The City of Skulls
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Conan remains in Turanian service for about two years, becoming an
expert horseman and archer and traveling over the immense deserts,
mountains, and jungles of Hyrkania, as far as the borders of Khitai.
One such journey takes him to the fabled kingdom of Mem, a
comparatively unknown land between Vendhya to the south, Hyrkania to
the north and west, and Khitai to the east.

1. Red Snow

Howling like wolves, a horde of squat, brown warriors swept down upon
the Turanian troop from the foothills of the Talakma Mountains, where
the hills flattened out into the broad, barren steppes of Hyrkania. The
attack came at sunset. The western horizon streamed with scarlet
banners, while to the south the invisible sun tinged the snows of the
higher peaks with red.

For fifteen days, the escort of Turanians had jogged across the plain,
fording the chill waters of the Zaporoska River, venturing deeper and
ever deeper into the illimitable distances of the East. Then, without
warning, came the attack.

Conan caught the body of Hormaz as the lieutenant slumped from his
horse, a quivering, black-feathered arrow protruding from his throat.
He lowered the body to the ground; then, shouting a curse, the young
Cimmerian ripped his broad-bladed tulwar from its scabbard and turned
with his comrades to meet the howling charge. For most of a month, he
had ridden the dusty Hyrkanian plains as part of the escort. The
monotony had long since begun to chafe him, and now his barbaric soul
craved violent action to dispell his boredom.

His blade met the gilded scimitar of the foremost rider with such
terrific force that the other's sword snapped near the hilt. Grinning
like a tiger, Conan drew his sword in a back-handed slash across the
bowlegged little warrior's belly. Howling like a doomed soul on the
red-hot floors of Hell, his opponent fell twitching into a patch of
blood-spattered snow.

Conan twisted in his saddle to catch another slashing sword on his
shield. As he knocked the foeman's blade aside, he drove the point of
his tulwar straight into the slant-eyed, yellowish face that snarled
into his, watching the enemy's visage dissolve into a smear of ruined
flesh.

Now the attackers were upon them in force. Dozens of small, dark men in
fantastic, intricate armor of lacquered leather, trimmed with gold and
flashing with gems, assailed them with demoniac frenzy. Bows twanged,
lances thrust, and swords whirled and clashed.

Beyond the ring of his attackers, Conan saw his comrade Juma, a
gigantic black from Kush, fighting on foot; his horse had fallen to an
arrow at the first rush. The Kushite had lost his fur hat, so that the
golden bangle in one ear winked in the fading light; but he had
retained his lance. With this, he skewered three of the stocky
attackers out of their saddles, one after another.

Beyond Juma, at the head of the column of King Yildiz's troop of picked
warriors, the commander of the escort, Prince Ardashir, thundered
commands from atop his mighty stallion. He wheeled his horse back and
forth to keep between the foe and the horse-litter which bore his
charge. This was Yildiz's daughter, Zosara. The troop were escorting
the princess to her wedding with Kujula, the Great Khan of the Kuigar
nomads.

Even as Conan watched, he saw Prince Ardashir clutch at his fur-cloaked
chest. As if conjured up by magic, a black arrow had sprouted suddenly
from his gemmed gorget. The prince gaped at the shaft; then, stiff as a
statue, he toppled from horseback, his jewel-crusted, spiked helmet
falling into the blood-spotted snow.

Thereafter, Conan became too busy to notice anything but the foes that
swept howling around him. Although little more than a youth, the
Cimmerian towered several inches above six feet. The swarthy attackers
were dwarfed by comparison with his clean-limbed height. As they
whirled around him in a snarling, yelping ring, they looked like a pack
of hounds attempting to pull down a kingly tiger.

The battle swirled up and down the slope, like dead leaves whirled by
autumnal gusts. Horses stamped, reared, and screamed; men hacked,
cursed, and yelled. Here and there a pair of dismounted men continued
their battle on foot. Bodies of men and horses lay in the churned mud
and the trampled snow.

Conan, a red haze of fury thickening before his eyes, swung his tulwar
with berserk fury. He would have preferred one of the straight
broadswords of the West, to which he was more accustomed. Nevertheless,
in the first few moments of the battle, he wreaked scarlet havoc with
the unfamiliar weapon. In his flying hand, the glittering steel blade
wove a shimmering web of razor-edged death about him. Into that web no
less than nine of the sallow little men in lacquered leather ventured,
to fall disemboweled or headless from their shaggy ponies. As he
fought, the burly young Cimmerian bellowed a savage war chant of his
primitive people; but soon he found that he needed every last bit of
breath, for the battle grew rather than lessened in intensity.

Only seven months before, Conan had been the only warrior to survive
the ill-fated punitive expedition that King Yildiz had launched against
a rebellious satrap of northern Turan, Munthassem Khan. By means of
black sorcery, the satrap had smashed the force sent against him. He
had—so he thought—wiped out the hostile army from its high-born
general, Bakra of Akif, down to the lowliest mercenary foot soldier.
Young Conan alone had survived. He lived to penetrate the city of
Yaralet, which was writhing under the magic-maddened satrap's rule, and
to bring a terrible doom on Munthassem Khan.

Returning in triumph to the glittering Turanian capital of Aghrapur,
Conan received, as a reward, a place in this honor guard. At first he
had had to endure the gibes of his fellow troopers at his clumsy
horsemanship and indifferent skill with the bow. But the gibes soon
died away as the other guardsmen learned to avoid provoking a swing of
Conan's sledgehammer fists, and as his skill in riding and shooting
improved with practice.

Now, Conan was beginning to wonder if this expedition could truly be
called a reward. The light, leathern shield on his left arm was hacked
into a shapeless ruin; he cast it aside. An arrow struck his horse's
rump. With a scream, the beast brought its head down and bucked,
lashing out with its heels. Conan went flying over its head; the horse
bolted and disappeared.

Shaken and battered, the Cimmerian scrambled to his feet and fought on
afoot. The scimitars of his foes slashed away his cloak and opened
rents in his hauberk of chain mail. They slit the leathern jerkin
beneath, until Conan bled from a dozen little superficial wounds.

But he fought on, teeth bared in a mirthless grin and eyes blazing a
volcanic blue in a flushed, congested face framed by a square-cut black
mane. One by one his fellows were cut down, until only he and the
gigantic black, Juma, stood back to back. The Kushite howled wordlessly
as he swung the butt of his broken lance like a club.

