Howard, Robert E - Conan - The Hour of the Dragon

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THE HOUR OF THE DRAGON
A Conan Story
by Robert E. Howard
The Lion banner sways and. falls in the horror-haunted gloom;
A scarlet Dragon rustles by, borne on winds of doom.
In heaps the shining horsemen lie, where the thrusting lances break,
And. deep in the haunted mountains, the lost, black gods awake.
Dead hands grope in the shadows, the stars turn pale with fright,
For this is the Dragon's Hour, the triumph of Fear and. Night.
1. O SLEEPER, AWAKE!
THE LONG TAPERS flickered, sending the black shadows wavering along the walls, and the velvet
tapestries rippled. Yet there was no wind in the chamber. Four men stood about the ebony table on
which lay the green sarcophagus that gleamed like carven jade. In the upraised right hand of each
man a curious black candle burned with a weird greenish light. Outside was night and a lost wind
moaning among the black trees.
Inside the chamber was tense silence, and the wavering of the shadows, while four pairs of
eyes, burning with intensity, were fixed on the long green case across which cryptic hieroglyphics
writhed, as if lent life and movement by the unsteady light. The man at the foot of the
sarcophagus leaned over it and moved his candle as if he were writing with a pen, inscribing a
mystic symbol' in the air. Then he set down the candle in its black gold stick at the foot of the
case, and, mumbling some formula unintelligible to his companions, he thrust a broad white hand
into his fur-trimmed robe. When he brought it forth again it was as if he cupped in his palm a
ball of living fire.
The other three drew in their breath sharply, and the dark, powerful man who stood at the
head of the sarcophagus whispered: "The Heart of Ahriman!" The other lifted a quick hand for
silence. Somewhere a dog began howling dolefully, and a stealthy step padded outside the barred
and bolted door. But none looked aside from the mummy-case over which the man in the ermine-
trimmed robe was now moving the great flaming jewel while he muttered an incantation that was old
when Atlantis sank. The glare of the gem dazzled their eyes, so that they could not be sure of
what they saw; but with a splintering crash, the carven lid of the sarcophagus burst outward as if
from some irresistible pressure applied from within, and the four men, bending eagerly forward,
saw the occupant - a huddled, withered, wizened shape, with dried brown limbs like dead wood
showing through moldering bandages.
"Bring that thing back?" muttered the small dark man who stood on the right, with a short,
sardonic laugh. "It is ready to crumble at a touch. We are fools!"
"Shhh!" It was an urgent hiss of command from the large man who held the jewel. Perspiration
stood upon his broad white forehead and his eyes were dilated. He leaned forward, and, without
touching the thing with his hand, laid on the breast of the mummy the blazing jewel. Then he drew
back and watched with fierce intensity, his lips moving in soundless invocation.
It was as if a globe of living fire nickered and burned on the dead, withered bosom. And
breath sucked in, hissing, through the clenched teeth of the watchers. For as they watched, an
awful transmutation became apparent. The withered shape in the sarcophagus was expanding, was
growing, lengthening. The bandages burst and fell into brown dust. The shiveled limbs swelled,
straightened. Their dusky hue began to fade.
"By Mitra!" whispered the tall, yellow-haired man on the left. "He was not a Stygian. That
part at least was true."
Again a trembling finger warned for silence. The hound outside was no longer howling. He
whimpered, as with an evil dream, and then that sound, too, died away in silence, in which the
yellow-haired man plainly heard the straining of the heavy door, as if something outside pushed
powerfully upon it. He half turned, his hand at his sword, but the man in the ermine robe hissed
an urgent warning: "Stay! Do not break the chain! And on your life do not go to the door!"
The yellow-haired man shrugged and turned back, and then he stopped short, staring. In the
Jade sarcophagus lay a living man: a tall, lusty man, naked, white of skin, and dark of hair and
beard. He lay motionless, his eyes wide open, and blank and unknowing as a newborn babe's. On his
breast the great jewel smoldered and sparkled.
The man in ermine reeled as if from some let-down of extreme tension.
"Ishtar!" he gasped. "It is Xaltotun! - and he lives! Valerius! Tarascus! Amalric! Do you
see? Do you see? You doubted me, but I have not failed! We have been close to the open gates of
hell this night, and the shapes of darkness have gathered close about us - aye, they followed him
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to the very door - but we have brought the great magician back to life."
"And damned our souls to purgatories everlasting, I doubt not," muttered the small, dark man,
Tarascus.
The yellow-haired man, Valerius, laughed harshly.
"What purgatory can be worse than life itself? So we are all damned together from birth.
Besides, who would not sell his miserable soul for a throne?"
"There is no intelligence in his stare, Orastes," said the large man.
"He has long been dead," answered Orastes. "He is as one newly awakened. His mind is empty
after the long sleep - say, he was dead, not sleeping. We brought his spirit back over the voids
and gulfs of night and oblivion. I will speak to him."
He bent over the foot of the sarcophagus, and fixing his gaze on the wide dark eyes of the
man within, he said, slowly: "Awake, Xaltotun!"
The lips of the man moved mechanically. "Xaltotun!" he repeated in a groping whisper.
"You are Xaltotun!" exclaimed Orastes, like a hypnotist driving home his suggestions. "You
are Xaltotun of Python, in Acheron."
A dim flame flickered in the dark eyes.
"I was Xaltotun," he whispered. "I am dead."
"You are Xaltotun!" cried Qrastes. "You are not dead! You live!"
