Conan grunted: 'That's the last we shall ever see of old Amulius. If he had been king of Aquilonia, things would be quite different here today.'
A few nights later, when fog lay heavy on the surface of the Alimane, the black-clad swimmer, whom Count Trocero had sent across the river several days before, returned. Again he bore a letter sewn into an envelope of well-oiled silk.
That very night the Lion Banner rose against the silver splendour of the watchful moon.
VIII
Swords Across the Alimane
I''or several months, the friends of Count Trocero had done their work, and well. In marketplace and roadside inn, in village and hamlet, in town and city, the whisper winged across the province of Poitain: 'The Liberator comes!'
Such was the title given to Conan by Count Trocero's I artisans, men who remembered trembling tales of the giant Cimmerian from years gone by. They had heard how he thrust and cut amidst the silvery flood of Thunder River to break the will of the savage Picts, lest they swarm in I heir thousands across the border to loot and slay and ravish the Bossonian Marches. Poitanians who knew these stories now looked to the indomitable figure of Conan to wrest them from the clutches of their bloody tyrant.
For weeks, archers and yeomen and men-at-arms had altered southward, ever southward, towards the Alimane. In the villages, men muttered over mugs of ale, their shaggy heads 'bent close together, of the invasion to come.
Now, at last, the Liberator neared. The moment loomed to free Poitain and, in good time, all of Aquilonia, prostrate now beneath the heavy heel of mad Numedides. The word so eagerly awaited had arrived in an oiled-silk envelope, stamped with the seal of their beloved count. And they were ready.
Chilled by the raw and foggy night, the sentinel, a youth from Gunderland, sneezed as he stamped his booted feet and slapped his shoulders. Sentry-go was a tedious tour of duty in the best of times, but on a damp night during a cold
snap, it could be cursed uncomfortable.
If only he had not foolishly let himself be caught blowing kisses in the ear of the captain's mistress, thought the Gunderman gloomily, he might even now be carousing in the cheerful warmth of the sergeants' mess with his luckier comrades. What need, after all, to guard the main gate to the barracks of Culario on such a night as this? Did the commandant think an army was stealing upon the base from Koth, or Nemedia, or even far Vanaheim?
Wistfully he told himself, had he enjoyed the fortune of a landed sire and birth into the gentry, he would now be an I officer, swanking in satin and gilded steel at the officers' ball. So deep was he in dreams that he failed to remark a slight scuff of feet behind him on the cobblestones. He was aware of nothing untoward until a leathern thong settled about his plump throat, drew quickly tight, and strangled him.
The officers' ball throbbed with merriment. Chandeliers blazed with the light of a thousand candles, which sparkled and shimmered hi the silvered pier glasses. Splendid in parade uniforms, junior officers vied for the favours of the local belles, who fluttered prettily, giggling at the honeyed whispers of their partners, while their mothers watched benignly from rows of gilded chairs along the plastered walls.
The party was past its peak. The royal governor, Sir Conradin, had made his requisite appearance to open the festivities and long since had departed in his carriage. Senior Captain Armandius, commandant of the Culario garrison, yawned and nodded over a goblet of Poitain's choicest vintage. From his red velvet seat, he stared down sourly upon the dancers, thinking that all this prancing, bowing and circling was a pastime fit for children only. In another hour, he decided, it would not seem remiss to take his leave. His thoughts turned to his dark-eyed Zingaran mistress, who doubtless waited impatiently for him. He smiled sleepily, picturing her soft lips and other charms. And then he dozed.
A servant first smelled smoke and thrust open the front'
door, to see a pile of burning brush stacked high against the walls of the officers' barracks. He bawled an alarm.
In the space of a few breaths, the king's officers swarmed nit of the burning building, like bees smoked out of their I rive by honey-seeking boys. The men and their ladies, furious or bewildered, found the courtyard already full- crowded by ;silent, sombre men with grim eyes in their work-worn faces and naked steel in their sun-browned hands.
