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Conan The Avenger by Robert E. Howard, Bjorn Nyberg and L. Sprague
deCamp
==================================================================

Contents

Introduction, by L. Sprague de Camp 8

The Return of Conan, by Bjorn Nyberg and L. Sprague de Camp 15

The Hyborian Age, Part 2, by Robert E. Howard 174

Pages 6 and 7: A map of the world of Conan in the Hyborian Age, based
upon notes and sketches by Robert E. Howard and upon previous maps by
P. Schuyler Miller, John D. Clark, David Kyle, and L. Sprague deCamp,
with a map of Europe and adjacent regions superimposed for reference.

[IMAGE][IMAGE]

Introduction

Conan the Cimmerian is the hero of over thirty stories by Robert E.
Howard (1906-36 of Cross Plains, Texas), by my colleagues Bjorn Nyberg
and Lin Carter, and by myself. Nyberg, Carter, and I have completed a
number of unfinished Howard manuscripts and have written several
pastiches, based upon hints in Howard's notes and letters, to fill the
gaps in the saga.

The Conan stories are of a kind called "heroic fantasy" or
"sword-and-sorcery fiction." Such a story is a tale of swashbuckling
adventure with a strong supernatural element, laid in an imaginary
world—perhaps this planet as it is once supposed to have been, or as it
will be some day, or some other world or dimension—where magic works
and modern science and technology are unknown. Here all men are mighty,
all women beautiful, all problems simple, and all life adventurous. The
genre was developed by William Morris in the late nineteenth century
and by Lord Dunsany and Eric R. Edison in the early twentieth. Notable
recent examples are J. R. R. Tolkien's trilogy, The Lord of the Rings;
Fletcher Pratt's The Well of the Unicorn; and Fritz Leiber's stories of
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

During the last decade of his short life (1927-36), Howard turned out a
large volume of what was then called "pulp fiction"—sport, detective,
western, historical, adventure, weird, and ghost stories, besides his
poetry and his many fantasies. At the age of thirty, he ended a
promising literary career by suicide.

Howard wrote several series of heroic fantasies, most of them published
in Weird Tales. Of these, the most popular as well as the longest
single series has been the Conan stories.

Howard was a natural storyteller, whose narratives are unsurpassed for
vivid, gripping, headlong action. His heroes—King Kull, Conan. Bran Mak
Morn, Solomon Kane—are larger than life: men of mighty thews, hot
passions, and indomitable will, who dominate the tales through which
they stride. Withal, as I have learned from editing his works, Howard
had an excellent prose style: precise, straightforward, simple,
unobtrusive, and highly readable. He had the rare knack of giving the
impression of a highly colorful scene without actually using many
adjectives to describe it.

Eighteen Conan stories were published during Howard's lifetime. Eight
others, from complete manuscripts to mere fragments, have been found
among his papers since 1950. Late in 1951, I discovered a cache of
Howard manuscripts in the apartment of the then literary agent for
Howard's estate. These included a few unpublished Conan stories, which
I edited for publication.

The incomplete, open-ended nature of the Conan saga presented an
irresistible temptation to add to it as Howard himself might in time
have done had he lived. Besides editing the unpublished Conan stories,
I undertook, in the early 1950s, to rewrite the manuscripts of four
other unpublished Howard adventure stories to convert them into Conan
stories. This did not prove difficult, since the heroes were much like
Conan, and I had merely to delete anachronisms and introduce a
supernatural element.

Meanwhile a citizen and resident of Sweden, Bjorn Nyberg, took a
further step. Introduced to Conan by his friends Ostlund and Chapman,
he had been hooked, as so many others have been, in reading of the
deeds of the mighty Cimmerian. Nyberg had the courage to sit down and
write a whole novel about Conan, in a language that was not his mother
tongue. This endeavor resulted in a collaboration between Nyberg and
myself, the outcome of which was "The Return of Conan" herein.

Howard's Conan stories are laid about twelve thousand years ago in the
imaginary Hyborian Age, eight thousand years after the sinking of
Atlantis and seven thousand years before the beginnings of recorded
history. A gigantic barbarian adventurer from the backward northern
land of Cimmeria, Conan arrived as a youth in the kingdom of Zamora
(see map) and for several years mad°. a precarious living there and in
neighboring lands as a thief. After a gore-spattered career as
mercenary soldier, pirate, treasure hunter, and chief of various
barbarian tribes, he became a scout on the western frontier of
Aquilonia, fighting the savage Picts. After rising to command in the
Aquilonian army and defeating a Pictish invasion, Conan was lured back
to Tarantia, the capital, and imprisoned by the jealous King Numedides.
Escaping, he was chosen to lead a revolution against the degenerate
king. Conan slew Numedides and took the throne for his own, to become
ruler of the mightiest Hyborian Kingdom.

Conan soon found that being king was no bed of houris. A cabal of
discontented nobles almost succeeded in assassinating him. By a ruse,
the kings of Koth and Ophir trapped and imprisoned him, but he escaped
in time to turn the tables on these would-be conquerors of Aquilonia.

Other enemies conjured an ancient wizard back from the grave and, with
the help of this living-dead sorcerer, broke Aquilonia's armies and
drove Conan into exile. But again he returned to confound and destroy
his fees.

In the process, Conan acquired a queen, with whom he settled down
happily, dismissing his harem of concubines. For about a year, his
reign was more or less peaceful. But then another foe gathered his
forces to strike…

And here the present story begins. At this time, Conan was about
forty-six or forty-seven years old, showing few signs of age save the
scars that crisscrossed his mighty frame and a more cautious,
deliberate approach to adventure and revelry than had been the case in
his riotous youth.

When Howard began writing the Conan stories in 1932, he gave serious
thought to the setting—his "Hyborian Age" civilization. To fix it
firmly in his own mind, he wrote an essay in which he set forth the
pseudo-history of prehistoric times that he used as a background for
the stories. In the last year of his life, he submitted this essay for
publication in a fan magazine, The Phantagraph, with an apologetic note
explaining that this was purely a fictional device to enable him to
make the Conan stories internally consistent. It was not to be taken
seriously as setting forth his true beliefs about the prehistory of
mankind.

The first half of The Hyborian Age was published in The Phantagraph
before that periodical ceased publication. The whole essay was then
published in 1938 in a mimeographed booklet, The Hyborian Age, put out
by a group of science-fiction fans. The first half, which carries this
pseudo-history down to the time of Conan, was re-printed in Conan,
chronologically the first volume of the present series. The second
half, which begins after Conan's time and continues down to the
beginnings of recorded history, is reproduced here.

L. Sprague de Camp
THE RETURN OF CONAN
by Bjorn Nyberg and L. Sprague de Camp

For two months after the battle of Tanasul, which destroyed the
Nemedian conquerors of Aquilonia and their sorcerous ally Xaltotun,
Conan is kept furiously busy by the tasks of reorganizing his kingdom,
repairing the damage done by the invaders, and collecting the promised
indemnity from Nemedia.

Then Conan prepares to visit Nemedia, to return the captured King
Tarascus to his homeland and to fetch back to Aquilonia the girl
Zenobia, who saved his life when he was imprisoned in the dungeons of
the palace at the Nemedian capital of Belverus. Before his departure,
he tactfully dismisses his harem of shapely concubines. With his usual
chivalry towards women, he makes a point of finding them husbands— or
at least other protectors—before bidding them farewell.

The journey to and from Belverus is a triumphal procession without unit
ward incident. Back in Tarantia, Conan celebrates his wedding to
Zenobia with all the pomp of which a rich and ancient kingdom is
capable. Between the pressure of state business and his absorption in
Zenobia, the next few months puss swiftly for Conan. Those who know him
best are a little surprised to see the king, in middle age, turn
monogamous and even uxorious; but the moody, mettlesome Cimmerian has
always been unpredictable. Then, however…

—"Know furthermore, O Prince, that Conan the barbarian thus won at last
to great fame and high estate as king of Aquilonia, the starry gem of
the green West with its gallant nobles, sturdy warriors, intrepid
frontiersmen, and beauteous damsels. But dark and terrible forces were
at work to rock his throne and wreck his fortune. For, on the night of
the feast at Tarantia to celebrate the year of peace that followed the
overthrow of the conspiracy of Valerius, Tarascus, and Amulric, and the
destruction of the wizard Xaltotun, Conan's lately-wedded queen Zenobia
was snatched from the palace by a winged shape out of nightmare and
borne off eastward. Thinking it better to travel swiftly, namelessly,
and alone than to take an army with him, Conan set out in search of his
stolen mate…"

THE NEMEDIAN CHRONICLES.


Prologue
--------

The chamber was murky. Long, flaming tapers, set in iron brackets in
the walls of stone, dispelled the gloom but little. It was difficult to
discern the robed and hooded figure at the unadorned table in the
middle of the floor. It was even harder to see the outlines of another
form, huddled in the darkness, seemingly engaged in muted speech with
the first one.

There was a gust of wind through the room, like the sweep of giant
wings. The tapers flickered madly, and the figure at the table was
suddenly alone.


1. Wings of Darkness
--------------------

The forbidding walls of the royal palace at Tarantia rose in jagged
silhouette against the darkening sky. Watchmen strode along the
battlements, halberd on shoulder and sword on hip, but their vigilance
was relaxed. Their eyes strayed often toward the entrance of the
palace. Over the lowered drawbridge and under the raised portcullis,
gay-clad knights and nobles entered with their ladies.

The sharp eye could discern Prospero, the king's general and right-hand
man, arrayed in crimson velvet with golden Poitainian leopards worked
upon his jupon. His long legs measured his strides in high boots of the
finest Kordavan leather. There went Pallantides, commander of the Black
Dragons, in light armor later to be doffed; Trocero, hereditary count
of Poitain, his slim waist and erect carriage belying the silver in his
hair; the counts of Manara and Couthen, the barons of Lor and Imirus
and many more. All went in with fair ladies in rich silks and satins,
while their retainers removed the litters and gilded chariots in which
their masters had been conveyed.

Peace reigned in Aquilonia. It had prevailed for more than a year since
the last attempt of the king of Nemedia, aided by the revived
Acheronian wizard Xaltotun, to wrest the kingdom from Conan. Years
before, in his turn, Conan had torn the crown from the bloody head of
the tyrant Numedides, whom he slew on the very throne.

But the Nemedian scheme had failed. Heavy damages were exacted, and the
withered mummy of the dead Xaltotun was borne away on his mysterious
chariot to haunts dark and unknown. King Conan's power waxed stronger
and stronger, the more his people became aware of the wisdom and
justice of his rule. The only disorders were the intermittent raids of
the savage Picts on the western border. These, however, were held in
check by seasoned troops on the Thunder River.

This was a night of feasting. Torches flared in rows about the gate;
colorful carpets from Turan covered the coarse flagstones. Gaily-clad
servants flitted about, guided and spurred by shouts from the
major-domos. This was the night when King Conan gave a royal ball in
honor of his queen, Zenobia, one-time slave girl in the Nemedian
Icing's seraglio. She had aided Conan to escape when he lay a prisoner
in the dungeons of Belverus and had been rewarded by the highest honor
that could be conferred on a woman of the western lands. She became
queen of Aquilonia, the mightiest kingdom west of Turan.

Well could the glittering throng of guests observe the ardent love that
bound the royal sovereigns to each other. It was apparent in gestures,
mannerisms, and speech, though Conan's barbarian blood probably urged
him to do away with civilized dissimulation and crush his lovely queen
in his strong arms. Instead, he stood at arm's length from her,
answering bows and curtseys with an ease which seemed natural but was
really newly acquired.

Ever and anon, though, the king's eyes strayed toward the far wall,
where hung an array of splendid weapons—swords, spears, axes, maces,
and javelins. Much as the king loved to see his people at pence, no
less could he curb the urge of his barbarian heritage to see red blood
flow and to feel the crunch of an enemy's armor and bones beneath the
edge of his heavy broadsword. But now it was time for peaceful
pursuits. Conan let his eyes wander back to linger briefly on the fair
countess curtseying before him.

Fair were the ladies, and a judge would be sorely put to decide a
contest for beauty—at least, if he were choosing among the guests. For,
in truth, the queen was more beautiful than anyone. The perfection of
her form was outlined by the clinging, low-necked gown she wore, with
only a silver circlet to confine the foamy mass of her wavy black hair.
Moreover, her perfectly-molded face radiated such innate nobility and
kindliness as were seldom seen in those times.

However, if the king was counted fortunate by his fellow men, no less
was Queen Zenobia envied by the ladies. Conan cut an imposing figure in
his simple black tunic, with legs clothed in black hose and feet booted
in soft, black leather. The golden lion of Aquilonia blazed upon his
breast. Otherwise his sole ornament was the slender golden circle on
his square-cut black mane. Looking at the great spread of his massive
shoulders, his lean waist and hips, and his legs muscled with a tiger's
deadly power, one could see that this was no man born to civilization.

But Conan's most arresting features were the smoldering blue eyes in
the dark, scarred face, inscrutable, with depths no one could plumb.
Those same eyes had seen things undreamed of by this gay throng, had
looked on battlefields strewn with mangled corpses, decks running red
with blood, barbarous executions, and secret rites at the altars of
monstrous deities. His powerful hands had swung the western broadsword,
the Zuagir tulwar, the Zhaibar knife, the Turanian yataghan, and the
forester's ax with the same devastating skill and power against men of
all races and against inhuman beings from dark and nameless realms. The
veneer of civilization lay thin over his barbaric soul.

The ball began. King Conan opened it with his queen in the first
complicated steps of the Aquilonian minuet. Though he was no expert at
the more intricate figures of the dance, the primordial instincts of
the barbarian took to the rhythm of the melody with an ease and
smoothness that enhanced the results of hurried lessons given during
the past week by the court's sweating master of ceremonies. Everyone in
the glittering throng followed suit. Soon couples milled colorfully on
the mosaic floor.

Thick candles cast a warm, soft light over the hall. Nobody noticed the
silent draft that began to waft through the air, causing the flames of
one chandelier to tremble and flicker. Nobody noticed, either, the
burning eyes that peered from a window niche, sweeping an avid glance
over the crowd. Their glare fastened upon the slim, silver-sheathed
figure in the king's arms. Only the burning eyes were to be seen, but a
soft, gloating chuckle whispered through the darkness. Then the eyes
disappeared and the casement closed.

The great bronze gong at the end of the hall boomed, announcing a
pause. The guests, hot from dancing, sat down to refresh themselves
with iced wine and Turanian sherbet.

"Conan! I want a nip of fresh air; all this dancing has made me hot."
The queen flung the words over her shoulder as she made her way toward
the now open doors to the broad balcony.

The king started to follow but was detained by a score of ladies
begging him to tell them of his early life. Was it true that he had
been a chieftain of wild hordes in half-fabulous Ghulistan in the
Himelian Mountains? Was it he who by a daring stroke had saved the
kingdom of Khauran from the Shemite plunderers of the mercenary captain
Constantius? Had he once been a pirate?

Questions like these flew like hailstones. Conan answered them curtly
or evasively. His barbarian instincts made him restive. They had
prompted him to accompany Zenobia out upon the balcony to guard her,
even though no danger could threaten his beloved spouse here, in his
capital, in his own castle, surrounded by friends and loyal soldiers.

Still he felt uneasy. There was a feeling in his blood of impending
danger and doom. Trusting his animal instincts, he began to make his
way toward the doors of the balcony despite the beseeching wails of his
lovely audience.

Elbowing his way forward a bit more brusquely than became a king, Conan
caught sight of the silver figure of Zenobia. Her back was toward him,
her hair moving in the soft, cool breeze. He grunted with relief. For
once, it seemed, his senses had deluded him. Nonetheless he continued
forward.

Suddenly, the slim form of the queen was shrouded in night. A black
pall fell over the company. Secret words were mumbled into
handkerchiefs by painted lips and bearded mouths. An icy breath of doom
swept through the hall. The ground trembled with thunder. The queen
screamed.

When the darkness fell, Conan sprang like a panther for the balcony
doors, upsetting noble guests and wine-laden tables. Another cry was
heard. The sound dwindled, as if Zenobia were being carried away. The
king reached the balcony to find it empty. Conan's glance sought the
unscalable sides of the palace and saw nothing. Then he lifted his
gaze. There, limned against the moonlit sky, he saw a fantastic shape,
a horrible anthropomorphic nightmare, ' clasping the silvery glint that
was his beloved wife. Carried along by powerful beats of its batlike
wings, the monster shrank to a dot on the eastern horizon. Conan stood
for a moment, a statue of black steel. Only his eyes seemed alive with
icy rage and terrible despair. When he turned his gaze to the audience,
they shrank back as if he had become the very monster that had carried
off his queen. Without a word, he went out of the hall, scattering
people, tables, and chairs heedlessly before him. At the exit he paused
before the weapon-laden wall and tore down a plain but heavy
broadsword, which had served him well in many campaigns. As he lifted
the blade, he spoke words thick with emotion:

"From this hour, I am no longer your king until I have returned with my
stolen queen. If I cannot defend my own mate, I am not fit to rule.
But, by Crom, I will seek out this robber and wreak vengeance upon him,
be he protected by all the armed hosts in the world!"

Then the king opened his mouth to voice a weird and terrible call that
echoed shudderingly through the hall. It rang like the cry of doomed
souls. The eerie horror of its tones made many a face turn ashen.

The king was gone.

Prospero hurried after Conan. Trocero paused, surveying all, before he,
too, followed.

A trembling Poitainian countess voiced the question that pressed the
minds of many guests. "What was that terrible shout? It froze the blood
in my veins. I felt as if a frightful doom were upon me. The avenging
souls of the Dark Lands must scream like that when they roam the barren
wastes for their prey."

The gray-haired count of Raman, veteran of border wars, answered: "Your
guess is close enough, milady. It is the battle cry of the Cimmerian
tribes. It is voiced only when they are about to fling themselves into
battle with utter abandon and no concern other than to kill." He
paused. "I have heard it once before—at the bloody sack of Venarium,
when the black-haired barbarians swarmed over the walls despite our
arrow storm and put everybody to the sword."

Silence fell over the throng.

"No, Prospero, no!" Conan's heavy fist thundered down upon the table.
"I will travel alone. To draw armored legions from the realm might
tempt attack by some scheming foe. Tarascus has not forgotten the
beating we gave him, and Koth and Ophir are untrustworthy as always. I
shall ride, not as King Conan of Aquilonia, with a shining retinue of
lords and lancers, but as Conan of Cimmeria, the common adventurer."

"But Conan," said Prospero with the easy familiarity that obtained
between him and the king, "we cannot let you risk your life on such an
uncertain quest. In this manner you may never attain your goal, whereas
with the lances of Poitainian knights at your back you can brave any
foe. Let us ride with you!"

Conan's blue eyes glowed with fierce appreciation, but he shook his
black-maned head. "No, my friend. I feel I am destined to free my queen
alone. Even the help of my trusty knights will not assure success. You
shall command the army in my absence, and Trocero shall rule the
kingdom. If I am not back in two years —choose a new king!"

Conan lifted the slender golden circlet from his black hair and put it
on the oaken table. He stood for a moment, brooding.

Trocero and Prospero made no attempt to break the silence. They had
long ago learned that Conan's ways were sometimes queer and
unfathomable to civilized men. With his barbarian mind unsullied by
civilized life, he was apt to let his thoughts run along paths other
than the common ones. Here stood not only a king whose queen had been
abducted. Here stood the primordial man, whose mate had been torn from
him by forces dark and unknown, and who, without show or bluster, was
silently storing terrible vengeance in his heart.

With a shrug of his broad shoulders, Conan broke the silence. "A horse,
Prospero, and the harness of a common mercenary! I ride at once."

"Whither?" asked the general.

"To the sorcerer Pelias of Koth, who dwells in Khanyria, in Khoraja. I
smell black sorcery in tonight's happenings. That flying creature was
no earthly bird. I care not for wizards and would rather manage without
their help, but now I need Pelias' advice."

Outside the heavy oaken door, a man stood with his ear pressed to the
panel. At these words, a smile spread over his features. With a furtive
glance, he melted into one of the niches, overhung with heavy
draperies, that lined the corridor. He heard the door open. Conan and
his friends passed, their footfalls dwindling down the staircase.

The spy waited till the sounds had died. Then, looking right and left,
he slunk out of hiding. Garbed in the dress of a retainer of the court,
he crossed the courtyard without being challenged. He disappeared into
the servants' quarters and soon emerged, donning a heavy woolen cloak
against the chill of night. He gave the password to the guard and was
let out. He set out for the western part of the city.

Nobody followed him. The smaller streets and lanes were black as the
inside of a chimney. Few rays of the clouded moon pierced their murk.
Watchmen, bill on shoulder and peaked helmet on head, paced the streets
in pairs, talking in low voices. Harlots leaned out of their windows
and called to the wanderer. Some were beautiful, showing off the
splendor of their white necks by low-cut gowns or sheer silken wraps.
Others had haggard and sleazy faces coated with power and Hyrkaoian
rouge. But the man hurried on without swerving from his path.

At last he came to a large house in a parklike garden. A high wall
surrounded it on all sides, but into a niche was recessed a small door.
He knocked four times. The door was opened by a giant, dusky Stygian
clad in white. The two men whispered a few words. Then the palace
servant hastened, toward the house, where all windows were dark but
one.

Evidently this was not the house of a native Aquilonian. Heavy
tapestries and rich paintings, adorned the walls, but the motifs
depicted were not western. Domed marble temples, white zikkurats, and
people with turbaned heads and flowing robes dominated the rich
pageantry of gold and silver thread, of silk and satin and curved
swords. Arabesqued oval tables, divans with spreads of red and green
silks, golden vases with exotic flowers combined to lend an air of the
opulent and exotic East.

Resting on a divan, a big, florid man sipped wine from a jeweled
goblet. He returned the salaam of the palace servant with a careless
nod.

"What brings you, Marinus?" There was asperity in the languid voice.
"Have you not enough work to do for me at the king's ball? It does not
end until early morning, unless Conan has called it off in one of his
barbaric moods. What has happened?" Taking another sip, he regarded
Marinus with a piercing stare.

"Ghandar Chen, my lord, the queen of Aquilonia has been abducted by an
unearthly monster, which flew away with her into the sky! The king
rides alone tonight to search for her. First, however, to get some clue
to the whereabouts of the reaver, he will visit the Kothian sorcerer
Pelias in Khanyria."

"By Erlik, this is news indeed!" Ghandar Chen sprang up, eyes blazing.
"Five of my poisoners hang on the hill of execution, so much kite's
meat. Those damned martinets of the Black Dragons are incorruptible.
But now Conan will be alone, in foreign lands!"

He clapped his hands. The Stygian entered silently and stood at
attention, his dark visage somber and inscrutable. Ghandar Chen spoke:

"Conan of Aquilonia embarks tonight on a long journey. He rides alone,
as a common mercenary. His first goal will be the city of Khanyria in
Khoraja, where he will seek the assistance of the sorcerer Pelias. Ride
swiftly to Baraccus, who camps on the Yivga River. Order him to take as
many trustworthy men as he needs and slay Conan in Khanyria. The
Cimmerian must not reach Pelias. If that cursed necromancer chooses to
help him, he might blast all our men from the earth with a wave of his
hand!"

The Stygian's somber eyes flashed, and his usually immobile features
were split by a dreadful smile.

"Well do. I know Conan," he rumbled, "since he crushed the host of
Prince Kutamun outside Khoraja. I was one of the few survivors, later
to be captured by Kothic slavers and sold—I, born a noble and bred to
war and the hunt! Long have I waited for my revenge! If the gods
permit, I will slay the Cimmerian myself." His hand sought the hilt of
his long dagger. "I go at once, master." He salaamed deeply and left.

Ghandar Chen seated himself at a richly-inlaid rosewood table. From the
drawer he took a golden pen and parchment. He wrote:

To King Yezdigerd, lord of Turan and the Eastern Empire. From your
faithful servant Ghandar Chen, greetings. Conan the Cimmerian, the
kozak and pirate, rides alone for Khanyria. I have sent word to slay
him there. When it is done, I will send you his head. Should he by some
magical feat escape, his road will probably run through Turanian
territory. Written in the Year of the Horse, on the third day of the
Golden Month.

He signed and sanded it. The Turanian then rose and gave the parchment
to Marine?, who had been lolling in the background. He snapped:

"Ride swiftly eastward. Start at once. My servants will furnish you
with arms and a horse. You shall take this to King Yezdigerd himself in
Aghrapur. He will reward us both handsomely."

A satisfied smile was upon Ghandar Chen's face as he sank back upon the
divan, his hand reaching for the goblet again.


2. The Ring of Rakhamon
-----------------------

The scorching afternoon sun cast searing rays across the desert like
whiplashes of white fire. Distant groves of palm trees shimmered;
flocks of vultures hung like clumps of ripe, black grapes in the
foliage. Endless expanses of yellow sand stretched as far as the eye
could see in undulating dunes and flats of ultimate aridity.

A solitary rider halted his horse in the shade of the palm fronds that
fringed an oasis. Though he wore the snowy khalat of the
desert-dwellers, his features belied any thought of Eastern origin. The
hand that shaded his questing eyes was broad and powerful and ridged
with scars. His skin was browned, not with the native duskiness of the
Zuagir, but with the ruddy bronze of the sunbaked Westerner. The eyes
were a volcanic blue, like twin pockets of unplumbable depth. A glint
at his sleeve betrayed the fact that the traveler wore a coat of mail
under his flowing dress. At his side hung a long, straight sword in a
plain leather scabbard.

Conan had ridden far and fast. Plunging across country with reckless
speed, he had broken four horses on his way to Koth. Having reached the
expanses of desert that formed the eastern end of the Kothian kingdom,
he had paused to buy a khalat and some bread and meat at a dingy,
dirty-white border village. Nobody had barred his way, though many an
unkempt head was thrust through a door in wonder at the speed of this
lonely rider, and many an armored guardsman stroked his beard,
pondering on this mercenary's haste.

There were, indeed, few in the Kothic realm who would have recognized
lung Conan of Aquilonia, for between the mutually hostile Aquilonians
and Kothians there was little intercourse.

Conan's sharp eyes swept the horizon. In the shimmering distance he
detected the faint outlines of domed buildings and towering walls.
This, then, would be the town of Khanyria in the kingdom of Khoraja.
Here he would seek the help of Pelias the sorcerer in recovering his
stolen queen. Five years before, he had met and befriended Pelias when
the Kothian wizard lay imprisoned in the vaults of the scarlet citadel
of his foe Tsotha-lanti.

Conan spurred the black stallion toward the distant towers. "Crom!" he
muttered. "I hope Pelias is in his full senses. Like as not he's lying
drunk on his golden divan, dead to the world. But, by Badb, I'll waken
him!"

In the narrow streets and cobbled marketplace of Khanyria, a motley
throng swirled and eddied. Zuagirs from the desert villages to the
northeast, swaggering mercenaries with roving eyes and hands on hilts,
hawkers crying their wares, harlots in red kirtles and painted faces
milled together in a flamboyant tableau. Now and then the crowd was
riven by the armored retainers of a wealthy noble, his perfumed sedan
chair bobbing on the shoulders of ebon-skinned, ox-muscled Kushite
slaves. Or a troop of guardsmen clattered out from the barracks,
accoutrements clanking and horsehair plumes flowing.

Crassides, the burly captain of the guard at the Western Gate, stroked
his graying beard and muttered. Strangers often passed into the city,
but seldom such curious strangers as today's arrivals. Early this
afternoon, in a cloud of dust stirred up from the desert sands, had
come a troop of seven. The rider in the lead was a lean fellow of
vulture look, his narrow mustache framing a thin line of mouth. He was
armed like a Western knight, though his cuirass and helm were plain,
without any device. By his side rode a huge Stygian on a black horse. A
khalat enshrouded the Stygian's form, and his only visible weapon was a
massive war bow.

The other five were all well armored, wearing serviceable swords and
daggers at their sides and holding lances in their hands. They looked
like hardy rogues, as ready to slit a throat as to bounce a wench.

It was not the custom of the Khanyrian city guard to stop strangers
without good reason, for here East and West met to mingle, haggle, and
trade tall tales. Nevertheless, Crassides cast a searching glance at
the seven as they jingled away towards the northern quarter. They
disappeared into the profusion of smoky taverns with mongrels yapping
about their horse's hooves.

The rest of the day passed quietly, but now it seemed that the trickle
of odd strangers must go on. As the sun flung its last rays across the
darkening heavens, a tall, burnoosed foreigner reined in before the
closed gate and demanded entrance.

Crassides, called to the gate by one of the guards on duty, arrived
just as the remaining guard shouted down: "What seek you here, rogue?
We let no outlanders in at night to cut our threats and debauch our
women! State your name and errand before I clap you in irons!"

The stranger's glowing eves, half hidden beneath his kaffia, regarded
the trooper icily. "My friend," said the stranger in a barbarous
accent, "for words less than those I have slit a hundred gullets. Let
me in or, by Crom, I'll raise a horde to sack this bunch of hovels!"

"Not so fast!" said Crassides, thrusting the guard aside. "Get down,
you young fool, and I'll teach you how to speak to strangers later.
Now, you, sir!" He spoke to the horseman. "We want no quarrels in
Khanyria, and as you see the gate is closed for the night. Ere we open
it, you must account for yourself."

"Call me Arus," growled the stranger. "I seek Pelias the sorcerer.''

"Let him in," said Crassides. The heavy bolts were drawn. Two watchmen
strained at the bronze handles, and one of the door valves swung slowly
open. The stranger cantered through, not even glancing at those around
the gate. He headed for the northern district, and the click of his
horse's hoofs dwindled in the distance.

The discomfited young guard spoke to his captain with restrained heat:
"Why do we let this insolent lout ride in as if he were lord of the
city? Why not put a shaft through his ribs?"

Crassides smiled through his beard. "Years may teach you wisdom, though
I doubt it. Have you never heard how, years ago, a northern barbarian
like this one was captured by the warlord of one of the little
city-states of Shem to the south? And how he escaped, rounded up a band
of outlaw Zuagirs, and came back for vengeance? And how the savage
horde stormed the city, putting the people to the sword, flaying
captives in the public square, and burning everything except the pole
on which the warlord's head was stuck? This fellow might be one of that
sort.

"But alone, he can do us little harm. And if he mean us ill, Pelias
will know it by his arcane arts and take measures. Now do you begin to
see?"

Conan knew that Pelias lurked in a tower of yellow stone at the
northern end of the city. He planned to visit the wizard first and
later to seek board and lodging. Anything would do. His body and tastes
had not been softened by his years of civilized life. A loaf of bread,
a hunk of meat, and a jack of foaming ale were all he wanted. For
sleep, why, he could use the floor of a tavern if all else failed.

Conan had no wish to spend the night in Pelias' abode, for all its
luxury. Too many dark and nameless things were apt to stalk the nighted
corridors of the sorcerer's dwelling…

There came a muffled oath and a cry of fear. A door to the right flew
open, and a young girl flung herself into the street.

Conan reined in. The girl was shaped like one of the mekhrani that
people the pleasure houses in the paradise of Erlik's true believers.
This Conan could readily see, for her simple dress was torn to tatters,
leaving her but scantily covered. Brushing back the jet-black tangle of
hair from her face, she cast a terrified glance towards the door, which
had closed behind her. Then her large eyes turned to Conan, sitting his
horse like a statue. Her hand flew to her mouth in terror.

"Now, lass, what's eating you?" spoke the Cimmerian roughly, bending
forward. "Is your lover cross with you, or what?"

The girl rose with a lithe motion. "Two drunken soldiers tried to rape
me. I came to buy wine for my father. They took my money, too.'"

Conan's eyes flashed as he jumped to the ground.

His barbaric code of chivalry made him hate a man's inflicting wanton
brutality on a woman.

"Steady, lass. We'll pull their beards yet. Just open the door. Are
they the only guests?"

Nodding in terrified confirmation, she led him to the tavern. After a
moment's hesitation she opened the door. In two long strides Conan was
inside. The door clicked shut behind him.

But no such scene as he had expected confronted him. Here were no
drunken soldiers to be quieted by a couple of buffets. Seven alert
armed men ranged the walls, swords and daggers gleaming in their hands.
The determination to kill was in their eyes as they instantly rushed
upon Conan.

A civilized man would have been stunned by surprise one second and cut
down in the next, but not the giant Cimmerian. His keen primitive
instincts gave him a flash of warning as he crossed the threshold, and
his lightning reflexes went instantly into action. No time now to draw
the great sword, before he had it out, they would be upon him like a
pack of wolves. His only chance lay in instant attack, surprising his
attackers by its very boldness before they could ring him and close
with him.

