The Hour of the Dragon
better left unmentioned, stole your mummy-case from under the very
talons of those which guarded it in the dark, and by camel-caravan and
galley and ox-wagon it came at last to this city.
'Those same thieves--or rather those of them who still lived after their
frightful quest--stole the Heart of Ahriman from its haunted cavern
below the temple of Mitra, and all the skill of men and the spells of
sorcerers nearly failed. One man of them lived long enough to reach me
and give the jewel into my hands, before he died slavering and gibbering
of what he had seen in that accursed crypt. The thieves of Zamora are
the most faithful of men to their trust. Even with my conjurements, none
but they could have stolen the Heart from where it has lain in
demon-guarded darkness since the fall of Acheron, three thousand years
ago.'
Xaltotun lifted his lion-like head and stared far off into space, as if
plumbing the lost centuries.
'Three thousand years!' he muttered. 'Set! Tell me what has chanced in
the world.'
'The barbarians who overthrew Acheron set up new kingdoms,' quoted
Orastes. 'Where the empire had stretched now rose realms called
Aquilonia, and Nemedia, and Argos, from the tribes that founded them.
The older kingdoms of Ophir, Corinthia and western Koth, which had been
subject to the kings of Acheron, regained their independence with the
fall of the empire.'
'And what of the people of Acheron?' demanded Xaltotun. 'When I fled
into Stygia, Python was in ruins, and all the great, purple-towered
cities of Acheron fouled with blood and trampled by the sandals of the
barbarians.'
'In the hills small groups of folk still boast descent from Acheron,'
answered Orastes. 'For the rest, the tide of my barbarian ancestors
rolled over them and wiped them out. They--my ancestors--had suffered
much from the kings of Acheron.'
A grim and terrible smile curled the Pythonian's lips.
'Aye! Many a barbarian, both man and woman, died screaming on the altar
under this hand. I have seen their heads piled to make a pyramid in the
great square in Python when the kings returned from the west with their
spoils and naked captives.'
'Aye. And when the day of reckoning came, the sword was not spared. So
Acheron ceased to be, and purple-towered Python became a memory of
forgotten days. But the younger kingdoms rose on the imperial ruins and
waxed great. And now we have brought you back to aid us to rule these
kingdoms, which, if less strange and wonderful than Acheron of old, are
yet rich and powerful, well worth fighting for. Look!' Orastes unrolled
before the stranger a map drawn cunningly on vellum.
Xaltotun regarded it, and then shook his head, baffled.
'The very outlines of the land are changed. It is like some familiar
thing seen in a dream, fantastically distorted.'
'Howbeit,' answered Orastes, tracing with his forefinger, 'here is
Belverus, the capital of Nemedia, in which we now are. Here run the
boundaries of the land of Nemedia. To the south and southeast are Ophir
and Corinthia, to the east Brythunia, to the west Aquilonia.'
'It is the map of a world I do not know,' said Xaltotun softly, but
Orastes did not miss the lurid fire of hate that flickered in his dark
eyes.
'It is a map you shall help us change,' answered Orastes. 'It is our
desire first to set Tarascus on the throne of Nemedia. We wish to
accomplish this without strife, and in such a way that no suspicion will
rest on Tarascus. We do not wish the land to be torn by civil wars, but
to reserve all our power for the conquest of Aquilonia.
'Should King Nimed and his sons die naturally, in a plague for instance,
Tarascus would mount the throne as the next heir, peacefully and
unopposed.'
Xaltotun nodded, without replying, and Orastes continued.
'The other task will be more difficult. We cannot set Valerius on the
Aquilonian throne without a war, and that kingdom is a formidable foe.
Its people are a hardy, war-like race, toughened by continual wars with
the Picts, Zingarians and Cimmerians. For five hundred years Aquilonia
and Nemedia have intermittently waged war, and the ultimate advantage
has always lain with the Aquilonians.
'Their present king is the most renowned warrior among the western
nations. He is an outlander, an adventurer who seized the crown by force
during a time of civil strife, strangling King Namedides with his own
hands, upon the very throne. His name is Conan, and no man can stand
before him in battle.
'Valerius is now the rightful heir of the throne. He had been driven
into exile by his royal kinsman, Namedides, and has been away from his
native realm for years, but he is of the blood of the old dynasty, and
many of the barons would secretly hail the overthrow of Conan, who is a
nobody without royal or even noble blood. But the common people are
loyal to him, and the nobility of the outlying provinces. Yet if his
forces were overthrown in the battle that must first take place, and
Conan himself slain, I think it would not be difficult to put Valerius
on the throne. Indeed, with Conan slain, the only center of the
government would be gone. He is not part of a dynasty, but only a lone
adventurer.'
'I wish that I might see this king,' mused Xaltotun, glancing toward a
silvery mirror which formed one of the panels of the wall. This mirror
cast no reflection, but Xaltotun's expression showed that he understood
its purpose, and Orastes nodded with the pride a good craftsman takes in
the recognition of his accomplishments by a master of his craft.
'I will try to show him to you,' he said. And seating himself before the
mirror, he gazed hypnotically into its depths, where presently a dim
shadow began to take shape.
