Conan: Road of Kings

by Karl Edward Wagner

  Presiding over his birthday revel, King Rimanendo smiled down from his royal box upon the guests who caroused upon the black marble floor beneath the gallery. His Majesty had already drunk more than was his wont for the occasion, and the smile upon his loose-featured face was more vacuous than usual. His corpulent figure seemed to be poured half in, half out of his velvet-padded chair of state. A young boy, whose naked flesh glowed with scented oils, held a chalice of opiated wine to his master’s lips on command, while his twin daintily wiped the trickles of wine and sweat from the rolls of chin.

  A number of Rimanendo’s choice circle of sycophants and courtiers shared the royal box, while the remainder of the gallery was filled for the most part by vigilant soldiers of the kings personal guard. King Rimanendo was not yet fool enough to forget that many of his guests here tonight would carouse all the more abandonedly at his royal wake.

  *

  Sandokazi’s appearance had excited comment even amidst the naked debauchery of this night’s revel. Bare flesh was cheap tonight—its lure derived from a society in which a wellborn lady customarily wore enough clothing from ankle to neck to require two attendants to help her dress. While girls of high rank brazenly paraded their barely costumed bodies, Sandokazi lured and tempted with too-brief glimpses of her supple dancer’s figure beneath the fluttering streamers of her feathered cloak. When she had promised to dance for them in the hour before unmasking, excitement grew high as that hour approached.

  They made way for her within the pavilion, clearing a space upon the polished marble floor. Sandokazi spoke briefly with the musicians—she had made arrangements with them earlier in the evening—and they began to ply their strings and flutes and drums in a quick, trilling melody. Conan knew too little about music to recognize the piece, but the rest of the growing audience made a bright chatter of applause.

  She stood for a moment in the center of the circle they had cleared for her—a fantastic figure even beside those who gathered to watch her dance. Her feathered cape completely enveloped her from neck to ankles as she paused there motionlessly. Behind the falcon mask that entirely enclosed her head, her glowing eyes stared back at them without blinking. Then Santiddio unfastened the silver chain from the collar at his sister’s throat, and stepped away.

  Freed from this tether, Sandokazi leaped from the polished floor in a sudden great bound, throwing her arms outward in a gesture that raised her cloak from her side like the spreading wings of a bird taking flight. For a moment Sandokazi seemed to hang suspended in midair, her lithe figure completely naked as her feathered wings bore her on high. Then, even as breath caught in hundreds of throats, she had fallen lightly to the marble floor, her nudity concealed once more by the flurry of feathers.

  Across the black marble floor Sandokazi danced now—sweeping low, spinning gracefully, then rising into the air in a sudden leap. So swift were her movements that the wreaths of white and umber feathers swirled all about her like living wings—one instant revealing a blur of white breast or tanned thigh, in another heartbeat molding close to her figure in a second skin. The musicians increased the tempo of their shrill melody, and Sandokazi seemed to fly about the ebon floor—soaring, darting, rising, diving. Her audience, remembering that first leaping vision of naked beauty, watched entrancedly as the flurry of her cloak enticed their eyes with the instantaneous disclosing and veiling of the dancer’s charms.

  Faster and faster the tempo of her flight. Only a trained danseuse could have maintained such a pace, mastered the intricate gestures and movements. Many of the watchers speculated as to whose face might be hidden beneath the falcon mask, enraptured by the beauty that was not concealed to them.

  At last, as the frenetic music reached a crescendo, Sandokazi once again leapt high into the air, arms outspread, pirouetting in midair. Her cloak of feathers spun straight out from her shoulders, disclosing her entire figure in nude perfection, as she seemed to take flight above the polished floor. Trailing her wings, she dropped back to the marble—as lightly as a falcon returning to its perch. Gathering her cape about her, Sandokazi made a low bow to her entranced audience.

  “My lords and my ladies!” shouted Santiddio, rejoining his sister through the tumultuous applause. “You have seen the dance of the falcon! But recall that the falcon is a bird of prey—for now you must pay the price of your entertainment!”