"I am Xaltotun," came the eery whisper. "But I am dead. In my house in Khemi, in Stygia,
there I died."
"And the priests who poisoned you mummified your body with their dark arts, keeping all your
organs intact!" exclaimed Orastes. "But now you live again! The Heart of Ahriman has restored your
life, drawn your spirit back from space and eternity." ' "The Heart of Ahriman!" The flame of
remembrance grew stronger. "The barbarians stole it from me!"
"He remembers," muttered Orastes. "Lift him from the case."
The others obeyed hesitantly, as if reluctant to touch the man they had recreated, and they
seemed not easier in their minds when they felt firm muscular flesh, vibrant with blood and life,
be-neath their fingers. But they lifted him upon the table, and Orastes clothed him in a curious
dark velvet robe, splashed with gold stars and cresent moons, and fastened a cloth-of-gold. fillet
about his temples, confining the black wavy locks that fell to his shoulders. He let them do as
they would, saying nothing, not even when they set him in a carven throne-like chair with a high
ebony back and wide silver arms, and feet like golden claws. He sat there motionless, and slowly
intelligence grew in his dark eyes and made them deep and strange and luminous. It was as if long-
sunken witch-lights floated slowly up through midnight pools of darkness.
Orastes cast a furtive glance at his companions, who stood staring in morbid fascination at
their strange guest. Their iron nerves had withstood an ordeal that might have driven weaker men
mad. He knew it was with no weaklings that he conspired, but men whose courage was as profound as
their lawless ambitions and capacity for evil. He turned his attention to the figure in the ebon-
black chair. And this one spoke at last.
"I remember," he said in a strong, resonant voice, speaking Nemedian with a curious, archaic
accent. "I am Xaltotun, who was high priest of Set in Python, which was in Acheron. The Heart of
Ahriman - I dreamed I had found it again - where is it?"
Orastes placed it in his hand, and he drew breath deeply as he gazed into the depths of the
terrible jewel burning in his grasp.
"They stole it from me, long ago," he said. "The red heart of the night it is, strong to save
or to damn. It came from afar, and from long ago. While I held it, none could stand before me. But
it was stolen from me, and Acheron fell, and I fled an exile into dark Stygia. Much I remember,
but much I have forgotten. I have been in a far land, across misty voids and gulfs and unlit
oceans. What is the year?"
Orastes answered him. "It is the waning of the Year of the Lion, three thousand years after
the fall of Acheron."
"Three thousand years!" murmured the other. "So long? Who are you?"
"I am Orastes, once a priest of Mitra. This man is Amalric, baron of Tor, in Nemedia; this
other is Tarascus, younger brother of the king of Nemedia; and this tall man is Valerius, rightful
heir of the throne of Aquilonia."
"Why have you given me life?" demanded Xaltotun. "What do you require of me?"
The man was now fully alive and awake, his keen eyes reflecting the working of an unclouded
brain. There was no hesitation or uncertainty in his manner. He came directly to the point, as one
who knows that no man gives something for nothing. Orastes met him with equal candor.
"We have opened the doors of hell this night to free your soul and return it to your body
because we need your aid. We wish to place Tarascus on the throne of Nemedia, and to win for
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Valerius the crown of Aquilonia. With your necromancy you can aid us."
Xaltotun's mind was devious and full of unexpected slants.
"You must be deep in the arts yourself, Orastes, to have been able to restore my life. How is
it that a priest of Mitra knows of the Heart of Ahriman, and the incantations of Skelos?"
"I am no longer a priest of Mitra," answered Orastes. "I was cast forth from my order because
of my delving in black magic. But for Amalric there I might have been burned as a magician.
"But that left me free to pursue my studies. I journeyed in Zamora, in Vendhya, in Stygia,
and among the haunted jungles of Khitai. I read the ironbound books of Skelos, and talked with
unseen creatures in deep wells, and faceless shapes in black reeking jungles. I obtained a glimpse
of your sarcophagus in the demon-haunted crypts below the black giant-walled temple of Set in the
hinterlands of Stygia, and I learned of the arts that would bring back life to your shriveled
corpse. From moldering manuscripts I learned of the Heart of Ahriman. Then for a year I sought its
hiding-place, and at last I found it."
"Then why trouble to bring me back to life?" demanded Xaltotun, with his piercing gaze fixed
on the priests. "Why did you not employ the Heart to further your own power?"
"Because no man today knows the secrets of the Heart," answered Orastes. "Not even in legends
live the arts by which to loose its full powers. I knew it could restore life; of its deeper
secrets I am ignorant. I merely used it to bring you back to life. It is the use of your knowledge
we seek. As for the Heart, you alone know its awful secrets."
Xaltotun shook his head, staring broodingly into the flaming depths.
"My necromantic knowledge is greater than the sum of all the knowledge of other men," he
said; "yet I do not know the full power of the jewel. I did not invoke it in the old days; I
guarded it lest it be used against me. At last it was stolen, and in the hands of a feathered
shaman of the barbarians it defeated all my mighty sorcery. Then it vanished, and I was poisoned
by the jealous priests of Stygia before I could learn where it was hidden."
"It was hidden in a cavern below the temple of Mitra, in Taran-tia," said Orastes. "By
devious ways I discovered this, after I had located your remains in Set's subterranean temple in
Stygia.
"Zamorian thieves, partly protected by spells I learned from sources better left unmentioned,
stole your mummy-case from under the very talons of those which guarded it in the dark, and by
camel-caravan and galley and ox-wagon it came at last to this city.
