The People of the Black Circle by Robert Ervin Howard

[Tarenn]

The sun had passed its zenith when they crossed a narrow
trail winding among the crags. Conan reined the horse aside
and followed it southward, going almost at right angles to their
former course.
"A Galzai village is at one end of this trail," he explained.
"Their women follow it to a well, for water. You need new
garments."
Glancing down at her filmy attire, Yasmina agreed with him.
Her cloth-of-gold slippers were in tatters, her robes and silken
under-garments torn to shreds that scarcely held together
decently. Garments meant for the streets of Peshkhauri were
scarcely appropriate for the crags of the Himelians.
Coming to a crook in the trail, Conan dismounted, helped
Yasmina down and waited. Presently he nodded, though she
heard nothing.
"A woman coming along the trail," he remarked. In sudden
panic she clutched his arm.
"You will not-not kill her?"
"I don't kill women ordinarily," he grunted; "though some of
the hill-women are she-wolves. No," he grinned as at a huge
jest. "By Crom, I'll pay for her clothes! How is that?" He
displayed a large handful of gold coins, and replaced all but the
largest. She nodded, much relieved. It was perhaps natural for
men to slay and die; her flesh crawled at the thought of
watching the butchery of a woman.
Presently a woman appeared around the crook of the trail-a
tall, slim Galzai girl, straight as a young sapling, bearing a great
empty gourd. She stopped short and the gourd fell from her
hands when she saw them; she wavered as though to run,
then realized that Conan was too close to her to allow her to
escape, and so stood still, staring at them with a mixed
expression of fear and curiosity.
Conan displayed the gold coin.
"If you will give this woman your garments," he said, "I will
give you this money."
The response was instant. The girl smiled broadly with surprize
and delight, and, with the disdain of a hill-woman for prudish
conventions, promptly yanked off her sleeveless embroidered
vest, slipped down her wide trousers and stepped out of them,
twitched off her wide-sleeved shirt, and kicked off her sandals.
Bundling them all in a bunch, she proffered them to Conan,
who handed them to the astonished Devi.
"Get behind that rock and put these on," he directed, further
proving himself no native hill-man. "Fold your robes up into a
bundle and bring them to me when you come out."
"The money!" clamored the hill-girl, stretching out her hands
eagerly. "The gold you promised me!"
Conan flipped the coin to her, she caught it, bit, then thrust it
into her hair, bent and caught up the gourd and went on
down the path, as devoid of self-consciousness as of garments.
Conan waited with some impatience while the Devi, for the first
time in her pampered life, dressed herself. When she stepped
from behind the rock he swore in surprize, and she felt a
curious rush of emotions at the unrestrained admiration
burning in his fierce blue eyes. She felt shame, embarrassment,
yet a stimulation of vanity she had never before experienced,
and a tingling when meeting the impact of his eyes. He laid a
heavy hand on her shoulder and turned her about, staring
avidly at her from all angles.
"By Crom!" said he. "In those smoky, mystic robes you were
aloof and cold and far off as a star! Now you are a woman
of warm flesh and blood! You went behind that rock as the
Devi of Vendhya; you come out as a hill-girl-though a
thousand times more beautiful than any wench of the Zhaibar!
You were a goddess-now you are real!"
He spanked her resoundingly, and she, recognizing this as
merely another expression of admiration, did not feel outraged.
It was indeed as if the changing of her garments had wrought
a change in her personality. The feelings and sensations she
had suppressed rose to domination in her now, as if the
queenly robes she had cast off had been material shackles and
inhibitions.
But Conan, in his renewed admiration, did not forget that peril
lurked all about them. The farther they drew away from the
region of the Zhaibar, the less likely he was to encounter any
Kshatriya troops. On the other hand he had been listening all
throughout their flight for sounds that would tell him the
vengeful Wazulis of Khurum were on their heels.
Swinging the Devi up, he followed her into the saddle and
again reined the stallion westward. The bundle of garments she
had given him, he hurled over a cliff, to fall into the depths of
a thousand-foot gorge.
"Why did you do that?" she asked. "Why did you not give
them to the girl?"
"The riders from Peshkhauri are combing these hills," he said.
"They'll be ambushed and harried at every turn, and by way
of reprisal they'll destroy every village they can take. They may
turn westward any time. If they found a girl wearing your
garments, they'd torture her into talking, and she might put
them on my trail."
"What will she do?" asked Yasmina.
"Go back to her village and tell her people that a stranger
attacked her," he answered. "She'll have them on our track, all
right. But she had to go on and get the water first; if she
dared go back without it, they'd whip the skin off her. That
gives us a long start. They'll never catch us. By nightfall we'll
cross the Afghuh border."

[Tarenn]

And later:
"And as we made our way
through the hills, we overtook a naked Galzai girl bearing a
gourd of water, who told us a tale of having been stripped
and ravished by a giant foreigner in the garb of an Afghuli
chief, who, she said, gave her garments to a Vendhyan woman
who accompanied him. She said you rode westward."

[esercito sconfitto]

outstanding, totally outstanding . Thanks for this find, Tarenn


by the way this is one of the oldest USB scenes ever, 1934

I wonder if there is a comic book version

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peopl ... ack_Circle