[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
A blue glow poured from the mouth of the cave now, and against it loomed a towering black shape.
For a moment she thought it was Conan himself, then saw that the shape moved too slowly and stiffly for
any mortal flesh. The statue had come forth, however animated, seemingly with a will of its own and
nothing commanding it.
The night suddenly seemed colder and darker than before, and the trees overhead ready to come to
life and reach down branches like clawing hands, to pluck her from the litter, lift her high, and rend her
apart like a rag doll in the hands of a willful child&
Scyra bit her lip to hold back a cry of despair. She also began casting about in her mind for any
spells that she could work, unaided by the Crystal of Thraz, herbs and simples, being spellclad, or by
anything else except her own wits and memory.
Before this quest yielded consequences, the Picts had regained enough courage to approach the
statue. Or at least one did. Scyra saw him close to the image, both figures dark against the blue glow
from the cave. She saw the spear rise, and she could riot tell whether in salute or challenge.
Then the statue moved. No longer heavily or slowly, but as swiftly as the Cimmerian himself might
have done. One arm gripped the spearhead, and a globe of dazzling blue flame flashed, swallowing both
spearhead and hand. The spear shaft burst into flames; the Pictish warrior howled and leapt back.
Not far enough. The statues other arm gripped his free hand. The pict howled again, this time in
mortal agony. The statue jerked him off his feet, holding him kicking frantically. His silhouette began to
change, twist, shrink. Scyra watched in horror and awe as the Pictish warrior was drained to a limp sack
of skin, then tossed away like a fruit sucked dry.
Horror and awe were also in the cries of the Picts. They drew back, and began hurling spears and
shooting arrows from what they doubtless hoped would be a safe distance. Blue sparks flashed all over
the statue as the spearheads and arrowheads immolated themselves, and a cloud of reeking smoke began
to spread about the figure.
The image took no harm, though, and neither retreated nor advanced. Instead, it suddenly raised
both arms, and blue sparks as long as lightning-bolts sprayed from both hands. Its aim was not perfect;
some of the sparks left only smoking patches on the hillside.
Others caught fleeing Picts. A blue glow spread around them as they stopped, limbs writhing in
convulsion, mouths opened in screams that reached Scyra's ears even through the crackling of the
sparks. It was as if each Pict was being burned in a fierce flame at his own stake.
Then the sparks died and only smoke spreading out in a noisome cloud remained. Smoke, and a
charred thing on the ground.
Scyra had found her spell now. If she could reach out with her mind as she had done to Conan, and
if the Picts had not looted her tent
There. The mind-touch she had sent across the miles had gripped the Crystal of Thraz. She kept her
touch exquisitely delicate; this was as difficult as milking adders for their venom to make certain potions
mentioned only in scrolls forbidden (and indeed, seldom found) outside Stygia.
Her concentration on the Crystal of Thraz was so complete that she did not notice dark shadowy
figures creeping down the slope to either side of the statue.
***
Conan led his rescue party down the slope in silence, although the statues thunderbolts broke the
darkness more often than he cared for. None came his way. Now he could only hope that the statues
increasing power would draw the whole attention of the Picts, without driving them into panic-flight.
That was what he dreaded, next only to treachery by Lysenius. He had too few men to pursue
Scyra and her chakans through the nighted forest, even if those few were united. As they were now, they
would be divided between his rescue party and those who remained behind to guard Lysenius from
wandering Picts, and the Bamulas from Lysenius's treachery.
The Bamulas had learned the art of moving as silently on rocky slopes as in their native jungles. No
coughs and hardly a single rattling pebble betrayed the rescue party as it crept downhill. They could have
made far more noise and still gone unnoticed amid the thunder of the statues magick and the cries of the
Picts.
Beyond the circle of death cleared by the statue, darkness fell again, and Conan's night-sight
returned. He saw a single figure standing beside a tree, and behind it, shadows that did not look
altogether human. Was it a fancy of the night and the magick, or was there something lying amid those
inhuman shadows?
He would start with the standing figure. At least it seemed human and, from the headdress, a chief.
Behead a Pictish war-band by killing the chief, after the band had already been shaken by magick, and
one had a good chance of driving the foe into flight.
With hands and whispers, Conan guided the Bamulas with him to the left. There the ground offered
more concealment, almost up to the very feet of the standing chief.
Unfortunately, a good number of Picts had also sought the same concealment. Conan found himself
at arm's length from a crouching Pict. As he drew back, his hand came down on a twig. In the brief
silence, the crack reached the Picts ears.
He sprang to his feet and the Cimmerian did the same. Conan's dagger swung in a deadly arc,
ending in the Pict's chest. Blood and breath sprayed from the man's mouth in silence, and he fell without a
cry. But he had a comrade, and that one not only rose but cried out, before a Bamula spear silenced him
forever.
Instantly, the slope seemed to grow Picts the way a cave grows mushrooms. All of them seemed to
have both wits and weapons with which to meet human foes, and all were between Conan and the chief.
A Cimmerian war yell halted some of the Picts as abruptly as if they had been impaled. Before they
could advance again, Conan had seen the thinnest part of their line. He charged it, sword and dagger
reflecting unearthly blueness as the statue continued its work. The Bamulas streamed behind and to either
side of him, shouting their own war cries and wielding blunted and blood-encrusted spears with the
strength of madmen.
The Picts' brief flowering of courage withered. Conan knocked two down by the sheer weight of his
massive frame striking at the run. He trampled them underfoot, thrust left with his dagger and slashed right
at two more Picts with his sword. The dagger sank between ribs, the sword crippled an arm and laid
open a skull. The Pict with the crippled arm died in the next moment as Vuona, of all people, cracked his
skull with a Pictish war club.
"What are you doing here?" Conan snarled.
"This is my last chance to be a warrior."
"Or anything else, if the Picts rally while we stand here wagging our tongues!" Conan muttered. The
woman seemed unperturbed, and a moment later a swirl of Picts drove between them and both had more
important matters on hand.
A Bamula was down, and from the wounds Conan could see, not likely to rise again. But four Picts
lay dead around the warrior and a fifth was reeling about with a lamed leg, until Conan's sword cured the
mans limp and his every other earthly ill.
Now nothing stood between Conan and the chief. The two men saw this at the same moment and
the chief turned. Conan was up with him in a moment, ready to not only kill the chief, but also to disgrace
him forever in the eyes of his warriors and gods by giving him a death-wound in the back.
The chief turned again at the last moment and thrust at Conan with a Gunderman short-sword. The
Cimmerian needed to be as nimble as a deer to escape the thrust. By then he was too close to the man to
wield a sword, and his dagger was in his other hand.
Conan's fist drove into the chief's face, the sword-hilt weighting the blow like a cestus. The Pict's
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]