Then it seemed as if a hammer came up out of the red mist of berserk
fury that clouded Conan's brain, as a heavy mace crashed against the
side of his head, denting and cracking the spiked helm and driving the
metal against his temple. His knees buckled and gave. The last thing he
heard was the sharp, despairing cry of the princess as squat, grinning
warriors tore her from the veiled palanquin down to the red snow that
splotched the slope. Then, as he fell face down, he knew nothing.

2. The Cup of the Gods

A thousand red devils were beating against Conan's skull with red-hot
hammers, and his cranium rang like a smitten anvil with every motion.
As he slowly clambered out of black insensibility, Conan found himself
dangling over one mighty shoulder of his comrade Juma, who grinned to
see him awaken and helped him to stand. Although his head hurt
abominably, Conan found he was strong enough to stay on his feet.
Wondering, he looked about him.

Only he, Juma, and the girl Zosara had survived. The rest of the
party—including Zosara's maid, slain by an arrow—were food for the
gaunt, gray wolves of the Hyrkanian steppe. They stood on the northern
slopes of the Talakmas, several miles south of the site of the battle.
Stocky brown warriors in lacquered leather, many with bandaged wounds,
surrounded them. Conan found that his wrists were stoutly manacled, and
that massive iron chains linked the manacles. The princess, in silken
coat and trousers, was also fettered; but her chains and fetters were
much lighter and seemed to be made of solid silver.

Juma was also chained, upon him most of the attention of their captors
was focused. They crowded around the Kushite, feeling his skin and then
glancing at their fingers to see if his color had come off. One even
moistened a piece of cloth in a patch of snow and then rubbed it
against the back of Juma's hand. Juma grinned broadly and chuckled.

"It must be they've never seen a man like me," he said to Conan.

The officer in command of the victors snapped a command. His men swung
into their saddles. The princess was bundled back into her horse
litter. To Conan and Juma the commander said, in broken Hyrkanian: "You
two! You walk."

And walk they did, with the spears of the Azweri, as their captors were
called, nudging them with frequent pricks between their shoulders. The
litter of the princess swayed between its two horses in the middle of
the column. Conan noted that the commander of the Azweri troop treated
Zosara with respect; she did not appear to have been physically harmed.
This chieftain did not seem to bear any grudge against Conan and Juma
for the havoc they had wrought among his men, the death and wounds they
had dealt.

"You damn good fighters!" he said with a grin. On the other hand, he
took no chances of letting his prisoners escape, or of letting them
slow down the progress of his company by lagging. They were made to
walk at a brisk pace from before dawn to after sunset, and any pause
was countered by a prod with a lance. Conan set his jaw and obeyed for
the moment.

For two days they wended over a devious trail through the heart of the
mountain range. They crossed passes where they had to plow through deep
snow, still unmelted from the previous winter. Here the breath came
short from the altitude, and sudden storms whipped their ragged
garments and drove stinging particles of snow and hail against their
faces. Juma's teeth chattered. The black man found the cold much harder
to endure than Conan, who had been reared in a northerly clime.

They came forth on the southern slopes of the Talakmas at last, to look
upon a fantastic sight—a vast, green valley that sloped down and away
before them. It was as if they stood on the lip of a stupendous dish.
Below them, little clouds crept over leagues of dense, green jungle. In
the midst of this jungle, a great lake or inland sea reflected the
azure of the clear, bright sky.

Beyond this body of water, the green continued on until it was lost in
a distant purple haze. And above the haze, jagged and white, standing
out sharply against the blue, rose the peaks of the mighty Himelias,
hundreds of miles further south. The Himelias formed the other lip of
the dish, which was encircled by the vast crescent of the Talakmas to
the north and the Himelias to the south.

Conan spoke to the officer: "What valley is this?"

"Meru," said the chief. "Men call it, Cup of Gods."

"Are we going down there?"

"Aye. You go to great city, Shamballah."

"Then what?"

"That for rimpoche—for god-king to decide."

"Who's he?"

"Jalung Thongpa, Terror of Men and Shadow of Heaven. You move along
now, white-skinned dog. No time for talk."

Conan growled deep in his throat as a spear prick urged him on,
silently vowing some day to teach this god-king the meaning of terror.
He wondered if this ruler's divinity were proof against a foot of steel
in his guts… But any such happy moment was still in the future.

Down they went, into the stupendous depression. The air grew warmer;
the vegetation, denser. By the end of the day they were slogging
through a land of steaming jungle warmth and swampy forest, which
overhung the road in dense masses of somber dark green, relieved by the
brilliant blossoms of flowering trees. Bright-hued birds sang and
screeched. Monkeys chattered in the trees. Insects buzzed and bit.
Snakes and lizards slithered out of the path of the party.

It was Conan's first acquaintance with a tropical jungle, and he did
not like it. The insects bothered him, and the sweat ran off him in
streams. Juma, on the other hand, grinned as he stretched and filled
his huge lungs.

"It is like my homeland," he said.

Conan was struck silent with awe at the fantastic landscape of verdant
jungle and steamy swamp. He could almost believe that this vast valley
of Meru was, in truth, the home of the gods, where they had dwelt since
the dawn of time. Never had he seen such trees as those colossal cycads
and redwoods, which towered into the misty heavens. He wondered how
such a tropical jungle could be surrounded by mountains clad in eternal
snows.

Once an enormous tiger stepped noiselessly into the path before them—a
monster nine feet long, with fangs like daggers. Princess Zosara,
watching from her litter, gave a little scream. There was a quick
motion among the Azweri and a rattle of accouterments as they readied
their weapons. The tiger, evidently thinking the party too strong for
it, slipped into the jungle as silently as it had come.

Later, the earth shook to a heavy tread. With a loud snort, a huge
beast burst from the rhododendron thickets and thundered across their
path. As gray and rounded as a mountainous boulder, it somewhat
resembled an enormous pig, with thick hide folded into bands. From its
snout, a stout, blunt, recurved horn, a foot in length, arose. It
halted, staring stupidly at the cavalcade from dim little pig's eyes;
then, with another snort, it crashed off through the underbrush.

"Nose-horn," said Juma. "We have them in Kush."

The jungle gave way at length to the shores of the great blue lake or
inland sea that Conan had seen from the heights. For a time, they
followed the curve of this unknown body of water, which the Azweri
called Sumeru Tso. At last, across a bay of this sea, they sighted the
walls, domes, and spires of a city of rose-red stone, standing amid
fields and paddies between the jungle and the sea.

