The Hour of the Dragon
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?'
'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'
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 country-folk. 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 wait 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 Shirki 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 that
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 breast-plates 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 more 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 breast-plates 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