"Those same thieves - or rather those of them who still lived after their frightful quest -
stole the Heart of Ahriman from its haunted cavern below the temple of Mitra, and all the skill of
men and the spells of sorcerers nearly failed. One man of them lived long enough to reach me and
give the jewel into my hands, before he died slavering and gibbering of what he had seen in that
accursed crypt. The thieves of Zamora are the most faithful of men to their trust. Even with my
conjurements, none but them could have stolen the Heart from where it has lain in demon-guarded
darkness since the fall of Acheron, three thousand years ago."
Xaltotun lifted his lion-like head and stared far off into space, as if plumbing the lost
centuries.
"Three thousand years!" he muttered. "Set! Tell me what has chanced in the world."
"The barbarians who overthrew Acheron set up new kingdoms," quoted Orastes. "Where the empire
had stretched now rose realms called Aquilonia, and Nemedia, and Argos, from the tribes that
founded them. The older kingdoms of Ophir, Corinthia and western Koth, which had been subject to
the kings of Acheron, regained their independence with the fall of the empire."
"And what of the people of Acheron?" demanded Orastes. "When I fled into Stygia, Python was
in ruins, and all the great, purple-towered cities of Acheron fouled with blood and trampled by
the sandals of the barbarians."
"In the hills small groups of folk still boast descent from Acheron," answered Orastes. "For
the rest, the tide of my barbarian ancestors rolled over them and wiped them out. They - my
ancestors - had suffered much from the kings of Acheron."
A grim and terrible smile curled the Pythonian's lips.
"Aye! Many a barbarian, both man and woman, died screaming on the altar under this hand. I
have seen their heads piled to make a pyramid in the great square in Python when the kings
returned from the west with their spoils and naked captives."
"Aye. And when the day of reckoning came, the sword was not spared. So Acheron ceased to be,
and purple-towered Python became a memory of forgotten days. But the younger kingdoms rose on the
imperial ruins and waxed great. And now we have brought you back to aid us to rule these kingdoms,
which, if less strange and wonderful than Acheron of old, are yet rich and powerful, well worth
fighting for. Look!" Orastes unrolled before the stranger a map drawn cunningly on vellum.
Xaltotun regarded it, and then shook his head, baffled.
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"The very outlines of the land are changed. It is like some familiar thing seen in a dream,
fantastically distorted."
"Howbeit," answered Orastes, tracing with his forefinger, "here is Belverus, the capital of
Nemedia, in which we now are. Here run the boundaries of the land of Nemedia. To the south and
southeast are Ophir and Corinthia, to the east Brythunia, to the west Aquilonia."
"It is the map of a world I do not know," said Xaltotun softly, but Orastes did not miss the
lurid fire of hate that flickered in his dark eyes.
"It is a map you shall help us change," answered Orastes. "It is our desire first to set
Tarascus on the throne of Nemedia. We wish to accomplish this without strife, and in such a way
that no suspicion will rest on Tarascus. We do not wish the land to be torn by civil wars, but to
reserve all our power for the conquest of Aquilonia.
"Should King Nimed and his sons die naturally, in a plague for instance, Tarascus would mount
the throne as the next heir, peacefully and unopposed."
Xaltotun nodded, without replying, and Orastes continued.
"The other task will be more difficult. We cannot set Valerius on the Aquilonian throne
without a war, and that kingdom is a formidable foe. Its people are a hardy, war-like race,
toughened by continual wars with the Picts, Zingarians and Cimmerians. For five hundred years
Aquilonia and Nemedia have intermittently waged war, and the ultimate advantage has always lain
with the Aquilonians.
"Their present king is the most renowned warrior among the western nations. He is an
outlander, an adventurer who seized the crown by force during a time of civil strife, strangling
King Namedides with his own hands, upon the very throne. His name is Conan, and no man can stand
before him in battle.
"Valerius is now the rightful heir of the throne. He had been driven into exile by his royal
kinsman, Namedides, and has been away from his native realm for years, but he is of the blood of
the old dynasty, and many of the barons would secretly hail the overthrow of Conan, who is a
nobody without royal or even noble blood. But the common people are loyal to him, and the nobility
of the outlying provinces. Yet if his forces were overthrown in the battle that must first take
place, and Conan himself slain, I think it would not be difficult to put Valerius on the throne.
Indeed, with Conan slain, the only center of the government would be gone. He is not part of a
dynasty, but only a lone adventurer."
"I wish that I might see this king," mused Xaltotun, glancing toward a silvery mirror which
formed one of the panels of the wall. This mirror cast no reflection, but Xaltotun's expression
showed that he understood its purpose, and Orastes nodded with the pride a good craftsman takes in
the recognition of his accomplishments by a master of his craft.
"I will try to show him to you," he said. And seating himself before the mirror, he gazed
hypnotically into its depths, where presently a dim shadow began to take shape.
It was uncanny, but those watching knew it was no more than the reflected image of Orastes'
thought, embodied in that mirror as a wizard's thoughts are embodied in a magic crystal. It
floated hazily, then leaped into startling clarity - a tall man, mightily shouldered and deep of
chest, with a massive corded neck and heavily muscled limbs. He was clad in silk and velvet, with
the royal lions of Aquilonia worked in gold upon his rich jupon, and the crown of Aquilonia shone
on his square-cut black mane; but the great sword at his side seemed more natural to him than the
regal accouterments. His brow was low and broad, his eyes a volcanic blue that smoldered as if
with some inner fire. His dark, scarred, almost sinister face was that of a fighting-man, and his
velvet garments could not conceal the hard, dangerous lines of his limbs.
