Fantasy Masterworks 01 (68 page)

Despair swept over him as he felt the strength of the warrior. Tilutan was wiser than Saidu. He dropped the scimitar and with a bellow, caught Amalric’s throat with both hands. The great fingers locked like iron, and Amalric, striving vainly to break their grip, was borne down, with the Ghanata’s great weight pinning him to the earth. The smaller man was shaken like a rat in the jaws of a dog. His head was smashed savagely against the sandy earth. As in a red mist he saw the furious face of his opponent, lips writhed back in a bestial grin of hate, teeth glistening. An inhuman snarling slavered from his thick throat.

‘You want her, you dog!’ the Ghanata mouthed, insane with rage and lust. ‘Arrrrghhh! I break your back! I tear out your throat! I - my scimitar! I cut off your head and make her kiss it!’

A final ferocious smash of Amalric’s head against the hard-packed sand, and Tilutan half-lifted him and hurled him down in an excess of bestial passion. Rising, the man ran, stooping like an ape, and caught up his scimitar where it lay like a broad crescent of steel in the sand. Yelling in ferocious exultation, he turned and charged back, brandishing the blade on high. Amalric rose slowly to meet him, dazed, shaken, sick from the manhandling he had received.

Tilutan’s girdle had become unwound in the fight, and now the end dangled about his feet. He tripped, stumbled, fell headlong, throwing out his arms to save himself. The scimitar flew from his hand.

Amalric, galvanized, caught up the scimitar and took a reeling step forward. The desert swam darkly to his gaze. In the dusk before him he saw Tilutan’s face suddenly ashy. The wide mouth gaped, the whites of the eyeballs rolled up. The giant froze on one knee and a hand, as if incapable of further motion. Then the scimitar fell, cleaving the round, shaven head to the chin, where its downward course was checked with a sickening jerk.

Amalric had a dim impression of a face divided by a widening red line, fading in the thickening shadows. Then darkness caught him with a rush.

Something soft and cool was touching Amalric’s face with gentle persistence. He groped blindly and his hand closed on something warm, firm and resilient. Then his sight cleared and he looked into a soft oval face, framed in lustrous black hair. As in a trance he gazed unspeaking, hungrily dwelling on each detail of the full red lips, dark violet eyes, and alabaster throat. With a start he realized the vision was speaking in a soft musical voice. The words were strange, yet possessed an illusive familiarity. A small white hand holding a dripping bunch of silk was passed gently over his throbbing head and face. He sat up dizzily.

It was night, under the star-splashed skies. The camel still munched its cud; a horse whinnied restlessly. Not far away lay a hulking dark figure with its cleft head in a horrible puddle of blood and brains. Amalric looked up at the girl who knelt beside him, talking in her gentle, unknown tongue. As the mists cleared from his brain, he began to understand her. Harking back into half-forgotten tongues he had learned and spoken in the past, he remembered a language used by a scholarly class in a southern province of Koth.

‘Who are you, girl?’ he demanded, prisoning a small hand in his own hardened fingers.

‘I am Lissa.’ The name was spoken with almost the suggestion of a lisp. It was like the rippling of a slender stream.

‘I am glad you are conscious. I feared you were not alive.’

‘A little more and I wouldn’t have been,’ he muttered, glancing at the grisly sprawl that had been Tilutan. She paled, refusing to follow his gaze. Her hand trembled, and in their nearness, Amalric thought he could feel the quick throb of her heart.

‘It was horrible,’ she faltered. ‘Like an awful dream. Anger -and blows - and blood--’

‘It might have been worse,’ he growled.

She seemed sensitive to every changing inflection of his voice or mood. Her free hand stole timidly to his arm.

‘I did not mean to offend you. It was very brave for you to risk your life for a stranger. You are noble as the knights about which I have read.’

He cast a quick glance at her. Her wide clear eyes met his, reflecting only the thought she had spoken. He started to speak, then changed his mind and said another thing. ‘What are you doing in the desert?’