"Shamballah!" cried the commander of the Azweri. As one man, their
captors dismounted, knelt, and touched their foreheads to the damp
earth, while Conan and Juma exchanged a mystified glance.

"Here gods dwell!" said the chief. "You walk fast, now. If you make us
late, they skin you alive. Hurry!"

3. The City of Skulls

The gates of the city were fashioned of bronze, green with age and cast
in the likeness of a gigantic, horned human skull. Square, barred
windows above the portal made the skulls's eye sockets, while below
them the barred grill of the portcullis grinned at them like the teeth
in fleshless jaws. The leader of the little warriors winded his twisted
bronze trumpet, and the portcullis rose. They entered the unknown city.

Here, everything was hewn and carved from rose-pink stone. The
architecture was ornate, cluttered with sculp ture and friezes swarming
with demons and monsters and many-armed gods. Gigantic faces of red
stone glared down from the sides of towers, which dwindled tier upon
tier into tapering spires.

Every where he looked, Conan saw carvings in the form of human skulls.
They were set into the lintels over doorways. They hung on golden
chains about the yellow-brown necks of the Meruvians, whose only other
garment, both for men and for women, was a short skirt. They appeared
on the bosses of the shields of the guards at the gate and were riveted
to the fronts of their bronze helmets.

Through the broad, well-planned avenues of this fantastic city the
troop pursued its course. The half-naked Meruvians stepped out of their
way, casting brief, incurious glances at the two stalwart prisoners and
at the horse litter containing the princess. Among the throngs of
bare-breasted city-dwellers moved, like crimson shadows, the forms of
shaven-headed priests, swathed from neck to ankle in voluminous robes
of gauzy red stuff.

Amid groves of trees, covered with flowers of scarlet, azure, and gold,
the palace of the god-king loomed up before them. It consisted of one
gigantic cone or spire, tapering up from a squat, circular base. Made
entirely of red stone, the round tower wall climbed upwards in a
spiral, like that of some curious, conical sea-shell. On each stone of
the spiral parapet was graved the likeness of a human skull. The palace
gave the impression of a tremendous tower made of death's heads. Zosara
could scarcely repress a shudder at this sinister ornamentation, and
even Conan set his jaw grimly.

They entered through another skull-gate and thence through massive
stone walls and huge rooms into the throne-room of the god-king. The
Azweri, dirty and travel-stained, remained in the rear, while a pair of
gilded guardsmen, each armed with an ornate halberd, took the arms of
each of the three prisoners and led them to the throne.

The throne, which rested atop a dais of black marble, was all of one
huge piece of pale jade, carven into the likeness of ropes and chains
of skulls, fantastically looped and interwoven. Upon this
greenish-white chair of death sat the half-divine monarch, who had
summoned the prisoners into this unknown world.

For all the seriousness of his plight, Conan could not repress a grin.
For the rimpoche Jalung Thongpa was very short and fat, with scrawny
bow legs that scarcely reached the floor. His huge belly was swathed in
a sash of cloth-of-gold, which blazed with gems. His naked arms,
swollen with flabby fat, were clasped by a dozen golden armlets, and
jeweled rings flashed and winked on his pudgy fingers. The bald head
that lolled on top of his misshapen body was notably ugly, with
dangling dewlaps, pendulous lips, and crooked, discolored teeth. The
head was topped by a spired helmet or crown of solid gold, blazing with
rubies. Its weight seemed to bow its wearer beneath it.

As Conan looked more closely at the god-king, he saw that Jalung
Thongpa was peculiarly deformed. One side of his face did not match the
other. It hung slackly from the bone and bore a blank, filmed eye,
while the other eye was bright with the glint of malicious
intelligence.

The rimpoche's good eye was now fixed upon Zosara, ignoring the two
gigantic warriors who accompanied her. Beside the throne stood a tall,
gaunt man in the scarlet robes of a Meruvian priest. Beneath his shaven
pate, cold green eyes looked out upon the scene with icy contempt. To
him the god-king turned and spoke in a high, squeaky voice. From the
few words of Meruvian that Conan had picked up from the Azweri, he
pieced together enough to understand that the tall priest was the
king's chief wizard, the Grand Shaman, Tanzong Tengri.

From scraps of the ensuing conversation, Conan further guessed that, by
his magic, the shaman had seen the approach of the troop escorting the
Princess Zosara to her Kuigar bridegroom and had shown this vision to
the god-king. Filled with simple, human lust for the slim Turanian
girl, Jalung Thongpa had dispatched the troop of his Azweri horsemen to
seize her and fetch her to his seraglio.

That was all that Conan wanted to know. For seven days, ever since his
capture, he had been pushed and prodded and bedeviled. He had walked
his feet off, and his temper was at the breaking point.

The two guards that flanked him were facing the throne with
respectfully downcast eyes, giving their full attention to the
rimpoche, who might at any instant issue a command. Conan gently
helfted the chains that bound his wrists. They were too stout for him
to break by main force; he had tried in the first days of this
captivity and failed.

Quietly, he brought his wrists together, so that the length of chain
hung down in a loop for a foot. Then, pivoting, he suddenly snapped his
arms up past the head of the left-hand guard. The slack of the chain,
swung like a whip, caught the guard across the face and sent him
staggering back, blood gushing from a broken nose.

At Conan's first violent movement, the other guard had whirled and
brought down the head of his halberd to the guard position. As he did
so, Conan caught the head of the halberd in the slack of the chain and
jerked the pole arm out of the guard's grasp.

A slash with the slack of the chain sent another guard reeling back,
clutching the bloody ruin of his mouth and spitting a broken tooth.
Conan's feet were chained too closely together to permit a full stride.
But from the floor in front of the dais he leaped with both feet
together, like a frog. In two such grotesque bounds, Conan was up on
the dais, and his hands were locked about the fat neck of the
slobbering little god-king, squatting on his pile of skulls. The
rimpoche's good eye goggled in terror, and his face blackened from the
pressure of Conan's thumbs on his windpipe.

The guards and nobles fluttered about, squealing with panic, or stood
frozen with shock and terror at this strange giant who dared to lay
violent hands upon their divinity.

"One move toward me, and I crush the life from this fat toad!" Conan
growled.

Alone of the Meruvians in the room, the Grand Shaman had shown no sign
of panic or surprise when the ragged youth had exploded in a whirlwind
of fury. In perfect Hyrkanian, he asked:

"What is your will, barbarian?"

"Set free the girl and the black! Give us horses, and we will quit your
accursed valley forever. Refuse—or try to trick us—and I'll crush your
little king to a pulp!"

