They were both panting again when they reached the ceiling of the cave. Irawagbon went first, back against one side of the crack in the rock and feet braced against the other. Conan winced slightly at the thought of more abrasion on his back and shoulders, already scabbed over from the rough fight with the crocodile and the tumble he’d taken when the second cheetah hit him that morning. But there was nothing to be done about it, and back in Cimmeria he’d climbed cracks and crevasses in plenty using this technique.
Hauling himself into the crevasse, he braced his feet and waited until his companion was ten feet along. The brighter light closer to the surface made him squint. There was a breath of hot air, too, and he groaned inwardly at the thought of leaving the pleasant coolness of the caves for the swelter outside.
Then he followed; he was slower than she, because it was more cramped for him. The last ten feet were narrow enough that he changed his posture, going head-up and lifting himself with feet and hands, and occasionally other parts of his body.
Just before his head went out he waited for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to daylight again after so long in darkness. Then he thrust up, slowly so as not to draw any hostile eyes. Irawagbon was lying prone, giving her surroundings a careful scan. Conan heaved himself out and did likewise.
She hauled up the vine with her weapons and belted them on.
To the east the hills faded into the distance, expanding from the one on which they lay like the surface of a wedge. Like this one, they were flat-topped, but divided by steep rocky slopes and narrow ribbons of riverside lowland as if it had been a tableland, a level plain, that was then cut into separate chunks by rivers. The process was incomplete, and many of the hills were joined by narrow bridges of un-eroded rock.
The flat tops had shortish tawny-green knee-length grass, mostly, with brush around boulders and the odd thorn-tree, also flat-topped and much like the savannah further north.
The slopes between the hills were varied—bare rock, thin grass, thicker scrub, and here and there a patch of taller forest. The riverside swales were forested, and densely so, with tall straight-trunked trees woven together by vines, all thick enough that only a glint now and then told of moving water. The hot wind was exceptionally damp, and piled clouds to the east told of a passing thunderstorm.
The grass felt a little wet beneath his feet, and he could see a broad shallow pond nearby with more of the small trees around it, probably a seasonal slough.
There was an intensely green scent to the air, a little dusty, and also a faint spark-and-sulfur scent that was another tell-tale of lightning strikes not long ago. He bent an eye on the rubble that was piled along the edge of the flat summit, and his father’s blacksmith lore told him that it was ironstone, probably rich enough to smelt if anyone wanted to do so in this huge unpeopled stretch.
He had two knives on him; an all-purpose camp knife about five inches in the blade, and a ten-inch dagger. With a pointing thumb Irawagbon indicated she wanted the tool rather than the weapon and he offered it hilt-first, resting across one palm. Her face lit in a grin as she took it, tested the edge, and nodded to him.
After a few minutes of silent scrutiny the Abomean came to one knee and used the knife to cut handfuls of grass and lianas, her fingers working skillfully as she wove them into a belt and pouch and slung it over one shoulder, stooping to pick up smooth rocks of the right size for throwing, and some smaller ones. He offered his groundsheet, and she cut herself a loincloth from it, twisting it deftly about her hips, taking the time to poke a new hole in the dead Darfari’s sword-belt so it would fit snugly about her waist.
That let her sheath her weapons and carry them more easily. Then she looked at him critically as she handed the camp-knife back.
“Give me this much leather,” she said, pointing at his breeks and then indicated something the length of her arm. “Make weapon—” She mimed whirling something around her head and following through with an outstretched arm. He did know the Stygian for that.
“Sling,” he said.
“Sling,” she said, nodding and looking as if she was memorizing the term.
He dropped his breeks and tossed them over. Irawagbon expertly cut spiral strips from the lower edge of the leg-coverings, knotted them, and then used a bit of the coarse heavy cotton cloth of the groundsheet to make the pocket. She dropped a rock into it, whirled it once around her head and let fly.
It smacked off the edge of a boulder fifty yards away with a sharp crack and a shower of sparks and rubble that confirmed his guess about the composition of the stone around here. She wore a satisfied smile, and he nodded soberly as she knotted the sling around her forehead like a headband, tying it off with a slipknot he recognized would let her whip it into action with a single motion of her hand.
Her improvised pouch could hold as many suitable rocks as an archer’s quiver could hold shafts. That would be very useful indeed. Slingers weren’t very common in Cimmeria or the northwestern realms, but he’d seen them in action elsewhere, and the projectiles were deadly weapons in the hands of the skillful… and she obviously was.
It would be useful for hunting, too.
