Yet Numedides was not so wedded to his peculiar pleasures that he failed to mark the findings of his spies, collected for him by his able minister, Vibius Latro. The chancellor reported rumours of no less a leader of the commons than the rich and powerful Count Trocero of Poitain. Trocero was no man idly to be dismissed - not with his peerless force
of armoured cavalry and a warlike, fiercely loyal people ready to rise at his beckoning.
'Trocero,' mused the king, 'must be destroyed, it's true; but he's too strong for open confrontation. We must needs seek out a skilful poisoner . . . Meanwhile, my faithful, hard-fisted Amulius Procas is stationed in the southern border region. He has crushed more than one arrogant landowner who dared turn revolutionary.'
Inscrutable were the cold black eyes of Thulandra Thuu. 'Omens of danger overwhelming to your general I read upon the face of heaven. We must concern ourselves-'
Numedides ceased to listen. His trance-like slumber, together with the stimulus of the poppied wine, had flogged his sensual appetite. His harem newly housed a delectable, full-breasted Kushite girl, and a torture-yet unnamed-was forming in his twisted brain.
'I'm off,' he said abruptly. 'Detain me not, lest I blast you with my shafts of lightning.'
The king pointed a taut forefinger at Thulandra Thuu and made a guttural sound. Then, roaring with boorish mirth, he pushed aside a panel behind the purple arras and slipped through. Thence a secret passage led to that part of the harem whispered of, with loathing, as the House of Pain and Pleasure. The sorcerer watched him go with the shadow of a smile and thoughtfully snuffed out the nineteen massive candles.
'O King of Toads,' he muttered in his unknown tongue. 'You speak the very truth, save that you have the characters reversed. Numedides shall crumble into dust, and Thulandra Thuu shall rule the West from an eternal throne, when Father Set and Mother Kali teach their loving son to wrest from the dark pages of the vast Unknown the secret of eternal life ...'
The thin voice pulsed through the darkened chamber like the dry rustle of a serpent's scales, slithering over the pallid bones of murdered men.
II
The Lions Gather
Far south of Aquilonia, a slender war galley cleft the stormy waters of the Western Ocean. The ship, of Argossean lines, was headed shoreward, where the lights of Messantia glimmered through the twilight. A band of luminescent green along the western horizon marked the passing of the day; and overhead, the first stars of evening bejewelled the sapphire sky, then paled before the rising of the moon.
On the forecastle, leaning upon the rail above the bow, stood seven persons cloaked against chill bursts of spray that fountained as the bronze ram rose and dipped, cleaving the waves asunder. One of the seven was Dexitheus, a calm-eyed, grave-faced man of mature years, dressed in the flowing robes of a priest of Mitra.
Beside him stood a broad-shouldered, slim-hipped nobleman with dark hair tinged with grey, who wore a silvered cuirass, on the breast of which the three leopards of Poitain were curiously worked in gold. This was Trocero, Count of Poitain, and his motif of three crimson leopards was repeated on the banner that fluttered from the foremast high above his head.
At Count Trocero's elbow, a younger man of aristocratic bearing, elegantly clad in velvet beneath a silvered shirt of mail, fingered his small beard. He moved quickly, and his ready smile masked with gaiety the metal of a seasoned and skilful soldier. This was Prospero, a former general of the Aquilonian army. A stout and balding man, wearing neither sword nor armour and unmindful of the failing light, worked sums with a stylus on a set of waxed tablets, braced against the rail. Publius had been the royal treasurer of Aquilonia before his resignation in despairing, protest against his monarch's policies of unlimited taxation and unrestrained expenditure.
Nearby, two girls clutched the inconstant rail. One was Belesa of Korzetta, a noblewoman of Zingara, slender and exquisite and but recently come to womanhood. Her long black hair streamed in the sea-wind like a silken banner. Nestled against her in the curve of one arm, a pale, flaxen-haired child stared wide-eyed at the lights that rimmed the waterfront. An Ophirean slave, Tina had been rescued from a brutal master by the Lady Belesa, niece of the late Count Valenso. Mistress and slave, inseparable, had shared the moody count's self-exile in the Pictish wilderness.
Above them towered a grim-faced man of gigantic stature. His smouldering eyes of volcanic blue and the black mane of coarse, straight hair that brushed his massive shoulders suggested the controlled ferocity of a lion in repose. He was a Cimmerian, and Conan was his name.
