Classic Audiobook Collection - Beyond the Black River by Robert E. Howard ~ Full Audiobook [fantasy]

Episode Date: April 18, 2023

Beyond the Black River by Robert E. Howard audiobook. Genre: fantasy Conan the Barbarian is employed by one of the civilized countries to help in it's push to claim lands from the primitive Picts. The Picts are not excited about the idea however. Old gods and mythical creatures are called up by the Pict witches to contest the invading army and Conan finds himself battling for his life amid the blood thirsty hordes that include saber-toothed tigers, 40 foot long venomous snakes and a demon from another dimension who is intent on crushing him. The huge dog Slasher makes an appearance here and distinguishes himself so well in a doomed battle to delay their forces that Conan openly praises his courage and pledges that 7 Pict heads will roll in his honor. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 1 (00:29:05) Chapter 2 (00:44:44) Chapter 3 (00:51:52) Chapter 4 (01:15:20) Chapter 5 (01:46:50) Chapter 6 (02:16:44) Chapter 7 (02:28:32) Chapter 8 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conan Beyond the Black River by Robert E. Howard, Chapter 1. Conan loses his axe. The stillness of the forest trail was so primeval that the tread of a soft-booted foot was a startling disturbance. At least it seemed so to the ears of the wayfarer, though he was moving along the path with the caution that must be practiced by any man who ventures beyond thunder, River. He was a young man of medium height, with an open countenance and mop of tousled tawny hair, unconfined by cap or helmet. His garb was common enough for that country. A coarse tunic, belted at the waist, short leather breeches beneath, and soft buckskin boots that came short

of the knee. A knife-hilt jotted from one boot-top. The broad leather belt supported a short, heavy sword and a buckskin pouch. There was no perturbation in the wide eyes that scanned the green walls which fringed the trail. Though not tall, he was well-built, and the arms that the short wide sleeves of the tunic left bare were thick with carted muscle. He tramped imperturbably along,

although the last settler's cabin lay miles behind him, and each step was carrying him nearer the grim peril that hung like a brooding shadow over the ancient forest. He was not making as much noise as it seemed to him, though he well knew that the faint tread of his booted feet would be like a tuskin of alarm to the fierce ears that might be lurking in the treacherous green fastness. His careless attitude was not genuine. His eyes and ears were keenly alert, especially his ears. For no one of his ears. For no one. No gaze could penetrate the leafy tangle for more than a few feet in either direction.

But it was instinct, more than any warning by the external senses, which brought him up suddenly, his hand on his hilt. He stood, stocked still in the middle of the trail, unconsciously holding his breath, wondering what he had heard, and wondering if indeed he had heard anything. The silence seemed absolute. a squirrel chattered or bird chirped. Then his gaze fixed itself on a mass of bushes beside the trail a few yards ahead of him. There was no breeze yet he had seen a branch quiver. The short hairs on his scalp prickled, and he stood for an instant undecided, certain that

a move in either direction would bring death streaking at him from the bushes. A heavy chopping crunch sounded behind the leaves. The bushes were shaken violently and simultaneously with the sound, an arrow arched erratically from among them, and vanished among the trees along the trail. The Wayfarer glimpsed its flight as he sprang frantically to cover. Crouching behind a thick stem, his sword quivering at his fingers, he saw the bushes part, and a tall figure

stepped leisurely into the trail. The traveler stared in surprise. The stranger was clad like himself in regard to boots and breez, though the latter were of silk instead of leather. But he wore a sleeveless hubberk of dark mesh mail in place of a tunic, and a helmet perched on his black mane.

That helmet held the other's gaze, as it was without a crest, but adorned by short bullhorns. No civilized hands. ever forged that headpiece, nor was the face below it that of a civilized man. Dark, scarred, with smoldering blue eyes, it was a face untamed as the primordial forest which formed its background. The man held a broadsword in his right hand, and the edge was smeared with crimson.

Come on out! He called, in an accent unfamiliar to the wayfarer. All safe now. there was only one of the dogs. Come on out. The other emerged dubiously and stared at the stranger. He felt curiously helpless and futile as he gazed on the proportions of the forest man, the massive iron-clad breast, and the arm that bore the reddened sword,

burned dark by the sun and ridged and corded with muscles. He moved with the dangerous ease of a panther. He was too fiercely supple to be a product. of civilization, even of that fringe of civilization which composed the outer frontiers. Turning, he stepped back to the bushes and pulled them apart. Still not certain just what had happened, the wayfarer from the east advanced and stared down into the bushes. A man lay there, a short, dark, thickly muscled man, naked except for a loincloth,

a necklace of human teeth, and a brass armlet. A short sword was thrust into the girdle of the loincloth, and one hand still gripped a heavy black bow. The man had long black hair, that was about all that the Wayfarer could tell about his head, for his features were a mask of blood and brains. His skull had been split to the teeth. A-picked by the gods! exclaimed the Wayfarer.

The burning blue eyes turned upon him. Are you surprised? Why? They told me at Veletrium, and again at the settlers' cabins along the road, that these devils sometimes sneaked across the border, but I didn't expect to meet one this far in the interior. You're only four miles east of Black River, the stranger informed him. They've been shot within a mile of Veletriam. No settler between Thunder River and Fort Tuscalan is really safe.

I picked up this dog's trail three miles. south of the fort this morning, and I've been following him ever since. I came up behind him just as he was drawing an arrow on you. Another incident, and there'd have been a stranger in hell, but I spoiled his aim for him. The wayfarer was staring wide-eyed at the larger man, dumbfounded by the realization that the man had actually tracked down one of the forest devils and slain him unsuspected. That implicated. That implicated. woodsmanship of a quality undreamed, even for Konajahara. You are one of the fort's garrison, he asked.

I'm no soldier. I draw the pay and rations of an officer of the line, but I do my work in the woods. Bolanos knows I'm of more use ranging along the river than cooped up in the fort. Casually, the slayer shoved the body deeper into the thicket with his foot, Pulled the bushes together, and turned away down the trail. The other followed him. My name is Balthus, he offered. I was at Velletrium last night.

I haven't decided whether I'll take up a hide of land or inter-fort service. The best land near Thunder River is already taken, grunted the slayer. Plenty of good land between Scalp Creek, you crossed it a few miles back, and the fort, but that's getting too devilish close to the slayer. the river. The picks steal over to burn and murder, as that one did. They don't always come singly. Someday they'll try to sweep the settlers out of Kanachahara. And they may succeed. Probably will succeed. This colonization business is mad anyway. There's plenty of good land east of the Bosonian marshes. If the Aquilonians would cut up some of the big estates of their barons and plant wheat

where now only deer are hunted, they wouldn't have to cross the border and take the land of the picks away from them. That's queer talk from a man in the service of the governor of Konajahara, objected Baltus. It's nothing to me, the other retorted. I'm a mercenary. I sell my sword to the highest bidder. I never planted wheat and never will, so long as there are other harvests to be reaped with the sword.

But you Hiborians have expanded as. far as you'll be allowed to expand. You've crossed the marshes, burned a few villages, exterminated a few clans, and pushed back the frontiers to Black River. But I doubt if you'll ever be able to hold what you've conquered. And you'll never push the frontier any further westward. Your idiotic king doesn't understand conditions here. He won't send you enough reinforcements.

And there are not enough settlers to withstand the shock of a concerted attack from across the the river. But the picks are divided into small clans, persisted both us. They'll never unite. We can whip any single clan, or any three or four clans, admitted the slayer. But some day a man will rise and unite thirty or forty clans, just as was done among the Samarians, when the Gundermen tried to push the border northward years ago. They tried to colonize the southern marshes of Samaria, to start a few small clans. built a fort town. Venerium, you've heard the tale.

So I have indeed, replied Balthus, wincing. The memory of that red disaster was a black blot in the chronicles of a proud and warlike people. My uncle was at Venerium when the Samarians swarmed over the walls. He was one of the few who escaped that slaughter. I've heard him tell the tale many a time.

The barbarians swept out of the hills in a ravening horde, without warning, and stormed Venerium with such fury none could stand before them. Men, women, and children were butchered. Venerium was reduced to a mass of charred ruins, as it is to this day. The Aquilonians were driven back across the marshes, and have never since tried to colonize the Sumerian country. But you speak of Venerium familiarly.

Perhaps you were there? I was, grunted the other. I was one of the horde that swarmed over the hills. I hadn't yet seen fifteen snows, but already my name was repeated about the council fires. Both us involuntary recoiled, staring. It seemed incredible that the man walking, tranquilly at his side, should have been one of those screeching blood-mad devils that had poured over the walls of venerium on that long-gone day

to make her streets run crimson. Then you too are a barbarian, he exclaimed involuntarily. The other nodded, without taking offense. I am Conan, a Samarian. I've heard of you. Fresh interest quickened Balthus's gaze. No wonder the Pict had fallen victim to his own sort of subtlety. The Samarians were barbarians, as ferocious as the Picts,

and much more intelligent. Evidently Conan had spent much time among civilized men, though that contact had obviously not softened him, nor weakened any of his primitive instincts. Balthus's apprehension turned to admiration, as he marked the easy cat-like stride, the effortless silence with which the Samarian moved along the trail. The oiled links of his armor did not clink,

and Balthus knew Conan could glide through the deepest thicket, our most tangled cups, as noiselessly as any naked-picked that ever lived. You're not a Gunderman? It was more assertion than question. Balthus shook his head. I'm from the Taurin. I've seen good woodsmen from the Tauron, but the Bosphonians have sheltered you, Aquilonians,

from the outer wildernesses for too many centuries. You need hardening. That was true. The Bosonian marshes, with their fortified villages, filled with determined bowmen, had long served Aquilonia as a buffer against the outlying barbarians. Now among the settlers beyond Thunder River, there was growing up a breed of forestmen

capable of meeting the barbarians at their own game, but their numbers were still scanty. Most of the frontiermen were like Balthus, more of the settler than the woodsman type. The sun had not set, but it was no longer in sight, hidden as it was behind the dense forest wall. The shadows were lengthening, deepening back in the woods, as the companions strode on down the trail.

"'It will be dark before we reach the fort,' commented Conan casually, then, listen. He stopped short, half-crowching, sword-ready, transformed into a savage figure of suspicion and menace, poised to spring and rend. Baltus had heard it too, a wild scream that broke at its highest note. It was the cry of a man in dire fear or agony.

Conan was off in an instant, racing down the trail, each stride widening the distance between him and his straining companion. Baltus puffed the curse. Among the settlements of the Torin, he was accounted a good runner, but Conan was leaving him behind with maddening ease. Then Baltus forgot his exasperation as his ears were outraged by the most frightful cry he had ever heard. It was not human this one.

It was a demaniacal cordualling of hideous triumph that seemed to exult over-fallen humanity and find echo in black gulfs beyond human kin. Baltus faltered in his stride and clammy sweat beated his flesh. But Conan did not hesitate. He darted around a bend in the trail and disappeared, and Palthus panicky at finding himself alone with that awful scream still shuddering through the forest in grisly echoes,

put on an extra burst of speed, and plunged after him. The Aquilonian slid to a stumbling halt, almost colliding with the Samarian, who stood in the trail over a crumpled body, but Conan was not looking at the corpse which lay there in the crimson-soaked dirt. He was glaring into the deep woods on either side of the trail.

Balthus muttered a horrified oath. It was the body of a man which lay there in the trail, a short fat man clad in the gilt-worked boots, and, despite the heat, the ermine-trimmed tunic of a wealthy merchant. His fat, pale face was set in a stare, a frozen horror. His thick throat had been slashed from ear to ear, as if by a razor-sharp blade. The short sword, still in its scabbard, seemed to indicate that he had been struck down without a chance to fight for his life. He picked, Baltus whispered, as he turned to peer into the deepening shadows of the forest. Conan shook his head and straightened to scowl down at the dead man.

A forest devil. This is the fifth by crumb. What do you mean? Did you ever hear of a Pictish wizard called Zogar Sag? Baltus shook his head uneasily. He dwells in, Guawella. The nearest village of course. the river. Three months ago, he hid beside this road and stole a string of pack-mules from a pack-train bound for the fort, drugged their drivers somehow. The mules belonged to this man. Conan casually

indicated the corpse with his foot. Tiberius, a merchant of villetrium. They were loaded with ale kegs, and old Zogar stopped to guzzle before he got across the river. A-Warererer, a The woodsman named Soroktus trailed him and led Valanus and three soldiers to where he lay dead drunk in a thicket. At the importunities of Tiberius, Valanus threw Zogar's sag into a cell, which is the worst insult you can give a piqued. He managed to kill his guard and escape, and sent back word that he meant to kill Tiberius, and the five men who captured him in a way that would make Aquilonians shudder. for centuries to come. Well, Saractus and the soldiers are dead.