A mighty kick sent a bench whaling against the legs of three of his
adversaries as they rushed forward. They fell in a clattering, cursing
tangle. Conan ducked a whistling sword stroke of one of the other four
and smashed his right fist into the man's face before the latter could
recover his balance. Conan felt the man's bones crack under the blow,
which cast him back against his advancing comrades.

Taking advantage of the confusion, the Cimmerian burst clean through
the ring of foes, wheeled with the speed of a panther, grabbed a heavy
oaken table and, with a muscle-wrenching heave, hurled it into the
faces of his enemies. Weapons clattered to the floor, and oaths and
cries of pain rent the air. The lull in the fight gave Conan time to
rip the great sword from its sheath and snatch out his dagger with his
left hand.

He did not wait for a renewed attack. His barbarian blood was roused by
this treacherous ambush. A red mist swam before his eyes, and his mind
was crazed with the lust of killing. Rushing in to attack,
single-handed against the six who were still in action, Conan with a
furious kick caved in the ribs of one rascal still on hands and knees.
As he parried a thrust with his dagger, a savage swipe of his heavy
sword sheared off the sword arm of another. Arm and sword fell to the
floor, and the man crumpled up, glassy-eyed and screaming, with blood
spurting.

That left four, advancing warily in a half-circle. The tall, wolfish
leader feinted at Conan's legs but almost lost his head to the
Cimmerian's whistling countercut. He escaped by throwing himself to the
floor. Just before he did so, Conan recognized the man as Baraccus, an
Aquilonian noble he had exiled for plotting with the Ophireans.

At that instant, the other three rushed in. One desperate sword-stroke
caught Conan on the helmet, denting it and dizzying him. Stars swam
before his eyes, but he ripped viciously upward and was rewarded by a
hoarse, gurgling scream. A dagger point broke on the stout links of
mail covering his right side, but a sword gashed his left arm.

When he hastily wiped the blood from his face he saw that he faced but
one enemy, as the Stygian, his dagger broken, had stepped back to pick
up a weapon from the floor. The tall leader was rising from his fall.

Conan stepped forward to close with his foe, but his foot slipped in a
pool of blood. He fell heavily.

The assassin confronting him shrieked in triumph and rushed forward,
lifting his sword. Conan's foot lashed out and knocked the man's leg
from under him, so that his blow went awry and he fell on top of the
Cimmerian, impaling himself on the dagger that Conan thrust up to meet
his falling form.

Conan flung the body aside and, with catlike speed, sprang again to his
feet to meet the attack of the rearmed Stygian. The dusky giant rushed
towards Conan, eyes blazing with dark fires and lips foaming with
impassioned hatred. Ducking the swipe of the Cimmerian's sword, he
whipped his white cloak around the blade, imprisoning it in the heavy
folds. The knife that the Stygian had picked up was driven against
Conan's side with such force that mail links snapped and the point
pierced the Cimmerian's body. But Conan ripped into the brown torso
with swift and murderous thrusts of his own dirk. The Stygian's mouth
flew open in awful pain, his dagger clattered to the floor, and he
doubled up and followed it.

Conan tore his sword free from the folds of the Stygian's dress and
advanced upon the unwounded leader. "You've forgotten your knightly
oaths since I kicked you off your estate, eh, Baraccus?" he snarled. "I
should have had your head when I found out your treason, but this time
will do as well as any!"

Conan presented a terrible aspect. From beneath his dented helmet,
blood flowed down the side of his sweaty face. His right side was red
with gore, and a bloody rent showed in his mailshirt. But the will to
kill burned unquenched in his terrible glance. Baraccus, remembering
the horrific legends of the Cimmerian's former deeds, lost his nerve
and whirled to flee. With a grating laugh, Conan tossed up his sword,
caught the hilt reversed, and hurled the weapon like a javelin.

The point smashed through the backplate of Baraccus' corselet. Baraccus
pitched forward at full length, the sword standing upright in his back
and a stream of blood running from his mouth.

Conan relaxed a little, surrounded by enemies dead or unconscious. Then
a voice behind him aroused his barbarian senses. He wheeled in a flash,
expecting another attack.

A fat man stood in the back door, wringing his pudgy hands. "Oh, mercy,
what has happened to my fine house?" he wailed, his face creased by
worry. "Blood all over! Furniture ruined!"

Two strides brought Conan to the taverner, under whose chin he poised
the point of his dagger. "You had a hand in this, you yapping dog!" he
roared. "They could not have set this ambush without your help."

"Mercy, lord! They threatened to cut my throat otherwise! That would
have been almost better than this! They said it would be swift and
silent…"

Conan slapped the man's face with such force that the taverner was
thrown against the door jamb. He reeled, and blood ran down his chin
from a cut lip.

"Silence!" rumbled Conan, his anger appeased a little. "Be glad I don't
flay you an inch at a time!"

"Yes-yes, lord!" The man wept, in abject terror.

"Now fetch a jack of wine, before I split your head! And of the best!
Also some clean cloths to bind up these scratches."

As the terrified taverner hurried off, Conan kicked a corpse out of the
way and sank down wearily upon a bench. A thought struck him. Where was
the handsome wench who had started all this? She was not in the room.

The host returned on trembling legs, holding a flask and a pewter
goblet. With an impatient curse, Conan tore the bottle from him and
upended it over his parched gullet. When the whole of the contents had
poured down without interruption, to the wonder of the unwilling host,
Conan set down the empty container with a crash, wiped his mouth on his
bloody sleeve, and turned his blue eyes upon the man.

"Killing dries a man's throat," he said. "Now tell me: Where is the
girl who was here with these men before I entered?"

The fat taverner, green with fear, shook his head. "Noble lord, I never
saw her until she came here yesterday, dressed in outlandish garments.
She changed her garb in her room on the upper floor. I know not her
name or aught else about her."

Conan heaved himself to his feet, only a little troubled by wounds that
would have incapacitated an ordinary man for days. Tearing his sword
out of Baraccus' body, he thundered: "Lead me to her room at once! And
should this prove another trap, your soul will rot on the black floors
of Hell within the instant!"

Knees knocking, the flabby Khanyrian led the way up the narrow stair.
The Cimmerian followed, his eyes scanning every cranny with wolfish
wariness. On the upper floor, his guide paused before a door and chose
a key from the great bunch at his girdle. He unlocked the door and
opened it wide to reassure the edgy barbarian.

Conan decided that there was no chance of another ambush in that narrow
room. The only furniture was a bed and a small table. On the bed lay
green silks, a golden sash, a turban strip with an emerald pin, and a
filmy veil. Conan stood silent with startled recognition. This was the
garb of a Hyrkanian noblewoman, from the great and growing eastern
empire of Turan—from Akif, Shahpur, or Aghrapur itself.

Wheeling and retracing his steps, Conan pondered this new enigma with
clouded brow.

With nostrils flaring and sword in hand, Conan stepped alertly from the
tavern door. His limbs had become a little stiffened from his wounds
and his side ached from the dagger thrust, but he still had vigor
enough to spring into the saddle of his waiting horse.

He was mystified by the assault. He well knew that many men of
different creeds, races, and stations thirsted for his blood and would
have loved to roast his guts over a slow fire. On this mission,
however, he had ridden swiftly, silently, and anonymously. Only Trocero
and Prospero knew which way he was going, and their loyalty was beyond
question. Yet armored foes had ambushed him with gleaming blades.
Something or someone had brought Baraccus from the West and the
Hyrkanian woman from the East together to try to trap him.

Conan shrugged the puzzle from his mind with the fatalistic equanimity
of the barbarian. As he could not now grasp the whole picture behind
the recent incident, he was content to wait until further information
came to light.

He cantered leisurely through the streets with eyes darting into the
shadows. The only light came from an occasional flickering taper in a
window. His thoughts came back to the beautiful woman who had nearly
led him to his death. The sight of her well-molded form had fired his
blood, and he had meant to take a kiss at the very least as a reward
for helping her. But now she was gone as if by magic.

Emerging upon a wide, deserted square, Conan, aided by the dim light of
the clouded moon, saw the outline of a spired edifice, pointing like a
finger to the heavens. In the deepening darkness it gleamed dull yellow
like the reflex of a dying sun. This was the tower where Pelias
secreted himself from the undesired company of his fellow men.

A broad expanse of trimmed gardens and lawns surrounded the yellow
tower. No walls, fences, or forbidding gates ringed it. They were not
needed. Horrid legends, whispered in the dark of evening, had taught
the Khanyrians to keep away from sorcerers' abodes, into which an
intruder might enter but from which he would probably never return.

Conan's horse shied at the edge of the lawn, whinnying and stomping. It
chewed its bit and blew foam from its lips.

"Crom!" muttered the Cimmerian. "It seems as if Pelias has unholy
company. Well, I can walk."

He dismounted and strode up the narrow flagstone walk, his eyes roving
and his hand on his hilt. Necromantic rites often drew nameless
monstrosities in the night, as the smell of carrion attracts vultures.
Conan had met many kinds of beings spawned in other times and planes of
existence. Many could be fought and slain only by magical weapons or by
incantations read from dusty volumes or pieces of crumbling parchment.
But Conan's taste had never run to spells and counterspells. He trusted
his keen-edged sword more than all the magical mummery.

However, no demon from the darker haunts barred his way. He reached the
tower without seeing a single sign of life among the shrubs and
flowers.

Just then the clouds slid away from the moon. By the bright moonlight,
Conan saw that the yellowish color of the tower was caused by an
abundance of small golden coins set in plaster. Conan peered at those
on a level with his eyes. None was familiar, and he suspected that it
was the same with the rest. All had the look of great age. On some, the
golden ridges of letters and cryptic signs had been worn away until
nothing but a polished disk remained.

Conan knew that gold was considered a valuable auxiliary in making
magic, especially in the form of coins from the ancient kingdoms. Here,
thought Conan, were tokens from the long-dead realms of forgotten
legendry, when priests and wizards ruled with awful terror, dragging
maidens screaming to dark caverns where ghastly rituals were performed,
or beheading thousands of prisoners in the public squares until rivers
of bubbling blood filled the gutters.

Conan shivered. Much evil was concentrated here. Nevertheless, he tried
the iron door.

The heavy slab of metal swung silently inward. Sword in hand, the
Cimmerian entered, senses fine-whetted like those of a prowling tiger.
By the faint light coming through the open door he could see two
flights of stairs, one circling upward while the other lost itself in
underground darkness.

Conan's keen nostrils picked up an alien smell from the stairs leading
downwards. He suspected that this musky odor wafted up from a maze of
caverns beneath the tower. The Cimmerian's eyes narrowed. Into his mind
flitted the remembrance of similar odors in the haunted catacombs of
the dead city of Pteion, in Stygia, where fearsome shapes wander by
night. He shook his head as an angry lion shakes its mane.

Suddenly he was startled by words in a deep, resonant voice: "Welcome,
Conan! Mount the stairs leading upward and follow the light!"

Glaring about, Conan could detect no clue to the origin of the voice.
It seemed to come from everywhere, reverberating like the tones of a
temple gong.

A glowing ball sprang into view in front of Conan, so suddenly that he
took an instinctive step backwards. It hung in the air without visible
support, shining brightly. By its light, Conan saw that he stood in a
hall adorned with tapestries of ancient and curious design. One wall
was covered with shelves on which stood oddly-shaped containers of
stone, silver, gold, and jade. Some were set with gems, others were
plain, and all were mingled helter-skelter.

The glowing globe moved slowly toward the stairs. Conan followed it
without hesitation. One never knew the mind of a wizard, but Pelias at
any rate seemed well-disposed towards the Cimmerian.

Not a creak sounded from the steps as Conan glided upwards, sword still
in hand, though a little more relaxed than before. The steps ended on a
landing barred by a copper-sheathed door with esoteric signs engraved
in fanciful and involved patterns on its ruddy surface. Some of these
Conan recognized from his wanderings as powerful magical symbols from
the secret knowledge of ancient races. He scowled distrustfully. Then
the door opened silently and the shimmering light went out.

Now there was no need of it. The room Conan entered was large and
well-lighted. It was furnished with a mixture of flamboyant wall
decorations and expensive works of art from many lands. A multitude of
wall brackets held flaming tapers; soft rugs covered the floor.

In the center of the room stood an enormous, pillow-strewn divan. On
this lay Pelias, a tall, lean, gray-haired man in scholar's robes. His
eyes were dark and meditative, his head narrow and well-formed, his
hands and feet small and trim. He had been studying, for empty spaces
gaped in the huge bookcase and several volumes were scattered about the
floor. Close by the divan, a large table was littered with parchment
scrolls. At least they locked like parchment, though Conan knew that
wizards preferred their mightiest spells to be written on cured human
skin.

On the wall hung a mirror in a simple iron frame, contrasting with the
luxury of the other furnishings. Conan was not surprised by the
sybaritic atmosphere. Unlike most sorcerers, Pelias had never looked
askance upon the pleasures of the flesh.

"Welcome, Conan!" cried the magician. "It has been nearly four years—"
Then Pelias sprang up with narrowed eyes as Conan walked heavily
forward, sheathing his sword. "You are wounded! And lately! You need a
stronger draught than this wine. Wait!"

Pelias turned to an ornately-carved cupboard and opened one of its many
small doors. From a recess he took a crystal flask, half full of a
liquid of smoky violet hue. Into a wine cup he poured a good measure of
the liquid and preferred it, saying:

"Drink this, my friend. It is made from the secret herbs of the Misty
Isles and the lands beyond Kush. It will heal your wounds and ease your
tired muscles."

Conan downed the draught with one mighty gulp. For a moment he
grimaced. His veins seemed afire and his brain whirled and reeled. Then
these feelings were replaced by sensations of well-being and content. A
vast weight of weariness seemed lifted from his shoulders; he had not
realized how fatigued his wounds and exertions had left him.

Pulling off his dented helmet, Conan felt his tingling scalp under the
bandage. His hair was still matted with dried blood, but no wound could
he find, not even a scar. His side and other wounded parts had stopped
aching.

"Truly this is a magical brew, Pelias!" he said.

"It is potent indeed. Apart from the rare ingredients, many potent
incantations have been read over it to bring out the full powers of the
recipe."

Conan grunted as he pulled off his mailshirt. "Would I had possessed it
many a former time in my life!"

"Let us move on to the question of your errand. What brings you alone
and in haste? I have not heard of any strife or great wars in the
northwest, in which you might need my aid."

"Were it only straightforward war, I would never ask magical help,"
growled Conan. "But I find myself pitted against dark and unknown
powers. I need clues to lead me to where I can smite my foe."

In swift, short sentences he told of the fateful night in Tarantia.

For a long time Pelias brooded with his chin in his hands. His eyes
were closed, and some might have thought him asleep. Conan, however,
knew that the wizard's brain was working with abnormal speed and
keenness behind that deceptive mask. Slowly Pelias' eyes opened. He
spoke.

"A demon of the darkest realms beyond the Mountains of the Night has
stolen your spouse. I know how to summon one, but I thought I shared
that knowledge with no one else in the West."

"Then fetch this fiend and we'll wring the truth out of him!"

"Not so fast, my hot-headed friend! Do not rush headlong into unknown
dangers! It is clear that this demon has been summoned by a sorcerer
with powers superior to those of ordinary magicians. Should we drag the
fiend hither with spells and incantations, we should have both him and
his master to cope with, and that might be too much for us. No; I know
a better way. The Mirror of Lazbekri shall give us the answer!"

He rose. Again opening the cupboard, he brought out a dully gleaming
cup whose rim was inscribed with curious symbols. Conan, who had gained
a smattering of many written languages in his wanderings, did not
recognize the script.

From a small jar the wizard poured a measure of red powder into the
cup. Then he placed the cup on a low ebony table beneath the plain,
iron-framed mirror. He threw back the folds of silk from his arm and
made a cryptic gesture.

Blue smoke began to spiral up from the cup. It thickened until its
billowing clouds filled the room. Conan could but dimly discern the
motionless form of the wizard, petrified in trance during his
concentration.

For an age, it seemed, nothing happened. Conan began to shift his
weight with impatience when he heard Pelias' whisper:

"The sorcerer's defenses are strong, Conan. I cannot pierce them. Who
is your tutelary deity?"

"It would be Crom, the grim god of the Cimmerians," muttered Conan,
"though I have had naught to do with gods for many years. I leave them
alone and they leave me alone."

"Well, pray to your Crom for help. We need it."

Conan closed his eyes and, for the first time in decades, prayed: "O
Father Crom, who breathes power to strive and slay into a man's soul at
birth, help your son against the demon that has stolen his mate…"

And into his brain he thought he heard the cold words come: "Long have
you forsaken me, O Conan. But you are my true son for all that, in your
striving and enduring and conquering. Look!"

Conan opened his eyes. The smoke had begun to thin. The Cimmerian saw
that the mirror did not, as one might expect, show the reflection of
Pelias; indeed, it showed no reflection at all. Its surface was a deep
gray, as if this were a window to forbidden dimensions. In a low
monotone, Pelias chanted an incantation in a tongue that Conan
recognized as the secret language used by the priests of Stygia in
their clandestine rituals in dark-walled Khemi.

Slowly, so slowly that it was not immediately noticeable, a picture
took form in the mirror. At first it was blurred and uncertain; then
swiftly it cleared and sharpened. In a bare, stone-walled room, a
cowled and robed figure sat at a low table, a scroll in his hands.

The picture grew as if the point of vantage of the watchers moved
nearer and nearer the hooded one. Suddenly the figure in the mirror
threw up its head and looked full into their faces. The hood fell back
from the yellow, hairless pate; the slitted, oblique eyes gazed coldly
into theirs. The thin, colorless lips parted in a ghastly grin. The
yellow one's right hand plunged into the folds of his robe and came out
again holding a shining ball. The man made a motion as if to throw
it—and then Conan exploded into lightning action.

A whistling slash of his heavy sword, held in readiness against the
unknown perils of the mirror, sheared the frame in two and shattered
the reflecting surface into thousands of tinkling splinters.

Pelias gave a start and shook himself like a man awakening. He said:

"By Ishtar, Conan, you saved us both! That shining thing was as deadly
as a nest of cobras. Had he managed to throw it into this room, we
should have been torn to bits in a holocaust that might have destroyed
half the city. I was spellbound by the necessary concentration and
could do nothing."

"The devil with that," grunted Conan, who had never learned to accept
praise graciously. "Now, what did all this mean? I saw the man was a
Khittan. What has he to do with my quest?"

Pelias' somber eyes rested upon the huge Cimmerian as his answer came
from stiff lips. "My friend, these matters are deeper than I thought.
The fate of the world may rest upon you."

The sorcerer paused, swilling a draught of wine. Leaning back on his
cushions, he continued. Outside, the night was black and still.

"The magicians of the West have long been aware that the effects of
certain spells have been weakened or nullified. This condition has been
growing more marked in recent years. During the past few months I have
buried myself in research, prying for the cause of this phenomenon. And
I have found it.

"We are entering a new era. Enlightenment and reason are spreading
among the peoples of the West. Aquilonia stands as a bulwark among the
nations, strengthening its imperial powers by the naked, elemental
force of the healthy barbarian mind. You have rejuvenated the nation,
and similar forces are at work in other realms. The bonds of black
magic are strained and broken by new factors brought in by the changed
conditions. The far-flung web of intrigue and evil spun by the black
forces is fraying.

"Some of the most evil spells would now hardly succeed at all in the
Western realms. This resistance of civilization to the magic of
darkness is concentrated in the barbarian king of Aquilonia. You have
long' been the center of mighty happenings, and the gods look favorably
upon you. And so things will continue to change until, with another
turn of the cosmic wheel, enlightenment shall perish and magic shall
rise again to power in a new cycle.

"I grow old, I who am already older than men reckon. Nowadays I use my
vast knowledge only to furnish a life of ease and comfort and to pursue
my scholarly researches. I do not live as an ascetic in ragged robes,
summoning red-eyed beings with slavering jaws and ripping claws to
wreak havoc among innocent human beings.

"But there is one who has long thirsted for absolute power over the
world and all that dwell therein. He has become obsessed by the idea.
Years ago he began to lay the groundwork for the gigantic, cataclysmal
acts of dark necromancy that should rock the earth to its core and
enslave its inhabitants.

"This I learned through my unearthly spies: When, one night, he cut out
the living heart of a maiden on an altar in a deserted temple by
moonlight and mumbled a terrible incantation over it, he failed to get
the results he sought. He was dumbfounded; this was his first attempt
upon the western countries.

"His failure roused him to insensate rage. For days and nights without
end he labored to find who opposed him, and at last he succeeded. You
are his main obstacle.

"This dark plan, whose outlines I now grasp, is worthy of his twisted
genius. By stealing your spouse, he forces you to go after her. He is
sure you will be slain by foes along the way or slaughtered by the
orange and unknown peoples that dwell east of the Himelian Mountains.
Should you by some feat of prowess or stroke of luck reach his haunts,
he counts on slaying you himself by his diabolical powers.

"After that, the road to conquest will be open to him, for the
resistance forged here in the West is too young yet to stand without
its backbone—Conan, the king of Aquilonia!"

Dryness rasped Pelias' throat; he sipped the wine.

"As you know, I am accounted one of the mightiest magicians of the
West, even though I nowadays seldom use my full powers. But should I be
pitted against him of whom I speak, I should riot have the chance of a
ewe in a pool of crocodiles. The sorcerers of the East are mightier
than those of the West, and he is the mightiest of all. He is Yah
Chieng of Paikang, in Khitai."

Conan pondered this information with somber eyes and immobile features.
At last the deep tones of his voice resounded.

"By Crom, Pelias, there rests more upon my shoulders than I could ever
fathom, if what you've said is true. But I care not for the fate of the
world, if I can only get my Zenobia back!"

"Ah, my friend, the fate of you, of your queen, and of the world are
fast entwined. Mighty events are upon us; the destinies of uncounted
ages to come will soon be decided. This is Yah Chieng's supreme bid for
power. He is sure of success, or the crawling snake would not have
dared attempt it. This kidnapping is but a trick to lure you from the
West, which you are guarding against evil eastern sorcery. Think, man,
and compare! Which is the more important: a single woman or the fate of
millions?"

"The devil with that, Pelias!" roared Conan. "D'you think I would let
my woman be torn from my side and then stay at home because I am some
sort of wizard's jinx? May the demons of Shaggali eat the marrow of my
bones if I care one copper's worth for kingship, power, lands, or
riches! I want my woman back, and I'll have her if I must carve my way
through a hundred thousand swordsmen to reach that bald-pated
scoundrel!"

Pelias shrugged. He realized that the savage promptings that guided the
barbarian's actions would not be affected by his disclosure of the
deeper causes of the recent events. The only world Conan really cared
about was the one that now surrounded him with red-blooded life. He had
little concern for the future. Pelias said:

"Alas, the Fates have already spun their web, and I cannot change it.
Now listen. Paikang, in Khitai, is your goal. There Yah Chieng lives in
his purple tower, guarded by two hundred giant Khitan saber-men, the
most skilled in the East. He has usurped the power of the rightful
rulers, and he governs with flail and whip. Beware his black arts. By a
wave of his hand he can blot an army from the earth. I know not if I
can help you, but I will try. Come with me."

The lean wizard rose and went to a small, gold-inlaid secretary-table
made of some strange wood. There was an oddness about its looks, as if
the craft that had fashioned it was not of human origin. Conan was a
little mystified. In all his wanderings he had never seen furniture in
this style.

Pelias pressed a projection hidden among the carvings of one leg of the
table. A small drawer shot out, and the wizard picked an object from
it. It was a ring. Strangely wrought, it did not shine with the fire of
gold, nor with the icy gleam of silver, nor yet with the rich red of
copper. Its dull-blue lustre was not like that of any known metal. All
along its band were hieroglyphs of ancient origin. Bending to peer,
Conan recognized forbidden symbols found only on the altar friezes of
the secret temples of certain inhuman gods worshiped in Stygia.

The seal, also, was strangely fashioned. It was of rhombic shape, with
the upper and lower points long and sharp. A careless man could easily
prick himself with it.

Pelias gazed at the ring for a moment. Its strange blue gleam was like
a sword of icy flame in the room. The Cimmerian, with his fine-whetted
senses, could feel the power emanating from the thing. Then the wizard
straightened and brushed back a grizzled lock from his forehead.

"Many moons have passed since I won this ring," he intoned. "For days
and nights without cease I fought its owner, a powerful sorcerer of
Luxur. The fury of the dark powers we unleashed might have devastated
the land had not our spells and counter-spells canceled each other.
With brain whirling and senses reeling, I strove with him through eons
of black time. When I felt I could not continue much longer, he
suddenly gave up. He changed his form to that of a hawk and tried to
flee. My strength resurged within me: I transformed myself into an
eagle, swooped upon him, and tore him to shreds. Ha! Those were the
days when I was young and gloried in my powers!

"Now, my friend, I want you to wear this ring. It will be a powerful
aid on your journey. Have you heard of Rakhamon?"

Conan nodded. The southern countries were rife with legends of the
past, but still the name of that dread sorcerer was whispered with
caution, though a full century and a half had passed since his end.
Hyrkanian invaders had sacked and burned his city while he lay helpless
in the stupor induced by the black lotus.

Many adepts in magic had sought for his secret books, said to be
written on the dried skins of maidens flayed alive, but none had found
them. If this ring was a relic of Rakhamon's possessions, it must be
powerful indeed.

"Aye, this is the ring of Rakhamon," said Pelias gravely. "Some of the
unnatural beings summoned from the darker realms could not* once
called, be controlled by the usual protective spells. Therefore he
fashioned this ring of a metal he found in the stone of a fallen star
during his travels in the icy North. He invested the ring with
unimaginable powers by secret and nameless rituals, in which blood was
spilled in profusion and screaming souls were condemned to the deepest
and darkest hell. The wearer of this ring can stand against any beast
summoned by magical arts, that much I know.

"As to its detailed use, there is no clue. Probably the knowledge
perished with the secret manuscripts. Take it, Conan! This is all I can
aid you with. No other spells I know can avail against the evil power
of Yah Chieng."

Conan took the proffered ornament. At first it seemed too small for his
massive ringers, but as he tried it on the middle finger of his left
hand it slid lightly on. It seemed to have a life of its own; it fitted
as if made to order. The Cimmerian shrugged. Decades of experience had
made him casual about the pretensions of magical things. The bauble
might work, and if not, no harm would come of it. At least, Pelias'
intentions were good.

"To the devil with all this talk," said the barbarian. "I have a long
journey before me. A loaf, a joint of meat, and a skin of wine, and I
am for bed. Could you spare me a cot for the night?"

"Any sort of bed you desire, my friend. My servants will fetch food and
tend your horse." Pelias clapped his hands.

"That reminds me," said Conan, yawning. "I. must sacrifice a bullock to
Crom ere I set forth tomorrow. Say nothing of it, for, if they knew,
people would say: Conan grows old; he is getting religious in his
dotage!"


3. Vengeance From the Desert
----------------------------

The sun glinted on spired helmets and whetted spearheads. Spurs jingled
and bright silks flashed as three armored riders breasted the long
slope of a great sand dune in the wide desert that formed the
southwestern marches of Turan. Red turbans were wound about their
helmets; sashes of the same color girdled their waists. White silken
shirts, baggy trousers thrust into short black boots, and sleeveless,
silvered mail-shirts completed their apparel. Curved swords hung at
their hips. Upright from the holders that hung from the saddles of two
of them rose the ten-foot Turanian lances. The remaining one bore,
slung from his saddle, a thick, double-curved bow in a bow case and a
score and a half of arrows in a lacquered leathern quiver.

Accompanying them was a fourth figure, bound by both wrists to a rope
held by the bowman. Deep gashes in the sand told of this prisoner's
inability to keep up with his mounted captors. He wore the white khalat
of the desert Zuagir, though the garment was dirty and torn to shreds.
His lean, dark visage was hollow-cheeked, but implacable hatred lurked
in his red-rimmed eyes. He stumbled panting up the slope without a
sound of pain or protest.

The Turanian soldiers, separated from the rest of their troop by a
two-day sandstorm, were seeking their way back to Fort Wakla, a
Turanian outpost deep in the Zuagir desert country. Yesterday they had
met the Zuagir. His horse had tumbled under him with an arrow through
its heart, and he had been laid senseless on the sand by a blow from a
spear butt. The commander of Fort Wakla had lately begun an intense
campaign against the desert tribes, who had harried Kuranian caravans
overly much of late. Having taken the Zuagir prisoner, the horsemen
were bringing him back to the fort to be bled of knowledge before being
hanged.

At the top of the dune, the little troop paused to rest. Waterskins
were lifted to parched mouths, while the ragged prisoner crawled up on
all fours, almost done in. Sand dunes stretched as far as the eye could
see. As practiced warriors, the Turanians used the pause to let their
hawklike eyes sweep the horizon and the surface of the sands. Nothing
could be seen save endless, rolling yellow plain.

The tallest of the three, the man with the bow and the prisoner's rope,
suddenly stiffened. Shading his dark eyes, he bent forward to get a
better view. On the top of a dune a mile away, he had sighted a lone
horseman riding at a gallop. The dune had hidden him as they came to
their point of vantage, but new the stranger was flying down the near
side in a flurry of sand. The leader turned to his fellows.

"By the alabaster hips of Yenagra!" he said, "we have caught another
desert rat! Be ready; we will kill this one and take his head on a
lance tip back to the fort."

Knowing there would be no trouble to recover the Zuagir after the
fight, he dropped the rope. He spurred his mount down the slope towards
the point in the wide valley of sand, where he counted on intercepting
the stranger, and in one smooth motion drew the powerful bow from its
case and nocked an arrow. His fellow troopers followed with spears
poised and slitted eyes agleam, yelping like hounds closing for the
kill.

At three hundred paces, the bowman drew and loosed at full gallop with
the effortless horsemanship of a Turanian cavalryman. But the shaft did
not strike home. Like lightning his intended victim flung his horse
aside with a mighty effort that almost threw the steed. With a swift
gesture, the stranger shook off the folds of his khalat.

The Hyrkanians halted in consternation. There appeared before them not
the half-starved form of a desert man, armed only with knife and
javelin, but a powerful western warrior in sturdy mail and steel
helmet, equipped with a long sword and a dagger. The sword flashed like
a flame in the sunlight as the rider whipped it out. The Turanian
leader's narrow eyes widened with astonishment.

"You dare return to Turan, barbarian scoundrel!" he cried. For the
Turanian was Hamar Kur, who had been amir of a troop of horse that
Conan, as a leader of the kozaki, had routed years before by an ambush
on the Yelba River. Hamar Kur was demoted to common trooper in the
frontier guards in consequence and ever since had burned for vengeance.
Drawing his saber, he shouted:

"At him, men! It is Conan the kozak! Slay him, and the king will fill
your helmets with gold!"

The Turanian riders hesitated, awed by the memory of gory and terrible
legends associated with that name. Tales told how this man, with two
pirate galleys, had sacked and burned the fortified seaport of
Khawarizm and then broken through six of the king's war galleys that
had come to trap him, leaving three foundering and the others' decks
awash with blood. They told how he, with a band of Zuagir tribesmen,
had harried the outflung Imperial posts in the south until the border
had to be drawn back. They told how the savage kozak hordes under his
command had stormed the walled city of Khorosun, slaying and burning.

Conan made full use of his enemies' moment of indecision. Spurring his
big horse, he thundered upon them like a one-man avalanche, his sword
flashing in circles. Hamar Kur's mount reared wildly before this
crashing charge and was cast to the ground. Its rider was spilled from
the saddle.

The two other soldiers couched their lances and spurred fiercely, but
lacked time to gain enough speed to make their charge effective. With
the fury of a thunderstorm Conan was upon them, smiting right and left.
The head of one man leaped from its trunk on a fount of blood. The next
instant, Conan's blade shattered the other's lance. The Turanian caught
the following blow on his shield but was hurled from his saddle by
sheer impact,

Hamar Kur had regained his feet. Skilled in combat against horsemen, he
ran to where the slain trooper had dropped his lance. Then he ran
swiftly up and thrust the shaft of the weapon between the legs of
Conan's horse. He cast himself aside at the last moment to avoid the
barbarian's terrible sword.

The desert sands clouded the sky as Conan and his mount crashed to the
ground together. With the practiced ease of the hardened mercenary, the
Cimmerian threw himself clear. He rose, sword still in hand. With cold
blue eyes slitted he watched his two surviving enemies slink towards
him, one from either side. Their tactics were obvious: to catch him
between them &o that one could strike him down from the rear.

With tigerish swiftness, he charged the soldier to the right. He knew
he risked a scimitar in the back from Hamar Kur, but it was never his
way to await the foe's attack. The Turanian tried to parry the crashing
blow, but to no avail. Splintering the curled blade with its terrible
force, the Cimmerian's sword smashed helmet and skull like a ripe
orange.

