Two days later, Conan was still thoughtful as he looked at the Stygian priest’s wagon in passing. The expressionless driver was, as usual, all that could be seen, but the trickle of incense-smoke and the sound of chanting showed the presence of the bald-headed, skull-faced terror.
The more he considered the game-drive, the less natural it seemed.
His spells are of weight… but I’ll warrant that my sword is quicker, the Cimmerian mused. He’ll summon few demons with his head resting six feet from his corpse.
For some reason the priest-magician seemed to have a hatred of Valeria—and now Conan—that went far beyond the generalized dislike many Stygians harbored toward foreigners. At the thought of decapitating the man, he let his hand fall from the pommel of his blade and brought his horse back up to a canter as he paced along the length of the convoy.
Killing a hierophant of the Serpent would mean he had to kill every Stygian man, woman, and child in the expedition. Even then, someone would talk. Sukhmet might be the arse-end of Stygia, but that would sting them in the arse, like Zarkabaal’s archers with the rhino. News would reach all the way to Luxor and Khemi, probably by no natural means and very quickly.
Even if he ran from here to the Vilayet Sea and hid in a cave when he got there, the Stygians—and their sorcerers—would hunt him down. His death, when it finally came, would not be pleasant.
No matter what his treachery, there’s no evidence that would save my skin, or Valeria’s, he thought. Perhaps a slaying by stealth, at night, with nobody the wiser. I’ve done it before—Yara in his tower—but he never knew I was coming until it was too late.
Shaking his head, he put the thought aside.
They had a river to ford, and even with no slaves to watch and fewer wagons heavy-laden with tools and supplies, it was going to be tricky. They’d seen massed thunderclouds to the east, in the higher ground where the nameless waterway had its birth, and the water had risen. The flow was deeper and more powerful, flexing beneath the smooth surface like a wrestler’s great muscles.
The air was thicker, as well, so the waterside with its breath of coolness was a bit of a relief under the blaze of the noonday sun. So was the odd gust of wind-born spray. Gelete came up to him as Valeria and another rider breasted the water to the other side, with a heavy rope held between them. The south-bank end was already secured to a large boulder.
The Nubakan commander was frowning.
“See?” he said, pointing upstream and down.
Conan looked, knowing better than to ignore the concerns of someone who knew the locality better than he did, and Gelete was neither a fool nor a faintheart. This wasn’t the Nubakan’s homeland by a long shot, but it was similar enough to it.
“See what?”
“Sand, mud, banks,” Gelete replied.
Conan looked again. The river spread out from the higher ground eastward, and the banks weren’t quite as well-defined. There were sand and mudbanks to either side of a stretch of water a hundred yards across—say half bowshot—and here and there downstream he saw patches of reeds and swamp.
“Tracks say much game through here,” the Nubakan said, and Conan reminded himself not to confuse fluency with intelligence. He felt stumble-tongued often enough himself in the twisting gutturals.
“Move twice year—wet season, dry season, south-north, north-south.”
Conan’s Stygian had improved a bit on this trip, and it took him only a few seconds to grasp what Gelete was telling him. This was a corridor for game migrations, a squeeze-point where movements over a front that encompassed miles narrowed to cross the water. He’d heard about those massive treks, though they weren’t a feature of the northlands.
The Vanir and Aesir say that there are migrations of those oversized deer—caribou, they call them—north of their border.
This far south, the migrations could be enormous, teeming masses of animals more numerous than the inhabitants of a great city. Being caught in such a movement would be yet another pain in the arse.
“Not now?” he said.
“No, just over,” Gelete said, pointing out places where the banks had been trampled down. “But…”
“But what?” Conan said.
“Where game cross river, wait is… wait are—” This time it took a while to get his meaning across, and eventually he had to call over one of his men who had a crocodile-hide quiver to hold his arrows. “Beast this skin,” Gelete said as the leader of the horse archers joined them.
“Crocodiles,” Conan said. Zarkabaal filled in the Stygian word.
