Roland Green - Conan and The Mists of Doom

"Our blood is our honor!"

The Lady of the Mists stepped into the center of the circle. Muhbaras noted that she was carrying a long staff, taller than she was, in the form of a serpent—the giant asp of the jungles east of Vendhya, to be precise. It had one ruby eye and one emerald eye, and down its length flowed, instead of scales, those unnameable runes that the captain had seen far too often since he came to the Valley of the Mists.

The Lady stopped just behind Danar, and thrust the staff down to the rock three times. Each time the rock boomed under the blow like a giant's drum. Muhbaras was uneasily conscious of how ancient the stonework of this balcony was, and how far it jutted out over a drop clear to the bottom of the valley. He even thought he saw the Maidens betray some unease, by the lift of a shoulder or the flicker of an eye, but for the most part they were doing their usual imitation of statues.

The Lady struck a fourth time—and this time no drum-thunder rolled out across the Valley. In silence the staff seemed to sink into the rock and stand there as if it had grown there. It did not so much as quiver—although Muhbaras thought that he saw a glow in the ruby eye, and perhaps also in the emerald one.

The Lady made a commanding gesture with her left hand, and eight Maidens marched forward from their places around the platform, until they made a tight circle around Danar and the staff. One unlocked the chains from his ankles.

Now an equally commanding gesture of the Lady's right hand set the Maidens to lifting Danar bodily, as if he were a barrel of wine or a sheep's carcass. For a moment Muhbaras thought that Danar's fate was to be impalement, and wondered at the Lady's lack of imagination if she could contrive no worse end for him.

Then the captain saw that they were lifting Danar so that the staff would rise up between his back and his bound hands. He would be as helpless as if he had actually been bound to it, and there would be no need to unbind his hands at any point.

Danar rose, then descended until only the top of his head was visible among the gleaming hair of the Maidens. For a long moment that, too, disappeared— then in the next moment Maidens were flung in all directions like sheep charged by a lion.

Danar burst out of the circle of Maidens with both hands free. His bonds dangled from his wrists, and in his right hand was a small dagger. He leapt over a Maiden who had gone sprawling and dashed for the edge of the platform, where a gap showed between two other Maidens.

"Your pardon, ladies," Danar said, as the women raised spears and moved to close the gap. At least that was what it sounded like to Muhbaras.

What he did know to his dying day was that Danar spoke to the Maidens preparing to kill him as courteously as he might have to a highborn woman with her daughter who found themselves in the path of his war chariot.

The tone had its effect. Or perhaps it was the dagger in Danar's hand. He feinted with it at the right-hand maiden, lashed out at her sister with the end of the thongs on his left wrist, and made the gap anew.

It was more than wide enough to let him reach the edge of the platform and, without breaking stride, leap into space.

Conan followed the Greencloak up the slope at a less frantic pace. Once again he was trying to look in every direction at once, for all that in some directions his eyes met solid rock just beyond the end of his nose.

He still saw too many men coming across the valley, and fewer but still uncomfortably many atop the ridge on this side. He and his comrades were boxed in as thoroughly as if they had been in a dungeon, and stone walls would have been only a trifle harder to break through than such a horde of tribesmen.

Then he noticed that the battle din from up the slope was dying away, faster than it should. Either his men had been overrun, or they had beaten off at least one attack, which ought to be impossible—

His eagerness to solve the mystery nearly ended Conan's life. He came around a rock into full view of archers higher up, and they promptly put a dozen arrows through the space where he had been standing. Nothing but a hillman's speed held his wounds to scratches. That same preternatural speed let him scoop up a handful of usable arrows before he leapt again.

This time he landed on something alive and foul-smelling, which swore Afghuli oaths fit to crack rocks or cause landslides.

"Farad, I heard you shouting. How fare we?"

Farad coughed so long and loud that Conan suspected sarcasm. "The men fare well, save for one dead and another fallen under his horse—or is that the one who dashed past me as if his breeches were aflame?"

"The same. I had some trouble bringing him up. Now that you've your breath back and your ribs intact, I repeat my question."

"We've beaten off one attack, on our right." Farad waved an arm in that general direction. "Nobody came down against our left, for which the gods be praised as that would have been the end of us."

"Are their men not yet in position on our left?" If so, then Conan's men had received only a stay of execution, not a full pardon.

"Oh, they hold the heights all across our front, Conan. But they've no manhood, the ones on our left. They hardly put a head up; when they do, they seldom shoot; and when they shoot, it's not to hit. If those weaklings had all the arrows in the world—"

Conan held up a hand. Battle-honed instincts made him see possibilities in this situation that had escaped Farad. It would be best not to get anyone's hopes up, however.

"My thanks. While there's a lull, I'm going up to scout on the left."

Had Danar's leap been a spell to turn all who saw it into stone, there could not have been more silence or less movement on the balcony. Muhbaras alone contained himself out of fear. The rest seemed unable to believe that what their eyes had seen was really what had happened.

To suspect one's eyes of so misleading one would unsettle anyone, Muhbaras suspected. At least he had no doubts—and indeed, he was already composing the tribute to Danar he would send to the soldier's kin, if he had any and if Muhbaras himself lived to set pen to parchment again—

The Maidens ceased to be statues. So did the Lady of the Mists. With hands raised, she advanced on the eight Maidens standing about the staff. A crimson nimbus sprang into existence around her right hand; a fainter golden light seemed to drip like water from her left hand.

The two colors cascaded down to the stone, splashed upward like water, and merged. They formed a sphere the size of a large melon, mostly crimson, shot with gold, and throwing off sparks. The sphere began to rotate—as it seemed to Muhbaras, in three different directions as once.

He would have called that impossible—except that since he came to the Valley of the Mists, Muhbaras had purged that word from his lips. It could only make one apt to be surprised—and the Lady and her Maidens held enough surprises for a soldier who kept his wits.

The sphere now floated upward, still spinning, with sparks of both colors cascading down so thickly that one could not see anyone through it. It rose higher and seemed to be moving toward the ring of Maidens.

It darted forward, until it was over the place where Danar had leapt.

Then Muhbaras clapped his hands over his ears, and before he squeezed his eyes shut, saw others doing the same. All seemed to be hearing the scream of one being flayed alive, a scream that told all who heard that it would go on until the end of time and perhaps beyond it until the gods themselves brought an end to it—

He kept his feet, and so did most of the Maidens. Some of them staggered, however, and a handful went to their knees.

Only the Lady of the Mists stood unaffected, her hands still raised, her breasts rising and falling a trifle more than usual under the robe as if she was breathing hard. Her eyes contrived to both glow and be utterly blank at the same time, while her lips were even paler than usual.