Conan the Barbarian: The Stories That Inspired the Movie by Robert E. Howard

back to her village and tell her people that a stranger stripped her and raped her,” he answered. “She’ll have them on our track, alright. But she had to go on and get the water first; if she dared go back without it, they’d whip the skin off her. That gives us a long start. They’ll never catch us. By nightfall we’ll cross the Afghuli border.”
    “There are no paths or signs of human habitation in these parts,” she commented. “Even for the Himelians this region seems singularly deserted. We have not seen a trail since we left the one where we met the Galzai woman.”
    For answer he pointed to the northwest, where she glimpsed a peak in a notch of the crags.
    “Yimsha,” grunted Conan. “The tribes build their villages as far from that mountain as they can.”
    She was instantly rigid with attention.
    “Yimsha!” she whispered. “The mountain of the Black Seers!”
    “So they say,” he answered. “This is as near as I ever approached it. I have swung north to avoid any Kshatriya troops that might be prowling through the hills. The regular trail from Khurum to Afghulistan lies further south.”
    She was staring at the distant peak with avid intentness. Her nails bit into her pink palms.
    “How long would it take to reach Yimsha from this point?”
    “All the rest of the day, and all night,” he answered, and grinned. “Do you want to go there? By Crom, it’s no place for an ordinary human, from what the hill people say.”
    “Why do they not gather and destroy the devils that inhabit it?” she demanded.
    “Wipe out wizards with swords? Anyway, they never interfere with people, unless the people interfere with them. I never saw one of them, though I’ve talked with men who swore they had. They say they’ve glimpsed people from the tower among the crags at sunset or sunrise – tall, silent men in black robes.”
    “Would you be afraid to attack them?”
    “I?” The idea seemed a new one to him. “Why, if they imposed upon me, it would be my life or theirs. But I have nothing to do with them. I came to these mountains to raise a following of human beings, not to war with wizards.”
    Yasmina did not at once reply. She stared at the peak as at a human enemy, feeling all her anger and hatred stir in her bosom anew. And another feeling began to take dim shape. She had plotted to hurl against the masters of Yimsha the man in whose arms she was now carried. Perhaps there was another way, besides the method she had planned, to accomplish her purpose. She could not mistake the look that was beginning to dawn in this wild man’s eyes as they rested on her. Kingdoms have fallen when a woman’s slim white hands pulled the strings of destiny – suddenly she stiffened, pointing.
    “Look!”
    Just visible on the distant peak there hung a cloud of peculiar aspect. It was a frosty crimson in color, veined with sparkling gold. This cloud was in motion; it rotated, and as it whirled it contracted. It dwindled to a spinning taper that flashed in the sun. And suddenly it detached itself from the snow-tippedpeak, floated out over the void like a gay-hued feather, and became invisible against the cerulean sky.
    “What could that have been?” asked the girl uneasily, as a shoulder of rock shut the distant mountain from view; the phenomenon had been disturbing, even in its beauty.
    “The hillmen call it Yimsha’s Carpet, whatever the devil that means,” answered Conan. “I’ve seen five hundred of them running as if the devil were at their heels, to hide themselves in caves and crags, because they saw that crimson cloud float up from the peak. What the hell!”
    They had advanced through a narrow, knife-cut gash between turreted walls, and emerged upon a broad ledge, flanked by a series of rugged slopes on one hand, and a gigantic precipice on the other. The dim trail followed this ledge, bent around a shoulder and reappeared at intervals far below, working a tedious way downward. And emerging from the