Soroktus was killed on the river, the soldiers in the very shadow of the fort, and now Tiberius is dead. No picked killed any of them. Each victim, except Tiberius, as you see, lacked his head, which no doubt is now ornamenting the altar of Zogar's particular god.

"'How do you know they weren't killed by the picks?' demanded Balthus. Conan pointed to the corpse of the merchant. "'You think that was done with a knife for a sword? Look closer, and you'll see that only a tellon could have made a gash like that. The flesh is ripped, not cut. Perhaps a panther began Balthus without conviction. Conan shook his head impatiently. A man from the Toron couldn't mistake the mark of a panther's claws.

No, it's a forest devil summoned by Zogar's sag to carry out his revenge. Tiberius was a fool to start for a volitrium alone and so close to dusk. But each one of the victims seemed to be smitten with madness just before doom overtook them. Look here. The signs are plain enough. Tiberius came riding along the. trail on his mule, maybe with a bundle of choice otter pelts behind his saddle, to sell in volitrium, and the thing sprang on him from behind that bush. See where the branches are crushed down?

Tiberius gave one scream, and then his throat was torn open, and he was selling his otter skins in hell. The mule ran away into the woods. Listen, even now you can hear him thrashing about under the trees. The demon didn't have time to take Tiberius's head. It took fright as we came up. As you came up, amended Balthus. It must not be a very terrible creature if it flees from one armed man.

But how do you know it was not a pick with some kind of a hook that rips instead of slicing? Did you see it? Tiberius was an armed man, grunted Conan. If Zogar Sogg can bring demons to aid him, he can tell them which he can tell them which men to kill and which sled alone. No, I didn't see it. I only saw the bushes shake as it left the trail. But if you want further proof, look here.

The slayer had stepped into the pool of blood in which the dead man sprawled. Under the bushes at the edge of the path, there was a footprint made in blood on the hard loam. Did a man make that? demanded Conan. Paulus felt his scalp prickle. Neither man nor any beast that he had ever seen could have left that strange, monstrous, three-toed print

that was curiously combined of the bird and the reptile, yet a true mark of neither. He spread his fingers above the print, careful not to touch it, and grunted explosively. He could not span the mark. What is it? he whispered. I never saw a beast that left a spore like that. Nor any other sane man, answered Conan grimly.

It's a swamp demon. They're thick as bats in the swamps beyond Black River. You can hear them howling like damned souls when the wind blows strong from the south on hot nights. What shall we do? Ask the Aquilonian, peering uneasily into the deep blue shadows. The frozen fear on the dead countenance haunted him, He wondered what hideous head the wretch had seen thrust grinning from among the leaves to chill his blood with terror.

No use trying to follow a demon, granted Conan, drawing a short woodman's axe from his girdle. I tried tracking him after he killed Soroktus. I lost his trail within a dozen steps. He might have grown himself wings and flown away or sucked down through the earth to hell. I don't know. I'm not going after the mule either. It'll either wonder back to the fort or to some settler's cabin. As he spoke, Conan was busy at the edge of the trail with his axe.

With a few strokes he caught a pair of saplings nine or ten feet long and denuded them of their branches. Then he caught a length arm a serpent-like vine that crawled among the bushes nearby and making one end fast to one of the poles, a couple of feet from the end, whipped the vine over the other sapling, and interlaced it back and forth. In a few moments he had a crude but strong litter.

The demon isn't going to get Tiberius's head, if I can help it, he growled. We'll carry the body into the fort. It isn't more than three miles. I never like the fat fool, but we can't have Pictish devils making so cursed free with white men's heads. The picks were a white race, though swarthy, but the border men never spoke of them as such. Balthus took the rear end of the litter,

onto which Conan unceremoniously dumped the unfortunate merchant, and they moved on down the trail as swiftly as possible. Conan made no more noise, laden with their grim burden than he had made when unencumbered. He had made a loop with the merchant's belt at the end of the poles, and was carrying his share of the load with one hand, while the other gripped his naked broadsword and his restless gaze roved the sinister walls about them.

The shadows were thickening, a darkening blue mist blurred the outlines of the foliage. The forest deepened in the twilight, became a blue haunt of mystery, sheltering unguessed things. They had covered more than a mile, and the muscles in both as a sturdy arms, were beginning to ache a little, when a cry rang shuddering from the woods whose blue shadows

were deepening into purple. Conan started convulsively, and both us almost let go the poles. A woman, cried the younger man. Great Mithra, a woman cried out then. A settler's wife staying in the woods, snarled Conan, setting down his end of the litter, looking for a cow probably, and stay here. He dived like a little. hunting wolf into the leafy wall.

Balthus's hair bristled. Stay here alone with this corpse and a devil hiding in the woods, he helped. I'm coming with you. And suiting action to words, he plunged after the Samarian. Conan glanced back at him but made no objection, though he did not moderate his pace to accommodate the shorter legs of his companion. Balthus wasted his wind in swearing, as the Samarian drew away from him again,

like a phantom between the trees, and then Conan burst into a dim glade and halted crouching, lips snarling, sword lifted. What are we stopping for? Panted Baltus, dashing the sweat out of his eyes and gripping his short sword. That scream came from this glade, or nearby, answered Conan. I don't mistake the location of sounds, even in the woods. But where? abruptly the sound rang out again, behind them.

In the direction of the trail they had just quitted. It rose piercingly and pitifully, the cry of a woman in frantic terror, and then, shockingly, it changed to a yell of mocking laughter that might have burst from the lips of a fiend of lower hell. What in Mithra's name! Balthus's face was a pale blur in the gloom. With a scorching oath, Conan wheeled and dashed back the way he had come, and the Aquilonian stumbled bewildered after him. He blundered into the Samarian as the latter stopped dead and rebounded from his brawny shoulders as though from an iron statue.

Gasping from the impact, he heard Conan's breath hiss through his teeth. The Samarian seemed frozen in his tracks. Looking over his shoulder, Baltus felt his hair stand up stiffly. Something was moving through the deep bushes that fringed the trail. Something that neither walked nor flew, but seemed to glide like a serpent.

But it was not a serpent. Its outlines were indistinct, but it was taller than a man, and not very bulky. It gave off a glimmer of weird light, like a faint blue flame. Indeed, the eerie fire was the only tangible thing about it. It might have been an embodied flame,

moving with reason and purpose through the blackening woods. Conan snarled a savage curse and hurled his axe with ferocious will, but the thing glided on without altering its course. Indeed, it was only a few instance fleeting glimpse they had of it, a tall, shadowy thing of misty flame floating through the thickets. Then it was gone, and the forest crouched in breathless stillness. With a snarl, Conan plunged through the intervening foliage and into the trail. His profanity, as Baltus floundered after him, was lurid and impassioned.

The Samarian was standing over the litter on which lay the body of Tiberius, and that body no longer possessed a head. Tricked us with its damnable catawalling, raved Conan, swinging his great sword about his head in his wrath. I might have known. I might have guessed a trick. Now there will be five heads to decorate Zogar's altar. But what thing is that that can cry like a woman and laugh like a devil

and shines like witchfire as it climbs. through the trees, gasped Balthus, mopping the sweat from his pale face. A swamp devil, responded Conan morosely. Grab those poles. We'll take in the body anyway. At least our loads a bit lighter. With which grim philosophy, he gripped the leathery loop and stalked down the trail. End of Chapter 1.

Chapter 2 of Conan, Beyond the Black River. by Robert E. Howard. This Libra Fox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 2. The Wizard of Guolella. Fort Tussalon stood on the eastern bank of Black River, the tides of which washed the foot of the stockades. The latter was of logs, as were all the buildings within, including the Don John, to dignify it by that appellation, in which were the governor's quarters, overlooking the stockade and the sullen river.

Beyond that river lay a huge forest, which approached jungle-like density along the spongy shores. Men paced the runways along the log parapet day and night, watching the dense green wall. Seldom a menacing figure appeared, but the sentries knew that they too were watched fiercely, hungrily, with the mercilessness of ancient hate. The forest beyond the river might seem desolate and vacant of life to the ignorant eye,

but life teemed there, not alone of bird and beast and reptile, but also of men, the fiercest of all the hunting beasts. There at the fort, civilization ended. Fort Tussalon was the last outpost of a civilized, world. It represented the westernmost thrust of the dominant Iborian races. Beyond the river the primitive still reigned in shadowy forests, bush-thatched huts where hung the grinning skulls of men, and mud-walled enclosures where fires flickered and drums rumbled and spears were wetted in the hands of dark, silent men with tangled black hair and the eyes of serpents.

Those eyes often glared through the bushes at the fort across the river. Once, dark-skinned men had built their huts where that fort stood. Yes, and their huts had risen where now stood the fields and log cabins of fair-haired settlers, back beyond Velletrium, that raw turbulent frontier town on the banks of Thunder River, to the shores of that other river that bounds the Bosonian marches. Traders had come, and priests of Mithra, who walked with bare feet and empty hands, and died horribly most of them, but soldiers had followed and men with axes in their hands and women and children in ox-drawn wanes. Back to Thunder River, and still back, beyond

Black River the Aborigines had been pushed, with slaughter and massacre. But the dark-skinned people did not forget that once Konanjahara had been theirs. The guard inside the eastern gate bawled a challenge, through a barred aperture, torchlight flickered, glinting on a steel headpiece and suspicious eyes beneath it. Open the gate, snorted Conan. You see its eye, don't you? Military discipline put his teeth on edge. The gate swung inward, and Conan and his companion passed through. Baltus noted that the gate was flamed. by a tower on each side, the summits of which rose above the stockade. He saw loopholes

for arrows. The guardsmen grunted as they saw the burden borne between the men. Their pikes jangled against each other as they thrust shut the gate, chin on shoulder, and Conan asked testily, Have you never seen a headless body before? The face of the soldiers were pallid in the torchlight. "'That's Tiberius,' blurted one. I recognized that for a transatunic, Valerius here owes me five lunas. I told him Tiberius had heard the loon call when he rode through the gate on his mule, with his glassy stare.

I wagered he'd come back without his head. Conan grunted, enigmatically, motioned Balthus to ease the litter to the ground, and then strode off toward the governor's quarters with the Aquilonian at his heels. The tussle-headed youth stared about him eagerly, and curiously, noting the rows of barracks along the walls, the stables, the tiny merchant's stalls, the towering blockhouse, and the other buildings, with the open square in the middle where the soldiers drilled, and where now fires danced and men off-duty lounged. These were now hurrying to join the morbid crowd gathered around the litter at the gate.

The rangy figures of Aquilonian pikemen and forest runners mingled with the shorter, stockier farms of Bosonian archers. He was not greatly surprised that the governor received them himself. Autocratic society, with its rigid caste laws, lay east of the marches. Bolanus was still a young man, well-knit, with a finely-chiseled countenance, already carved into sober casts by toil and responsibility. You left the fort before daybreak, I was told, he said to Conan. I had begun to fear that the picks had caused,

you at last." When they smoke my head, the whole river will know it," grunted Conan. They'll hear Pictish women wheeling their dead as far as Veletrium. I was on a lone scout. I couldn't sleep. I kept hearing drums talking across the river. They talk each night, reminded the governor. His fine eyes shadowed as he stared closely at Conan.

He had learned the unwisdom of discounting while men's instinct. There was a difference last night, growled Conan. There has been ever since Zogar Sogg got back across the river. We should either have given him presents and sent him home or else hanged him, sighed the governor. You advise that, but— But it's hard for you, Iborians, to learn the ways of the outlands, said Conan. Well, it can't be helped now.

But there will be no peace on the border so long as Zogar lived. and remembers the cell he sweated in. I was following a warrior who slipped over to put a few white notches on his bow. After I split his head, I fell in with this lad, whose name is Balthus, and who's come from the Taurin to help hold the frontier. Volonus approvingly eyed the young man's frank countenance and strongly knit frame. I am glad to welcome you, young, sir. I wish more of your people would come.

We need men used to forest life. Many of our soldiers and some of our settlers are from the eastern provinces, and know nothing of woodcraft or even of agricultural life. Not many of that breed this side of Veletriam, grunted Conan. That town's full of them, though. But listen, Valanius, we found Tiberius dead on the trail, and in a few words he related the grisly affair. Valonis paled.

I did not know he had left the fort. He must have been mad. He was, answered Conan. Like the other four, each one, when his time came, went mad and rushed into the woods to meet his death like a hair running down the throat of a python. Something called to them from the deeps of the forest. Something the men call a loon, for lack of a better name, but only the doomed ones could hear it.

Zogar Sagh has made a magic that Aquilonian civilization can't overcome. To this thrust, Valonis made no reply. He wiped his brow with a shaky hand. Do the soldiers know of this? We left the body by the eastern gate. You should have concealed the fact. Hidden the corpse somewhere in the woods. The soldiers are nervous enough already.