It was uncanny, but those watching knew it was no more than the
reflected image of Orastes' thought, embodied in that mirror as a
wizard's thoughts are embodied in a magic crystal. It floated hazily,
then leaped into startling clarity--a tall man, mightily shouldered and
deep of chest, with a massive corded neck and heavily muscled limbs. He
was clad in silk and velvet, with the royal lions of Aquilonia worked
in gold upon his rich jupon, and the crown of Aquilonia shone on his
square-cut black mane; but the great sword at his side seemed more
natural to him than the regal accouterments. His brow was low and broad,
his eyes a volcanic blue that smoldered as if with some inner fire. His
dark, scarred, almost sinister face was that of a fighting-man, and his
velvet garments could not conceal the hard, dangerous lines of his
limbs.
'That man is no Hyborian!' exclaimed Xaltotun.
'No; he is a Cimmerian, one of those wild tribesmen who dwell in the
gray hills of the north.'
'I fought his ancestors of old,' muttered Xaltotun. 'Not even the kings
of Acheron could conquer them.'
'They still remain a terror to the nations of the south,' answered
Orastes. 'He is a true son of that savage race, and has proved himself,
thus far, unconquerable.'
Xaltotun did not reply; he sat staring down at the pool of living fire
that shimmered in his hand. Outside, the hound howled again, long and
shudderingly.
2
A Black Wind Blows
The year of the dragon had birth in war and pestilence and unrest. The
black plague stalked through the streets of Belverus, striking down the
merchant in his stall, the serf in his kennel, the knight at his banquet
board. Before it the arts of the leeches were helpless. Men said it had
been sent from hell as punishment for the sins of pride and lust. It was
swift and deadly as the stroke of an adder. The victim's body turned
purple and then black, and within a few minutes he sank down dying, and
the stench of his own putrefaction was in his nostrils even before death
wrenched his soul from his rotting body. A hot, roaring wind blew
incessantly from the south, and the crops withered in the fields, the
cattle sank and died in their tracks.
Men cried out on Mitra, and muttered against the king; for somehow,
throughout the kingdom, the word was whispered that the king was
secretly addicted to loathsome practises and foul debauches in the
seclusion of his nighted palace. And then in that palace death stalked
grinning on feet about which swirled the monstrous vapors of the plague.
In one night the king died with his three sons, and the drums that
thundered their dirge drowned the grim and ominous bells that rang from
the carts that lumbered through the streets gathering up the rotting
dead.
That night, just before dawn, the hot wind that had blown for weeks
ceased to rustle evilly through the silken window curtains. Out of the
north rose a great wind that roared among the towers, and there was
cataclysmic thunder, and blinding sheets of lightning, and driving rain.
But the dawn shone clean and green and clear; the scorched ground veiled
itself in grass, the thirsty crops sprang up anew, and the plague was
gone--its miasma swept clean out of the land by the mighty wind.
Men said the gods were satisfied because the evil king and his spawn
were slain, and when his young brother Tarascus was crowned in the great
coronation hall, the populace cheered until the towers rocked,
acclaiming the monarch on whom the gods smiled.
Such a wave of enthusiasm and rejoicing as swept the land is frequently
the signal for a war of conquest. So no one was surprised when it was
announced that King Tarascus had declared the truce made by the late
king with their western neighbors void, and was gathering his hosts to
invade Aquilonia. His reason was candid; his motives, loudly proclaimed,
gilded his actions with something of the glamor of a crusade. He
espoused the cause of Valerius, 'rightful heir to the throne'; he came,
he proclaimed, not as an enemy of Aquilonia, but as a friend, to free
the people from the tyranny of a usurper and a foreigner.
If there were cynical smiles in certain quarters, and whispers
concerning the king's good friend Amalric, whose vast personal wealth
seemed to be flowing into the rather depleted royal treasury, they were
unheeded in the general wave of fervor and zeal of Tarascus' popularity.
If any shrewd individuals suspected that Amalric was the real ruler of
Nemedia, behind the scenes, they were careful not to voice such heresy.
And the war went forward with enthusiasm.
The king and his allies moved westward at the head of fifty thousand
men--knights in shining armor with their pennons streaming above their
helmets, pikemen in steel caps and brigandines, cross-bowmen in leather
jerkins. They crossed the border, took a frontier castle and burned
three mountain villages, and then, in the valley of the Valkia, ten
miles west of the boundary line, they met the hosts of Conan, king of
Aquilonia--forty-five thousand knights, archers and men-at-arms, the
flower of Aquilonian strength and chivalry. Only the knights of Poitain,
under Prospero, had not yet arrived, for they had far to ride up from
the southwestern corner of the kingdom. Tarascus had struck without
warning. His invasion had come on the heels of his proclamation, without
formal declaration of war.
The two hosts confronted each other across a wide, shallow valley, with
rugged cliffs, and a shallow stream winding through masses of reeds and
willows down the middle of the vale. The camp-followers of both hosts
came down to this stream for water, and shouted insults and hurled
stones across at one another. The last glints of the sun shone on the
golden banner of Nemedia with the scarlet dragon, unfurled in the breeze
above the pavilion of King Tarascus on an eminence near the eastern
cliffs. But the shadow of the western cliffs fell like a vast purple
pall across the tents and the army of Aquilonia, and upon the black
banner with its golden lion that floated above King Conan's pavilion.