Most encouraging was the tale that the rear guard, a thousand strong imder the Aquilonian Baron Groder, had escaped the debacle at Timais and was wandering in the mountains to the east. To investigate, Conan sent Prospero with a troop of light horse to search for their lost comrades and guide them to the base. Dexitheus prayed to Mitra that this rumor might prove true, for the addition of Groder s force would nearly double their strength. Kingdoms had fallen ere this to fewer than three thousand determined warriors.
A full moon glared down upon the Plain of Pallos like the yellow eye of an angry god. A chill, imeasy
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wind rustled through the tall meadow grasses and plucked with ghostly fingers at the cloaks of sentries, who stood watch about the rebel camp.
In his candle-lit tent, Conan sat late over a flagon of ale, listening to his oflBcers. Some, still downcast by their recent defeat, were reluctant to contemplate further conflicts at this time. Others, avid for revenge, urged an early assault, even with their present diminished might.
“Look you, General,” said Count Trocero. “Amulius Procas will never expect an attack so soon upon the heels of our disaster, so we shall take him by surprise. Once across the Alimane, we shall be joined by ovu: Poitanian friends, who only await our coming to raise the province.'’
Conan’s savage soul incited him to heed his friend’s advice. To strike across the border now, at the very ebb of their fortunes, would wrest victory from defeat with a vengeance. He urgently needed a vigorous sally to mend the men’s morale. Already some were drifting away, deserting what they viewed as a hopeless cause. Unless he could shore up the dykes of loyalty with hopes of triiunph, the leakage of the disaflFected would soon become a flood, leaching his army away to nothing.
Yet the mighty Cimmerian had, dining his years of campaigning, grown wise in the ways of war. Experience cautioned him to rein in his eagerness, rather than commit his remaining strength—at least until Prospero returned with word of Baron Groder and his force. Once Conan knew he could count upon this powerful reinforcement, he could then determine whether the moment for assault was at hand.
Dismissing his commanders, Conan sought the warm arms and soft breasts of Alcina. The golden dancing girl had entranced him with her wily ways of
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assuaging his passions; but this night she laughingly eluded his embrace, to proflFer a goblet of wine.
“Tis time, my lord, that you enjoyed a gentleman’s drink, instead of swilling bitter beer like any peasant,” she said. "I brought a flask of fine wine from Messantia for your especial pleasure."
“Crom and Mitra, girl, IVe drunk enough this nightl I thirst now for the wine of yom: lips, not for the pressings of the grape."
"It is but a gentle stimulant, lord, to augment your desires—and my enjoyment of them," she wheedled. Standing in the candle light in a length of sheer safiEron silk, which did little to hide the lush lines of her body, she smiled seductively and thrust the goblet toward him, saying: 'lt contains spices from my homeland to rouse your senses. Will you not drink it, my lord, to please me?"
Looking eagerly upon the moon-pale oval of her face, Conan said: '1 need no rousing when I smell the perfume of your hair. But give it to me; 111 drink to this night’s dehghts.”
He drank the wine in three great gulps, ignoring the faintly acrid taste of the spices, and slammed the goblet down. Then he reached for the delectable girl, whose wide-set eyes were fixed upon him.
But, when he sought to seize her in his arms, the tent reeled crazily about him, and a searing pain bloomed in his vitals. He snatched at the tent pole, missed, and fell heavily.
Alcina leaned over his supine body. In his blxuring vision, her features melted into a mist, through which her green eyes burned like incandescent emeralds.
"Crom's blood, wench!" Conan gasped. "You've poisoned mel"
He struggled to rise, but it seemed to the Cimmerian that his body had turned to lead. Although the veios in his temples throbbed, his face purpled with
eflFort, and his thews stood out along his limbs like ship’s cables, he could not regain his feet. He fell back, gulping air. Then his vision dimmed until he seemed to drift from the lamplit interior of the tent into a trancelike waking dream. He could neither speak nor stir.