Alas for the officers; they wore only their daggers, more ornamental than useful, and, so stood little chance against the well-armed rebels. Within the hour, Culario was free; and the banner of the Count of Poitain, with its crimson leopards, flew beside a strange new flag that bore the blazon of a golden lion on a sable field.
n a private room in Culario's best-regarded inn, the royal governor sat gaming with his crony, the Aquilonian tax assessor for the southern region. Both were deep in their cups, and consistent losses had rendered the governor surly and short tempered. Still, having escaped from the officers' ball, Sir Conradin preferred to shun his home for yet a while, knowing that his wife would accord him an unpleasant welcome. The presence of the sentry stationed in the doorway so fanned his irritation that he brusquely commanded the soldier to stand out of sight beyond the entrance to the inn.
'Give a man some privacy,' he grumbled.
'Especially when he's losing, eh?' teased the assessor. He guessed that the sentry would not have to brave the clammy mists for long, for Sir Conradin's purse was nearly empty.
Continuing their game, engrossed in the dance of ivory cubes and the whimsical twists of fortune, neither player noticed a dull thud and the sound of a falling body beyond the heavy wooden portal.
An instant later, booted feet kicked open the door of the inn; and a fierce-eyed mob of rustics, armed with clubs and rakes and scythes as well as more conventional weapons, burst in to drag the gamesters from their table to the crude gallows newly set in the centre of the market square.
Tin- men of the Border Legion received their first warning that the province seethed with insurrection when an officer of the guard, yawning as he strolled about the perimeter of the camp to assure himself that every sentry stood alert and at his post, discovered one such sentinel slumbering in the shadow of a baggage wain.
With an oath, the captain sent his booted toe thudding against the shirker's ribs. When this failed to arouse the sleeper, the officer squatted to examine the man. A feeling of dampness on his fingers caused him to snatch away his hand; and he stared incredulously at the stain that darkened it and at the welling gash that bridged the fellow's throat. Then he straightened his back and filled his lungs to bellow an alarm, just in time to take an arrow through the heart.
Fog drifted across the rippling waters of the Alimane, to twist and coil around the boles of trees and the tents of sleeping men. Fog also swirled about the edges of the camp, where dark and sombre forests stood knee deep in purple gloom. The ghostly tendrils wreathed the trunks of immemorial oaks, and through the coils there drifted a wraith-like host of crouching figures in drab clothing, with knives in their hands and strung bows draped across their shoulders. These shadowy figures breasted the curtaining f°g going from tent to tent, entering softly, and emerging moments later with blood upon the blades of their silent knives.
As these intruders stole among the sleeping men, other dark figures struggled through the clutching waters of the Alimane. These, too, were armed.
Ascalante, Count of Thune, was roused from heavy slumber by a shapeless cry as of a man in agony. The cry was followed by a score of shouts, and then the horns of chaos blared across the camp. For a moment, the Aquilonian adventurer thought himself immersed in bloody dreams. There sounded through the dripping night the screams of men in mortal combat, the shrieks of the injured, the gurgle of the dying, the tramp of many feet, the hiss of arrows, and the clangour of steel.
Cursing, the count sprang half-naked from his cot, flung wide the tent flap, and stared out upon a scene of roaring carnage. Burning tents cast a lurid light across a phantasmagoria of indescribable confusion. Corpses lay tossed abou
t and trampled in the slimy mud, like toys discarded by the careless hands of children. Half-clothed Aquilonian soldiers fought with the frenzy of despair against mail-suited men armed with spear, sword and axe, and others who plied longbows at such close range that every arrow thudded home. Royalist captains and sergeants strove heroically to force their pikemen into formation and to arm those who had issued unprepared from their shelters.
Then a terrible figure loomed up before the tent wherein the Count of Thune stood frozen with astonishment and horror. It was Gromel, the burly Bossonian, from whose thick lips poured a steady stream of curses. Ascalante blinked at him in amazement. The officer was clad in nothing but a loin cloth and a knee-length coat of mail. That mail was rent and hacked in at least a dozen places, baring Gromel's mightily muscled torso, which seemed to the fastidious count to be incarnadined with gore.
'Are we betrayed?' gasped Ascalante, clutching at Gromel's blood-encrusted sword arm.
