"By Mitra!" Either a voice spoke, or he suffered from hallucination. "In all my life I have never seen such a thing!"
Shaking the sweat and blood from his eyes, Conan saw four horsemen sitting their steeds in the twilight and staring up at him. Three were lean, white-robed hawks, Zuagir tribesmen without a doubt, nomads from beyond the river. The other was dressed like them in a white, girdled khalat and a flowing head-dress which, banded about the temples with a triple circlet of braided camel-hair, fell to his shoulders. But he was not a Shemite. The dusk was not so thick, nor Conan's hawk-like sight so clouded that he could not perceive the man's facial characteristics.
He was as tall as Conan, though not so heavy-limbed. His shoulders were broad and his supple figure was hard as steel and whalebone. A short black beard did not altogether mask the aggressive jut of his lean jaw, and gray eyes cold and piercing as a sword gleamed from the shadow of the kafieh. Quieting his restless steed with a quick, sure hand, this man spoke: "By Mitra, I should know this man!"
"Aye!" It was the guttural accents of a Zuagir. "It is the Cimmerian who was captain of the queen's guard!"
"She must be casting off all her old favorites," muttered the rider. "Who'd have ever thought it of Queen Taramis? I'd rather have had a long, bloody war. It would have given us desert folk a chance to plunder. As it is we've come this close to the walls and found only this nag"—he glanced at a fine gelding led by one of the nomads—"and this dying dog."
Conan lifted his bloody head.
"If I could come down from this beam I'd make a dying dog out of you, you Zaporoskan thief!" he rasped through blackened lips.
"Mitra, the knave knows me!" exclaimed the other. "How, knave, do you know me?"
"There's only one of your breed in these parts," muttered Conan. "You are Olgerd Vladislav, the outlaw chief."
"Aye! And once a hetman of the kozaki of the Zaporoskan River, as you have guessed. Would you like to live?"
"Only a fool would ask that question," panted Conan.
"I am a hard man," said Olgerd, "and toughness is the only quality I respect in a man. I shall judge if you are a man, or only a dog after all, fit only to lie here and die."
"If we cut him down we may be seen from the walls," objected one of the nomads.
Olgerd shook his head.
"The dusk is too deep. Here, take this ax, Djebal, and cut down the cross at the base."
"If it falls forward it will crush him," objected Djebal. "I can cut it so it will fall backward, but then the shock of the fall may crack his skull and tear loose all his entrails."
14
