They plunged on. The yells died out behind them. Balthus’ breath was whistling through his teeth. He felt a pain in his side, and running became torture. He blundered against the 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 amidst a tangle of branches.
`Shall we take to the woods?’ panted Balthus.
`Give me your ax,’ murmured Conan 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’ 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 snuffed 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 its throat. And at that instant Conan hurled the ax.
All the weight of arm and shoulder was behind the throw, and the ax was a streak of silver in the dim moon. Almost before he realized what had happened, Balthus saw the leopard rolling on the ground in its death-throes, the handle of the ax standing up from its head. The head of the weapon had split its narrow skull.
Conan bounded from the bushes, wrenched his ax 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 corning after that cat. As soon as he got his wits back Zogar sent him after us. The Picts would follow him, but he’d leave them far behind. He’d circle the village until he hit our trail and 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 spoor there, 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: `Does Zogar Sag catch leopard cubs and train them for bloodhounds?’
Conan shook his head. `That was a leopard he called out of the woods.’
`But,’ Balthus 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 Jhebbal Sag.’
`Jhebbal Sag?’ Balthus repeated the ancient name hesitantly. He had never heard it spoken more than three or four times in his whole life.
`Once all living things 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 Jhebbal 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 nighted 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 Jhebbal Sag 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?’
`They are now,’ was Conan’s disquieting answer. `Zogar would never leave our tracking to one beast alone.’
`What are we to do, then?’ asked Balthus uneasily, grasping his ax 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 the 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 ghostily 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 Vilayet, half a world away from this spot. Later I saw a black witch-finder of Kush scratch it in the sand of a nameless river. He told me part of its meaning – it’s sacred to Jhebbal Sag and the creatures which worship him. Watch!’
They drew back among the dense foliage some yards away and waited in tense 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 leaves shone 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 hairs 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 hind-quarters 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 Balthus glimpsed and vaguely recognized pristine images and half-embodied memories, shadows from Life’s dawn, forgotten and repudiated by sophisticated races – ancient, primeval fantasms unnamed and nameless.
Then the deeper fires were masked 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 find a good place we’ll hide and wait until another night to swing back and make the river. We’ve got to warn Valannus, but it won’t help him any if we get ourselves killed.’