Then she tossed the breeks back to him. When he redonned them, they were a bit above the knee on both legs, but functional enough. While he was doing that, the Abomey woman laughed. He looked up enquiringly as he buckled his sword-belt once again.
“Nice—” She said a word in her own language and slapped one hand on her own muscular but shapely right buttock.
“Arse,” he filled in helpfully.
“Nice arse you,” she said, and winked. “Except pale like belly of dead fish. Maybe arse you get killed, you no know because can’t see?”
He snorted. She had a warrior’s sense of humor, too.
“Where now?” he said.
“Shrine that way,” she said. “Darfari blasphemers not gone yet, likely. Few to guard so many spear-wives, must stop to… fetter? Chain? And get food for trip. We go hilltop, there, there, there.”
He looked up. It was about noon.
“How many suns?”
“Two,” she said, helpfully holding up that many fingers. “Kerchaki country in between,” she added, then shrugged with a can’t-be-helped expression.
“Kerchaki?”
“Beast. Like man, but hairy, big. Big teeth…”
They talked around it for a while as they went. She seemed to be describing some sort of great ape.
She knew the word in Stygian. Conan only did because Governor Wenamun had one in his menagerie, and allowed the citizens of Sukhmet in to see it occasionally. But she shook her head.
“Gorilla further south, in deep woods. Big, but not fierce, only kill if you attack. Kerchaki look same-not-same. Different. Clever. Eat more meat. Dangerous. Cunning enough, make no noise when strike.”
Conan grunted thoughtfully. He’d had experience with dangerous apes more than once, in the hills around the southern end of the Vilayet Sea far to the northeast, and elsewhere… not least in the house of Nabondius the Red Priest, who’d kept one as bodyguard-pet. It had turned on its master at the last.
And there’s that curse, he thought uneasily, but he didn’t let it show on his face.
They trotted on in silence—using the hunter’s pace, walking and speeding up gradually to a slow run and then slowing again, stopping for a few minutes every hour or so. At the third pause, Irawagbon snatched the sling from around her brow, loaded an egg-sized pebble, whirled it once around her head and loosed. A hundred yards ahead of them a bird that looked somewhat like a quail leapt up and fell limp with its head nearly torn free.
A covey of the same burst free from a stretch of bushes with red-and-blue berries, and the sling whirred three more times, taking them all down at nearly a hundred yards.
They gutted both quickly, plucked them as they walked, then tucked the feet of a pair each into their belts. The birds drained as they walk-trot-ran-trot-walked. It was messy, but she wasn’t squeamish at all. A few times she stopped and pulled up some herb or root. He silently thanked his luck that he’d fallen in with someone who knew the local vegetation.
They ran on into the swift dusk of these southern lands, then through the night as long as the moon was up. It was waxing and offering more light. Conan had been looking for a good spot. He’d already started to point when Irawagbon spoke.
“There right place.”
They smiled and headed over to the little declivity he’d seen. A dead thorn-tree provided tinder-dry wood; Conan ripped off branches with casual strength, conscious of the woman’s admiring looks. By the time he had the fire built—the light wouldn’t show beyond the rim of the little hilltop hollow, and nothing nearby was higher—she had the butterflied birds pinned with twigs to green branches. The smoke didn’t matter in the dense dark, since it couldn’t be seen.
When the flames had died down to coals, the Abomean rigged the birds on makeshift supports and set them to grill, tucking the roots she’d dug in around the edges.
As soon as the food was done, they buried the fire under clods dug with their knives, and then demolished the meal. He savored the smoky-rich taste of the roasted birds and the filling quality of the roots. A good stamping ensured that the fire was well and truly out.
After they’d licked their fingers clean, Irawagbon grinned at him from where she’d laid her half of the groundsheet.
“Hei-eh, Conan,” she said. “Ask?”
“Ask what?”
“I see pretty arse again?” He could just make out the double-handed clutching gesture she made, along with a broad wink. Then she added, “Feel, too?”
No, I definitely won’t tell Valeria about this part of the journey, he thought as he walked over.
* * *
Some time later he yawned, then stopped as a thought struck him.
“You not afraid—”
His hand shaped the air over her belly.
Irawagbon groaned softly, rolled her eyes and slapped his arm.
“Now man asks?”
He shrugged.
“Spear-wife has marriage—” she began. Another pause to find words. Eventually they settled on “rite.” He wasn’t sure that was correct, but he didn’t know the Stygian for “ceremony.”
“Priest puts on spell—that word?”
Conan nodded, and she continued.
