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floor; her simple jests and childish laughter even made them enjoy it.
    While gathering bamboo in the jungle, the warriors scared up a wild pig. At cost of a deep gore to one man’s thigh, the raging sow was speared to provide a feast for the night of the hut’s completion. The wounded soldier, doctored and pampered by Sariya, lived to share the animal’s succulent flesh with the others; she made him eat its heart, so that its vengeful spirit would not haunt him and sicken his wound. Now the grimacing, razor-tusked skull bleached atop the roof-peak of the bungalow, warding off ghosts and other evils.
    Beneath its protection, they found Babrak studying one of his many scrolls of Tarim’s teachings. As Conan and Juma approached from the fort road, they could see him lounging in the shade of the open porch, which was already more lived in than either of the hut’s two rooms. Sariya, wrapped in a length of blue cloth from the village market, knelt over a smoking fire in the middle of the yard. She arose to greet her protectors with eager embraces. Upon Conan she lavished kisses, but no questions.
    “You walk proudly, and I see no stripes of the lash. Well enough, then!” Babrak, leaving the porch, pressed up beside Sariya to administer a stiff, formal embrace to Conan, though his field-green turban barely brushed the taller man’s chin. “You have weathered your court-martial well, by grace of the One God.”
    “And by sufferance of them all, it would seem.” Conan returned his friend’s clasp wholeheartedly, making Babrak grunt. “My officers have resolved to leave my punishment to the Red Garrotes.”
    “Fear not, Conan,” Babrak told him. “If need be, I will stand with you against a whole regiment of those assassins! Tarim teaches us to protect the righteous.”
    “I do not ask it. I can protect myself.” Conan moved with them into the shade of the porch. “But if aught happens to me, I leave it to you, my friends, to care for Sariya. She has no family and no other home than this, so she tells me.”
    “Is that so, lass?” Juma asked, showing frank concern. “What of your tribe and your clan?”
    “I have none.” The maid seated herself beside the hut’s bamboo door, doubling her trim knees on the rough matting before her. “Since earliest memory, I have been raised in jungle camps of Mojurna’s devotees. Mere months ago I learned, to my horror, that I was destined for sacrifice.” She told the story with affecting frankness. “Now that I have escaped my ordained fate, my old teachers and sister acolytes would only mock or revile me.”
    “Even so,” Conan said, “‘tis a good thing you were spared.” He settled down beside her, his bandaged hand finding its way around her waist.
    “Oh, yes, Conan! It is far better to live!” She twined against him, pressing a kiss on the side of his neck. “I have seen so little of life! There is much more I want to see, much good that I can do.” She fell silent abruptly, glancing at the fire; then she arose and left the porch, kneeling to tend the covered copper and clay pots steaming on smokeless coals.
    “A fine girl,” Juma said, gazing after her with the others.
    “Truly, she must have put an enchantment on me,” Conan whispered earnestly. “Already she has emptied my purse, and I do not even mind! The trifles she buys for the hut are of use, or at least pretty. She has a way of making life comfortable.”
    “Aye, yours is a house blest by heaven, I can see.” Babrak arose from his cross-legged crouch. “But forgive me, I must return to my duty. The half-bell struck long since, and I dare not be late for drill. I leave you to your repast.” He turned away, smiling. “I trust you will enjoy it, or at least pretend to your woman that you do.” With a passing farewell to Sariya, he left the yard.
    Conan, reaching for an earthen decanter and sloshing it to gauge its reserve of date wine, raised it to his lips and swigged deeply of the syrupy