Red Nails, Polished Read online

rest on the floor.

  Conyn sprang up, her eyes like live coals. So that was Tascela's game, having first used the strangers to destroy her foes! She should have known that something of the sort would be going on in that blackbearded degenerate's mind.

  The Cimmerian started toward Tecuhltli with reckless speed. Rapidly she reckoned the numbers of her former allies. Only twenty-one, counting Tascela, had survived that fiendish battle in the throne room. Three had died since, which left seventeen enemies with which to reckon. In her rage Conyn felt capable of accounting for the whole clan singlehanded.

  But the innate craft of the wilderness rose to guide her berserk rage. She remembered Techotl's warning of an ambush. It was quite probable that the princess would make such provisions, on the chance that Topal might have failed to carry out her order. Tascela would be expecting her to return by the same route she had followed in going to Xotalanc.

  Conyn glanced up at a skylight under which she was passing and caught the blurred glimmer of stars. They had not yet begun to pale for dawn. The events of the night had been crowded into a comparatively short space of time.

  She turned aside from her direct course and descended a winding staircase to the floor below. She did not know where the door was to be found that let into the castle on that level, but she knew she could find it. How she was to force the locks she did not know; she believed that the doors of Tecuhltli would all be locked and bolted, if for no other reason than the habits of half a century. But there was nothing else but to attempt it.

  Sword in hand, she hurried noiselessly on through a maze of green-lit or shadowy rooms and halls. She knew she must be near Tecuhltli, when a sound brought her up short. She recognized it for what it was--a human being trying to cry out through a stifling gag. It came from somewhere ahead of her, and to the left. In those deathly-still chambers a small sound carried a long way.

  Conyn turned aside and went seeking after the sound, which continued to be repeated. Presently she was glaring through a doorway upon a weird scene. In the room into which she was looking a low rack-like frame of iron lay on the floor, and a giant figure was bound prostrate upon it. Her head rested on a bed of iron spikes, which were already crimson-pointed with blood where they had pierced her scalp. A peculiar harness-like contrivance was fastened about her head, though in such a manner that the leather band did not protect her scalp from the spikes. This harness was connected by a slender chain to the mechanism that upheld a huge iron ball which was suspended above the captive's hairy breast. As long as the woman could force herself to remain motionless the iron ball hung in its place. But when the pain of the iron points caused her to lift her head, the ball lurched downward a few inches. Presently her aching neck muscles would no longer support her head in its unnatural position and it would fall back on the spikes again. It was obvious that eventually the ball would crush her to a pulp, slowly and inexorably. The victim was gagged, and above the gag her great black ox-eyes rolled wildly toward the woman in the doorway, who stood in silent amazement. The woman on the rack was Tascela, princess of Tecuhltli.

  The Eyes of Olmec

  "Why did you bring me into this chamber to bandage my leg?" demanded Valerian. "Couldn't you have done it just as well in the throne room?"

  He sat on a couch with his wounded leg extended upon it, and the Tecuhltli man had just bound it with silk bandages. Valerian's redstained sword lay on the couch beside him.

  He frowned as he spoke. The man had done his task silently and efficiently, but Valerian liked neither the lingering, caressing touch of his slim fingers nor the expression in his eyes.

  "They have taken the rest of the wounded into the other chambers," answered the man in the soft speech of the Tecuhltli men, which somehow did not suggest either softness or gentleness in the speakers. A little while before, Valerian had seen this same man stab a Xotalanca man through the breast and stamp the eyeballs out of a wounded Xotalanca woman.

  "They will be carrying the corpses of the dead down into the catacombs," he added, "lest the ghosts escape into the chambers and dwell there."

  "Do you believe in ghosts?" asked Valerian.

  "I know the ghost of Tolkemec dwells in the catacombs," he answered with a shiver. "Once I saw it, as I crouched in a crypt among the bones of a dead king. It passed by in the form of an ancient woman with flowing white locks and locks, and luminous eyes that blazed in the darkness. It was Tolkemec; I saw her living when I was a child and she was being tortured."