  At first they thought he only meant for them to shower her with coins and trinkets, as they might a common dancer. But angry shouts and cries of alarm quickly disabused them.

  “Softly, my lords!” Santiddio warned, drawing his rapier. “It’s only your gold and jewels we want, not your lives!”

  Milling in sudden confusion, the assembled guests seemed unable to grasp that this was not all some elaborate jest. While they had been intent upon Sandokazi’s dance, Mordermi’s men had stealthily taken position at the doorways. Now all entrances to the pavilion were barred by grim-faced brigands with naked weapons in their fists. In the gardens without, frightened revellers fled from the threatening figures who suddenly sprang out of the darkness beyond the multicolored lanterns.

  “Stand where you are, all of you!” Mordermi shouted, leaping onto a table and brandishing his sword. “A hundred of my men have surrounded the pavilion! Make no resistance, and you’ll not be harmed!”

  A few men, out of rashness born of disbelief or drunkenness, sought to draw their weapons. In an instant Mordermi’s men were upon them, bludgeons and swords striking savagely. Women screamed in horror, as bright blood and groans of agony punctuated the quick fate of futile resistance. The king’s guests had come to the masque to disport; Mordermi’s brigands had come to despoil. The outlaws were armed and organized, and their surprise attack left no time for the guests to rally. Those of the men who wore arms were speedily divested of their weapons—either passively or by force—and their swords distributed to those of the attackers who might need them. In a moment, panic claimed the guests—so that they milled helplessly about the ballroom.

  At the first ripple of drawn steel and violent bloodshed, King Rimanendo’s guard instinctively made for the dance floor. The move was expected. Conan, uttering a satisfied belch, took a good grip on the haft of his war axe and positioned himself at the stairway leading down from the gallery. Several of his cohorts rushed to join him there, carrying chairs and tables for a barricade.

  “Stand clear, and give me room to swing!” Conan roared. “I can hold the stairway against a thousand of these perfumed toy soldiers! Come down to me, you glittering fops! Who’ll die first!”

  Conan’s boast might well have been true. Only a few men could descend the steep stairway at a time. The royal guard were resplendent in silks and velvet and silvered mail, but their halbards were unwieldy on the narrow stairway, and they had no archers among them who might pick off the raiders as the guardsmen advanced.

  “Come back to me, you fools!” Rimanendo shrilled, as his besotted brain recognized danger. “Close about me, do you hear! They seek to murder your king! I’ll have flayed alive any man of you who deserts me!”

  The king of Zingara hugged his catamites to his quaking breast. Bleating in fear, he begged his soldiers to surround him, to fight to the last drop of their blood to defend him from this army of assassins. “Let those on the floor escape as best they can!” he commanded. “Mitra, how they’re screaming! Why haven’t my soldiers at the gate come to save their king from his murderers!”

  A strong garrison was positioned along the gate and high wall that shut off the royal pleasure palace from the mainland, while other guards regularly patrolled the crest of the steep cliffs that bounded the promontory as it thrust seaward. Their presence was primarily to insure the privacy of the king and his party and to discourage thieves, rather than to repel an armed assault—Zingara was not at war, despite the internal dissensions and rivalries that gave assassins certain employ.

  As Sandokazi’s dance had reached its climax, Mordermi had signed to one of his men ou
tside the pavilion. The man in turn had passed the signal to those who lay hidden beyond the walls.

  From the darkened trees that lined the road that led to the king’s pleasure gardens, torches suddenly flared to brightness. Angry shouts filled the night, as a disordered mob suddenly converged upon the gate. A hundred or more members of the White Rose—as close to a muster of Santiddio’s vaunted people’s army as had ever been attempted—stormed out of the night in an unruly procession, brandishing placards and chanting slogans.

  “Disperse!” commanded the captain of the guard. “Disperse at once! Do you hear!” He sent a frantic summons for the rest of his soldiers to reinforce his guards here at the gate.

  “We’ll not disperse until we’ve had an audience with King Rimanendo!” yelled back their burly leader. It was Carico, most radical of Santiddio’s rivals for leadership of the White Rose, who exulted in the prestige this night’s work would surely bring to him. “Our king and his effete nobility pass the night in drunken debauchery, while in Kordava widows and children must dine on refuse and sleep in gutters!”