‘I came from Gazal,’ she answered. ‘I - I was running away. I could not stand it any longer. But it was hot and lonely and weary, and I saw only sand, sand - and the blazing blue sky. The sands burned my feet, and my sandals were worn out quickly. I was so thirsty, my canteen was soon empty. And then I wished to return to Gazal, but one direction looked like another. I did not know which way to go. I was terribly afraid, and started running in the direction in which I thought Gazal to be. I do not remember much after that. I ran until I could run no further, and I must have lain in the burning sand for a while. I remember rising and staggering on, and toward the last I thought I heard someone shouting, and saw a huge man on a black horse riding toward me, and then I knew no more until I awoke and found myself lying with my head in that man’s lap, while he gave me wine to drink. Then there was shouting and fighting--’ She shuddered. ‘When it was all over, I crept to where you lay like a dead man, and I tried to bring you to--’

‘Why?’ he demanded.

She seemed at a loss. ‘Why,’ she floundered, ‘why, you were hurt - and - why, it is what anyone would do. Besides, I realized that you were fighting to protect me from these men. The people of Gazal have always said that the desert people were wicked and would harm the helpless.’

‘That’s no exclusive characteristic,’ muttered Amalric. ‘Where is this Gazal?’

‘It can not be far,’ she answered. ‘I walked a whole day - and then I do not know how far the warrior carried me after he found me. But he must have discovered me about sunset, so he could not have come far.’

‘In what direction?’ he demanded.

‘I do not know. I travelled eastward when I left the city.’

‘City?’ he muttered. ‘A day’s travel from this spot? I had thought there was only desert for a thousand miles.’

‘Gazal is in the desert,’ she answered. ‘It is built amidst the palms of an oasis.’

Putting her aside, he got to his feet, swearing softly as he fingered his throat, the skin of which was bruised and lacerated. He examined the three Ghanatas in turn, finding no sign of life in them. Then, one by one, he dragged them a short distance out into the desert. Somewhere the jackals were yelping. Returning to the water hole where the girl squatted patiently, he cursed to find only the black stallion of Tilutan with the camel. The other horses had broken their tethers and bolted during the fight.

Amalric went to the girl and proffered her a handful of dried dates. She nibbled at them eagerly, while the other sat and watched her, his chin on his fists, an increasing impatience throbbing in his veins.

‘Why did you run away?’ he asked abruptly. ‘Are you a slave?’

‘We have no slaves in Gazal,’ she answered. ‘Oh, I was weary - so weary of the eternal monotony. I wished to see something of the outer world. Tell me, from what land do you come?’

‘I was born in the western hills of Aquilonia,’ he answered.

She clapped her hands like a delighted child.

‘I know where it is! I have seen it on the maps. It is the westernmost country of the Hyborians, and its king is Epeus the Sword-wielder!’

Amalric experienced a distinct shock. His head jerked up and he stared at his fair companion.

‘Epeus? Why, Epeus has been dead for nine hundred years. The king’s name is Vilerus.’

‘Oh, of course,’ she said, rather embarrassedly. ‘I am foolish. Of course, Epeus was king nine centuries ago, as you say. But tell me - tell me all about the world!’

‘Why, that is a big order,’ he answered nonplussed. ‘You have not travelled?’

‘This is the very first time that I have ever been out of sight of the walls of Gazal,’ she admitted to him.

His gaze was fixed on the curve of her white bosom. He was not interested in her adventures at the moment, and Gazal might have been Hell for all he cared.

He started to speak, then changing his mind caught her roughly in his arms, his muscles tensing for the struggle he expected. But he encountered no resistance. Her soft, yielding body lay across his knees, and she looked up at him somewhat in surprize, but without fear or embarrassment. She might have been a child submitting to a new kind of play. Something about her direct gaze confused him. If she had screamed, wept, fought, or smiled knowingly, he would have known how to deal with her.

‘Who in Mitra’s name are you, girl?’ he asked roughly. ‘You are neither touched with the sun, nor playing a game with me. Your speech shows you to be no ignorant country lass, innocent in ignorance. Yet you seem to know nothing of the world and its ways.’

‘I am a daughter of Gazal,’ she answered helplessly. ‘If you saw Gazal, perhaps you would understand.’

He lifted her and placed her on the sand. Rising, he brought a saddle blanket and set it out for her.

‘Sleep, Lissa,’ he said, his voice harsh with conflicting emotions. ‘Tomorrow I mean to see Gazal.’