"That man is no Hyborian!" exclaimed Xaltotun.
"No; he is a Cimmerian, one of those wild tribesmen who dwell in the gray hills of the
north."
"I fought his ancestors of old," muttered Xaltotun. "Not even the kings of Acheron could
conquer them."
"They still remain a terror to the nations of the south," answered Orastes. "He is a true son
of that savage race, and has proved himself, thus far, unconquerable."
Xaltotun did not reply; he sat staring down at the pool of living fire that shimmered in his
hand. Outside, the hound howled again, long and shudderingly.
2. THE BLACK WIND BLOWS
THE YEAR OF THE DRAGON had birth in war and pestilence and unrest. The black plague stalked
through the streets of Belverus, striking down the merchant in his stall, the serf in his kennel,
the knight at his banquet board. Before it the arts of the leeches were helpless. Men said it had
been sent from hell as punishment for the sins of pride and lust. It was swift and deadly as the
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stroke of an adder. The victim's body turned purple and then black, and within a few minutes he
sank down dying, and the stench of his own putrefaction was in his nostrils even before death
wrenched his soul from his rotting body. A hot, roaring wind blew incessantly from the south, and
the crops withered in the fields, the cattle sank and died in their tracks.
Men cried out on Mitra, and muttered against the king; for somehow, throughout the kingdom,
the word was whispered that the king was secretly addicted to loathsome practises and foul
debauches in the seclusion of his nighted palace. And then in that palace death stalked grinning
on feet about which swirled the monstrous vapors of the plague. In one night the king died with
his three sons, and the drums that thundered their dirge drowned the grim and ominous bells that
rang from the carts that lumbered through the streets gathering up the rotting dead.
That night, just before dawn, the hot wind that had blown for weeks ceased to rustle evilly
through the silken window curtains. Out of the north rose a great wind that roared among the
towers, and there was cataclysmic thunder, and blinding sheets of lightning, and driving rain. But
the dawn shone clean and green and clear; the scorched ground veiled itself in grass, the thirsty
crops sprang up anew, and the plague was gone - its miasma swept clean out of the land by the
mighty wind.
Men said the gods were satisfied because the evil king and his spawn were slain, and when his
young brother Tarascus was crowned in the great coronation hall, the populace cheered until the
towers rocked, acclaiming the monarch on whom the gods smiled.
Such a wave of enthusiasm and rejoicing as swept the land is frequently the signal for a war
of conquest. So no one was surprized when it was announced that King Tarascus had declared the
truce made by the late king with their western neighbors void, and was gathering his hosts to
invade Aquilonia. His reason was candid; his motives, loudly proclaimed, gilded his actions with
something of the glamor of a crusade. He espoused the cause of Valerius, "rightful heir to the
throne"; he came, he proclaimed, not as an enemy of Aquilonia, but as a friend, to free the people
from the tyranny of a usurper and a foreigner.
If there were cynical smiles in certain quarters, and whispers concerning the king's good
friend Amalric, whose vast personal wealth seemed to be flowing into the rather depleted royal
treasury, they were unheeded in the general wave of fervor and zeal of Tarascus's popularity. If
any shrewd individuals suspected that Amalric was the real ruler of Nemedia, behind the scenes,
they were careful not to voice such heresy. And the war went forward with enthusiasm.
The king and his allies moved westward at the head of fifty thousand men - knights in shining
armor with their pennons streaming above their helmets, pikemen in steel caps and brigandines,
crossbowmen in leather jerkins. They crossed the border, took a frontier castle and burned three
mountain villages, and then, in the valley of the Valkia, ten miles west of the boundary line,
they met the hosts of Conan, king of Aquilonia - forty-five thousand knights, archers and men-at-
arms, the flower of Aquilonian strength and chivalry. Only the knights of Poitain, under Prospero,
had not yet arrived, for they had far to ride up from the southwestern comer of the kingdom.
Tarascus had struck without warning. His invasion had come on the heels of his proclamation,
without formal declaration of war.
The two hosts confronted each other across a wide, shallow valley, with rugged cliffs, and a
shallow stream winding through masses of reeds and willows down the middle of the vale. The camp-
followers of both hosts came down to this stream for water, and shouted insults and hurled stones
across at one another. The last glints of the sun shone on the golden banner of Nemedia with the
scarlet dragon, unfurled in the breeze above the pavilion of King Tarascus on an eminence near the
eastern cliffs. But the shadow of the western cliffs fell like a vast purple pall across the tents
and the army of Aquilonia, and upon the black banner with its golden lion that floated above King
Conan's pavilion.
All night the fires flared the length of the valley, and the wind brought the call of
trumpets, the clangor of arms, and the sharp challenges of the sentries who paced their horses
along either edge of the willow-grown stream.
It was in the darkness before dawn that King Oman stirred on his couch, which was no more
than a pile of silks and furs thrown on a dais, and awakened. He started up, crying out sharply
and clutching at his sword. Pallantides, his commander, rushing in at the cry, saw his king
sitting upright, his hand on his hilt, and perspiration dripping from his strangely pale face.
"Your Majesty!" exclaimed Pallantides. "Is aught amiss?"
"What of the camp?" demanded Conan. "Are the guards out?"
