Prospero reflected that Conan might be feeling the pangs of guilt—a rare thing for the wild, brawling, half-civilised Cimmerian warrior-king. The hunting trip into northern Gunderland had been Conan's idea. His queen, Zenobia, had fallen ill after long labour giving birth to their third child, a daughter. During the slow months of her recovery, Conan had been with her as much of the time as he could afford to take from his royal duties. Feeling neglected, the boy had become surly and withdrawn. Now that Zenobia had regained much of her strength and Death had seemingly withdrawn his dark wings from the palace, Conan had suggested a few weeks of camping and hunting together, hoping to find a new closeness to his son.
And now the headstrong boy, wild with the excitement of his first grown-up hunt, had ridden off alone into the gathering darkness of the unknown forest in crazy pursuit of the elusive snow-white stag they had vainly chased for hours.
As the sky cleared, revealing the glittering stars, the rising wind whined in the boughs and dry leaves rustled as if to the tread of stealthy feet. Conan again broke off amidst a wild tale of sorcery and pirate life to search the gloom with probing eyes. The great Gunderland wood was not the safest place, even in this turbulent age. Bison and aurochs, wild boar, brown bear, and grey wolf stalked the woodland paths. And there lurked another potential enemy as well: the most cunning and treacherous of all foes—man. For rogues, thieves, and renegades took to the wilds when city life became too dangerous for them.
Snarling an oath, the king came to his feet, doffing his black cloak and tossing it on his pile of duffel.
'Call me woman-hearted if you dare, you bastards,' he growled, 'but I'll sit here no longer. With this moon as bright as day, I can follow a trail or I'm a Stygian. Fulk! Saddle up red Ymir for me; the black's winded. You men! Pass the wineskin one last time around and saddle up. Sir Valens! You'll find the torches in the third wagon. Distribute them, and let's forth. I'll not sleep easy till I know my boy is safe.'
Swinging astride the big roan, Conan muttered: 'That unlicked cub, haring off like a jackass after a stag that could outrun two ponies like his! When I find him, I'll teach him to make me leave a nice warm fire for the cold wet woods!'
A snow-white owl floated across the gibbous moon. Conan choked off his curses with a sudden shiver. A black foreboding swept his barbaric soul. His backward people whispered strange tales of a thing that fled in the night—a were-stag, ghostly white and swift as the winter wind. Pray Crom that this was a beast of normal flesh and blood, and not some uncanny thing from nighted gulfs beyond space and time…
II
The Faceless Men
Young Conn was cold and wet and weary. The insides of his thighs were chafed from hours of hard riding, and he had developed more than a few blisters. He was also conscious of a growling emptiness where his stomach should be. Worst of all, he was lost.
The white stag had floated ahead of him like a ghostly bird, glimmering against the darkness. The elusive brute had come almost within spear-shot a dozen times. Each time that cool caution overcame Conn's excitement the magnificent stag had faltered, proud antlers drooping, as if it had reached the edge of its endurance—and each time the vision of bearing so splendid a prise back to his father had spurred the boy on just a little farther.
The boy reined his panting pony to a halt amidst thick bushes and stared around through the dense gloom. Boughs creaked and leaves whispered above him under the rush of the wind, and foliage blotted out stars and moon alike. He had not the faintest idea of where he was, nor of the direction in which the white stag had led him, except that he knew he had strayed far beyond the bounds his father had set. The boy shivered a little in his leather jerkin. He knew his father's temper; he would be beaten with a heavy belt when he came limping back. The only thing that might mitigate Conan's anger would be for Conn to return triumphant, to throw the great stag at the feet of the king.
Conn shrugged off his fatigue and hunger and set his square jaw with boyish determination. At that instant he bore a striking likeness to his mighty sire: the same tanned, frowning visage framed in straight, coarse black hair: the same smouldering blue eyes, deep chest, and broad shoulders. Only twelve, he looked likely to match his father's towering height when he came of age, for already he was taller than many Aquilonian grown men.
