Red Nails, Polished Page 2

to fill a galeon. You know that, too."

  "Where are the fine ships and the bold lasses you commanded now?" he sneered.

  "At the bottom of the sea, mostly," she replied cheerfully. "The Zingarans sank my last ship off the Shemite shore--that's why I joined Zarallo's Free Companions. But I saw I'd been stung when we marched to the Darfar border. The pay was poor and the wine was sour, and I don't like black men. And that's the only kind that came to our camp at Sukhmet--rings in their noses and their teeth filed--bah! Why did you join Zarallo? Sukhmet's a long way from salt water."

  "Red Ortho wanted to make me her master," he answered sullenly. "I jumped overboard one night and swam ashore when we were anchored off the Kushite coast. Off Zabhela, it was. There was a Shemite trader told me that Zarallo had brought her Free Companies south to guard the Darfar border. No better employment offered. I joined an east-bound caravan and eventually came to Sukhmet."

  "It was madness to plunge southward as you did," commented Conyn, "but it was wise, too, for Zarallo's patrols never thought to look for you in this direction. Only the sister of the woman you killed happened to strike your trail."

  "And now what do you intend doing?" he demanded.

  "Turn west," she answered. "I've been this far south, but not this far east. Many days' traveling to the west will bring us to the open savannas, where the black tribes graze their cattle. I have friends among them. We'll get to the coast and find a ship. I'm sick of the jungle."

  "Then be on your way," he advised. "I have other plans."

  "Don't be a fool!" She showed irratation for the first time. "You can't keep on wandering through this forest."

  "I can if I choose."

  "But what do you intend doing?"

  "That's none of your affair," he snapped.

  "Yes, it is," she answered calmly. "Do you think I've followed you this far, to turn around and ride off empty-handed? Be sensible, boy. I'm not going to harm you."

  She stepped toward him, and he sprang back, whipping out his sword.

  "Keep back, you barbarian dog! I'll spit you like a roast pig!"

  She halted, reluctantly, and demanded: "Do you want me to take that toy away from you and spank you with it?"

  "Words! Nothing but words!" he mocked, lights like the gleam of the sun on blue water dancing in his reckless eyes.

  She knew it was the truth. No living woman could disarm Valerian of the Sisterhood with her bare hands. She scowled, her sensations a tangle of conflicting emotions. She was angry, yet she was amused and filled with admiration for his spirit. She burned with eagerness to seize that splendid figure and crush it in her iron arms, yet she greatly desired not to hurt the boy. She was torn between a desire to shake his soundly, and a desire to caress him. She knew if she came any nearer his sword would be sheathed in her heart. She had seen Valerian kill too many women in border forays and tavern brawls to have any illusions about him. She knew he was as quick and ferocious as a tigress. She could draw her broadsword and disarm him, beat the blade out of his hand, but the thought of drawing a sword on a man, even without intent of injury, was extremely repugnant to her.

  "Blast your soul, you hustler!" she exclaimed in exasperation. "I'm going to take off your--"

  She started toward him, her angry passion making her reckless, and he poised himself for a deadly thrust. Then came a startling interruption to a scene at once ludicrous and perilous.

  "What's that?"

  It was Valerian who exclaimed, but they both started violently, and Conyn wheeled like a cat, her great sword flashing into her hand. Back in the forest had burst forth an appalling medly of screams--the screams of horses in terror and agony. Mingled with their screams there came the snap of splintering bones.

  "Lions are slaying the horses!" cried Valerian.

  "Lions, nothing!" snorted Conyn, her eyes blazing. "Did you hear a lion roar? Neither did I! Listen to those bones snap--not even a lion could make that much noise killing a horse."

  She hurried down the natural ramp and he followed, their personal feud forgotten in the adventurers' instinct to unite against common peril. The screams had ceased when they worked their way downward through the green veil of leaves that brushed the rock.

  "I found your horse tied by the pool back there," she muttered, treading so noiselessly that he no longer wondered how she had surprised his on the crag. "I tied mine beside it and followed the tracks of your boots. Watch, now!"

  They had emerged from the belt of leaves, and stared down into the lower reaches of the forest. Above them the green roof spread its dusky canopy. Below them the sunlight filtered in just enough to make a jade-tinted twilight. The giant trunks of trees less than a hundred yards away looked dim and ghostly.