  “Disperse, or I’ll send out my soldiers to crack a few heads!”

  “We’ll not disperse without an audience with Rimanendo!” Carico roared above the jeers of his comrades. “The people are starving, while the tyrant and his henchmen feast upon the blood of our land!”

  “Call out the archers!” ordered the worried captain to a subordinate, as a hail of stone and refuse began to pelt the gate. “If this disturbance reaches the attention of His Majesty, he’ll have my head!”

  Thus, even as the applause rose for Sandokazi’s dance, the soldiers who should have been posted about the wall and grounds were racing toward the melee outside the main gate. In the distance, the tumult beyond the wall did not reach the ears of those within the pavilion—no more than the soldiers who faced the angry mob at the gate were yet aware of the sudden uproar that was bringing a violent climax to the birthday revel.

  In a short time screams from the pavilion, frightened fugitives who had been at dalliance in the gardens outside would alert the soldiers at the gate to the real danger. Before they could recover, Mordermi and his band must be in flight. Holding sway over a ballroom full of drunken revellers and fainting women was an easier task than facing down a force of heavily armed soldiers.

  While Rimanendo cowered behind the protective wall of his personal guard, Mordermi’s brigands rapidly despoiled the royal guests of their valuables—working with systematic skill for all the need of haste. This had been a major court festival; lords and their ladies alike had come adorned in their most magnificent jewellery. Now costly rings, necklaces and tiaras of incalculable value, jeweled daggers and almoners bulging with gold and silver coins were stripped unceremoniously from the terrified guests, stuffed into sturdy sacks. Others quickly collected silver plates and chalices, golden trays and candelabra.

  Sandokazi, laughing excitedly behind her mask, scurried about with an open sack—speedily filling it with a fortune in gold and jewellery, while her brother stood at her side with drawn rapier. After the initial ripple of violence, there had been little resistance to the raiders. Women whimpered as they surrendered their precious ornaments, while men scowled and muttered low threats of vengeance. But half a dozen crumpled figures on the polished floor and a number more who nursed broken scalps and bleeding wounds were evidence that the outlaws were not overawed by their victims’ lofty status.

  Conan shook a cramp from his tense shoulders and glowered uneasily at the guards atop the stairway. There would be hard fighting should they determine to descend from the gallery. The Cimmerian wondered that these Zingarans could honor as their king a drunken coward who permitted his nobles to be plundered before his presence and refused to allow his soldiers to interfere.

  “Quickly now, my loyal subjects!” urged Mordermi, clapping his hands and prancing all about. In his guise of King Rimanendo, the travesty became unbearable, although the humor of it was little appreciated by His Majesty’s court.

  The looting of the royal pavilion proceeded swiftly. In a matter of minutes the raiders were weighted down with as many overladen sacks as they might feasibly make off with. Mordermi judged that it was time to bid his host a good night and depart—before reinforcements ruined the evening for them.

  “You will all remain inside, if you care to live through this night!” Mordermi warned in a loud voice. “I have archers positioned outside the doorways. Any fool who tries to pursue us from here will be given a wooden stickpin to wear upon his heart!”

  Wondering how long that bluff would hold them, Conan warily followed his comrades from the pavilion. If the Zingaran gentry were made of the same stuff as their king, he decided, then they would probably remain inside until they starved.

  They had little more than fled the pavilion, when shouts and the clamour of running soldiers told them how closely they had timed it.

  Faced with the threat of archers, the mob at the gate had broken for cover. From the shelter of the darkened trees, they had continued to hurl stones and verbal abuse at the guards—Carico haranguing them at the top of his stout lungs. Flames crackled upward from the midst of the road, and a grotesque effigy of King Rimanendo began to burn lustily.

  Enraged, the captain of the guard had ordered his archers to loose upon the rabble. A few howls of pain rewarded their efforts, but the archers were few and their targets hidden by the night and the forest. Reasonably protected from the desultory archery barrage, the mob seemed more incensed than cowed by the show of force, and the riot before the royal pleasure gardens only waxed the more furious.

