"Roland Green - Conan at the Demon's Gate" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Roland)

hunters today was not the least of them.

It was time to watch behind. Kubwande and six other warriors halted, turned to

face back down the trail, and raised spears. One blew a bone whistle. Its eerie

call drew equally eerie replies from birds, but none from humans or spirits.

To finish the ritual, Kubwande raised his war club, whirled it three times

around his head, and flung it down the trail. It struck a tree so hard that the

club bounced back and fell almost at his feet.

The signs were all good. Nothing they need fear was on their trail. While

hunting boar, that was just as well.

***

Conan the Cimmerian could sleep as readily as any cat, but he remained wakeful

as he lay among the tree roots, watching the clearing. He was not in one of his
regular hiding places, each chosen carefully, then set about with snares and

traps that none could pass through without waking him.

He was half a day from the nearest of those refuges, in land claimed by the

tribe called the Fish-Eaters. The Fish-Eaters could hardly have been a menace

even if they wished to be, but fear can make weaklings deadly.

Also, the Bamulas had taken to wandering in the Fish-Eaters' land as if it were

their own. No one on the Black Coast despised the Bamulas. Conan knew of them

only by what their enemies said, but there had been several warriors from tribes

hostile to the Bamulas aboard Tigress. The Bamulas had offered a good price for

those warriors, or so Belit had said, but she refused.

"I will sell no one to the Bamulas," she added. "If I deal with them at all, I

will buyтАФand at the same price I pay the Stygians."

Blood and steel, death and fear, were the coin Belit used against the Stygians,

until her own end. Now the clean seas held her ashes and those of Tigress; the