They'd have found it out some way. If I'd hidden the body, it would have been returned to the fort. as the corpse of Soroktus was, tied up outside the gate for the men to find in the morning. Volonis shuddered. Turning, he walked to a casement and stared silently out over the river, black and shiny under the glint of the stars. Beyond the river the jungle rose like an ebb and wall. The distant screech of a panther broke the stillness.

The night pressed in, blurring the sounds of the soldiers outside the blockhouse, dimming the fires. A wind whispered through the black branches, rippling the dusky water. On its wings came a low rhythmic pulsing, sinister as the pad of a leopard's foot. After all, said Valanus as if speaking his thoughts aloud, What do we know?

What does anyone know of the things that jungle may hide? We have dim rumors of great swamps and rivers and a forest that stretches on and on over everlasting plains and hills, to end at last on the shores of the western ocean. But what things lie between the river and that ocean? We dare not even guess. No white man has ever plunged deep into that vastness and returned alive to tell us what he found.

We are wise in our civilized knowledge, but our knowledge extends just so far to the western bank of that ancient river. Who knows what shapes earthly and unearthly may lurk beyond the dim circle of light our knowledge has cast? Who knows what gods are worshipped under the shadows of that heathen forest, or what devils crawl out of the black ooze of the swamps? Who can be sure that all the inhabitants of that black country are natural?

Zogar Sogg. A sage of the eastern cities would, sneer at his primitive magic-making as the mummery of a faker. Yet he has driven mad and killed five men in a manner no man can explain. I wonder if he himself is wholly human. If I can get with an axe-throwing distance of him, I'll settle that question, growled Conan, helping himself to the governor's wine, and pushing a glass toward Balthus, who took it, hesitatingly, and with an uncertain glance toward Valanus.

The governor turned toward Conan and stared at him thoughtfully. The soldiers who do not believe in ghosts or devils, he said, are almost in a panic of fear. You, who believe in ghosts, ghouls, goblins, and all manner of uncanny things, do not seem to fear any of the things in which you believe. There is nothing in the universe cold. steel won't cut," answered Conan. I threw my axe at the demon, and he took no hurt. But I might have missed in the dusk, or a branch deflected its flight.

I'm not going out of my way looking for devils, but I wouldn't step out of my path to let one go by. Valan lifted his head and met Conan's gaze squarely. Conan, more depends on you than you realize. You know the weakness of this province. A slender wedge thrust into the untamed wilderness. You know that the lives of all the people west of the marches depend on this fort. Were it to fall, red axes would be splintering the gates of eveletrium

before a horseman could cross the marches. His Majesty, or His Majesty's Advisors, have ignored my plea that more troops be sent to hold the frontier, they know nothing of border conditions, and are adverse to expending any more money in this direction. The fate of the frontier depends upon the men who now hold it. You know that most of the army which conquered Konajuhara has been withdrawn. You know the force left me is inadequate, especially since that devil Zogar Saag managed to poison our water supply and forty men died in one.

day. Many of the others are sick, or have been bitten by serpents or mauled by wild beasts, which seem to swarm in increasing numbers in the vicinity of the fort. The soldiers believe Zogar's boast that he could summon the forest beasts to slay his enemies. I have three hundred pikemen, four hundred Bosonian archers, and perhaps fifty men who, like yourself, are skilled in woodcraft. They are one. They are one. worth ten times their number of soldiers, but there are so few of them. Frankly, Conan, my situation is becoming precarious. The soldiers whisper of desertion. They are low-spirited, believing Zogar's sag has loosed devils on us. They fear the black plague with which he

threatened us, the terrible black death of the swamp lands. When I see a sick soldier, I sweat with fear of seeing him turn black and shrivel and die before my eyes. Conan, if the plague is loosed upon us, the soldiers will desert in a body. The border will be left unguarded, and nothing will check the sweep of the dark-skinned hordes to the very gates of elytrium, maybe beyond. If we cannot hold the fort, how can they hold the town? Conan, Zogar Sag must die if we are to hold Kornajahara. You have penetrated the unknown deeper than any other man in the fort.

You know where Guawela stands, and something of the forest trails across the river. Will you take a band of men tonight and endeavor to kill or capture him? Oh, I know it's mad. There isn't more than one chance in a thousand that any of you will come back alive. But if we don't get him, it's death for us all. You can take as many men as you wish. A dozen men are better for a job like that than a regiment, answered Conan. Five hundred men couldn't fight their way to Guawila and back. But a dozen might slip in and out again. Let me pick my men. I don't want any soldiers.

Let me go, eagerly exclaimed Balthus. I've hunted dear all my life on the Torin. All right, Villanus, we'll eat at the stall where the foresters gather, and I'll pick my men. We'll start within an hour, drop down the river in a boat to a point below the village, and then steal upon it through the woods. If we live, we should be back by daybreak. End of Chapter 2 Chapter 3 of Conan, Beyond the Black River by Robert E. Howard. This Libravox recording is in the public domain.

Chapter 3. The Crawlers in the Dark. The river was a vague trace between walls of ebony. The paddles that propelled the long boat creeping along in the dense shadow of the eastern bank, dipped softly into the water, making no more noise than the beak of a heron. The broad shoulders of the man in front of Baltus were a blur in the dense gloom. He knew that not even the keen eyes of the man who knelt in the prow would discern anything more than a few feet ahead of them. Conan was feeling his way by instinct and an internal familiarity with the river. No one spoke.

Balthus had had a good look at his companions in the fort before they slipped out of the stockade and down the bank into the waiting canoe. They were of a new breed growing up in the world on the raw edge of the front end. here, men whom grim necessity had taught woodcraft. Aquilonians of the western provinces to a man, they had many points in common. They dressed alike in buckskin boots, leathern breeks and deerskin shirts, with broad girdles that held axes and short swords,

and they were all gaunt and scarred and hard-eyed, sinewy and taciturn. They were wild men of a sort, Yet there was still a wide gulf between them and the Samarian. They were sons of civilization, reverted to a semi-barbarism. He was a barbarian of a thousand generations of barbarians. They had acquired stealth and craft, but he had been born to these things. He excelled them even in light economy of motion.

They were wolves, but he was a tiger. Balthus admired them and their leader, and felt a pulse of pride that he was admitted into their company. He was proud that his paddle made no more noise than did theirs. In that respect at least, he was their equal, though woodcraft learned in hunts on the Turan could never equal that ground into the souls of men on the savage border. Below the fort the river made a wide bend. The lights of the outpost were quickly lost, but the canoe held on its way for nearly a mile, avoiding snags and floating logs with almost uncanny precision.

Then a low grunt from their leader, and they swung its head about and glided toward the opposite shore. Emerging from the black shadows of the brush that fringed the bank and coming into the open of the midstream created a peculiar illusion of rash exposure. But the stars gave little light, and Balthus knew that unless one were watching for it, it would be all but impossible for the keenest eye to make out the shadowy shape of the canoe crossing the river. They swung in under the overhanging bushes of the western shore, and Balthus groped far and found a projecting route which he grasped.

No word was spoken. All instructions had been given before the scouting party left the fore. As silently as a great panther, Conan slid over the side and vanished in the bushes. Equally noiseless, nine men followed him. Tobalthus, grasping the root with his paddle across his knee, it seemed incredible that ten men should thus fade into the tangled forest without a sound. He settled himself to wait. No word passed between him and the other man who had been left with him.

somewhere a mile or so to the northeast zogar sogs village stood girdled with thick woods balthus understood his orders he and his companion were to wait for the return of the raiding party if conan and his men had not returned by the first tinge of dawn they were to race back up the river to the fort and report that the forest had again taken its immemorial toll of the infating race the silent was oppressive. No sound came from the black woods, invisible beyond the ebbin masses that were the overhanging bushes. Bothus no longer heard the drums. They had been silent for hours. He kept blinking, unconsciously trying to see through the deep gloom. The dank night smells of the river, and the damp forest oppressed him. Somewhere nearby, there was a sound as if a big fish had flopped and splashed the water. Baltus thought it must have leaped so close to the canoe that it had struck the side,

for a slight quiver vibrated the craft. The boat's stern began to swing slightly away from the shore. The man behind him must have let go of the projection he was gripping. Both us twisted his head to hiss a warning, and could just make out the figure of his companion a slightly blacker bulk in the blackness. The man did not reply. wondering if he had fallen asleep, Baltus reached out and grasped his shoulder.

To his amazement, the man crumbled under his touch and slumped down in the canoe. Twisting his body half about, Baltus groped for him, his heart shooting into his throat, his fumbling fingers slid over the man's throat, only the youth's convulsive clenching of his jaws choked back the cry that rose to his lips.

His fingers encountered a gaping, oozing, oozing wound, his companion's throat had been cut from ear to ear. In that instant of horror and panic, Balthus started up, and then a muscular arm out of the darkness locked fiercely about his throat, strangling his yell. The canoe rocked wildly. Bothus' knife was in his hand, though he did not remember jerking it out of his boot, and he stabbed fiercely and blindly. He felt the blade sink down. deep, and a fiendish yell rang in his ear, a yell that was horribly answered. The darkness seemed to come to life about him. A bestial clamor rose on all sides, and other arms grappled him.

Born under a mass of hurtling bodies, the canoe rolled sideways. But before he went under with it, something cracked against Balthus's head. And the night was briefly illuminated by a blinding burst of fire before it gave way to a blackness where not even stars shone. End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 of Conan Beyond the Black River by Robert E. Howard. This Libre Vox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 4 The Beasts of Zogar Zog.

Fires dazzled both us again as he slowly recovered his senses. He blinked, shook his head. Their glare heard his eyes. A confused, medley of sound, rose about him, growing more distinct as his senses cleared. He lifted his head and stared stupidly about him. Black figures hemmed him in, etched against crimson tongues of flame. Memory and understanding came in a rush. He was bound upright to a post in an open space, ringed by fierce and tenets,

terrible figures. Beyond that ring fires burned tended by naked, dark-skinned women. Beyond the fires he saw huts of mud and waddle thatched with brush. Beyond the huts there was a stockade with a broad gait, but he saw these things only incidentally. Even the cryptic dark women with their curious coiffures were noted by him only absently. His full attention was fixed in awful fascination on the men who stood glaring at him. Short men, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, lean-hipped. They were naked except for scanty loinclouts. The firelight brought out the play of their swelling muscles in bold relief.

Their dark faces were immobile, but their narrow eyes glittered with the fire that burns in the eyes of a stalking tiger. Their tangled manes were bound back with bands of. of copper. Swords and axes were in their hands. Crude bandages banded the limbs of some, and smears of blood were dried on their dark skins. There had been fighting, recent and deadly. His eyes wavered away from the steady glare of his captors, and he repressed a cry of horror. A few feet away there rose a low, hideous pyramid. It was built of gory human heads. Dead eyes glared glassily up at the black sky.

Numbly he recognized the countenances which were turned toward him. They were the heads of the men who had followed Conan into the forest. He could not tell if the Samarian's head were among them. Only a few faces were visible to him. It looked to him as if there must be ten or eleven heads at least. A deadly sickness assailed him. He fought a desire to wretch. Beyond the heads lay the bodies of half a dozen picks, and he was aware of a fierce exultation

at the sight. The forest runners had taken toll at least. Twisting his head away from the ghastly spectacle, he became aware that another post stood near him, a stake-painted black as was the one to which he was bound. A man sagged in his bonds there, naked except for his leather and breeks, whom Baltus recognized as one of Conan's woodsman. Blood trickled from his mouth, oozed sluggishly from a gash in his side, lifting his head as he licked his livid lips. He muttered, making himself heard with difficulty above the fiendish clamor of the picks.

So they got you, too. Sneaked up in the water and cut the other fellow's throat, groaned Baltus. We never heard them till they were on us. "'Methra, how can anything move so silently?' "'They're devils,' mumbled the frontiersmen. "'They must have been watching us from the time we left midstream. We walked into a trap. Arrows from all sides were ripping into us before we knew it.

Most of us dropped at the first fire. Three or four broke through the bushes and came to hand-grips. But there were too many. Conan might have gotten away. I haven't seen his head. Been better for you and me if they'd killed us outright. I can't blame Conan. Ordinarily we'd have gotten to the village without being discovered.

They don't keep spies on the riverbank as far down as we landed. We must have stumbled into a big party coming up the river from the south. Some devilment is up. Too many picks here. These aren't all, Gwawelli, men from the western tribes here and from up and down the river. Balthus stared at the ferocious shapes. Little as he knew of Pictish ways, he was aware that the number of men clustered about them was out of proportion to the size of the village.

There were not enough huts to have accommodated them all. Then he noticed that there was a difference in the barbaric tribal designs painted on their faces and breasts. "'Some kind of devilment,' muttered the forest-runner. They might have gathered here to watch Zogar's magic-making. He'll make some rare magic with our carcasses. Well, a border man doesn't expect to die in bed. But I wish we'd gone out along with the rest.