Conan's sea boots, tight breeches and torn silken shirt disclosed his magnificent physique. These garments he had looted from the chests of the dead pirate admiral, Bloody Tranicos, where in a cave on a hill in Pictland, the corpses of Tranicos and his captains still sat around a table heaped with the treasure of a Stygian prince. The clothes, small for so large a man, were faded, ripped, and stained with dirt and blood; but no one looking at the towering Cimmerian and the heavy broadsword at his side would mistake him for a beggar.
'If we offer the treasure of Tranicos in the open marketplace,' mused Count Trocero, 'King Milo may regard us with disfavour. Hitherto he has entreated us fairly; but when rumours of our hoard of rubies, emeralds, amethysts and such-like trinkets set in gold do buzz about his ears, he may decree that the treasure shall escheat to the crown of Argos.' Prospero nodded. 'Aye, Milo of Argos loves a well-filled treasury as well as any monarch. And if we approach the goldsmiths and moneylenders of Messantia, the secret will be shouted about the town within an hour's time.'
To whom, then, shall we sell the jewels?' asked Trocero.
'Ask our commander-in-chief,' Prospero laughed slyly. 'Correct me if I'm wrong, General Conan, but did you not once have acquaintance with — ah -'
Conan shrugged. 'You mean, was I not once a bloody pirate with a fence in every port? Aye, so I was; and that I might have once again become, had you not arrived in time to plant my feet on the road to respectability.' He spoke Aquilonian fluently but with a barbarous accent.
After a moment's pause, Conan continued: 'My plan is this. Publius shall go to the treasurer of Argos and recover the deposit advanced upon the usage of this galley, minus the proper fee. Meanwhile, I'll take our treasure to a discreet dealer whom I knew in former days. Old Varro always gave me a fair price for plunder.'
'Men say,' quoth Prospero, 'that the gems of Tranicos have greater worth than all the other jewels in all the world. Men such as he of whom you speak would give us but a fraction of their value.'
'Prepare for disappointment,' said Publius. 'The value of such baubles ever gains in the telling but shrinks in the selling.'
Conan grinned wolfishly. 'I'll get what I can, fear not. Remember I have often dealt beneath the counter. Besides, even a fraction of the treasure is enough to set swinging all the swords in Aquilonia.' Conan looked back at the quarterdeck, where stood the captain and the steersman.
'Ho there,' Captain Zeno!' he roared in Argossean. Tell your rowers that if they put us ashore ere the taverns shutter for the night, it's a silver penny apiece for them, above their promised wage! I see the lights of the pilot boat ahead.'
Conan turned back to his companions and lowered his voice. 'Now, friends, we must guard our tongues as concerns our riches. A stray word, overheard, might cost us the wherewithal to buy the men we need. Forget it not!'
The harbour boat, a gig rowed by six burly Argosseans, approached the galley. In the bow a cloak-wrapped figure wagged a lantern to and fro, and the captain waved an answer to the signal. As Conan moved to go below and gather his possessions, Belesa laid a slender hand upon his arm. Her gentle eyes sought his face, and there was anguish in her voice.
'Do you still intend to send us to Zingara?' she asked.
'It is best to part thus, Lady. Wars and rebellions are no places for gentlewomen. From the gems I gave you, you should realise enough to live on, with enough to spare for your dowry. If you wish, I'll see
to converting them to coin. Now I have matters to attend to in my cabin.'
Wordlessly, Belesa handed Conan a small bag of soft leather, containing the rubies that Conan had taken from a chest in the cave of Tranicos. As he strode aft along the catwalk to his cabin in the poop, Belesa watched him go. All that was woman within her responded to the virility that emanated from him, like heat from a roaring blaze. Could she have had her unspoken wish, there would have been no need for a dowry. But, ever since Conan had rescued her and the girl Tina from the Picts, he had been to them no more than a friend and protector.
Conan, she realised with a twinge of regret, was wiser than she in such matters. He knew that a delicate, high-born lady, imbued with Zingaran ideals of womanly modesty and purity, could never adapt herself to the wild, rough life of :in adventurer. Moreover, if he were slain or if he tired of war, she would become an outcast, for the princely houses of Zingara would never admit a barbarian mercenary's drab into their marble halls.
