helf.

"That fellow must have climbed up here to escape him, or one like him.
He must have died of starvation. There are no bones broken. That thing
must be a dragon, such as the black people speak of in their legends. If
so, it won't leave here until we're both dead."

Valeria looked at him blankly, her resentment forgotten. She fought down
a surging of panic. She had proved her reckless courage a thousand times
in wild battles on sea and land, on the blood-slippery decks of burning
war-ships, in the storming of walled cities, and on the trampled sandy
beaches where the desperate men of the Red Brotherhood bathed their
knives in one another's blood in their fights for leadership. But the
prospect now confronting her congealed her blood. A cutlas-stroke in the
heat of battle was nothing; but to sit idle and helpless on a bare rock
until she perished of starvation, besieged by a monstrous survival of an
elder age--the thought sent panic throbbing through her brain.

"He must leave to eat and drink," she said helplessly.

"He won't have to go far to do either," Conan pointed out. "He's just
gorged on horse-meat, and like a real snake, he can go for a long time
without eating or drinking again. But he doesn't sleep after eating,
like a real snake, it seems. Anyway, he can't climb this crag."

Conan spoke imperturbably. He was a barbarian, and the terrible patience
of the wilderness and its children was as much a part of him as his
lusts and rages. He could endure a situation like this with a coolness
impossible to a civilized person.

"Can't we get into the trees and get away, traveling like apes through
the branches?" she asked desperately.

He shook his head. "I thought of that. The branches that touch the crag
down there are too light. They'd break with our weight. Besides, I have
an idea that devil could tear up any tree around here by its roots."

"Well, are we going to sit here on our rumps until we starve, like
that?" she cried furiously, kicking the skull clattering across the
ledge. "I won't do it! I'll go down there and cut his damned head
off----"

Conan had seated himself on a rocky projection at the foot of the spire.
He looked up with a glint of admiration at her blazing eyes and tense,
quivering figure, but, realizing that she was in just the mood for any
madness, he let none of his admiration sound in his voice.

"Sit down," he grunted, catching her by her wrist and pulling her down
on his knee.