The first thing the liberated Abomean troops did was break out their captured weapons. Then they took turns scrubbing themselves free of caked filth, each group standing guard over the others. Then they donned their kit.
Which turned out to be leather breechclouts, light tunics of tough cotton that came to just above the knee, all dyed green with red chevrons in patterns that denoted rank, sandals that strapped up the calves, and belts carrying dagger and shortsword as well as pouches for small items. All wore tight leather helmets over their close-shorn heads, strapped with brass and steel, and similar guards on their forearms.
About half carried spears. Those added elephant-hide breastplates and tall narrow shields of the same—Irawagbon explained that they had a legend that their founders back in the mists of time had been women who hunted elephant, and who’d turned up to rescue an equally legendary king and become his bodyguards.
The other half were slingers and carried small circular buckler-like shields slung over their backs, as well. The slings themselves knotted around their helmets. After that, and while their healers treated wounds, they ate. Their captors had starved them, to cut the risks of guarding them.
Conan noted with approval their priorities, and joined in the meal, wolfing down stew and roast meat and baked wild roots and greens and flat cakes of unleavened meal. The Darfari had been well-supplied. Irawagbon translated for her commander as they made their hasty dinner.
“Chief of a Hundred Spears Nawi, she say, you give us chance, so honor commands we help you, too.”
Conan nodded and brought right fist to chest in salute to the hard-faced woman across the campfire outside the ruins, in the open space south of the perimeter wall. Nawi smiled thinly.
“Also, she say, you go same way we do toward home, part way at least.”
He’d expected that would be their reaction, but took nothing for granted—he supposed there were as many faithless rogues here among folk black of skin as there were anywhere else, and as many among women as men, come to that. It was good to find otherwise with the Abomean warriors.
“First however, Gagooli bless you. She… walks with spirits.”
Gagooli was an older woman, but lean and wiry enough to keep up with the youngsters who made up most of the unit. In charge of the brace who doctored injuries, she’d donned her kit, too, but it was of a different sort; body-paint, including a white daub across the eyes and forehead, a blanket of soft red-dyed goatskin studded with gold ornaments, a headdress that included large feathers, and a gourd rattle on the end of a stick. She tapped that in the air around his head before sitting cross-legged beside Nawi.
There she spoke, first in her language and then in Stygian considerably better than Conan’s. What she said caused rustles and stares and invoking signs.
“Derketa speaks to me of you. She says you are Her avenger!”
Well, that will help, he thought.
They moved to the rear of the ruined temple, where he bowed his head and touched his brow in the direction of the cult statue. She wasn’t a goddess he worshipped, but he didn’t hate her the way anyone not raised Stygian detested Set. From what he’d heard, Derketa was a deity of love and pleasure and fertility—but also of war and the underworld of the dead, like Ishtar.
“I thank her for her favor,” he said. In this time among the civilized lands, he’d learned that it never hurt to be polite, and there was nothing people resented more than a slight to their gods.
For that matter, gods can be touchy, too.
“And She says you are under a curse. A curse from a follower of—”
She spat into the dirt.
“—the Serpent of Hell.”
That meant Set, but they were probably reluctant to say the name, lest the deity be summoned. Behind him there were more gestures and murmured invocations—all the Abomeans save the posted sentries were gathered to watch and listen. It was the first time Conan had been in a gathering of warriors where he was the only man, and it felt a little strange.
Or quite strange, he thought further.
He’d enjoyed Irawagbon’s company, occasionally very much indeed, and it had been a good little set-to. Yet on the whole, he’d be glad to be back alone on Valeria’s trail as soon as possible. Or on the trail of the late unlamented Khafset’s brother Nebset, and then on Valeria’s trail, and hopefully more.
Conan scowled and spoke. “I kill a priest of… of the Serpent God,” he said.
There were gasps.
“He tried to kill me, set crocodiles on me and my comrades as we crossed a river. Sacrificing children—children of his own people—to gather power. So I fought my way through the crocodiles and cut off his head. I think he was kin to another Stygian, an officer who tried to force himself on a friend of mine, who is a warrior woman like you. She killed him, but had to flee from the Stygian lands, and she is pursued by his brother. The curse still seems to follow me, but I will not let it turn me from my duty to save a comrade. I follow to—”
He decided not to say rescue.
“—warn her lest he kill her from ambush.”
And earn her… gratitude, he added, but to himself rather than aloud. Women can be odd about such things.
