catlike upon the Cimmerian.
"You dare invade my chambers, you red-handed rogue!" he snarled. "I have heard you are on the rove again, and I hoped for the pleasure of having your limbs torn off by wild horses. But as it is—"
He whipped forward in a swift arching stroke. Most men would have been so distracted by his words as to have their throats slit by that whistling edge, but the pantherish speed of barbarian muscles saved Conan. Parrying with his hilt, he lashed out in a vicious countercut. In the exchange of blows and thrusts, he soon found he faced one of the most skilled swordsmen he had ever met.
But no civilized fencer could match the skill and speed of Conan, hardened in wars and battles since boyhood against foes from all over the world. The skill at arms he had won as a mercenary would by itself have made him master of any ordinary swordsman, for his learning had been pounded into his brain in endless, bloody strife on far battlefields.
As the duel continued, Veziz Shah began to tire and his eyes filled with an awful fear. With a sudden cry he flung his scimitar into Conan's face and raced for the far wall. There his questing fingers probed the surface as if seeking the spring to open a hidden exit.
Conan avoided the missile with a jerk of his black-maned head. The next second his arm was around the neck and his knee in the back of the Turanian emir. His voice was a terrible whisper in Veziz Shah's ear.
"Dog, remember when you caught ten of my Afghulis when you commanded a squadron in Secunderam? And how you sent me their pickled heads in jars with wishes for a hearty repast? Your time has come. Rot in Hell!"
With a terrible heave, the blood-mad Cimmerian forced his enemy's body backwards against the thrust of his knee until the Turanian's spine snapped like a dry twig. A lifeless corpse flopped to the floor. Sweating and panting, Conan turned to the woman on the divan.
Thanara had not moved during the fight. Now she rose, eyes shining, raised her arms and came fearlessly towards Conan, ignoring the bloody sword in his hand
"You are a real man!" she whispered, pressing herself against his rough mail and twining her arms around his corded neck. "None other could have slain Veziz Shah. I am glad you did. He forced me by threats to come in here to do his bidding. I have nothing against loving a man, but I wish to do it of my own accord. Share my couch, barbarian!"
Conan felt the hot urge of his racing blood. In his younger days he would have swept the woman into his arms and damned the consequences. But now the caution of long experience asserted itself.
"You were clad otherwise when we met in Khanyria," he said, taking both her wrists in one big paw and drawing her firmly down to the couch beside him. "Tell me the tale behind that ambush, and your part in it. No lies, now, if you know what's good for you!"
The dark eyes under the long lashes regarded him without fear. A well-formed hand gently drew itself from his grasp and took one of the goblets of wine from the table. She handed him this vessel and began sipping the other herself
"You must be thirsty after killing. Have a draught of this wine. Drink, and I will tell you the story you ask for."
Conan stared into the depths of the cup as Thanara's musical voice began: "I am Thanara, a yedka or high-born lady of Maypur. King Yezdigerd has graciously appointed me one of his personal agents—the eyes and ears of the king, as we call them in Turan. When word came that you had embarked on your lonely journey, I was sent to supervise the work of the stupid mercenaries engaged by our agent in Tarantia. I suppose—"
Conan hurled his cup to the floor and furiously turned upon the woman. He had sniffed the wine and let a little touch his tongue, and his keen barbarian senses told him of the threat that lurked in the cup. One huge hand fastened itself in her long black hair.
"I'll supervise you, strumpet!" he snarled. "I thought—"
Thanara's hand came up from behind her and flung into his face a pinch of the pollen of the yellow lotus. Conan jerked back, coughing and sneezing, and let go Thanara's hair. Holding her breath, she slipped out of his reach and stood up.
Snoring heavily, Conan sprawled upon the couch.
Thanara nodded in satisfaction. For the next two or three days he would be like a man stone dead.
A rising murmur from without attracted her attention. She stepped to a window overlooking the square and pulled back the curtains. At the sight she saw she jerked back. Houses flamed, fired by the ravaging Zuagir horde. Shrieks of captive women and curses of battling men echoed. White, ghostly shapes flitted here and there. Evidently Conan had entered the fort, not alone as she had thought, but in the company of the desert wolves.
Swiftly she collected her wits. She grabbed a white robe from one of the chests and donned it She armed herself with a long, gold-hilted dagger. Thrusting aside the broken and staring corpse of the late governor, she searched with swift hands for the spring activating the secret door.
With a grating sound, a section of the wall swung inward, disclosing a spiral staircase leading downwards. She went back to the couch where the unconscious form of Conan rested. Grasping him beneath the armpits, she dragged him inside the secret door, straining her muscles to the utmost to move his great weight. She worked the spring from inside to close the door and laid the Cimmerian to rest on the steps.
Thanara hurried down the steps. Light came faintly from several narrow window slits. On the ground floor she found herself in a small circular chamber. The exit worked in the same way as the entrance to the hidden passage. She pressed the stud and slipped out, taking good note of the means of reentry.
The fort was a hell. The Zuagirs had broken out the contents of the wine cellars and gotten swiftly drunk. Their laughing torchmen had set fire to every house. Bands of captive, half-naked women were rounded up and herded, with whiplashes and coarse jests, toward the main gate.
At the barracks the slaughter had been awful. The cornered soldiers, rushing out through the only exit, had run into a hail of arrows from the waiting Zuagir archers. Hundreds of pincushioned bodies lay in heaps about the ruins of the barracks, while charred bodies in the debris showed that many had been caught by the flames before they could win out the door to face the arrows.
Among the inner buildings of the fort, bands of blood-mad nomads were still cutting down the remnants of the company of the Imperial Guard who, awakened by the noise, burst out of their scattered lodgings
Hardened to a life of raw experience, Thanara hurried through the dark streets. The way was lit only by the guttering flames of burning houses. Unfrightened by the corpses choking the gutters, she melted into dark doorways whenever a screaming Zuagir band shuffled by, swinging golden spoils and herding captive women. When passing the mouth of a small lane, she heard a gurgle. She peered swiftly into the gloom and discerned a prostrate figure. She also saw that it wore the spired helmet and fine-meshed mail coif of a Turanian Imperial Guard.