"Five hundred horsemen patrol the stream, Your Majesty," answered the general. "The Nemedians
have not offered to move against us in the night. They wait for dawn, even as we."
"By Crom," muttered Conan. "I awoke with a feeling that doom was creeping on me in the
night."
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He stared up at the great golden lamp which shed a soft glow over the velvet hangings and
carpets of the great tent. They were alone; not even a slave or a page slept on the carpeted
floor; but Conan's eyes blazed as they were wont to blaze in the teeth of great peril, and the
sword quivered in his hand. Pallantides watched him uneasily. Conan seemed to be listening.
"Listen!" hissed the king. "Did you hear it? A furtive step!"
"Seven knights guard your tent, Your Majesty," said Pallantides. "None could approach it
unchallenged."
"Not outside," growled Conan. "It seemed to sound inside the tent."
Pallantides cast a swift, startled look around. The velvet hangings merged with shadows in
the comers, but if there had been anyone in the pavilion besides themselves, the general would
have seen him. Again he shook his head.
"There is no one here, sure. You sleep in the midst of your host."
"I have seen death strike a king in the midst of thousands," muttered Conan. "Something that
walks on invisible feet and is not seen!"
"Perhaps you were dreaming. Your Majesty," said Pallantides, somewhat perturbed.
"So I was," grunted Conan. "A devilish dream it was, too. I trod again all the long, weary
roads I traveled on my way to the kingship."
He fell silent, and Pallantides stared at him unspeaking. The. king was an enigma to the
general, as to most of his civilized subjects. Pallantides knew that Conan had walked many strange
roads in his wild, eventful life, and had been many things before a twist of Fate set him on the
throne of Aquilonia.
"I saw again in the battlefield whereon I was born," said Conan, resting his chin moodily on
a massive fist. "I saw myself in a pantherskin loin-clout, throwing my spear at the the mountain
beasts. I was a mercenary swordsman again, a het-man of the kozaki who dwell along the Zaporoska
River, a corsair looting the coasts of Kush, a pirate of the Barachan Isles, a chief of the
Himelian hillmen. All these things I've been, and of all these things I dreamed; all the shapes
that have been I passed like an endless procession, and their feet beat out a dirge in the
sounding dust.
"But throughout my dreams moved strange, veiled figures and ghostly shadows, and a far-away
voice mocked me. And toward the last I seemed to see myself lying on this dais in my tent, and a
shape bent over me, robed and hooded. I lay unable to move, and then the hood fell away and a
moldering skull grinned down at me. Then it was that I awoke."
"This is an evil dream. Your Majesty," said Pallantides, suppressing a shudder. "But no
more."
Conan shook his head, more in doubt than in denial. He came of a barbaric race, and the
superstitions and instincts of his heritage lurked close beneath the surface of his consciousness.
"I've dreamed many evil dreams," he said, "and most of them were meaningless. But by Crom,
this was not like most dreams! I wish this battle were fought and won, for I've had a grisly
premonition ever since King Nimed died in the black plague. Why did it cease when he died?"
"Men say he sinned!"
"Men are fools, as always," grunted Conan. "If the plague struck all who sinned, then by Crom
there wouldn't be enough left to count the living! Why should the gods - who the priests tell me
are just - slay five hundred peasants and merchants and nobles before they slew the king, if the
whole pestilence were aimed at him? Were the gods smiting blindly, like swordsmen in a fog? By
Mitra, if I aimed my strokes no straighter, Aquilonia would have 'had a new king long ago.
"No! The black plague's no common pestilence. It lurks in Stygian tombs, and is called forth
into being only by wizards. I was a swordsman in Prince Almuric's army that invaded Stygia, and of
his thirty thousand, fifteen thousand perished by Stygian arrows, and the rest by the black plague
that rolled on us like a wind out of the south. I was the only man who lived."
"Yet only five hundred died in Nemedia," argued Pallantides.
"Whoever called it into being knew how to cut it short at will," answered Conan. "So I know
there was something planned and diabolical about it. Someone called it forth, someone banished it
when the work was completed - when Tarascus was safe on the throne and being hailed as the
deliverer of the people from the wrath of the gods. By Crom, I sense a black, subtle brain behind
all this. What of this stranger who men say gives counsel to Tarascus?"
"He wears a veil," answered Pallantides; "they say he is a foreigner; a stranger from
Stygia."
"A stranger from Stygia!" repeated Conan scowling. "A stranger from hell, more like! - Ha!
What is that?"
"The trumpets of the Nemedians!" exclaimed Pallantides. "And hark, how our own blare upon
their heels! Dawn is breaking, and the captains are marshaling the hosts for the onset! Mitra be
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with them, for many will not see the sun go down behind the crags."
"Send my squires to me!" exclaimed Conan, rising with alacrity and casting off his velvet
night-garment; he seemed to have forgotten his forebodings at the prospect of action. "Go to the
captains and see that all is in readiness. I will be with you as soon as I don my armor."
Many of Conan's ways were inexplicable to the civilized people he ruled, and one of them was
his insistence on sleeping alone in his chamber or tent. Pallantides hastened from the pavilion,
clanking in the armor he had donned at midnight after a few hours' sleep. He cast a swift glance
over the camp, which was beginning to swarm with activity, mail clinking and men moving about
dimly in the uncertain light, among the long lines of tents. Stars still glimmered palely in the
western sky, but long pink streamers stretched along the eastern horizon, and against them the
dragon banner of Nemedia flung out its billowing silken folds.