Conan wheeled like a panther in the nick of time. He just managed to
catch Hamar Kur's whistling blow on his sword hilt. There was a
momentary exchange of cuts and parries as the straight blade of the
West and the curved blade of the East whirled about each other in a
coruscating dance of death. Then a quick thrust from Conan pierced his
enemy's breast. The point drove through the fine Turanian mail and on
through the ex-amir's body. Hamar gave a ghastly scream and fell
heavily. Conan braced his legs to tear his dripping blade free.

The Cimmerian wiped his sword on his enemy's sash and looked swiftly
around. He had heard a sound from behind, and his senses and temper
were on edge. He waited warily as a tattered figure half slid and half
rolled down the slope almost to his feet. It was the Zuagir. Rising on
shaky legs, he spat upon the prostrate form of Hamar Kur. Then he
turned his burning eyes on Conan. As he took in the gigantic figure in
worn mail, the rage and fury in his eyes gave way to recognition and
joy. Lifting his bound hands, he cried:

"Praise be to Kemosh, for he has answered my prayers and sent these
dogs to the floors of Hell! And more, he has brought back the great
warlord who led us to plunder long ago! I greet you, Hawk of the
Desert! There will be feasting and dancing in the villages! The
Turanian dogs will cower in their towers as the cry goes forth from the
desert: 'Yamad al-Aphta has returned!'"

Conan shrugged his broad shoulders and thrust his sword back into the
scabbard His horse had risen front its fall, and Conan unslung his
waterskin and pack from the saddle.

"Here, wolf," he grunted, "you look a little the worse for wear. Have a
draught, but take care you are not overfilled." Conan brought out bread
and dried meat and shared them with the Zuagir. "Now tell me: What is
afoot in the desert? How did you fall into the hands of the
Hyrkanians?"

The nomad answered between gulps and champings: "I am Yar Allal of the
Duali tribe. I was riding in haste and alone for our camp when these
dogs caught me. They shot my horse from under me and stunned me with a
blow on the head. They were bringing me back to Fort Wakla for
questioning and death."

"Whence your hurry?" asked Conan. "And why alone? These hills swarm
with Turanian patrols."

The voice of the Zuagir took on a burning edge as he answered. "A
terrible misfortune has struck our tribe. Listen, my lord. For days we
lay in wait in the ruins of the Gharat temple, fifty miles to the
south. Word had come that a rich caravan was approaching from the west,
bringing the wealth and person of the lady Thanara."

"Who's that?"

"A yedka of Maypur, famed for her beauty and riches. Furthermore she is
high in the favor of King Yezdigerd. Could we but capture her, a
fabulous ransom would be ours as well as the spoils from the camel
train.

"We lay there with knives whetted and bows newly strung until we
thought the dogs of traders would never come. And then, one day, we
heard the camels' bells in the distance. The long line of men, beasts,
and wagons came into view.

"We waited until they were almost upon us. Uttering our war cry, we
swept down upon them. We expected an easy conquest of the merchants and
their retainers. Then, suddenly, the merchants and servants threw aside
their khalats. Instead of timid civilians, mailed lancers in the white
turbans of the Imperial Guard rushed against us!

"There must have been a hundred of them hidden in the wains. They rode
through our ranks like reapers mowing down a field of wheat. Half of us
perished in the first attack. The rest were riven apart and scattered
into small bands. We fought mightily against the odds, and many a
Turanian plunged to earth with a Duali spear through his throat or a
curved knife in his guts.

"But our courage was of no avail as the steel-clad ranks closed in upon
us. I saw my brother felled by a stroke from the amir's scimitar. Then
Yin Allal, my father, caught a blow on the head that knocked him
stunned from the saddle. I spurred my horse; smiting and thrusting I
won through and away. They pursued me for hours, but their horses were
wearier than mine and they gave it up. I was on my way to raise the
tribe as I was caught. By now the caravan is safely within the walls of
Fort Wakla. There will be rejoicing among the Turanians tonight; not
for decades have they captured a Zuagir chief alive!"

"How know you he is alive?"

"In the last moment ere I raced off, I looked back and saw two of them
carrying him back toward the carts. He was moving, though feebly."

Conan digested this tale. He well remembered Yin Allal, one of his
staunchest supporters of old, when he, as war chief of three united
Zuagir tribes, had led them in daring raids against the Turanians.
Confronted by this new problem, he did not wish to leave an old friend
unaided in the hands of his enemies. He sprang up, his blue eyes
flashing with determination.

"Catch yourself a horse!" he snapped. "We ride for the Duali oasis at
once. We shall be there by nightfall, and if my name is not forgotten
I'll raise the tribes again. I will save my old friend. We'll pull
those dogs' beards yet, by Crom!"

With a laugh he flung himself into the saddle. Gesturing to his
companion to follow, he spurred his horse into a fierce gallop over the
sands.

The oasis lay enfolded in the black arms of the desert night. Stars
twinkled like gems on a dark mantle studded with diamonds; the fronds
of the palms, now and then moving before the slight evening breeze,
were silvered by the cold moonlight. In the shadow of the foliage were
strewn a profusion of tents—a large Zuagir camp.

Earlier in the day, this had been a quiet place. The desert sun poured
its golden rays upon the camel's-hair dwellings. Veiled women went
about their primitive duties, fetching water from the well and broiling
strips of meat over the campfires. Snores and snuffles sounded from the
nomadic abodes as the tribesmen took their siesta.

Now the Duali oasis was a center of frantic activity. In the middle
rose a tent whose size indicated its importance. From this tent, now
and then, a lean desert hawk emerged. The Zuagir would hurry with
flapping khalat to his horse, spring into the saddle, and urge the
mount into a mad race out over the desert. Others returned from their
missions, flinging themselves from foam-flecked steeds to hasten toward
the big central tent. Zuagirs from the neighboring tribes of the
Kharoya and Qirlata had been pouring in all day. Now the area covered
by dun-colored tents was thrice as large as the day before.
Conversations were whispered behind the door flaps; men went to and fro
on urgent errands. There was an orderly bustle such as is seldom seen
in a desert camp.

The hearts of the robed and bearded chiefs in the central tent swelled
with pride and affection. The huge figure in worn mail, seated in the
place of honor, had become the center of legendry and hero worship
since the day long ago when he had arrived among them. He united their
bickering clans and led them in raids so daring, bloody, and rewarding
that tales of them were still told around the campfires. Their
superstitious minds regarded the return of the big Cimmerian as a good
omen. This opinion was strengthened by having occurred at the same time
that their raiding party had been nearly wiped out and one of their
mightiest chiefs captured.

Petty inter-tribal quarrels were swept away by the return of the Hawk
of the Desert. Savage expectation was mirrored in their dark eyes as
Conan lectured them.

"The fort is impregnable to a straight assault," he said bluntly. "We
have no ballistae or other siege engines to reduce it by force. It is
well provisioned, like all these Turanian outposts, and might hold out
for a year. Moreover, a determined sally by their seasoned squadrons
would scatter bur irregular ranks. Our chance is to come to grips with
them inside the walls, where cavalry tactics cannot be used and we have
the advantage of numbers. Trickery must be used.

"Let us equip a caravan train from the loot stored here in this oasis.
Fifty of us, garbed as merchants, slaves, retainers, and camel drivers
shall take the caravan to the fort, as if we were on the road to
Kherdpur. At the twelfth hour we shall cut down the guards at the gate,
open up, and let in the horde. Our main goals are the barracks, the
officers' quarters, and the governor's palace. We shall pillage, burn
sack, and slay until the streets run red with Turanian blood!"

The Cimmerian rose, hitching at his scabbard. "To work, desert dogs!
Before sunrise, I want such a camel train as would make any Zuagir's
mouth water!"

Camel bells tinkled. The feet of men and beasts raised clouds of dust
as the long line passed through the gate of Fort Wakla. At the gate,
the lean merchant in the lead declared: "Lord, I am Zebah, a Shemite of
Anakia. I have come up from Yukkub to barter my goods in Kherdpur."

"Who is this?" asked the gate captain, pointing to a huge man wrapped
in a capacious khalat. His kaffia hid the lower part of his face, so
that only his piercing blue eyes could be seen.

"This is my personal servant and bodyguard," declared the leader, "a
Stygian. The others are hired guards, camel drivers, and slaves. By
Ashtoreth, it is good to be safely within walls again! I had feared
attacks from the Zuagir bands. My men are well armed, as the noble
captain can see. But the gods protected us, so none of those stinking
vermin of the desert assailed us."

The captain of the watch grinned. "Your precautions were wasted, my
man. Just now a woman could ride alone and unmolested along the caravan
trail. Yesterday a squadron of the Imperial Guards smashed a host of
the desert rats and captured their chieftain. We think only one of the
dogs got away."

"Ah!" said the Shemite. "That is indeed glorious news."

"All in the day's work. But at least this show of force should stop the
raids for a while. Veziz Shah has ordered us to slay any Zuagir, man,
woman, or child, caught by our patrols. By the time you return to
Yukkub, you will be able to travel the length and breadth of the Zuagir
desert without fear."

"I will burn an offering to Bel as a measure of my gratitude," said the
merchant, as the last of the camels shambled through the gate. Four
guardsmen closed the gate; its ironclad valves swung creakingly shut on
hinges as thick as a man's leg. The massive bolt bars clanged into
their cradles.

The fort was really a small city. A high, crenelated wall of stone
girded the mass of buildings with parapets and battlements. Watchful
bowmen ranged the breastworks. The space within was roomy, and
merchants and thieves found their means of support in the profusion of
buildings. Isolated as it was, Fort Wakla must contain within itself
the means of civilized living, with drinking shops and gambling houses
to keep the garrison happy.

At the spacious market place in the center, mailed soldiers in spired
helmets and robed merchants with exotic wares and veiled women milled
about. The space resounded with the cries of hawkers and auctioneers.
To one side rose the mighty citadel where the governor lived, a
fortress in itself with gray stone walls, narrow windows, and heavy
copper doors. Those who had been inside, however, averred that the
interior belied the grimness of the outside. It was heaped with art
treasures, fitted with comfortable furniture, and stocked with fine
wines and viands.

Evening had come. The sky darkened swiftly, and here and there candles
and lamps illuminated the windows. Sweating taverners bore wine casks
from their cellars for the evening rush of customers. Gamblers rolled
dice with practiced twists and turns. The colorful night life of a
Hyrkanian city was beginning.

In the quarters by the western wall, reserved for visiting caravans,
arguments raged around the campfires of Conan's band. Nearly all
advocated staying there in safety, unsuspected, until the appointed
hour had come. But Oman was of another mind. With a good two hours to
spare, he meant to find out as much as he could about the disposition
of the enemy. The quarters of the officers and common soldiers he had
already located, close by the main gate, but he did not know the number
of the troops quartered there.

"May the fiends cut off your tongues!" he rumbled. "I will do as I have
said. In the tavern district there will be scores of drunken soldiers
off duty. From one of them I shall get the information I want if I have
to wring it from him like a sodden cloth!"

The iron determination of the Cimmerian swept aside the objections of
his followers. He wrapped his khalat about him and strode away, hiding
his face under the kaffia. There was no reason to upset their carefully
laid plans by letting some Turanian with a good memory recognize him.

The fumes of sour wine, stale beer, and sweat struck Conan in the face
as he entered the first drinking shop. The carousal was in full swing.
Wenches hurried to and fro with jacks of foaming ale and flagons of
wine, while painted hussies dawdled on the knees of half-drunken
soldiers who emptied their wine cups and yelled for more. The interior
was much like that of a western tavern, though the garb was more
colorful.

Seeking out a small, secluded table in a darker corner, the big
barbarian sat down upon a creaking chair and ordered a tankard of beer.
Slaking his thirst in gulps, he looked around. A pair of drunken
lancers were wrestling on the floor amid shrieks and titters from the
women. Taut muscles rippled under their tawny, sweating skins. A game
of dice was in progress at a neighboring table. Gleaming coins and
flashing gems wandered from one side to the other across its rough-hewn
and wine-spattered surface. The Cimmerian relaxed. Nervousness seldom
assailed him, but his senses had been on edge as he entered the enemy's
lair.

"What about a drink, you silent dullard?"

With a crash of overturned chairs, a giant man-at-arms pushed through
the throng, leaving a train of furious curses in his wake. He flung
himself down upon the unoccupied seat at Conan's table. His eyes were
glassily belligerent, and his gilded mail and silken sash were splashed
with wine from his cup.

Conan's eyes narrowed. The man wore the scarlet mantle and white turban
of the Imperial Guards. The turban sported a peacock feather, the
emblem of a captain of these elite troops. No doubt he belonged to that
detachment that routed the Zuagirs and took Yin Allal prisoner. In fact
he might have commanded that company. Here was an opportunity sent by
the gods if Conan could but use it.

With a show of bluff intimacy, the big Cimmerian leaned forward, his
face still hidden in the shadow of Ids kaffia. "Do not wonder that I
find this place dull. I came in only to slake my thirst." He gave the
soldier a friendly punch in the shoulder. "I'm on my way to a pleasure
house where the women are so fair and skilled as to rival the
courtesans of Shadizar!"

The captain hiccupped, shook his head, and focused his eyes with an
effort. "Huh? Women? Good idea. Who are you, anyway?"

"Hotep of Khemi, bodyguard to the merchant Ze-bah. Come along with me,
man! A visit to this place will surfeit you for a month."

Conan was not an expert dissembler. His performance would have aroused
the suspicion of a shrewd and sober man. However, the drunken stupor of
the Turanian left room for nothing but his most primitive instincts.
Breathing hard with aroused lust, he leaned forward with a loud belch.

"Lead me there, man! I have wandered too long over the cursed desert
without a woman."

"Were you with the party that ambushed the Zuagirs?"

"With them? I commanded them!"

"Good for you!"

"Aye; that was a noble fight. But the only wench in the caravan was the
yedka Thanara, may the gods smite her haughty body with boils!"

"She refused you?"

"Worse! She slapped me when I tried to kiss her in her tent!"

"The insolence of her!" said Conan.

"Nor was that all. Would you believe it, she threatened to have me
flayed in the great square at Agra-pur if I did not behave? Me,
Ardashir of Akif! Behave myself! As if any red-blooded man could
control himself when casting his eyes upon her!"

"It is shameful, how women treat us."

"Enough of that. Lead me to your pleasure house, Stygian. I need
forgetfulness and surcease."

Rising unsteadily, the Turanian pushed through the throng. Conan
followed. In the street, the cool night air was like a slap in the face
with a wet cloth. The captain sobered visibly as he walked. Suddenly
curious, he peered at the half-hidden face of his companion, who
hurried silently along at his side.

"Ho," he said, "Wait a moment, my fleet-footed friend! You have not
described the whereabouts of this magical house of women, of which I
have never heard though I know Wakla well. Let's have a look under your
headsheet—"

Ardashir's speech was cut short by a powerful hand on his throat.
Corded muscles of unimaginable strength held him as in a giant vice.
Normally accounted the strongest man in his company, he was, in his
unsteady condition, helpless against the suddenness of the assault and
the gorilla like power of the Cimmerian.

He was swiftly dragged into a dark lane, struggling for breath and
clawing at the hands that throttled him. When he was almost
unconscious, he was swiftly trussed with his own sash. Roughly turned
over on his back, he felt the burning eyes of his captor upon him as
the barbarian spoke heavily accented Hyrkanian in a sibilant whisper:

"You asked my name, eastern dog! Have you heard of Conan, called Yamad
al-Aphta by the Zuagirs? Chief of the kozaki and the Vilayet pirates?"

The Turanian could do no more than make a choking sound in his bruised
throat. Conan continued: "I have returned from the West, and now I will
have information from you if I have to burn out your eyes or skin the
soles of your feet to get it!"

Though a tough and courageous man, Ardashir was paralyzed with shock.
Normal enemies, such as Zaugir bands, Kshatriya legions, or the
defending troops of invaded western nations he had faced with the
fatalistic hardihood of the seasoned warrior. But this barbarian giant,
kneeling over him with poised dagger, was regarded with superstitious
dread by the Turanians. The saga of his daring exploits had invested
him with magical powers in their eyes, until his name was spoken like
that of a mythical ogre.

Ardashir knew that the barbarian's threats were not idle. Conan would
carry out the most bestial acts of torture without compunction to gain
his own ends. Yet it was not the fear of torture but rather the numbing
realization of the identity of his captor that loosed Ardashir's
tongue.

By prodding a little with his dagger now and then, Conan gathered his
news. The regular garrison of twelve hundred horse was quartered in the
barracks by the main gate, while the hundred men of the Imperial Guard
were spread over the city in temporary quarters. The desert chieftain
was chained in the dungeon beneath the governor's tower. The lady
Thanara was also quartered in the tower. The strength of the guards at
the gates the captain did not know.

Conan pondered the situation. He knew that the barracks formed a square
with a single exit. He had over two thousand determined nomads at his
disposal. But using his new-found knowledge effectively, he counted on
gaining victory.

A glance at the moon told him the twelfth hour was near. It was time to
hurry. He tested the bonds of his captive, gagged him with his own
turban, dragged him farther into the lane, and left him there, glaring
and straining.

"I must be growing soft," Conan said to himself. "Time was when I
should have cut the cur's throat after questioning him. But the Zuagirs
will no doubt take care of that when they find him."

Faint, rapid drum beats filled the luxurious apartment on the second
floor of the governor's palace, where Thanara of Maypur lounged on a
silken divan, nibbling fruit from a low table that stood on the thick
rug in front of her couch. Her sheerly transparent gown revealed her
seductive charms, but the man in the room paid scant attention to
these.

This man was a small, bandy-legged, mud-colored fellow, clad in skins
and furs. His flat, wrinkled, monkeylike face was painted with stripes
and circles of red and black. His long black hair was gathered in
greasy braids, and a necklace of human teeth encircled his neck. A
powerful stench of sweat-soaked leather and unwashed human hide rose
from him. He was a Wigur, one of those fierce and barbarous nomads from
the far northeast beyond the Sea of Vilayet.

The little man sat cross-legged on the floor and stared at the thin
curl of smoke that rose from a brazier on a tripod in front of him. The
wavering blue column soared up from its source for two feet, then
rippled and curled up on itself in interwoven arabesques. All the while
the man kept up a swift tapping of his finger tips against a small
drum, less than a foot across, which he held in his other hand.

At last the staccato tapping stopped.

"What see you, Tatur?" asked the yedka.

"He comes," said the shaman in a high singsong voice. "He whom you seek
is near."

"How can he be?" said the lady Thanara sharply. "Veziz Shah keeps a
sharp watch, and no such conspicuous rogue could gain admittance."

"Nevertheless, he approaches," whined Tatur. "The spirits do not lie.
Unless you flee, he will soon confront you."

"He must have entered Wakla in disguise," mused Thanara. "If he comes
upon me, what shall I do? Will your master, he who is not to be named,
give me some means to cope with him?" There was a note of panic in her
voice, and her hand sought her shapely throat.

"It is the will of him who shall not be named that you should succeed
in your mission," intoned the Wigur. He fumbled inside his sheepskin
coat and brought out a small purple phial.

"A drop of this in his wine," he said, "will render him like one dead
for three days."

"That is good. But the barbarian is wary. His suspicions are aroused in
the wink of an eye, as we learned at Khanyria. Suppose he detects the
drug and refuses to drink?"

Tartur brought out another object: a small pouch of soft leather. "In
that case, this will lay him low if he breathes it."

"What is it?"

"Pollen of the yellow lotus of Khitai. Use it only as a last resort.
For, should a breath of air blow it back upon you, you too will be cast
into a swoon. And too deep a breath of it can kill."

"That is good, but not enough. If your master really expects me to
confront the Cimmerian, he should furnish me with a last-minute means
of escape if I am trapped. Others may underestimate the Cimmerian, but
not I. And your master can do it, and he owes it to me for past
services."

A faint smile creased Tatur's wrinkled features. "He who is not to be
named said truly you are a sharp bargainer. Here." He brought out an
object like a translucent egg. "Break this in your hour of need, and
help will come to you from other dimensions."

Thanara examined the three objects. "Good," she said at last. "Ride to
Aghrapur and tell the king I await Conan here. If all goes well, he
shall have his enemy. If not, he will need a new agent. Haste and
farewell!"

A few minutes later, Tatur the shaman, astride a small, shaggy
Hyrkanian pony, jogged off into the night across the sands at a
tireless canter.

The night was cool and quiet. The captain of the watch at the main gate
stretched and yawned. From the small guardhouse in the square before
the gate, he could see two bowmen patrolling the parapet over the big
twin doors. The pair of spearmen at the pillars flanking the entrance
stood erect and still, the moonlight reflected by their polished mail
shirts and spired helmets. No need to fear anything; a stroke on the
gong at his side would bring a company on the double from the barracks.
Nevertheless, the governor had ordered the guards doubled and their
vigilance increased.

The officer wondered. Did Veziz Shah really fear an attack on the fort
on account of the captured Zuagir chief? Let the desert rats come! They
would smash their heads against the walls while the archers riddled
them with arrows. The governor must be getting old and prone to
nightmares. Let him rest. He, Akeb Man, was in charge!

The moon was obscured by clouds. Akeb Man blinked and peered. What had
happened? It seemed as if the two archers on the wall had sat down for
a moment. Now, however, they had risen again and resumed their measured
pacing. Better investigate these lazy devils. He would give them three
hours' drill in the desert sun if they had tried to shirk their duty.

Rising, he gazed out again before opening the door. At that instant the
moonlight returned in full force. A shocking sight met his eyes.
Instead of spired helmets and mantles, the archers wore banded kaffias
and khalats.

Zuagirs!

How they had gotten in, only the devils knew. Akeb Man snatched at the
hammer that hung beside the gong to strike the alarm.

The door of the guardhouse burst in with a crash and fell in a cloud of
splinters and dust. Akeb Man wheeled and snatched at his scimitar, but
the sight of the man confronting him made him pause in astonishment. No
white-clad desert raider was he, but a giant western warrior in black
mesh-mail, naked sword in hand.

With a cry of fear and rage, the Turanian lashed out with a low
disemboweling thrust. With the swiftness of lightning, the mailed giant
avoided the blade and brought his own long straight sword down in a
whistling blow. Blood spurted like a fountain as Akeb Man sank to the
floor, cloven to the breastbone.

Conan wasted no time in gloating. Any moment now, an inquisitive
guardsman might poke his head through a barracks window or a belated
citizen might come wandering by. The big iron-sheathed doors were now
opening, and through them poured a swift and silent-footed stream of
white-robed nomads.

Swiftly, Conan issued his orders. His tones were low, but the words
carried to the ears of all.

"Two men with torches, set the barracks afire. Three hundred archers
with plenty of arrows place themselves to mow down the soldiers as they
pour out. The rest of you hit the fort with torch and sword. Burn and
slay, and take any spoils and captives you want. Keep together. Do not
break up into bands smaller than twenty. Thabit, bring your fifty with
me. I am for the governor's palace."

With an imperious gesture, Conan dismissed his subchiefs and beckoned
his fifty, who followed his long strides at a dogtrot. Behind them,
smoking torches lit the square as the arsonists slunk towards the
guardsmens' lodgings. Other bands vanished in different directions.
With the armed defenders of the fort wiped out by Conan's stratagem,
there would be little opposition. The lean reavers licked their lips in
anticipation of plunder and vengeance as they stalked along the silent
streets, arrows nocked and knives and spears gleaming in the moonlight.

Oman led his men straight toward their goal. He intended to save Yin
Allal first. Moreoever, he was intrigued by the tale of the beautiful
yedka. Here, he thought, he might find a prize precious enough to
satisfy his own taste. Beautiful women had always been one of his
weaknesses, and his imagination had been fired by Ardashir's account He
increased his speed, watching the dimmed doorways and nighted lane
mouths with smoldering eyes as he hurried past.

As they emerged upon the central square, Conan . mouthed a barbaric
oath. Four sentries paced in pairs before the copper door of the
residence. He had counted on taking the governor by surprise, but that
was no longer possible. Swinging his great sword, he raced across the
flagstones of the market place. Such was his speed that one of the
spearmen was down with his side caved in before the others collected
their shattered wits. Conan's followers were twenty yards behind,
unable to match the Cimmerian's terrific speed.

Two spearmen thrust their weapons against his broad breast, while the
third put a horn to his lips and sent forth a bellowing signal. This
was cut short by a well-aimed Zuagir arrow, which pierced the
trumpeter's brain. The horn fell to the ground with a clank.

Conan parried the spear thrusts with a fierce swipe of his sword that
sheared off the heads of both weapons. With a vicious thrust he impaled
one antagonist on his long blade. The Turanian fell sprawling against
the other with a gurgle. The second man's sword stroke at the
Cimmerian's head went awry and struck sparks from the flagstones. In
the next instant, the man was pincushioned with arrows. With a groan
and a clatter of mail he fell.

Roused to a vicious lust for killing, Conan sprang forward and tried
the copper door. Time was short. In answer to the ringing note of the
horn, people thrust their heads out of casements around the square.
Archers appeared on some of the roofs; he must get into the tower
before the foe had time to organize a defense.

The door opened before his thrusting shoulder. Leaving ten of his men
to guard against attack from the rear, Conan led the rest inside.

With a clink of mail and a flash of sword blades, ten soldiers in the
white turbans of the Imperial Guard rushed against him out of a
doorway. The Cimmerian's battle cry rang high as he and his followers
closed with their enemies. Many a curved knife or shortened spear found
its mark in Turanian vitals, but the flashing scimitars also took a
heavy toll. However, the bloodiest havoc wreaked was that of Oman's
cross-hiked sword. He leaped, cut, and thrust with a tigerish frenzy
and speed that blurred the sight of his adversaries. In a couple of
minutes, the ten Turanians lay in pools of blood, though eight silent
figures in bloodstained khalats bore witness to the ferocity of the
defense.

Conan swept up to the second floor, taking four steps at a stride. On
this floor, he knew, the quarters of the governor were located.
Pausing, he flung swift orders at his followers.

"Ten of you, search for the keys to the dungeon and free Yin Allal. The
rest, take all the plunder you can carry. I'll pay the governor a
visit."

As the Zuagirs, howling and laughing, stormed up and down the stairs,
Conan broke the sandalwood door before him into splinters with a mighty
kick. He found himself in the anteroom of the governor's apartments.
Crossing the floor swiftly on sound-deadening mats, he halted in
midstep. From the other side of the door before him he heard a woman's
voice raised in angry expostulation.

Conan's brows drew together in a vast frown. He picked up a heavy table
and heaved it against the new obstacle. With a crashing impact, the
ungainly missile burst open the shattered door. He tossed the remains
of the table aside and strode through.

At a table in the middle of the lamplit room stood a tall, powerful man
of middle age. Conan knew him by description as Veziz Shah. Silken
divans and tables laden with delicacies stood about on the rug-covered
floor. On one table rested a flagon of wine with two filled goblets.

A woman rested on the divan. Her wide dark eyes held no trace of fear
as she looked upon the invading barbarian. Conan gave a start. This was
the girl who had accosted him in Khanyria and almost led him to his
death!

No time now to mull over such matters. With a curse, the governor
unsheathed his jeweled scimitar and advanced catlike upon the
Cimmerian.

"You dare invade my chambers, you red-handed rogue!" he snarled. "I
have heard you are on the rove again, and I hoped for the pleasure of
having your limbs torn off by wild horses. But as it is—"

He whipped forward in a swift arching stroke. Most men would have been
so distracted by his words as to have their throats slit by that
whistling edge, but the pantherish speed of barbarian muscles saved
Conan. Parrying with his hilt, he lashed out in a vicious countercut.
In the exchange of blows and thrusts, he soon found he faced one of the
most skilled swordsmen he had ever met.

But no civilized fencer could match the skill and speed of Conan,
hardened in wars and battles since boyhood against foes from all over
the world. The skill at arms he had won as a mercenary would by itself
have made him master of any ordinary swordsman, for his learning had
been pounded into his brain in endless, bloody strife on far
battlefields. In addition he retained the flashing, lightning-quick
speed of the primordial barbarian, unslowed by civilized comfort.

As the duel continued, Veziz Shah began to tire and his eyes filled
with an awful fear. With a sudden cry he flung his scimitar into
Conan's face and raced for the far wall. There his questing fingers
probed the surface as if seeking the spring to open a hidden exit.

Conan avoided the missile with a jerk of his black-maned head. The next
second his arm was around the neck and his knee in the back of the
Turanian amir. His voice was a terrible whisper in Veziz Shah's ear.

"Dog, remember when you caught ten of my Afghulis when you commanded a
squadron in Secunderam? And how you sent me their pickled heads in jars
with wishes for a hearty repast? Your time has come. Rot in Hell!"

With a terrible heave, the blood-mad Cimmerian forced his enemy's body
backwards against the thrust of his knee until the Turanian's spine
snapped like a dry twig. A lifeless corpse flopped to the floor.
Sweating and panting, Conan turned to the woman on the divan.

Thanara had not moved during the fight. Now she rose, eyes shining,
raised her arms and came fearlessly towards Conan, ignoring the bloody
sword in his hand. The blood ran swiftly through his veins at the sight
of her.

"You are a real man!" she whispered, pressing herself against his rough
mail and twining her arms around his corded neck. "None other could
have slain Veziz Shah. I am glad you did. He forced me by threats to
come in here to do his bidding."

Conan felt the hot urge of his racing blood. In his younger days he
would have swept the woman into his arms and damned the consequences.
But now the caution of long experience asserted itself. He growled
warningly.

"You were clad otherwise when we met in Khanyria," he said, taking both
her wrists in one big paw and drawing her firmly down to the couch
beside him. "Tell me the tale behind that ambush, and your part in it.
No lies, now, if you know what's good for you!"

The dark eyes under the long lashes regarded him without fear. A
well-formed hand gently drew itself from his grasp and took one of the
goblets of wine from the table. She handed him this vessel and began
sipping the other herself. The assurance of a beautiful and intelligent
woman colored her actions.

"You must be thirsty after killing. Have a draught of this wine. It is
the best from Veziz Shah's own cellar. Drink, and I will tell you the
story you ask for."

Conan stared into the depths of the cup as Thanara's musical voice
began: "I am Thanara, a yedka or high-born lady of Maypur. King
Yezdigerd has graciously appointed me one of his personal agents—the
eyes and ears of the king, as we call them in Turan. When word came
that you had embarked on your lonely journey, I was sent to supervise
the work of the stupid mercenaries engaged by our agent in Tarantia. I
suppose—"

Conan hurled his cup to the floor and furiously turned upon the woman.
He had sniffed the wine and let a little touch his tongue, and his keen
barbarian senses told him of the threat that lurked in the cup. One
huge hand fastened itself in her long black hair.

"I'll supervise you, strumpet!" he snarled. "I thought—"

Thanara's hand came up from behind her and flung into his face a pinch
of the pollen of the yellow lotus. Conan jerked back, coughing and
sneezing, and let go Thanara's hair. Holding her breath, she slipped
out of his reach and stood up.

Snoring heavily, Conan sprawled upon the couch.

Thanara nodded in satisfaction. For the next two or three days he would
be like a man stone dead. Swift action was now necessary.

A rising murmur from without attracted her attention. She stepped to a
window overlooking the square and pulled back the curtains. At the
sight she saw she jerked back. Houses flamed, fired by the ravaging
Zuagir horde. Shrieks of captive women and curses of battling men
echoed. White, ghostly shapes flitted here and there. No soldiery was
to be seen. Evidently Conan had entered the fort, not alone as she had
thought, but in the company of the desert wolves.

Swiftly she collected her wits. A seasoned spy, she was already
hatching a plan to save herself and further the king's aims. She
grabbed a white robe from one of the chests and donned it She armed
herself with a long, gold-hiked dagger. Thrusting aside the broken and
staring corpse of the late governor, she searched with swift hands for
the spring activating the secret door.

With a grating sound, a section of the wall swung inward, disclosing a
spiral staircase leading downwards. She went back to the couch where
the unconscious form of Conan rested. Grasping him beneath the armpits,
she dragged him inside the secret door, straining her muscles to the
utmost to move his great weight. She worked the spring from inside to
close the door and laid the Cimmerian to rest on the steps. He lay
snoring like a hibernating bear.

Thanara hurried down the steps. Light came faintly from several narrow
window slits. On the ground floor she found herself in a small circular
chamber. The exit worked in the same way as the entrance to the hidden
passage. She pressed the stud and slipped out, taking good note of the
means of reentry.

The fort was a hell. The Zuagirs had broken out the contents of the
wine cellars and gotten swiftly drunk, with the light-hearted
irresponsibility of the primitive nomad unused to civilized drink.
Their laughing torchmen had set fire to every house. Bands of captive,
half-naked women were rounded up and herded, with whiplashes and coarse
jests, toward the main gate.