The shaman nodded his skull-like head. His green eyes were as cold as
ice in the masklike face of tight-stretched, saffron skin. With a
commanding gesture, he raised his carven staff of ebony.

"Set free the princess Zosara and the black-skinned captive," he
ordered calmly. Pale-faced servitors with frightened eyes scurried to
do his bidding. Juma grunted, rubbing his wrists. Beside him, the
princess shivered. Conan swung the limp form of the king in front of
him and stepped from the dais.

"Conan!" bellowed Juma. "Beware!"

Conan whirled, but too late. As he had moved to the edge of the dais,
the Grand Shaman acted. Nimble as a striking cobra, his ebony staff
flicked out and lightly tapped Conan's shoulder, where his naked skin
bulged through the rents in his ragged clothing. Conan's lunge toward
his antagonist was never completed. Numbness spread through his body,
like venom from a reptile's fang. His mind clouded; his head, too heavy
to hold up, fell forward on his chest. Limply, he collapsed. The
half-strangled little god-king tore free from his grasp.

The last sound Conan heard was the thunderous bellow of the black as he
went down under the wriggling swarm of brown bodies.

4. The Ship of Blood

Above all, it was hot and it stank. The dead, vitiated air of the
dungeon was stale. It reeked with the stench of close-packed, sweating
bodies. A score of naked men were crammed into one filthy hole,
surrounded on all sides by huge blocks of stone weighing many tons.
Many were small, brown Menivians, who sprawled about, listless and
apathetic. There were a handful of the squat, slant-eyed little
warriors who guarded the sacred valley, the Azweri. There were a couple
of hawk-nosed Hyrkanians. And there were Conan the Cimmerian and his
giant black comrade, Juma. When the Grand Shaman's staff had struck him
into insensibility and the warriors had pulled down the mighty Juma by
weight of numbers, the infuriated rimpoche had commanded that they pay
the ultimate penalty for their crime.

In Shamballah, however, the ultimate penalty was not death, which in
Meruvian belief merely released the soul for its next incarnation.
Enslavement they considered worse, since it robbed a man of his
humanity, his individuality. So to slavery they were summarily
condemned.

Thinking of it, Conan growled deep in his throat, and his eyes blazed
with smouldering fires out of his dark face, peering through the
shaggy, matted tangle of his uncut black mane. Chained beside him,
Juma, sensing Conan's frustration, chuckled. Conan glowered at his
comrade; sometimes Juma's invincible good humor irritated him. For a
free-born Cimmerian, slavery was indeed an intolerable punishment.

To the Kushite, however, slavery was nothing new. Slave raiders had
torn Juma as a child from his mother's arms and dragged him out of the
sweltering jungles of Kush to the slave marts of Shem. For a while he
had worked as a field hand on a Shemite farm. Then, as his great thews
began to swell, he had been sold as an apprentice gladiator to the
arenas of Argos.

For his victory in the games held to celebrate the victory of King Milo
of Argos over King Ferdrugo of Zbgara, Juma was given his freedom. For
a time he lived in various Hyborian nations by thieving and by odd
jobs. Then he drifted east to Turan, where his mighty stature and skill
in combat won him a place in the ranks of King Yildiz's mercenaries.

There he had come to know the youthful Conan. He and the Cimmerian had
struck it off from the first. They were the two tallest men among the
mercenary troops, and both came from far, outlandish countries; they
were the only members of their respective races among the Turanians.
Their comradeship had now led them to the slave pits of Shamballah and
would shortly lead them to the ultimate indignity of the slave block.
There they would stand naked in the blinding sun, poked and prodded by
prospective buyers while the slave dealer bellowed praises of their
strength.

The days dragged slowly past, as crippled snakes drag their tails
painfully through the dust. Conan, Juma, and the others slept and woke
to receive wooden bowls of rice, stingily shared out by their
overseers. They spent the long days fitfully dozing or languidly
quarreling.

Conan was curious to learn more about these Meruvians, for in all his
wanderings he had never encountered their like. They dwelt here in this
strange valley as their ancestors had done since time began. They had
no contact with the outside world and wanted none.

Conan became friendly with a Meruvian named Tashudang, from whom he
learned something of their singsong language. When he asked why they
called their king a god, Tashudang replied that the king had lived for
ten thousand years, his spirit being reborn in a different body after
each sojourn in mortal flesh. Conan was skeptical of this, for he knew
the sort of lies that kings of other lands spread about themselves. But
he prudently kept his opinion to himself. When Tashudang complained
mildly and resignedly of the oppression of the king and his shamans,
Conan asked:

"Why don't you and your fellows get together and throw the whole lot
into the Sumeru Tso, and rule yourselves? That's what we would do in my
country if anybody tried to tryannize over us."

Tashudang looked shocked. "You know not what you say, foreigner! Many
centuries ago, the priests tell us, this land was much higher than it
now is. It stretched from the tops of the Himelias to the tops of the
Talakmas—one great, lofty plain, covered with snow and whipped by icy
winds. The Roof of the World, it was called.

"Then Yama, the king of the demons, determined to create this valley
for us, his chosen people, to dwell in. By a mighty spell, he caused
the land to sink. The ground shook with the sound of ten thousand
thunders, molten rock poured from cracks in the earth, mountains
crumbled, ard forests went up in flame. When it was over, the land
between the mountain chains was as you now see it. Because it was now a
lowland, the climate wanned, and the plants and beasts of the warm
countries came to dwell in it. Then Yama created the first Meruvians
and placed them in the valley, to inhabit forever. And he appointed the
shamans as leaders and enlighteners of the people.

"Sometimes the shamans forget their duties and oppress us, as if they
were but greedy common men. But Yama's command, for us to obey the
shamans, still holds good. If we defy it, Yama's great spell will be
nullified, and this land will rise to the height of the mountain tops
and again become a cold waste. So, no matter how they abuse us, we dare
not revolt against the shamans."

"Well," said Conan, "if that filthy little toad is your idea of a god—"

"Oh, no!" said Tashudang, his eyeballs glistening white in the dimness
with fear. "Say it not! He is the only begotten son of the great god,
Yama himself. And when he calls his father, the god comes!" Tashudang
buried his face in his hands, and Conan could get no more words out of
him that day.

The Meruvians were an odd race. Theirs was a peculiar lassitude of
spirit—a somnolent fatalism that bade them bow to everything that came
upon them as a predestined visitation from their cruel, enigmatic gods.
Any resistance to fate on their part, they believed, would be punished,
if not immediately, then in their next incarnation.