Pallantides turned toward a smaller tent near by, where slept the royal squires. These were
tumbling out already, roused by the trumpets. And as Pallantides called to them to hasten, he was
frozen speechless by a deep fierce shout and the impact of a heavy blow inside the king's tent,
followed by a heart-stopping crash of a falling body. There sounded a low laugh that turned the
general's blood to ice.
Echoing the cry, Pallantides wheeled and rushed back into the pavilion. He cried out again as
he saw Conan's powerful frame stretched out on the carpet. The king's great two-handed sword lay
near his hand, and a shattered tent-pole seemed to show where his sword had fallen. Pallantides'
sword was out, and he glared about the tent, but nothing met his gaze. Save for the king and
himself it was empty, as it had been when he left it.
"Your Majesty!" Pallantides threw himself on his knee beside the fallen giant.
Conan's eyes were open; they blazed up at him with full intelligence and recognition. His
lips writhed, but no sound came forth. He seemed unable to move.
Voices sounded without. Pallantides rose swiftly and stepped to the door. The royal squires
and one of the knights who guarded the tent stood there. "We heard a sound within," said the
knight apologetically. "Is all well with the king?"
Pallantides regarded him searchingly.
"None has entered or left the pavilion this night?"
"None save yourself, my lord," answered the knight, and Pallantides could not doubt his
honesty.
"The king stumbled and dropped his sword," said Pallantides briefly. "Return to your post."
As the knight turned away, the general covertly motioned to the five royal squires, and when
they had followed him in, he drew the flap closely. They turned pale at the sight of the king
stretched upon the carpet, but Pallantides' quick gesture checked their exclamations.
The general bent over him agan, and again Conan made an effort to speak. The veins in his
temples and the cords in his neck swelled with his efforts, and he lifted his head clear off the
ground. Voice came at last, mumbling and half intelligible.
"The thing - the thing in the corner!"
Pallantides lifted his head and looked fearfully about him. He saw the pale faces of the
squires in the lamplight, the velvet shadows that lurked along the walls of the pavilion. That was
all.
"There is nothing here. Your Majesty," he said.
"It was there, in the comer," muttered the king, tossing his lion-maned head from side to
side in his efforts to rise. "A man - at least he looked like a man - wrapped in rags like a
mummy's bandages, with a moldering cloak drawn about him, and a hood. All I could see was his
eyes, as he crouched there in the shadows. I thought he was a shadow himself, until I saw his
eyes. They were like black jewels.
"I made at him and swung my sword, but I missed him clean - how, Crom knows - and splintered
that pole instead. He caught my wrist as I staggered off balance, and his fingers burned like hot
iron. All the strength went out of me, and the floor rose and struck me like a club. Then he was
gone, and I was down, and - curse him! - I can't move! I'm paralyzed!"
Pallantides lifted the giant's hand, and his flesh crawled. On the king's wrist showed the
blue marks of long, lean fingers. What hand could grip so hard as to leave its print on that thick
wrist? Pallantides remembered that low laugh he had heard as he rushed into the tent, and cold
perspiration beaded his skin. It had not been Conan who laughed.
"This is a thing diabolical!" whispered a trembling squire. "Men say the children of darkness
war for Tarascus!"
"Be silent!" ordered Pallantides sternly.
Outside, the dawn was dimming the stars. A light wind sprang up from the peaks, and brought
the fanfare of a thousand trumpets. At the sound a convulsive shudder ran through the king's
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mighty form. Again the veins in his temples knotted as he strove to break the invisible shackles
which crushed him down.
"Put my harness on me and tie me into my saddle," he whispered. "I'll lead the charge yet!"
Pallantides shook his head, and a squire plucked his skirt.
"My lord, we are lost if the host learns the king has been smitten! Only he could have led us
to victory this day."
"Help me lift him on the dais," answered the general.
They obeyed, and laid the helpless giant on the furs, and spread a silken cloak over him.
Pallantides turned to the five squires and searched their pale faces long before he spoke.
"Our lips must be sealed for ever as to what happens in this tent," he said at last. "The
kingdom of Aquilonia depends upon it. One of you go and fetch me the officer Valannus, who is a
captain of the Pellian spearmen."
The squire indicated bowed and hastened from the tent, and Pallantides stood staring down at
the stricken king, while outside trumpets blared, drums thundered, and the roar of the multitudes
rose in the growing dawn. Presently the squire returned with the officer Pallantides had named - a
tall man, broad and powerful, built much like the king. Like him, also, he had thick black hair.
But his eyes were gray and he did not resemble Conan in his features.
"The king is stricken by a strange malady," said Pallantides briefly. "A great honor is
yours; you are to wear his armor and ride at the head of the host today. None must know that it is
not the king who rides."
"It is an honor for which a man might gladly give up his life," stammered the captain,
overcome by the suggestion. "Mitra grant that I do not fail of this mighty trust!"
And while the fallen king stared with burning eyes that reflected the bitter rage and
humiliation that ate his heart, the squires stripped Valannus of mail shirt, burganet and leg-
pieces, and clad him in Conan's armor of black plate-mail, with the vizored salade, and the dark
plumes nodding over the wivern crest. Over all they put the silken surcoat with the royal lion
worked in gold upon the breast, and they girt him with a broad gold-buckled belt which supported a
jewel-hilted broad-sword in a cloth-of-gold scabbard. While they worked, trumpets clamored
outside, arms clanged, and across the river rose a deep-throated roar as squadron after squadron
swung into place.
