She was too surprised to resist as he took her sword from
her hand and shoved it back in its sheath. "Sit still and calm down.
You'd only break your steel on his scales. He'd gobble you up at one
gulp, or smash you like an egg with that spiked tail of his. We'll get
out of this jam some way, but we shan't do it by getting chewed up and
swallowed."

She made no reply, nor did she seek to repulse his arm from about her
waist. She was frightened, and the sensation was new to Valeria of the
Red Brotherhood. So she sat on her companion's--or captor's--knee with a
docility that would have amazed Zarallo, who had anathematized her as a
she-devil out of hell's seraglio.

Conan played idly with her curly yellow locks, seemingly intent only
upon his conquest. Neither the skeleton at his feet nor the monster
crouching below disturbed his mind or dulled the edge of his interest.

The girl's restless eyes, roving the leaves below them, discovered
splashes of color among the green. It was fruit, large, darkly crimson
globes suspended from the boughs of a tree whose broad leaves were a
peculiarly rich and vivid green. She became aware of both thirst and
hunger, though thirst had not assailed her until she knew she could not
descend from the crag to find food and water.

"We need not starve," she said. "There is fruit we can reach."

Conan glanced where she pointed.

"If we ate that we wouldn't need the bite of a dragon," he grunted.
"That's what the black people of Kush call the Apples of Derketa.
Derketa is the Queen of the Dead. Drink a little of the juice, or spill
it on your flesh, and you'd be dead before you could tumble to the foot
of this crag."

"Oh!"

She lapsed into dismayed silence. There seemed no way out of their
predicament, she reflected gloomily. She saw no way of escape, and Conan
seemed to be concerned only with her supple waist and curly tresses. If
he was trying to formulate a plan of escape, he did not show it.

"If you'll take your hands off me long enough to climb up on that peak,"
she said presently, "you'll see something that will surprise you."

He cast her a questioning glance, then obeyed with a shrug of his
massive shoulders. Clinging to the spire-like pinnacle, he stared out
over the forest roof.

* * * * *

He stood a long moment in silence, posed like a bronze statue on the
rock.

"It's a walled city, right enough," he muttered presently. "Was that
where