“Have baby only with husband. King, eh? King have plenty bed-wives. No touch spear-wives.” She sighed. “Us four thousand spear-sisters, no baby.”
Conan grinned, a lazy expression. “You no—” He altered his smile to a comic mask of sadness and longing. “—for King?”
Again Irawagbon rolled her eyes. “King has—” She opened her hands six times, for sixty years. “And—”
She repeated his gesture of a massive belly and pulled her head down to mimic jowls.
“—like hippo… and smell. Some spear-wives, all good with women, that not against law. Me I like—”
With one arm she made a graphic thrusting gesture.
“—better. Not get much. What Stygian word, woman go—”
She made the thrusting gesture again.
“—with man, married?”
“Adultery,” Conan supplied, after a moment’s thought.
“Adultery,” she agreed, “get buried alive. So be careful.” Then she looked at him, cocking a brow he could barely see in the dimness. “You not like bee-man,” she said.
“What?” he asked.
“Bee sting once and die,” she said with a strategic clutch. “Not you! No snore now.”
* * *
Irawagbon took the first watch.
Something brought Conan out of deep slumber, snapping into full alertness as he always did—hangovers aside, when it took an effort of will.
It was the noise.
In fact, he realized, there was suspiciously little noise, given how loud the night should be here with the buzz and chitter of insects, the calls of birds, and the cries of beasts from lion-roars and the mad screeching laughter of hyenas.
It wasn’t entirely quiet, but it was much quieter than it should have been, and it was very dark. Half the stars were obscured by clouds and the moon was down. He hissed softly, expecting Irawagbon to ghost up at once. She’d already shown that she was about as good in moving in the dark as he.
Nothing.
Alarm shot through him like a bucket of cold water poured on the stomach. He rolled up into a crouch, sword in one hand and dagger in the other. The dense darkness at least had the advantage that he wouldn’t be given away by a glitter off the honed edges. He sniffed at the still, warm night air, then softly padded forward.
Irawagbon had showed him the spots from which she intended to observe, four of them. Pacing around a perimeter was a useless type of sentry-go, only practiced by idiots and civilized men—if there was a difference.
Then the silence was broken again. By a long hooting screech, bellowing, loud, but about a quarter mile off to the north. It wasn’t human, not quite, but not entirely the scream of a hunting beast either.
Kerchaki, he thought, and he felt the hair bristling on the back of his neck as he remembered what she’d said. Cunning enough to be quiet when they strike. He ran his hands over the ground around the rock Irawagbon had chosen as one of her listening-posts. His hand brushed leather.
He wound it up quickly and stuffed it in his belt-pouch. Then a spot of dampness. He brought it to his nose; blood, though he tasted it to check. Conan felt around carefully. There were a few more spatters, but none of the pools he’d expect with a mortal wound. The most plausible explanation was that whatever it was had crept up, given Irawagbon a clout hard enough to leave her unconscious or at least in no condition to resist, and then carried her off.
The Cimmerian went back to the embers of their fire and kindled a small branch. Then he walked carefully back to the rock and held it low, looking about for a few moments. That showed him Irawagbon’s footprints in a few places, and then other impressions. Manlike, but bigger than Conan’s own, broader, and driven deeper than his own footprint would be… which meant weight at least half again his. And with the big toe splayed out a bit to one side and the others longer than they should be.
He smothered the torch—at this elevation, it was like waving a banner. He’d seen feet like that before, mostly on things trying to kill him and coming far too close to success. It was very rare for him to fight anyone stronger than he was, or with keener senses. When he expanded the possibilities from anyone to anything, however, that no longer held.
“Kerchaki right enough,” he muttered to himself under his breath.
The broken weapons-belt she’d been wearing confirmed his guess. The only question now was what to do about it. He could wait another couple of hours until sunrise—but that would probably leave Irawagbon unpleasantly dead, if she wasn’t already. Or he could pursue now, with only that screech to go on for direction, with enemies who’d be stronger than he was and more importantly much keener of hearing and scenting. Possibly better able to see in darkness.
He took a deep breath and shrugged as he wrapped up the sword-belt and slung it over one shoulder. Irawagbon was a comrade, and he’d agreed to help her. That meant there was really nothing to do but follow, and without waiting.
Drinking his fill of water, he hitched his sword-belt around so that it would be less likely to catch on something, and rigged a makeshift cup from a fold of his ground sheet, filled with dirt to hold a few embers so that he could carry fire without the light showing.
Then he turned until an inner sense told him he was facing the direction from which he’d heard the long savage cry, and walked into the night with sword in his right hand and fire in his left.
Steel and fire…