“Conan!” the girl murmured, bending over him, but he made no reply. In a silken whisper, she said: "So much for you, barbarian pigl And soon your wretched remnant of an army w5l follow you back to the hells whence you and they once crawledl”
Calmly seating herself, she drew forth the amulet she bore between her breasts. A glance at the time candle on a taboret showed that half an hour must yet elapse before she could commune with her master. In sphhixlike silence she sat, unmoving, until the time approached. Then she focused her mind upon the obsidian fragment.
In far-oflF Tarantia, Thulandra Thuu, gazing into his magical mirror, gave a dry chuckle as he observed the quiescent form of the giant Cimmerian. Rising, he replaced the mirror in its cabinet, roused his servant, and sent him with a message to the king.
Hsiao found Numedides, unclothed, enjoying a massage by four handsome naked girls. Keeping his modest eyes fixed upon the marble floor, Hsiao bowed low and said:
"My master respectfully informs Your Majesty that the bandit rebel Conan is slain in Argos by my master s otherworldly powers."
With a grunt, Numedides sat up, pushing the girls away. “Eh? Dead, you say?"
"Aye, my lord King."
“Excellent news, excellent news." With a loud guffaw, Numedides slapped his bare thigh. ‘When I become a—^but enough of that. What else?"
“My master asks your permission to send a message to General Amuhus Procas, informing him of
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this event and authori2ang him to cross into Argos, 1o scatter the rebel remnants ere they can choose another leader.”
Numedides waved the Khitan away. “Begone, yellow dog, and tell your master to do as he thinks best. Now let us continue, gtrls.”
Thus, later that night, a courier set out along the far-flung road to General Procas’s headquarters on the Argossean frontier. The message, which bore the seal of King Numedides, would in less than a fortnight loose the fury of the Border Legion upon the leader-less men who followed the Lion banner.
In Conan’s tent, Alcina opened her traveling chest and dug out a page’s costume, into which she changed. Under the garments in the chest lay a small copper
-e,'
Alcina’s Jewelry Cosket
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casket, widch she opened by twisting the silver dragon that bestrode the lid. The casket contained a choice assortment of rings, bracelets, necklaces, earrings, and other gem-encrusted finery. Alcina burrowed into the jewelry imtil she found a small oblong of copper, inscribed in Argossean. This token—a forgery provided by Quesado—entided the bearer to change horses at the royal post stations. She made a quick selection of the jewelry, tucking the better pieces into her girdle, and filled the small purse depending from her belt with coins of gold and silver.
Then she extinguished the candle and boldly left the darkened tent. Demurely she addressed the sentry: "The general sleeps; but he has asked me to bear an lurgent message to the court of Argos. Will you kindly order the grooms to saddle a horse, forthwith, and fetch it hither?"
The sentry called the corporal of the guard, who sent a man to comply with Alcina's request, while the girl waited silently at the entrance to the tent. The soldiers, who were used to the comings and goings of the general’s mistress and admired her splendid figure and easy ways, hastened to do her bidding.
When the horse was brought, she mounted swiftly and followed the sentry assigned to her beyond the limits of the camp. Then, at a spanking trot, she vanished into the moonlit distance.
Four days later, Alcina arrived in Messantia. She hastened to Quesado’s hideaway, where she found the spy's replacement, Fadius tiie Kothian, f
eeding Quesado’s carrier pigeons. She asked:
'T'rayj where is Quesado?"
"Have you not heard?” repHed Fadius. 'TIe's an ambassador now, too proud to spare time for the likes of us. He’s been here but once since he arrived on his embassy."
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"Well, grandee or no grandee, I must see him’ at once. I bear news of the greatest import.’'
Grumbhng, Fadius led Alcina to the hostehy in Messantia where the Aquilonians lodged. Quesado’s servant was pulling o£E his master s boots and preparing him for bed when Alcina and Fadius burst in unannounced.
“Dammel'’ cried Quesado. "What sort of ill-bred rabble are you, to intrude on a gentleman retiring for the nightr
"You know well enough who we are,” said Aldna. "I came to tell you Conan is dead.”
Quesado paused with his mouth open, then closed it slowly. ‘Well!” he said at last "That casts a different Hght on many matters. Pull on my boots again, Narses. I must to the palace forthwith. What has befallen. Mistress Alcina?”