At the barracks the slaughter had been awful. The cornered soldiers,
rushing out through the only exit, had run into a hail of arrows from
the waiting Zuagir archers. None of them had a chance, blinded by smoke
and confused by sleep. Hundreds of pin-cushioned bodies lay in heaps
about the ruins of the barracks, while charred bodies in the debris
showed that many had been caught by the flames before they could win
out the door to face the arrows.

Among the inner buildings of the fort, bands of blood-mad nomads were
still cutting down the remnants of the company of the Imperial Guard
who, awakened by the noise, burst out of their scattered lodgings. Such
a bloody stroke as tonight's sack had not been dealt a Turanian
stronghold in decades.

Hardened to a life of raw experience, Thanara hurried through the dark
streets. The way was lit only by the guttering flames of burning
houses. Unfrightened by the corpses choking the gutters, she melted
into dark doorways whenever a screaming Zuagir band shuffled by,
swinging golden spoils and herding captive women. When passing the
mouth of a small lane, she heard a gurgle. She peered swiftly into the
gloom and discerned a prostrate figure. She also saw that it wore the
spired helmet and fine-meshed mail coif of a Turanian Imperial Guard.

Hurrying into the narrow space, she bent and removed the gag from the
man's mouth. She at once recognized Ardashir of Akif, half suffocated
by the smoke of nearby fires but otherwise very much alive.

She cut his bonds and motioned him to rise and follow her, stifling the
imprecations that he started to gasp out by a finger at her lips. With
the habits of an old soldier, he accepted her leadership without
argument.

The journey back to the governor's palace was uneventful. The drunken
bands seemed satisfied with their spoils and were drawing back out of
the fort. Once, however, the Turanians were confronted by a pair of
leering, drunken desert raiders, but the Zuagirs could not match the
swift strokes of Ardashir's scimitar by clumsy motions with their
curved knives. Leaving their bloodied bodies behind, the couple won
unscathed to the tower. They slipped into the secret entrance. Ardashir
followed unwillingly as Thanara led the way up the stairs to where
Conan lay.

Recognizing his foe, Ardashir snatched at his scimitar with an oath.
Thanara caught his arm. "Calm yourself! Know you not that the king will
shower us with gold if we bring the barbarian to him alive?"

Ardashir made a pungent suggestion as to what King Yezdigerd could do
with his gold. "The swine has smirched my honor!" he shouted. "I will—"

"Hold your tongue, fool! What will happen to you when the king learns
you have lost a whole company of his precious Imperials but escaped
without a scratch yourself?"

"Hm," said Ardashir, his fury abating and giving way to calculation.
Thanara continued:

"The king's most skilled executioners will have to meet in conclave to
invent sufferings hellish enough to atone for the trouble he has given
Turan. Take hold of your senses! Will you forsake wealth and a
generalship for a moment of personal vengeance?"

Growling but quieted, Ardashir sheathed his sword and helped the girl
to tie the barbarian's hands and feet. Peering into the deserted
quarters of the governor through a secret spyhole, she whispered:

"We shall wait until dawn. By then the Zuagir bands will have left, and
we shall take horses from some stable. The drunken raiders must have
overlooked some. If we spur hard, we can be out of danger in half a
day. Provisions can be found in this house. We shall ride straight for
the capital and drug our prisoner anew during the journey to keep him
quiet. In five days he shall lie in the king's deepest dungeon in
Aghrapur!"

Her dark eyes flashed triumphantly as she gazed on the prostrate form
of the Cimmerian.


4. The Palace on the Cliff
--------------------------

With head whirling, stomach knotted with nausea, and throat parched,
Conan the Cimmerian slowly regained his senses. His last memory was of
sitting on the sumptuous couch of Veziz Shah, governor of Fort Wakla.
Now he found himself gazing at dank, dripping walls, with the squeak of
scuttling rats in his ears as he turned heavily over to sit up on a bed
of moldy straw. As he moved, there was a jingle of chains linking the
fetters on his wrists and ankles with a massive stone staple set in the
wall. He was naked but for a loincloth.

His head felt as if it were going to split. His tongue stuck to his
palate with thirst, and intense pangs of hunger assailed him. In spite
of the shooting pains in his skull, he raised his voice in a mighty
bellow.

"Ho, guards! Would you let a man perish of hunger and thirst? Fetch
food and drink! What cursed nook of Hell is this?"

With a patter of footsteps and a jingle of keys, a paunchy, bearded
jailer appeared on the other side of the iron grille that barred the
door of the cell. "So the western dog has awakened! Know that these are
the dungeons of King Yezdigerd's palace at Aghrapur. Here are food and
water. You will need to fill your belly to appreciate the cordial
reception the king has prepared for you."

Thrusting a loaf and a small jug through the bars, the jailer went
away, his cackling laughter resounding hollowly in the corridor. The
famished Cimmerian flung himself on the food and drink. He munched
great hunks of the stale loaf and washed them down with gulps of water.
At least he did not now have to fear poison, for if the king had wanted
to kill him out of hand it would have been easy to do so while he lay
unconscious.

He pondered his predicament. He was in the hands of his most implacable
enemy. In the olden days King Yezdigerd had offered fabulous rewards
for Conan's head. Many had been the attempts on Conan. Several would-be
assassins had been killed by Conan himself. But the tenacious hatred in
Yezdigerd's heart had not slackened even when his foe had won power as
king of far Aquilonia. Now, by a woman's devious schemes, Conan was at
last at the mercy of his merciless antagonist. Any ordinary man would
have been daunted by the terrible prospect.

Not so Conan! Accepting things as they were with barbarian stolidity,
his fertile mind was already trying and discarding plans of winning to
freedom and turning the tables of his vengeful captor. His eyes
narrowed as the clank of footsteps sounded in die corridor.

At a harsh word of command the steps halted. Through the grille Conan
could discern a half-score of guardsmen, gilt-worked mail a-shimmer in
the torchlight, curved swords in their hands. Two bore heavy bows at
the ready. A tall, massive officer stood forward. Conan recognized
Ardashir, who spoke in a sharp, cutting voice.

"Shapur and Vardan! Truss the barbarian securely and sling a noose
about his neck! Archers! Stand by to prevent any trick!"

The two soldiers stepped forward to carry out the order. One bore a log
of wood six feet long and several inches thick, while the other carried
a stout rope. Ardashir addressed himself to the Cimmerian. His eyes
glowed with malevolence and his fingers twitched with eagerness to
attack Conan, but he held himself in check with the iron self-control
of a well-trained officer. He hissed: "One false move, barbarian dog,
and your heart shall know the marksmanship of my archers! I should
dearly love to slay you myself, but you are the king's own meat."

Oman's chill blue eyes regarded the maddened officer without emotion as
the soldiers placed the log across his shoulders and bound his arms to
it. Without apparent effort, Conan tensed his huge arm muscles, so that
the rope was stretched to its greatest tautness at the moment of tying.
The jailer than unlocked Oman's fetters. Conan rumbled:

"You Turanian dogs will get what you deserve sooner or later. You will
see."

Ardashir's face twitched in fury as he spat back: "And you will get
yours, you red-handed rogue! No torture devised by human brains will be
too cruel when the royal executioners set to work upon you." He laughed
a shrill uncontrolled laugh that betrayed his hysteric mood. "But
enough of this gabble. Follow me, Your Majesty of maggoty Aquilonia!"

At a gesture to the guardsmen, the little company marched along the
dank corridors. The bound barbarian walked in their midst, bearing the
log across his shoulders. Conan was quite unruffled. He had been in
many tight places before and won his way to freedom. He was like a
trapped wolf, alert and constantly looking for a chance to reverse the
situation. He did not waste thought on the terrible odds against him,
or on futile recriminations against his foes, or on self-reproach for
the moment's lapse in vigilance that resulted in his capture. His whole
mind and nervous system were concentrated on what to do next.

Winding stone staircases led upward. As nobody had blindfolded Conan,
his keen eyes took in every detail. The dungeons of the royal palace
were far below ground level. There were several floors to pass, at each
of which an armed guard stood ready with sword or pike.

Twice Conan glimpsed the outside world as they passed window slits. The
darkling sky showed that the time was either dawn or dusk. Now he
understood the mystifying murmur of surf which had reached his ears.
The palace was built on the outskirts of Aghrapur, on a crag
overlooking the Sea of Vilayet. The dungeons were carved out of the
heart of the rock whose sheer face ended in the lapping waves below.
That was why Conan could see the sky through the window slits, though
they had not yet reached the lower floors of the palace itself. Conan
stored the knowledge in his mind.

The size of the palace was amazing. The party passed through endless
rooms with fountains and jeweled vases. Exotic blooms exuded heavy
perfume. Now their steps echoed from arching walls; now they were
muffled by rich rugs and hangings. Corseleted soldiers stood like
statues everywhere with inscrutable faces and eyes alert. Here the
splendor of the East bloomed in its full glory.

The party halted before two gigantic, gold-worked doors. Fully fifty
feet high they towered, their upper parts disappearing in the gloom.
Mysterious arabesques curled their snaky course across the surfaces of
the doors, on which the dragons, heroes, and wizards of Hyrkanian
legend were depicted. Ardashir stepped forward and struck the golden
plates a ringing blow with the hilt of his scimitar.

In response, the immense doors opened slowly. The low murmur of a great
assembly of people reached Oman's ears.

The throne room was vaster than anything Conan had ever seen, from the
sumptuous state chambers of Ophir and Nemedia to the smoky,
timber-roofed halls of Asgard and Vanaheim. Giant pillars of marble
reared lofty columns toward a roof that seemed as distant as the sky.
The profusion of cressets, lamps, and candelabra illuminated costly
drapes, paintings, and hangings. Behind the throne rose windows of
stained glass, closed against the fall of night.

A glittering host filled the hall. Fully a thousand must have assembled
there. There were Nemedians in jupons, trunk hose, and leathern boots;
Ophireans in billowing cloaks; stocky, black-bearded Shemites in silken
robes; renegade Zuagirs from the desert; Vendhyans in bulging turbans
and gauzy robes; barbarically-clad emissaries from the black kingdoms
to the far southwest. Even a lone yellow-haired warrior from the Far
North, clad in a somber black tunic, stared sullenly before him, his
powerful hands gripping the hilt of a heavy longsword that rested
before him with the chape of its scabbard on the floor.

Some had come here to escape the wrath of their own rulers, some as
informers and traitors against the lands of their birth, and some as
envoys. The gluttonous mind of King Yezdigerd was never satisfied with
the size of his growing empire. Many and devious were the ways in which
he sought to enlarge it.

The blare of golden trumpets rang across the huge hall. An avenue
opened through the milling mass, and Conan's little group set itself
again in motion. The distance to the dais was still too great to make
out the individuals clustered there, but their brisk approach would
soon bring them into range.

Conan was afire with curiosity. Though he had fought this eastern
despot many years ago on several occasions—as war-chief of the Zuagirs,
as admiral of the Vilayet pirates, as leader of the Himelian hillmen,
and as hetman of the kozaki—he had never yet seen his implacable foe in
person. He kept his eyes full on the figure on the golden throne as he
approached it.

So it came about that he did not notice the widening of the blond
giant's gray eyes in sudden recognition. The powerful knuckles whitened
as the enigmatic gaze intently followed the towering figure of the
Cimmerian on his way toward the dais.

King Yezdigerd was a swarthy giant of a man with a short black beard
and a thin, cruel mouth. Although the debauchery of the Turanian court
had wrought pouches under his glittering eyes, and lines crisscrossed
his stern and gloomy features ten years too early, his hard-muscled,
powerful body bore witness that self-indulgence had not sapped his
immense vitality.

A brilliant strategist and an insatiable plunderer, Yezdigerd had more
than doubled the size of the kingdom inherited from his weak
predecessor Yildiz. He had wrung tribute from the city-states of
Brythunia and eastern Shem. His gleaming horsemen had beaten the armies
of such distant nations as Stygia and Hyperborea. The crafty king of
Zamora, Mithridates, had been shorn of border provinces and had kept
his throne only at the price of groveling before his conqueror.

Arrayed in a splendor of silk and cloth-of-gold, the long lolled on the
shining throne with the deceptive ease of a resting panther.

At his right sat a woman. Conan felt his blood run hot with
recognition. Thanara! Her voluptuous body was draped in the seductive
robes of a Turanian noblewoman. A diamond-studded diadem glittered in
her lustrous black hair. Her eyes fastened triumphantly on the trussed
and weaponless figure of her captive. She joined in the laughter of the
courtiers round the throne at some grim jest uttered by the king.

The detail halted before the throne. Yezdigerd's eyes blazed with
triumphant glee. At last he held in his power the man who had
slaughtered his soldiers, burnt his cities, and scuttled his ships. The
lust for vengeance churned up within him, but he held himself in check
while the guardsmen knelt and touched their foreheads to the marble
floor.

Conan made no obeisance. His blue eyes aflame with icy fire, he stood
still and upright, clashing with the Turanian king in a battle of
looks. Every inch of his body expressed defiance and contempt. Unclad
as he was, he still commanded the attention of all by the aura of power
that radiated from him. The rumor of his fabulous exploits was
whispered back and forth among the members of the glittering throng.
Many knew him under other dreaded names in their own distant lands.

Sensing the strain upon the rope he held, Ardashir looked up from his
kneeling posture. Black rage seethed in his face as he saw the disdain
of the Cimmerian for court etiquette. He tugged viciously at the rope,
tightening the noose about Conan's neck. A lesser man would have
stumbled and fallen, but Conan stood steady as a rock. The massive
muscles of his bull-neck swelled in ridges against the pressure of the
rope. Then he suddenly bent forward and straightened up again, pulling
the rope backwards. Ardashir was jerked off his knees and sprawled with
a clatter of gear on the marble.

"I pay homage to no Hyrkanian dog!" Conan's roar was like a peal of
thunder. "You wage your wars with the help of women. Can you handle a
sword yourself? Til show you how a real man fights!"

During his short speech, Conan relaxed the taut muscles of his arms, so
that the rope binding them went slack. By stretching, he got the tips
of his left fingers around one end of the log on his back. With a quick
jerk he slipped his right arm out of the loose coils of rope and
brought the log around in front of him. Then he swiftly freed his left
arm.

Ardashir scrambled up and lunged towards him, drawing his scimitar.
Conan whipped the end of the log around with a thud against the
Turanian's helmet. The officer was hurled across the floor, his body
spinning like that of a thrown doll.

For a split second, everybody stood unmoving, struck still by this
seemingly magical feat. With the fighting instinct of the barbarian,
Conan took instant advantage of this pause. One end of the log shot out
and caught a guardsman in the face. The man flew over backwards, his
face a mere smear of blood and broken bones. Then Conan whirled and
threw the log into the nearest group of guards on the other side of
him, even as they started to rise and draw their weapons. The men were
bowled over in a clattering heap.

Lithe and quick as a leopard, Conan bounded forward, snatching up the
scimitar that Ardashir had dropped when knocked unconscious. A couple
of courtiers tried to bar the Cimmerian's way at the foot of King
Yezdigerd's dais, but he easily cut his path through them, slashing and
thrusting. He bounded up the steps of the dais.

As he came, the king rose to meet him, sweeping out his own scimitar.
The jewels in its hilt flashed as Yezdigerd brought the blade up to
parry a terrific right cut that Conan aimed at his head. Such was the
force of the blow that the king's sword snapped. Conan's blade cut
through the many folds of the snow-white turban, cleaving the spray of
bird-of-paradise feathers that rose from the front of it and denting
the steel cap that Yezdigerd wore beneath.

Though the blow failed to split the king's skull as Conan intended, it
threw the Turanian backwards, stunned. Yezdigerd fell back over the arm
of his throne and overset the gleaming chair. King and throne rolled
off the dais, down the steps on the other side, and into a knot of
onrushing guardsmen, spoiling their charge.

Conan, beside himself with battle lust, would have bounded after the
king to finish him off. But loyal arms dragged Yezdigerd out of the
press, and from all sides sword blades and spear points pressed in upon
the unprotected Cimmerian.

Conan's scimitar wove a lethal net of steel around him. He surpassed
himself in brilliant swordsmanship. Despite his stay in the dungeon and
the aftereffects of the drug he had inhaled, he was fired with
vitality. If he must die, he would now die sword in hand, laughing and
slaying, to carve a niche for himself in the Hall of Heroes.

He whirled in gleeful frenzy. A quick slash sent an antagonist tumbling
backwards with his entrails spilling out; a lightning thrust burst
through mail links into a Turanian heart. Stabbing, slicing, smiting,
and thrusting, he wrought red havoc. For an instant, raging like a mad
elephant about the dais, he cleared it of soldiers and courtiers except
for those who lay in a tangle about his feet.

Only the lady Thanara remained, sitting petrified in her chair. With a
grating laugh, Conan tore the glittering diadem from her hair and flung
her into the throng that milled about the platform.

Soldiers now advanced grimly from all sides, their spearheads and sword
blades forming a bristling hedge in front of an ordered line of
shields. Behind them, archers nocked their shafts. Noncombatants stood
in clumps in the farther parts of the throne room, watching fascinated.

Conan flexed his muscles, swung his scimitar, and gave a booming laugh.
Blood ran down his naked hide from superficial cuts in scalp, arm,
chest, and leg. Surrounded and unarmored, not even his strength and
speed could save him from the thrust of many keen blades all at once.
The prospect of death did not trouble him; he only hoped to take as
many foes as he could into the darkness with him.

Suddenly there came the clash of steel, the spurt of blood, and the icy
gleam of a northern longsword. A giant figure hewed its way through the
armored lines, leaving three blood-spattered corpses on the floor. With
a mighty bound, the fair-haired northerner leaped to the dais. In his
left arm he cradled a couple of heavy, round objects—bucklers of bronze
and leather picked up from the floor where the victims of Conan's first
outburst had dropped them.

"Catch this!" cried the newcomer, tossing one of the shields to Conan.
Their glances met and locked. Conan cried:

"Rolf! What do you here, old polar bear?"

"I will tell you later," growled the northerner, grasping the handle of
the other buckler. "If we live, that is. If not, I am prepared to fight
and die with you."

The unexpected advent of this formidable ally raised Conan's spirits
even higher.

"Rush in, jackals," he taunted, waving his bloodstained scimitar. "Who
will be the next to consign his soul to Hell? Attack, damn you, or I'll
carry the fight to you!"

The steel-sheathed ranks of the Turanian soldiery had halted, forming a
square about the dais. The two giant barbarians stood back to back, one
black-haired and almost naked, the other blond and clad in somber
black. They seemed like two royal tigers surrounded by timorous
hunters, none of whom dared to strike the first blow.

"Archers!" cried an officer directing the Turanian troopers. "Spread
out, so the shafts shall strike from all sides."

"They have us," growled Rolf "Had we but stout coats of Asgardean mail…
Ah, well, it was fun while it lasted."

"Not quite," said Conan. "See you that row of windows? Here is my
plan…"

He whispered a few quick words to his comrade, who nodded. The two
giants sprang forward, their blades flickering with the speed of
striking snakes. Two guardsmen sank to the floor in their blood, and
the others shrank back momentarily from the fury of the onslaught.

"Follow me, Rolf! We'll fool these dogs yet!" barked the Cimmerian,
striking right and left.

The swords of the barbarians cleared a bloody avenue. The big
northerner wheeled, thrusting and cutting, his sword cutting down the
Turanians like wheat stalks before the scythe as he guarded Conan's
back. As Conan rushed forward, Rolf followed in his wake, his sword
widening the bloody path opened by the Cimmerian. His booming bass was
casting forth the ringing tones of old northern battle songs, and the
gleam of the berserk was in his gaze.

None could stand before their terrible attack. Turanian swords and
spears sought their blood, but glanced harmlessly from the shields as
the pantherish speed of the barbarians blurred the eyes of their
adversaries. Conan bled from a score of wounds and Rolf's garb was in
tatters, but the bodies heaped upon the floor bespoke the violence of
their attack.

They put their backs to one of the large windows. For a few seconds
both barbarians exploded into maniacal fury, laying about them with
blood-crusted blades and clearing a space of several feet around them.
The massed soldiers shrank back for a moment. It seemed to their
superstitious minds as if these were not men but invincible ogres, hard
as steel, risen from the darker realms to wreak terrible vengeance.

Conan utilized this moment with lightninglike speed. The stained glass
of the window shattered into thousands of gleaming, many-colored shards
under blows from his scimitar that tore a great gap in the leaded pane.
Hurling their swords and shields into the faces of their foes, the
Cimmerian and the northerner sprang through in headlong dives toward
the sea two hundred feet below. A taunting laugh lingered behind them
in the air as the guardsmen closed in.

"Archers! An archer, quickly, to have at them!" The commanding
officer's voice was shrill with desperation. Five men stood forward,
each armed with the powerful, double-curved Hyrkanian war bow. The
window niche was cleared, and soon the twang of cords was heard. Then
one of the bowmen shrugged his shoulders and turned to the officer,

"The range is too great in this treacherous moonlight. We cannot even
discern their heads, and probably they are swimming under water most of
the time. The task is beyond us."

Glaring, the general swung about and hurried to the king's chamber.
Yezdigerd had recovered from his shock. The only sign of damage was a
small bandage round his forehead, partly covered by his turban. The
terse account of the incidents elapsed was interrupted by the crash of
the king's fist on a table, spilling vases and wine jugs to the floor.

"You have dared to fail! The red-handed barbarians have escaped and
mocked the majesty of Turan! Are my soldiers sucklings, that they
cannot lay two men low? Every tenth man among the guards shall die in
the morning, to bolster the courage of the rest!"

He continued in a lower voice: "See that two war galleys are outfitted
at once. The barbarians will surely try to steal a boat and make their
way across the sea. We shall overtake them. See that the ships are
well-provisioned and manned by my best seamen and soldiers. Take the
sturdiest slaves for rowers. When I have caught these dogs, they shall
suffer the agonies of a thousand deaths in the torture chambers of
Aghrapur!"

He laughed, animated by the grisly prospect, and gestured imperiously
to his general. The latter hurried out, threading his way through the
throng in the courtroom to carry out his lord's commands.

Khosru the fisherman sat patiently on the gunwale of his sloop, mending
a net which had been broken by the thrashing of a giant sturgeon that
afternoon. He cursed his misfortune, for this was a fine net. It had
cost him two pieces of gold and the promise of fifty pounds of fish to
the Shemite merchant from, whom he had bought it. But what could a
poor, starving fisherman do? He must have nets to get his living from
the sea.

Aye, if those were the only things necessary for him and his family!
But he must also strain and work to meet the taxes imposed by the king.
He looked up in venomous, furtive hatred at the palace, limned against
the moonlit sky. It perched on the cliff like a giant vulture of gold
and marble. The king's taxgatherers had supple whips and no compunction
about using them. Welts and old scars on Khosru's back told of wrongs
suffered when the shoals were empty of fish.

Suddenly the sloop heaved, almost unseating him. Khosru sprang up, his
eyes starting from their sockets in terror. A huge, almost-naked man
was climbing aboard, his black, square-cut hair disordered and
dripping. He seemed to Khosru like some demon of the sea, an evil
merman, come up from unknown deeps to blast his soul and devour his
body.

For a moment the apparition simply sat on a thwart, breathing in deep
gasps. Then it spoke in Hyrkanian, though with a barbarous accent.
Khosra took heart a little, for the tales depicted the demons as devoid
of speech. Still he quavered before the smoldering eyes and ferocious
mien of the giant. His terror increased as another figure, a huge,
black-clad, golden-haired man with a broad-bladed dagger at his belt,
followed the first over the gunwale.

"Fear not, sailor!" boomed the black-haired giant "We don't want your
blood, only your ship." He drew a glittering diadem from die waistband
of his loincloth and held it out. "Here is payment enough and more. You
can buy ten such craft as this one with it. Agreed—or—?"

He flexed his thick fingers suggestively. Khosru, his head whirling,
nodded and snatched the diadem. With the speed of a frightened mouse he
scuttled into the dinghy moored to the stern of the sloop and rowed
away at desperate speed.

His strange customers lost no time. The sail went swiftly up and
billowed in the freshening breeze. The trim craft gathered speed as it
steered out toward the east.

Khosru shrugged his shoulders, mystified. He paused to hold up the
fabulous diadem, whose gems glittered in the moonlight like a cascade
of splashing white fire.


5. The Sea of Blood
-------------------

The wind blew hard. Salt spray was tossed from the waves by the howling
gusts. Conan the Cimmerian expanded his mighty chest in deep, joyous
breaths, relishing the feel of freedom. Many memories crowded his mind
from the earlier days when he, as chief of the pirates of Vilayet, had
swept the sea with dripping sword blades and laid the Turanian seaports
in smoking ruins.

Vilayet was still a Hyrkanian sea, dominated by the Turanian navy's
swift war galleys. Trade was carried on to some extent by daring
merchants from the smaller countries on the northeastern shore, but a
merchantman's way across the turbulent waves was fraught with peril. No
state of war was needed for a Turanian captain to board, plunder, and
scuttle a foreign vessel if it pleased him. The excuse was simply
"infringement upon the interests of the lord of the Turanian Empire."

Besides the greedy Turanian navy, there lurked another danger as great:
the pirates!

A motley horde of escaped slaves, criminals, freebooters, and wandering
adventurers, all with a common lust for gold and a common disregard for
human life, infested the waters of this huge inland sea, making even
Turanian shipping a hazardous venture. In the mazes of islands to the
south and east lay their secret harbors.

Internal strife often crippled their power, to the satisfaction of the
king of Turan, until there came among them a strange barbarian from the
West, with blue eyes and raven hair. Oman swept aside their quarreling
captains and took the reins of leadership in his own hands. He united
the pirates and forged them into a fearsome weapon aimed at the heart
of Turan. Conan smiled in recollection of those days, when his name was
a curse in Vilayet harbors, and prayers and incantations were chanted
against him in die temples of the seaports.

The sloop was a trim and well-built craft. Her sharp bow cut the water
like a scimitar, and her single sail billowed tautly before the wind.
Aghrapur had been astern for nearly twenty hours. Conan guessed their
speed to be greater than that of Turanian warships. Should the breeze
die, however, they would have a problem. They could never hope to equal
the speed of a galley, propelled by hard-driven slave rowers, by means
of their own puny sweeps. But the wind showed no sign of slackening,
and Rolfs capable hand guided the small vessel before it so as to
extract the last ounce of sailpower from it.

Rolf was telling the long tale of the wanderings and adventures that
had led him to Aghrapur. "… so here I am, a fugitive from my native
Asgard and from Turan both."

"Why did you join me?" asked Conan. "You were comfortably off at the
Turanian court."

Rolf looked offended. "Did you think I had forgotten the time you saved
my life, in that battle with the Hyperboreans in the Graaskal
Mountains?"

Conan grinned. "So I did, didn't I? After so many battles, I had
forgotten myself." He shaded his eyes and looked at the unbroken blue
line of the horizon. "I doubt not that at least a couple of Yezdigerd's
war galleys are on our heels," he said grimly. "The rascal must be hot
for vengeance. I doubt he will soon forget how we pulled his beard."

"True," rumbled Rolf. "I hope this fine wind keeps up, or we shall soon
be at grips with his galleys."

Conan's active mind was already dwelling on another topic. "In my days
with the Red Brotherhood," he mused, "this area was the surest one for
a sweep to catch a fat merchantman from Sultanapur or Khawarizm. Aye,
but those traders fought well; sometimes the sea was red with our blood
as well as theirs before we had the prize. Some of the pirate ships
should be nearby." His eagle eyes continued to scan the endless blue
vista.

He stiffened like a lion sighting its prey and thrust out an arm to
starboard.

"Rolf, we have company? Those yellow sails can mean but one thing: a
pirate. We might as well drop our sail and await them; they could
overtake us in a half-hour if they wished!"

Eyes fixed on the oncoming vessel, he waited, outwardly stolid and
unmoved.

Conan drank in the measured thump of oars in their locks, the creak of
spars, the shouts of boatswains, and the smell of tar with gusto. Half
a cable's length away a slim sailing galley, its yellow sail ablaze in
the afternoon sun, hove to. The black flag of the Brotherhood fluttered
from its masthead, Conan and Rolf rowed toward the pirate craft.

The gunwale was lined with faces. Many were swathed in colorful
headcloths. Some favored the eastern turban; others wore helmets of
steel or bronze. A few had pates shaven and bare except for a
scalp-lock. The din and clamor lessened. Cold, cruel eyes scrutinized
the two strangers in the sloop.

The small craft bumped against the side of the bigger vessel. A rope
was lowered. Hand over hand, Conan and Rolf climbed with the agility of
practiced seamen. Clearing the gunwale, they found themselves in the
center of a half-circle of curious pirates, all shouting queries at
once. Among them Conan recognized several who had followed him in
former days. He snarled:

"Dogs, don't you know me? Is your memory so short that you must be
reminded of my name, or have your eyes grown dim with age?"

Several men in the throng had drawn back, blanching from the shock of
recognition. One, white-faced, rasped:

"A ghost, by Tarim! Erlik preserve us! It is our old admiral, come back
from his grave to haunt us!" Veteran though he was, the grizzled pirate
was obviously terrified as he pointed at Conan. "You perished many
years ago, when the vampires of the Colchian Mountains assailed your
crew as they fled from the Turanians after taking vengeance on Artaban
of Shahpur. Begone, spirit, or we shall all be doomed!"

Conan gave a gusty laugh. He slapped his thigh with mirth, plucked
Rolf's dagger from its sheath, and hurled it to the deck so that the
point was driven inches deep into the planking and the hilt quivered
upright. Then he pulled the weapon out.

"Have you taken leave of your senses, Artus?" he roared. "Could a ghost
make that nick in the deck? Come, man, I am as alive as the lot of you
and, if you believe me not, I'll crack a few heads to prove it! I
escaped both the vampires and the Turanians, and what befell me after
that is no concern of yours. Do you know me now?"

Conan's old followers now joyfully milled about the towering Cimmerian
to shake his hand and clap his back. Men who had never seen him before
crowded with the others, fired with curiosity about a man whose name
was legendary, and whose fantastic exploits were still told by the wine
legs on still evenings.

Suddenly a sharp voice sheared through the clamor: "Avast, there!
What's going on? Who are they? I told you to fetch them to me as soon
as they were picked up!"

A tall man, wearing a light mail shirt, stood on the bridge, one fist
banging the rails. A blazing red cloth was wound around his head. A
badly-healed scar from eye to chin disfigured his long, narrow face.

"It is Conan, Captain!" cried old Artus, the shipmaster. "Our old
admiral has returned!"

The captain's close-set eyes narrowed as his own sight sought
confirmation of the oldster's words. An evil light blazed in those eyes
as he picked out the bronzed form of the Cimmerian. He opened his mouth
to speak, but Conan beat him to it.

"Are you not glad to see me, Yanak? Remember how I kicked you out of
the fleet for hoarding spoils that belonged to all? How have you
managed to trick your way to a captaincy? Ill days must have dawned for
the Brotherhood!"

With his mouth working, Yanak spat back: "For that, barbarian, I will
have you hung by the heels and roasted over the ship's fire! I am
captain and give the orders here!"

"That may be," retorted Conan. "But I am still a member of the
Brotherhood." He looked challengingly around, and nobody chose to deny
his assertion. "I claim a right according to the articles. The right of
any member of the brotherhood to fight the captain of a ship for the
captaincy in a captain's duel."

He tossed up the dagger he had borrowed from Rolf and caught it again.
It was a formidable weapon with a broad, eighteen,-inch blade, but
still no sword. He and Rolf had cast aside their swords in order to
swim to the sloop, so the dagger was the only weapon they had between
them.

The crew murmured, for all knew that in such a duel Conan would have to
fight with whatever weapon he had with him at the time, while Yanak
could choose what weapons he pleased. Yanak's armor, too, would give
him a further advantage.

"This is madness, Conan!" Arms plucked the Cimmerian's elbow. "Yanak
will cut you to pieces. I have seen him fight three brawling drunkards
at the time and lay them low. We'll depose him instead and choose you
for captain. All your old followers are on your side."

Conan shook his head and rumbled: "Half the crew don't know me and
would oppose such a move. The men would be split into factions and our
strength would be weakened. No, it must be done the traditional way."

Several crewmen were already clearing a space around the mast. Yanak
approached, a gleeful smile on his scarred face as his hands tested the
supple strength of a keen, straight sword. It was a weapon forged by a
master craftsman, as could be seen by its brightly gleaming blade and
sharply honed edges, tapering to a needle point.