It was not easy to drag information out of them, but the Cimmerian
youth kept doggedly at it. For one thing, it helped to pass the
unending days. For another, he did not intend to remain in slavery
long, and every bit of information that he could gather about this
hidden kingdom and its peculiar people would be of value when he and
Juma came to try for freedom. And finally, he knew how important it was
in traveling through a strange country, to command at least a
smattering of the local language. Although not at all a scholar by
temperament, Conan picked up languages easily. He had already mastered
several and could even read and write some of them a little.

At last came the fateful day when the overseers in black leather strode
amongst the slaves, wielding heavy whips and herding their charges out
the door. "Now," sneered one, "we shall see what prices the princes of
the Sacred Land will pay for your unwieldy carcasses, outland swine!"
And his whip raised a long weal across Conan's back.

Hot sun beat down on Conan's back like whips of fire. After being so
long in darkness, he was dazzled by the brightness of day. After the
slave auction, they led him up the gangplank to the deck of a great
galley, which lay moored to the long, stone quays of Shamballah. He
squinted against the sun and cursed in a growling undertone. This,
then, was the doom to which they had sentenced him—to drudge at the
oars until death took him.

"Get down in the hold, you dogs!" spat the ship's overseer, cuffing
Conan's jaw with the back of his hand. "Only the children of Yama may
stride the deck!"

Without thinking, the Cimmerian youth exploded into action. He drove
his balled fist into the burly overseer's bulging belly. As the breath
hissed from the man's lungs, Conan followed the blow with a hammerlike
right to the jaw, which stretched the shipman on the deck. Behind him,
Juma howled with joy and struggled to get up the line to stand beside
him.

The commander of the ship's guard rapped out an order. In a flash, the
points of a dozen pikes, in the hands of wiry little Meruvian marines,
were leveled at Conan. The Cimmerian stood in the circle of them, a
menacing growl rising to his lips. But he belatedly controlled his
rage, knowing that any move would bring instant death.

It took a bucket of water to revive the overseer. He laboriously
climbed to his feet, blowing like a walrus, while water ran down his
bruised face into his sparse black beard. His eyes glared into Conan's
with insane rage, then cooled to icy venom.

The officer began to issue a command to the marines: "Slay the—" but
the overseer interrupted:

"Nay, slay him not. Death were too easy for the dog. Ill make him
whimper to be put out of his misery ere I've done with him."

"Well, Gorthangpo?" said the officer.

The overseer stared over the oar pit, meeting the cowed gaze of a
hundred-odd naked brown men. They were starved and scrawny, and their
bent backs were criss-crossed by a thousand whip scars. The ship
carried a single bank of long oars on each side. Some oars were manned
by two rowers, some by three, depending upon the size and strength of
the slaves. The overseer pointed to an oar in the waist, to which three
gray-haired, skeletal old men were chained.

"Chain him to yonder oar! Those walking corpses are played out; they
are of no more use to us. Clear the oar of them. This foreign lad needs
to stretch his arms a bit; well give him all the room he needs. And if
he follow not the pace, I'll open his back to the spine!"

As Conan watched impassively, the sailors unlocked the manacles that
connected the wrist chains of the three old men to rings on the oar
itself. The old men screamed with terror as brawny arms heaved them
over the rail. They hit the water with a great splash and sank without
a trace, save for the bubbles that rose one by one to the surface and
burst.

Conan was chained to the oar in their place. He was to do the work of
all three. As they fastened him to the filth-slimed bench, the overseer
eyed him grimly.

"We'll see how you like pulling an oar, boy. You'll pull and pull until
you think your back is breaking—and then you'll pull some more. And
every time you slack off or miss a boat, I'll remind you of your place,
like this!"

His arm swung; the whip uncoiled against the sky and came whistling
down across Conan's shoulders. The pain was like that of a white-hot
iron rod against his flesh. But Conan did not scream or move a muscle.
It was as if he had felt nothing, so strong was the iron of his will.

The overseer grunted, and the lash cracked again. This time a muscle at
one corner of Conan's grimly set mouth twitched, but his eyes looked
stonily ahead. A third lash, and a fourth. Sweat formed on the
Cimmerian's brow; it trickled down into his eyes, stinging and
smarting, even as the red blood ran down his back. But he gave no sign
of feeling pain.

Behind him, he heard Juma's whisper: "Courage!"

Then came a call from the afterdeck; the captain wished to sail.
Reluctantly, the overseer gave up his pleasure of lashing the
Cimmerian's back to pulp.

The sailors cast off the ropes that moored the ship to the quay and
shoved off with boathooks. Aft of the oar benches but on the same
level, in the shade of the catwalk that ran the length of the ship over
the heads of the rowers, sat a naked Meruvian behind a huge drum. When
the ship had cleared the quay, the coxswain lifted a wooden maul and
began to thump the drum. With each beat, the slaves bent to the oars,
rising to their feet, raising the looms, and leaning back until their
weight brought them down on the benches; then pushing the looms down
and forward and repeating. Conan soon caught the rhythm, as did Juma,
chained to the oar behind him.

Conan had never before been on a ship. As he heaved at his oar, his
quick eyes peered around him at the listless, dull-eyes slaves with
whip-scarred backs, who worked on the slimy benches in the frightful
stench of their own waste. The galley was low through the waist, where
the slaves labored; the rail was only a few feet above the water. It
was higher in the bow, where the seamen berthed, and in the carved and
gilded stern, where the officers had their quarters. A single mast
arose amidships. The yard of the single triangular sail, and the furled
sail itself, lay along the catwalk over the oar pit.

When the ship had left the harbor, the sailors untied the lashings that
held the sail and its yard to the catwalk and raised it, heaving on the
halyard and grunting a chantey. The yard went up by jerks, a few inches
at a time. As it rose, the gold-and-purple striped sail unfurled and
shook out with snapping, booming sounds. Since the wind was fair on the
quarter, the oarsmen were given a rest while the sail took over.

Conan noted that the entire galley had been made from some wood that
either by nature or by staining was of a dark red color. As he gazed
about, eyes half shut against the glare, the ship looked as if it had
been dipped in blood. Then the whip sang above him and the overseer, on
the catwalk above, yelled down:

"Now lay to, you lazy swine!"

A lash laid another welt across his shoulders. It is indeed a ship of
wood, he thought to himself; slaves' blood.