A httle time later, Quesado presented himself at the palace with a peremptory demand to see the king. The Zingaran intended to urge an instant attack on Conan’s army by the forces of Argos. He felt siure that the rebels, demoralized by the fall of their leader, would crumble before any vigorous assault.
Fate, however, ordained that events should march to a different tune. Roused from slumber. King Mile flew into a rage at Quesado’s insolence in demanding a midnight audience.
"His Majesty,” reported the head page to Quesado, “commands that you depart instanter and return at a more seemly time. He suggests an hour before noon tomorrow.”
Quesado flushed with the anger of frustration. Looking down his nose, he said: "My good man, you do not seem to realize who and what I am.”
The page laughed, matching Quesado’s impudence with his own. “Aye, sir, we all know who you are—and what you were.” Derisive grins spread to the
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faces of the guards flanking the page, who continued: “Now pray depart hence, and speedily, on pain of my sovereign lord’s displeasiurel”
'Trou shall rue those words, varlet!" snarled Quesado, turning away. He tramped the cobbled streets to his former headquarters on the waterfront, where he found Fadius and Alcina awaiting him. There he prepared a furious dispatch to the King of Aquilonia, telling of Milo’s rebuflP, and sent it on its way wired to the leg of a pigeon.
In a few days, the former spy’s report reached Vibius Latro, who brought it to his king’s attention. Numedides, seldom able to restrain his passions imder the easiest of circimistances, read of the recalcitrance of the King of Argos toward his mighty neighbor and sent another courier post-haste to General Amulius Procas. This dispatch did more than authorize an incursion into Argos, as had the previous message. In exigent terms, it commanded the general at once to attack across the borders of Argos, with whatever force he needed, to stamp out the last embers of the rebellion.
Procas, a tough and canny old campaigner, winced at the royal command. On the night that followed his victorious battles on the AKmane, he had quickly withdrawn from Argossean territory the detachments he had sent across the river to harry the fleeing rebels. Those incursions could be excused on grounds of hot pursuit. But now, if he mounted a new invasion, the open violation of the border would almost certainly turn King Milo's sympathies from cautious neutrality into open hostility to the royal Aquilonian cause.
But the royal command admitted of no argument or refusal. If he wished his head to continue to ride his shoulders, Procas must attack, although every instinct in his soldierly bosom cried out against this hasty, ill-timed instruction.
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Procas delayed his advance for several days, hoping that the king, on secx)nd thoughts, would coimter-mand his order. But no communication came, and Procas dared wait no longer. And so, on a bright spring morning, Amulius Procas crossed the Alimane in force. The river, which had subsided somewhat from its flood, offered no obstacle to his squadrons of glittering, panoplied knights, stolid mailed spearmen, and leather-coated archers. They splashed across and marched implacably up the winding road that led to Saxula Pass through the Rabirian range, and thence to the rebel camp on the Plain of Pallos.
Not imtil the morning after Alcina’s departure did Conan’s oflBcers learn of the fall of their leader. They gathered round him, laid him on his bed, and searched him for woimds. Dexitheus, still limping on a walking stick, sniffed at the dregs in the goblet from which Conan had drunk Alcina’s potion.
'That drink," he said, "was laced with the juice of the purple lotus of Stygia. By rights, our general should be as dead as King Tuthamon; yet he lives, albeit no more than a Hving corpse with open eyes."
Publius flicked his fingers as he did mental sums and mused: 'Terchance the poisoner used only so much of the drug as would suffice to slay an ordinary man, unmindful of Conan’s great size and strength.”
"'Twas that green-eyed witch!” cried Trocero. 'Tve never trusted her, and her disappearance last night proclaims her guilt Were she in my power, Td bum her at the stake!”
Dexitheus turned on the count "Green eyes, quotha? A woman with green eyes?"
"Aye, as green as emeralds. But what of it? Surely you know Conan’s concubine, the fair Alcina.”
