At the first blow, the monster uttered a shrill, ululating cry and slackened its grip.
The ring!
The ring of Rakhamon, the gift of Pelias, with unknown powers of magic and sorcery, that Conan carried! A deadly weapon against this waif of the icy darkness, that tore men’s souls from their bodies to eternal damnation and left them broken and frozen on the snows!
Conan struck again, and now the ululation changed to a shrill shriek as the white horror flung itself backward to escape the terror of the ring. With savage glee, Conan lunged after it. Now he was the attacker!
Using the sharp rhomboid points of the ring as a weapon, he ripped savagely into the white form.
There was a shrill bellow from the facial region of the creature. It fled over the snow, white ichor dripping from its wounds, while Conan pursued it like an avenging spirit.
Its steps carried it to the brink of an icy chasm, where it paused, at bay, tottering and trembling. Mercilessly, Conan slashed with his ringed fist at its body. With a weird shriek it staggered backward. For a moment it fought for balance on the edge; then the icy crust gave way. With a long-drawn wail it hurtled downwards into the darkness of the abyss.
Conan shook himself like a wolf-dog after the hunt. “Pelias gave me a powerful bauble indeed,” he mumbled.
“A pox on these snow demons! That one has been cast back to its hellish haunts, anyway. Now I’d better hurry, if I am to reach the downward slopes tomorrow.”
CHAPTER 8: The Dragon of Khitai
It was the twenty-fifth day since he had crossed the Khitan border.
The arid, sandy lands bordering the vast Wuhuan Desert, unpeopled save for straggling bands of weather-beaten nomads, had been relieved by vast bogs and marshes. Waterfowl whirred up in clouds from pools of stagnant water. Red-eyed, ill-tempered marsh buffalo splashed and snorted in the tall reeds. Swarms of biting insects hummed; tigers on the hunt uttered coughing roars. Conan needed all his swamp-craft, acquired in the Kushite jungles and the marshes fringing the Sea of Vilayet, to cross these inhospitable reaches, with the help of handmade swamp shoes and improvised bamboo rafts.
When the fens ended, thick jungle began. This was not much easier to penetrate. Conan’s heavy Zhaibar knife was at constant work cutting through dense undergrowth, but the iron muscles and dogged determination of the giant Cimmerian never flagged. These parts had once been rich and civilized, long ago when Western civilization was barely in its morning glow. In many places Conan found crumbling ruins of temples, palaces, and whole dries, dead and forgotten for thousands of years. Their empty window-holes stared blackly like the eye sockets of skulls in somber forgetfulness. Vines draped the worn and pitted statues of weird, pre-human gods. Chattering apes shrieked their displeasure at his intrusion into their green-mantled walls.
The jungle melted into rolling plains, where saffron-skinned herdsmen watched their flocks. Straight across this part of the land, across hills and valleys alike, ran the Great Wall of Khitai. Conan surveyed it grimly. With a thousand stout Aquilonian warriors, equipped with rams and catapults, he would soon breach this vast but static defense, by a lightning thrust ere help could come from other sections of the wall.
But he had no thousand soldiers with siege engines, and cross the Great Wall he must. One dark night, when the moon was veiled, he stole over by means of a rope, leaving a guardsman stunned by a blow on the helm.
The grassy fields were traversed in the tireless, mile-devouring barbarian jog-trot, which enabled him to cover vast distances between rests.
The jungle soon began anew. Here, however, were signs of the passing of man^ lacking in the other forests through which he had hewn a laborious way. Narrow paths were beaten through the undergrowth, though it massed as thickly as ever among the clustered bamboo stems on the sides. Vines festooned the trees; gay-feathered birds twittered. From far away came the snarl of a hunting leopard.
Conan slunk along the path like an animal born to jungle life. From the information he had gleaned from the Khitan slave freed after the sea fight on the Vilayet Sea, he deduced that he was now in the jungle bordering the city-state of Paikang. The Khitan had told him that it took eight days to cross this belt of forest. Conan counted on making it in four. Drawing upon his immense barbarian resources of vitality, he could undergo exertions unthinkable to other men.
Now his goal was to reach some settlement. The tale was that the forest folk lived in dread of Paikang’s cruel ruler. Therefore Conan counted on finding friends who could furnish him with directions for reaching the city.
The eerie atmosphere of the bamboo jungle pressed down upon him with almost physical force. Unbroken and unexplored for thousands of years, save for narrow paths and small clearings, it seemed to hold the answers to the mysteries of aeons. An enigmatic aura of brooding enveloped the glossy, naked stems of the bamboo, which rose on every hand in jutting profusion. The esoteric traditions of this land reached back before the first fire was lit in the West. Vast and ancient was the knowledge hoarded by its philosophers, artisans, and sorcerers.
Conan shrugged off the depressing influence and gripped the hilt of his tulwar more firmly. His feet trod silently on the matting of moldering leaves. His faculties were sharpened and alert, like those of a wolf raiding into the lands of a foreign pack.
There was a rustle among the half-rotten leaves. A great snake, slate-gray with a flaming red zigzag along its back, reared its head from its hiding place. It struck viciously, with bared and dripping fangs. At that instant, the steel in Conan’s hand flashed. The tulwar’s keen edge severed the head of the reptile, which writhed and twisted in its death throes. Conan grimly cleaned his blade and pressed on.
Then he halted. Stock-still he stood, ears sharpened to the utmost, nostrils widened to catch the faintest scent.
He had heard the clank of metal and now could catch the sound of voices.
Swiftly but cautiously he advanced. The path made a sudden turn a hundred paces further on. At this corner his sharp eyes sought the cause of the disturbance.
In a small clearing, two powerful yellow-skinned Khitans were trussing a saffron-hued girl to a tree. Unlike most of the Far Eastern folk, these men were tall and powerful. Their lacquered, laminated armor and flaring helmets gave them a sinister, exotic look. At their sides hung broad, curved swords in lacquered wooden scabbards. Cruelty and brutality were stamped on their features.
The girl twisted in their grip, uttering frantic pleas in the singsong, liquid Khitan tongue. Having learned more than a smattering of it in his youth, when he had served the king of Turan as a mercenary, Conan found he could understand the words. The captive’s slant-eyed face was of a startling oriental beauty.
Her pleading had no effect on her merciless captors, who continued their work. Conan felt his rage mounting.
This was one of those cruel human sacrifices which he had tried to stamp out in the western world but which were still common in the East. His blood boiled at the sight of this manhandling of a defenseless girl. He broke from cover with a bull-like rush, sword out.
The crackling of the underbrush beneath the Cimmerian’s feet reached the ears of the Khitan soldiers. They swung round towards the sound, and their eyes widened with unfeigned surprise. Both whipped out their swords and prepared to meet the barbarian’s attack with arrogant confidence. They spoke no word, but the girl cried out: “Flee! Do not try to save me! These are the best swordsmen in Khitai! They belong to the bodyguard of Yah Chieng!”