5. Rogue's Moon

For seven days, Conan and Juma sweated over the massive oars of the red
galley as it plodded its way around the shores of the Sumeru Tso,
stopping overnight at each of the seven sacred cities of Meru:
Shondakor, Thogara, Auzakia, Issedon, Paliana, Throana, and then—having
made the circuit of the sea—back to Shamballah. Strong men though they
were, it was not long before the unremitting labor brought them to the
edge of exhaustion, when their aching muscles seemed incapable of
further effort. Yet still the tireless drum and the hissing whip drove
them on.

Once a day, sailors drew buckets of cold, brackish water up over the
side and drenched the exhausted slaves. Once a day, when the sun stood
at the zenith, they were given a heaping bowl of rice and a long
dipperful of water. At night they slept on their oars. The animal-like
round of unvarying drudgery sapped the will and drained the mind,
leaving the rowers soulless automata.

It would have broken the strength of any man—save for such as Conan.
The young Cimmerian did not yield to the crushing burden of fate as did
the apathetic Moravians. The unending labor at the oars, the brutal
treatment, the indignity of the slimy benches, instead of sapping his
will, only fed the fires within him.

When the ship returned to Shamballah and dropped anchor in the wide
harbor, Conan had reached the limits of his patience. It was dark and
still; the new moon—a slim, silver scimitar—hung low in the western
sky, casting a wan, illusive light. It would soon set. Such a night was
called a "rogue's moon" in the nations of the West, for such poorly-lit
night were wont to be chosen by highwaymen, thieves, and assassins to
ply their trades. Bent over their oars, ostensibly asleep, Conan and
Juma discussed escape with the Meruvian slaves.

On the galley, the feet of the slaves were not fettered. But each wore
a pair of manacles joined by a chain, and this chain was strung through
an iron ring loosely looped around the loom of the oar. Although this
ring slid freely along the loom, its travel was stopped at the outer
end by the oarlock and, at the inner, by a collar or ferrule of lead.
This collar, securely fastened to the butt end of the oar by an iron
spike, acted as a counterweight to the blade of the oar. Conan had
tested the strength of his chain and of the manacles and the ring a
hundred times; but even his terrific strength, hardened by seven days
of rowing, could not strain any of them. Still, in a tense, growling
whisper, he urged schemes of revolt upon his fellow slaves.

"If we could get Gorthangpo down on our level," he said, "we could tear
him to pieces with our nails and teeth. And he carries the keys to all
our bonds. While we were unlocking the manacles, the marines would kill
some of us; but once we got loose, we should outnumber them five or six
to one—"

"Do not speak of it!" hissed the nearest Meruvian. "Do not even think
of it!"

"Aren't you interested?" asked Conan in astonishment.

"Nay! Even to talk of such violence turns my bones to water."

"Mine, too," said another. "The hardships we suffer have been inflicted
upon us by the gods, as a just punishment for some misdeed in a former
life. To struggle against it were not only useless but a wicked
blasphemy as well. I pray you, barbarian, hush your unholy talk and
submit with becoming humility to your fate."

Such an attitude went against Conan's grain, nor was Juma a man to bow
without resistance to any threat of doom. But the Meruvians would not
listen to their arguments. Even Tashudang, unusually loquacious and
friendly for a Meruvian, begged Conan to do nothing that would enrage
Gorthangpo, the overseer, or bring down upon them a worse punishment
from the gods than that which their divinities had already inflicted
upon them.

Conan's argument was cut short by the song of the whip. Aroused by the
murmur, Gorthangpo had crept out on the catwalk in the darkness. From
the few whispered words he overheard, he divined that mutiny was
brewing. Now his whip hissed and cracked on Conan's shoulders.

Conan had had enough. In one surge of motion, he bounded to his feet,
seized the lashing end of the whip, and tore it out of Gorthangpo's
grip. The overseer yelled for the marines.

There was still no way for Conan to get the iron ring off the loom of
his oar. In his desperation, an inspiration struck him. The
construction of the oarlock limited the vertical motion of the loom to
a height of less than five feet above the deck on which he stood. Now
he pushed the butt end of the oar up as far as it would go, climbed to
the bench, and crouching, placed his shoulders beneath the loom. Then,
with a terrific heave of his long, powerful legs, he straightened up.
The oar broke in its oarlock with a rending crash. Quickly, Conan
slipped his ring off the broken end. Now he had a serviceable weapon: a
club or quarterstaff nine feet long, with a ten-pound mass of lead on
one end.

Conan's first terrific swing caught the goggling overseer on the side
of the head. His skull shattered like a melon, spattering the benches
with a bloody spray of pulped brains. Then Conan hauled himself to the
catwalk to meet the charge of the marines. Below on the benches, the
scrawny, brown Meruvians crouched, whimpering prayers to their
devil-gods. Only Juma imitated Conan's act, breaking his oar at the
oarlock and slipping his slave ring loose.

The marines were Meruvians themselves, lax and lazy and fatalistic.
They had never had to fight a slave mutiny; they did not believe such a
thing possible. Least of all had they expected to have to face a burly
young giant armed with a nine-foot club. Still, they came on bravely
enough, although the width of the catwalk allowed them to approach
Conan only two abreast.

Conan waded in, swinging wildly. His first blow hurled the first marine
off the catwalk and into the benches with a broken sword arm. The
second dropped the next man with a shattered skull. A pike was thrust
at his naked breast; Conan knocked the pike out of its welder's hand,
and his next blow hurled two men at once off the catwalk; the one whom
he had struck with crushed-in ribs, and his companion jostled off the
walk by the impact of the first victim's body.

Then Juma climbed up beside him. The Kushite's naked torso gleamed like
oiled ebony in the dim moonlight, and his oar mowed down the advancing
Meruvians like a scythe. The marines, unprepared to face two such
monsters, broke and ran for the safety of the poop deck, whence their
officer, just aroused from slumber, was screeching confused commands.

Conan bent to the corpse of Gorthangpo and searched his pouch for the
key ring. Swiftly he found the key to all the manacles on the ship and
unlocked his own, then did the same for Juma.

A bow twanged, and an arrow whistled over Conan's head and struck the
mast. The two freed slaves did not wait to pursue the battle further.
Dropping off the catwalk, they pushed through the cowering rowers to
the rail, vaulted over the side, and vanished into the dark waters of
Shamballah's harbor. A few arrows sped after them, but in the dim light
of the setting crescent moon the archers could do little more than
shoot at random.

