Shadows in the Moonlight Page 4

But we can't put to sea until they've goneout of sight, for they're coming from the direction in which we must go.Doubtless they'll pass the island tonight, and at dawn we can go on ourway.'

  'Then we must spend the night here?' she shivered.

  'It's safest.'

  'Then let us sleep here, on the crags,' she urged.

  He shook his head, glancing at the stunted trees, at the marching woodsbelow, a green mass which seemed to send out tendrils straggling up thesides of the cliffs.

  'Here are too many trees. We'll sleep in the ruins.'

  She cried out in protest.

  'Nothing will harm you there,' he soothed. 'Whatever threw the stone atus did not follow us out of the woods. There was nothing to show thatany wild thing lairs in the ruins. Besides, you are soft-skinned, andused to shelter and dainties. I could sleep naked in the snow and feelno discomfort, but the dew would give you cramps, were we to sleep inthe open.'

  Olivia helplessly acquiesced, and they descended the cliffs, crossed theplateau and once more approached the gloomy, age-haunted ruins. By thistime the sun was sinking below the plateau rim. They had found fruit inthe trees near the cliffs, and these formed their supper, both food anddrink.

  The southern night swept down quickly, littering the dark blue sky withgreat white stars, and Conan entered the shadowy ruins, drawing thereluctant Olivia after him. She shivered at the sight of those tenseblack shadows in their niches along the walls. In the darkness that thestarlight only faintly touched, she could not make out their outlines;she could only sense their attitude of waiting--waiting as they hadwaited for untold centuries.

  Conan had brought a great armful of tender branches, well leafed. Thesehe heaped to make a couch for her, and she lay upon it, with a curioussensation as of one lying down to sleep in a serpent's lair.

  Whatever her forebodings, Conan did not share them. The Cimmerian satdown near her, his back against a pillar, his sword across his knees.His eyes gleamed like a panther's in the dusk.

  'Sleep, girl,' said he. 'My slumber is light as a wolf's. Nothing canenter this hall without awaking me.'

  Olivia did not reply. From her bed of leaves she watched the immobilefigure, indistinct in the soft darkness. How strange, to move infellowship with a barbarian, to be cared for and protected by one of arace, tales of which had frightened her as a child! He came of a peoplebloody, grim and ferocious. His kinship to the wild was apparent in hisevery action; it burned in his smoldering eyes. Yet he had not harmedher, and her worst oppressor had been a man the world called civilized.As a delicious languor stole over her relaxing limbs and she sank intofoamy billows of slumber, her last waking thought was a drowsyrecollection of the firm touch of Conan's fingers on her soft flesh.