you were going, when you tried to send me off alone to the coast?"

"I saw it before you came. I knew nothing of it when I left Sukhmet."

"Who'd have thought to find a city here? I don't believe the Stygians
ever penetrated this far. Could black people build a city like that? I
see no herds on the plain, no signs of cultivation, or people moving
about."

"How could you hope to see all that, at this distance?" she demanded.

He shrugged his shoulders and dropped down on the shelf.

"Well, the folk of the city can't help us just now. And they might not,
if they could. The people of the Black Countries are generally hostile
to strangers. Probably stick us full of spears----"

He stopped short and stood silent, as if he had forgotten what he was
saying, frowning down at the crimson spheres gleaming among the leaves.

"Spears!" he muttered. "What a blasted fool I am not to have thought of
that before! That shows what a pretty woman does to a man's mind."

"What are you talking about?" she inquired.

Without answering her question, he descended to the belt of leaves and
looked down through them. The great brute squatted below, watching the
crag with the frightful patience of the reptile folk. So might one of
his breed have glared up at their troglodyte ancestors, treed on a
high-flung rock, in the dim dawn ages. Conan cursed him without heat,
and began cutting branches, reaching out and severing them as far from
the end as he could reach. The agitation of the leaves made the monster
restless. He rose from his haunches and lashed his hideous tail,
snapping off saplings as if they had been toothpicks. Conan watched him
warily from the corner of his eye, and just as Valeria believed the
dragon was about to hurl himself up the crag again, the Cimmerian drew
back and climbed up to the ledge with the branches he had cut. There
were three of these, slender shafts about seven feet long, but not
larger than his thumb. He had also cut several strands of tough, thin
vine.

"Branches too light for spear-hafts, and creepers no thicker than
cords," he remarked, indicating the foliage about the crag. "It won't
hold our weight--but there's strength in union. That's what the
Aquilonian renegades used to tell us Cimmerians when they came into the
hills to raise an army to invade their own country. But we always fight
by clans and tribes."

"What the devil has that got to do with those sticks?" she demanded.

"You wait and see."