With a small sigh, she touched the girl who nestled beside her. 'Time to go below, Tina, and gather our belongings.'
Amid shouts and hails, the slender galley inched up to the quay. Publius paid the harbour tax and rewarded the pilot. He settled his debt to Captain Zeno and his crew and, reminding him of the secrecy of the mission, bade the Argossean skipper a ceremonious farewell.
As the captain barked his orders, the sail was lowered to the deck and stowed beneath the catwalk; the oars were shipped amid oaths and clatter and placed under the benches. The officers, sailors and rowers - streamed merrily onward, where bright lights blazed in inns and taverns; and slatterns, beckoning from second-storey windows, bantered cheerful obscenities with the expectant mariners.
Men loitered about the waterfront street. Some lurched drunkenly along the roadway, while others snored in doorways or relieved themselves in the dark mouths of alleys.
One among the loiterers was neither so drunk nor so bleary-eyed as he appeared. A lean, hatchet-faced Zingaran he was, who called himself Quesado. Limp blue-black ringlets framed his narrow face, and his heavy-lidded eyes gave him a deceptive look of sleepy indolence. In shabby garments of sober black, he lounged in a doorway as if time itself stood still; and when accosted by a pair of drunken mariners, he retorted with a well-worn jest that sent them chuckling on their way.
Quesado closely observed the galley as it tied up to the quay. He noted that, after the crew had roistered off, a small group of armed men accompanied by two women disembarked and paused as they reached the pier, until several loungers hurried up to proffer their services. Soon the curious party disappeared, followed by a line of porters with chests and sea bags slung across their shoulders or balanced on their heads.
When darkness had swallowed up the final porter, Quesado sauntered over to a wine shop, where several crewmen from the ship had gathered. He found a cosy place beside the fire, ordered wine, and eyed the seamen. Eventually he chose a muscular, sunburned Argossean rower, already in his cups, and struck up a conversation. He bought the youth a jack of ale and told a bawdy jest.
The rower laughed uproariously, and when he had ceased chuckling, the Zingaran said indifferently: 'Aren't you from that big galley moored at the third pier?'
The Argossean nodded, gulping down his ale.
'Merchant galley, isn't she?'
The rower jerked back his tousled head and stared contemptuously. 'Trust a damned foreigner not to know one ship from another!' he snorted. 'She's a ship-o'-war, you spindle-shanked fool! That's the ArianusArianus, pride of King Milo's navy.'
Quesado clapped a hand to his forehead. 'Oh, gods, how stupid of me! She's been abroad so long I scarce recognised her. But when she put in, was she not flying some device with lions on it?'
'Those be the crimson leopards of Poitain, my friend,' the oarsman said importantly. 'And the Count of Poitain, no less, hired the ship and himself commanded her.'
'I can scarcely credit it!' exclaimed Quesado, acting much amazed. 'Some weighty diplomatic mission, that I'll warrant . . .'
The drunken rower, puffed by the wind of his hearer's rapt attention, rushed on: We've been on the damnedest voyage-a thousand leagues or more-and it's a wonder we didn't get our throats cut by the savage Picts-'
He broke off as a hard-faced officer from the Arianus clapped a heavy hand upon his shoulder.
'Hold your tongue, you babbling idiot!' snapped the mate, glancing suspiciously at the Zingaran. 'The captain warned us to keep close-mouthed, especially with strangers. Now shut your gob!'
'Aye, aye,' mumbled the rower. Avoiding Quesado's eye, lie buried his face in his jack of ale.
'It's naught to me, mates,' yawned Quesado with a careless shrug. 'Little has happened in Messantia of late, so I but thought to nibble on some gossip.' He rose lazily to his feet, stood up, and sauntered out the door.
Outside, Quesado lost his air of sleepy idleness. He strode briskly along the pier-side street until he reached a seedy rooming house wherein he rented a chamber that overlooked the harbour. Moving like a thief in the night, he climbed the narrow stairs to his second-storey room.
Swiftly he bolted the door behind him, drew tattered curtains across the dormer windows, and lit a candle stub from the glowing coals in a small iron brazier. Then he hunched over a rickety table, forming tiny letters with a fine-pointed quill on a slender strip of papyrus.