His words brought more murmurs, and some leaned forward to slap him on the arms and back. One tousled his hair, and he had to stop himself from glaring blue-eyed murder. He’d never liked that, even as a boy, though his father had been ready to turn it to a clout across the ear if he objected.
“Can you break the curse?” he asked Gagooli.
She answered with discouraging quickness, a sharp shake of the head.
“No,” she said. “It was laid by a powerful magician who invoked… his god. But it is strange. The curse of a dead man is… dead. It may work, but it is not a thing that emanates from a living mind. This one is halfway between that and the work of a living man. It is anchored in the land of common day, somehow. What I can do is shield you from the eyes of the spell, for a while. Shall I?”
Conan nodded emphatically. “I would be most grateful.”
Nawi spoke, and Irawagbon translated.
“Commander say yes, do this thing, we owe you much.”
* * *
The Abomeans proved as good as their word.
With Conan they left the next morning, trotting as tirelessly as Irawagbon had shown she could, off southward with the rising sun on their left. The horses of the dead Darfari were reserved for the wounded, but Conan found it not much of a hardship. The spear-wives were mostly lighter than he, but he had longer legs than any of them, and was in as hard condition.
They could still run into the dirt many armies with which he’d marched. To their advantage, they had no baggage train, no camp followers and no supply train. With forty skilled slingers, they didn’t even have to stop to hunt; birds and small animals, gazelle and the like fell to them all through the day, so at sunset they simply had to cook what they’d killed or plucked up from the ground and off bushes and trees as they passed.
The third day was lost to a downpour so powerful they couldn’t see to proceed. It passed by evening, and they made camp.
On the fourth day he rose, washed, ate, and filled his lungs with the warm clear air. Nawi and Irawagbon came as he strapped up his bedroll, and Gagooli. She looked a bit worn, as if she hadn’t been sleeping, and she offered him a bracelet. He accepted it, a band of leather with designs in beadwork stitched on the outer surface.
“This is Derketa’s Arm,” the walker-with-spirits said. “Shield you. Makes clear the footprints of your enemies.” He took it gratefully, wrapped it around his thick left wrist, and tied the thong. It probably couldn’t hurt, and might well help.
Nawi led a saddled horse, and Irawagbon led two more with loaded pack saddles. The younger woman looked a little woebegone, and he thought he knew why. She was going back to a life of involuntary celibacy, which was enough to depress the cheeriest soul. He grinned at her, and when Nawi turned her head to consult with the spirit-walker, she stuck out her tongue and gave him a quick kick in the ankle.
He suppressed a yelp.
The spear-wife commander turned back to him, and they clasped wrists, her grip firm and dry and hard.
“Now we go there,” she said through the younger spear-wife, pointing southeast. “Spirit-walker says, you go there.” Her arm shifted directly south, to where the savannah rose in green waves, speckled with beasts by ones or twos or in clumps, trees growing more common and larger in the distance.
Anticipating his question, Gagooli shrugged. “No, I do not see your friend,” the shaman said. “She is not of this land. Neither is your enemy… but he is linked to the curse laid on you. Linked by blood, perhaps; and perhaps he is part of the spell, part of what keeps it bound to this world. Or he may have something of the magician, an amulet or icon. Or all of those. He follows your friend, you say, so to see him is to see her.” She added, “That way. See the tall, forked mountain?”
He did when he followed her pointing arm, though only just. He wouldn’t have thought someone her age could match his keenness of vision. Then he shivered.
She probably wasn’t seeing it that way.
Gagooli smiled at him wolfishly, showing strong yellow teeth, and likely guessing his thought.
“Go there, you will find his tracks on the western edge.”
He nodded.
The spear-wives packed up with their usual speed. Irawagbon turned and shouted, and all of them lifted their arms and cried:
“Conan! Conan! Conan!”
He waved, swung into the saddle, and put his mount up to a loping trot, two pack-animals following behind. When he looked over his shoulder a few moments later, only the fact that they were trotting over a rise let him see the ant-tiny figures of the Abomeans. Their green tunics faded into the rainy-season grass. Sunlight glinted on spearheads.
He turned back to the southward track.
There was a track, heading more or less toward the mountain Gagooli had indicated. The way was probably carved by paw and hoof, not human feet, but it was there nonetheless, winding to keep to higher ground.
Suddenly he threw back his head and laughed, a booming carefree sound that startled a flight of bright blue-and-green long-tailed birds out of some trees ahead. He had a good horse and an open road, an enemy to catch and…