  Not waiting for new troops to reach them from the city, the captain of the guard had ordered a sortie to break up the rioters. A strong detachment of his force had just marched out of the gate, when word of the raid upon the king’s pavilion reached him. In an agony of indecision, the officer sought to call back his sally to defend the gate once again, so that he could dispatch another body of troops to the pavilion—all the while uncertain which of these threats constituted the main attacking force.

  As a result, it was a disordered and winded party of guards who reached the plundered pavilion too late to trap Mordermi’s raiders within the marble structure. Instead, they came upon a frightened and outraged mass of royal guests, bereft of their valuables and angrily demanding the heads of all those concerned—incompetent guards included.

  With a scant lead, Mordermi and his treasure-laden band raced through the darkened grounds beyond the lighted gardens. While they were ahead of the chase for the moment, they had not made good their escape by any means. Sheer cliffs dropped away into the sea on all sides of the headland beyond its walled landward side—and there was no chance of scaling the wall now that the garrison was fully alerted.

  The third phase of Mordermi’s raid must work perfectly now, or they would be hunted down like wolves trapped in a sheep pen.

  Out of the mist-buried sea, a small flotilla of rowboats fought the tide to gain a narrow fringe of beach exposed as the sea ebbed from beneath the sheer bluff. With precise timing, they breached the surf and touched shore in the interval that the guards who should have patrolled the cliffs were decoyed to repel the rioters at the gate. Previous reconnaissance had settled upon the best approach to the headland, and now the hotly pursued raiders made for the prearranged landing site.

  The promontory rose a hundred feet or more above the surf—its escarpment a sheer wall of broken rock. As they reached the pick-up point, one of those on the beach below shot an arrow to which a cord was affixed. Eager hands hauled in the cord, after its nether end had been made fast to a heavy rope. Drawing the rope upward, they secured it to a tree that was firmly rooted close beside the precipice. Clinging to the rope, the raiders hurriedly worked their way down the face of the cliff—their descent encumbered by their weighty sacks of plunder.

  Conan tore off the silken mask that covered his features and glared back along the path they had followed. The gr
ounds were extensive, and along the edge of the cliffs stunted trees replaced roses and floral arbors. With the cover of darkness, it was impossible to know which way the outlaws had fled, and this had given them a distinct advantage over their pursuers. But Conan could hear the frantic sounds of men crashing through the brush, fanning out in their search, and he knew that time was running out for them.

  “Get on down there, ’Kazi!” Mordermi urged her. “We may have fighting here very shortly.”

  “I’ll wait for the rest of you,” Sandokazi returned.

  “Santiddio, see that your sister gets down that rope, or I’ll toss her off and let the falcon fly home. Conan and I will guard the rear.”

  Conan observed the progress of the others down the rope. “We’d all be down in no time, if they’d just let those sacks drop and slide down after them.”

  “What! And risk losing all these lovely baubles in the surf?” Mordermi demanded incredulously. “Conan, what’s the point in stealing all this gold if we don’t mean to spend it?”

  “Look sharp, then,” Conan warned. “Here comes some who don’t mean to let us live to spend it!”

  The first straggling group of soldiers pelted toward them, howling like a pack with its quarry at bay. The light was just enough for them to discern the raiders silhouetted along the edge of the precipice, so that they shouted to their comrades that the outlaws were trapped.

  Conan risked a glance toward the rope. Most of the men had made it down; others were scrambling in mad haste. But they would have to deal with these soldiers before he and Mordermi could make good their escape.

  The soldiers were breathless from the pursuit, but they were ready enough with their swords. Conan, in helmet and scale armor, had the advantage over his comrades, and he unhesitatingly attacked the first of the guard to reach them. Swinging the war axe with both hands, Conan’s heavy blade snapped the other’s rapier as it made a futile parry, sheared through cuirass and caved in the man’s chest. Wrenching the axe free, Conan parried another’s blade against the iron straps that reinforced its haft, smashed the man’s arm with a sudden blow of the hammer head, then finished him with a slash of the broad blade.