Conan the Barbarian by Michael A. Stackpole

Author:Michael A. Stackpole
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

XVIII

Conan stood on the hillside, shading his eyes with a hand. His horse, reins drooping on the ground, pawed the earth in an attempt to uncover anything even the least bit edible. The barbarian grunted.

He’d spent the night at the top of the hill, and had risen before dawn. He and the horse set off, but as it became light, they’d not gotten very far. Conan could see the tracks leading down the hill and then tracking back around it, but couldn’t, for the life of him, remember making any of the turns.

He spat. Sorcery. As magework went, it’s wasn’t the nastiest he’d ever run into. It didn’t try to scare him from entering the Wastes. He and the horse could ride into them without feeling any pain. It was just that he got a vague sense of frustration followed by a wave of exhaustion. Trying to go further just didn’t seem worth the effort. And, curiously enough, when he let the horse go, they ended up near his hill, with good water and the view of a road that would carry them far from the Wastes themselves.

He suspected, in fact, that if he followed the road and tried to enter the Wastes from another direction, he’d end up near some other campsite of relative safety. It was akin to when his father had placed a sword at his throat, keeping him back from any potential harm in their first duels. Frustrating, yes, but his father wasn’t going to let him hurt himself.

But it is worth the effort. Conan took a deep breath and faced himself due west. He spotted a stone twelve feet in front of him. His shadow touched it. He deliberately put one foot in front of the other and in two strides had reached it. Something tried to convince him that he’d gone far enough, but he picked another target and moved to it.

With each step, the Red Waste tried to fight back. It tried to convince him that he need not go any further. But its argument melted in the face of his conviction that he did need to go further. In fact, its every attempt to discourage him just encouraged him more. He pitted his determination against that of the sorcery protecting the land, and refused to be stopped.

He glanced at his back trail. It looked as if he’d not gotten very far at all. Hopelessness slammed into him. He snarled. Indulging it was as bad as a warrior indulging in revenge. He would not. It was not part of him or his tradition, so it would find no purchase in his mind or upon his soul.

He turned back to the west and pushed hard, then something broke. He stumbled forward, all opposition gone. Conan wasn’t certain what had happened, but he figured it was not good. Drawing his sword, he whistled for his horse, mounted up, and headed west as fast as he could.

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