At dawn they started westward. Amalric had lifted Lissa onto the camel, showing her how to maintain her balance. She clung to the seat with both hands, showing no knowledge whatever of camels, which again surprized the young Aquilonian. A girl raised in the desert, she had never before been on a camel, nor, until the preceding night, had she ever ridden or been carried on a horse. Amalric had manufactured a sort of cloak for her, and she wore it without question, not asking whence it came, accepting it as she accepted all things he did for her, gratefully but blindly, without asking the reason. Amalric did not tell her that the silk that shielded her from the sun had once covered the skin of her abductor.

As they rode she again begged him to tell her something of the world, like a child asking for a story.

‘I know Aquilonia is far from this desert,’ she said. ‘Stygia lies between, and the Lands of Shem, and other countries. How is it that you are here, so far from your homeland?’

He rode for a space in silence, his hand on the camel’s guide-rope.

‘Argos and Stygia were at war,’ he said abruptly. ‘Koth became embroiled. The Kothians urged a simultaneous invasion of Stygia. Argos raised an army of mercenaries, which went into ships and sailed southward along the coast. At the same time, a Kothic army was to invade Stygia by land. I was one of that mercenary army. We met the Stygian fleet and defeated it, driving it back into Khemi. We should have landed, looted the city, and advanced along the course of the Styx - but our admiral was cautious. Our leader was Prince Zapayo da Kova, a Zingaran. We cruised southward until we reached the jungle-clad coasts of Kush. There we landed, and the ships anchored, while the army pushed eastward along the Stygian frontier, burning and pillaging as we went. It was our intention to turn northward at a certain point and strike into the heart of Stygia to form a juncture with the Kothic host which was supposed to be pushing down from the north. Then word came that we were betrayed. Koth had concluded a separate peace with the Stygians. A Stygian army was pushing southward to intercept us, while another already had cut us off from the coast.

‘Prince Zapayo, in desperation, conceived the mad idea of marching eastward, hoping to skirt the Stygian border and eventually reach the eastern lands of Shem. But the army from the north overtook us. We turned and fought. All day we fought, and finally they gave before us, their retreat turning into rout. But the next day the pursuing army came up from the west, and crushed between the hosts, our army ceased to be. We were broken, annihilated, destroyed. There were few left to flee. But when night fell, I broke away with my companion, a Cimmerian named Conan, a brute of a man with the strength of a bull.

‘We rode southward into the desert, because there was no other direction in which we might go. Conan had been in this part of the world before, and he believed we had a chance to survive. Far to the south we found an oasis, but Stygian riders harried us, and we fled again, from oasis to oasis, fleeing, starving, thirsting, until we found ourselves in a barren, unknown land of blazing and empty sand. We rode until our horses were reeling, and we were half delirious. Then one night we saw fires and rode up to them, taking a desperate chance that we might make friends. As soon as we came within range, a shower of arrows greeted us. Conan’s horse was hit and it reared, throwing its rider. His neck must have broken like a twig, for he never moved. I got away in the darkness, somehow, though my horse died under me. I had only a glance at the attackers. They were tall, lean brown men, wearing strange, barbaric garments. I wandered on foot through the desert, and fell in with those three vultures you saw yesterday. They were jackals - Ghanatas - members of a robber tribe of mixed blood. The only reason they didn’t murder me was because I had nothing they wished. For a month I have been wandering and thieving with them because there was nothing else I could do.’

‘I did not know it was like that,’ Lissa murmured faintly. ‘They said there were wars and cruelty out in the world, but it seemed like a dream and far away. Listening to you speak of treachery and battle seems almost like seeing it.’

‘Do no enemies ever come against Gazal?’ he demanded. She shook her head. ‘Men ride wide of Gazal. Sometimes I have seen black dots moving in lines along the horizon, and the old men said they were armies moving to war. But they never come near to Gazal.’

Amalric felt a dim stirring of uneasiness. This desert, seemingly empty of life, nevertheless contained some of the fiercest tribes on earth - the Ghanatas, who ranged far to the east; the masked Tibu, whom he believed dwelt further to the south; and somewhere off to the southwest lay the semi-mythical empire of Tombalku, ruled by a wild and barbaric race. It was strange that a city in the midst of this savage land should be left so completely alone that one of its inhabitants did not even know the meaning of war.

When he turned his gaze elsewhere, strange thoughts assailed him. Was the girl touched by the sun? Was she a demon in womanly form come out of the desert to lure him to some cryptic doom? A glance at her clinging childishly to the high peak of the camel saddle was sufficient to dispel these breedings Then again doubt assailed him. Was he bewitched? Had she cast a spell on him?