The wolfish howling of the picks rose in volume and exultation, and from a movement in their ranks, an eager surging and crowding, both us deduced that someone of importance was coming, Twisting his head about, he saw that the stakes were set before a long building, larger than the other huts, decorated by human skulls dangling from the eaves. Through the door of that structure, now danced a fantastic figure. Sogar, muttered the woodsman, his bloody countenance set in wolfish lines as he unconsciously strained at his cords. Balthus saw a lean figure of middle height,

Almost hidden in ostrich plumes set on a harness of leather and copper. From amid the plumes peered a hideous and malevolent face. The plumes puzzled both us. He knew their source lay half the width of a world to the south. They fluttered and rustled evilly as the shaman leaped and cavorted. With fantastic boughs and prancings, he entered the ring and whirled before his bound in silent captives. With another man, it would have seemed ridiculous, a foolish savage prancing meaninglessly in a whirl of feathers.

But that ferocious face, glaring out from that billowing mass, gave the scene a grim significance. No man with a face like that could seem ridiculous, or like anything, except the devil, he was. Suddenly he froze to statuesque stillness. The plumes rippled once and sank about him. The howling warriors fell silent. Zogar Sagh stood erect and motionless,

and he seemed to increase in height to grow and expand. Balthus experienced the illusion that the Pict was towering above him, staring contemptuously down from a great height, though he knew the shaman was not as tall as himself. He shook off the illusion with difficulty. The shaman was talking now, a harsh, guttural intonation that yet carried the hiss of a cobra. He thrust his head on his long neck toward the wounded man on the stake. His eyes shone red as blood in the firelight.

The frontiers man spat full in his face. With a fiendish howl, Zogar bounded convulsively into the air, and the warriors gave tongue to a yell that, shuttered up to the stars. They rushed toward the man on the stake, but the shaman beat them back. A snarled command sent men running to the gate. They hurled it open, turned, and raced back to the circle. The ring of men split, divided with desperate haste to right and left.

Balthus saw the women and naked children scurrying to the huts. They peaked out of doors and windows. A broad lane was left to the open gate. beyond which loomed the black forest, crowding suddenly in upon the clearing, unlighted by the fires. A tense silence reigned as Zogar Saag turned toward the forest, raised on his tiptoes, and sent a weird, inhuman call shuddering out into the night. Somewhere, far out in the black forest, a deeper cry answered him. Balthus shuddered.

From the timbre of that cry, he knew it never came from a human throat. He remembered what Volonus had said, that Zogar boasted that he could summon wild beasts to do his bidding. The woodsman was livid beneath his mask of blood. He licked his lips spasmodically. The village held its breath. Zogar's sog stood still as a statue, his plumes trembling, faintly about him, but suddenly the gate was no longer empty.

A shuddering gasp swept over the village, and men crowded hastily back, jamming one another between the huts. Balthus felt the short hair stirr on his scalp. The creature that stood in the gate was like the embodiment of nightmare legend. Its collar was of a curious pale quality, which made it seem ghostly. and unreal in the dim light. But there was nothing unreal about the low-hung savage head and the great curved fangs that glistened in the firelight.

On noiseless padded feet, it approached like a phantom out of the past. It was a survival of an older, grimmer age, the ogre of many an ancient legend, a saber-toothed tiger. No Hiborian hunter had looked upon. one of those primordial brutes for its centuries. Immemorial myths lent the creatures a supernatural quality, induced by their ghostly color and their fiendish ferocity. The beast that glided toward the men on the stakes

was longer and heavier than a common striped tiger, almost as bulky as a bear. Its shoulders and forelegs were so massive and mightily muscled, as to give it a curiously top-heavy look, though its hindquarters were more powerful than that of a lion. Its jaws were massive, but its head was brutously shaped. Its brain capacity was small. It had room for no instincts except those of destruction.

It was a freak of carnivorous development, evolution run amok in a horror of fangs and talons. This was the monstrosity Zogar Sogg had summoned out of the forest. Balthus no longer doubted the actuality of the shaman's magic. Only the black arts could establish a dominion over that tiny-brained, mighty-thewed monster. Like a whisper at the back of his consciousness rose the vague memory of the name of an ancient god of darkness and primordial fear, to whom, once both men and beasts, bowed, and whose children, men whispered, still lurked in dark corners of the world.

New horror tinged the glare he fixed on Zogar's sog. The monster moved past the heap of bodies and the pile of gory heads without appearing to notice them. He was no scavenger. He hunted only the living in a life dedicated solely to slaughter. An awful hunger burned greedily in the wide, unwinking eyes, the hunger, not alone of belly emptiness, but the lust of death-dealing.

His gaping jaws slavoured. The shaman stepped back, his hand waved toward the woodsman. The great cat sank into a crouch, and Balthus numbly remembered tales of its appalling ferocity of how it could spring upon an elephant and drive its sword-like fangs so deeply into the titan's skull

that they could never be withdrawn but would keep it nailed to its victim to die of starvation. The shaman cried out shrilly, and with an ear-shattering roar, the monster sprang. Baltus had never dreamed of such a spring, such a hurtling of incarnated destruction embodied in that giant bulk of iron-thews and ripping talons.

Full on the woodsman's breast it struck, and the stake splintered and snapped at the base, crashing to the earth under the impact. Then the saber-tooth was gliding toward the gate, half-dragging, half-carrying a hideous crimson hulk that only faintly resembled a man. Bothus glared almost paralyzed, his brain refusing to credit what his eyes had seen. In that leap, the great beast had not only broken off the stake, it had ripped the mangled body of its victim from the post to which it was bound. The huge tellens, in that instant of contact,

had disemboweled and partially dismembered the man, and the giant fangs had torn away the whole, top of his head, shearing through the skull as easily as through flesh. Stout rawhide thongs had given way like paper, where the thongs had held flesh and bone had not. Baltus reched suddenly. He had hunted bears and panthers, but he had never dreamed the beast lived which could make such a red ruin of a human frame in the flicker of an instant.

The saber-tooth vanished through the gate, and a few moments later a deep roar sounded through the forest, receding in the distance. But the picks still shrank back against the huts, and the shaman still stood facing the gate that was like a black opening to let in the night. Cold sweat burst suddenly out of Balthus's skin. What new horror would come through that gate to make carry-in-lawful. meat of his body. Sick panic assailed him, and he strained futilely at his thongs. The night pressed in very black and horrible outside the firelight. The fires themselves glowed lurid as the fires of hell. He felt the eyes of the picks upon him, hundreds of hungry, cruel eyes that reflected the lust of souls utterly without humanity as he knew it. They no longer

seened men. They were devils of this black jungle, as inhuman as the creatures to which the fiend in the nodding plumes screamed through the darkness. Zogar sent another call shuddering through the night, and it was utterly unlike the first cry. There was a hideous sybilance in it. Balthus turned cold at the implication. If a serpent could hiss that loud, it would make just such a sound. This time there was no answer, only a period of breathless silence, in which the pound of Balthus's heart strangled him. And then there sounded a swishing outside the gate,

a dry rustling that sent chills down Balthus' spined. Again, the firelight gate held a hideous occupant. Again, Balthus recognized the monster from ancient legends. He saw and knew the ancient and evil serpent which swayed there. Its wedge-shaped head, huge as that of a horse, as high as a tall man's head, and its palely gleaming barrel rippling out behind it. A forked tongue darted in and out,

and the firelight glittered on bared fangs. Both us became incapable of emotion. The horror of his fate paralyzed him. This was the reptile that the ancients called Ghost Snake, the pale, abominable terror that of old glided into huts by night to devour whole families. Like the python, it crushed its victim, but unlike other constrictors, its fangs bore venom that carried madness and death. It too had long been considered extinct.

But Valanus had spoken truly. No white man knew what shapes haunted the great forest beyond Black River. It came on, silently, rippling over the ground. Its hideous head on the same level, its neck curving back slightly for the stroke. Balthus gazed, with glazed, hypnotized stare into that lonesome gullet, down which he would soon be engulfed. And he was aware of no sense, except a vague nausea.

And then something that glinted in the firelight streaked from the shadows of the huts, and the great reptile whipped about and went into instant convulsions. As in a dream, Balta saw a short-throwing spear transfixing the mighty neck, just below the gaping jaws, the shaft protruding from one side

and the steel head from the other. Notting and looping hideously, the maddened reptile rolled into the circle of men who strove back from him. The spear had not severed its spine, but merely transfixed its great neck muscles. Its furiously lashing tail mowed down a dozen men, and its jaws snapped convulsively, splashing others with the venom that burned like liquid fire. Howling, cursing, screaming, frantic, they scattered before. for it, knocking each other down in their flight, trampling the fallen, bursting through the huts.

The giant snake rolled into a fire, scattering sparks and brands, and the pain lashed it to more frenzied efforts. A hut wall buckled under the ram-like impact of its flailing tail, discouraging howling people. Men stampeded through the fires, knocking the logs right and left. The flames sprang up, then sank. dim glow was all that lighted that nightmare scene where the giant reptile whipped and rolled, and men clawed and shrieked in frantic flight.

Balthus felt something jerk at his wrists, and then, miraculously, he was free, and a strong hand dragged him behind the post. Dazedly he saw Conan, felt the forest man's iron grip on his arm. There was blood on the Samarian's mail, dried blood on the sword in his right hand. he loomed dim and gigantic in the shadowy light. Come on, before they get over their panic. Baltus felt the half of an axe shoved into his hand. Zogar's sog had disappeared.

Conan dragged Baltus after him until the youth's numb brain awoke, and his legs began to move of their own accord. Then Conan released him and ran into the building where the skulls hung. Baltus followed him. He got a glimpse of a grim stone altar, faintly lighted by the glow outside. Five human heads grinned on that altar, and there was a grisly familiarity about the features of the freshest. It was the head of the merchant Tiberius.

Behind the altar was an idle, dim, indistinct, bestile, yet vaguely manlike in outline. Then fresh horror choked Baltus. as the shape heaved up suddenly with a rattle of chains, lifting long misshapen arms in the gloom. Conan's sword flailed down, crunching through flesh and bone, and then the Samarian was dragging Baltus around the altar, past a huddled, shaggy bulk on the floor, to a door at the back of the long hut.

Through this they burst, out into the enclosure again, but a few yards beyond them loomed the stockade. It was dark behind the altar hut. The mad stampede of the picks had not carried them in that direction. At the wall, Conan halted, gripped Balthus, and heaved him at arm's length into the air as he might have lifted a child. Balthus grasped the points of the upright logs set in the sun-dried mud and scrambled up on them, ignoring the havoc done his skin.

He lowered a hand to the Samarian, when, around a corner of the altar hut, sprang a fleeing picked. He halted short, glimpsing the man on the wall in the faint glow of the fires. Conan hurled his axe with deadly aim, but the warrior's mouth was already open for a yell of warning, and it rang loud above the den, cut short as he dropped with a shattered skull. Blinding terror had not submerged all ingrained instincts. As that wild yell rose above the clamor,

there was an instance lull, and then a hundred throats bade, ferocious answer, and warriors came leaping to repel the attack presaged by the warning. Conan leaped high, caught not Baltus's hand, but his arm near the shoulder, and swung himself up. Balthus set his teeth against the strain, and then the Samarian was on the wall beside him, and the fugitives dropped down on the other side. End of Chapter 4. Chapter 5 of Conan Beyond the Black River by Robert E. Howard.

This Libre-Vox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 5. The Children of Jabal Sogg. Which way is the river? Baltus was confused. We don't dare try for the river now, granted Conan. The woods between the village and the river are swarming with warriors. Come on. We'll head in the last direction they'll expect us to go. West.

Looking back as they entered the thick growth, both us beheld the wall dotted with black heads as the savages peered over. The picks were bewildered. They had not gained the wall in time to see the fugitives take cover. They had rushed to the wall expecting to repel an attack in force. They had seen the body of the dead warrior, but no enemy, was in sight. Baltus realized that they did not yet know their prisoner had escaped.

From other sounds he believed that the warriors, directed by the shrill voice of Zogar Saga, were destroying the wounded serpent with arrows. The monster was out of the shaman's control. A moment later, the quality of the yells was altered. Screeches of rage rose in the night. Conan laughed grimly. He was leading Balthus along a narrow trail that ran west under the black branches, stepping as swiftly and surely as if he trod a well-lighted thoroughfare.

