With his makeshift spear, he stabs some poisoned fruit with the sword tip and coats it with purple liquid. Seeing civilization gives Conan an idea, and he gathers several branches and sticks together with his sword sticking out of the center, tying them into a sturdy bundle with vine. As they ponder their situation, made worse that the only food available within reach are poisonous Apples of Derketa, Valeria shows Conan the walled city in the distance. The monster rushes towards them and they scramble back up the rocks, realizing what the skeleton was doing there in the first place as the beast, which Conan assumes is a dragon, waits at the foot of the hill, trapping them. They rush back towards the pool and find an elephant sized reptilian monster with a scorpion-like tail. Conan tries to get her to head towards the coast but she refuses, causing a standoff only interrupted by the sound of their horses being torn apart by what Valeria assumes are lions. He reveals that he followed Valeria from Sukhmet after she refused the advances of and killed a Stygian officer, forcing her to flee. She begins to make her way down the rocks but is startled by Conan standing at the base. Passing a skeleton on a small outcropping, she makes it to the top of the rock, and is surprised to see a walled city a mile to the south.
Valeria of the Red Brotherhood stops at twilight at a jungle pool to rest her horse and climbs a nearby crag to pierce the canopy of the trees.
Conan and Valeria take refuge in an entirely walled and enclosed city where the inhabitants have waged war against each other for decades.
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