'Up, Marduk!' he said, thumping his heels in the ribs of the black pony. They shouldered through the wet, dripping boughs into a long grassy glade. As they entered the open place, young Conn glimpsed a flash of white against the gloom. The great white stag came floating out of the darkness, entering the clearing ahead of them with an effortless bound. The boy's heart swelled, and the excitement of the hunt made his blood sing. Iron-shod hooves drummed through the swishing grasses. Ahead of them, ghost-white against the wet blackness, the stag cleared fallen tree trunks with graceful leaps and bounded toward the far edge of the glade, with the prince in hot pursuit.
Conn leaned over the pony's neck, one strong brown hand clenching the light javelin. Ahead of him, like a will-o'-the-wisp, the white stag glowed. But a dense wall of trees rose beyond. His heart pounding, Conn knew the stag must slow its pace or go floundering into that barrier.
The next instant, even as he flung back one arm to hurl the javelin, it happened. The stag dissolved into mist—a mist that reformed into a tall, gaunt, human shape clothed in white robes. It was a woman, from the billowing cloud of iron-grey hair that swirled about the bony, calm, expressionless mask of its face.
Terror smote Conn. The pony reared, eyes rolling, and neighed shrilly, then came down and stood motionless, shuddering. Conn stared into the cold, cat-green eyes of the woman-thing before him.
Silence stretched taut between them. In the stillness, Conn was aware of his trembling hands, his thudding heart, the sour taste in his dry mouth. Was this fear? Who was this ghost-woman, to teach fear to the son of Conan the Conqueror?
With a violent effort of will, the boy clamped his quivering fingers about the shaft of the javelin. Ghost, witch, or were-woman—the son of Conan would show no fear!
Eyes of lambent green flame smiled with cold mockery into the boy's imitation of his sire's glare. With one gaunt hand, the woman gestured slowly. Leaves crackled; twigs snapped.
The boy jerked his head around, and his grim expression faltered to see the weird forms that stepped into the clearing from all sides.
They were lean men, gaunt as mummies and of superhuman stature. Taller even than the mighty Conan, many topped seven feet. From throat to wrist and heel they were clad in black garments that fitted as tightly as gloves. Even their heads were hooded in tight black cowls .Their hands were bony, thin, and long-fingered, and they bore curious weapons. These were rods or batons, over two feet long, of sleek, gleaming black wood. The ends of each rod were tipped with spherical knobs of dull, silvery metal. These knobs were slightly smaller than fowl's eggs.
It was their faces that struck into his heart the thrill of superstitious awe. For they had no faces! Beneath the tight-fitting black cowls, their visages were smooth, blank, white ovals.
Few would have blamed the lad if he had fled in fear. But he did not flee. Though only twelve, he was sprung from a savage line of mighty warriors and brave women, and few of his forefathers had faltered in the face of danger or death. His ancestors had faced the terrible giant bear, the dread snow-dragons of the Figlophian mountains, and the rare saber-toothed tiger of the cave country. They had fought these creatures knee-deep in winter snows, while the quivering curtain of the northern lights flickered overhead. In this moment of peril, his barbaric ancestry awoke within the boy.
The woman raised her head and called out a short phrase, in strongly accented Aquilonian: 'Yield, boy!'
'Never!' shouted Conn. Yelling the Cimmerian war cry learned from his mighty sire, he couched his javelin like a lance at the nearest of the black-clad faceless ones and spurred his tired pony once more.
No flicker of emotion disturbed the calm old face of the wh
ite-clad woman. Before the pony could make more than one weary bound, agonizing pain shot up Conn's arm. He gasped, doubling over in the saddle. The javelin flew from his numb fingers, to thud into the wet grass. One of the black-clad men closing in on him had glided close with magical swiftness. With one bony hand, the man had caught the pony's bridle. With the other, the man had whipped up his slender wooden baton. The ball on one end had stroked the hollow of Conn's elbow. The touch of the rod, wielded with exquisite control, had struck the cluster of nerves under the joint. The pain was blinding.
The black-clad man recovered his stance and whipped back the rod for another blow. But the woman cried out in an unfamiliar tongue. She spoke in a deep, harsh, metallic, sexless voice. The faceless man in black withheld his blow.