Full-armed, Vallanus dropped to his knee and bent his plumes before the figure that lay on
the dais.
"Lord king, Mitra grant that I do not dishonor the harness I wear this day!"
"Bring me Tarascus's head and I'll make you a baron!" In the stress of his anguish Conan's
veneer of civilization had fallen from him. His eyes flamed, he ground his teeth in fury and blood-
lust, as barbaric as any tribesmen in the Crimmerian hills.
3. THE CLIFFS REEL
THE AQUILONIAN HOST was drawn up, long serried lines of pikemen and horsemen in gleaming
steel, when a giant figure in black armor emerged from the royal pavilion, and as he swung up into
the saddle of the black stallion held by four squires, a roar that shook the mountains went up
from the host. They shook their blades and thundered forth their acclaim of their warrior king -
knights in gold-chased armor, pikemen in mail coats and basinets, archers in their leather
jerkins, with their longbows in their left hand.
The host on the opposite side of the valley was in motion, trotting down the long gentle
slope toward the river; their steel shone through the mists of morning that swirled about their
horses' feet.
The Aquilonian host moved leisurely to meet them. The measured tramp of the armored horses
made the ground tremble. Banners flung out long silken folds in the morning wind; lances swayed
like a bristling forest, dipped and sank, their pennons fluttering about them.
Ten men-at-arms, grim, taciturn veterans who could hold their tongues, guarded the royal
pavilion. One squire stood in the tent, peering out through a slit in the doorway. But for the
handful in the secret, no one else in the vast host knew that it was not Conan who rode on the
great stallion at the head of the army.
The Aquilonian host had assumed the customary formation:
the strongest part was the center, composed entirely of heavily armed knights; the wings were
made up of smaller bodies of horsemen, mounted men-at-arms, mostly, supported by pikemen and
archers. The latter were Bossonians from the western marches, strongly built men of medium
stature, in leathern jackets and iron head-pieces.
The Nemedian army came on in similar formation and the two hosts moved toward the river, the
wings, in advance of the centers. In the center of the Aquilonian host the great lion banner
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streamed its billowing black folds over the steel-clad figure on the black stallion.
But on his dais in the royal pavilion Conan groaned in anguish of spirit, and cursed with
strange heathen oaths.
"The hosts move together," quoth the squire, watching from the door. "Hear the trumpets peal!
Ha! The rising sun strikes fire from lance-heads and helmets until I am dazzled. It turns the
river crimson - aye, it will be truly crimson before this day is done!
"The foe have reached the river. Now arrows fly between the hosts like stinging clouds that
hide the sun. Ha! Well loosed, bowman! The Bossonians have the better of it! Hark to them shout!"
Faintly in the ears of the king, above the din of trumpets and clanging steel, came the deep
fierce shout of the Bossonians as they drew and loosed in perfect unison.
"Their archers seek to hold ours in play while their knights ride into the river," said the
squire. "The banks are not steep; they slope to the water's edge. The knights come on, they crash
through the willows. By Mitra, the clothyard shafts find every crevice of their harness! Horses
and men go down, struggling and thrashing in the water. It is not deep, nor is the current swift,
but men are drowning there, dragged under by their armor, and trampled by the frantic horses. Now
the knights of Aquilonia advance. They ride into the water and engage the knights of Nemedia. The
water swirls about their horses' bellies and the clang of sword against sword is deafening."
"Crom!" burst in agony from Conan's lip. Life was coursing sluggishly back into his veins,
but still he could not lift his mighty frame from the dais.
"The wings close in," said the squire. "Pikemen and swordsmen fight hand to hand in the
stream, and behind them the bowmen ply their shafts.
"By Mitra, the Nemedian arbalesters are sorely harried, and the Bossonians arch their arrows
to drop amid the rear ranks. Their center gains not a foot, and their wings are pushed back up
from the stream again."
"Crom, Ymir, and Mitra!" raged Conan. "Gods and devils, could I but reach the fighting, if
but to die at the first blow!"
Outside through the long hot day the battle stormed and thundered. The valley shook to charge
and counter-charge, to the whistling of shafts, and the crash of rending shields and splintering
lances. But the hosts of Aquilonia held fast. Once they were forced back from the bank, but a
counter-charge, with the black banner flowing over the black stallion, regained the lost ground.
And like an iron rampart they held the right bank of the stream, and at last the squire gave Conan
the news that the Nemedians were falling back from the river.
"Their wings are in confusion!" he cried. "Their knights reel back from the sword-play. But
what is this? Your banner is in motion - the center sweeps into the stream! By Mitra, Valannus is
leading the host across the river!"
"Fool!" groaned Conan. "It may be a trick. He should hold his position; by dawn Prospero will
be here with the Poitanian levies."
"The knights ride into a hail of arrows!" cried the squire. "But they do not falter! They
sweep on - they have crossed! They charge up the slope! Pallantides has hurled the wings across
the river to their support! It is all he can do. The lion banner dips and staggers above the
melee.
"The knights of Nemedia make a stand. They are broken! They fall back! Their left wing is in
full flight, and our pikemen cut them down as they run! I see Valannus, riding and smiting like a
madman. He is carried beyond himself by the fighting-lust. Men no longer look to Pallantides. They
follow Valannus, deeming him Conan, as he rides with closed vizor.
"But look! There is method in his madness! He swings wide of the Nemedian front, with five
thousand knights, the pick of the army. The main host of the Nemedians is in confusion - and look!
