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

I lit another torch and remembered that this had best be the last I used, or we

might not be able to signal the camp when the rain ceased. The spread of the

light extended. I saw that the sinuousity of the figures was no fancy; the

worship of Set had once found a home in this cave. I recognized Stygian

hieroglyphs and even more arcane signs, of which I neither knew nor wished to

know the meaning.

I strode farther to the rear, saw that the cave made a bend, and moved on until

I could look beyond the bend into what appeared to be a chamber. Something tall

and upright loomed at the outer edge of the light. I took two more stepsтАФ

"Crom!"

It was not an image of the Great Serpent, as I had feared. It was the life-sized
image of a warrior of gigantic stature, in a strange mix of weapons and garb,

half-Pictish and half-Black Coast, with a stout Hyborian broadsword at his

waist.

Nor was it hard to put a name to that warrior. On three different campaigns I

had seen the same face, older, weathered, the square-cut mane of hair gray, the

face adorned with a mustache and in time, a beard, but none other than the one I

beheld on the image.

The soft, swift tread of a hunting-panther sounded behind me, and I turned to

see Sabaros. He had removed his hood and undone his hair, and I saw in the

torchlight that it was jet black. Nor was there any more doubt about the hue of

his eyes. They were blue, the same blue as the ice I had once seen in a cave in

Gunderland, and fixed on the image with an intensity that seemed to make them

glow with an inner light.

It struck me that I had not been wrong to invoke the chief god of Cimmeria and