Conan, with a clump of sailors behind him, was battling with the Picts inside the stockade; Strombanni, with most of his men, was climbing up on the stockade, slashing at the dark figures already swarming over the wall. The Picts, who had crept up unobserved and surrounded the fort while the defenders were fighting among themselves, were attacking from all sides. Valenso's soldiers were clustered at the gate, trying to hold it against a howling swarm of exultant demons who thundered against it from the outside with a tree trunk.
More and more savages streamed from behind the huts, having scaled the undefended south wall. Strombanni and his pirates were beaten back from the other sides of the palisade, and in an instant the compound was swarming with naked warriors. They dragged down the defenders like wolves; the battle resolved into swirling whirlpools of painted figures surging about small groups of desperate white men. Picts, sailors, and men-at-arms littered the earth, stamped underfoot by the heedless feet.
Blood-smeared braves dived howling into huts, and shrieks rose above the din of battle as women and children died beneath the red axes. When they heard those pitiful cries, the men-at-arms abandoned the gate, and in an instant the Picts had burst it and were pouring into the palisade at that point also. Huts began to go up in flames.
'Make for the manor!' roared Conan, and a dozen men surged in behind him as he hewed an inexorable way through the snarling pack.
Strombanni was at his side, wielding his red cutlass like a flail. 'We can't hold the manor,' grunted the pirate.
'Why not?' Conan was too busy with his crimson work to spare a glance.
'Because — uh!' a knife in a dark hand sank deep in the Barachan's back. 'Devil eat you, bastard!' Strombanni turned staggeringly and split the savage's skull to his teeth. The pirate reeled and fell to his knees, blood starting from his lips.
'The manor's burning!' he croaked, and slumped over in the dust.
Conan cast a swift look about him. The men who had followed him were all down in their blood. The Pict gasping out his life under the Cimmerian's feet was the last of the group that had barred his way. All about him, battle was swirling and surging, but for the moment he stood alone.
He was not far from the south wall. A few strides and he could leap to the ledge, swing over, and be gone through the night. But he remembered the helpless girls in the manor — from which, now, smoke was rolling in billowing masses. He ran toward the manor.
A feathered chief wheeled from the door, lifting a war-axe, and, behind the racing Cimmerian, lines of fleet-footed braves were converging upon him. He did not check his stride. His downward-sweeping cutlass met and deflected the axe and split the skull of the wielder. An instant later, Conan was through the door and had slammed and bolted it against the axes that thudded into the wood.
The great hall was full of drifting wisps of smoke, through which he groped, half blinded. Somewhere a woman was whimpering little, catchy, hysterical sobs of nerve-shattering horror. He emerged from a whorl of smoke and stopped dead in his tracks, glaring down the hall.
The hall was dim and shadowy with drifting smoke. The great silver candelabrum was overturned, the candles extinguished; the only illumination was a lurid glow from the great fireplace and the wall in which it was set, where the flames licked from burning floor to smoking roof beams. And limned against that lurid glare, Conan saw a human worm swinging slowly at the end of a rope. The dead face, distorted beyond recognition, turned toward him as the body swung; but Conan knew it was Count Valenso, hanged to his own roof beam.
But there was something else in the hall. Conan saw it through the drifting smoke: a monstrous black figure, outlined against the hell-fire glare. That outline was vaguely human, although the shadow thrown on the burning wall was not human at all.
'Crom!' muttered Conan aghast, paralyzed by the realization that he was confronted by a being against whom his sword was useless. He saw Belesa and Tina, clutched in each other's arms, crouching at the bottom of the stair.
The black monster reared up, looming gigantic against the flame, great arms spread wide. A dim face leered through the drifting smoke — semi-human, demoniac, altogether terrible. Conan glimpsed the dose-set horns, the gaping mouth, the peaked ears. It was lumbering toward him through the smoke, and an old memory woke with desperation.
Near the Cimmerian lay the great overturned candelabrum, once the pride of Korzetta Castle: fifty pounds of massy silver, intricately worked with figures of gods and heroes. Conan grasped it and heaved it high above his head.
