Free Conan the Barbarian by L. Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter Page A

of arrows to his liking, and strapping a scabbarded curved sword to his belt. Conan watched with approval as the Mongol swept the remaining food into a sack and slung the bag across his shoulder.
    They left the hut together. Ahead of them lay rolling hills, bright-crested with dawn’s liquid gold, and smudged, here and there, where scrub oaks, black and gaunt, broke through the thin blanket of snow.
    “I, too, am bound southwards for Zamora,” Conan said briefly.
    “Then shall we go together?” suggested Subotai. “It is good to have a friend at your back when trouble comes.” Conan looked down at the small man at his side and shrugged. “Do you know the road to Zamora?”
    Subotai nodded.
    Conan shouldered his gear. “Then let’s be on our way.”

V
     
    The Priestess
     
    The journey to Shadizar of Zamora was long and weary. Above the travellers stretched the vast emptiness of the firmament, deep blue by day, and cloudless, in these climes; by night a canopy of black velvet upon which the prodigal gods had stitched handfuls of diamonds.
    Below their feet lay a seldom-travelled track, which snaked across the flat prairie and the rondure of patient hills. Here the naked black soil flaunted its shabby finery of withered grasses, like some swarthy strumpet, past her prime. Scrub vegetation alone broke the eternal monotony of the steppe, that source of man’s wide migration.
    Conan and Subotai strode through this empty land with a measured pace that devoured the leagues, the small man often trotting to keep up with the limber strides of the giant Cimmerian. Sometimes they ran. Conan would lope along, with the Hyrkanian pounding at his side.
    Once, as they rested, Conan growled, “You have strong legs for one so small, and lungs like a smith’s bellows.”
    Subotai grinned. “To follow the profession of a thief, a man must learn to outrun his enemies.”
    During the fortnight on the road, they came to rich forest lands where stands of trees stood tall beside lakes and ponds gouged aeons before by the feet of glaciers. They crossed a low pass and descended to the banks of the Nezvaya River. The stream ran south before turning east at the Zamorian border; and the adventurers followed its banks.
    When the provisions brought from the witch’s house gave out, they had to spend part of each day foraging for food. Conan speared fish in the river with a crude spear whittled from a sapling, while Subotai prowled the forest with his arrow nocked. One day he would bring in a hare; the next, a badger. Some days they went to sleep hungry.
    In time the forest lands thinned out, save for a gallery of trees along the Nezvaya. Wide meadows lay before them, splashed with the amber, vermilion, and cornflower blue of early spring flowers. Smiling skies, sun-flecked, announced the unmourned passing of the winter cold.
    When Subotai’s arrow brought down a wild ass, the companions spent the day smoking the meat, so that they could go forward for several days without further stops. As they lounged by the crackling fire, over which hung strips and slabs of drying flesh, Conan put aside his natural curiosity to learn more about the steppe-dweller and his people.
    “To what gods do your people pray?” he asked.
    The Hyrkanian shrugged. “I pray to the Four Winds, which rule the land. The Winds of Heaven bring the snow, the rain, the odour of the beasts we hunt, and the sound of approaching enemies. Tell me, Cimmerian, what gods are in the prayers of your people?”
    “Crom, father of stars, king of gods and men,” answered Conan gruffly; for he little liked to dwell on such matters. “But my people seldom pray to him; I, never. Crom is aloof in his high heaven, indifferent to the needs mid prayers of mortals.”
    “Does this god of yours reward your sins with punishments?”
    Conan chuckled. “He cares not about the sins of puny men.”
    “What good, then, is a god who pays no heed to prayers and fails to punish