Conan gripped his dagger firmly and strode towards the mast. A wide
circle six yards in diameter was already drawn in charcoal on the deck
around the mast. The rules of the fight were simple. The antagonists
were to fight inside the circle. Any trick was allowed. The fight would
be to the death, or until one of the duelists was so badly hurt he
could not go on. In that case he would simply be flung overboard
anyway. If one of the fighters stepped out of the circle, the onlookers
would at once thrust him back in.

The instant Conan entered the circle, Yanak bounded forward, cleaving
the air with a whistling stroke. But the barbarian was too old a hand
to be surprised. He leaped sideways, and Yanak was saved from a dagger
thrust in his side only by twisting his body aside at the last moment.
After that, he moved more warily, although he was clearly at an
advantage. The longer reach of his weapon almost matched him evenly
with Oman's brawn and stature. Now and then he made a sudden attack,
shouting and cursing, but the silent Cimmerian parried or evaded the
blows with effortless ease and continued to circle around the mast.
Conan ignored the pirate captain's taunts and exhortations to stand and
fight.

Then Yanak tried a trick. Conan and he were temporarily on the same
side of the mast. With all the power of his knotted leg muscles, the
captain sprang upward in a mighty leap, at the same time smiting
downward at the Cimmerian's bare head.

But Conan's instinct triggered his lightning-fast responses. Instead of
retreating, he sprang forward. Yanak's blade whistled harmlessly down
behind the barbarian's back as Conan buried his knife to the hilt in
his foe's abdomen, shearing through the light mail links with the
immense force of his thrust. The pirate fell to the deck, cursing and
gagging on blood. His sword fell with a clank. Conan stooped and lifted
him up. With a mighty heave, he flung the corpse over the heads of the
crew into the sea. Picking up the fallen sword, he swept their ranks
with a cold gaze.

"Now who is captain, my lads?"

The shouts of "Conan!" would have satisfied any doubter. Conan drank in
the heady satisfaction of his new-won power. Then his thunderous voice
bellowed them to silence.

"To die sails and oars, lubbers! A man to the masthead as lookout! I
have Yezdigerd himself hot on my trail. But we will lead him a merry
chase, by Crom!"

Taken aback by the announcement that their archenemy was abroad, the
crew's idolatrous confidence in Conan was yet so strong as to wash away
all misgivings. Many remembered how the Cimmerian had fought and
tricked his way out of seemingly impossible odds. Tales of these
exploits were circulated among the rest of the crew.

Conan sprang to the bridge in one mighty leap, shouting: "Set sail!
Course southeast!"

Men hauled at lines, voicing lusty sea songs. Yellow canvas spread
before the breeze. The pirate at the helm strained with knotted muscles
at the steering oar, bringing the slim vessel about. She fled eastward
before the wind, fleet as the deer of the moorlands.

"So you think I'm mad, Artus? By Crom, I hope Yezdigerd thinks so too!"

Conan's hearty laughter resounded in the well-appointed cabin as he
sprawled in a chair, a tumbler of wine in his hand. Conan had casually
possessed himself of the wardrobe of his predecessor and clad himself
in the colorful garb of a Vilayet pirate: scarlet breeches, flaring sea
boots, a yellow shirt of fine Vendhyan silk with wide sleeves, and a
wide, varicolored sash around his waist. The costume was topped off by
a red cloth around his head. Into the sash was thrust a long dirk with
an ornately-carved ivory handle.

Together with Rolf, Artus the shipmaster lounged in Conan's company
while the galley swiftly cleaved the waters of the inland sea. With
clouded brow, he set his goblet on the table.

"No, Conan, I know you too well. But this seems a hare-brained scheme,
dashing straight into the jaws of the Turanian. You could at least tell
us what you are planning. The men are drunk with confidence and do not
think of the fact that Yezdigerd will bring at least two large war
galleys. I am old and sober enough to stop and ponder. What are your
intentions?"

With sudden gravity, Conan rose and went to a gilded wooden cupboard.
Opening it, he brought out a roll of parchment. This he spread upon the
table. It was a chart of the waters they were now sailing.

"Here is our position. Yezdigerd has been four days on his way from
Aghrapur. The Turanian ships are running free. With their mean speed, I
compute them to be somewhere in this area." (He pointed to a spot on
the chart.) "With our present course and speed, we shall rendezvous
with Yezdigerd somewhere off the Zhurazi Archipelago."

"The Zhurazi, eh?" muttered Artus. "Those are dangerous waters. The
charts show no soundings. That cursed cluster is shunned by sane men.
Some say it is haunted by demons and monsters from the darker realms
and that you are lost if you set foot on its shores."

"Lost, Hell!" rumbled Conan. "I once lived on the north main island for
a fortnight after shipwreck. There was a tribe of yellow savages
dwelling among die crags, and I had the devil of a time stopping them
from sacrificing me to their lizard-god!"

Thus lightly he dismissed the hair-raising drama played out on these
islands years before. The pantherish Cimmerian had not only stayed
alive in a land of hostile people but also had slain the monster out of
forgotten ages that terrorized the inhabitants. Conan was not wont to
dwell upon the past; the violent and colorful present held all his
attention.

He stood for a while in silence, regarding the chart. Then, with a
sudden gesture, he swept it off the table and swung about to face his
friends.

"Right you are, Arras. There are no soundings on this chart. Turanian,
isn't it? Drawn by the king's own surveyors in Aghrapur—the very type
of map our bloodthirsty pursuer will have. That is our advantage."

And however they pressed him, he would not explain further.

Muscles played on the sweating backs of the slaves at the oars. The
blades rose and fell in steady rhythm, speeding the huge war vessel
over the waves. The burly slavemaster strode the catwalk with his
braided whip, his skin gleaming with sweat and oil. Now and then the
whiplash uncurled like a striking cobra, to hiss out and mark the back
of a faltering oarsman. The slaves of Turanian ships were cruelly
driven, and none so cruelly as those in King Yezdigerd's own flagship,
the Scimitar. . The king took his ease on a silken couch on the poop,
shaded by an awning and sipping wine from a golden beaker. On a similar
bed by his side lounged the lady Thanara.

The king was sunk in one of his spells of gloom. His gaze was brooding
and somber, as he slowly swirled the pale-yellow liquid in the golden
bowl. He said:

"Evil powers aid the Cimmerian devil! He must have stolen a boat
immediately upon his escape. My cursed admirals need half a day to put
my flagship to sea, and then the devils that ruin human patience have
turned the wind against us. We move like snails."

"Better than he can do, though," said Thanara, looking lazily at the
monarch from under long eyelashes. "His puny oars will avail him little
in this wind. Every stroke of the club on the block lessens his head
start. Be patient, my lord! Erlik will deliver the barbarian into our
hands."

"My henchmen have often thought so, yet that scoundrel has tricked his
way out of every trap. Now for once I am the hunter? I will personally
see that he escapes not. By the beard of my father Yildiz, there will
be a reckoning!" Yezdigerd's voice became eager and his eyes filled
with new energy. He shaded his face and looked out over the glittering
waters.

He made a quick gesture. The admiral hurried forward, the gilded scales
of his mail winking in the sunlight.

"I see land, Uthghiz. Have we veered from our course?" said the king.

The admiral, knowing his sovereign's irascible temper, quickly unfolded
a map and pointed.

"That, my lord, is the Zhurazi Archipelago. The Cimmerian has probably
landed there for food and water. I intend to scan the coast for signs
of his boat. Furthermore^ the straightest course for the eastern shores
of Vilayet leads close to these islands."

"You may be right. But keep every man alert. How close can you sail?"

"These are unknown waters, my lord. The conditions of life on the
islands are shrouded in superstition. Horrible tales are told of
fiendish monsters haunting the crags. No surveying has been done in
this area. We dare not go too close lest we strike unseeen rocks." but
the yedka continued to scan the ragged coastline.

The king sank back on his gilded couch, muttering,

Had her eyes deceived her? Was that a sail she glimpsed before it
disappeared behind a rocky islet on the fringe of the cluster? The
Turanian ships drew closer with every oar stroke. She waited eagerly
for another glimpse of the sail.

She stiffened and pointed. The sail had reappeared.

"Look, my lord!" she cried. "Yonder is a prize for your ships! A
pirate! We have surprised them!"

The yedka was not the only one who spied the corsair. Swift orders were
shouted. The crew prepared for battle, while signals were run up to
warn the sister vessel to do likewise.

The overseers moved among the benches to check the fetters chaining the
rowers. Stacks of arms were readied by the mast, and the ship's
soldiery ran to their stations. Archers climbed into the rigging to
suitable points of vantage, while groups of burly seamen, armed with
grapnels, stood by the gunwales.

Though Conan's sharp eyes could not discern the details of these
preparations, he knew that they began as soon as he let his ship be
sighted. The pirate ship was long since ready for battle. Despite the
heavy odds against the pirate crew, all trusted their barbaric captain
implicitly. Men who had sailed with Conan years ago told fantastic
tales about former sea fights and the ingenious ways the Cimmerian had
turned the tables on his foes. Keen blades were shaken at the distant
Turanian ships, while bearded mouths muttered oaths in many tongues.

"Prepare to go about." The sharp voice of their captain cut like steel
through the din.

The order was a shock to the crew. Here they were, ready for the
attack, with the greatest captain in the world to lead them—and what
did this captain do? Prepare to run like a rabbit! Bewildered, they
went halfheartedly to their chores. Conan noticed their listlessness
and snarled:

"Be swift, you mangy rascals, or I'll have your backs raw under the
lash! Do you think I'm fool enough to fight two war galleys, each with
twice my strength, on the open sea, when I have a better plan? Do not
worry, lubbers, we shall have a feasting of swords, that songs will be
written about. Now go to it!"

Fired with new enthusiasm, the men sprang into the rigging. Soon the
ship was speeding toward the inner parts of the Zhurazi Archipelago.
Before putting his plan into operation, Conan conferred with the ship's
carpenter. The information gleaned, together with his own knowledge of
the waters, left him no doubts.

The Zhurazi Archipelago was made up of two large islands surrounded by
a great number of smaller isles. The strait between the two main
islands was a long, narrow channel, and for this Conan guided his ship.
There was grim expectation in his mien as he viewed the Turanian
galleys following astern, their oars laboring with all the power that
could be wrung from the slaves.

King Yezdigerd paced the poop, armed in silvered Turanian mail and a
gold-spired helmet He bore a round, emblazoned shield on his left arm;
a long scimitar hung by his side. The cruel and gloomy Turanian monarch
was also a fierce and intrepid warrior, who loved to take part in a
good fight in person.

"See how the yellow hyenas flee!" he cried. "Will they play games with
us? They will lose the wind among the islands, and then our oars will
make them easy prey. Faster!"

Meanwhile the admiral conferred in low tones with the „shipmaster, who
argued his point with many gestures and head shakings. The admiral,
looking doubtful, went back up to the poop. He said:

"Your Majesty, these waters are unsounded. We have no charts we can.
trust, and the shipmaster fears we shall ground. I suggest we circle
the islands and catch the corsair in open sea."

Yezdigerd's voice swept aside the misgivings of his admiral with a
sweeping gesture. His voice was hot with exasperation.

"I told you the rascal will be an easy prey in the lee of the islands.
Let the whips be plied to bring us every ounce of speed. We shall snap
our jaws about the pirate soon enough!"

The king seemed to have reason for his expectations. The slender
corsair was now barely halfway through the strait, making laborious
headway. The Turanians, seeing their victim as good as caught, shouted
with glee.

Dismay reigned among the pirate crew. Their progress was slow, and the
Hyrkanian ships were closing in with every stroke, like hawks
plummeting down upon a dove. Rolf stood silent, with the taciturnity of
the northern barbarian, but Arms pleaded with his captain:

"Captain, the Hyrkanians will reach us long before we emerge! We stand
no chance. We cannot maneuver in this narrow way, and their rams will
splinter us like an eggshell. Could we not warp her ashore with the
boats? We might put up a fight in the jungle. Tarim! We must do
something!"

Conan, his calm unruffled, pointed at the oncoming war galleys. They
were indeed a formidable sight. In the lead came the Scimitar with
white water boiling up around her bow and her ten-foot bronze ram. She
seemed a very angel of doom, descending in swift anger upon the
wrongdoer. Close behind followed her sister, only a little less
imposing.

"A pretty sight, by Ishtar," said Conan calmly. "Good speed, too. The
slave drivers must be plying their whips with vigor. A heavy ship, that
foremost one. Three or four times our weight."

His voice changed its tone from light banter to stern efficiency. "What
are your soundings now?"

"Five fathoms, captain, and slowly increasing. We have passed the
throat of the shallows. A wonder we did not scrape our bottom off!"

"Good! I knew we should get through. Now look at our pursuers!"

The Scimitar, bearing down upon her prey at full speed, suddenly
stopped dead. A cracking of timbers and snapping of cordage resounded
between the islands. Cries of dismay rent the air as the mast snapped
off at the base and toppled, shrouding the decks in folds of canvas.
The oars began backing to get her off, but her speed at the time of
grounding had been too great. The unseen sandbank held her fast like a
clutching octopus.

The other galley was a little more fortunate. Her captain was a man of
decision and, when the leading vessel struck, he promptly ordered the
oars to back water. But the oars were unevenly applied in the confusion
and the galley veered to port toward the shore. She was saved from the
cliffs only by another sandbank, into which she plowed deeply. Boats
were launched and lines paid out to prepare for the arduous task of
warping her afloat.

The throng on the deck of the corsair howled, shook their weapons, and
made uncomplimentary gestures at the Turanians. They cheered Conan, and
even the pessimistic shipmaster voiced his frank esteem.

"Those galleys will be days in getting afloat," said Artus. "I doubt
the bigger one will ever sail again; her bottom must be half stove in.

"So, captain, whither do we sail? Khoraf, where the slavers put in with
the fairest women of the South? Rhamdan, where the great caravan road
ends?"

Conan's voice was tinged with scorn as he swept the throng with his
ice-blue glance. "We have Turanian ships here, my friends. We have not
escaped Yezdigerd; we have caught him in a trap! I promised you a
feasting of swords. You shall have it." He paused, looking upward. "The
wind freshens; we are coming out of lee. Set a course to round the
larboard island!"

Eager hands sprang to the lines as all realized the full genius of
Conan's planning.

King Yezdigerd paced the poop of his shattered flagship in blazing
anger. Some of it he vented upon the seaman at the sounding post and
the steersman, by having both beheaded forthwith. There was no
immediate danger of sinking, for the hull had settled firmly upon the
reef. But the hold had quickly filled with water from many sprung
seams, indicating that the ship could probably never be saved. And the
trick played upon the long by the escaping pirate infuriated his always
irascible temper.

"I will hunt that dog to the ends of the earth!" he shouted. "The whole
thing smacks of that devil Conan. I'll warrant he is aboard. Will
Khogar never get his cursed tub afloat?"

Thus he raged while work progressed on the Khoralian Star. As the long
day wore on, the crews slowly coaxed the ship off the sandbank by
inches, by tugging and having with the ships' boats. The captain of the
Star was deeply preoccupied with directing this work when his attention
was drawn by the warning cry of the lookout. The man's voice was shrill
with excitement, and his hands waved frantically.

Rounding the point, her yellow sail billowing majestically, came the
ship they had expected to be in full flight. Sleek and beautiful she
came. Her bulwarks and shrouds were lined with eager corsairs. Faintly,
their mocking challenges reached the Turanians' ears, like the cries of
faraway demons in Hell.

Straight for the helpless Khoralim Star she bore like a striking eagle.
She rammed a ship's boat, cutting it in two and sending splinters and
bodies flying. Then she shortened her sail, made a quick turn, and in
an instant lay board and board with her prey. Grappling hooks bit into
Turanian wood, and a rain of arrows preceded the yelling, murderous
host that surged over the gunwales.

The Turanians fought bravely. Surprised by their enemy, yet their
captain got them into a semblance of order. The corsairs swept the
lower deck, littering the planks with corpses. But they were checked by
a blast of arrows from the poop, where the Turanian soldiery were drawn
up behind a bristling hedge of spears. Only a moment they checked their
attack. Then they swept on irresistibly, led by their mail-clad
barbarian captain, who shattered helmets and severed limbs left and
right with an ease that seemed magical.

The Turanians could not stand against these hardened fighters, led by
the ferocious Cimmerian. A vicious swipe of Conan's broadsword opened a
breach in the spear hedge. The bloodthirsty horde swarmed over the
poop, scattering the Hyrkanians like chaff.

The captain, knowing that his only chance of saving his ship lay in
slaying the pirate leader, sprang to meet Conan. Their blades clashed
in a circular dance of steel. But the Turanian could not master the
swordcraft of Conan, veteran from a thousand battlefields. The sharp
edge of the Turanian's yataghan shaved a raven lock from the
Cimmerian's ducking head; then the heavy broadsword smashed into the
captain's mailed side. Khogar sank down dying, his rib cage caved in.

The fight went out of the Turanian soldiery as their captain fell.
Cries for quarter were heard. The men flung down their arms in clanking
heaps.

Conan surveyed the scene with grim satisfaction. He had lost a score of
men, but he had captured the only navigable ship at his enemy's
disposal. Several of the pirate crew were already at work striking the
fetters from the slaves' ankles. They shouted for joy as they found
long-lost friends among them. Others herded the captive Turanians into
custody below.

While a prize crew continued the labor of freeing the vessel, the
pirate ship cast off. Her decks were jammed, for her own crew was
augmented by scores of freed and hastily-armed galley slaves. She
headed straight for the bigger prize.

In a tavern in Onagnu, a secret stronghold of the Vilayet pirates, loud
voices called for more wine. The cool clear liquid poured into old
Arms' cup as the ears of the throng itched for more of his tales. The
grizzled shipmaster washed down the draught in thirsty gulps.
Satisfied, he wiped his lips upon the back of his hand and took in the
crowd of listeners with a glance.

"Aye, lads, you should have been there! Great and glorious was the
fighting as we took the first one. Then we swept down upon Yezdigerd's
Scimitar. We must have seemed like very devils out of Hell to them, but
they were ready for us. They severed the lines of our grapnels with
swords and axes, until our archers blasted them back from the rail and
we warped in to their side by mighty efforts. We laid her board and
board, and every man among us was fired with killing lust.

"Conan was the first aboard her. The Turanians closed in about him in a
circle of swords, but he slashed at them so savagely that they gave
way. Then we all came in a rush, and the fighting was fast and furious.
The Turanians were all well-trained and hardened fighters, Yezdigerd's
household troops, fighting under the eye of their king. For a moment
the outcome was precarious, in spite of the ferocity of Conan, who
smashed Turanian mail and arms like rotten wood. They stood in perfect
unity, and our attacks recoiled from their massed ranks like bloody
waves from a rock-bound shore.

"Then came a cry of triumph, for some of us had jumped down among the
galley slaves, slain the overseers, and struck the chains from the
rowers' ankles. The slaves surged up on the deck like a horde of lost
souls. They snatched whatever weapons they could find from the corpses.
Their hatred of their masters must have run deep. Heedless of their own
lives, they drove into the Turanian ranks, shouldering us aside. Some
flung themselves forward to be spitted upon Hyrkanian swords and
spears, while others climbed over their corpses to strangle Turanians
with their bare hands. I saw a giant galley slave use a Hyrkanian's
body as a club, knocking his foes to the deck, before sinking down with
a dozen arrows in his body.

"Confusion reigned. The glittering ranks wavered. Conan yelled a weird
battle cry and flung himself into the press. We followed, determined to
win or die.

"After that, red hell reigned. In a bloody tidal wave we swept the ship
from stem to stern with steel. We scattered the foe like chaff before
the wind of our swords, and the scuppers were choked with blood.

"Conan was terrible as a tiger. His broadsword struck like a
thunderbolt. Corpses were scattered about him like wheat stalks before
the sickle. He plunged in where the fighting was thickest, and always
his advent spelled doom for the Hyrkanians, With all his savage
passion, he moved toward the poop where Yezdigerd himself stood
bellowing orders, surrounded by his picked men.

"Conan smote their ranks like a charging elephant. Men went down
beneath his sword like dolls. Then a cry of rage came from Yezdigerd,
and the king himself rushed to meet him. I think Yezdigerd must have
missed him before then, as his surprise was patent to all. Savage
curses streamed from his lips as they engaged.

"'I saw your hand in this, Cimmerian cur!' he screamed. 'By Erlik, now
you shall reap your deserts! Die, barbarian dog!'

"He aimed a terrific stroke at Conan's head. No ordinary man could have
avoided or stopped that swift and powerful blow, but Conan is superior
to a dozen ordinary men. With a jarring impact, he parried it in a
flashing movement too quick for the eye to follow."

"'Die yourself, jackal of Turan!' he thundered. For an instant they
struck and parried like lightning, while the rest of us stopped
fighting to watch. Then a mighty blow shattered Yezdigerd's shield and
made him drop his shield arm. In one lightning sweep, Conan smote the
bearded head from the king's giant body, which crumpled to the deck."

"After that, the Turanians surrendered meekly enough. We did not get
many prisoners, for the swords had taken too heavy a toll. A bare half
of our original two hundred were left standing, but we had captured or
slain three hundred of the Hyrkanian dogs."

He gulped down more wine and held out his cup for a refill. During the
pause, a hearer asked: "What about the Turanian yedka? What became of
her?"

Amis' brows clouded and he gave a visible shudder. "That was the
strangest event of that memorable day. We were binding up wounds and
herding prisoners, when the sun seemed to cloud over and a chill of
doom fell upon us. The water swirled blackly about our ships. Wind
moaned in the rigging like the lament of a lost soul, though we were
under the lee of a cliff.

"Someone cried and pointed up. In the sky appeared a black dot, growing
swiftly larger. At first it looked like a bird or bat. Then it grew to
a fantastic, horrible shape, manlike but winged. With a rush of vast
leathery wings it swooped to the poop deck, uttering a shrill cry that
smote our hearts like death.

"At that cry, the woman of Maypur stepped from the poop cabin, which
none of us had yet entered. In the wink of an eye, the monster snatched
her up and bore her off, flapping heavily over the oily waters of the
channel. In a few seconds both were out of sight, and the sun shone
once again.

"We stared at one another, white-faced. Everybody asked his neighbor
what had happened. Had the fiend stayed, I am sure we should have all
leaped into the sea to escape it, though it was gone so quickly that we
had no time for panic. Even Conan looked shaken and pale.

"I have seen that thing before," he muttered, but he would not explain.
Some of us surmised that the devil had come to drag Thanara off to the
hell of Erlik's worshipers. But others, who had been standing close to
her when the creature swooped upon us, said that she showed no fear of
it, but rather eagerness, as if she had summoned it herself.

"At last Conan shook himself like one coming out of a daze and bellowed
orders to strip the slain of valuables and pitch the corpses over the
side, even the body of the king. All he would say of the abduction of
Thanara was:

"'Let the damned hussy escape with her bogeyman. I do not war upon
women, though I would have striped her hide for her treachery.'

"And that was the end of the matter. We burned the grounded galley and
sailed the other one hither."

"And where is Conan? " cried another listener. "Why is he not here to
tell us tales of his adventures himself? Will he return as our leader
to sweep the Turanians from the sea?"

"Alas, no! The Cimmerian ordered the ships to make straight for the
eastern shore. He said he was on a vital mission. He had paused here
only to settle his old score with Yezdigerd. One of the slaves we freed
was a Khitan. Conan remained with him for hours, squatting in
conversation. They talked of far lands beyond the Himelias. If Khitai
be his goal, he must seek some really fabulous treasure. Otherwise, who
would be so mad as to try for those lands beyond the sunrise?"

"Why took he not a score of sea rovers with him?"

"That is another mystery. He swore he had taken an oath to journey
alone, and that his goal would be unattainable otherwise.

"We landed him on the eastern shore, and the farewell between him and
Rolf the northerner was short and manly. The crew in their sorrow began
chanting a sea dirge, until he lifted his mighty voice to curse us to
silence. We watched him disappear behind a sand dune on his way to
unknown perils.

"Rolf is our captain now, and an abler one is not to be found barring
Conan. For Conan will always remain the greatest captain of them all,
even when Vilayet Sea has become a desert waste and the stars have
fallen from the heavens. I drink his health, and may his quest be
successful!"

The toast was drunk in a silence oddly out of place in a pirates'
tavern.


6. Treason in the East
----------------------

"And how fares Her Royal Highness, the Devi?" Conan asked the fat
taverner as he sat guzzling a goblet of the scented Shirakman wine of
Vendhya. Trusting to the disguise of his Kshatriyan garb, he had
ventured within its doors to slake his thirst not only for drink but
also for knowledge of this alluring woman, whose empire he had saved.
Old memories rushed into his mind. There was a faraway look in his icy
blue eyes as he listened.

Although the tavern was almost empty, the rasping voice of its owner
took on a cautious note as he bent forward to whisper into the
Cimmerian's ear.

"Ah, the Devi rules with a wise and firm hand, though she has no
consort to stand by her side and uphold her. But the nobility say the
throne needs a warlike spirit. It is even whispered that her cousin
Chengir Khan has an eye for the supreme power and also for herself.
Hitherto she has repulsed his wooing, but public sentiment will soon
force her to decide. The dynasty must be carried on, and Yasmina must
do her duty to the realm."

The stout Vendhyan cast a swift glance through the, open door. Heavy
steps and the clank of weapons were heard as a troop swung by, bucklers
on their arms and spears on their mailed shoulders. With professional
discipline; the soldiers halted at their officer's command. Their
scarred old ghebra stepped into the tavern. His swift glance took in
everybody, halting for an instant on Conan, then completing its circle
back to the host.

Stepping up to the counter, the officer spoke in a whisper with the
taverner. A couple of dusty bottles passed over the worn boards into
the silken sack in his hand. His business concluded, he stepped out
with long strides and barked a command. His detachment took up their
measured step again.

Conan cast an indifferent glance after the troop as their steps
receded. His head was full of Yasmina, alone in her palace, ruling the
realm without the support of a consort. He shrugged. The internal
affairs of Vendhya were not his present business.'

He had, rather, better look to his own problems. Tomorrow he would be
on his way east, toward the farther reaches of the Himelians, and for
that long trek he should be well rested. His colossal frame could
endure hardships unimaginable to a civilized man, but on dangerous
missions his instincts prompted him to rest when he could, like a
carnivore on a long hunt.

"Taverner!" rumbled Conan. "Have you a room for the night? I am near
done with fatigue. These desert trips take the sap out of a man."

The Eastern night lay like a hot, caressing, silken blanket over the
city of Ayodhya. Stars glittered in diamond splendor against the black
sky, and the sickle of the waning moon rode in the west. Torches and
candles flared. From bright-lit palaces sounded laughter and music and
the patter of dancing girls' feet, while out of dimly illuminated
temples rang the austere tones of golden cymbals and the soft massed
voices of worshipers' choirs.

Conan awoke suddenly, with muscles poised like springs for instant
action. He had heard a fumbling at the door of his room. He had lain
stretched full-length upon the bed, naked but for his silken breeks,
spurning bedclothes in the sultry night. Now he rose noiselessly, sword
in hand, alert as a wolf.

The latch was slowly and cautiously depressed. As the door began to
open, Conan hid himself behind it. A veiled and robed figure of small
stature, dim in the starlight, furtively entered. It halted uncertainly
as if astonished to find the room empty.

Conan listened with sensitive ears. He could hear no sound outside.
Clearly, the mysterious visitor had come alone. His purpose was unknown
to Conan. Any Vendhyan recognizing Conan would have brought the whole
municipal guard with him. Many Kshatriyas had not forgotten the
marauding hill chief of Ghor, though it had been year? since he had led
his hairy hordes down from the hills to pillage. Conan did not intend
this situation to remain enigmatic any longer than necessary. Swinging
the door silently to with a push of his big hand, he took a stealthy
step forward. Like a flash, his hand was over the mouth of the
intruder, who was borne down upon the bed like a child despite
desperate resistance. Two frightened eyes looked up into Conan's as he
hissed:

"Why are you here in my room? Talk, you! But hush your voice!"

He removed his hand from the mouth of the captive and tore away the
veil over the face. To his glance was revealed the full lips and
straight, narrow nose of a Vendhyan woman. In a voice like the silver
chimes of a temple gong, she spoke:

"I came to fetch you to my mistress. She has learned of your coming and
is anxious to see you. Don your clothes and we will be on our way. Make
haste!"

Oman's eyes narrowed with suspicion. "Why this cursed haste, girl!
Can't your lady let a man sleep in peace? Why not meet me tomorrow?"

"In the day, many people at my mistress' palace would know Conan of
Ghor. She does not wish you torn in twain between wild elephants."

Conan was instantly on guard. "Conan of Ghor, eh? Who knows me here?
Who is she? What does she want."

"I cannot tell you. But this she said «re I left the palace: 'If he
hesitates, tell him the Galzai girl of Mount Yimsha would repay him for
the clothes he once gave her.'"

Yimsha! Oman's thoughts wandered back thirteen years, to the momentous
days when he had assaulted the evil wizards of the Black Circle, and
how he had once provided a girl with clothes bought (at sword's point,
true, but still with coin) from a Galzai girl on her way to the well.
The girl he had outfitted was Yasmina herself! ~

"So your mistress is the Devi?" he growled. "Why didn't you say so in
the first place?"

"Aye, the Devi bids you come. Now hurry!"

With practiced speed, Conan dressed and armed himself. The girl
silently opened the door and peered out. Then, with a gesture, she
motioned to Conan. The twain slipped noiselessly down the stairs and
out into the hot night.

Their route was devious and twisting. Evidently there was truth in the
rumors of intrigue that Conan had heard in the tavern, for his guide
often cast quick glances over her shoulder. Many times she turned into
narrow, cobbled lanes, darker than night itself, as if to shake off
pursuers.

Once, in such a lane, a huge dog with glowing eyes and slavering jaws
sprang upon them from a doorway. The ripping thrust of the Cimmerian's
dagger stretched him lifeless in the gutter. Another time, a knot of
ragged men appeared at the end of the street, barring their exit.
Oman's white-toothed smile and slap at the hilt of his sword sent them
scurrying. No other disturbance barred their way.

Soon their journey ended. They stood before the high, crenelated wall
around the royal palace. Its lofty towers reared narrow pinnacles
against the sky; the smell of exotic flowers and fruit from the gardens
within reached their nostrils. The girl scanned the surface of the
wall. At last she pressed two places on it at the same time. Without a
sound, a section swung inward, revealing a dimly-lit corridor.

Enjoining Conan to silence with a finger upon her lips, she led the
way. The secret door swung noiselessly to behind him, and he followed
her swift step along the corridor, hand on hilt. He was sure that
Yasmina meant him no harm, or she would not have chosen this mode of
fetching him, but his barbarian instincts kept him on guard.

They went up a stone staircase, then along more dim corridors, until at
last the girl stopped before a door and peered through a small hole set
at eye's height. She pulled a lever, and the door opened. They entered.

"Wait here, my lord," she said, "and I will tell my mistress that you
are here."

She hurried from the room, wispy garments fluttering. Conan shrugged
and let his eyes wander round the chamber.

Replete with the riches of an Eastern ruler it was, with silken
hangings, golden cups and ornaments, and rich embroidery strewn with
precious stones, yet its luxury was tempered by the quality of
exquisite taste. That it was a woman's boudoir was evident from the
vanity table with its costly Turanian mirror. It was strewn with jars
of Jade, gold, and silver, holding ointments and salves prepared by the
most skilled cosmeticians of the East. Femininity also showed itself in
the splendor of the great bed, with its opaque silken hangings and
canopy of gold-worked Shemirish cloth.

Conan nodded in curt appreciation. Though he was a hardened warrior,
yet his days as a king had taught him to find pleasure in beautiful
surroundings. His thoughts were interrupted by a sound at his back.
Wheeling, he half drew his sword; then he checked himself.

It was Yasmina. When he had first met her, she had been in the first
flower of womanhood—hardly twenty as he remembered. Now, thirteen years
later, she was a mature woman. The sharp wit that had enabled her to
hold the throne still shone from her eyes, but her clinging silken
garments revealed that her girlish figure had bloomed into a woman's
desirable body. And that body was of such beauty that poets grew famous
by describing it; it would have fetched over a thousand talars on the
auction block at Sultanapur. Yasmina's beautiful face was suffused with
happiness as she stopped three steps from him, arms half opened,
murmuring:

"My hill chieftain! You have come back!"

Oman's blood pounded in his temples as he covered the distance between
them in one mighty stride and took her in his arms. As her supple body
pressed warmly against his, she whispered:

"We shall be undisturbed, my chieftain. I have sent away the guards for
the night. The entrance to this room is locked. Love me, my chieftain!
For thirteen years I have longed for the feel of your arms around me. I
have not been happy since we parted after the battle in Femesh Valley.
Hold me in your arms, and let this be a night that neither of us shall
ever forget!"

