bling for fifty feet with all the wind
and half the life battered out of him.

How the stunned Cimmerian regained his feet, not even he could have ever
told. But the only thought that filled his brain was of the woman lying
dazed and helpless almost in the path of the hurtling fiend, and before
the breath came whistling back into his gullet he was standing over her
with his sword in his hand.

She lay where he had thrown her, but she was struggling to a sitting
posture. Neither tearing tusks nor trampling feet had touched her. It
had been a shoulder or front leg that struck Conan, and the blind
monster rushed on, forgetting the victims whose scent it had been
following, in the sudden agony of its death throes. Headlong on its
course it thundered until its low-hung head crashed into a gigantic tree
in its path. The impact tore the tree up by the roots and must have
dashed the brains from the misshapen skull. Tree and monster fell
together, and the dazed humans saw the branches and leaves shaken by the
convulsions of the creature they covered--and then grow quiet.

Conan lifted Valeria to her feet and together they started away at a
reeling run. A few moments later they emerged into the still twilight of
the treeless plain.

* * * * *

Conan paused an instant and glanced back at the ebon fastness behind
them. Not a leaf stirred, nor a bird chirped. It stood as silent as it
must have stood before Man was created.

"Come on," muttered Conan, taking his companion's hand. "It's touch and
go now. If more dragons come out of the woods after us----"

He did not have to finish the sentence.

The city looked very far away across the plain, farther than it had
looked from the crag. Valeria's heart hammered until she felt as if it
would strangle her. At every step she expected to hear the crashing of
the bushes and see another colossal nightmare bearing down upon them.
But nothing disturbed the silence of the thickets.

With the first mile between them and the woods, Valeria breathed more
easily. Her buoyant self-confidence began to thaw out again. The sun had
set and darkness was gathering over the plain, lightened a little by the
stars that made stunted ghosts out of the cactus growths.

"No cattle, no plowed fields," muttered Conan. "How do these people
live?"

"Perhaps the cattle are in pens for the night," suggested Valeria, "and
the fields and grazing-pastures are on the other side o