  His voice sank to a fearful whisper: "Tascela laughs, but I know Tolkemec's ghost dwells in the catacombs! They say it is rats whch gnaw the flesh from the bones of the newly dead--but ghosts eat flesh. Who knows but that--"

  He glanced up quickly as a shadow fell across the couch. Valerian looked up to see Tascela gazing down at him. The princess had cleansed her hands, torso, and locks of the blood that had splashed them; but she had not donned her robe, and her great dark-skinned hairless body and limbs renewed the impression of strength bestial in its nature. Her deep black eyes burned with a more elemental light, and there was the suggestion of a twitching in the fingers that tugged at her thick blue-black locks.

  She stared fixedly at the man, and he rose and glided from the chamber. As he passed through the door he cast a look over him shoulder at Valerian, a glance full of cynical derision and obscene mockery.

  "He has done a clumsy job," criticized the princess, coming to the divan and bending over the bandage. "Let me see--"

  With a quickness amazing in one of her bulk she snatched his sword and threw it across the chamber. Her next move was to catch his in her giant arms.

  Quick and unexpected as the move was, he almost matched it; for even as she grabbed him, his dirk was in his hand and he stabbed murderously at her throat. More by luck than skill she caught his wrist, and then began a savage wrestling-match. He fought her with fists, feet, knees, teeth, and nails, with all the strength of his magnificent body and all the knowledge of hand-to-hand fighting he had acquired in his years of roving and fighting on sea and land. It availed his nothing against her brute strength. He lost his dirk in the first moment of contact, and thereafter found himself powerless to inflict any appreciable pain on his giant attacker.

  The blaze in her weird black eyes did not alter, and their expression filled his with fury, fanned by the sardonic smile that seemed carved upon her smooth lips. Those eyes and that smile contained all the cruel cynicism that seethes below the surface of a sophisticated and degenerate race, and for the first time in his life Valerian experienced fear of a woman. It was like struggling against some huge elemental force; her iron arms thwarted his efforts with an ease that sent panic racing through his limbs. She seemed impervious to any pain he could inflict. Only once, when he sank his white teeth savagely into her wrist so that the blood started, did she react. And that was to buffet his brutally upon the side of the head with her open hand, so that stars flashed before his eyes and his head rolled on his shoulders.

  His shirt had been torn open in the struggle, and with cynical cruelty she rasped her thick locks across his bare pectorals, bringing the blood to suffuse the fair skin, and fetching a cry of pain and outraged fury from him. His convulsive resistance was useless; he was crushed down on a couch, disarmed and panting, his eyes blazing up at her like the eyes of a trapped tigress.

  A moment later she was hurrying from the chamber, carrying his in her arms. He made no resistance, but the smoldering of his eyes showed that he was unconquered in spirit, at least. He had not cried out. He knew that Conyn was not within call, and it did not occur to his that any in Tecuhltli would oppose their princess. But he noticed that Tascela went stealthily, with her head on one side as if listening for sounds of pursuit, and she did not return to the throne chamber. She carried his through a door that stood opposite that through which she had entered, crossed another room and began stealing down a hall. As he became convinced that she feared some opposition to the abduction, he t
hrew back his head and screamed at the top of his lusty voice.

  He was rewarded by a slap that half-stunned him, and Tascela quickened her pace to a shambling run.

  But his cry had been echoed and, twisting his head about, Valerian, through the tears and stars that partly blinded him, saw Techotl limping after them.

  Tascela turned with a snarl, shifting the man to an uncomfortable and certainly undignified position under one huge arm, where she held his writhing and kicking vainly, like a child.

  "Tascela!" protested Techotl. "You cannot be such a dog as to do this thing! He is Conyn's man! He helped us slay the Xotalancas, and--"

  Without a word Tascela balled her free hand into a huge fist and stretched the wounded warrior senseless at her feet. Stooping, and hindered not at all by the struggles and imprecations of her captive, she drew Techotl's sword from its sheath and stabbed the warrior in the breast. Then casting aside the weapon, she fled on along the corridor. She did not see a man's dark face peer cautiously after her from behind a hanging. It vanished, and presenly Techotl groaned and stirred, rose dazedly and staggered drunkenly away, calling Conyn's name.

  Tascela hurried on down the corridor, and descended a winding ivory staircase. She