The Hour of the Dragon
'So it is more than the whim of a brainless beast?' he muttered. 'Those
riders cannot see you, spawn of hell; but the other bird can see you,
and they can see him. You follow me, he follows you, and they follow
him. Are you only a craftily trained feathered creature, or some devil
in the form of a bird? Did Xaltotun set you on my trail? Are you
Xaltotun?'
Only a strident screech answered him, a screech vibrating with harsh
mockery.
Conan wasted no more breath on his dusky betrayer. Grimly he settled to
the long grind of the hills. He dared not push the horse too hard; the
rest he had allowed it had not been enough to freshen it. He was still
far ahead of his pursuers, but they would cut down that lead steadily.
It was almost a certainty that their horses were fresher than his, for
they had undoubtedly changed mounts at that castle he had passed.
The going grew rougher, the scenery more rugged, steep grassy slopes
pitching up to densely timbered mountainsides. Here, he knew, he might
elude his hunters, but for that hellish bird that squalled incessantly
above him. He could no longer see them in this broken country, but he
was certain that they still followed him, guided unerringly by their
feathered allies. That black shape became like a demoniac incubus,
hounding him through measureless hells. The stones he hurled with a
curse went wide or fell harmless, though in his youth he had felled
hawks on the wing.
The horse was tiring fast. Conan recognized the grim finality of his
position. He sensed an inexorable driving fate behind all this. He could
not escape. He was as much a captive as he had been in the pits of
Belverus. But he was no son of the Orient to yield passively to what
seemed inevitable. If he could not escape, he would at least take some
of his foes into eternity with him. He turned into a wide thicket of
larches that masked a slope, looking for a place to turn at bay.
Then ahead of him there rang a strange, shrill scream, human yet weirdly
timbred. An instant later he had pushed through a screen of branches,
and saw the source of that eldritch cry. In a small glade below him four
soldiers in Nemedian chain-mail were binding a noose about the neck of a
gaunt old woman in peasant garb. A heap of fagots, bound with cord on
the ground near by, showed what her occupation had been when surprised
by these stragglers.
Conan felt slow fury swell his heart as he looked silently down and saw
the ruffians dragging her toward a tree whose low-spreading branches
were obviously intended to act as a gibbet. He had crossed the frontier
an hour ago. He was standing on his own soil, watching the murder of one
of his own subjects. The old woman was struggling with surprising
strength and energy, and as he watched, she lifted her head and voiced
again the strange, weird, far-carrying call he had heard before. It was
echoed as if in mockery by the raven flapping above the trees. The
soldiers laughed roughly, and one struck her in the mouth.
Conan swung from his weary steed and dropped down the face of the rocks,
landing with a clang of mail on the grass. The four men wheeled at the
sound and drew their swords, gaping at the mailed giant who faced them,
sword in hand.
Conan laughed harshly. His eyes were bleak as flint.
'Dogs!' he said without passion and without mercy. 'Do Nemedian jackals
set themselves up as executioners and hang my subjects at will? First
you must take the head of their king. Here I stand, awaiting your lordly
pleasure!'
The soldiers stared at him uncertainly as he strode toward them.
'Who is this madman?' growled a bearded ruffian. 'He wears Nemedian
mail, but speaks with an Aquilonian accent.'
'No matter,' quoth another. 'Cut him down, and then we'll hang the old
hag.'
And so saying he ran at Conan, lifting his sword. But before he could
strike, the king's great blade lashed down, splitting helmet and skull.
The man fell before him, but the others were hardy rogues. They gave
tongue like wolves and surged about the lone figure in the gray mail,
and the clamor and din of steel drowned the cries of the circling raven.
Conan did not shout. His eyes coals of blue fire and his lips smiling
bleakly, he lashed right and left with his two-handed sword. For all his
size he was quick as a cat on his feet, and he was constantly in motion,
presenting a moving target so that thrusts and swings cut empty air
oftener than not. Yet when he struck he was perfectly balanced, and his
blows fell with devastating power. Three of the four were down, dying in
their own blood, and the fourth was bleeding from half a dozen wounds,
stumbling in headlong retreat as he parried frantically, when Conan's
spur caught in the surcoat of one of the fallen men.
The king stumbled, and before he could catch himself the Nemedian, with
the frenzy of desperation, rushed him so savagely that Conan staggered
and fell sprawling over the corpse. The Nemedian croaked in triumph and
sprang forward, lifting his great sword with both hands over his right
shoulder, as he braced his legs wide for the stroke--and then, over the
prostrate king, something huge and hairy shot like a thunderbolt full on
the soldier's breast, and his yelp of triumph changed to a shriek of
death.
Conan, scrambling up, saw the man lying dead with his throat torn out,
and a great gray wolf stood over him, head sunk as it smelled the blood
that formed a pool on the grass.
The king turned as the old woman spoke to him. She stood straight and
tall before him, and in spite of her ragged garb, her features,
clear-cut and aquiline, and her keen black eyes, were not those of a
common peasant woman. She called to the wolf and it trotted to her side
like a great dog and rubbed its giant shoulder against her knee, while
it gazed at Conan with great green lambent eyes. Absently she laid her
hand upon its mighty neck, and so the two stood regarding the king of
Aquilonia. He found their steady gaze disquieting, though there was no
hostility in it.