Gromel shook off the grasping hand and spat blood. 'Betrayed or surprised, or both - by the slimy guts of Nergal' growled the Bossonian. 'The province has risen. Our sentries are slain; our horses chased into the woods. The road north is blocked. The rebels have snaked across the river, unseen in these accursed fogs. Most of the sentries have had their throats cut by the country-folk. We're caught between the two forces and helpless to fight back.'
'What's to be done, then?' whispered Ascalante.
'Flee for your life, man,' spat Gromel. 'Or surrender, as
I intend to do. Here, help me to bind up these wounds, ere I bleed to death.'
First, hidden by the fog, Conan had led his pikemen across the ford of Nogara. Once the fight had started, Trocero, Prospero and Pallantides followed with the archers and mounted troops. Before a wan moon broke through the deep-piled clouds, the Count of Poitain found himself engaged in a pitched battle; for enough of the Legionnaires had gathered to make a wall of shields, behind which their long spears bristled like a giant thorn bush. Trocero led his armoured knights against this barrier of interlocking shields and, after several unsuccessful tries, broke through. Then the slaughter began.
The Numedidean camp was a makeshift affair, strung out along the northern bank of the Alimane and backed against the forest. Its elongated shape made it difficult to defend, As a rule, Aquilonian soldiers built square encampments, walled with earthworks or palisades of logs. Neither of these defences was practicable in the present case, and thus the camp of the Border Legion was vulnerable. The conformation of the land, together with the complete surprise effected by the Army of Liberation as it came to be called tipped the balance in favour of the rebels, even though the Legionnaires still outnumbered the combined forces of Conan and the revolting Poitanians.
Besides, the morale of the Legion had declined, so that Aquilonia's finest soldiers for once failed to deserve their reputation. Ascalante had reported to his officers that their former chief, Amulius Procas, died by his own hand, despondent over his sorry showing in the Argossean incursion. The soldiers of the Legion could scarcely credit this canard. They knew and loved their old general, for all his strict discipline and crusty ways.
To the officers and men, Ascalante seemed a fop and a poseur. True, the Count of Thune had some experience with the military, but in garrison duty only and on quiet frontiers. And also true, any general stepping up to greatness over
little-hardened senior officers needs time to cool the hot breath of rancour in those whom he commands. But the timid ways and courtly airs of the new arrival did little ' conciliate his staff; and their discontent was wordlessly transmitted to the soldiers of the line.
The attack was well planned. When the Poitanian peasants had spilled the blood of the sentries, fired the tents, and driven off the horses from their makeshift corral, the sleeping mops, roused at last to their peril, formed ranks to challenge their attackers along the northern boundary of the camp. Hut when they were simultaneously battered from the south by Conan's unexpected forces, their lines of defence crumbled and the song of swords became a deathly clamour.
General Ascalante was nowhere to be found. Descrying ii horse, the courtier had flung himself astride the unsaddled beast and, lacking spurs, had lashed the animal into motion with a length of branch torn from a nearby tree. He eluded he Poitanian foresters by a hair's breadth and galloped off into the night.
A cunning opportunist like Gromel might curry favour with the victors by surrendering himself and his contingent; but for Ascalante it was quite another matter. He had a noble's pride. Besides, the count divined what Thulandra Thuu would do when he learned of the débâcle. The sorcerer had expected his appointee to hold the rebels south of the Alimane - a task not too difficult under ordinary circumstances for a commander with a modicum of military training. But the magician's arts had somehow failed to warn him of the uprising of the Poitanians - an event that would have daunted an officer more seasoned than the Count of Thune. And now his camp was charred and cindered, and defeat was imminent. Ascalante, thus, could only quit the lieu and put as much distance as he could between himself and both the crafty rebel leader and the dark, lean necromancer in Tarantia.
Throughout the moonless night, the Count of Thune thundered through a tunnel of tall trees, and dawn found him nine leagues east of the site of the disaster. Spurred by the thought of Thulandra's incalculable wrath, he pushed
alicml :is fast as he dared go on his exhausted mount. There WITC places in the eastern deserts where, he hoped, even the vengeful sorcerer would never find him.