Their flank is protected by the cliffs, but there is a defile left unguarded! It is like a great
cleft in the wall that opens again behind the Nemedian lines. By Mitra, Valannus sees and seizes
the opportunity! He has driven their wing before him, and he leads his knights toward that defile.
They swing wide of the main battle; they cut through a line of spearmen, they charge into the
defile!"
"An ambush!" cried Conan, striving to struggle upright.
"No!" shouted the squire exultantly. "The whole Nemedian host is in full sight! They have
forgotten the defile! They never expected to be pushed back that far. Oh, fool, fool, Tarascus, to
make such a blunder! Ah, I see lances and pennons pouring from the farther mouth of the defile,
beyond the Nemedian lines. They will smite those ranks from the rear and crumple them. Mitra, what
is this?"
He staggered as the walls of the tent swayed drunkenly. Afar over the thunder of the fight
rose a deep bellowing roar, indescribably ominous.
"The cliffs reel!" shrieked the squire. "Ah, gods, what is this? The river foams out of its
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channel, and the peaks are crumbling!
The ground shakes and horses and riders in armor are overthrown! The cliffs! The cliffs are
falling!"
With his words there came a grinding rumble and a thunderous concussion, and the ground
trembled. Over the roar of the battle sounded screams of mad terror.
"The cliffs have crumbled!" cried the livid squire. "They have thundered down into the defile
and crushed every living creature in it! I saw the lion banner wave an instant amid the dust and
falling stones, and then it vanished! Ha, the Nemedians shout with triumph! Well may they shout,
for the fall of the cliffs has wiped out five thousand of our bravest knights - hark!"
To Conan's ears came a vast torrent of sound, rising and rising in frenzy: "The king is dead!
The king is dead! Flee! Flee! The king is dead!"
"Liars!" panted Conan. "Dogs! Knaves! Cowards! Oh, Crom, if I could but stand - but crawl to
the river with my sword in my teeth! How, boy, do they flee?"
"Aye!" sobbed the squire. "They spur for the river; they are broken, hurled on like spume
before a storm. I see Pallantides striving to stem the torrent - he is down, and the horses
trample him! They rush into the river, knights, bowmen, pikemen, all mixed and mingled in one mad
torrent of destruction. The Nemedians are on their heels, cutting them down like corn."
"But they will make a stand on this side of the river!" cried the king. With an effort that
brought the sweat dripping from his temples, he heaved himself up on his elbows.
"Nay!" cried the squire. "They cannot! They are broken! Routed! Oh gods, that I should live
to see this day!"
Then he remembered his duty and shouted to the men-at-arms who stood stolidly watching the
flight of their comrades. "Get a horse, swiftly, and help me lift the king upon it. We dare not
bide here."
But before they could do his bidding, the first drift of the storm was upon them. Knights and
spearmen and archers fled among the tents, stumbling over ropes and baggage, and mingled with them
were Nemedian riders, who smote right and left at all alien figures. Tent-ropes were cut, fire
sprang up in a hundred places, and the plundering had already begun. The grim guardsmen about
Conan's tent died where they stood, smiting and thrusting, and over their mangled corpses beat the
hoofs of the conquerors.
But the squire had drawn the flap close, and in the confused madness of the slaughter none
realized that the pavilion held an occupant. So the flight and the pursuit swept past, and roared
away up the valley, and the squire looked out presently to see a cluster of men approaching the
royal tent with evident purpose.
"Here comes the king of Nemedia with four companions and his squire," quoth he. "He will
accept your surrender, my fair lord -"
"Surrender the devil's heart!" gritted the king.
He had forced himself up to a sitting posture. He swung his legs painfully off the dais, and
staggered upright, reeling drunkenly. The squire ran to assist him, but Conan pushed him away.
"Give me that bow!" he gritted, indicating a longbow and quiver that hung from a tent-pole.
"But Your Majesty!" cried the squire in great perturbation. "The battle is lost! It were the
part of majesty to yield with the dignity becoming one of royal blood!"
"I have no royal blood," ground Conan. "I am a barbarian and the son of a blacksmith."
Wrenching away the bow and an arrow he staggered toward the opening of the pavilion. So
formidable was his appearance, naked but for short leather breeks and sleeveless shirt, open to
reveal his great, hairy chest, with his huge limbs and his blue eyes blazing under his tangled
black mane, that the squire shrank back, more afraid of his king than of the whole Nemedian host.
Reeling on wide-braced legs Conan drunkenly tore the door-flap open and staggered out under
the canopy. The king of Nemedia and his companions had dismounted, and they halted short, staring
in wonder at the apparition confronting them.
"Here I am, you jackals!" roared the Cimmerian. "I am the king! Death to you, dog-brothers!"
He jerked the arrow to its head and loosed, and the shaft feathered itself in the breast of
the knight who stood beside Tarascus. Conan hurled the bow at the king of Nemedia.
"Curse my shaky hand! Come in and take me if you dare!"
Reeling backward on unsteady legs, he fell with his shoulders against a tent-pole, and
propped upright, he lifted his great sword with both hands.
"By Mitra, it is the king!" swore Tarascus. He cast a swift look about him, and laughed.
"That other was a jackal in his harness! In, dogs, and take his head!"
The three soldiers - men-at-arms wearing the emblem of the royal guards - rushed at the king,
and one felled the squire with a blow of a mace. The other two fared less well. As the fast rushed
in, lifting his sword, Conan met him with a sweeping stroke that severed mail-links like cloth,
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