In another part of the palace, five men sat in ^ richly furnished room.
Ever and anon they sipped from golden goblets as they listened to the
tall, swarthy man.

"Now is the time!" he said. "Tonight! I have just learned that Yasmina
has sent away the score of soldiers who usually guard her chambers. A
woman's whim, no doubt, but it will serve us well!"

"My lord Chengir," one of the others interrupted, "is it really
necessary to slay the Devi? I have fought Turanian squadrons on the
border and hewed my way out of hillmen's ambushes, but I like not the
thought of striking down a woman in cold blood."

The tall man smiled. "Neither do I, Ghemur, but it is necessary for the
kingdom of Vendhya. The blood of the realm needs renewal. There must be
new conquests to augment our power. The Devi has weakened the fiber of
the country by her peaceful rule. We, a race of conquering warriors,
now waste our time building dams and roads for the filthy lower castes!
Nay, she must die. Then I, as successor to the throne, will lead the
KshatriySs to new conquests. We will carve out a new empire in blood in
Khitai, in Uttara Kuru, in Turan. We'll sweep the hillmen from the
Himelias in a red flood. The East shall shake and totter to our
thunder! Day and night, camel trains laden with spoil shall pour into
Ayodhya. Are you with me?"

Four curved swords slid halfway out of their gold-worked sheaths, and
the clamor of the generals' assent was a loud murmur.

The prince waved them to silence. "Not so loud, sirs.

Remember that nearly all are loyal to Yasmina. Few have our foresight.
Should we attempt an open revolt, the troops and the people would tear
us to pieces. But should she die by secret assassination… Of course I,
as her cousin and heir, would diligently search for the malefactors.
Perhaps we could execute a couple of scapegoats—after cutting out their
tongues. After a suitable time of mourning, I shall gather my army and
strike to the north and to the east. My name will be lauded in history
with our great conquerors of old!"

His voice rang high with excitement and his eyes shone. With an
imperious gesture, he rose. "Arm yourselves, gentlemen. Don your masks.
We go to Yasmina's chambers by a secret passage. Our duty to the
kingdom will be performed within the hour!"

Five black-masked nobles filed out of the room on their way to cut the
throat of a defenseless woman.

The faint light of the stars sifted into the queen's bedchamber, as
Conan awoke for the second time that night. His sharp ears caught a
soft, almost inaudible sound. Any ordinary man would have muttered
sleepily, attributed the disturbance to rats or bad dreams, turned
over, and gone back to sleep.

Not so Conan! Instantly wide awake, he investigated. His animal
instincts were on edge. As his right hand sought the hilt of his sword
and drew it noiselessly from its shagreen scabbard, his left parted the
hangings to get a view of the room. Yasmina lay sleeping, a faint smile
on her beautiful lips.

It needed not the glint of steel in the hands of five dark figures,
faintly outlined in the starlight, to tell Conan that here was deadly
danger. Masked men did not nightly invade their queen's chamber with
kindly intentions. Catlike, he crouched on the balls of his feet, sword
in hand, rage in his heart.

The assassins stole closer, readying their daggers for the strokes that
would seat a new ruler on the throne of Vendhya. One was already
plucking at the hangings of the royal bed.

Conan went into action with blurring speed. Like a maddened tiger he
sprang. The nearest man was down, disemboweled, before the others
recovered from their shock. His sword flashed quick as a striking
cobra. With a crash, the helmet and head of another were cloven to the
chin. Conan kicked the corpse against the others, breaking their
charge, while parrying a cut against his legs by one who had dodged the
human missile. With a terrific backhanded swipe, he smote the sword arm
from the man's body. The limb fell jerking to the floor, while the
assassin sank down in a heap.

Conan stormed against the remaining two. With flashing sabers, they
fought for their lives under the maddened onslaught of the naked
Cimmerian. Red fury blazed in Oman's eyes as he rained mighty strokes
upon their frantic parries, circling them to keep them from getting on
opposite sides of him.

"Murder a woman sleeping in her bed, will you?" he snarled. "Cowards!
Jackals! Any treacherous Stygian is a fair fighter compared to you! But
no blood shall be spilt tonight but yours, curs!"

Conan's blade flickered like a shaft of deadly light. A terrific slash
shore off the head of one of his masked adversaries, with the ferocity
of the Cimmerian's attack backed the single one remaining against the
wall. Their swift blows and parries shaped a glittering, ever-changing
pattern of steel in the starlight.

Yasmina, now fully awake, stood beside her bed, watching with bated
breath. Suddenly she cried out in terror, as Conan slipped in the blood
on the floor and fell across one of the corpses.

The Vendhyan assailant sprang forward, unholy glee in his black eyes.
He raised his sword. Conan struggled to rise. Suddenly, the mouth of
his foe flew open. He teetered, dropping his sword, and fell with a
choking gurgle. Behind was revealed the naked, supple form of Yasmina.
Between the shoulders of the dead Kshatriya protruded the hilt of the
dagger she had driven home in the nick of time to save her lover.

Conan slashed himself free from the entangling folds of a mantle and
rose. From head to foot he was covered with blood, but his blue eyes
blazed with their old unquenchable fire.

"Lucky for me you were quick with your sticker, girl! But for you, I
should have kept these gentlemen company in Hell by now. Crom, but it
was a good fight!"

Her first reply was one of feminine anxiety. "You bleed, my chieftain!
Come with me to the bathroom, and we will dress your wounds."

"It's theirs, all but a couple of scratches," grunted Conan, wiping the
blood off with the turban cloth of. one of the dead assassins. "Small
price to pay to thwart these scoundrels."

"I praise the gods you were with me, or they would have succeeded." The
Devi's voice was vibrant with emotion. "Never have I dreamed that
assassination threatened me! The people deem my rule just, and I have
the backing of the army and most of the nobility. Maybe Yezdigerd of
Turan has sent emissaries as masked murderers to my chambers."

"Yezdigerd won't bother you again," muttered the Cimmerian. "He's dead.
I slew him on his own ship. Unmask them!"

The Devi tore the mask from the face of the man she had knifed, then
recoiled in amazement and horror. "Chengir! My own cousin! Oh,
treachery, black treachery and power madness! Heads shall roll for this
tomorrow!"

She shook her raven tresses and turned her dark, liquid eyes on the
inscrutable face of the Cimmerian. "I know now that I need a consort.
Rule Vendhya with me, Conan! Tomorrow we'll announce our betrothal;
within a month there will be nuptial feasts and ceremonies such as have
not taken place in Vendhya for a hundred years! I love you, my
chieftain!"

She embraced him hotly, straining with her vigorous, slim young body
against his, covering his lips with kisses, until his senses swam. But
he shook his head and thrust her gently from him. He held her at arm's
length.

"Crom knows, lass, that you make a tempting offer," he rumbled. "Few
women have I seen so beautiful as you, nor so wise. Any man blessed
with your hand in marriage would count himself the favorite of a
hundred gods. Ten years ago, when I was a wandering soldier of fortune,
I would perhaps have accepted. Now I cannot. I have my own kingdom now,
Aquilonia in the West, the mightiest realm in the world. But my queen
has been stolen from me by an evil magician in Khitai, and I have sworn
an oath to get her back. I should not be a man if I did not keep my
vow. Marry one of your own people. They would rather be ruled by a king
of their own blood. Tomorrow I ride for the Himelians."

There was misty tenderness and vast love in the deep, brimming eyes of
Yasmina as she regarded him. "The gods give happiness only to snatch it
away. Mayhap that is as well, or life would be nothing but happiness,
and we should lack the contrasts to know what real happiness means."
Her eyes cleared, and a queer, half-whimsical smile played upon her
lips. "You will go tomorrow. But there are several hours left until
dawn. Let us spend them in a more profitable way than talking!"

They locked again in a fierce embrace, while the stars shone coldly
upon the dead, glassy-eyed faces of the foiled assassins.


7. The Demon of the Snows
-------------------------

The man slunk silently along the snow-covered trail. His body was bent
forward; his eyes scanned the ground, and his nostrils widened like
those of a hound on the scent. No man had ever before been where he now
stalked; at least, none had been there and returned to tell about it.
Mist-veiled and mysterious were the icy upper wastes of the mighty
Himelian mountains.

Zelvar Af had been hunting alone when he happened upon the odd tracks
in the snow. Wide, splayed footprints were pressed deeply down at
distances of at least four feet denoting the size of the creature that
made them. Zelvar Af had never seen anything like them; but his memory
stirred with the recollection of ghastly legends told in the thatched
huts of the hill villages by white-bearded old men.

With primitive recklessness, Zelvar Af shrugged off the glimmerings of
fear. True, he was alone and several days' journey from home. But was
he not the foremost hunter of the Wamadzi? The double curve of his
powerful Hyrkanian bow brought reassurance as he clutched it with his
eyes searching. He moved cat-footed on the trail.

It was no manifestation of sound or sight that made him stop. The white
slopes stretched upward before him in snowy magnificence. Other mighty
ranges could be seen far off in jagged silhouette. No sign of life
showed anywhere. But an icy, creeping feeling suddenly filled his
mind—the feeling that something arisen from dreadful tales of horrible
beings from dark borderlands. He wheeled in a flash, his brown hand
whipping out his heavy Zhaibar knife.

His blood froze in his veins. His eyes opened in awful terror at the
sight of the giant white shape that glided toward him over the snow. No
features could be discerned in the white face of the horribly manlike
figure, but its swift glide brought it straight to its petrified
victim. With a scream of terror, Zelvar swung his blade. Then the icy
embrace of the smothering white arms swept around him. Silence reigned
again in the vast white reaches.

"By thunder, it is good to be among hillmen again!"

The words were stressed by a bang on the rough wooden table with a
half-gnawed beef bone. A score of men were gathered in the big hut of
the chief of the Khirgulis: chiefs from neighboring villages and the
foremost men of the Khirguli tribe. Wild and fierce they were. Clothed
in sturdy hillman's sheepskin tunics and boots, they had doffed the
huge fur coats worn against the cold of the upper ranges, displaying
the barbaric splendor of Bakhariot belts and ivory-and-gold tulwar
hilts.

The commanding figure was, however, none of these fierce mountaineers.
Conan the Cimmerian, in the place of honor, was the center of their
attention. Long and varied was the tale he had told, for it was over a
decade since his feet had last trod the winding paths of the Himelian
crags.

"Yes, I think you will be little bothered by Turanians henceforth."
Flashes coruscated in the blue depths of Conan's eyes as he told his
recent experiences. "I slew Yezdigerd on the deck of his flagship, as
the blood of his men gushed round my ankles. His vast empire will be
sundered and split by the feuds of Shahs and Aghas, as there is no
successor to the throne."

The gray-bearded chief sighed. "We have seen little of the Turanians
since the day you with your Afghulis and the Devi Yasmina with her
Kshatriyas defeated their host in Femesh Valley. Nor have the riders of
Vendhya bothered us; we keep a silent agreement of truce since that
day, even refraining from raiding their caverns and outposts. I almost
long for the old days of battle, when we rained stones upon their
spired helmets and ambushed their mailed lancers from every cranny."

Conan smiled in reminiscence. But his thoughts dwelt on his recent
visit to Vendhya. It was hard to push the picture of a slim,
black-haired, tear-eyed woman out of his mind, as he remembered her
standing on the palace wall, waving her silken veil as he thundered
away toward the hazy mountains.

A portly, bearded chief cleared his throat. "We understand that you are
on a pressing errand, Conan," he said. "But take our advice and go
around the Talakman region. Strange and terrible things happen there,
and it is whispered that the snow demons of the old myths are abroad
again."

"What are these snow demons, that they send fear into the stout hearts
of the men of Ghulistan?"

The chief bent lower and answered with a quaver in his voice. "Devils
out of the nighted gulfs of the black abyss haunt the snowy reaches of
Talakma. Men have been found with their bodies broken and mangled by
something of terrible strength and ferocity. But the most horrible
thing of all is that every corpse, no matter how recent, was frozen
stiff to the core! Fingers and limbs are so brittle that they break of
like icicles!"

"I thank you for the warning." Conan's voice was somber. "But I cannot
pass around the Talakmas. It would cost me two months, and I must
travel by the straightest path. My time is short."

Clamoring, they tried to dissuade him, but in vain. His stentorian
voice beat upwards to tones of command, whereupon they all fell silent.

He rose heavily and went into the inner room to a bed covered with
thick furs, while his companions lingered, shaking their heads and
muttering in fearful tones.

The wind howled sadly as Conan made his way across the snowy vastness.
Gusts flung biting snow into his weather-beaten face, and the icy
blasts pierced his thick fur coat. Slung from his shoulders was his
pack, crammed with supplies for the long trek over the cold wastes,
dried meat and coarse bread. His breath stood out in a long plume from
his nostrils.

For days he had been upon his way, traversing the snows with the easy,
long-limbed hillman's stride that eats up the mountainous miles. At
night he had slept in primitive snow caves, dug with the crude,
broad-bladed shovel carried for the purpose, and at daybreak he hurried
on again. Chasms gaped across his path. .Sometimes his muscular legs
took them in a running broad jump. Sometimes he had to make a wide
detour around the end of the chasm, or lower himself into the deeps
with his climbing rope and scramble up the other side.

The snows were unbroken and almost deserted by living things. Once a
hungry snow leopard charged him, but he broke the carnivore's attack
with a ripping thrust of his Zhaibar knife. The animal tumbled to the
ground, choking out its life in convulsions. He left it there to lie
forever in the eternal cold.

As die snow-laden wind lessened, he wiped the icy particles from his
brows, paused, and looked about him. Behind stretched the interminable
plains of snow, broken by yawning abysses and jutting peaks, which lost
themselves in the distance. Far in front, he dimly discerned the
beginning of the downward slope of the mountains and the promise of an
end to this grueling leg of his journey.

Then his sharp blue eyes espied something else. With sudden curiosity,
Conan moved forward to investigate. He paused, looking down at the odd
footprints that had caught his attention. Unlike any spoor he had ever
seen, they looked a little like the tracks of a bear. But no bear ever
left footprints so large, without claw marks and with those curiously
splayed toes. They must have been made recently, for the drifting snow
had only partly filled them. They led close by a towering, mountainous
mass of ice. Conan followed the trail, alert as a stalking panther.

Even the Cimmerian's lightning quickness failed to avoid the monstrous
white form that suddenly hurtled upon him from above. He had a glimpse
of shapeless limbs and horribly featureless head. Then he was flung to
the ground with such violence that the breath was knocked out of his
lungs.

Because of his quick reaction, the snaky arms had not wholly enveloped
him. His body had half-twisted out of their descending grip, though
they grabbed him in a viselike clutch back and front.

He struggled madly to free his right hand and slash at his foe with the
naked knife in his fist, but even his giant strength seemed like a
babe's to the demoniac power of the monster. And then a horrible,
featureless face bent forward, as if to stare straight into his eyes.
An abysmal chill began to envelop his body, and he felt a deadly
tugging at the borders of his mind. In that amorphous terror he saw
mirrored the abysmal evil of the darker gulfs where slavering things
dwell, preying on human souls. Forces tore at the roots of his reason;
icy drops of sweat sprang out on his forehead.

A weaker man would have succumbed to the evil of this unknown and
overwhelming power, but the civilized layer was only a thin coating
over Oman's barbarian reflexes. His animal instincts rushed to the fore
of his mind. The urge to self-preservation made his muscles contract in
one mighty effort. With a tearing of fur and clothing, he ripped his
left hand free of the constraining whiteness and smashed into the blank
visage facing him.

At the first blow, the monster uttered a shrill, ululating cry and
slackened its grip.

The ring!

The ring of Rakhamon, the gift of Pelias, with unknown powers of magic
and sorcery, that Conan carried! A deadly weapon against this waif of
the icy darkness, that tore men's souls from their bodies to eternal
damnation and left them broken and frozen on the snows!

Conan struck again, and now the ululation changed to a shrill shriek as
the white horror flung itself backward to escape the terror of the
ring. With savage glee, Conan lunged after it. Now he was the attacker!
Using the sharp rhomboid points of the ring as a weapon, he ripped
savagely into the white form.

There was a shrill bellow from the facial region of the creature. It
fled over the snow, white ichor dripping from its wounds, while Conan
pursued it like an avenging spirit.

Its steps carried it to the brink of an icy chasm, where it paused, at
bay, tottering and trembling. Mercilessly, Conan slashed with his
ringed fist at its body. With a weird shriek it staggered backward. For
a moment it fought for balance on the edge; then the icy crust gave
way. With a long-drawn wail it hurtled downwards into the darkness of
the abyss.

Conan shook himself like a wolf-dog after the hunt. "Pelias gave me a
powerful bauble indeed," he mumbled. "A pox on these snow demons! That
one has been cast back to its hellish haunts, anyway. Now I'd better
hurry, if I am to reach the downward slopes tomorrow."


8. The Dragon of Khitai
-----------------------

It was the twenty-fifth day since he had crossed the Khitan border.

The arid, sandy lands bordering the vast Wuhuan Desert, unpeopled save
for straggling bands of weather-beaten nomads, had been relieved by
vast bogs and marshes. Waterfowl whirred up in clouds from pools of
stagnant water. Red-eyed, ill-tempered marsh buffalo splashed and
snorted in die tall reeds. Swarms of biting insects hummed; tigers on
the hunt uttered coughing roars. Conan needed all his swamp-craft,
acquired in the Kushite jungles and the marshes fringing the Sea of
Vilayet, to cross these inhospitable reaches, with the help of handmade
swamp shoes and improvised bamboo rafts.

When the fens ended, thick jungle began. This was not much easier to
penetrate. Conan's heavy Zhaibar knife was at constant work cutting
through dense undergrowth, but the iron muscles and dogged
determination of the giant Cimmerian never flagged. These parts had
once been rich and civilized, long ago when Western civilization was
barely in its morning glow. In many places Conan found crumbling ruins
of temples, palaces, and whole dries, dead and forgotten for thousands
of years. Their empty window-holes stared blackly like the eye sockets
of skulls in somber forgetfulness. Vines draped the worn and pitted
statues of weird, pre-human gods. Chattering apes shrieked their
displeasure at his intrusion into their green-mantled walls.

The jungle melted into rolling plains, where saffron-skinned herdsmen
watched their flocks. Straight across this part of the land, across
hills and valleys alike, ran the Great Wall of Khitai. Conan surveyed
it grimly. With a thousand stout Aquilonian warriors, equipped with
rams and catapults, he would soon breach this vast but static defense,
by a lightning thrust ere help could come from other sections of the
wall.

But he had no thousand soldiers with siege engines, and cross the Great
Wall he must. One dark night, when the moon was veiled, he stole over
by means of a rope, leaving a guardsman stunned by a blow on the helm.
The grassy fields were traversed in the tireless, mile-devouring
barbarian jog-trot, which enabled him to cover vast distances between
rests.

The jungle soon began anew. Here, however, were signs of the passing of
man^ lacking in the other forests through which he had hewn a laborious
way. Narrow paths were beaten through the undergrowth, though it massed
as thickly as ever among the clustered bamboo stems on the sides. Vines
festooned the trees; gay-feathered birds twittered. From far away came
the snarl of a hunting leopard.

Conan slunk along the path like an animal born to jungle life. From the
information he had gleaned from the Khitan slave freed after the sea
fight on the Vilayet Sea, he deduced that he was now in the jungle
bordering the city-state of Paikang. The Khitan had told him that it
took eight days to cross this belt of forest. Conan counted on making
it in four. Drawing upon his immense barbarian resources of vitality,
he could undergo exertions unthinkable to other men.

Now his goal was to reach some settlement. The tale was that the forest
folk lived in dread of Pai-kang's cruel ruler. Therefore Conan counted
on finding friends who could furnish him with directions for reaching
the city.

The eerie atmosphere of the bamboo jungle pressed down upon him with
almost physical force. Unbroken and unexplored for thousands of years,
save for narrow paths and small clearings, it seemed to hold the
answers to the mysteries of aeons. An enigmatic aura of brooding
enveloped the glossy, naked stems of the bamboo, which rose on every
hand in jutting profusion. The esoteric traditions of this land reached
back before the first fire was lit in the West. Vast and ancient was
the knowledge hoarded by its philosophers, artisans, and sorcerers.

Conan shrugged off the depressing influence and gripped the hilt of his
tulwar more firmly. His feet trod silently on the matting of moldering
leaves. His faculties were sharpened and alert, like those of a wolf
raiding into the lands of a foreign pack. There was a rustle among the
half-rotten leaves. A great snake, slate-gray with a flaming red zigzag
along its back, reared its head from its hiding place. It struck
viciously, with bared and dripping fangs. At that instant, the steel in
Conan's hand flashed. The tulwar's keen edge severed the head of the
reptile, which writhed and twisted in its death throes. Conan grimly
cleaned his blade and pressed on.

Then he halted. Stock-still he stood, ears sharpened to the utmost,
nostrils widened to catch the faintest scent. He had heard the clank of
metal and now could catch the sound of voices.

Swiftly but cautiously he advanced. The path made a sudden turn a
hundred paces further on. At this corner his sharp eyes sought the
cause of the disturbance.

In a small clearing, two powerful yellow-skinned Khitans were trussing
a saffron-hued girl to a tree. Unlike most of the Far Eastern folk,
these men were tall and powerful. Their lacquered, laminated armor and
flaring helmets gave them a sinister, exotic look. At their sides hung
broad, curved swords in lacquered wooden scabbards. Cruelty and
brutality were stamped on their features.

The girl twisted in their grip, uttering frantic pleas in the singsong,
liquid Khitan tongue. Having learned more than a smattering of it in
his youth, when he had served the king of Turan as a mercenary, Conan
found he could understand the words. The captive's slant-eyed face was
of a startling oriental beauty.

Her pleading had no effect on her merciless captors, who continued
their work. Conan felt his rage mounting. This was one of those cruel
human sacrifices which he had tried to stamp out in the western world
but which were still common in the East. His blood boiled at the sight
of this manhandling of a defenseless girl. He broke from cover with a
bull-like rush, sword out.

The crackling of the underbrush beneath the Cimmerian's feet reached
the ears of the Khitan soldiers. They swung round towards the sound,
and their eyes widened with unfeigned surprise. Both whipped out their
swords and prepared to meet the barbarian's attack with arrogant
confidence. They spoke no word, but the girl cried out:

"Flee! Do not try to save me! These are the best swordsmen in Khitai!
They belong to the bodyguard of Yah Chieng!"

The name of his foe brought a greater fury to Conan's heart. With
slitted eyes, he struck the Khitans like a charging lion.

Unequalled as swordsmen in Khitai they may have been, but before the
wrath of Conan they were like straws in the wind. The barbarian's blade
whirled in a flashing dance of death before their astonished eyes. He
feinted and struck, crushing armor and shoulder bone beneath the keen
edge of his hard-driven tulwar. The first yellow man sank down, dying.

The other, hissing like a snake, exploded into a fierce attack. Neither
fighter would give way. Their blades crashed ringingly together. Then
the inferior steel of Khitai broke before the supple strength of the
tulwar, forged from matchless Himelian ore by a Khirguli smith. Conan's
blade ripped through the armor plate into the Khitan's heart.

With muted fear, the captive girl had followed the fight with widened
eyes. When Conan broke from cover, she thought him one of her friends
or relatives, bent upon a mad attempt to rescue her.

Now she saw that he was a cheng-li, a white-skinned foreigner from the
legendary lands west of the Great Wall and the Wuhuan Desert. Would he
devour her alive, as legends averred? Or would he drag her back to his
homeland as slave, to work chained in a filthy dungeon the rest of her
life?

Her fears were soon allayed by Conan's friendly grin as he swiftly cut
her bonds. His appreciative glance ran over her limbs, not with the air
of a captor sizing up the value of a captive, but with the glance of a
free man looking upon a free woman. Her cheeks were suffused with blood
before his frank admiration.

"By Macha" he said, "I did not know they bred women this beautiful in
the yellow lands! It seems I should have visited these parts long ago!"
His accent was far from perfect, but she had no difficulty in following
the words.

"Seldom do white strangers come to Khitai," she answered. "Your arrival
and victory were timed by the gods. But for you, those two" (she
indicated the corpses) "would have left me helpless prey to the terror
Yah Chieng has let loose in the jungle."

"I have sworn to settle my debt with that scoundrel," growled Conan.
"It seems I have to settle yours at the same time. What is this jungle
terror you speak of?"

"None has met it and lived to tell. Men say the arch wizard has
conjured up a monster out of forgotten ages, when fire-breathing beasts
walked the earth and the crust shook with earthquakes and eruptions. He
holds the land in abject terror of it, and human sacrifices are often
demanded. The fairest women and ablest men are taken by his soldiers to
feed the maw of the beast of terror."

"Meseems this is no healthy neighborhood," said Conan. "Though I fear
not this monster of yours, I'd as lief not be hindered by it on my way
to Paikang. Is your village far?"

Before she could answer, there was a heavy crashing in the undergrowth.
The bamboo stems shook and swayed, and a hoarse bellow reached their
startled ears. Conan gripped his hilt, a grim smile on his lips. The
girl shrank behind his mighty frame. Tense as a tiger, the Cimmerian
waited.

With a croaking growl, a giant, scaly form crashed through the
undergrowth at the fringe of the clearing. Dimly seen in the darkness
of the forest, the sunlight of the glade revealed its terrible form in
full. Forty feet it measured from snout to spiked tail. Its short,
bowed legs were armed with sharp, curved claws. Its jaws were gigantic,
set with teeth beside which a sabertooth's fangs were puny. Mighty
swellings at the sides of its head told of the great muscles that
worked this awful engine of destruction. Its scaly hide was of a
repellant leaden hue, and its fetid breath stank of moldering corpses.

It stopped for a moment in the sunlight, blinking. Conan used the time
for swift action.

"Climb that tree! He can't reach you there!" he thundered to the
terror-frozen girl.

Stung to action, the girl followed his command, while the Cimmerian's
attention was again engaged by the giant lizard. This was one of the
most formidable antagonists he had ever faced. Armored knights,
sword-swinging warriors, blood thirsty carnivores, and skulking
poisoners—all were dwarfed by the menace of this giant engine of
destruction rushing upon him.

But the foremost hunter of the Cimmerian hills, the jungles of Kush,
and the Turanian steppes was not to be taken in one gulp. Conan stood
his ground, lest, if he fled or climbed a tree, the dragon should turn
its attention to the girl. Then, an instant before the mighty jaws
would have closed about him, he sprang to one side. The impetus of the
dragon's charge carried it crashing into the undergrowth, while Conan
ran to a clump of bamboos.

More quickly than he expected, the monster, roaring and crashing,
untangled itself from the thickets and returned to the attack. Conan
saw that he could not hope to reach the tree in which the girl had
taken refuge in time to escape those frightful jaws. The glossy tubes
of the bamboo afforded no holds for climbing, and their stems would be
snapped by a jerk of the monster's head. No safety lay that way.

Whipping out his Zhaibar knife, Conan chopped through the base of a
slim stem of bamboo. Another cut, slantwise, sheared off its crown of
leaves and left a glassy-sharp rounded point. With this improvised
ten-foot lance, Conan charged his oncoming adversary.

He rammed the point between the gaping jaws and down the darkness of
the gullet. With a mighty heave of his straining muscles, Conan drove
the bamboo deeper and deeper into the soft internal tissues of the
dragon. Then the jaws slammed shut, biting off the shaft a foot from
Oman's hand, and a sidewise lunge of the head hurled Conan into a
thicket twenty feet away.

The grisly reptile writhed in agony, uttering shrieks of pain. Conan
dragged himself to his feet, feeling as if every muscle in his body had
been torn loose from its moorings. His arm ached as he drew his tulwar,
yet by sheer will power he forced his battered body into service. He
stumbled forward, half-blinded by dust, but avoiding the thrashing tail
and snapping jaws.

Grimly, he put his whole strength into one desperate lunge for the
monster's eye. The blade went in like a knife through butter. The hilt
was snatched from his grasp by the last convulsions of the dying beast.
Again he was thrown to the ground, but with a final tremor, the hulk of
his terrible foe subsided.

Conan gasped the dust-laden air, picked himself up, and limped toward
the tree where huddled the girl.

"I must be growing old," he muttered between gasps "A little fight like
that wouldn't have bothered me at all in the old days."

This was but the barbarian's naive way of belittling his feat. He knew
that no other man could have done what he had just accomplished; nor
could he have succeeded but for luck and the ways of fate. He roared
hoarsely:

"Come down, lass! The dragon ate more bamboo than was good for him. Now
lead me to your village. I shall need help from you in return."


9. The Dance of the Lions
-------------------------

Smoke of the yellow lotus spiraled wispily upward in the dim-lit bamboo
hut. Like clutching tentacles, it writhed in fragrant streamers toward
the chimney-hole in the ceiling, curling from the mouthpiece of carven
jade ending the silken hose of the elaborate, gold-bowled water-pipe on
the floor and from the pursed and wrinkled lips of an old Khitan,
sitting cross-legged on a reed mat.

His face was like yellowed parchment. Nearly fourscore years must have
weighed upon his shoulders. Yet there was an air of youthful energy and
command about him, coupled with calm and serenity of thought. He held
the mouthpiece in his left hand, puffing slowly in sybaritic enjoyment
of the narcotic fumes. Meanwhile, his sharp black eyes studied the big,
black-haired, white-skinned man in front of him, who sat upon a low
stool and wolfed down the shi-la rice stew placed before him by the
girl he had saved.

She was now clad in a chastely high-necked jacket and embroidered
trousers, which set off her golden complexion and large, deep, slanted
eyes to advantage. With her lustrous hair combed into a complex
coiffure, it was a startling transformation from the tousle-headed,
half-naked, frightened girl whom he had rescued from men and monster.
But he recalled the clasp of her hot arms during an hour of rest in the
jungle, when she had given him a woman's reward, freely and willingly,
in a burst of Oriental passion that needed no torch to inflame his
desires.

One day and one night they had journeyed, resting only when the girl
needed it. When she was utterly spent, he flung her across his broad
shoulders, while his untiring legs pounded along. At last the path
widened into a clearing. A dozen bamboo huts with shingled roofs were
grouped near a brook, where fish splashed in silvery abundance.
Wooden-featured, yellow-skinned men emerged with swords and bows at the
intrusion, only to utter cries of Joy and shouts of welcome to this
savior of a daughter of their village.

For it seemed that these people were outcasts of noble blood, who had
fled from the tyranny of Yah Chieng the Terrible. Now they dwelt on the
edge of life, fearing every moment to be wiped out by a cohort of the
sorcerer's dreaded swordsmen.

Wiping his mouth with the appearance of surfeit and taking a last draft
from the bowl of yellow rice wine, Conan listened to the words of his
host.

"Aye, mighty was the clan of Kang, of which I, Kang Hsiu, am the head,"
he said. "And fairest of all the city-states of northern Khirai was
purple-towered Paikang. Hosts of glittering warriors shielded us from
the warlike ambitions of Shu-chen to the north and Ruo-gen to the
south. The lands were rich and the crops always plentiful. I dwelt in
the palace in Paikang surrounded by all the splendor and culture of our
ancient civilization.

"Then came the Accursed One. On one dark night his hordes swept up from
the southeast like a destroying blaze. Our armies were wiped out by his
foul arts. They were engulfed by earthquakes, devoured by magical fire,
or smitten with the dry plague. Our sword arm was withered, and his
hellhounds made free with our beautiful city. Paikang was sacked in
fury and blood, in thunderous fires and unnamable atrocities. I, my
family, and some of my retainers fled on fast camels. Through many
perils we found this refuge. I doubt if Yah Chieng knows of us, or he
would surely have wiped us out by now. Kang Lou-dze, my daughter here,
was captured by his swordsmen while visiting a village several miles
from here. No hunters ever come to this hidden place.

"It would seem that our plight is hopeless. We are but a handful, to
face magical might and thousands of well-armed soldiers. Still, the
people, whom he is grinding to poverty by his taxes and extortions,
long for the bygone days of serenity, freedom, and wealth. They would
rise if given the chance. But the iron heels of Yah Chieng's generals
press upon their necks. His swordsmen swagger the streets of the cities
like conquerors, with whips in their hands.

"So it has been for a score of years, and our hope dwindles. It would
die bat for the prophecy, in which we have put all our faith during
these years of terror."

Conan had listened silently, but curiosity now prompted a question.
"The memories of many happenings lie crowded in my mind. But this
prophecy? What of it?"