6. Tunnels of Doom

Two naked men hauled their dripping bodies out of the sea and peered
about them in the murk. They had swum for hours, it seemed, looking for
a way to get into Shamballah unobserved. At last they had found the
outlet to one of the storm sewers of the ancient stone city. Juma still
trailed the length of broken oar with which he had fought the marines;
Conan had abandoned his on the ship. Occasionally a faint gleam of
light came into the sewer from a storm grating set into a gutter in the
street overhead, but the light was so feeble—the thin moon having
set—that the darkness below remained impenetrable. So, in almost total
darkness, the twain waded through the slimy waters, seeking a way out
of these tunnels.

Huge rats squeaked and fled as they went through the stone corridors
beneath the streets. They could see the glimmer of eyes through the
dark. One of the larger scavengers nipped Conan's ankle, but he caught
and crushed the beast in his hands and flung its corpse at its more
cautious fellows. These quickly engaged in a squealing, rustling battle
over the feast, while Conan and Juma hurried on through the
upward-winding tunnels.

It was Juma who found the secret passage. Sliding one band along the
dank wall, he accidentally released a catch and snorted with surprise
when a portion of the stone gave way beneath his questing fingers.
Although neither he nor Conan knew where the passage led, they took it,
as it seemed to slope upward toward the city streets above.

At last, after a long climb, they came to another door. They groped in
utter darkness until Conan found a bolt, which he slid back. The door
opened with a squeak of dry hinges to his push, and the two fugitives
stepped through and froze.

They stood on an ornamental balcony crowded with statues of gods or
demons in a huge, octagonal temple The walls of the eight-sided chamber
soared upward, past the balcony, to curve inward and meet to form an
eight-sided dome. Conan remembered seeing such a dome towering among
the lesser buildings of the city, but he had never inquired as to what
lay within it.

Below, at one side of the octagonal floor, a colossal statue stood on a
plinth of black marble, facing an altar in the exact center of the
chamber. The statue dwarfed everything else in the chamber. Rising
thirty feet high, its loins were on a level with the balcony on which
Conan and Juma stood. It was a gigantic idol of a green stone that
looked like jade, although never had men found true jade in so large a
mass. It had six arms, and the eyes in its scowling face were immense
rubies.

Facing the statue across the altar stood a throne of skulls, like that
which Conan had already seen in the throne room of the palace on his
arrival in Shamballah, but smaller. The toadlike little god-king of Mem
was seated on this throne. As Conan's glance strayed from the idol's
head to that of the ruler, he thought he saw a hideous suggestion of
similarity between the two. He shuddered and his nape prickled at the
hint of unguessable cosmic secrets that lay behind this resemblance.

The rimpoche was engaged in a ritual. Shamans in scarlet robes knelt in
ranks around the throne and the altar, chanting ancient prayers and
spells. Beyond them, against the walls of the chamber, several rows of
Memvians sat cross-legged on the marble pavement. From the richness of
their jewels and their ornate if scanty apparel, they appeared to be
the officials and the nobility of the kingdom. Above their heads, set
in wall brackets around the balcony, a hundred torches flickered and
smoked. On the floor of the chamber, in a square about the central
altar, stood four torcheres, each crowned by the rich, gplden flame of
a butter lamp. The four flames wavered and sputtered.

On the altar between the throne and the colossus lay the naked, white,
slender body of a young girl, held to the altar by slender golden
chains. It was Zosara.

A low growl rumbled in Conan's throat. His smouldering eyes burned with
blue fire as he watched the hated figures of King Jalang Thonpa and his
Grand Shaman, the wizard-priest Tanzong Tengri.

"Shall we take them, Conan?" whispered Juma, his teeth showing white in
the flickering dimness. The Cimmerian grunted.

It was the festival of the new moon, and the god-king was wedding the
daughter of the king of Turan on the altar, before the many-armed
statue of the Great Dog of Death and Terror, Yama the Demon King. The
ceremony was proceeding according to the ancient rites prescribed in
the holy texts of the Book of the Death God. Placidly anticipating the
public consummation of his nuptials with the slim, long-legged Turanian
girl, the divine monarch of Mem lolled on his throne of skulls as ranks
of scarlet-clad shamans droned the ancient prayers.

Then came an interruption. Two naked giants dropped from nowhere to the
floor of the temple—one a heroic figure of living bronze, the other a
long-limbed menace whose mighty physique seemed to have been carved
from ebony. The shamans froze in mid-chant as these two howling devils
burst into their midst.

Conan seized one of the torcheres and hurled it into the midst of the
scarlet-robed shamans. They broke, screaming with pain and panic, as
the flaming liquid butter set fire to their gauzy robes and turned them
into living torches. The other three lamps followed in rapid
succession, spreading fire and confusion over the floor of the chamber.

Juma sprang toward the dais, where the king sat with his good eye
staring in fear and astonishment. The gaunt Grand Shaman met Juma on
the marble steps with his magical staff lifted to smite. But the black
giant still had his broken oar, and he swung it with terrific force.
The ebony staff flew into a hundred fragments. A second swing caught
the wizard-priest in the body and hurled him, broken and dying, into
the chaos of running, screaming, flaming shamans.

King Jalung Thongpa came next. Grinning, Juma charged up the steps
toward the cowering little god-king. But Jalung Thongpa was no longer
on his throne. Instead, he knelt in front of the statue, arms raised
and chanting a prayer.

Conan reached the altar at the same time and bent over the nude,
writhing form of the terrified girl. The light golden chains were
strong enough to hold her, but not strong enough to withstand Conan's
strength. With a grunt, he braced his feet and heaved on one; a link of
the soft metal stretched, opened, and snapped. The other three chains
followed, and Conan scooped up the sobbing princess in his arms. He
turned—but then a shadow fell over him.

Startled, he looked up and remembered what Tashudang had told him:
"When he calls his father, the god comes!"

Now he realized the full extent of the horror behind those words. For,
looming above him in the flickering torchlight, the arms of the
gigantic idol of green stone were moving. The scarlet rubies that
served it for eyes were glaring down at him, bright with intelligence.

7. When the Green God Wakes

The hairs lifted on Conan's nape, and he felt as if the blood in his
veins had congealed to ice. Whimpering, Zosara pressed her face into
the hollow of his shoulder and clung to his neck. On the black dais
that upheld the throne of skulls, Juma also froze, the whites of his
eyes showing as the superstitious terrors of his jungle heritage rose
within him. The statue was coming to life.

