commentary:
She turned
toward Conan, her bosom heaving, her eyes flashing. Fierce fingers of
wonder caught at his heart. She was slender, yet formed like a
goddess: at once lithe and voluptuous. Her only garment was a broad
silken girdle. Her white ivory limbs and the ivory globes of her
breasts drove a beat of fierce passion through the Cimmerian's pulse,
even in the panting fury of battle. Her rich black hair, black as a
Stygian night, fell in rippling burnished clusters down her supple
back. Her dark eyes burned on the Cimmerian.
She was untamed as a desert wind, supple and dangerous as a she-
panther. She came close to him, heedless of his great blade, dripping
with blood of her warriors. Her supple thigh brushed against it, so
close she came to the tall warrior. Her red lips parted as she stared
up into his somber menacing eyes.
"Who are you?" she demanded. "By Ishtar, I have never seen your like,
though I have ranged the sea from the coasts of Zingara to the fires
of the ultimate south. Whence come you?"
"From Argos," he answered shortly, alert for treachery. Let her slim
hand move toward the jeweled dagger in her girdle, and a buffet of his
open hand would stretch her senseless on the deck. Yet in his heart he
did not fear; he had held too many women, civilized or barbaric, in
his iron-Chewed arms, not to recognize the light that burned in the
eyes of this one.
"You are no soft Hyborian!" she exclaimed. "You are fierce and hard as
a gray wolf. Those eyes were never dimmed by city lights; those thews
were never softened by life amid marble walls."
"I am Conan, a Cimmerian," he answered.
To the people of the exotic climes, the north was a mazy half-mythical
realm, peopled with ferocious blue-eyed giants who occasionally
descended from their icy fastnesses with torch and sword. Their raids
had never taken them as far south as Shem, and this daughter of Shem
made no distinction between AEsir, Vanir or Cimmerian. With the
unerring instinct of the elemental feminine, she knew she had found
her lover, and his race meant naught, save as it invested him with the
glamor of far lands.
"And I am Bêlit," she cried, as one might say, "I am queen."
"Look at me, Conan!" She threw wide her arms. "I am Bêlit, queen of
the black coast. Oh, tiger of the North, you are cold as the snowy
mountains which bred you. Take me and crush me with your fierce love!
Go with me to the ends of the earth and the ends of the sea! I am a
queen by fire and steel and slaughter--be thou my king!"
His eyes swept the blood-stained ranks, seeking expressions of wrath
or jealousy. He saw none. The fury was gone from the ebon faces. He
realized that to these men Bêlit was more than a woman: a goddess
whose will was unquestioned. He glanced at the Argus, wallowing in the
crimson sea-wash, heeling far over, her decks awash, held up by the
grappling-irons. He glanced at the blue-fringed shore, at the far
green hazes of the ocean, at the vibrant figure which stood before
him; and his barbaric soul stirred within him. To quest these shining
blue realms with that white-skinned young tiger-cat--to love, laugh,
wander and pillage--"I'll sail with you," he grunted, shaking the red
drops from his blade.