Damn, Conan thought. He’d seen the animals now and then, once in the Styx. Nasty skulking beasts sometimes bigger than a man, and there was a pair of crocodile skulls outside the south gate of Sukhmet…
Crom, those skulls were half my height long or more, he remembered. And that was just the head.
“Just how big do crocodiles get here?” he asked.
The Nubakans talked among themselves, adding in broad gestures. Gelete turned back to Conan and shrugged.
“When from egg, this long.”
He held his hands a few inches apart.
“Get older, get big. Get big, big, big—”
His hands showed increments of size.
“—until crocodile dies. Big I see at home… my height, half again.” He marked the dirt with the heel of his sandal and then paced out a stretch ten or eleven feet long. “Heavy like one bull. But Nubaka land of hills. River bigger, crocodile bigger. Styx biggest. Eastern edge.”
“The Styx?” Conan said. “In Khemi, in the moat, not that big.”
“Stygian hunt big ones where they many peoples, for make safe cattle, children. In Styx by Nubaka, far south, very big. I show.”
He called a name, and one of his men loped over. He had a thong around his neck, and on it was strung a tooth. Slightly curved, sharply pointed, and about the same length as the span of Conan’s index and little fingers, if he splayed them apart. If the rest of the animal was in proportion, that was a very big crocodile, and no mistake.
“Crom,” he swore.
Conan looked at the river. If they attacked herds of game during a migration, there was scant hope they’d be scared away by human voices and splashing! Turning back, he asked, “How did he kill that? And why?”
The man talked to his chief. Gelete turned to Conan.
“Take strong wood, wood like bow, spear-point on each end. Bend in half. Put in meat. Throw to crocodile. He eat, meat go away in stomach, steel go—” He made a sharp gesture, as of a bent spring snapping open. “Crocodile take no more cattle, children, women who fetch water.”
Conan grunted. That seemed like an appropriate way to deal with the treacherous beasts, who could lunge out of the water to drag you in and drown you.
“This isn’t a very big river,” Conan said. “Not small, but—”
Gelete pointed westward. “Big there. Crocodile come for game go past.” Then he grinned. “Tail meat of crocodile good in stew,” he added. “Hide very…”
A moment’s consultation.
“… good. Good, strong? Yes. Use for this, for that.”
Conan thought for a long moment.
“Gelete, half your men on the north bank, half here—watching for crocodiles.”
The Nubakan nodded and gave his orders. Half his archers trotted into the water, holding their bows and quivers overhead—which was all they needed to do, given their scanty garb. The other half waited with shafts on string, covering them until they splashed up on the other bank. There they strung themselves out along the bank, bows ready, looking back the way they had come.
Conan ordered the Stygian spearmen to take to the water, standing in clumps on the shallower parts of the crossing. By then the heavy rope was stretched as tight as it would go, and the wagons were ready. Strapping his gear to his mount, he stripped down to his breeks and the belt that carried his dagger—the sword wouldn’t be much good if he was swimming. He accompanied the first wagon, with a party of strong men tallied onto ropes tied to the upstream side, holding tight to keep it from tilting.
The water tugged at his legs as he rode and his horse made heavy going, sinking breast-deep and swimming in a few spots. He turned on the north shore and headed back to an improvised raft carrying a good deal of what was left of their supplies, less important now that they were only two days’ march from the outermost Stygian settlements. There food could be bought—or commandeered, for those on the kingdom’s business.
With the crossing fully underway, wagon after wagon followed, as did files of camp followers with their baggage bundled on their heads, some carrying squealing children.
The screams started just as the raft reached the north bank.
It grounded, with the waiting men coming out knee-deep to unload it. Suddenly there were shouts and a volley of arrows from the Nubakans on the north bank. Their powerful bows sent the long arrows sleeting into the water, and long scale-armored forms erupted, limbs thrashing and sending up geysers.
Conan whipped his head around. His horse turned, too, but he had to keep it tight-reined as it showed its teeth in a snort, rolled its eyes, and laid back its ears. A knot of Stygian spearmen were in the water, plunging their weapons into the chaos, heedless of arrows landing near them. There was another shriek as one of them vanished beneath the surface with blurring suddenness.