Balthus stumbled after him, guiding himself by feeling the dense wall on either hand. They'll be after us now. Zokar's discovered you're gone, and he knows my head wasn't in the pile before the altar hut. The dog! If I'd had another spear I'd have thrown it through. him before I struck the snake. Keep to the trail. They can't track us by torchlight,

and there are scores of paths leading from the village. They'll follow those leading to the river first, throw a carton of warriors from miles along the bank, expecting us to try to break through. We won't take to the woods until we have to. We can make better time on this trail. Now buckle down to it and run as you never ran before. They got over their panic, cursed quick, panted Balthus, complying with the fresh burst of speed.

They're not afraid of anything very long, grunted Conan. For a space nothing was said between them. The fugitives devoted all their attention to covering distance. They were plunging deeper and deeper into the wilderness, and getting further away from civilization at every step. But Balthus did not question. Conan's wisdom. The Samarian presently took time to grunt.

When we're far enough away from the village, we'll swing back to the river in a big circle. No other village within miles of Guarweila. All the picks are gathered in that vicinity. We'll circle wide around them. They can't track us until daylight. They'll pick up our path then, but before dawn we'll leave the trail and take to the woods. They plunged on. The elves died out behind.

them, Balthus's breath was whistling through his teeth. He felt a pain in his side, and running became torture. He blundered against bushes on each side of the trail. Conan pulled up suddenly, turned, and stared back down the dim path. Somewhere the moon was rising, a dim white glow amid a tangle of branches. "'Shall we take to the woods?' panted Balthus. "'Give me your axe,' murmured Conan saw. softly. Something is close behind us. Then we'd better leave the trail, exclaimed Balthus.

Conan shook his head and drew his companion into a dense thicket. The moon rose higher, making a dim light in the path. We can't fight the whole tribe, whispered Balthus. No human being could have found our trail so quickly, or followed us so swiftly, muttered Conan. Keep silent. There followed a tense silence in which Balthus felt that his heart could be heard pounding for miles away.

Then, abruptly, without a sound to announce its coming, a savage head appeared in the dim path. Balthus's heart jumped into his throat. At first glance he feared to look upon the awful head of the saber-tooth. But this head was smaller, more narrow. It was a leopard which stood there, snarling silently. and glaring down the trail. What wind there was was blowing toward the hiding men

concealing their scent. The beast lowered his head and snuffled the trail, then moved forward uncertainly. A chill played down Balthus' spine. The brute was undoubtedly trailing them. And it was suspicious.

It lifted its head, its eyes glowing like balls of fire, and growled low, in his throat, and at that instant Conan hurled the axe. All the weight of arm and shoulder was behind the throat, and the axe was a streak of silver in the dim moon. Almost before he realized what had happened, both saw the leopard rolling on the ground in its death throws, the handle of the axe standing up from its head.

The head of the weapon had split its narrow skull. Conan bounded from the bushes, wrenched his axe free, and dragged the limp body in among the trees, concealing it from the casual glance. Now let's go, and go fast, he grunted, leading the way southward, away from the trail. There'll be warriors coming after that cat. As soon as he got his wits back, Zogar sent him after us. The picks would follow him and he'd leave them far behind. He'd circle the village until he hit our trail, then come after us like a streak.

They couldn't keep up with him, but they'll have an idea as to our general direction. They'd follow, listening for his cry. Well, they won't hear that. But they'll find the blood on the trail and look around and find the body in the brush. They'll pick up our spore here, if they can. Walk with care. He avoided clinging briars and low-hanging branches effortlessly. gliding between trees without touching the stems,

and always planting his feet in the places calculated to show least evidence of his passing. But with Balthus it was slower, more laborious work. No sound came from behind them. They had covered more than a mile when Balthus said, The Sogoros Saga catch leopard cubs and train them for bloodhounds. Conan shook his head. That was the leopard he called out of the wood. woods. But, Baltus persisted, if he can order the beasts to do his bidding, why doesn't he

rouse them all and have them after us? The forest is full of leopards. Why send only one after us? Conan did not reply for a space, and when he did it was with a curious reticence. He can't command all the animals. Only such as remember, Jabal Sog. Jabal. Boghaw? Baldus repeated the ancient name, hesitantly. He had never heard his spoken more than three or four times in his whole life. Once all living creatures worshipped him. That was long ago. When beasts and men spoke one language,

men have forgotten him, even the beasts forget. Only a few remember. The men who remember Jabal Sag and the beasts who remember are brothers and speak the same tongue. Balthus did not reply. He had strained at a Pictish stake and seen the knighted jungle give up its fanged horrors at a shaman's call. Civilized men laugh, said Conan. But not one can tell me how Zogar sag can call pythons and tigers and leopards

out of the wilderness and make them do his bidding. They would say it is a lie if they dared. That's the way with civilized. men, when they can't explain something by their half-baked science, they refuse to believe it. The people on the Tauran were closer to the primitive than most Aquilonians. Superstitions persisted, whose sources were lost in antiquity, and Balthus had seen that which still prickled his flesh. He could not refute the monstrous thing which Conan's words implied. I've heard that there's an ancient grove sacred to Jabal Sagh somewhere in this forest,

said Conan. I don't know. I've never seen it. But more beasts remember in this country than any I've ever seen. Then others will be on our trail. There are now, was Conan's disquitening answer. Zogar would never leave our tracking to one beast alone. What are we to do, then? asked Balthus uneasily,

grasping his axe as he stared at the gloomy arches above him. His flesh crawled with the momentary expectation of ripping talons and fangs leaping from the shadows. Wait! Conan turned, squatted, and with his knife, began scratching a curious symbol in the mold, stooping to look at it over his shoulder, Balthus felt a crawling of flesh along his spine.

He knew not why. He felt no wind against his face, but there was a rustling of leaves above them, and a weird moaning swept ghostly through the branches. Conan glanced up inscrutably, then rose and stood staring somberly down at the symbol he had drawn. "'What is it?' whispered Balthus. "'It looked archaic and meaningless to him.

he supposed that it was his ignorance of artistry which prevented his identifying it as one of the conventional designs of some prevailing culture but had he been the most erudite artist in the world he would have been no nearer the solution i saw it carved in the rock of a cave no human had visited for a million years muttered conan in the uninhabited mountains beyond the sea of veered have a world away from this spot. Later I saw a black witch-finder of Cush scratch it in the sand of a nameless river. He told me part of its meaning, it's sacred to Jabal's sog, and the creatures which worship him.

Watch. They drew back among the dense foliage some yards away and waited intense silence. To the east, drums muttered, and somewhere to north and west, other drums answered. Balthus shivered, though he knew long miles of black forest separated him from the grim beaters of those drums, whose dull pulsing was a sinister overture that set the dark stage

for bloody drama. Balthus found himself holding his breath. Then, with a slight shaking of the leaves, the bushes parted, and a magnificent panther came into view, the moonlight, dappling through the moonlight, dabbling through. through the leaves, shown on its glossy coat, rippling with the play of the great muscles beneath it. With its head held low, it glided toward them. It was smelling out their trail.

Then it halted as if frozen, its muzzle almost touching the symbol cut in the mold. For a long space, it crouched, motionless. It flattened its long body and laid its head on the ground before the mark. And Balthus felt the short hair stir on his scalp, for the attitude of the great carnivore was one of awe and adoration. Then the panther rose and backed away carefully, belly almost to the ground. With his hindquarters among the bushes he wheeled as if in sudden panic and was gone like a flash of dappled light.

Balthus mopped his brow with a trembling hand and glanced at Conan. The barbarian's eyes were smoldering with fires that never lit the eyes of men bred to the ideas of civilization. In that instant, he was all wild and had forgotten the man at his side. In his burning gaze, both as glimpsed and vaguely recognized, pristine images and half-embodied memories, shadows from life's dawn, forgotten and repudiated by sophisticated, races, ancient primeval phantasms unnamed and nameless. Then the deeper fires were massed, and Conan was silently leading the way deeper into the forest.

We've no more to fear from the beasts, he said after a while, but we've left a sign for men to read. They won't follow our trail very easily, and until they find that symbol, they won't know for sure we've turned south. Even then it won't be easy to smell us out without the beasts to aid them. But the woods south of the trail will be full of warriors looking for us. If we keep moving after daylight, we'll be sure to run into some of them. As soon as we can find a good place, we'll hide and wait until another night

to swing back and make the river. We've got to warn Volanus, but it won't help him any if we get ourselves killed. "'Warn, Villanus? "'Hell, the woods along the river are swarming with picks. "'That's why they got us. "'Zogar's brewing war magic, no mere raid this time. "'He's done something no pickt has done in my memory. "'United as many as fifteen or sixteen clans.

"'His magic did it. "'They'll follow a wizard farther than they will a war chief. "'You saw the mob in the village? and there were hundreds hiding along the riverbank that you didn't see. More coming from the farther villages. He'll have at least three thousand fighting men. I lay in the bushes and heard their talk as they went past. They mean to attack the fort.

When I don't know. But Zogar doesn't dare delay long. He's gathered them and whipped them into a frenzy. If he doesn't lead them into battle quickly, they'll fall too quarreling with one another. They're like blood-mad tigers. I don't know whether they can take the fort or not. Anyway, we've got to get back across the river and give the warning.

These settlers on the Veletrium Road must either get into the fort or back to Veletrium. While the picks are besieging the fort, war parties will range the road far to the east, might even cross Thunder River and raid the thickly settled country behind Veletrium. As he talked, he was leading the way deeper and deeper into the ancient wilderness. Presently he grunted with satisfaction. They had reached a spot where the underbrush was more scattered, and an outcropping of stone was visible, wandering off southward.

Both us felt more secure as they followed it, not even a pick to trail them over naked rock. How did you get away? he asked presently. Conan tapped his male shirt, and helmet. If more boarders would wear harnesses, they'd be fewer skulls hanging on the ultra-huts. But most men make noise if they wear armor. They were waiting on each side of the path without moving, and when a pickth stands motionless, the very beasts of the forest pass him without seeing him. They'd seen us crossing the river and got in their places. If they'd

gone into ambush after we left the bank, I'd have had some hint of it. But they were waiting, and not even a leaf trembled. The devil himself couldn't have suspected anything. The first suspicion I had was when I heard a shaft rasp against a bow as it was pullback. I dropped and yelled for the men behind me to drop, but they were too slow, taken by surprise like that. Most of them fell at the first folly that raked us from both sides. Some of the arrows crossed the trail and struck picks on the other side.

I heard them howl. He grinned with vicious satisfaction. Such of us as were left plunged into the woods enclosed with him. When I saw the others were all down or taken, I broke through and outfooted the painted devils through the darkness. They were all around me. I ran and crawled and sneaked, and sometimes I lay on my belly under the bushes while they passed me on all sides. I tried for the shore and found it lined with them, waiting for just such a move, but I'd have cut my way through and taken a chance on swimming, only I heard the drums pounding in the village and knew they'd taken somebody alive. They were all so engrossed in Zogar's magic that I was able to climb the wall behind

at the altar hut. There was a warrior supposed to be watching at that point, but he was squatting behind the hut and peering around the corner at the ceremony. I came up behind him and broke his neck with my hands before he knew what was happening. It was his spear I threw into the snake, and that's his axe you're carrying. But what was that thing you killed at the altar hut? asked Balthus, with a shiver at the memory of the dim scene horror. One of Zogar's gods, one of Jabal's children that didn't remember and had to be kept chained to the altar.

A bull ape. The picks think they're sacred to the hairy one who lives on the moon, the gorilla god of Gula. It's getting light. Here's a good place to hide until we see how close they're on our trail. Probably have to wait until night to break back to the river. A low hill pitched upward, girdled and covered with thick trees and bushes. Near the crest, Conan slid into a tangle of jutting rocks, crowned by dense bushes.

Lying among them, they could see the jungle below without being seen. It was a good place to hide or defend. Balthus did not believe that even a Pict could have trailed them over the rocky ground for the past four or five miles, but he was afraid of the beasts that obeyed Zogar Saag. His faith in the curious symbol wavered a little now, but Conan had dismissed the possibility of beasts tracking them. A ghostly whiteness spread through the dense branches.

The patches of sky visible altered in hue grew from pink to blue. Balthus felt the gnawing of hunger, though he had slaked his thirst at a stream they had skirted, there was complete silence, except for an occasional chirp of a bird. The drums were no longer to be heard. Balthus's thoughts reverted to the grim scene before the altar hut. Those were ostrich plumes, Zogar-Sag wore, he said. I've seen them on the helmets of knights who rode from the east to visit the barons of the marches.

There are no ostriches in this forest, are there? They came from Cush, answered Conan. West of here many marches lies to seashore. Ships from Singara occasionally come in trade weapons and ornaments and wine to the coastal tribes for skins and copper ore and gold dust. Sometimes they trade ostrich plumes they got from the Stygians, who in turn got them from the black tribes of Cush, which lies south of Stygia. The Pictish shamans place great store by them, but there's much risk in such trade.

