ively together, severing the
triple-pieced shaft and almost precipitating Conan from his perch. He
would have fallen but for the girl behind him, who caught his sword-belt
in a desperate grasp. He clutched at a rocky projection, and grinned his
thanks back at her.

Down on the ground the monster was wallowing like a dog with pepper in
its eyes. He shook his head from side to side, pawed at it, and opened
his mouth repeatedly to its widest extent. Presently he got a huge front
foot on the stump of the shaft and managed to tear the blade out. Then
he threw up his head, jaws wide and spouting blood, and glared up at the
crag with such concentrated and intelligent fury that Valeria trembled
and drew her sword. The scales along his back and flanks turned from
rusty brown to a dull lurid red. Most horribly the monster's silence was
broken. The sounds that issued from his blood-streaming jaws did not
sound like anything that could have been produced by an earthly
creation.

With harsh, grating roars, the dragon hurled himself at the crag that
was the citadel of his enemies. Again and again his mighty head crashed
upward through the branches, snapping vainly on empty air. He hurled his
full ponderous weight against the rock until it vibrated from base to
crest. And rearing upright he gripped it with his front legs like a man
and tried to tear it up by the roots, as if it had been a tree.

This exhibition of primordial fury chilled the blood in Valeria's veins,
but Conan was too close to the primitive himself to feel anything but a
comprehending interest. To the barbarian, no such gulf existed between
himself and other men, and the animals, as existed in the conception of
Valeria. The monster below them, to Conan, was merely a form of life
differing from himself mainly in physical shape. He attributed to it
characteristics similar to his own, and saw in its wrath a counterpart
of his rages, in its roars and bellowings merely reptilian equivalents
to the curses he had bestowed upon it. Feeling a kinship with all wild
things, even dragons, it was impossible for him to experience the sick
horror which assailed Valeria at the sight of the brute's ferocity.

He sat watching it tranquilly, and pointed out the various changes that
were taking place in its voice and actions.

"The poison's taking hold," he said with conviction.

"I don't believe it." To Valeria it seemed preposterous to suppose that
anything, however lethal, could