In the same instant something lunged half-out of the stream in a frothing wave of spray, great jaws longer than a man’s arms closing on a whole upper torso and sinking back with a twist that flipped the victim’s thrashing legs vertically into the air for a second. Then the froth was mixed with red.
That created a gap and more of the reptilian killers pushed past the spearmen, despite their frantic thrusting. The creatures were visible only as nostrils and eyes, and the wakes they left in the shallow water.
Valeria’s horse reared, with a great crocodile clamped to its belly. She went into the water as the beast began whipping its head back and forth to tear loose a chunk of its victim. Flesh ripped and bone snapped and the mount’s guts spilled into water that was rapidly going from silt-pale to bright red. Whipped further into a frenzy, more of the predators drove toward it.
A wagon capsized as half a dozen of the great reptiles attacked the mules pulling it. The chorus of terrified shrieks grew louder and more frantic.
Not a dozen paces away a Stygian soldier ran back and forth along the north bank, shouting at someone in the water and visibly nerving himself to plunge in. He hesitated a little too long, or his legs flashing along the water’s edge were too tempting. A crocodile lunged half its considerable length onto the bank, clamped its jaws on one leg and dragged him back into the water, heedless as he stabbed at its bone-armored skull and a dozen arrows punching into its head and forequarters at point-blank range.
There must be scores of the beasts attacking, Conan realized. “Crom, give my arm strength!” he bellowed aloud. Nothing happened, of course—Crom didn’t respond to prayers—but his eyes locked on a rock that split the current downstream of the ford.
He’d wondered where the priest of Set had gotten to. Now he knew.
The man was on that rock.
Not clinging like a drenched cat crawling away from reptilian death, either. He was kneeling on the rock’s surface, somehow in full ceremonial fig as he’d been for the sacrifices at the mine. And there was a body before him as he raised the curved knife, chanting. It was a naked Stygian child, bound and squealing as the steel punched into the torso.
Another figure had been pushed to one side, gutted.
Two more struggled uselessly against their bonds.
Crom! This time Conan’s bellow was wordless, but beneath it ran a thought. He’s summoning them!
The Cimmerian hammered his heels into the horse’s flanks and flogged at its haunches with the loose end of the reins. The beast shied, tried to turn against the pressure of the bit—naturally enough, since it had no dog in this fight and knew perfectly well what crocodiles were and what they wanted. Then with a despairing whinny it plunged into the water.
Conan headed straight for the rope stretched downstream of the ford, which was now festooned with men and women clinging there desperately. One man vanished abruptly as he watched, wrenched free of his desperate two-armed grip on the rope. Another tried to climb up onto the rope, and even managed it after a fashion… until the armored snout of a crocodile rammed her free and back into the waiting fangs.
Closer, and Conan could see the long forms under the water, their armored tails sculling as they slipped effortlessly though their natural hunting-ground. Two headed for his horse’s churning legs.
Better you than me, nag, Conan thought.
He kicked his bare feet clear of the stirrups and brought them up, crouching in the saddle. As the reptile’s swift approach turned to a lunge, he unleashed all the power of his long legs in a desperate leap toward the rock where his enemy wrought magic. He soared over the rope, and his outstretched hands knifed into the water.
A shock of coolness, and he was eeling through it toward the dimly seen base of the rock. He resisted the impulse to look around wildly as he stroked, but a moving shadow on the sand of the river-bottom gave an instant’s warning. He whipped aside just as the crocodile arrowed in from the direction of the south bank and slammed its jaws shut.
Action happened without thought, in a whirling knot of motion. His left hand clamped on the beast’s foreleg, even as his right whipped the foot-long dagger from his belt and drove it home. He aimed in the pale, soft skin at the base of the throat. Most of a crocodile was armored in plates and scutes, but only fine scales covered the softer skin of their undersides.
Both arms were nearly wrenched from their sockets as the beast convulsed, and the dagger didn’t strike the throat. Instead the point drove home in the reptile’s belly, just below the breastbone.
