Sitha bared its fangs. "My master would not be pleased, an I slew you.
We will pit strength at the stones."
"Stones?" Hordo said. "What stones?"
The S"tarra spun on its booted heel, motioning for them to follow. In a muttering file they did, down the valley away from the keep to a spot where boulders had been arranged to form a rough circle half a hundred paces across. The ground between had been smoothed and leveled, and in the center of the circle lay two rough spheres of dark granite. Conan estimated the smaller at twice the weight of a man, the larger at half again as much.
"Lift one of the stones," Sitha said. "Any one of you." It flashed bare fangs again, briefly. "Any two of you."
"Hordo!" someone called. "Hordo"s strongest!"
Aberius eyed the stones, then Karela"s one-eyed lieutenant. "Who"ll wager?" he cried, his narrow face taking on a malicious smile. "Who thinks old Hordo can lift the small stone?"
"Old Hordo, is it?" Hordo spat.
He bent to the lesser of the huge stones as a babbling knot formed around Aberius to get their wagers marked. The burly man threw his arms about the stone, fitting his hands carefully to the undercurves, and heaved. The scar running from under his eye-patch whitened with strain, and his eye bulged. The round stone stirred. Abruptly his hands slipped, and he staggered back with an oath.
"Mitra!" the one-eyed brigand panted. "There"s no way to get a good grip on the accursed thing." Chortling, Aberius collected his winnings.
"Your strongest cannot lift it," Sitha hissed. "Can two of you do it?
Let any two try." His scathing glance took in Conan, but the Cimmerian said nothing.
Reza and another hawk-nosed Iranistani, named Banidr, pushed forward.
Aberius began again to hawk his wagering. Those who had lost the first time were now quickest to press their coins at him.
Reza and Banidr conferred a moment, dark heads together, then squatted, one on either side of the stone. Pressing their forearms in under the lower curve of the stone sphere, each grasped the other"s upper arm.
Their closeness to the stone forced them into spraddle-legged stances.
For a moment they rocked back and forth, counting together, then suddenly tried to heave themselves erect. Veins popped forth on their foreheads. The stone lifted. A finger breadth. A handwidth. Banidr cried out, and in an instant the stone had forced their arms apart, torn loose their grips, and thumped to the ground. Banidr fell back, clutching himself. Arguments broke out as to whether the two had lifted the stone far enough or not.
"This!" Sitha"s shout riveted the bandits, drying their arguments in midword. "This I mean by lifting the stone!" The S"tarra bent over the large granite ball, locked its arms about it, and straightened as easily as if it had been a pebble. Gasps broke from the bandits as it started toward them; they parted before it. Five paces. Ten. Sitha let the stone fall with a crash, and turned back to the dumbstruck men.
"That I mean by lifting." Peals of hissing laughter broke between its fangs.
"I"ll have a try," Conan said.
The S"tarra"s laughter slowed and stopped. Red eyes regarded Conan with open contempt. "You, human? Will you try to carry the stone back to its place, then?"
"No," the young Cimmerian said, and bent to the larger stone.
"Two to one he fails," Aberius cried. "Three to one!" Men eyed Conan"s ma.s.sive chest and shoulders, weighed the odds, and crowded around the weasel-faced man.
Conan squatted low to get his arms below the largest part of the big stone. As his fingers felt for purchase on the rough sphere, he found Sitha"s frowning gaze on him.
With a sudden roar, the big Cimmerian heaved. His mighty thew corded, and his joints popped with the strain. The muscles of his broad back stood out in stark relief, and his ma.s.sive arms knotted. Slowly he straightened, every fiber quivering as he came fully erect. His eyes met Sitha"s once more, and snarling, the S"tarra took a backward step.
With great effort Conan stepped forward, back bowed under the strain.
He took another step.
"Conan," someone said softly, and another voice repeated, louder, "Conan!"
Teeth bared by lips drawn back in a rictus of effort, Conan went forward. Now his eyes were locked on the stone Sitha had carried.
Two more voices took up the cry. "Conan!" Five more. "Conan!" Ten.
"Conan!" The shouts were flung back from the mountain slopes as a score of throats hurled forth their chant with his every step. "Conan! Conan!
Conan!"
He came level with the other stone, took one step more, and let the great sphere fall with a thunderous thud that every man there felt in his feet. Conan"s shoulder joints creaked as he straightened, looking at Sitha. "Will you try to take my stone back?"
Cheering bandits darted between a glowering Aberius, parting with all his former winnings and more, and Conan, some clasping his hand, others merely wanting to touch his arm. Sitha"s hands twitched in front of its chest as if clutching for the thick haft of a battle-ax.
Of a sudden the bronzen tones of a great gong broke from the fortress and echoed down the valley. Sitha whirled at the first tone and broke into a run for the black keep. The gong pealed forth again, and again, its hollow resonance rolling against the mountains. Atop the ebon ramparts of the keep S"tarra ran.
"An attack?" Hordo said, bewildered. The bandits crowded in close behind the one-eyed man, their exuberance of moments before already dissipated. Some had drawn their swords.
Conan shook his head. "The portcullis is open, and I see no one near the ballistae or catapults. Whatever"s happening, though. . ." He let his words trail off as Karela galloped up to face them, one fist on a scarlet thigh-boot.
"Are the lot of you responsible for this?" she demanded. "I heard all of you bellowing like oxen in a mire, then this infernal gong began."
As she spoke the tolling ceased, though the ghost of it seemed yet to hang in the air.
"We know no more than you," Hordo replied.
"Then I"ll find out what"s happening," she said.
"Karela," Conan said, "do you not think it best to wait?"
Her green eyes raked him scornfully, and without a word she spun her horse and galloped toward the fortress. The big black"s hooves rang on the black granite of the ramp, and after a moment"s delay she was admitted.
Minutes later the portcullis opened once more. Sitha"s ma.s.sive form, helmeted and bearing the great battle-ax, galloped through the gate, followed by paired columns of mounted S"tarra. Conan counted lances as they streamed down the incline and pounded across the valley toward a gorge leading north.
"Three hundred," the Cimmerian said after the last S"tarra had disappeared. "More wayfarers, do you think?"
"So long as it"s not us," Hordo replied.
Slowly the bandits returned to the cold ashes of their campfires, breaking into twos and threes to cast lots or dice. Aberius began maneuvering three clay cups and a pebble atop a flat rock, trying to entice back some of the silver he had lost. Conan settled with his back to a tilted needle of stone, where he could watch both the keep and the gorge into which Sitha had led the S"tarra. The day stretched long and flat, and except when Hordo brought him meat and cheese and a leather flagon of thin wine Conan did not change his position.
As the sanguinary sun sank on the western mountain peaks, the S"tarra returned, galloping from the same knife-sharp slash in the valley by which they had left.
"No casualties," Hordo said, coming up beside Conan as the S"tarra appeared.
Conan, once more counting lances, nodded. "But they took... something."
Twenty riderless horses were roped together in the middle of the column, each bearing a long bundle strapped across it.
A spark of light in the east caught the Cimmerian"s eye, a momentary glitter that flashed against the shadows of mountains already caught in twilight and was gone. It flashed again. Frowning, he studied the slopes around the valley. High above them, to the north, another spark flared and was gone.
"Think you Amanar knows the valley is watched?" Hordo asked.
"You use that eye," Conan said approvingly. The S"tarra rode up the long incline to the fortress, the portcullis creaking open to let them ride in without slowing. "I worry more about who does the watching."
The one-eyed brigand let out a long, low whistle between his teeth.
"Who? Now that"s a kettle of porridge to set your teeth on edge."