The picks are too likely to try to seize the ship, and the coast is dangerous to ships. I've sailed along it when I was with the pirates of the Barocaniles, which lie southwest of Zingara. Bothus looked at his companion with admiration. I knew you hadn't spent your life on this frontier. You've mentioned several far places. You've traveled widely. I've roamed far, farther than any other man of my race ever wondered. I've seen all the great cities of the Haborians, the Shemites, the Stygians, and the Hercanians.

I've roamed in the unknown country south of the black kingdoms of Cush, and east of the Sea of Bileat. I've been a mercenary captain, a corsair, a Cossack, a penniless vagabond, a general. Hell, I've been everything except a king, and I may be that before I die. The fancy pleased him, and he grinned hardly. Then he shrugged his shoulders and stretched his mighty figure on the rocks. This is as good life as any. I don't know how long I'll stay on the frontier, a week, a month, a year. I have a roving foot, but it's as well on the border as anywhere.

Balthus set himself to watch the forest below them. Momentarily, he expected to see fierce painted faces thrust through the leaves, but as the hours passed, no stealthy footfall disturbed the brooding quiet. Balthus believed the picks had missed their trail and given up the chase. Conan grew restless. We should have cited parties scouring the woods for us. If they've quit the chase, it's because they're after bigger game. They may be gathering to cross the river and storm the fort.

Would they come this far south if they lost the trail? They've lost the trail all right. Otherwise, they'd have been on our necks before now. Under ordinary circumstances, they'd scour the woods from miles in every direction. Some of them should have passed within sight of this hill. They must be preparing to cross the river. We've got to take a chance and make for the river. River.

Creeping down the rocks, Baltus felt his flesh crawl between his shoulders, as he momentarily expected a withering blast of arrows from the green masses about them. He feared that the Picks had discovered them and were lying about an ambush. But Conan was convinced no enemies were near, and the Samarian was right. We're miles to the south of the village, grunted Conan. We'll hit straight through for the river. I don't know how far down the river they've spread. We'll hope to hit it below them.

With haste that seemed reckless to both us, they hurried eastward. The woods seemed empty of life. Conan believed that all the picks were gathered in the vicinity of Guarweila, if indeed they had not already crossed the river. He did not believe they would cross in the daytime, however. Some woodsmen would be sure to see them and give the alarm. They'll cross above and below the floor. fort out of sight of the sentries. Then others will get in canoes and make straight across for the

river wall. As soon as they attack, those hidden in the woods on the east shore will assail the fort from the other sides. They've tried that before and got the guts shot and hacked out of them, but this time they've got enough men to make a real onslaught of it. They pushed on without pausing, though Balthus gazed longingly at the squirrels flitting among the branches, which he would have brought down with a cast of his axe. With a sigh he drew up his broad belt. The everlasting silence and gloom of the primitive forest was beginning to depress him. He found himself thinking of the open groves and sun-dappled meadows of the Turan, of the bluff

cheer of his father's steep-thatched, diamond-pained house, of the fat cows browsing through the deep lush grass, and the hearty fellowship of the brawny, bare-armed plow-plowings. and herdsmen. He felt lonely in spite of his companion. Conan was as much a part of this wilderness as Balthus was alien to it. The Samarian might have spent years among the great cities of the world. He might have walked with the rulers of civilization. He might even achieve his wild whim some day and rule as king of a civilized nation.

Stranger things had happened. But he was no less a-beam. barbarian. He was concerned only with the naked fundamentals of life, the warm intimacies of small, kindly things. These sentiments and delicious trivialities that make up so much of civilized men's lives were meaningless to him. A wolf was no less a wolf because a whim of chance caused him to run with the watchdogs. Bloodshed and violence and savagery were the natural elements of the life Conan knew. He could not and would never understand the little things that are so dear to civilized men and women. The shadows were lengthening when they reached the river

and peered through the masking bushes. They could see up and down the river for about a mile each way. The sullen stream lay bare and empty. Conan scowled across at the other shore. We've got to take another chance here. We've got to take another chance here. We've got to to swim the river. We don't know whether they've crossed or not. The woods over there may be alive with them. We've got to risk it. We're about six miles south of Guaweila. He wheeled and ducked as a bow-string twanged. Something like a white flash of light streaked through the bushes. Balthas knew it was an arrow. Then with a tigerish bound, Conan was through the bushes. Balthus caught the gleam of steel as he whirled his sword and heard a death scream.

The next instant he had broken through the bushes after the Samarian. A-picked with a shattered skull lay face down on the ground, his fingers spasmodically clawing at the grass. Half a dozen others were swarming about Conan, swords, and axes lifted. They had cast away their bows, useless at such deadly close quarters. Their lower jaws were painted white, contrasting vividly. with their dark faces, and the designs on their muscular breasts differed from any Balthus had ever seen.

One of them hurled his axe at Balthus and rushed after it with lifted knife. Balthus stuck, and then caught the wrist that drove the knife licking at his throat. They went to the ground together, rolling over and over. The Pict was like a wild beast, his muscles hard as steel strings. Balthus was striving to maintain his hold on the wild man's wrists and bring his own axe into play, but so fast and furious was a struggle that each attempt to strike was blocked. The Pict was wrenching furiously to free his knife-hand, was clutching at Balthus's axe, and driving his knees at the youth's groin.

Suddenly he attempted to shift his knife to his free hand, and in that instant Balthus struggling up on one knee, split the painted head with a desperate blow of his axe. He sprang up and glared wildly about for his companion, expecting to see him overwhelmed by numbers. Then he realized the full strength and ferocity of the Samarian. Conan bestrored two of his attackers, shorn half-asunder by that terrible broadsword. As Balthus looked, he saw the Samarian beat down a thrust. dusting short sword, avoid the stroke of an axe with a cat-like sidewise spring, which brought

him within arm's length of a squat savage stooping for a bow. Before the picked could straighten, the red sword flail down and clove him from shoulder to mid-breastbone, where the blade stuck. The remaining warriors rushed in one from either side. Baltus hurled his axe with an accuracy that reduced the attackers to one. Conan, abandoning his efforts to free his sword, wheeled and met the remaining picked with his bare hands. The stocky warrior, a head shorter than his tall enemy, leaped in, striking with his axe,

at the same time stabbing murderously with his knife. The knife broke on the Samarion's mail, and the axe checked in mid-air as Conan's fingers locked like iron on the descending arm. A bone snapped loudly. and Baltus saw the picked wince and falter. The next instant he was swept off his feet, lifted high above the Samarian's head. He writhed in mid-air for an instant kicking and thrashing,

and then was dashed headlong to the earth with such force that he rebounded and then lay still, his limp posture telling of splintered limbs and a broken spine. Come on! Conan wrenched his sword free and snatched up an axe. Grab a bow and a handful of arrows, and hurry. We've got to trust to our heels again. That yell was heard.

They'll be here in no time. If we tried to swim now, they'd feather us with arrows before we reached midstream. End of Chapter 5. Chapter 6 of Conan, Beyond the Black River by Robert E. Howard. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. CHAPTER VI REDAXES OF THE BORTER CONANNAN did not plunge deeply into the forest. A few hundred yards from the river, he altered his slanting course and ran parallel with it.

Balthus recognized a grim determination not to be hunted away from the river which they must cross if they were to warn the men in the fort. Behind them rose more loudly the yells of the forest men. Baltus believed the picks had reached the glade where the bodies of the slain men lay, then further yells seemed to indicate that the savages were streaming into the woods in pursuit. They had left a trail any picked could follow. Conan increased his speed, and Baltus grimly set his teeth and kept on his heels, though he felt he might collapse any time.

It seemed centuries since he had eaten last. He kept on going more by an effort of will than anything else. His blood was pounding so furiously in his eardrums that he was not aware when the yells died out behind them. Conan halted suddenly. Baltus leaned against a tree and panted. They've quit, grunted the Samarian, scowling, sneaking up on us.

Gasp, Baltus. Conan shook his head. A short chase like this they yell every step of the way. No. They've gone back. I thought I heard somebody yelling behind them a few seconds before the noise began to get dimmer. They've been recalled, and that's good for us, but damned bad for the men in the fort. It means the warriors are being summoned out of the woods for the attack.

These men we ran into were warriors from a tribe down the river. They were undoubtedly headed for Guaweila to join in the assault on the fort. Damn it! We're farther away than ever now. We've got to get across the river. Turning east, he hurried through the thickets with no attempt at concealment. Baltus followed him, for the first time, feeling the sting of lacerations on his breast and shoulder where the pick's savage teeth had scored him.

He was pushing through the thick bushes that fringed the bank when Conan pulled him back. Then he heard a rhythmic splashing, and peering through the leaves, saw a dug-out canoe coming up the river, its single occupant paddling hard against the current. He was a strongly built-picked with a white heron feather thrust in a copper band that confined his square-cut mane. "'That's a Guar-Willa man,' muttered Conan. "'Emissary from Zogar. White plume shows that.

He's carried a piece talk to the tribes down the river, and now he's trying to get back and take a hand in the slaughter. The lone ambassador was now almost even with their hiding place, and suddenly, Balthus almost jumped out of his skin. At his very ear had sounded the harsh gutturals of a Pict. Then he realized that Conan had called to the paddler in his own tongue. The man started, scanned the bushes, and call back something, then cast him. a startled glance across the river, bent low, and sent the canoe scooting in toward the

western bank. Not understanding, Balthus saw Conan take from his hand the bow he had picked up in the glade and notch an arrow. The picked had run his canoe in close to the shore, and staring up into the bushes, called out something. His answer came in the twang of the bowstring, the streaking flight of the arrow that sank to the feathers in his broad breast. With a choking gasp, he slumped sidewise and rolled into the shallow water.

In an instant Conan was down the bank and wading into the water to grasp the drifting canoe. Balthus stumbled after him and somewhat dazily crawled into the canoe. Conan scrambled in, seized the paddle, and sent the craft shooting toward the eastern shore. Balthus noted with envious admiration the play of the great muscles beneath the sun-burnt skin. The Samarian seemed an iron man, who never knew fatigue. What did you say to the Pict? asked Balthus. Told him to pull into shore, said there was a white forest runner on the bank who was trying

to get a shot at him. That doesn't seem fair, Balthus objected. He thought a friend was speaking to him. You mimic a Pict perfectly. We needed his boat, grunted Conan, not pausing in his exertions. Only way to lure him to the bank, which is worse, to betray a Pict who'd enjoy skinning us both alive, or betray the men across the river whose lives depend on our getting over. Both us mulled over this delicate ethical question for a moment, then shrugged his shoulder and

asked, How far are we from the fort? Conan pointed to a creek which flowed into Black River from the east, a few hundred yards below them. That's South Creek. It's ten miles from its mouth to the fort. It's the southern boundary of Kalanjahara. Marshes miles wide south of it. No danger of a raid from across them.

Nine miles above the fort North Creek forms the other boundary. Marshes beyond that, too. That's why an attack must come from the west, across Black River. Kalanjahara is just like a spear, with a point nineteen miles wide, thrust into the Pictish wilderness. Why don't we keep to the canoe and make the trip by water? Because, considering the current we've got to brace, and the bins in the river we can go faster afoot.

Besides, remember, Guarulai is south of the fort. If the picks are crossing the river, we'd run right into them. Dusk was gathering as they stepped upon the eastern bank. Without pause, Conan pushed on northward, at a pace that made Baltus's sturdy legs ache. Valanus wanted a fort built at the mouths of North and South Creeks, grunted the Samarian. Then the river could be patrolled constantly, but the government wouldn't do it. Soft-bellied fools, sitting on velvet cushions with naked girls offering them iced wine on

their knees, I know the breed. They can't see any farther than their palace wall. Diplomacy, hell. They'd fight picks with theories of territorial expansion. Villanus and men like him have to obey the orders of a set of damned fools. They'll never grab any more Pictish land, any more than they'll ever rebuild Vinarium. The time may come when they'll see the barbarians

swarming over the walls of the eastern cities. A week before, both us would have laughed at any such preposterous suggestion. Now he made no reply. He had seen the unconquerable ferocity of the men who dwelt beyond the frontiers. He shivered, casting glances at the sullen river, just visible through the bushes,

at the arches of the trees which crowded close to its banks. He kept remembering that the picks might have crossed the river and be lying in ambush between them and the fort. It was fast, growing dark. A slight sound ahead of them jumped his heart into his throat, and Conan's sword gleamed in the air. He lowered it when a dog, a great, gaunt, scarred beast, slunk out of the bushes and stood staring at them.

That dog belonged to a settler who tried to build his cabin on the bank of the river a few miles south of the fort, grunted Conan. The picks slipped over and killed him, of course, burned his cabin. We found him dead among the embers, and the dog lying senseless among three picks he'd killed. He was almost cut to pieces. We took him to the fort and dressed his wounds, but after he recovered he took to the woods and turned wild. "'What now, Slasher? Are you hunting the men who killed your master?' The massive head swung from side to side, and the eyes glowed greenly.