'Men say King Conan died beneath the stones and dirt when the cliffs
crumbled by Valkia,' she said in a deep, strong, resonant voice.
'So they say,' he growled. He was in no mood for controversy, and he
thought of those armored riders who were pushing nearer every moment.
The raven above him cawed stridently, and he cast an involuntary glare
upward, grinding his teeth in a spasm of nervous irritation.
Up on the ledge the white horse stood with drooping head. The old woman
looked at it, and then at the raven; and then she lifted a strange weird
cry as she had before. As if recognizing the call, the raven wheeled,
suddenly mute, and raced eastward. But before it had got out of sight,
the shadow of mighty wings fell across it. An eagle soared up from the
tangle of trees, and rising above it, swooped and struck the black
messenger to the earth. The strident voice of betrayal was stilled for
ever.
'Crom!' muttered Conan, staring at the old woman. 'Are you a magician,
too?'
'I am Zelata,' she said. 'The people of the valleys call me a witch. Was
that child of the night guiding armed men on your trail?'
'Aye.' She did not seem to think the answer fantastic. 'They cannot be
far behind me.'
'Lead your horse and follow me, King Conan,' she said briefly.
Without comment he mounted the rocks and brought his horse down to the
glade by a circuitous path. As he came he saw the eagle reappear,
dropping lazily down from the sky, and rest an instant on Zelata's
shoulder, spreading its great wings lightly so as not to crush her with
its weight.
Without a word she led the way, the great wolf trotting at her side, the
eagle soaring above her. Through deep thickets and along tortuous ledges
poised over deep ravines she led him, and finally along a narrow
precipice-edged path to a curious dwelling of stone, half hut, half
cavern, beneath a cliff hidden among the gorges and crags. The eagle
flew to the pinnacle of this cliff, and perched there like a motionless
sentinel.
Still silent, Zelata stabled the horse in a near-by cave, with leaves
and grass piled high for provender, and a tiny spring bubbling in the
dim recesses.
In the hut she seated the king on a rude, hide-covered bench, and she
herself sat upon a low stool before the tiny fireplace, while she made a
fire of tamarisk chunks and prepared a frugal meal. The great wolf
drowsed beside her, facing the fire, his huge head sunk on his paws, his
ears twitching in his dreams.
'You do not fear to sit in the hut of a witch?' she asked, breaking her
silence at last.
An impatient shrug of his gray-mailed shoulders was her guest's only
reply. She gave into his hands a wooden dish heaped with dried fruits,
cheese and barley bread, and a great pot of the heady upland beer,
brewed from barley grown in the high valleys.
'I have found the brooding silence of the glens more pleasing than the
babble of city streets,' she said. 'The children of the wild are kinder
than the children of men.' Her hand briefly stroked the ruff of the
sleeping wolf. 'My children were afar from me today, or I had not needed
your sword, my king. They were coming at my call.'
'What grudge had those Nemedian dogs against you?' Conan demanded.
'Skulkers from the invading army straggle all over the countryside, from
the frontier to Tarantia,' she answered. 'The foolish villagers in the
valleys told them that I had a store of gold hidden away, so as to
divert their attentions from their villages. They demanded treasure from
me, and my answers angered them. But neither skulkers nor the men who
pursue you, nor any raven will find you here.'
He shook his head, eating ravenously.
'I'm for Tarantia.'
She shook her head.
'You thrust your head into the dragon's jaws. Best seek refuge abroad.
The heart is gone from your kingdom.'
'What do you mean?' he demanded. 'Battles have been lost before, yet
wars won. A kingdom is not lost by a single defeat.'
'And you will go to Tarantia?'
'Aye. Prospero will be holding it against Amalric.'
'Are you sure?'
'Hell's devils, woman!' he exclaimed wrathfully. 'What else?'
She shook her head. 'I feel that it is otherwise. Let us see. Not
lightly is the veil rent; yet I will rend it a little, and show you your
capital city.'
Conan did not see what she cast upon the fire, but the wolf whimpered in
his dreams, and a green smoke gathered and billowed up into the hut. And
as he watched, the walls and ceiling of the hut seemed to widen, to grow
remote and vanish, merging with infinite immensities; the smoke rolled
about him, blotting out everything. And in it forms moved and faded, and
stood out in startling clarity.
He stared at the familiar towers and streets of Tarantia, where a mob
seethed and screamed, and at the same time he was somehow able to see
the banners of Nemedia moving inexorably westward through the smoke and
flame of a pillaged land. In the great square of Tarantia the frantic
throng milled and yammered, screaming that the king was dead, that the
barons were girding themselves to divide the land between them, and that
the rule of a king, even of Valerius, was better than anarchy. Prospero,
shining in his armor, rode among them, trying to pacify them, bidding
them trust Count Trocero, urging them to man the wall and aid his
knights in defending the city. They turned on him, shrieking with fear
and unreasoning rage, howling that he was Trocero's butcher, a more evil
foe than Amalric himself. Offal and stones were hurled at his knights.
A slight blurring of the picture, that might have denoted a passing of
time, and then Conan saw Prospero and his knights filing out of the
gates and spurring southward. Behind him the city was in an uproar.