Dexitheus shook his head with a frown of foreboding. "I heard that our general had taken a dancing girl from the wineshops of Argos,” he murmured, 'T5ut
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I try to ignore such whoredoms among my sons, and Conan tactfully kept her out of my sight. Woe unto our cause! For the lord Mitra warned me in a dream to beware a green-eyed shadow hovering near our leader, although I knew not that the evil one already walked amongst us. Woe unto me, who failed to confide the warning to my comrades 1”
“Enough of this,” said Pubhus. “Conan Hves, and we can thank oiur gods that our fair poisoner is no arithmetician. Let none but his squires attend him or even enter the tent. We must tell ihe men that he is ill of a minor tisick, whilst we continue to rebuild our force. If he recovers, he recovers; but meanwhile you must take command, Trocero.”
The Poitanian count nodded somberly. 'T11 do yhat I can, since I am second in command. You, Pubhus, must mend the nets of your spy system, so that we shall have warning of Procas’s moves. It’s time for morning roll call, so I must be off. Ill drill the lads as hard as Conan ever drilled them, aye and morel”
By the time Procas began his invasion, the Lions again had their watching eyes and listening ears abroad. Reports of the strength of the invaders reached the leaders of the rebel army, who had gathered in Conan s tent. Trocero, wearing the silvery badge of age and the lines of weariness but self-assmred withal, asked Pubhus:
"What know we of the numbers of the foe?”
Pubhus bent his head to work sums on his waxen tablets. When he raised his eyes, his expression showed alarm. ‘Thrice our strength and more,” he said heavily. "This is a black day, my friends. We can do Httle save make a final stand.”
“Be of good cheer!” said the coimt, slapping the stout treasurer on the back. ‘Tfou’d never make a
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general, Publius; you’d assure the soldiers they were beaten before the fray began." He turned to Dexitheus. “How does our patient?"
“He regains some sHght awareness, but as yet he cannot move. I now think he will live, praise Mitra."
'WeU, if he cannot sit a horse when the battle trumpet blows, I must sit it for him. Have we any word of Prosper©?"
Publius and Dexitheus shook their heads. Trocero shrugged, saying: “Then we must make do with what we have. The foe will close within striking distance on the morrow, and we must needs decide whether to fight or flee."
Down from the mountains streamed the armored cavalry and infantry of the Border Legion. A swirl of galloping scouts preceded them, and in their midst rode General AmuKus Procas in his chariot Drawn up
to confront them, the rebels formed their battle lines in the midst of the plain.
The still air offered no respite from the myriad fears and silent prayers of the waiting men. The broad front of the superior Aquilonian force allowed Count Trocero no opportunity for clever flanking or enveloping moves. Yet, to retreat now would mean the instant dissolution of the rebel force. The count knew there could be no shrewdly timed withdrawal, with rear-guard actions to delay pursuit. Such a fighting retreat was only for well-trained, self-confident troops. These men, discoiu'aged by their fortune on the Alimane, would simply flee, every man for himself, while the Aquilonian light horse rode down the fugitives, slaying and slaying until nightfall sheltered the survivors beneath its dragon wings.
Trocero, scanning the oncoming host from his command post on a hillock, presently signaled his groom to fetch his charger. He adjusted a strap on his
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armor and heaved himself into the saddle. To the few hundred horsemen who gathered aroimd him, he said:
"You know our plan, my friends. Tis a slim chance, but our only one.”
For Trocero had decided that their only hope lay in a suicidal charge into the AquHonian array, in a mad eflEort to reach AmuHus Procas himself. He knew that the enemy commander, a stout man of middle years slowed by ancient wounds, found riding hard on his aging joints and preferred to travel by chariot. He knew, too, that the general’s charioteer would have difficulty in maneuvering the clumsy vehicle in the press of battle. Thus, if the rebel horse could by some miracle reach and slay the Aquilonian general, his troops might falter and break.
The outlook, as Trocero had said, was black, but the plan was the best he could devise. Meanwhile he strove to give his subordinates no sign of his discomfiture. He laughed and joked as if he faced certain victory instead of a forlorn attempt to vanquish thrice their number of the world’s best soldiery.
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