'Silver and fire!' he roared in a voice like a clap of wind, and hurled the candelabrum with all the power of his iron muscles. Full on the great black breast it crashed, fifty pounds of silver winged with terrific velocity. Not even the black one could stand before such a missile. The demon was carried off its feet — hurtled back into the open fireplace, which was a roaring mouth of flame. A horrible scream shook the hall, the cry of an unearthly thing gripped suddenly by earthly death. The mantel cracked, and stones fell from the great chimney, half hiding the black, writhing limbs at which the flames ate in elemental fury. Burning beams crashed down from the roof and thundered on the stones, and the whole heap was enveloped in a roaring burst of fire.
Flames were creeping down the stair when Conan reached it. He caught up the fainting child under one arm and dragged Belesa to her feet. Through the crackle and snap of the fire sounded the splintering of the front door under the war-axes.
He glared about, sighted a door opposite the stair landing, and hurried through it, carrying Tina and dragging Belesa, who seemed dazed. As they came into the chamber beyond, a crash behind them announced that the roof was falling in the hall. Through a strangling wall of smoke, Conan saw an open, outer door on the other side of the chamber. As he lugged his charges through it, he saw that it sagged on broken hinges, lock and bolt snapped and splintered as if by some terrific force.
'The devil came in by this door!' Belesa sobbed hysterically. 'I saw him — but I did not know —'
They emerged into the firelit compound a few feet from the row of huts that lined the south wall. A Ret was skulking toward the door, eyes red in the firelight and axe lifted. Dropping Tina and swinging Belesa away from the blow, Conan snatched out his cutlass and drove it through the savage's breast. Then, sweeping both girls off their feet, he ran, carrying them, toward the south wall.
The compound was full of billowing smoke-clouds that half hid the red work going on there, but the fugitives had been seen. Naked figures, black against the dull glare, pranced out of the smoke, brandishing gleaming axes. They were still yards behind him when Conan ducked into the space between the huts and the wall. At the other end of the corridor, he saw other howling shapes, running to cut him off.
Halting short, he tossed Belesa bodily to the footwalk, then Tina, and then leaped up after them. Swinging Belesa over the palisade, he dropped her into the sand outside, and dropped Tina after her. A thrown axe crashed into a log by his shoulder, and then he, too, was over the wall and gathering up his dazed and helpless charges. When the Picts reached the wall, the space before the palisade was empty of all except the dead.
VIII
Swords of Aquilonia
Dawn was tinging the dim waters an old-rose hue. Far out across the tinted waters, a fleck of white grew out of the mist — a sail that seemed to hang suspended in the pearly sky. On a bushy headland, Conan the Cimmerian held a ragged cloak over a fire of green wood. As he manipulated the cloak, puffs of smoke rose upward, quivered against the dawn, and vanished.
Belesa crouched near him, one arm about Tina. She asked: 'Do you think they'll see it and understand?'
'They'll see it, right enough,' he assured her. 'They've been hanging off this coast all night, hoping to sight some survivors. They're scared stiff; there's only half a dozen of them, and not one can navigate well enough to sail from here to the Barachan Isles. They'll understand my signals; 'tis the pirate code. They'll be glad to ship under me, since I'm the on
ly captain left.'
'But suppose the Picts see the smoke?' She shuddered, glancing back over the misty sands and bushes to where, miles to the north, a column of smoke stood up in the still air.
'They're not likely to see it. After I hid you in the woods, I crept back and saw them dragging barrels of wine and ale out of the storehouses. Already most of them were reeling. By this time, they'll all be lying around, too drunk to move. If I had a hundred men, I could wipe out the whole horde — Crom and Mitra!' he cried suddenly. 'That's not the Red Hand after all, but a war galley! What civilised state would send a unit of its fleet hither? Unless somebody would have words with your uncle, in which case they'll need a spaewoman to raise his ghost.'
He scowled out to sea in an effort to make out the details of the craft through the mist. The approaching ship was bow-on, so that all he could see was a gilded bow ornament, a small sail bellying in the faint onshore breeze, and the bank of oars on each side rising and falling like a single pair.
