The Hour of the Dragon
'How can we thwart him?' asked Tarascus, impressed.
'There is but one way,' answered Orastes. 'We must steal the Heart of
Ahriman!'
'But I--' began Tarascus involuntarily, then closed his mouth quickly.
None had noticed him, and Orastes was continuing.
'It is a power that can be used against him. With it in my hands I might
defy him. But how shall we steal it? He has it hidden in some secret
place, from which not even a Zamorian thief might filch it. I cannot
learn its hiding-place. If he would only sleep again the sleep of the
black lotus--but the last time he slept thus was after the battle of the
Valkia, when he was weary because of the great magic he had performed,
and--'
The door was locked and bolted, but it swung silently open and Xaltotun
stood before them, calm, tranquil, stroking his patriarchal beard; but
the lambent lights of hell flickered in his eyes.
'I have taught you too much,' he said calmly, pointing a finger like an
index of doom at Orastes. And before any could move, he had cast a
handful of dust on the floor near the feet of the priest, who stood like
a man 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 Amalric, 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 Poitanian army
to reclaim his kingdom. If he had reappeared immediately after Valkia,
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' 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 is 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.
21
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 the 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 further 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 Galparan, 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