  "The horses should be beyond that thicket, over there," whispered Conyn, and her voice might have been a breeze moving through the branches. "Listen!"

  Valerian had already heard, and a chill crept through his veins; so he unconsciously laid his white hand on his companion's muscular brown arm. From beyond the thicket came the noisy crunching of bones and the loud rending of flesh, together with the grinding, slobbering sounds of a horrible feast.

  "Lions wouldn't make that noise," whispered Conyn. "Something's eating our horses, but it's not a lion--Crom!"

  The noise stopped suddenly, and Conyn swore softly. A suddenly risen breeze was blowing from them directly toward the spot where the unseen slayer was hidden.

  "Here it comes!" muttered Conyn, half lifting her sword.

  The thicket was violently agitated, and Valerian clutched Conyn's arm hard. Ignorant of jungle lore, he yet knew that no animal he had ever seen could have shaken the tall brush like that.

  "It must be as big as an elephant," muttered Conyn, echoing his thought. "What the devil--" Her voice trailed away in stunned silence.

  Through the thicket was thrust a head of nightmare and lunacy. Grinning jaws bared rows of drippnig yellow tusks; above the yawning mouth wrinkled a saurian-like snout. Huge eyes, like those of a python a thousand times magnified, stared unwinkingly at the petrified humans clinging to the rock above it. Blood smeared the scaly, flabby lips and dripped from the huge mouth.

  The head, bigger than that of a crocodile, was further extended on a long scaled neck on which stood up rows of serrated spikes, and after it, crushing down the briars and saplings, waddled the body of a titan, a gigantic, barrel-bellied torso on absurdly short legs. The whitish belly almost raked the ground, while the serrated backbone rose higher than Conyn could have reached on tiptoe. A long spiked tail, like that of a gargantuan scorpion, trailed out behind.

  "Back up the crag, quick!" snapped Conyn, thrusting the boy behind him. "I don't think she can climb, but she can stand on her hind legs and reach us--"

  With a snapping and rending of bushes and saplings, the monster came hurtling through the thickets, and they fled up the rock before her like leaves blown before a wind. As Valerian plunged into the leafy screen a backward glance showed his the titan rearing up fearsomely on her massive hindlegs, even as Conyn had predicted. The sight sent panic racing through him. As she reared, the beast seemed more gigantic than ever; her snouted head towered among the trees. Then Conyn's iron hand closed on his wrist and he was jerked headlong into the blinding welter of the leaves, and out again into the hot sunshine above, just as the monster fell forward with her front feet on the crag with an impact that made the rock vibrate.

  Behind the fugitives the huge head crashed through the twigs, and they looked down for a horrifying instant at the nightmare visage framed among the green leaves, eyes flaming, jaws gaping. Then the giant tusks clashed together futilely, and after that the head was withdrawn, vanishing from their sight as if it had sunk in a pool.

  Peering down through broken branches that scraped the rock, they saw it squatting on its haunches at the foot of the crag, staring unblinkingly up at them.

  Valerian shuddered.

  "How long do you suppos
e she'll crouch there?"

  Conyn kicked the skull on the leaf-strewn shelf.

  "That fellow must have climbed up here to escape her, or one like her. She must have died of starvation. There are no bones broken. That thing must be a dragon, such as the black people speak of in their legends. If so, it won't leave here until we're both dead."

  Valerian looked at her blankly, his resentment forgotten. He fought down a surging of panic. He had proved his reckless courage a thousand times in wild battles on sea and land, on the blood-slippery decks of burning war ships, in the storming of walled cities, and on the trampled sandy beaches where the desperate women of the Red Sisterhood bathed their knives in one another's blood in their fights for leadership. But the prospect now confronting his congealed his blood. A cutlass stroke in the heat of battle was nothing; but to sit idle and helpless on a bare rock until he perished of starvation, besieged by a monstrous survival of an elder age--the thought sent panic throbbing through his brain.

  "She must leave to eat and drink," he said helplessly.

  "She won't have to go far to do either," Conyn pointed out. "She's just gorged on horse meat and, like a real snake, she can go for a long time without eating or drinking again. But she doesn't sleep after eating, like a real snake, it seems. Anyway, she can't climb this crag."

  Conyn spoke imperturbably. She was a barbarian, and the terrible patience of the wilderness and its children was