The Hour of the Dragon
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 shoulder 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 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.
It 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 you 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 locked 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 trails 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 drum!' 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 war-horse 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 Tiberias 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 their 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
ghastily 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.
22
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 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