Why he had been spared so long, he did not understand, unless the malign entity which ruled the river meant to keep him alive to torture him with grief and fear. Already unmanned by their superstitious fears, the blacks might well have died without striking a blow in their own defense when attacked by their inhuman foes. Conan did not doubt that the slaughter along the river had been massacre rather than battle. Meanwhile, or immediately after, or perhaps before, the destruction of those on the river-bank had been accomplished. He understood that while waiting for him in the glade, N'Gora and his comrades had been terror-stricken by the winged monster swooping upon them from the sky, and fleeing in blind panic, had fallen over the cliff all except their chief, who had somehow escaped their fate, though not madness. He no longer doubted the visions of the black lotus. What shapes would emerge from the blackness he knew not, nor did he care. The black fury in his soul drove out all fear. Now he sat grimly on the pyramid, waiting for his unseen foes. Like a true queen she lay, with her plunder heaped high about her: silks, cloth-of-gold, silver braid, casks of gems and golden coins, silver ingots, jeweled daggers, and teocallis of gold wedges.īut of the plunder of the accursed city, only the sullen waters of Zarkheba could tell, where Conan had thrown it with a heathen curse. Spear-shafts and leopardskins, lay the Queen of the Black Coast in her last sleep, wrapped in Conan’s scarlet cloak. But on the deck of the Tigress, on a pyre of broken benches, Out in the black shadows stealthy feet padded and red eyes glimmered. On the pyramid among the fallen towers sat Conan the Cimmerian like an iron statue, chin propped on massive fists. The moon had not risen the stars were flecks of hot amber in a breathless sky that reeked of death. T he jungle was a black colossus that locked the ruin-littered glade in ebon arms.