'Well,' said Conan, 'at least they're coming to take us off. It would be a long walk back to Zingara. Until we find out who they are and whether they're friendly, say naught of who I am. I'll think of a proper tale by the time they get here.'
Conan stamped out the fire, handed the cloak back to Belesa, and stretched like a great, lazy cat. Belesa watched him in wonder. His unperturbed manner was not assumed; the night of fire and blood and slaughter, and the flight through the black woods afterward, had left his nerves untouched. He was as calm as if he had spent the night in feasting and revel. Bandages torn from the hem of Belesa's gown covered a few minor wounds that he had received in fighting without armour.
Belesa did not fear him; she felt safer than she had felt since she landed on that wild coast. He was not like the freebooters, civilised men who had repudiated all standards of honour and lived without any. Conan, on the other hand, lived according to the code of his people, which was barbaric and bloody but at least upheld its own peculiar standards of honour.
'Think you he is dead?' she asked.
He did not ask her to whom she referred. 'I believe so,' he replied. 'Silver and fire are both deadly to evil spirits, and he got a bellyfull of both.'
'How about his master?'
'Thoth-Amon? Gone back to lurk in some Stygian tomb, I suppose. These wizards are a queer lot.'
Neither spoke of that subject again; Belesa's mind shrank from the task of conjuring up the scene when a black figure skulked into the great hall, and a long-delayed vengeance was horribly consummated.
The ship was larger, but some time would yet elapse before it made shore. Belesa asked:
'When you first came to the manor, you said something of having been a general in Aquilonia and then having to flee. What is the tale on that?'
Conan grinned. 'Put it down to my own folly in trusting that quince-faced Numedides. They made me general because of some small successes against the Picts; and then, when I'd scattered five times my own number of savages in a battle at Velitrium and broken their confederacy, I was called back to Tarantia for an official triumph. All very tickling to the vanity, riding beside the king while girls scatter rose petals before you; but then at the banquet the bastard plied me with drugged wine. I woke up in chains in the Iron Tower, awaiting execution.'
'Whatever for?'
He shrugged. 'How know I what goes on in what that numb-wit calls his brain? Perhaps some of the other Aquilonian generals, resentful of the sudden rise of an outland barbarian into their sacred ranks, had worked upon his suspicions. Or perhaps he took offense at some of my frank remarks about his policy of spending the royal treasury to adorn Tarantia with golden statues of himself instead of for the defence of his frontiers.
'The philosopher Alcemides confided to me, just before I quaffed the drugged draught, that he hoped to write a book on the use of ingratitude as a principle of statecraft, using the king as a model. Heigh-ho! I was too drunk to realise he was trying to warn me.
'I had, however, friends with whose aid I was smuggled out of the Iron Tower, given a horse and a sword, and turned loose. I rode back to Bossonia with the idea of raising a revolt, beginning with my own troops. But, when I got there, I found my sturdy Bossonians gone, sent to another province, and In their place a brigade of ox-eyed yokels from the Tauran, most of whom had never heard of me. They insisted on trying to arrest me, so I had to split a few skulls in cutting my way out I swam Thunder River with arrows whizzing about my ears... and here I am.'
He frowned out toward the approaching ship again. 'By Crom, I'd swear yonder ensign bore the leopard of Poitain, did I not know it were a thing impossible. Come.'
He led the girls down to the beach as the chant of the coxswain became audible. With a final heave on the oars, the crew drove the galley's bow with a rush up the sand. As men tumbled off the bow, Conan yelled:
'Prospero! Trocero! What in the name of all the gods are you doing . . .'
'Conan!' they roared, and closed in on him, pounding his back and wringing his hands. All spoke at once, but Belesa did not understand the speech, which was that of Aquilonia. The one referred to as 'Trocero' must be the Count of Poitain, a broad-shouldered, slim-hipped man who moved with the grace of a panther despite the grey in his black hair.
'What do you here?' persisted Conan.
'We came for you,' said Prospero, the slim, elegantly-clad one.
'How did you know where I was?'
The stout, bald man addressed as 'Publius' gestured toward another man in the black robe of a priest of Mitra. 'Dexitheus found you by his occult arts. He swore you still lived and promised to lead us to you.'