"My wife, the mother of Kang Lou-dze, was gifted with strange powers.
She knew the calls of birds, and I have often seen die wild beasts of
the jungle nuzzling her hands. When disaster struck, one of Yah
Chieng's marauders found his way to her chamber and struck her down
while she prayed to our gods. I was too late to save her, but as I
stood with dripping blade over the body of her murderer, she beckoned
to me from the floor where she lay in her blood, and whispered into my
grief-stricken ear:

" 'My days are ended. Flee swiftly to save our family. Hide yourselves
and wait. Despair not. For there will come' from the west a conqueror
such as you have never seen, with a great and noble heart. In his wrath
he will crush the fiend like a snake under his heel. He will be a man
of white skin and great strength, a king in his own land, and he will
smite the usurper like a flaming thunderbolt. The gods are with him,
and Paikang will once again—'

"In that instant her mouth filled with a rush of blood, and she died.
Stricken as I was, I could not stay. I gathered my children, and my
servants helped me to carry the younger ones through a secret passage.

"Through all these years we have waited for the white war lord. We have
listened for rumors of his shining armies and hoped to see his pennon
on the towers of Paikang. But only marauding nomads have come from the
Great Desert, and our hope has dwindled with the years.

"Except for a troop of mercenaries that Yah Chieng captured last year,
you are the first man with white skin and round eyes to come from the
West during all this time, but the prophecy said our savior would be a
king and a conqueror. You are alone, without armies or followers, and
you wear the habit of the nomads.

"I am old, my days are numbered, and now I begin to despair for the
fate of my people."

A broad smile split Conan's face. Thumping the floor, he boomed: "Who
said I'm no king, old man? King I am, and king of the mightiest kingdom
of the West, fair Aquilonia. Conquered it myself, I did, and strangled
its tyrant on the throne with my own hands. White I am, and my strength
has won me duels with professional stranglers. Do I not fit your
prophecy?"

The old man looked up, eager and incredulous at the same time:. "Is
this true, Conan? You are a king? Then the part I did not tell you is
also true—for my beloved wife said that this would occur within twenty
years of our defeat. The gods be praised! We shall have a feast of
prayer and thanksgiving tonight. Tomorrow we are at your command! Will
you lead us?"

Conan's laugh was gusty. "Not so hotly, my friend! Even I, who have had
my share of follies, am not so rash as to rush into the maw of this
scoundrel with only a score of men. The gods help those who use their
wits. We must lay our plans carefully."

Then his voice was drowned by the joyful shouts of the crowd that had
gathered outside the hut, summoned by Kang Lou-dze. With sudden
sobriety he accepted the humble adoration of these folk, whose sole
hope of salvation he represented.

The high council of the Khitan village of outcasts was in session. The
atmosphere inside the bamboo hut was rife with tension. Conan lolled on
the floor mats, a beaker of wine in his hand, while his sharp blue eyes
scrutinized his new allies. The air was thick with the lotus-scented
smoke of water pipes.

"It will be no easy task to win entrance to the fiend's castle," said
one tall, slant-eyed man, whose face was disfigured by a scar across
his brow. "His cursed swordsmen guard it day and night, and there are
his own unearthly powers in the bargain. The people have no arms, and a
straightforward attack on the heavily-fortified citadel is out of the
question with our scant force."

"You are right, Leng Chi," said the aged Kang Hsiu. "Stealth and
trickery pave the road to success. And I know of only one way that
might carry us there. In a week, Yah Chieng will give his annual feast
in celebration of the conquest of Pailcang. The climax of this feast is
always the Dance of the Lions, performed with all the ancient
ceremonies. Thus Yah Chieng caters to the people's taste for spectacle
and tradition. It is the only time when the great gates are opened and
the public is admitted into the large courtyard. But how this can avail
us I cannot fathom, for we must bring King Conan with us, and he is
pale of skin and round of eye. We cannot possibly disguise him
effectively, for he stands out among all men. Of course, we could carry
him in a box—"

Conan's rough voice broke into the conversation. "None of that, my
friend. To lie unmoving in a coffin, indeed! But this Lion Dance gives
me an idea. I have heard of it from travelers. Do not the dancers carry
great dresses made for two men, with a lion's head? At the end of the
feast, I can slip into the castle. Then I shall be on my own. The only
snag is the dancing dress. You have none here, and it would take too
long to make one."

"Fate is indeed looking our way," replied the old man gravely. "In
Shaulun, a day's journey hence, there is a team that goes to the dance
every year with their lion dress. We will make it worth their while to
let us borrow it. As for the rest, you speak true. You will have many
chances to slip away during the latter part of the feast, for Yah
Chieng often plies the rabble with wine, and there arises such
confusion and shouting that his swordsmen have to chase everybody out
with naked swords. Perhaps this time we can turn the riot to our
advantage.

"The swordsmen of the usurper would be surprised to meet sober men with
forbidden swords in their hands. Aye, I think we could promise Yah
Chieng an unusually lively feast!"

"Not yet," said Leng Chi. "How many can we muster? Yah Chieng has his
Two Hundred at instant call, besides his regular troops. Some of the
latter might come over to us, did they know what was afoot. But-"

"And we have but a few bits of armor," said another headman. "The
troops of the usurper will be scaled and plated like the crayfish of
Lake Ho."

As the meager forces that the refugees could put in the field were
summed up, faces and voices fell again. Then Conan spoke:

"The other day, Lord Kang, you said something about a troop of Western
mercenaries captured by Yah Chieng last year. What is this?"

The old man said: "In the Month of the Hog, a company of fifty came
marching out of the west. They said they had served the king of—what
was the name of the kingdom? Turan, that is it. But, resenting the
scornful way this king's generals treated them, they had deserted and
struck out eastward to seek their fortunes in Khitai."

Leng Chi took up the tale. "They passed a few leagues north of here,
through the village of Shaulun. They found favor with the villagers
because they destroyed a band of robbers, and they did not loot or
rape. Therefore the villagers warned them against Yah Chieng. But they
would not listen, and marched on to Paikang.

"There, we heard, they offered their swords to Yah Chieng. He feigned
acceptance but had other plans in mind. He gave them a feast, at the
height of which he had their captain's head cut off and the rest cast
into his dungeon."

"Why did he do this?" said Conan.

"It seems he wanted them for sacrifices in some great rite of devilish
magic!"

"What became of them?"

"At last accounts, they still awaited their doom, though that is three
months since."

"How did you hear of it?"

"A woman of Paikang, who had been having a love affair with one of the
Two Hundred, fled to Shaulun, and thence the tale came to us."

"Lord Kang," said Conan, "tell me about /our palace. I shall need to
find my way about it."

Kang Hsiu began drawing lines on the earthen floor of the hut. "You
know that the usurper may have changed things since I dwelt therein.
But this is how they were in my day. Here stands the main gate; here
rises the great hall…"

Hours later, plans were made down to the last detail. Kang Hsiu rose
and swung his goblet high, the amber liquid swirling in the smoky
lamplight. He cried in a ringing voice: "To the future and honor of
great Paikang, and may the head of the Snake soon be crushed under the
boot of the Avenger!"

An answering shout went up, and Conan made a gesture and drank. His
brain whirled with the realization that he was at last within reach of
his goal.

Dust rose in choking clouds on the road that ran west from Paikang.
Hundreds of Khitans in blue and brown shuffled along it towards the
city.

The sun gleamed whitely on the massive marble wall of Paikang. The
waters of the moat reflected the white walls, the brown hills, and the
blue sky, save where the wakes of a flock of swimming ducks disturbed
its surface. Over the walls rose the pagodas of Paikang, their multiple
roofs gleaming with glazed tiles of green, blue, and purple and
glittering with gilded ornaments at the corners. Golden dragons and
lions snarled down from the angles of the battlements surmounting the
great gate.

The dusty lines of countryfolk streamed into the gate, afoot and on
donkeyback. For once Yah Chieng's soldiers stood back, leaning on their
bills and tridents and watching the throng without stopping each one
for questioning, search, and extortion. Now and then the drab column
was lightened by the brilliant costumes of the dancers. The lion
dancers of Shaulun made an especially brave show. The gilded lion mask
flashed in the sun, turning its bulging eyes and curling tongue this
way and that. The man in the forequarters must have been of unusual
stature, for the headpiece of the lion costume towered far above the
heads of the Khitans.

Inside the city, the countryfolk poured along a winding avenue toward
the palace. Conan, peering through the holes below the lion mask,
sniffed the pungent smells of a Khitan city and pricked his ears at its
sounds. At first it sounded like a meaningless din, though each horn,
bell, whistle, and rattle was used by tradesmen of a particular kind to
make themselves known.

Following the crowd, he came to another wall with a great gate standing
open in it. The folk poured in. The column divided to flow around a
jade screen of carven dragons, ten feet high and thrice as long, and
joined again on the other side. They were in the courtyard of Yah
Chieng's palace, formerly the seat of the Kang clan.

Pushing, shouting masses pressed against the tables where Yah Chieng's
servants ladled out rice stew and rice wine. Many of the guests were
already in a stimulated condition; the singsong talk of the crowd rose
to a roar. Here a juggler tossed balls and hatchets; there a musician
plucked a one-stringed lute and sang plaintive songs, though only those
within a few feet of him could hear him.

Conan heard Leng Chi's voice in his ear: "Over this way. The dancing
will soon begin. Be not so proficient as to win the prize. It would not
forward our plans to have the judge demand that you doff your headpiece
to receive it…"

The long stone corridor was dark. Deathly silence reigned in its murky
depths. Conan slunk stealthily forward like a jungle cat, avoiding the
slightest sound, carrying his sword unsheathed. He was clad in a Khitan
jacket and silken trousers, bought from a merchant in a border village.

As he had planned, so had things befallen. During the rising turmoil in
the courtyard, nobody had noticed by the flickering torchlight that one
of the lion dresses was now borne by only one carrier. Shadows and
nooks had aided Conan's swift entry. Now he was on his way into the
heart of the enemy's stronghold.

His senses were sharpened to the utmost. It was not the first time he
had entered the abode of a hostile wizard. Memories of the ghastly
things he had met on similar occasions thrust themselves upon his
consciousness like attacking demons. All his life, the supernatural had
been the one thing that could send tendrils of fear probing into his
brain. But with iron self-possession, he shrugged off his atavistic
fears and continued his catlike stalk.

The corridor branched. One stairway led up, the other down, hardly
discernible in the all-pervading darkness. Conan chose the one leading
downward. The plan of the castle was well-learned and locked in his
brain.

Yo La-gu, one of Yah Chieng's Two Hundred, lolled on his bench in the
dungeon beneath the citadel of Paikang. His temper was ruffled. Why
should he of all men sit here, guarding these milksop western
prisoners, while outside the feast was in progress and wine and love
were to be had for the asking? A stupid idea of the wizard to keep
people prisoner for years, preparing to use them up in some magical
stunt, when a single raid on the countryside would' fetch as many
Khitans in a week! Grumbling, he eased himself off the creaking settle
to fetch more wine from his secret hoard. His armor rustled and
clanked.

He reached the niche in the wall where he had secreted his bottles and
stretched his hand towards it —and that was his last conscious act. Ten
steely fingers fastened on his windpipe, crushing his throat, until
black unconsciousness swamped his brain, and he sank down in a heap.

Conan surveyed his handiwork with a grim smile. It was good to slay
foes again! The old barbarian instincts boiled in his blood, and his
lips writhed in the snarl of the hunting beast.

His kill had been so swift and silent that none of the sleeping
occupants of the cells had stirred. Conan stooped and tore the bunch of
keys from the dead jailor's belt. He tried several of them in the lock
of the nearest cell.

At the soft metallic sound, a prisoner turned, shook his head, and
opened his eyes. The imprecation on his lips was stifled as he beheld
the strange figure at the grille. His astonishment grew as the bars
swung inward. In a bound, he was on his feet. He checked his rush, for
the light from the wall cresset glinted faintly on die blade in the
stranger's right hand. A gesture from the giant cautioned him to
silence, and another beckoned him to follow.

In the clear light, the eyes of the prisoner widened in surprise. Conan
frowned, searching his memory. At last he said: "Lyco of Khorshemish!
Is it you?"

"Aye." Their brawny hands met in a firm grip. The prisoner continued:
"By the breasts of Ishtar, Conan, I am struck to the core with
astonishment! Are you here with an Aquilonian host to deal with the
evil sorcerer, or have you flown on the back of an eagle?"

"Neither, Lyco," came the rumbling reply. "I am here to mete out
justice to the yellow cur, true, but I counted on finding my army here.
I think I have done so. When we fought as mercenaries, yours was always
among the readiest blades."

"Most of the prisoners here are true men and fighters," said the other.
"We long only to flesh our steel in those Khitan bravos."

"You will have your chance. Here are the keys to the dungeons; take
them and free your men. The armory lies down this corridor; equip your
followers with blades and strike! Strike to avenge your own suffering
and to free the queen of Aquilonia!" He smiled grimly at Lyco's
astounded expression. "Now you know why I'm here. You will find Khitan
allies among the throng in the courtyard. Go swiftly."

He was gone again like a haunting phantom. Lyco began to waken his
comrades, sending some to open the armory while others busied
themselves at the locks of other cell doors.

"By Mitra," murmured Lyco, "the barbarian is a mad one! Traveling
across the world to rescue a woman!" But admiration glowed in his eyes
as he looked into the dark mouth of the corridor.


10. The Lair of the Sorcerer
----------------------------

A vast, high-ceilinged hall opened at the end of the dank stone
corridor. Its square flagstones were covered with dust undisturbed by
human feet but its aura of silence brooded menacingly. Its upper part
was lost in darkness. Conan stalked warily over the vast floor toward
the opening of another corridor, as if he expected any one of the
flagstones to drop out from under him.

A noise like a thunderclap rang with booming crashes between the
echoing walls, and a shrill wailing cry made Oman's blood run cold.
With a swish of mighty wings, an unearthly being swooped from the upper
darkness. Like a stooping hawk it plummeted down towards Conan.

The barbarian flung himself aside barely in time to avoid the
razor-sharp claws in the monster's paws. Then his sword swept in a
glittering arc. The winged horror flopped away, howling. One arm,
severed at the elbow, gushed dark, ill-smelling blood. With a horrible
scream it again sprang towards the Cimmerian.

Conan stood his ground. He knew that his only chance lay in a sure
thrust through the creature's vitals. Even partly dismembered, it had
the strength to tear him, to pieces. It was, he was sure, the same
thing that had borne off Zenobia long months before.

The monster spread its wings to soar as it sprang. At the last moment,
Conan ducked the claws of the remaining hand and put all his strength
into a ripping thrust. His blade tore into the black body, as the
searching talons ripped the shirt from his back.

With a choking gasp, the monster fell. Oman braced his feet to drag his
blade free, dripping with the creature's dark juices.

His hair was sweaty and tangled and his back was bloody from the
clawing he had received. But a terrible fire burned unquenched in his
eyes as he reached the mouth of the other corridor. Behind him, on the
floor of the hall, the monster lay in a pool of brown, staring with
sightless yellow eyes toward the darkness from which it had come.

The corridor into which Conan stepped was short and straight. In the
distance he saw a door of stone. Cryptic signs of Khitan origin covered
its surface. This must be the Tunnel of Death that led to Yah Chieng's
private chambers. Beyond that door he would find his foe. Conan's eyes
glowed ferally in the darkness, and his hand gripped his hilt with
vengeful force.

Suddenly the darkness changed to bright illumination. Red licking
flames arose from the floor in a hellish wall. Their writhing tongues
reached up to the ceiling, and they burst toward Conan in hungry spouts
of burning death. He could feel their terrible heat on his face and
arms, and his clothes began to smolder. Sweat ran down his face. As he
wiped his brow with the back of his hand, a piece of metal rasped his
skin.

The ring of Rakhamon again! He had forgotten it in his single-minded
determination. Would it prove potent against the strength of the yellow
wizard?

He swept his hand through the licking flames. A crash, like the beating
of a thousand cymbals, reverberated in the corridor. The flames fell
tinkling to the floor, like shards of glass. The rest of the fire was
turned to marble It flamed, smoldered; a blue serpentine of smoke rose
and swayed upward about Orastes in a slender spiral. And when it had
risen above his shoulders it curled about his neck with a whipping
suddenness like the stroke of a snake. Orastes' scream was choked to a
gurgle. His hands flew to his neck, his eyes were distended, his tongue
protruded. The smoke was like a blue rope about his neck; then it faded
and was gone, and Orastes slumped to the floor a dead man.

Xaltotun smote his hands together and two men entered, men often
observed accompanying him—small, repulsively dark, with red, oblique
eyes and pointed, rat-like teeth. They did not speak. Lifting the
corpse, they bore it away.

Dismissing the matter with a wave of his hand, Xaltotun seated himself
at the ivory table about which sat the pale kings.

"Why are you in conclave?" he demanded.

"The Aquilonians have risen in the west," answered Amulric, recovering
from the grisly jolt the death of Orastes had given him. "The fools
believe that Conan is alive, and coming at the head of a Poitainian
army to reclaim his kingdom. If he had reappeared immediately after
Val-kia, or if a rumor had been circulated that he lived, the central
provinces would not have risen under him, they feared your powers so.
But they have become so desperate under Valerius's misrule that they
are ready to follow any man who can unite them against us, and prefer
sudden death to torture and continual misery.

"Of course the tale has lingered stubbornly in the land that Conan was
not really slain at Valkia, but not until recently have the masses
accepted it. But Pallantides is back from exile in Ophir, swearing that
the king was ill in his tent that day, and that a man-at-arms wore his
harness, and a squire who but recently recovered from the stroke of a
mace received at Valkia confirms his tale— or pretends to.

"An old woman with a pet wolf has wandered up and down the land,
proclaiming that King Conan yet lives, and will return some day to
reclaim the crown. And of late the cursed priests of Asura sing the
same song. They claim that word has come to them by some mysterious
means that Conan is returning to reconquer his domain. I cannot catch
either her or them. This is, of course, a trick of Trocero's. My spies
tell me there is indisputable evidence that the Poitanians are
gathering to invade Aquilonia. I believe that Trocero will bring
forward some pretender who he will claim is King Conan."

Tarascus laughed, but there was no conviction in his laughter. He
surreptitiously felt of a scar beneath his jupon, and remembered ravens
that cawed on the trail of a fugitive; remembered the body of his
squire, Arideus, brought back from the border mountains horribly
mangled, by a great gray wolf, his terrified soldiers said. But he also
remembered a red jewel stolen from a golden chest while a wizard slept,
and he said nothing.

And Valerius remembered a dying nobleman who gasped out a tale of fear,
and he remembered four Khitans who disappeared into the mazes of the
south and never returned. But he held his tongue, for hatred and
suspicion of his allies ate at him like a worm, and he desired nothing
so much as to see both rebels and Nemedians go down locked in the death
grip.

But Amalric exclaimed: "It is absurd to dream that Conan lives!"

For answer Xaltotun cast a roll of parchment on the table.

Amalric caught it up, glared at it. From his lips burst a furious,
incoherent cry. He read:

To Xaltotun, grand fakir of Nemedia: Dog of Acheron, I am returning to
my kingdom, and I mean to hang your hide on a bramble.

Conan.

"A forgery!" exclaimed Amalric.

Xaltotun shook his head.

"It is genuine. I have compared it with the signature on the royal
documents on record in the libraries of the court. None could imitate
that bold scrawl."

"Then if Conan lives," muttered Amalric, "this uprising will not be
like the others, for he is the only man living who can unite the
Aquilonians. But," he protested, "this is not like Conan. Why should he
put us on our guard with his boasting? One would think that he would
strike without warning, after the fashion of the barbarians."

"We are already warned," pointed out Xaltotun. "Our spies have told us
of preparations for war in Poitain. He could not cross the mountains
without our knowledge; so he sends me his defiance in characteristic
manner."

"Why to you?" demanded Valerius. "Why not to me, or to Tarascus?"

Xaltotun turned his inscrutable gaze upon the king.

"Conan in wiser than you," he said at last. "He already knows what you
kings have yet to learn—that it is not Tarascus, nor Valerius, no, nor
Amalric, but Xaltotun who is the real master of the western nations."

They did not reply; they sat staring at him, assailed by a numbing
realization of the truth of his assertion.

"There is no road for me but the imperial highway," said Xaltotun. "But
first we must crush Conan. I do not know how he escaped me at Belverus,
for knowledge of what happened while I lay in the slumber of the black
lotus is denied me. But he is in the south, gathering an army. It is
his last, desperate blow, made possible only by the desperation of the
people who have suffered under Valerius. Let them rise; I hold them all
in the palm of my hand. We will wait until he moves against us, and
then we will crush him once and for all.

"Then we shall crush Poitain and Gunderland and the stupid Bossonians.
After them Ophir, Argos, Zingara, Koth—all the nations of the world we
shall weld into one vast empire. You shall rule as my satraps, and as
my captains shall be greater than kings are now. I am unconquerable,
for the Heart of Ahriman is hidden where no man can ever wield it
against me again."

Tarascus averted his gaze, lest Xaltotun read his thoughts. He knew the
wizard had not looked into the golden chest with its carven serpents
that had seemed to sleep, since he laid the Heart therein. Strange as
it seemed, Xaltotun did not know that the Heart had been stolen; the
strange jewel was beyond or outside the ring of his dark wisdom; his
uncanny talents did not warn him that the chest was empty. Tarascus did
not believe that Xaltotun knew the full extent of Orastes' revelations,
for the Pythonian had not mentioned the restoration of Acheron, but
only the building of a new, earthly empire. Tarascus did not believe
that Xaltotun was yet quite sure of his power; if they needed his aid
in their ambitions, no less he needed theirs. Magic depended, to a
certain extent after all, on sword strokes and lance thrusts. The king
read meaning in Amalric's furtive glance; let the wizard use his arts
to help them defeat their most dangerous enemy. Time enough then to
turn against him. There might yet be a way to cheat this dark power
they had raised.


XXI Drums of Peril
------------------

Confirmation of the war came when the army of Poitain, ten thousand
strong, marched through the southern passes with waving banners and
shimmer of steel. And at their head, the spies swore, rode a giant
figure in black armor, with the royal lion of Aquilonia worked in gold
upon the breast of his rich silken surcoat Conan lived! The king lived!
There was no doubt of it in men's minds now, whether friend or foe.

With the news of the invasion from the south there also came word,
brought by hard-riding couriers, that a host of Gundermen was moving
southward, reinforced by the barons of the northwest and the northern
Bossonians. Tarascus marched with thirty-one thousand men to Galparan,
on the river Shirki, which the Gundermen must cross to strike at the
towns still held by the Nemedians. The Shirki was a swift, turbulent
river rushing southwestward through rocky gorges and canyons, and there
were few places where an army could cross at that time of the year,
when the stream was almost bank-full with the melting of the snows. All
the country east of the Shirki was in the hands of the Nemedians, and
it was logical to assume that the Gundermen would attempt to cross
either at Galparan, or at Tanasul, which lay to the south of Galparan.
Reinforcements were daily expected from Nemedia, until word came that
the king of Ophir was making hostile demonstrations on Nemedia's
southern border, and to spare any more troops would be to expose
Nemedia to the risk of an invasion from the south.

Amalric and Valerius moved out from Tarantia with twenty-five thousand
men, leaving as large a garrison as they dared to discourage revolts in
the cities during their absence. They wished to meet and crush Conan
before he could be joined by the rebellious forces of the kingdom.

The king and his Poitanians had crossed the mountains, but there had
been no actual clash of arms, no attack on towns or fortresses. Conan
had appeared and disappeared. Apparently he had turned westward through
the wild, thinly settled hill country, and entered tie Bossonian
marches, gathering recruits as he went. Amalric and Valerius with their
host, Nemedians, Aquilonian renegades, and ferocious mercenaries, moved
through the land in baffled wrath, looking for a foe which did not
appear.

Amalric found it impossible to obtain more than vague general tidings
about Conan's movements. Scouting-parties had a way of riding out and
never returning, and it was not uncommon to find a spy crucified to an
oak. The countryside was up and striking as peasants and country-folk
strike—savagely, murderously, and secretly. All that Amalric knew
certainly was that a large force of Gundermen and northern Bossonians
was somewhere to the north of him, beyond the Shirki, and that Conan
with a smaller force of Poitanians and southern Bossonians was
somewhere to the southwest of him.

He began to grow fearful that if he and Valerius advanced farther into
the wild country, Conan might elude them entirely, march around them
and invade the central provinces behind them. Amalric fell back from
the Shirki valley and camped in a plain a day's ride from Tanasul.
There he waited. Tarascus maintained his position at Calparan, for he
feared that Conan's maneuvers were intended to draw him southward, and
so let the Gundermen into the kingdom at the northern crossing.

To Amalric's camp came Xaltotun in his chariot drawn by the uncanny
horses that never tired, and he entered Amalric's tent where the baron
conferred with Valerius over a map spread on an ivory camp table.

This map Xaltotun crumpled and flung aside.

"What your scouts cannot learn for you," quoth he, "my spies tell me,
though their information is strangely blurred and imperfect, as if
unseen forces were working against me.

"Conan is advancing along the Shirki river with ten thousand
Poitanians, three thousand southern Bossonians, and barons of the west
and south with their retainers to the number of five thousand. An army
of thirty thousand Gundermen and northern Bossonians is pushing
southward to join him. They have established contact by means of secret
communications used by the cursed priests of Asura, who seem to be
opposing me, and whom I will feed to a serpent when the battle is
over—I swear it by Set!

"Both armies are headed for the crossing at Tanasul, but I do not
believe that the Gundermen will cross the river. I believe that Conan
will cross, instead, and join them."

"Why should Conan cross the river?" demanded Amalric.

"Because it is to his advantage to delay the battle. The longer he
waits, the stronger he will become, the more precarious our position.
The hills on the other side of the river swarm with people passionately
loyal to his cause-broken men, refugees, fugitives from Valerius's
cruelty. From all over the kingdom men are hurrying to join his army,
singly and by companies. Daily, parties from our armies are ambushed
and cut to pieces by the countryfolk. Revolt grows in the central
provinces, and will soon burst into open rebellion. The garrisons we
left there are not sufficient, and we can hope for no reinforcements
from Nemedia for the time being. I see the hand of Pallantides in this
brawling on the Ophirean frontier. He has kin in Ophir.

"If we do not catch and crush Conan quickly the provinces will be in a
blaze of revolt behind us. We shall have to fall back to Tarantia to
defend what we have taken; and we may have to fight our way through a
country in rebellion, with Conan's whole force at our heels, and then
stand siege in the city itself, with enemies within as well as without.
No, we cannot wait. We must crush Conan before his army grows too
great, before the central provinces rise. With his head hanging above
the gate at Tarantia you will see how quickly the rebellion will fall
apart."

"Why do you not put a spell on his army to slay them all?" asked
Valerius, half in mockery.

Xaltotun stared at the Aquilonian as if he read the full extent of the
mocking madness that lurked in those wayward eyes.

"Do not worry," he said at last "My arts shall crush Conan finally like
a lizard under the heel. But even sorcery is aided by pikes and
swords."

"If he crosses the river and takes up his position in the Goralian
hills he may be hard to dislodge," said Amalric. "But if we catch him
in the valley on this side of the river we can wipe him out How far is
Conan from Tanasul?"

"At the rate he is marching he should reach the crossing sometime
tomorrow night His men are rugged and he is pushing them hard. He
should arrive there at least a day before the Gundermen."

"Good!" Amalric smote the table with his clenched fist "I can reach
Tanasul before he can. I'll send a rider to Tarascus, bidding him
follow me to Tanasul. By the time he arrives I will have cut Conan off
from the crossing and destroyed him. Then our combined force can cross
the river and deal with the Gundermen."

Xaltotun shook his head impatiently.

"A good enough plan if you were dealing with anyone but Conan. But your
twenty-five thousand men are not enough to destroy his eighteen
thousand before the Gundermen come up. They will fight with the
desperation of wounded panthers. And suppose the Gundermen come up
while the hosts are locked in battle? You will be caught between two
fires and destroyed before Tarascus can arrive. He will reach Tanasul
too late to aid you."

"What, then?" demanded Amalric. "Move with your whole strength against
Conan," answered the man from Acheron. "Send a rider bidding Tarascus
join us here. We will await his coming. Then we will march together to
Tanasul."

"But while we wait," protested Amalric, "Conan will cross the river and
join the Gundermen."

"Conan will not cross the river," answered Xaltotun.

Amalric's head jerked up and he stared into the cryptic dark eyes.

"What do you mean?"

"Suppose there were torrential rains far to the north, at the head of
the Shirki? Suppose the river came down in such flood as to render the
crossing at Tanasul impassable? Could we not then bring up our entire
force at our leisure, catch Conan on this side of the river and crush
him, and then, when the flood subsided, which I think it would do the
next day, could we not cross the river and destroy the Gundermen? Thus
we could use our full strength against each of these smaller forces in
turn."

Valerius laughed as he always laughed at the prospect of the ruin of
either friend or foe, and drew a restless hand jerkily through his
unruly yellow locks. Amalric stared at the man from Acheron with
mingled fear and admiration.

"If we caught Conan in Shirlu valley with the hill ridges to his right
and the river in flood to his left," he admitted, "with our whole force
we could annihilate him. Do you think—are you sure—do you believe such
rains will fall?"

"I go to my tent," answered Xaltotun, rising. "Necromancy is not
accomplished by the waving of a wand. Send a rider to Tarascus. And let
none approach my tent."

That last command was unnecessary. No man in that host could have been
bribed to approach that mysterious black silken pavilion, the
door-flaps of which were always closely drawn. None but Xaltotun ever
entered it, yet voices were often heard issuing from it; its walls
billowed sometimes without a wind, and weird music came from it.
Sometimes, deep in midnight, its silken walls were lit red by flames
flickering within, limning misshapen silhouettes that passed to and
fro.

Lying in his own tent that night, Amalric heard the steady rumble of a
drum in Xaltotun's tent; through the darkness it boomed steadily, and
occasionally the Nemedian could have sworn that a deep, croaking voice
mingled with the pulse of the drum. And he shuddered, for he knew that
voice was not the voice of Xaltotun. The drum rustled and muttered on
like deep thunder, heard afar off, and before dawn Amalric, glancing
from his tent, caught the red flicker of lightning afar on the northern
horizon. In all other parts of the sky the great stars blazed, whitely.
But the distant lightning flickered incessantly, like the crimson glint
of firelight on a tiny, turning blade.

At sunset of the next day Tarascus came up with his host, dusty and
weary from hard marching, the footmen straggling hours behind the
horsemen. They camped in the plain near Amalric's camp, and at dawn the
combined army moved westward.

Ahead of him roved a swarm of scouts, and Amalric waited impatiently
for them to return and tell of the Poitanians trapped beside a furious
flood. But when the scouts met the column it was with the news that
Conan had crossed the river!

"What?" exclaimed Amalric. "Did he cross before the flood?"

"There was no flood," answered the scouts, puzzled. "Late last night he
came up to Tanasul and flung his army across."

"No flood?" exclaimed Xaltotun, taken aback for the first time in
Amalric's knowledge. "Impossible! There were mighty rains upon the
headwaters of the Shirki last night and the night before that!"

"That may be, your lordship," answered the scout. "It is true the water
was muddy, and the people of Tanasul said that the river rose perhaps a
foot yesterday; but that was not enough to prevent Conan's crossing."

Xaltotun's sorcery had failed! The thought hammered in Amalric's brain.
His horror of this strange man out of the past had grown steadily since
that night in Belverus when he had seen a brown, shriveled mummy swell
and grow into a living man. And the death of Orastes had changed
lurking horror into active fear. In his heart was a grisly conviction
that the man—or devil—was invincible. Yet now he had undeniable proof
of his failure.

Yet even the greatest of necromancers might fail occasionally, thought
the baron. At any rate, he dared not oppose the man from Acheron—yet.
Orastes was dead, writhing in Mitra only knew what nameless hell, and
Amalric knew his sword would scarcely prevail where the black wisdom of
the renegade priest had failed. What grisly abomination Xaltotun
plotted lay in the unpredictable future. Conan and his host were a
present menace against which Xaltotun's wizardry might well be needed
before the play was all played.

They came to Tanasul, a small fortified village at the spot where a
reef of rocks made a natural bridge across the river, passable always
except in times of greatest flood. Scouts brought in the news that
Conan had taken up his position in the Goralian hills, which began to
rise a few miles beyond the river. And just before sundown the
Gundermen had arrived in his camp.

Amalric looked at Xaltotun, inscrutable and alien in the light of the
flaring torches. Night had fallen.

"What now? Your magic has failed. Conan confronts us with an army
nearly as strong as our own, and he has the advantage of position. We
have a choice of two evils: to camp here and await his attack, or to
fall back toward Tarantia and await reinforcements."

"We are ruined if we wait," answered Xaltotun. "Cross the river and
camp on the plain. We will attack at dawn."

"But his position is too strong!" exclaimed Amalric.

