o adjoining chambers. And presently only Tecuhltli and
their white-skinned allies stood upright in the great throne room. The
survivors stared bleakly and blankly at each other, like survivors after
Judgment Day or the destruction of the world. On legs wide-braced, hands
gripping notched and dripping swords, blood trickling down their arms,
they stared at one another across the mangled corpses of friends and
foes. They had no breath left to shout, but a bestial mad howling rose
from their lips. It was not a human cry of triumph. It was the howling
of a rabid wolf-pack stalking among the bodies of its victims.

Conan caught Valeria's arm and turned her about.

"You've got a stab in the calf of your leg," he growled.

She glanced down, for the first time aware of a stinging in the muscles
of her leg. Some dying man on the floor had fleshed his dagger with his
last effort.

"You look like a butcher yourself," she laughed.

He shook a red shower from his hands.

"Not mine. Oh, a scratch here and there. Nothing to bother about. But
that calf ought to be bandaged."

* * * * *

Olmec came through the litter, looking like a ghoul with his naked
massive shoulders splashed with blood, and his black beard dabbled in
crimson. His eyes were red, like the reflection of flame on black water.

"We have won!" he croaked dazedly. "The feud is ended! The dogs of
Xotalanc lie dead! Oh, for a captive to flay alive! Yet it is good to
look upon their dead faces. Twenty dead dogs! Twenty red nails for the
black column!"

"You'd best see to your wounded," grunted Conan, turning away from him.
"Here, girl, let me see that leg."

"Wait a minute!" she shook him off impatiently. The fire of fighting
still burned brightly in her soul. "How do we know these are all of
them? These might have come on a raid of their own."

"They would not split the clan on a foray like this," said Olmec,
shaking his head, and regaining some of his ordinary intelligence.
Without his purple robe the man seemed less like a prince than some
repellent beast of prey. "I will stake my head upon it that we have
slain them all. There were less of them than I dreamed, and they must
have been desperate. But how came they in Tecuhltli?"

Tascela came forward, wiping her sword on her naked thigh, and holding
in her other hand an object she had taken from the body of the feathered
leader of the Xotalancas.

"The pipes of madness," she