He did not growl or bark. Silently as a phantom he slid in between them. Let him come, muttered Conan. He can smell the devils before we can see them. Balthus smiled and laid his hand caressingly on the dog's head. The lips involuntarily writhed back to display the gleaming fangs. Then the great beast bent his head, sheepish. and his tail moved with jerky uncertainty, as if the owner had almost forgotten the

emotions of friendliness. Baltus mentally compared the great gaunt hard body with the fat sleek hounds tumbling vociferously over one another in his father's kennel yard. He sighed, The frontier was no less hard for beasts than for men. This dog had almost forgotten the meaning of kindness and friends. friendliness. Slasher glided ahead, and Conan let him take the lead. The last tinge of dusk faded into stark darkness.

The miles fell away under their steady feet. Slasher seemed voiceless. Suddenly he halted, tints, ears lifted. An instant later the men heard it, a demoniac yelling up the river ahead of them, faint as a whisper. swore like a madman. And they've attacked the fort. We're too late. Come on.

He increased his pace, trusting to the dog to smell out ambushes ahead. In a flood of tense excitement, Baltus forgot his hunger and weariness. The yells grew louder as they advanced, and above the devilish screaming, they could hear the deep shouts of the soldiers. Just as Baltus began to fear

that they would run into the savages who seemed to be howling just ahead of them, Conan swung away from the river in a wide semicircle that carried them to a low rise from which they could look over the forest. They saw the fort, lighted with torches thrust over the parapet on long poles. These cast a flickering,

uncertain light over the clearing, and in that light they saw throngs of naked, painted figures along the fringe of the clearing. The river swarmed with canoes, The Picks had the fort completely surrounded. An incessant hail of arrows reigned against the stockade from the woods and the river. The deep twanging of the bow-strings rose above the howling. Yelling like wolves, several hundred naked warriors with axes in their hands,

ran from under the trees and raced toward the eastern gate. They were within 150 yards of their objective, when a withering blast of arrows from the wall littered the ground with corpses and sent the survivors fleeing back to the trees. The men in the canoes rushed their boats toward the river wall and were met by another shower of clothyard shafts and a volley from the small ballastas mounted on towers on that side of the stockade. Stones and logs whirled through the air and splintered and sank half a dozen canoes,

killing their occupants, and the other boats drew back out of range. A deep roar of triumph rose from the walls of the fort, answered by bestial howling from all quarters. Shall we try to break through? asked Balthus, trembling with eagerness. Conan shook his head. He stood with his arms folded, his head slightly bent, a sombre and brooding figure.

The forts doomed. The picks are blood-mad and won't stop. until they're all killed, and there were too many of them for the men in the fort to kill. We couldn't break through, and if we did, we could do nothing but die with Avalanus. There's nothing we can do but save our own hides, then? Yes, we've got to warn the settlers. Do you know why the picks are not trying to burn the fort with fire arrows? Because they don't want a flame that might warn the people to the east.

They plan to stamp out the fort, and then sweep east before anyone knows of its fall. They may cross Thunder River and take Veletrium before the people know what's happening. At least they'll destroy every living thing between the fort and Thunder River. We fail to warn the fort, and I see now it would have done no good if we had succeeded. The fort's too poorly manned. A few more charges and the picks will be over the walls and breaking down the gates, but we can start the settlers toward belletrium.

Come on. We're outside the circle the picks have thrown around the fort. We'll keep clear of it. They swung out in a wide arc, hearing the rising and falling of the volume of the yells, marking each charge and repulse. The men in the fort were holding their own, but the shrieks of the picks did not diminish in savagery. They vibrated with a timbre that held assurance of ultimate victory.

Before Balthus realized they were close to it, they broke into the road leading east. Now run, grunted Conan. Balthus set his teeth. It was nineteen miles to Veletrium, a good five to Scalp Creek beyond which began the settlements. It seemed to the Aquilonian that they had been fighting and running for centuries, but the nervous excitement that rioted through his blood stimulated him to Herculian efforts. Slasher ran ahead of them, his head to the ground, snarling low, the first sound they had heard from him. "'Picks ahead of us,' snarled Conan, dropping to one knee and scanning the ground in the starlight.

He shook his head, baffled. I can't tell how many. Probably only a small party, some that couldn't wait to take the fort. They've gone ahead to butcher the settlers in their beds. Come on! Ahead of them presently, they saw a small party. they saw a small blaze through the trees and heard a wild and ferocious chanting. The trail bent there, and leaving it they cut across the bend through the thickets.

A few moments later, they were looking on a hideous sight. An ox-wain stood in the road, piled with meager household furnishings. It was burning. The oxen lay near with their throats cut. A man and a woman lay in the road, stripped, and mutilated. Five picks were dancing about them with fantastic leaps and bounds, waving bloody axes. One of them brandished the woman's red-smeared gown. At the sight, a red haze swam before Balthus. Lifting his bow, he lined the prancing figure black against

the fire, and loosed. The slayer leaped convulsively and fell dead with the arrow through his heart. then the two white men and the dog were upon the startled survivors. Conan was animated merely by his fighting spirit, and an old, old racial hate, but Baltus was a fire with wrath. He met the first picked to oppose him with a ferocious swipe that split the painted skull, and sprang over his falling body to grapple with the others.

But Conan had already killed one of the two he had chosen, and the leap of the Aquilonian was a second late. The warrior was down with a long sword through him, even as Balthus's axe was lifted. Turning toward the remaining picked, Balthus saw slasher rise from his victim, his great jaws dripping blood. Balthus said nothing as he looked down at the pitiful forms

in the road beside the burning wane. Both were young, the woman little more than a girl. By some whim of chance, the Picks had left her face unmoored, and even in the agonies of an awful death, it was beautiful. But her soft young body had been hideously slashed with many knives, a mist-clouded Baltus's eyes, and he swallowed chokingly. The tragedy momentarily overcame him. He felt like falling upon the ground and weeping and biting the earth.

Some young couple just hitting out on their own, Conan was saying, as he wiped his sword unemotionally, on their way to the fort when the picks met them. Maybe the boy was going to enter the service, maybe take up land on the river. Well, that's what will happen to every man, woman, and child this side of Thunder River, if we don't get them into Voletrium in a hurry. Balthus's knees trembled as he followed Conan. But there was no hint of weakness in the long,

easy stride of the Samarian. There was a kinship between him and the great gaunt brute that glided beside him. Slasher no longer growled with his head to the trail. The way was clear before them. The yelling on the river came faintly to them, but Balthus believed the fort was still holding. Conan halted suddenly with an oath. He showed Balthus a trail that led north from the road. It was an old trail, partly grown with new young growth, and this growth had recently been broken down. Both us realized this fact more by feel than sight, though Conan seemed to see like a cat in the dark. The Samarian showed him where broad wagon tracks turned off the main trail, deeply indented in the forest mold.

"'Settlers going to the licks after salt,' he grunted. They're at the edges of the marsh, about nine miles from here. Blast it! They'll be cut off and butchered to a man. Listen, one man can warn the people on the road. Go ahead and wake them up and herd them into belletrium. I'll go and get the men gathering the salt. They'll be camped by the licks.

We won't come back to the road. We'll hitch straight through the woods. With no further comment, Conan turned off the trail and hurried down the dim path and Balthus, after staring after him for a few moments, set out along the road. The dog had remained with him and glided softly at his heels. When Balthus had gone a few rods, he heard the animal growl. Whirling, he glared back the way he had come, and was startled to see a vague, ghostly glow vanishing into the forest

in the direction Conan had taken. Slasher rumbled deep in his throat, his hackle. still stiff in his eyes, balls of green fire. Balthus remembered the grim apparition that had taken the head of the merchant Tiberius not far from that spot, and he hesitated. The thing must be following Conan, but the giant Samarian had repeatedly demonstrated

his ability to take care of himself, and Balthus felt his duty lay toward the helpless settlers, who slumbered in the path of the red hurricane. The horror of the fiery phantom was overshadowed by the horror of those limp, violated bodies beside the burning oxwain. He hurried down the road, crossed Scalp Creek, and came in sight of the first settler's cabin, a long, low structure of ax-hewn logs. In an instant he was pounding on the door. A sleepy voice inquired his pleasure,

"'Get up! The picks are over the river!' That brought instant response. A low cry echoed his words, and then the door was thrown open by a woman in a scanty shift. Her hair hung over her bare shoulders in disorder. She held a candle in one hand and an axe in the other. Her face was colorless, her eyes wide with terror. Come in, she begged, we'll hold the cabin.

No, we must make for voletrium. The fort can't hold them back. It may have fallen already. Don't stop to dress. Get your children and come on. But my man's gone with the others after salt, she wailed, wringing her hands. Behind her peered three, tussled youngsters, blinking and bewildered.

Conan's gone after them. He'll fetch them through safe. We must hurry up the road to warn the other cabins. Relief flooded her countenance. Mitra be thanked, she cried. If the Samarians gone after them, they're safe if mortal man can save them. In a whirlwind of activity, she snatched up the smallest child and herded the others through the door ahead of her.

Bothus took the candle and ground it out under his heel. He listened an instant. No sound came up the dark road. Have you got a horse? In the stable, she groaned. Oh, hurry! He pushed her aside as she fumbled with shaking hands at the bars. He led the horse out and lifted the children on its back, telling them to hold to its mane

and to one another. They stared at him seriously, making no outcry. The woman took the horse's halter and set out up the road. She still gripped her axe, and both us knew that if cornered she would fight with the desperate courage of a she-panther. He held behind, listening. He was suppressed by the belief that the fort had been stormed and taken, that the dark-skinned hordes were already streaming up the road toward belletrium,

drunken on slaughter and mad for blood. They would come with the speed of starving wolves. Presently they saw another cabin looming ahead. The woman started to shriek a warning, but Baltha stopped her. He hurried to the door and knocked. A woman's voice answered him. He repeated his warning, and soon the cabin discouraged its occupants. An old woman, two young women and four children.

Like the other woman's husband, their men had gone to the salt licks the day before, unsuspecting of any danger. One of the young women seemed dazed, the other prone to hysteria, but the old woman, a stern old veteran of the frontier, quieted them harshly. She helped Balthus get out the two horses that were stabled in a pin behind the cabin and put the children on them. Balthus urged that she herself mount with them, but she shook her head and made one of the younger women ride.

She's with child, grunted the old woman. I can walk and fight too if it comes to that. As they sat out, one of the women said, A young couple passed along the road about dusk. We advised them to spend the night at our cabin, but they were anxious to make the fort tonight. Did they met the picks, answered Baltus briefly, and the woman sobbed in horror.

They were scarcely out of sight of the cabin, when some distance behind them quavered a long, high-pitched yell. A wolf! exclaimed one of the women. A painted wolf with an axe in his hand, muttered Balthus. Go, rouse the other settlers along the road and take them with you. I'll scout along behind. Without a word, the old woman her charges ahead of her. As they faded into the darkness, Balthus could see the pale ovals

that were the faces of the children twisted back over their shoulders to stare toward him. He remembered his own people on the Toran, and a moment's giddy sickness swam over him. With momentary weakness he groaned and sank down in the road. His muscular arm fell over Slashers' massive neck, and he felt the dog's warm, moist tongue touch his face. He lifted his head and grinned with a painful effort. Come on, boy, he mumbled rising. We've got work to do. A red glow suddenly became evident through the trees.

The picks had fired the last hut. He grinned. How Zogar Sag would froth if he knew his warriors had let their destructive natures get the better of them. The fire would warn the people farther up the road. They would be awake and alert when the fugitives reached them. But his face grew grim. The women were traveling slowly, on foot and on the overloaded horses.

The swift-footed picks would run them down within a mile, unless he took his position behind a tangle of fallen logs beside the trail. The road west of him was lighted by the burning cabin, and when the picks came he saw them first. Black furtive figures etched against the distant glare. Drawing a shaft to the head, he loosed, and one of the figures crumpled. The rest melted into the woods on either side of the road. Slasher whimpered with the killing lust beside him.

Suddenly a figure appeared on the fringe of the trail under the trees and began gliding toward the fallen timbers. Balthus's bowstring twanged, and the picked yelped, staggered, and fell into the shadows with the arrow through his thigh. Slasher cleared the timbers with abound and leaped into the bushes. They were violently shaken, and then the dog slunk back to Balthus' side,

his jaws crimson. No more appeared in the trail. Balthus began to fear they were stealing past his position through the woods, and when he heard a faint sound to his left, he loosed blindly. He cursed as he heard the shaft splinter against a tree, But Slashar glided away as silently as a phantom, and presently Balthus heard a thrashing

and a gurgling. Then Slasher came like a ghost through the bushes, snuggling his great crimson-stained head against Balthus's arm. Blood oozed from a gash in his shoulder, but the sounds in the wood had ceased forever. The men lurking on the edges of the road evidently sensed the fate of their companion, and decided that an open charge was preferable to being dragged down in the dark by a devil-beast they could neither see nor hear. Perhaps they realized that only one man lay behind the logs.

