`Where am I?’ she asked abruptly.
`In the but of Yar Afzal, the chief of the Khurum Wazulis,’ he answered. `Afghulistan lies a good many miles farther on to the west. We’ll hide here awhile. The Kshatriyas are beating up the hills for you – several of their squads have been cut up by the tribes already.’
`What are you going to do?’ she asked.
`Keep you until Chunder Shan is willing to trade back my seven cow-thieves,’ he grunted. `Women of the Wazulis are crushing ink out of shoki leaves, and after a while you can write a letter to the governor.’
A touch of her old imperious wrath shook her, as she thought how maddeningly her plans had gone awry, leaving her captive of the very man she had plotted to get into her power. She flung down the dish, with the remnants of her meal, and sprang to her feet, tense with anger.
`I will not write a letter! If you do not take me back, they will hang your seven men, and a thousand more besides!’
The Wazuli girl laughed mockingly, Conan scowled, and then the door opened and Yar Afzal came swaggering in. The Wazuli chief was as tall as Conan, and of greater girth, but he looked fat and slow beside the hard compactness of the Cimmerian. He plucked his red-stained beard and stared meaningly at the Wazuli girl, and that wench rose and scurried out without delay. Then Yar Afzal turned to his guest.
`The damnable people murmur, Conan,’ quoth he. `They wish me to murder you and take the girl to hold for ransom. They say that anyone can tell by her garments that she is a noble lady. They say why should the Afghuh dogs profit by her, when it is the people who take the risk of guarding her?’
`Lend me your horse,’ said Conan. `I’ll take her and go.’
`Pish!’ boomed Yar Afzal. `Do you think I can’t handle my own people? I’ll have them dancing in their shirts if they cross me! They don’t love you – or any other outlander – but you saved my life once, and I will not forget. Come out, though, Conan; a scout has returned.’
Conan hitched at his girdle and followed the chief outside. They closed the door after them, and Yasmina peeped through a loop-hole. She looked out on a level space before the hut. At the farther end of that space there was a cluster of mud and stone huts, and she saw naked children playing among the boulders, and the slim erect women of the hills going about their tasks.
Directly before the chief’s but a circle of hairy, ragged men squatted, facing the door. Conan and Yar Afzal stood a few paces before the door, and between them and the ring of warriors another man sat cross-legged. This one was addressing his chief in the harsh accents of the Wazuli which Yasmina could scarcely understand, though as part of her royal education she had been taught the languages of Iranistan and the kindred tongues of Ghulistan.
`I talked with a Dagozai who saw the riders last night,’ said the scout. `He was lurking near when they came to the spot where we ambushed the lord Conan. He overheard their speech. Chunder Shan was with them. They found the dead horse, and one of the men recognized it as Conan’s. Then they found the man Conan slew, and knew him for a Wazuli. It seemed to them that Conan had been slain and the girl taken by the Wazuli; so they turned aside from their purpose of following to Afghulistan. But they did not know from which village the dead man was come, and we had left no trail a Kshatriya could follow.
`So they rode to the nearest Wazuli village, which was the village of Jugra, and burnt it and slew many of the people. But the men of Khojur came upon them in darkness and slew some of them, and wounded the governor. So the survivors retired down the Zhaibar in the darkness before dawn, but they returned with reinforcements before sunrise, and there has been skirmishing and fighting in the hills all morning. It is said that a great army is being raised to sweep the hills about the Zhaibar. The tribes are whetting their knives and laying ambushes in every pass from here to Gurashah valley. Moreover, Kerim Shah has returned to the hills.’
A grunt went around the circle, and Yasmina leaned closer to the loop-hole at the name she had begun to mistrust.
`Where went he?’ demanded Yar Afzal.
`The Dagozai did not know; with him were thirty Irakzai of the lower villages. They rode into the hills and disappeared.’
`These Irakzai are jackals that follow a lion for crumbs,’ growled Yar Afzal. `They have been lapping up the coins Kerim Shah scatters among the border tribes to buy men like horses. I like him not, for all he is our kinsman from Iranistan.’
`He’s not even that,’ said Conan. `I know him of old. He’s an Hyrkanian, a spy of Yezdigerd’s. If I catch him I’ll hang his hide to a tamarisk.’
`But the Kshatriyas!’ clamored the men in the semicircle. `Are we to squat on our haunches until they smoke us out? They will learn at last in which Wazuh village the wench is held. We are not loved by the Zhaibari; they will help the Kshatriyas hunt us out.’
`Let them come,’ grunted Yar Afzal. `We can hold the defiles against a host.’
One of the men leaped up and shook his fist at Conan.
`Are we to take all the risks while he reaps the rewards?’ he howled. `Are we to fight his battles for him?’
With a stride Conan reached him and bent slightly to stare full into his hairy face. The Cimmerian had not drawn his long knife, but his left hand grasped the scabbard, jutting the hilt suggestively forward.
`I ask no man to fight my battles,’ he said softly. `Draw your blade if you dare, you yapping dog!’
The Wazuh started back, snarling like a cat.
`Dare to touch me and here are fifty men to rend you apart!’ he screeched.
`What!’ roared Yar Afzal, his face purpling with wrath. His whiskers bristled, his belly swelled with his rage. `Are you chief of Khurum? Do the Wazulis take orders from Yar Afzal, or from a low-bred cur?’
The man cringed before his invincible chief, and Yar Afzal, striding up to him, seized him by the throat and choked him until his face was turning black. Then he hurled the man savagely against the ground and stood over him with his tulwar in his hand.
`Is there any who questions my authority?’ he roared, and his warriors looked down sullenly as his bellicose glare swept their semicircle. Yar Afzal grunted scornfully and sheathed his weapon with a gesture that was the apex of insult. Then he kicked the fallen agitator with a concentrated vindictiveness that brought howls from his victim.
`Get down the valley to the watchers on the heights and bring word if they have seen anything,’ commanded Yar Afzal, and the man went, shaking with fear and grinding his teeth with fury.
Yar Afzal then seated himself ponderously on a stone, growling in his beard. Conan stood near him, legs braced apart, thumbs hooked in his girdle, narrowly watching the assembled warriors. They stared at him sullenly, not daring to brave Yar Afzal’s fury, but hating the foreigner as only a hillman can hate.
`Now listen to me, you sons of nameless dogs, while I tell you what the lord Conan and I have planned to fool the Kshatriyas.’ The boom of Yar Afzal’s bull-like voice followed the discomfited warrior as he slunk away from the assembly.
The man passed by the cluster of huts, where women who had seen his defeat laughed at him and called stinging comments, and hastened on along the trail that wound among spurs and rocks toward the valley head.
Just as he rounded the first turn that took him out of sight of the village, he stopped short, gaping stupidly. He had not believed it possible for a stranger to enter the valley of Khurum without being detected by the hawk-eyed watchers along the heights; yet a man sat cross-legged on a low ledge beside the path – a man in a camel-hair robe and a green turban.
The Wazuli’s mouth gaped for a yell, and his hand leaped to his knifehilt. But at that instant his eyes met those of the stranger and the cry died in his throat, his fingers went limp. He stood like a statue, his own eyes glazed and vacant.
For minutes the scene held motionless; then the man on the ledge drew a cryptic symbol in the dust on the rock with his forefinger. The Wazuli did not see him place anything within the compass of that emblem, but presently something gleamed there – a round, shiny black ball that looked like polished jade. The man in the green turban took this up and tossed it to the Wazuli, who mechanically caught it.