Conan let go of the foreleg and clamped both hands on the hilt of the embedded dagger. His feet hit the sandy mud of the river-bottom. Bracing himself, turning the point against the direction the reptile moved, he pulled with all his might as the crocodile’s own lashing tail drove it past. The keen foot-long blade dragged down, opening a four-foot slit from breastbone to the midpoint of the belly, jerking at him savagely as it cut through tough muscle and organs.
Then it was past, whipping the surface into a sparkling sheet above him and sending out a cloud of blood that hid the light.
The Cimmerian flexed his knees and shot upward, whooping in a long breath as his head broke the surface. He’d retained a death-grip on the hilt of his dagger, and now he clamped it between his teeth as he stroked out for the rock that was the sorcerer’s perch.
Fingers and toes gripped stone, and he pulled himself upward with desperate speed. He had to strike before the priest of Set knew he was there… and getting himself out of a river full of teeth provided an added spur.
The riven side of the little crag gave him good handholds and he went up it agile as an ape, keeping his breathing under control. When he came over the edge of the rock to the sloping surface of the top, he saw that chance had put him behind the Stygian. Even better, the priest-sorcerer was oblivious, swaying, chanting, and focused entirely on his ritual.
The last sacrifice saw him though, and the boy’s eyes were wide as Conan swarmed over the edge and drove across the four feet separating him from his enemy.
“Ry’lla, aie Setesh, aie Cthu—”
With one big hand he clamped around the Stygian’s neck, choking off the meaningless words. The other caught the hilt of the dagger as he dropped it from his teeth and drove it home, over and over again, with all the strength of his right arm. The sorcerer collapsed beneath him but wriggled—snake-like—long past the point where he should have been dead.
They rolled over the rock, face-to-face now, and the priest’s lips moved again, spewing sound as well as droplets of blood.
“Set… curse… you!”
Conan drove the blade home again, this time up under the chin of the starved hawk-face, up and into the brain. The unnatural glitter of the dark eyes died at last.
The Cimmerian came to one knee, panting.
“You curse me? I kill you, Stygian pig,” he gritted. Then a thought came to him, and he glanced around, snatched up a linen bag from the priest’s sacrificial gear. A moment’s cutting and twisting, and the priest’s head was in it.
The body went over the edge with a kick, and there was a final turmoil of crocodiles as they fought over the bloody titbit. Conan stood, controlling the frenzy of battle and looking out over the ford.
Nearly all the remaining people and gear were over on the north bank now. The massed attack had stopped, the beasts returning to their natural behavior—which did not involve pack-like assaults pushed past the point of filling their bellies.
The frenzy stopped the instant the priest died, he thought grimly, and he scooped up the last, the living child as he leapt. They splashed into the water, and Conan waded ashore on the north bank.
A pike point drove toward him—
—and into the mouth of a crocodile behind him. He whirled with a curse, snatching for his sword. The beast’s jaws clamped shut, severing the tough seasoned wood of the sixteen-foot shaft just below the long pyramid-shaped point, but the same shearing power drove the pike’s head into something sensitive. The animal let loose a bellow and retreated, turning and diving into water red with blood and littered with the floating bodies of men and beasts.
Brocas of Corinthia threw down the useless pole that the crocodile’s bite had made of his pike. His brown hair was plastered to a face pale with effort and spattered with someone’s blood, but he grinned as he offered his hand.
The toddler clung to Conan with arms and legs as he came to dry land, bawling at an earsplitting volume. Though no louder than his mother wailed as she came running up. She took a moment to drop to her knees and hail him in the Stygian fashion, throwing up her arms, then clutched the child to her breast.
He ruffled the boy’s hair, then grasped Brocas’ hand.
“Shrewdly struck, dog-brother,” he said. “Your debt is paid. Those jaws would have closed on my arse if you hadn’t given him that thrust.”
“Now you owe me a mug of beer,” Brocas said.
“That I will pay, and down another with you.”
Then he saw that the eyes of the crowd were on him, and he scowled as they broke into a chorus of shouts and hails.
“Get to work!” he bellowed. “Take a count of the gear and who’s missing!”