They came with a sudden rush, breaking cover from both sides of the trail. Three dropped with arrows through them, and the remaining pair hesitated. One turned and ran back down the road, but the other lunged over the breastwork, his eyes and teeth gleaming of the dim light, his asses. Lytte's foot slipped as he sprang up, but the slip saved his life. The descending axe shaved the lock of hair from his head, and the picked rolled down the logs from the force of his waist to blow, before he could regain his feet. Slasher tore his throat out.

Then followed a tense period of waiting, in which time Baltus wondered if the man who had fled had been the only survivor of the party. Obviously, it had been a small band that had either left the fighting at the fort or was scouting ahead of the main body. Each moment that passed increased the chances for safety of the women and children hurrying toward belletrium. Then, without warning, a shower of arrows whistled over his retreat. A wild howling rose from the woods along the trail.

Either the survivor had gone after aid or another party had joined the first. The burning cabin still smoldered lending a little light. Then they were after him, gliding through the trees beside the trail. He shot three arrows and threw the bow away. As if sensing his plight, they came on, not yelling now, but in deadly silence except for a swift pad of many feet. He fiercely hugged the head of the great dog growling at his side, muttered, all right boy give him hell and sprang to his feet drawing his axe then the dark figures flooded over the breastworks and closed in a storm of flailing axes stabbing knives and ripping fangs

end of chapter six chapter seven of conan beyond the black river by robert e howard this labor box recording is in the public domain Chapter 7 The Devil in the Fire When Conan turned from the Voletrium Road He expected a run of some nine miles And set himself to the task But he had not gone for When he heard the sounds of a party of men ahead of him

From the noise they were making in their progress He knew they were not picks He hailed them Who's there? Challenged a harsh voice "'Stand where you are until we know you, or you'll get an arrow through you.' "'You couldn't hit an elephant in this darkness,' answered Conan impatiently. "'Come on, fool. It's I, Conan. The picks are over the river.'

"'We suspected as much,' answered the leader of the men as they strode forward. Tall, rangy men, stern-faced with bows in their hands. One of our party wounded an antelope and tracked it nearly to Black River. He heard them yelling down the river and rube. ran back to our camp. We left the salt and the wagons, turned the oxen loose, and came as swiftly as we could. If the picks are besieging the fort, war parties will be ranging up the road toward our cabins. Your families are safe, grunted Conan. My companion went ahead to take them to Voletrium. If we go back to the main road, we may run into the whole horde. We'll strike

southeast through the timber. Go ahead. I'll scout behind. A few moments later, the hold band was hurrying southeastward. Conan followed more slowly, keeping just within earshot. He cursed the noise they were making. That many picks or Samarians would have moved through the woods with no more noise than the wind makes as it blows through the black branches. He had just crossed a small glade when he wheeled, answering the conviction of his primitive instincts that he was being followed.

standing motionless among the bushes. He heard the sounds of the retreating settlers fade away. Then a voice called faintly back along the way he had come. Conan! Conan! Wait for me! Conan! Balthus! He swore bewilderedly. Cautiously he called, Here I am. Wait for me, Conan!

The voice came more distinctly. Conan moved out of the shadows, scowling. What the devil are you doing here? Crom! He half-crowched, the flesh prickling along his spine. It was not Balthus who was emerging from the other side of the glade. A weird glow burned through the trees. It moved toward him, shimmering weirdly,

a green witch-fire that moved with purpose and intent. It halted some feet away, and Conan glared at it, trying to distinguish its fire-misted outlines. The quivering flame had a solid core. The flame was but a green garment that masked some animate and evil entity, but the Samarian was unable to make out its shape or likeness. Then, shockingly, a voice spoke to him from amidst the fiery column.

"'Why do you stand like a sheep waiting for the butcher, Conan?' The voice was human, but carried strange vibrations that were not human. Sheep? Conan's wrath got the best of his momentary awe. Do you think I'm afraid of a damned Pictish swamp devil? A friend called me. I called in his voice, answered the other. The men you follow belong to my brother.

I would not rob his knife of their blood, but you are mine. Oh, fool, you have come from the far gray hills of Samaria to meet your doom in the forest of Konajahara. You've had your chance at me before now, snorted Conan. Why didn't you kill me then, if you could? My brother had not painted a skull black for you and hurled it into the fire that burns forever on Kula's black altar. He had not whispered your name to the black ghosts that haunt the uplands of the darkland. But a bat has flown over the mountains of the dead, and drawn your image in blood on the white tiger's hide that hangs before the long hut where sleeps the four

brothers of the night. The great serpents coil about their feet, and the stars. burn like fireflies in their hair. Why have the gods of darkness doomed me to death? growled Conan. Something, a hand, foot, or talon he could not tell which, thrust out from the fire, and marked swiftly on the mold. A symbol blazed there, marked with fire, and faded, but not before he recognized it.

You dared make the sign which only a priest of Jabal's saga dare make. Thunder rumbled through the black mountain of the dead, and the altar hut of Gula was thrown down by a wind from the Gulf of ghosts. The loon, which is messenger to the four brothers of the night, flew swiftly and whispered your name in my ear. Your head will hang in the altar hut of my brother. Your body will be eaten by the black-winged,

sharp-beaked children of Jehiel. Who the devil is your brother? demanded Conan. His sword was naked in his hand, and he was subtly loosening the axe in his belt. Zogar Sag, a child of Jebal Sag, who still visits his sacred groves at times. A woman of Guawilas, leapt in a grove holy to Jabal Sag.

Her babe was Zogar Sag. I too am a son of Jabal Sag, out of a fire being from a far realm. Zogar Sag summoned me out of the misty lands. With incantations and sorcery and his own blood, he materialized me in the flesh of his own planet. it. We are one, tied together by invisible threads. His thoughts are my thoughts. If he is struck, I am bruised, if I am cut, he bleeds. But I have talked enough. Soon, your ghosts will talk

with the ghosts of the darkland, and they will tell you of the old gods which are not dead. but sleep in the outer abysses, and from time to time, awake. I'd like to see what you look like, muttered Conan, working his axe-free. You who leave a track like a bird, who burn like a flame, and yet speak with a human voice. You shall see, answer the voice from the flame, see, and carry the knowledge with you into the dark land. The flames leaped and sank, dwindling and dimming. A face began to take shadowy form. At first Conan thought it was Zogar's sog himself, who stood wrapped in green fire,

but the face was higher than his own, and there was a demoniac aspect about it. Conan had noted various abnormalities about Zogar's features, an obliqueness of the eyes, a sharpness of the ears, a wolfish thinness of the lips. These peculiarities were exaggerated in the apparition which swayed before him. The eyes were red as coals of living fire. More details came into view,

a slender torso, covered with snaky scales, which was yet manlike in shape, with manlike arms from the waist upward. Below, long, crane-like legs ended in splay three-toed feet like those of some huge bird. Along the monstrous limbs the blue fire fluttered and ran. He saw it as through a glistening mist. Then suddenly it was towering over him,

though he had not seen it move toward him. A long arm, which for the first time he noticed, was armed with curbing sickle-like talons, swung high and swept down at his neck. With the fierce cry he broke the spell and bounded aside hurling his axe. The demon avoided the cast with an unbelievably quick movement of its narrow head

and was on him again with a hissing rush of leaping flames. But fear had fought far it when it slew his other victims, and Conan was not afraid. He knew that any being clothed in material flesh can be slain by material weapons, however grisly as form may be. One flailing talon-armed limb knocked his helmet from his head,

a little lower and it would have decapitated him. But fierce joy surged through him as his savagely driven sword sank deep in the monster's groin. He bounded backward from a flailing stroke, tearing his sword free as he leaped. The talons raped his breast, ripping through male links as if they had

been cloth. But his return spring was like that of a starving wolf. He was inside the lashing arms and driving his sword deep in the monster's belly, felt the arms lock about him and the talons ripping the mail from his back as they sought his vitals. He was lapped and dazzled by the blue flame that was chill as ice. Then he had torn fiercely away from the weakening arms, and This sword cut the air in a tremendous swipe. The demon staggered and fell sprawling sideways, its head hanging only by a shred of flesh. The fires that veiled it leaped fiercely upward,

now red as gushing blood, hiding the figure from view. A scent of burning flesh filled Conan's nostrils. Shaking the blood and sweat from his eyes, he wheeled and ran staggering through the woods. Blood trickled from his limbs. Somewhere, miles to the south, he saw the faint glow of flames that might mark a burning cabin. Behind him toward the road rose a distant howling that spurred him to greater efforts. End of Chapter 7.

Chapter 8 of Conan Beyond the Black River by Robert E. Howard. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 8. Konajahara No More There had been fighting on Thunder River, Fierce fighting, before the walls of Elytrium, Axe and a torch had been piled up and down the bank, and many settlers' cabin lay in ashes

before the painted horde was rolled back. A strange quiet followed the storm, in which people gathered and talked in hushed voices, and men with red-stained bandages drank their ale silently in the taverns along the river bank. There, to Conan the Samarian, moodily quaffing from a great wine-glass, came a gaunt forester with a bandage about his head and his arm in a sling. He was the one survivor of Fort Tuscalan. "'You went with the soldiers to the ruins of the fort?' Conan nodded.

"'I wasn't able,' murmured the. the other. There was no fighting? The picks had fallen back across the Black River. Something must have broken their nerve, though only the devil who made them knows what. The woodsman glanced at his bandaged arm and sighed. They say there were no bodies worth disposing of. Conan shook his head.

Ashes. The picks had piled them in the fort and set fire to the fort before they crossed the river, their own dead and the men of Valanus. was killed among the last, in the hand-to-hand fighting when they broke the barriers. They tried to take him alive, but he made them kill him. They took ten of the rest of us prisoners, when we were so weak from fighting we could fight no more. They butchered nine of us then and there. It was when Zogar Sogg died that I got my chance to break free and run for it.

Zogar Sogs dead? ejaculated Conan. I, I saw him die. That's why the Picks is. didn't press the fight against Velletrium as fiercely as they did against the fort. It was strange. He took no wounds in battle. He was dancing among the slain, waving an axe from which he just brained the last of my comrades.

He came at me, howling like a wolf, and then he staggered and dropped the axe, and began to reel in a circle screaming as I never heard a man or beast scream before. He fell between me and the fire they'd build to roast me, gagging and frothing at the mouth. And all at once he went rigid, and the picks shouted that he was dead. It was during the confusion that I slipped my cords and ran for the woods. I saw him lying in the firelight. No weapon had touched him. Yet there were red marks like the wounds of a sword in the groin, belly, and neck,

the last, as if his head had been always. almost severed from his body. What do you make of that?" Conan made no reply, and the forester, aware of the reticence of barbarians on certain matters, continued, "'He lived by magic, and somehow he died by magic. It was the mystery of his death that took the heart out of the picks. Not a man who saw it was in the fighting before Velletrium.

They hurried back across Black River. Those that struck Thunder River were warriors. who had come on before Zogar Sagh died. They were not enough to take the city by themselves. I came along the road, behind their main force, and I know none followed me from the fort. I sneaked through their lines and got into the town. You brought the settlers through, all right, but their women and children got into elytrium just ahead of those painted devils. If the youth, Balthus, and old Slasher hadn't held them up a while, they'd have butchered every woman and child in Kanajahara. I passed the place where Baltus and the dog made their last

stand. They were lying amid a heap of dead picks. I counted seven, brained by his axe or disemboweled by the dog's fangs. And there were others in the road with arrows sticking in them. Gods, what a fight that must have been. He was a man, said Conan. I drink to his shade, and to the shade of the dog who knew no fear. He quaffed part of the wine, then emptied the rest upon the floor with a curious heathen gesture, and smashed the goblet.

The heads of ten picks shall pay for his, and seven heads for the dog, who was a better warrior than many a man. And the forester, staring into the moody, smoldering blue eyes, knew the barbaric oath would be kept. They'll not rebuild the fort? No.

Konajahara is lost to Aquilonia. The frontier has been pushed back. Thunder River will be the new border. The woodsman sighed and stared at his callous hand, worn from contact with axe-haft and sword-hilt. Conan reached his long arm for the wine-jug. The forester stared at him, comparing him with the men about them,

the men who had died along the lost river, comparing him with those other wild men over that river. Conan did not seem aware of his gaze. Barbarism is the natural state of mankind, the borderer said, still staring somberly at the Samarian. Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance, and barbarism must always ultimately triumph.

End of Chapter 8. End of Conan Beyond the Black River by Robert E. Howard