Chapter 5: The Children of Jhebbal Sag

‘Which way is the river?’ Balthus was confused.

‘We don’t dare try for the river now, ‘ grunted Conan. ‘The woods between the village and the river are swarming with warriors. Come on! We’ll head in the last direction they’ll expect us to go--west!’

Looking back as they entered the thick growth, Balthus beheld the wall dotted with black heads as the savages peered over. The Picts were bewildered. They had not gained the wall in time to see the fugitives take cover. They had rushed to the wall expecting to repel an attack in force. They had seen the body of the dead warrior. But no enemy was in sight.

Balthus realized that they did not yet know their prisoner had escaped. From other sounds he believed that the warriors, directed by the shrill voice of Zogar Sag, were destroying the wounded serpent with arrows. The monster was out of the shaman’s control. A moment later the quality of the yells was altered. Screeches of rage rose in the night.

Conan laughed grimly. He was leading Balthus along a narrow trail that ran west under the black branches, stepping as swiftly and surely as if he trod a well-lighted thoroughfare. Balthus stumbled after him, guiding himself by feeling the dense wall on either hand.

‘They’ll be after us now. Zogar’s discovered you’re gone, and he knows my head wasn’t in the pile before the altar-hut. The dog! If I’d had another spear I’d have thrown it through him before I struck the snake. Keep to the trail. They can’t track us by torchlight, and there are a score of paths leading from the village. They’ll follow those leading to the river first--throw a cordon of warriors for miles along the bank, expecting us to try to break through. We won’t take to the woods until we have to. We can make better time on this trail. Now buckle down to it and run as you never ran before.’

‘They got over their panic cursed quick!’ panted Balthus, complying with a fresh burst of speed.

‘They’re not afraid of anything, very long, ‘ grunted Conan.

For a space nothing was said between them. The fugitives devoted all their attention to covering distance. They were plunging deeper and deeper into the wilderness and getting farther away from civilization at every step, but Balthus did not question Conan’s wisdom. The Cimmerian presently took time to grunt: ‘When we’re far enough away from the village we’ll swing back to the river in a big circle. No other village within miles of Gwawela. All the Picts are gathered in that vicinity. We’ll circle wide around them. They can’t track us until daylight. They’ll pick up our path then, but before dawn we’ll leave the trail and take to the woods.’

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 coming 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.’

‘Warn Valannus?’

‘Hell, the woods along the river are swarming with Picts! That’s why they got us. Zogar’s brewing war-magic; no mere raid this time. He’s done something no Pict has done in my memory--united as many as fifteen or sixteen clans. His magic did it; they’ll follow a wizard farther than they will a war-chief. You saw the mob in the village; and there were hundreds hiding along the river bank that you didn’t see. More coming, from the farther villages. He’ll have at least three thousand fighting-men. I lay in the bushes and heard their talk as they went past. They mean to attack the fort; when, I don’t know, but Zogar doesn’t dare delay long. He’s gathered them and whipped them into a frenzy. If he doesn’t lead them into battle quickly, they’ll fall to quarreling with one another. They’re like blood-mad tigers.

‘I don’t know whether they can take the fort or not. Anyway, we’ve got to get back across the river and give the warning. The settlers on the Velitrium road must either get into the fort or back to Velitrium. While the Picts are besieging the fort, war-parties will range the road far to the east--might even cross Thunder River and raid the thickly settled country behind Velitrium.’

As he talked he was leading the way deeper and deeper into the ancient wilderness. Presently he grunted with satisfaction. They had reached a spot where the underbrush was more scattered, and an outcropping of stone was visible, wandering off southward. Balthus felt more secure as they followed it. Not even a Pict could trail them over naked rock.