The black-robed man bowed gravely. 'Your destiny is linked with that of Aquilonia, Conan of Cimmeria,' he said. 'I am but one small link in the chain of your fate.'
'Well, what's this all about?' said Conan. 'Crom knows I'm glad to be rescued from this forsaken sandspit, but why came you after me?'
Trocero spoke: 'We have broken with Numedides, being unable longer to endure his follies and oppressions, and we seek a general to lead the forces of revolt. You're our man!'
Conan laughed gustily and stuck his thumbs in his girdle. 'It's good to find some who understand true merit. Lead me to the fray, my friends!' He glanced around and his eyes caught Belesa, standing timidly apart from the group. He gestured her forward with rough gallantry. 'Gentlemen, the Lady Belesa of Korzetta.' Then he spoke to the girl in her own language again. 'We can take you back to Zingara, but what will you do then?'
She shook her head helplessly. 'I know not I have neither money nor friends, and I am not trained to earn my living. Perhaps it would have been better had one of those arrows struck my heart'
'Do not say that, my lady!' begged Tina. 'I will work for us both!'
Conan drew a small leather bag from his girdle. 'I didn't get Tothmekri's jewels,' he rumbled, 'but here are some baubles I found in the chest where I got the clothes I'm wearing.' He spilled a handful of flaming rubies into his palm. 'They're worth a fortune, themselves.' He dumped them back into the bag and handed it to her.
'But I can't take these —' she began.
'Of course you shall take them! I might as well leave you for the Picts to scalp as to take you back to Zingara to starve,' said he. 'I know what it is to be penniless in a Hyborian land. Now, in my country, sometimes there are famines; but people go hungry only when there's no food in the land at all. But in civilised countries I've seen people sick of gluttony while others were starving. Aye, I've seen men fall and die of hunger against the walls of shops and storehouses crammed with food.
'Sometimes I was hungry, too, but then I took what I wanted at sword's point. But you can't do that. So you take these rubies. You can sell them and buy a castle, and slaves, and fine clothes, and with them it won't be hard to get a husband, because civilised men all desire wives with these possessions.'
'But what of you?'
Conan grinned and indicated the circle of Aquilonians. 'Here's my fortu
ne. With these true friends, I shall have all the wealth in Aquilonia at my feet.'
The stout Publius spoke up: 'Your generosity does you credit, Conan, but I wish you had consulted with me first. For revolutions are made not only by wrongs, but also by gold; and Numedides' publicans have so beggared Aquilonia that we shall be hard put to find the money to hire mercenaries.'
'Ha!' laughed Conan. 'I'll get you gold enough to set every blade in Aquilonia swinging!' In a few words he told of the treasure of Tranicos and of the destruction of Valenso's settlement. 'Now the demon's gone from the cave; the Picts will be scattering to their villages. With a detail of well-armed men, we can make a quick march to the cavern and back before they realise we're in Pictiand. Are you with me?'
They cheered until Belesa feared that their noise would draw the attention of the Picts. Conan cast her a sly grin and muttered in Zingaran, under cover of the racket:
'How d'you like King Conan'? Sounds not bad, eh?'
Wolves Beyond the Border
Robert E. Howard
I
It was the mutter of a drum that awakened me. I lay still amidst the bushes where I had taken refuge, straining my ears to locate it, for such sounds are illusive in the deep forest. In the dense woods about me there was no sound. Above me the tangled vines and brambles bent close to form a massed roof, and above them there loomed the higher, gloomier arch of the branches of the great trees. Not a star shone through that leafy vault. Low-hanging clouds seemed to press down upon the very tree-tops. There was no moon. The night was dark as a witch's hate.
The better for me. If I could not see my enemies, neither could they see me. But the whisper of that ominous drum stole through the night: thrum! thrum! thrum!, a steady monotone that grunted and growled of nameless secrets. I could not mistake the sound. Only one drum in the world makes just that deep, menacing, sullen thunder: a Pictish war-drum, in the hands of those wild painted savages who haunted the Wilderness beyond the border of the Westermarck.
The Conan Chronology Page 590