But as the hours passed, Ascalante conceived a fierce and undying hatred of Conan the Cimmerian, on whom he laid blame for his defeat and flight. In his heart the Count l Thune vowed some day in like manner to repay the Liberator,
Towards dawn Conan bestrode the Border Legion's ruined camp, receiving information from his captains. Hundreds of Legionnaires lay dead or dying, and hundreds more had sought the safety of the forest, whence Trocero's partisans were now dislodging them. But a full regiment of royalist soldiery, seven hundred strong, had come over to Conan's cause, having been persuaded by circumstances and a Bossonian officer named Gromel. The surrender of these troops — Poitanians and Bossonians, with a sprinkling of Gundermen and a few score other Aquilonians among them - pleased the Cimmerian mightily; for seasoned, well-trained professionals would bolster his fighting strength and stiffen the resolve of his motley followers.
A shrewd judge of men, Conan suspected Gromel, whom he had briefly known along the Pictish frontier, of being both a formidable fighter and a wily opportunist; but opportunism is forgiveable when it serves one's turn. And so he congratulated the burly captain on his change of heart and appointed him an officer in the Army of Liberation.
Squads of weary men laboured to strip the dead of usable equipment and stack the corpses in a funeral pyre, when Prospero strode up. His armour, splashed with dried blood, was ruddy in the roseate light of dawn, and he seemed in rare good humour.
'What word?' asked Conan gruffly.
'Nothing but good, General,' grinned the other. 'We have captured their entire baggage train, with supplies and weapons enough for twice our strength.'
'Good work!' grunted Conan. What of the enemy's horses?'
'The foresters have rounded up the beasts they let run tree, so we have mounts again. And we have taken several thousand prisoners, who threw down their arms when they saw their cause was hopeless. Pallantides fain would know what he's to do with them.'
'Offer them enlistment in our forces. If they refuse, let them go where they will. Unarmed men can harm us not,' said Conan indifferently. 'If we do win this war, we shall need all the good will we can muster. Tell Pallantides to let each choose his course.'
'Very well, General; what other orders?' asked Prospero.
'We ride this morn for Culario. Trocero's partisans report there's not a royalist still under arms between here and the town, which waits to welcome us.'
'Then we shall have an easy march t
o Tarantia,' grinned Prospero.
'Perhaps, and perhaps not,' Conan replied, narrowing his lids. 'It will be days before news of the royalist rout arrives in Bossonia and Gunderland and the garrisons there head south to intercept us. But they will come in time.'
'Aye. Under Count Ulric of Raman, I'll wager,' said Prospero. Then, as Trocero joined his fellow officers, he added: 'What is your guess, my lord Count?'
'Ulric, I have no doubt,' said Trocero. 'A pity we missed our meeting with the northern barons. They would have held him back for quite a while.'
Conan shrugged his massive shoulders. 'Prepare the men to move by noon. I'll take a look at Pallantides's prisoners.'
A short while later, Conan stalked down the line of disarmed royalist soldiery, stopping now and then to ask a sharp question: 'You wish to serve in the Army of Liberation? Why?'
In the course of this inspection, his eye caught the reflected sparkle of the morning sun on the hairy chest of a ragged prisoner. Looking more closely, he perceived that the light bounced off a small half-circle of obsidian, hung on a slender
chain around the roan's burly neck. For an instant Conan stared, struggling to remember where it was that he had seen the trinket. Taking the object between thumb and fore- finder, he asked the soldier with a hidden snarl:
Where did you get this bauble?'
'May it please you, General, I picked it up in General Procas's tent the morning after the general was —after he died. I thought it might be an amulet to bring me luck.'
Conan studied the man through narrowed lids. 'It surely brought no luck to General Procas. Give it to me.'
The soldier hastily stripped off the ornament and, trembling, handed it to Conan. At that moment Trocero approached, and Conan, holding up the object to his gaze, muttered. 'I know where I have seen this thing before. The dancer Alcina wore it around her neck.'
The Conan Chronology Page 603