"Fool!" A gust of passion broke the veneer of the wizard's calm. "Have
you forgotten Valkia? Because some obscure elemental principle
prevented the flood do you deem me helpless? I had intended that your
spears should exterminate our enemies; but do not fear: it is my arts
shall crush their host. Conan is in a trap. He will never see another
sun set. Cross the river!"

They crossed by the flare of torches. The hoofs of the horses clinked
on the rocky bridge, splashed through the shallows. The glint of the
torches on shields and breastplates was reflected redly in the black
water. The rock bridge was broad on which they crossed, but even so it
was past midnight before the host was camped in the plain beyond. Above
them they could see fires winking redly in the distance. Conan had
turned at bay in the Goralian hills, which had more than once before
served as the last stand of an Aquilonian king.

Amalric left his pavilion and strode restlessly through the camp. A
weird glow flickered in Xaltotun's tent, and from time to time a
demoniacal cry slashed the silence, and there was a low sinister
muttering of a drum that rustled rather than rumbled.

Amalric, his instincts whetted by the night and the circumstances, felt
that Xaltotun was opposed by core than physical force. Doubts of the
wizard's power assailed him. He glanced at the fires high above him,
and his face set in grim lines. He and his army were deep in the midst
of a hostile country. Up there among those hills lurked thousands of
wolfish figures out of whose hearts and souls all emotion and hope had
been scourged except a frenzied hate for their conquerors, a mad lust
for vengeance. Defeat meant annihilation, retreat through a land
swarming with blood-mad enemies. And on the morrow he must hurl his
host against the grimmest fighter in the western nations, and his
desperate horde. If Xaltotun failed them now——-

Half a dozen men-at-arms strode out of the shadows. The firelight
glinted on their breastplates and helmet crests. Among them they half
led, half dragged a gaunt figure in tattered rags.

Saluting, they spoke: "My lord, this man came to the outposts and said
he desired word with King Valerius. He is an Aquilonian."

He looked more like a wolf—a wolf the traps had scarred. Old sores that
only fetters make showed on his wrists and ankles. A great brand, the
mark of hot iron, disfigured his face. His eyes glared through the
tangle of his matted hair as he half crouched before the baron.

"Who are you, you filthy dog?" demanded the Nemedian.

"Call me Tiberias," answered the man, and his teeth clicked in an
involuntary spasm. "I have come to tell you how to trap Conan."

"A traitor, eh?" rumbled the baron.

"Men say you have gold," mouthed the man, shivering under his rags.
"Give some to me! Give me gold and I will show you how to defeat the
king!" His eyes glazed widely, his outstretched, upturned hands were
spread like quivering claws.

Amalric shrugged his shoulders in distaste. But no tool was too base
for his use.

"If you speak the truth you shall have more gold than you can carry,"
he said. "If you are a liar and a spy I will have you crucified
head-down. Bring him along."

In the tent of Valerius, the baron pointed to the man who crouched
shivering before them, huddling his rags about him.

"He says he knows a way to aid us on the morrow. We will need aid, if
Xaltotun's plan is no better than it has proved so far. Speak on, dog."

The man's body writhed in his strange convulsions. Words came in a
stumbling rush:

"Conan camps at the head of the Valley of Lions. It is shaped like a
fan, with steep hills on either side. If you attack him tomorrow you
will have to march straight up the valley. You cannot climb the hills
on either side. But if King Valerius will deign to accept my service, I
will guide him through the hills and show him how he can come upon King
Conan from behind. But if it is to be done at all, we must start soon.
Il is many hours' riding, for one must go miles to the west, then miles
to the north, then turn eastward and so come into the Valley of Lions
from behind, as the Gundermen came."

Amalric hesitated, tugging his chin. In these chaotic times it was not
rare to find men willing to sell their souls for a few gold pieces.

"If yon lead me astray you will die," said Valerius. "You are aware of
that, are you not?"

The man shivered, but his wide eyes did not waver.

"If I betray you, slay me!"

"Conan will not dare divide his force," mused Amalric. "He will need
all his men to repel our attack. He cannot spare any to lay ambushes in
the hills. Besides, this fellow knows his hide depends on his leading
you as he promised. Would a dog like him sacrifice himself? Nonsense!
No, Valerius, I believe the man is honest."

"Or a greater thief than most, for he would sell his liberator,"
laughed Valerius. "Very well. I will follow the dog. How many men can
you spare me?"

"Five thousand should be enough," answered Amalric. "A surprise attack
on their rear will throw them into confusion, and that will be enough.
I shall expect your attack about noon."

"You will know when I strike," answered Valerius.

As Amalric returned to his pavilion he noted with gratification that
Xaltotun was still in his tent, to judge from the blood-freezing cries
that shuddered forth into the night air from time to time. When
presently he heard the clink of steel and the jingle of bridles in the
outer darkness, he smiled grimly. Valerius had about served his
purpose. The baron knew that Conan was like a wounded lion that rends
and tears even in his death-throes. When Valerius struck from the rear,
the desperate strokes of the Cimmerian might well wipe his rival out of
existence before he himself succumbed. So much the better. Amalric felt
he could well dispense with Valerius, once he had paved the way for a
Nemedian victory.

The five thousand horsemen who accompanied Valerius were hard-bitten
Aquilonian renegades for the most part. In the still starlight they
moved out of the sleeping camp, following the westward trend of the
great black masses that rose against the stars ahead of them. Valerius
rode at their head, and beside him rode Tiberias, a leather thong about
his wrist gripped by a man-at-arms who rode on the other side of him.
Others kept close behind with drawn swords.

"Play us false and you die instantly," Valerius pointed out "I do not
know every sheep-path in these hills, but I know enough about the
general configuration of the country to know the directions we must
take to come in behind the Valley of Lions. See that you do not lead us
astray."

The man ducked his head and his teeth chattered as he volubly assured
his captor of his loyalty, staring up stupidly at the banner that
floated over him, the golden serpent of the old dynasty.

Skirting the extremities of the hills that blocked the Valley of Lions,
they swung wide to the west. An hour's ride and they turned north,
forging through wild and rugged hills, following dim bails and tortuous
paths. Sunrise found them some miles northwest of Conan's position, and
here the guide turned eastward and led them through a maze of
labyrinths and crags. Valerius nodded, judging their position by
various peaks thrusting up above the others. He had kept his bearings
in a general way, and he knew they were still headed in the right
direction.

But now, without warning, a gray fleecy mass came billowing down from
the north, veiling the slopes, spreading out through the valleys. It
blotted out the sun; the world became a blind gray void in which
visibility was limited to a matter of yards. Advance became a stumbling
groping muddle. Valerius cursed. He could no longer see the peaks that
had served him as guide-posts. He must depend wholly upon the
traitorous guide. The golden serpent drooped in the windless air.

Presently Tiberias seemed himself confused; he halted, stared about
uncertainly.

"Are you lost, dog?" demanded Valerius harshly.

"Listen!"

Somewhere ahead of them a faint vibration began, the rhythmic rumble of
a drum.

"Conan's drums!" exclaimed the Aquilonian.

"If we are close enough to hear the drum," said Valerius, "why do we
not hear the shouts and the clang of arms? Surely battle has joined."

"The gorges and the winds play strange tricks," answered Tiberias, his
teeth chattering with the ague that is frequently the lot of men who
have spent much time in damp underground dungeons. "Listen!"

Faintly to their ears came a low muffled roar.

"They are fighting down in the valley!" cried Tiberias. "The drum is
beating on the heights. Let us hasten!"

He rode straight on toward the sound of the distant drum as one who
knows his ground at last. Valerius followed, cursing the fog. Then it
occurred to him that it would mask his advance. Conan could not see him
coming. He would be at the Cimmerian's back before the noonday sun
dispelled the mists.

Just now he could not tell what lay on either hand, whether cliffs,
thickets or gorges. The drum throbbed unceasingly, growing louder as
they advanced, but they heard no more of the battle. Valerius had no
idea toward what point of the compass they were headed. He started as
he saw gray rock walls looming through the smoky drifts on either hand,
and realized that they were riding through a narrow defile. But the
guide showed no sign of nervousness, and Valerius hove a sigh of relief
when the walls widened out and became invisible in the fog. They were
through the defile; if an ambush had been planned, it would have been
made in that pass.

But now Tiberias halted again. The drum was rumbling louder, and
Valerius could not determine from what direction the sound was coming.
Now it seemed ahead of him, now behind, now on one hand or the other.
Valerius glared about him impatiently, sitting on his warhorse with
wisps of mist curling about him and the moisture gleaming on his armor.
Behind him the long lines of steel-clad riders faded away and away like
phantoms into the mist.

"Why do you tarry, dog?" he demanded.

The man seemed to be listening to the ghostly drum. Slowly he
straightened in his saddle, turned his head and faced Valerius, and the
smile on his lips was terrible to see.

"The fog is thinning, Valerius," he said in a new voice, pointing a
bony finger. "Look!"

The drum was silent. The fog was fading away. First the crests of
cliffs came in sight above the gray clouds, tall and spectral. Lower
and lower crawled the mists, shrinking, fading. Valerius started up in
his stirrups with a cry that the horsemen echoed behind him. On all
sides of them the cliffs towered. They were not in a wide, open valley
as he had supposed. They were in a blind gorge walled by sheer cliffs
hundreds of feet high. The only entrance or exit was that narrow defile
through which they had ridden.

"Dog!" Valerius struck Tiberas full in the mouth with his clenched
mailed hand. "What devil's trick is this?"

Tiberias spat out a mouthful of blood and shook with fearful laughter.

"A trick that shall rid the world of a beast! Look, dog!"

Again Valerius cried out, more in fury than in fear.

The defile was blocked by a wild and terrible band of men who stood
silent as images—ragged, shock-headed men with spears in their
hands—hundreds of them. And up on the cliffs appeared other
faces—thousands of faces—wild, gaunt, ferocious faces, marked by fire
and steel and starvation.

"A trick of Conan's!" raged Valerius.

"Conan knows nothing of it," laughed Tiberias. "It was the plot of
broken men, of men you ruined and turned to beasts. Amalric was right.
Conan has not divided his army. We are the rabble who followed him, the
wolves who skulked in these hills, the homeless men, the hopeless men.
This was our plan, and the priests of Asura aided us with the mist.
Look at them, Valerius! Each bears the mark of your hand, on his body
or on his heart!

"Look at me! You do not know me, do you, what of this scar your hangman
burned upon me? Once you knew me. Once I was lord of Amilius, the man
whose sons you murdered, whose daughter your mercenaries ravished and
slew. You said I would not sacrifice myself to trap you? Almighty gods,
if I had a thousand lives I would give them all to buy your doom!

"And I have bought it! Look on the men you broke, dead men who once
played the king! Their hour has come! This gorge is your tomb, try to
climb the cliffs: they are steep, they are high. Try to fight your way
back through the defile: spears will block your path, boulders will
crush you from above! Dog! I will be waiting for you in Hell!"

Throwing back his head he laughed until the rocks rang. Valerius leaned
from his saddle and slashed down with his great sword, severing
shoulder-bone and breast. Tiberias sank to the earth, still laughing
ghastlily through a gurgle of gushing blood.

The drums had begun again, encircling the gorge with guttural thunder;
boulders came crashing down; above the screams of dying men shrilled
the arrows in blinding clouds from the cliffs.


XXII The Road to Acheron
------------------------

Dawn was just whitening the east when Amalric drew up his hosts in the
mouth of the Valley of Lions. This valley was flanked by low, rolling,
but steep hills, and the floor pitched upward in a series of irregular
natural terraces. On the uppermost of these terraces Conan's army held
its position, awaiting the attack. The host that had joined him,
marching down from Gunderland, had not been composed exclusively of
spearmen. With them had come seven thousand Bossonian archers, and four
thousand barons and their retainers of the north and west; swelling the
ranks of his cavalry.

The pikemen were drawn up in a compact wedge-shaped formation at the
narrow head of the valley. There were nineteen thousand of them, mostly
Gundermen, though some four thousand were Aquilonians of the other
provinces. They were flanked on either hand by five thousand Bossonian
archers. Behind the ranks of the pikemen the knights sat their steeds
motionless, lances raised: ten thousand knights of Poitain, nine
thousand Aquilonians, barons and their retainers.

It was a strong position. His flanks could not be turned, for that
would mean climbing the steep, wooded hills in the teeth of arrows and
swords of the Bossonians. His camp lay directly behind him, in a
narrow, steep-walled valley which was indeed merely a continuation of
the Valley of lions, pitching up at a higher level. He did not fear a
surprise from the rear, because the hills behind him were full of
refugees and broken men whose loyalty to him was beyond question.

But if his position was hard to shake, it was equally hard to escape
from. It was a trap as well as a fortress for the defenders, a
desperate last stand of men who did not expect to survive unless they
were victorious. The only line of retreat possible was through the
narrow valley at their rear.

Xaltotun mounted a hill on the left side of the valley, near the wide
mouth. This hill rose higher than the others, and was known as the
King's Altar, for a reason long forgotten. Only Xaltotun knew, and his
memory dated back three thousand years.

He was not alone. His two familiars, silent, hairy, furtive and dark,
were with him, and they bore a young Aquilonian girl, bound hand and
foot. They laid her on an ancient stone, which was curiously like an
altar, and which crowned the summit of the hill. For long centuries it
had stood there, worn by the element until many doubted that it was
anything but a curiously shapen natural rock. But what it was, and why
it stood there, Xaltotun remembered from of old. The familiars went
away, with their bent backs like silent gnomes, and Xaltotun stood
alone beside the stone altar, his dark beard blown in the wind,
overlooking the valley.

He could see clear back to the winding Shirki, and up into the hills
beyond the head of the valley. He could see the gleaming wedge of steel
drawn up at the head of the terraces, the burganets of the archers
glinting among the rocks and bushes, the silent knights motionless on
their steeds, their pennons flowing above their helmets, their lances
rising in a bristling thicket.

Looking in the other direction he could see the long serried lines of
the Nemedians moving in ranks of shining steel into the mouth of the
valley. Behind them the gay pavilions of the lords and knights and the
drab tents of the common soldiers stretched back almost to the river.

like a river of molten steel the Nemedian host flowed into the valley,
the great scarlet dragon rippling over it. First marched the bowmen, in
even ranks, arbalests half raised, bolts nocked, fingers on triggers.
After them came the pikemen, and behind them the real strength of the
army—the mounted knights, their banners unfurled to the wind, their
lances lifted, walking their great steeds forward as if they rode to a
banquet.

And higher up on the slopes the smaller Aquilonian host stood grimly
silent.

There were thirty thousand Nemedian knights, and, as in most Hyborian
nations, it was the chivalry which was the sword of the army. The
footmen were used only to clear the way for a charge of the armored
knights. There were twenty-one thousand of these, pikemen and archers.

The bowmen began loosing as they advanced, without breaking ranks,
launching their quarrels with a whir and tang. But the bolts fell short
or rattled harmlessly from the overlapping shields of the Gundermen.
And before the arbalesters could come within killing range, the arching
shafts of the Bossonians were wreaking havoc in their ranks.

A little of this, a futile attempt at exchanging fire, and the Nemedian
bowmen began falling back in disorder. Their armor was light, their
weapons no match for the Bossonian longbows. The western archers were
sheltered by bushes and rocks. Moreover, the Nemedian footmen lacked
something of the morale of the horsemen, knowing as they did that they
were being used merely to clear the way for the knights.

The crossbowmen fell back, and between their opening lines the pikemen
advanced. These were largely mercenaries, and their masters had no
compunction about sacrificing them. They were intended to mask the
advance of the knights until the latter were within smiting distance.
So while the arbalesters plied their bolts from either flank at long
range, the pikemen marched into the teeth of the blast from above, and
behind them the knights came on.

When the pikemen began to falter beneath the savage hail of death that
whistled down the slopes among them, a trumpet blew, their companies
divided to right and left, and through them the mailed knights
thundered.

They ran full into a cloud of stinging death. The cloth-yard shafts
found every crevice in their armor and the housings of the steeds.
Horses scrambling up the grassy terraces reared and plunged backward,
bearing their riders with them. Steel-clad forms littered the slopes.
The charge wavered and ebbed back.

Back down in the valley Amalric re-formed his ranks. Tarascus was
fighting with drawn sword under the scarlet dragon, but it was the
baron of Tor who commanded that day. Amalric swore as he glanced at the
forest of lance-tips visible above and beyond the head-pieces of the
Gundermen. He had hoped his retirement would draw the knights out in a
charge down the slopes after him, to be raked from either flank by his
bowmen and swamped by the numbers of his horsemen. But they had not
moved. Campservants brought skins of water from the river. Knights
doffed their helmets and drenched their sweating heads. The wounded on
the slopes screamed vainly for water. In the upper valley, springs
supplied the defenders. They did not thirst that long, hot spring day.

On the King's Altar, beside the ancient, carven stone, Xaltotun watched
the steel tide ebb and flow. On came the knights, with waving plumes
and dipping lances. Through a whistling cloud of arrows they plowed to
break like a thundering wave on the bristling wall of spears and
shields. Axes rose and fell above the plumed helmets, spears thrust
upward, bringing down horses and riders. The pride of the Gundermen was
no less fierce than that of the knights. They were not spear-fodder, to
be sacrificed for the glory of better men. They were the finest
infantry in the world, with a tradition that made their morale
unshakable. The kings of Aquilonia had long learned the worth of
unbreakable infantry. They held their formation unshaken; over their
gleaming ranks flowed the great lion banner, and at the tip of the
wedge a giant figure in black armor roared and smote Like a hurricane,
with a dripping ax that split steel and bone alike.

The Nemedians fought as gallantly as their traditions of high courage
demanded. But they could not break the iron wedge, and from the wooded
knolls on either hand arrows raked their close-packed ranks
mercilessly. Their own bowmen were useless, their pikemen unable to
climb the heights and come to grips with the Bossonians. Slowly,
stubbornly, sullenly, the grim knights fell back, counting their empty
saddles. Above them the Gundermen made no outcry of triumph. They
closed their ranks, locking up the gaps made by the fallen. Sweat ran
into their eyes from under their steel caps. They gripped their spears
and waited, their fierce hearts swelling with pride that a king should
fight on foot with them. Behind them the Aquilonian knights had not
moved. They sat their steeds, grimly immobile.

A knight spurred a sweating hone up the hill called the King's Altar,
and glared at Xaltotun with bitter eyes.

"Amalric bids me say that it is time to use your magic, wizard," he
said. "We are dying like flies down there in the valley. We cannot
break their ranks."

Xaltotun seemed to expand, to grow tall and awesome and terrible.

"Return to Amalric," he said. "Tell him to re-form his ranks for a
charge, but to await my signal. Before that signal is given he will see
a sight that he will remember until he lies dying!"

The knight saluted as if compelled against his will, and thundered down
the hill at breakneck pace.

Xaltotun stood beside the dark altar-stone and stared across the
valley, at the dead and wounded men on the terraces, at the grim,
blood-stained band at the head of the slopes, at the dusty, steel-clad
ranks re-forming in the vale below. He glanced up at the sky, and he
glanced down at the slim white figure on the dark stone. And lifting a
dagger inlaid with archaic hieroglyphs, he intoned an immemorial
invocation:

"Set, god of darkness, scaly lord of the shadows, by the blood of a
virgin and the sevenfold symbol I call to your sons below the black
earth 1 Children of the deeps, below the red earth, under the black
earth, awaken and shake your awful manes! Let the hills rock and the
stones topple upon my enemies! Let the sky grow dark above them, the
earth unstable beneath their feet! Let a wind from the deep black earth
curl up beneath their feet, and blacken and shrivel them———"

He halted short, dagger lifted. In the tense silence the roar of the
hosts rose beneath him, borne on the wind.

On the other side of the altar stood a man in a black hooded robe,
whose coif shadowed pale delicate features and dark eyes calm and
meditative.

"Dog of Asura!" whispered Xaltotun, and his voice was like the hiss of
an angered serpent. "Are you mad, that you seek your doom? Ho, Baal!
Chiron!"

"Call again, dog of Acheron!" said the other, and laughed. "Summon them
loudly. They will not heal, unless your shouts reverberate in Hell."

From a thicket on the edge of the crest came a somber old woman in
peasant garb, her hair flowing over her shoulders, a great gray wolf
following at her heels.

"Witch, priest, and wolf," muttered Xaltotun grimly, and laughed.
"Fools, to pit your charlatan's mummery against my arts! With a wave of
my hand I brush you from my path!"

"Your arts are straws in the wind, dog of Python," answered the
Asurian. "Have you wondered why the Shirki did not come down in flood
and trap Conan on the other bank? When I saw the lightning in the night
I guessed your plan, and my spells dispersed the clouds you had
summoned before they could empty their torrents. You did not even know
that your rain-making wizardry had failed."

"You lie!" cried Xaltotun, but the confidence in his voice was shaken.
"I have felt the impact of a powerful sorcery against mine—but no man
on earth could undo the rain-magic, once made, unless he possessed the
very heart of sorcery."

"But the flood you plotted did not come to pass," answered the priest
"Look at your allies in the valley, Pythonian! You have led them to the
slaughter! They are caught in the fangs of the trap, and you cannot aid
them. Look!"

He pointed. Out of the narrow gorge of the upper valley, behind the
Poitainians, a horseman came flying, whirling something about his head
that flashed in the sun. Recklessly he hurtled down the slopes, through
the ranks of the Gundermen, who sent up a deep-throated roar and
clashed their spears and shields like thunder in the hills. On the
terraces between the hosts the sweat-soaked horse reared and plunged,
and his wild rider yelled and brandished the thing in his hands like
one demented. It was the torn remnant of a scarlet banner, and the sun
struck dazzlingly on the golden scales of a serpent that writhed
thereon.

"Valerius is dead!" cried Hadrathus ringingly. "A fog and a drum lured
him to his doom! I gathered that fog, dog of Python, and I dispersed
it! I, with my magic which is greater than your magic!"

"What matters it?" roared Xaltotun, a terrible sight, his eyes blazing,
his features convulsed. "Valerius was a fool. I do not need him. I can
crush Conan without human aid!"

"Why have you delayed?" mocked Hadrathus. "Why have you allowed so many
of your allies to fall pierced by arrows and spitted on spears?"

"Because blood aids great sorcery!" thundered Xaltotun, in a voice that
made the rocks quiver. A lurid nimbus played about his awful head.
"Because no wizard wastes his strength thoughtlessly. Because I would
conserve my powers for the great days to be, rather than employ them in
a hill-country brawl. But now, by Set, I shall loose them to the
uttermost! Watch, dog of Asura, false priest of an outworn god, and see
a sight that shall blast your reason for evermore!"

Hadrathus threw back his head and laughed, and hell was in his
laughter.

"Look, black devil of Python!"

His hand came from under his robe holding something that flamed and
burned in the sun, changing the light to a pulsing golden glow in which
the flesh of Xaltotun looked like the flesh of a corpse.

Xaltotun cried out as if he had been stabbed.

"The Heart! The Heart of Ahriman!"

"Aye! The one power that is greater than your power!"

Xaltotun seemed to shrivel, to grow old. Suddenly his beard was shot
with snow, his locks flecked with gray.

"The Heart!" he mumbled. "You stole it! Dog! Thief!"

"Not I! It has been on a long journey far to the southward. But now it
is in my hands, and your black arts cannot stand against it. As it
resurrected you, so shall it hurl you back into the night whence it
drew you. You shall go down the dark road to Acheron, which is the road
of silence and the night The dark empire, unreborn, shall remain a
legend and a black memory. Conan shall reign again. And the Heart of
Ahriman shall go back into the cavern below the temple of Mitra, to bum
as a symbol of the power of Aquilonia for a thousand years!"

Xaltotun screamed inhumanly and rushed around the altar, dagger lifted;
but from somewhere—out of the sky, perhaps, or the great jewel that
blazed in the hand of Hadrathus—shot a jetting beam of blinding blue
light Full against the breast of Xaltotun it flashed, and the hills
reechoed the concussion. The wizard of Acheron went down as though
struck by a thunderbolt, and before he touched the ground he was
fearfully altered. Beside the altar-stone lay no fresh-slain corpse,
but a shriveled mummy, a brown, dry, unrecognizable carcass sprawling
among moldering swathings.

Somberly old Zelata looked down.

"He was not a living man," she said. "The Heart lent him a false aspect
of life, that deceived even himself. I never saw him as other than a
mummy."

Hadrathus bent to unbind the swooning girl on the altar, when from
among the trees appeared a strange apparition—Xaltotun's chariot drawn
by the weird horses. Gently they advanced to the altar and halted, with
the chariot wheel almost touching the brown withered thing on the
grass. Hadrathus lifted the body of the wizard and placed it in the
chariot. And without hesitation the uncanny steeds turned and moved off
southward, down the hill. And Hadrathus and Zelata and the gray wolf
watched them go—down the long road to Acheron which is beyond the ken
of men.

Down in the valley, Amalric had stiffened in his saddle when he saw
that wild horseman curvetting and caracoling on the slopes while he
brandished that blood-stained serpent-banner. Then some instinct jerked
his head about, toward the hill known as the King's Altar. And his lips
parted. Every man in the valley saw it—an arching shaft of dazzling
light that towered up from the summit of the hill, showering golden
fire. High above the hosts it burst in a blinding blaze that
momentarily paled the sun.

"That's not Xaltotun's signal!" roared the baron.

"No!" shouted Tarascus. "It's a signal to the Aquilonians! Look!"

Above them the immobile ranks were moving at last, and a deep-throated
roar thundered across the vale.

"Xaltotun has failed us!" bellowed Amalric furiously. "Valerius has
failed us! We have been led into a trap! Mitra's curse on Xaltotun who
led us here! Sound the retreat!"

"Too late! yelled Tarascus. "Look!"

Up on the slopes the forest of lances dipped, leveled. The ranks of the
Gundermen rolled back to right and left like a parting curtain. And
with a thunder like the rising roar of a hurricane, the knights of
Aquilonia crashed down the slopes.

The impetus of that charge was irresistible. Bolts driven by the
demoralized arbalesters glanced from their shields, their bent helmets.
Their plumes and pennons streaming out behind them, their lances
lowered, they swept over the wavering lines of pikemen and roared down
the slopes like a wave.

Amalric yelled an order to charge, and the Nemedians with desperate
courage spurred their horses at the slopes. They still outnumbered the
attackers.

But they were weary men on tired horses, charging uphill. The onrushing
knights had not struck a blow that day. Their horses were fresh. They
were coming downhill and they came like a thunderbolt. And like a
thunderbolt they smote the struggling ranks of the Nemedians— smote
them, split them apart, ripped them asunder, and dashed the remnants
headlong down the slopes.

After them on foot came the Gundermen, blood-mad, and the Bossonians
were swarming down the hills, loosing as they ran at every foe that
still moved.

Down the slopes washed the tide of battle, the dazed Nemedians swept on
the crest of the wave. Their archers had thrown down their arbalests
and were fleeing. Such pikemen as had survived the blasting charge of
the knights were cut to pieces by the ruthless Gundermen.

In a wild confusion the battle swept through the wide mouth of the
valley and into the plain beyond. All over the plain swarmed the
warriors, fleeing and pursuing, broken into single combat and clumps of
smiting, hacking knights on rearing, wheeling horses. But the Nemedians
were smashed, broken, unable to re-form or make a stand. By the
hundreds they broke away, spurring for the river. Many reached it,
rushed across and rode eastward. The countryside was up behind them;
the people hunted them like wolves. Few ever reached Tarantia.

The final break did not come until the fall of Amalric. The baron,
striving in vain to rally his men, rode straight at the clump of
knights that followed the giant in black armor whose surcoat bore the
royal lion, and over whose head floated the golden lion banner with the
scarlet leopard of Poitain beside it. A tall warrior in gleaming armor
couched his lance and charged to meet the lord of Tor. They met like a
thunderclap. The Nemedian's lance, striking his foe's helmet, snapped
bolts and rivets and tore off the casque, revealing the features of
Pallantides. But the Aquilonian's lance-head crashed through shield and
breast-plate to transfix the baron's heart.

A roar went up as Amalric was hurled from his saddle, snapping the
lance that impaled him, and the Nemedians gave way as a barrier bursts
under the surging impact of a tidal wave. They rode for the river in a
blind stampede that swept the plain like a whirlwind. The hour of the
Dragon had passed.

Tarascus did not flee. Amalric was dead, the color-bearer slain, and
the ro>al Nemedian banner trampled in the blood and dust. Most of his
knights were fleeing and the Aquilonians were riding them down;
Tarascus knew the day was lost, but with a handful of faithful
followers he raged through the melee, conscious of but one desire —to
meet Conan, the Cimmerian. And at last he met him.

Formations had been destroyed utterly, close-knit bands broken asunder
and swept apart. The crest of Trocero gleamed in one part of the plain,
those of Prospero and Pallantides in others. Conan was alone. The
house-troops of Tarascus had fallen one by one. The two longs met man
to man.

Even as they rode at each other, the horse of Tarascus sobbed and sank
under him. Conan leaped from his own steed and ran at him, as the king
of Nemedia disengaged himself and rose. Steel flashed blindingly in the
sun, clashed loudly, and blue sparks flew; then a clang of armor as
Tarascus measured his full length on the earth beneath a thunderous
stroke of Conan's broadsword.

The Cimmerian placed a mail-shod foot on his enemy's breast, and lifted
his sword. His helmet was gone; he shook back his black mane and his
blue eyes blazed with their old fire.

"Do you yield?"

"Will you give me quarter?" demanded the Nemedian.

"Aye. Better than you'd have given me, you dog. Life for you and all
your men who throw down their arms. Though I ought to split your head
for an infernal thief," the Cimmerian added.

Tarascus twisted his neck and glared over the plain. The remnants of
the Nemedian host were flying across the stone bridge with swarms of
victorious Aquilonians at their heels, smiting with the fury of glutted
vengeance. Bossonians and Gundermen were swarming through the camp of
their enemies, tearing the tents to pieces in search of plunder,
seizing prisoners, ripping open the baggage and upsetting the wagons.

Tarascus cursed fervently, and then shrugged his shoulders, as well as
he could, under the circumstances.

"Very well. I have no choice. What are your demands?"

"Surrender to me all your present holdings in Aquilonia. Order your
garrisons to march out of the castles and towns they hold, without
their arms, and get your infernal armies out of Aquilonia as quickly as
possible. In addition you shall return all Aquilonians sold as slaves,
and pay an indemnity to be designated later, when the damage your
occupation of the country has caused has been properly estimated. You
will remain as hostage until these terms have been carried out."

"Very well," surrendered Tarascus. "I will surrender all the castles
and towns now held by my garrisons without resistance, and all the
other things shall be done. What ransom for my body?"

Conan laughed and removed his foot from his foe's steel-clad breast,
grasped his shoulder and heaved him to his feet. He started to speak,
then turned to see Hadrathus approaching him. The priest was as calm
and self-possessed as ever, picking his way between rows of dead men
and horses.

Conan wiped the sweat-smeared dust from his face with a blood-stained
hand. He had fought all through the day, first on foot with the
pikemen, then in the saddle, leading the charge. His surcoat was gone,
his armor splashed with blood and battered with strokes of sword, mace
and ax. He loomed gigantically against a background of blood and
slaughter, like some grim pagan hero of mythology.

"Well done, Hadrathus!" quoth he gustily. "By Crom, I am glad to see
your signal! My knights were almost mad with impatience and eating
their hearts out to be at sword-strokes. I could not have held them
much longer. What of the wizard?"

"He has gone down the dim road to Acheron," answered Hadrathus. "And
I—I am for Tarantia. My work is done here, and I have a task to perform
at the temple of Mitra. All our work is done here. On this field we
have saved Aquilonia—and more than Aquilonia. Your ride to your capital
will be a triumphal procession through a kingdom mad with joy. All
Aquilonia will be cheering the return of their king. And so, until we
meet again in the great royal hall—farewell!"

Conan stood silently watching the priest as he went. From various parts
of the field knights were hurrying toward him. He saw Pallantides,
Trocero, Prospero, Servius Galannus, their armor splashed with crimson.
The thunder of battle was giving way to a roar of triumph and acclaim.
All eyes, hot with strife and shining with exultation, were turned
toward the great black figure of the king; mailed arms brandished
red-stained swords. A confused torrent of sound rose, deep and
thunderous as the sea-surf: "Hail, Conan, king of Aquilonia!"

Tarascus spoke.

"You have not yet named my ransom."

Conan laughed and slapped his sword home in its scabbard. He flexed his
mighty arms, and ran his blood-stained fingers through his thick black
locks, as if feeling there his re-won crown.

"There is a girl in your seraglio named Zenobia."

"Why, yes, so there is."

"Very well." The king smiled as at an exceedingly pleasant memory. "She
shall be your ransom, and naught else. I will come to Belverus for her
as I promised. She was a slave in Nemedia, but I will make her queen of
Aquilonia!"