As they watched, powerless to move, the image of green stone shifted
one of its huge feet slowly, creakingly. Thirty feet above their heads,
its great face leered down at them. The six arms moved jerkily, flexing
like the limbs of some gigantic spider. The thing tilted, shifting its
monstrous weight. One vast foot came down on the altar on which Zosara
had lain. The stone block cracked and crumbled beneath the tons of
living green stone.

"Crom!" breathed Conan. "Even stone lives and walks in this mad place!
Come, girl—" He picked Zosara up and leaped down from the dais to the
floor of the temple. From behind him came an ominous scraping sound of
stone on stone. The statue was moving.

"Juma!" yelled Conan, casting a wild eye about for the Kushite. The
black still crouched motionless beside the throne. Upon the throne, the
little god-king pointed an arm, thick with fat and bright with jewels,
at Conan and the girl.

"Kill—Yama! Kill—kill—kill!" he screamed.

The many-armed thing paused and peered about with its ruby eyes until
it sighted Conan. The Cimmerian was nearly mad with the primitive
night-fears of his barbarian people. But, as with many barbarians, his
very fear drove him into combat with that which he dreaded. He put down
the girl and heaved up a marble bench. Sinews creaking with the effort,
he strode forward towards the lumbering colossus.

Juma yelled: "No, Conan! Get away! It sees you!"

Now Conan stood near the monstrous foot of the walking idol. The stone
legs towered above him like the pillars of some colossal temple. His
face congested with the effort, Conan raised the heavy bench over his
head and hurled it at the leg. It crashed into the carven ankle of the
colussus with terrific impact. The marble of the bench clouded with a
web of cracks, which shot through it from end to end. He stepped even
closer, picked up the bench again, and again swung it against the
ankle. This time the bench shattered into a score of pieces; but the
leg, though slightly chipped, was not materially damaged. Conan reeled
back as the statue took another ponderous step toward him.

"Conan! Look out!"

Juma's yell made him look up. The green giant was stooping. The ruby
eyes glared into his. Strange, to stare into the living eyes of a god!
They were bottomlessly deep—shadow-veiled depths wherein his gaze sank
endlessly through red eons of time without thought. And deep within
those crystalline depths, a cold, inhuman malignancy coiled. The god's
gaze locked on his own, and the young Cimmerian felt an icy numbness
spread through him. He could neither move nor think…

Juma, howling with primal rage and fear, whirled. He saw the many
mighty hands of stone swoop toward his comrade, who stood staring like
one entranced. Another stride would bring Yama upon the paralyzed
Cimmerian.

The black was too far from the tableau to interfere, but his frustrated
rage demanded an outlet. Without conscious thought, he picked up the
god-king, who shrieked and wriggled in vain, and hurled him toward his
infernal parent Jalung Thongpa whirled through the air and thudded down
on the tessalated pave before the tramping feet of the idol. Dazed by
his fall, the little monarch stared widly about with his good eye. Then
he screamed hideously as one titanic foot descended upon him.

The crunch of snapping bones resounded in the ringing silence. The
god's foot slid on the marble, leaving a broad, crimson smear on the
tiles. Creaking at the waist, the titanic figure bent and reached for
Conan, then stopped.

The groping, green stone hands, fingers outspread, halted in mid-air.
The burning crimson light faded from the ruby eyes. The vast body with
its many arms and devil's head, which a moment before had been flexible
and informed with life, froze into motionless stone once more.

Perhaps the death of the king, who had summoned this infernal spirit
from the nighted depths of nameless dimensions, cancelled the spell
that bound Yama to the idol. Or perhaps the king's death released the
devil-god's will from the domination of his earthly kinsman. Whatever
the cause, the instant the Jalung Thongpa was crushed into bubbling
gore, the statue reverted to lifeless, immobile stone.

The spell that had gripped Conan's mind also broke. Numbly, the youth
shook his head to clear it. He stared about him. The first thing of
which he was aware was the princess Zosara, who flung herself into his
arms, weeping hysterically. As his bronzed arms closed about her
softness and he felt the feathery touch of her black, silken hair
against his throat, a new kind of fire flared up in his eyes, and he
laughed deeply.

Juma came running across the floor of the temple. "Conan! Everybody
either is dead or has ran away! There should be horses in the paddock
behind the temple. Now is our chance to quit this accursed place!"

"Aye! By Crom, I shall be glad to shake the dust of this damned land
from my heels," growled the Cimmerian, tearing the robe from the body
of the Grand Shaman and draping it over the princess's nakedness. He
snatched her up and carried her out, feeling the warmth and softness of
her supple young body against his own.

An hour later, well beyond the reach of pursuit, they reined in their
horses and examined the branching roads. Conan looked up at the stars,
pondered, and pointed. "This way!"

Juma wrinkled his brow. "North?"

"Aye, to Hyrkania." Conan laughed. "Have you forgotten that we still
have this girl to deliver to her bridegroom?"

Juma's brow wrinkled with greater puzzlement than before, seeing how
Zosara's slim, white arms were wound around his comrade's neck and how
her small head was nestled contentedly against his mighty shoulder. To
her bridegroom? He shook his head; never would he understand the ways
of Cimmerians. But he followed Conan's lead and turned his steed toward
the mighty Talakma Mountains, which rose like a wall to sunder the
weird land of Mem from the windy steppes of Hyrkania.

A month later, they rode into the camp of Kujula, the Great Khan of the
Kuigar nomads. Their appearance was entirely different from what it had
been when they fled from Shamballah. In the villages on the southern
slopes of the Talakmas, they had traded the links from the golden
chains that still dangled from Zosara's wrists and ankles for clothing
suitable to snowy mountain passes and gusty plains. They wore fur caps,
sheepskin coats, baggy trousers of coarse wool, and stout boots.

When they presented Zosara to her black-bearded bridegroom, the khan
feasted and praised and rewarded them. After a carousal that lasted for
several days, he sent them back to Turan loaded with gifts of gold.

When they were well away from Khan Kujula's camp, Juma said to his
friend: "That was a fine girl. I wonder you didn't keep her for
yourself. She liked you, too."

Conan grinned. "Aye, she did. But I'm not ready to settle down yet. And
Zosara will be happier with Kujula's jewels and soft cushions than she
would be with me, galloping about the steppes and being roasted,
frozen, and chased by wolves or hostile warriors." He chuckled.
"Besides, though the Great Khan doesn't know it, his heir is already on
the way."

"How do you know?"

"She told me, just before we parted."

Juma made clicking sounds from his native tongue. "Well, I will never,
never underestimate a Cimmerian again!"