His message written, the Zingaran rolled up the bit of flattened reed and cleverly inserted it into a brazen cylinder no larger than a fingernail. Then he scrambled to his feet, thrust open a cage that leaned against the seaward wall, and brought out a fat, sleepy pigeon. To one of its feet he secured the tiny cylinder; and gliding to the window, he drew aside the drape, opened the pane, and tossed the bird out into the night. As it circled the harbour and vanished, Quesado smiled, knowing that his carrier pigeon would find a safe roost and set out on its long journey northward with the coming of the dawn.
In Tarantia, nine days later, Vibius Latro, chancellor to King Numedides and chief of his intelligence service, received the brass tube from the royal pigeon-keeper. He unrolled the fragile papyrus with careful fingers and held it in the narrow band of sunlight that slanted through his office window. He read:
The Count of Poitain, with a small entourage, has arrived from a distant port on a secret mission. Q.
There is a destiny that hovers over kings, and signs and omens presage the fall of ancient dynasties and the doom of mighty realms. It did not require the sorceries of such as Thulandra Thuu to sense that the house of Numedides stood in grave peril. The signs of its impending fall were everywhere.
Messages came out of Messantia, travelling northward by dusty roads and by the unseen pathways of the air. To Poitain and the other feudal demesnes along the troubled and strife-torn borders of Aquilonia, these missives found their way; some even penetrated the palisaded camps and fortresses of the loyal Aquilonian army. For stationed there were swordsmen and pikemen, horsemen and archers who had served with Conan when he was an officer of King Numedides' men who had fought at Conan's side in the great battle of Velitrium, and even before that, at Massacre Meadow, when Conan first broke the hosts of savage Picts -men of his old regiment, the Lions, who well remembered him. And like the beasts whose name they bore, they remained loyal to the leader of the pride. Others who hearkened to the call were wearied of service to a royal maniac who shrugged aside the business of his kingdom to indulge his unnatural lusts and to pursue mad dreams of eternal life.
In the months after Conan's arrival in Messantia, many Aquilonian veterans of the Pictish wars resigned or deserted from their units and drifted south to Argos. With them down the long and lonesome roads tramped Poitanians and Bossonians, Gundermen from the North, yeomen of the Tauran, petty nobles from Tarantia, impoverished knights from distant provinces, and many a penniless adventurer.
Whence come they all?' marvelled Publius as he stood with Conan near the large tent of the commander-in-chief, watching a band of r
ag-tail knights ride into the rebel camp. Their horses were lean, their trappings ragged, their armour rusty, and they were caked with dust and dried mud. Some bore bandaged wounds.
'Your mad king has made many enemies,' grumbled Conan. 'I get reports of knights whose lands he has seized, nobles whose wives or daughters he has outraged, sons of merchants whom he has stripped of their pelf - even common workmen and peasants, stout-hearted enough to take up arms against the royal madman. Those knights yonder are outlaws driven into exile for speaking out against the tyrant.'
'Tyranny oft breeds its own downfall,' said Publius. 'How many have we now?'
'Over ten thousand, by yesterday's reckoning.'
Publius whistled. 'So many? We had better limit our recruits ere they devour all the coin in our treasury. Vast as is the sum that you obtained for the jewels of Tranicos, 'twill melt like snow hi the springtime if we enlist more men than we can afford to pay.'
Conan clapped the stout civilian on the back. 'It's your task as treasurer, good Publius, to make our purse outlast this feast of vultures. Only today I importuned King Milo for more camp space. Instead, he drenched me with a cataract of complaints. Our men crowd Messantia; they overtax the facilities of the city; they drive up prices; some commit crimes against the citizens. He wants us hence, either to a new camp or on our way to Aquilonia.'
Publius frowned. 'Whilst our troops train, we must remain close to the city and the sea, for access to supplies, Ten thousand men grow exceeding hungry when drilled as you drill them. And ten thousand bellies require much food, or their owners grow surly and desert.'
Conan shrugged. 'No help for it. Trocero and I ride forth on the morrow to scout for a new site. The next full moon should see us on the road to Aquilonia.'
'Who is that?' murmured Publius, indicating a soldier who, released from the morning's drill, was sauntering by, close to the general's tent. The man, clad in shabby black, had swilled a tankardful that afternoon; for his lean legs wobbled beneath him, and once he tripped over a stone that lay athwart his path. Sighting Conan and Publius, he swept off his battered cap, bowed so low that he quite unbalanced himself, recovered, and proceeded on his way.
The Conan Chronology Page 594