But Conn did not yield. With an inarticulate cry, he caught with his left hand at the hilt of the falchion that hung at his hip. Clumsily he dragged it forth and reversed his grip upon it. The black-clad men were all around him now, with skinny hands reaching out from long black arms.
Conn swung backhanded at the nearest. The blade struck the man's long neck and laid open his throat. With a gurgling groan, the tall man folded at the knees and fell face-down in the wet grass.
Conn raked his spurs against the pony's ribs, shouting a command to the beast. The pony reared with a shrill whinny as the other faceless men glided in from all sides. Then it lashed out at them with iron-shod hoofs. Like phantoms, the men evaded the hoofs. One flicked out his rod. The knob struck Conn's wrist with diabolical accuracy, and away went the falchion from his flaccid fingers. Another metal ball on the end of a black rod gently stroked the back of Conn's head. The boy fell from the saddle, a bundle of loose limbs. One man caught him in gaunt, black-clad arms and eased him to the grass, while others brought the pony under control.
The green-eyed woman bent over the unconscious lad.
'Conn, Crown Prince of Aquilonia, heir apparent to the throne of Conan,' she said in her harsh voice. She uttered a dry, mirthless laugh. 'Thoth-Amon will be pleased.'
III
Runes of Blood
Conan was hunched over in the saddle, hungrily munching a bit of roast boar, when Euric, the chief huntsman, came to him.
The king straightened wearily, spat out a bit of gristle, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. 'Anything?' he grunted. The old huntsman nodded and held out a curious object.
'This,' he said.
Conan eyed it warily. It was an ivory mask, delicately carved to fit closely a long-jawed, narrow-chinned, high-cheekboned human face. The queer thing about it was that it was modeled featurelessly, presenting—except for the eye slits—a blank oval of sleek ivory to the eye. Conan did not like the look of it.
'Hyperborean work,' he spat. 'Anything else?'
The old huntsman nodded. 'Blood on the grass, the grass itself trampled, hoofmarks of a young pony, and—this.' '
The fires in Conan's eyes dulled and his face sagged. It was the falchion he had given as a gift to Conn, celebrating the latter's twelfth birthday. The coronet of an Aquilonian prince was etched in the silver of the guard.
'Nothing else?'
'The dogs are sniffing about for a trail now,' said Euric.
Conan nodded heavily. 'When they've found the track, sound your horn and gather the men,' he growled.
The sun was high; the lank grasses smelled wet; the air was steamy and humid. But again the King of Aquilonia shivered as if an unseen draft of icy air were blowing upon his heart.
The sun was an hour older before they found the corpse. It had been carefully buried at the bottom of a gully, beneath a mound of dead leaves and moist earth. But the eager hounds sniffed it out, baying their deep-chested song to call the huntsmen.
Conan rode down to the bed of the gully to examine the corpse. The body had been stripped. The man had been nearly seven feet tall and gaunt. His skin was white as parchment. His hair, too, was a silky white. His throat had been slashed.
Euric crouched over the dirt-stained corpse, sniffing the blood, dipping his fingers in the wound, and thoughtfully rubbing bloody fingertips together. Conan waited in moody silence. At last the old man rose stiffly, wiping his hands.
'Sometime last night, sire,' he said.
Conan looked the corpse over, his gaze lingering on its long-jawed, narrow-chinned, high-cheekboned face. The man was a Hyperborean: his lean height, unnatural pallor, and silky, colorless hair told Conan that. Dead cat-green eyes stared up from among the wet dirt and sodden leaves.
'Loose the hounds again, Euric. Prospero! Bid the men be wary. We are being led,' said Conan.
They rode on together. After a time, the Poitanian general cleared his throat. 'You think the mask and falchion were left behind for a purpose, sire?'
'I know it,' Conan growled. 'In my bones; the way an old stiff-legged soldier knows when rain is coming. There's a pack of those white devils ahead somewhere. They have my boy. They are herding us, damn their guts!'
'Into an ambush?' asked Prospero. Conan chewed the idea over in silence, then shook his head.
'I doubt it. We've ridden safely through three perfect sites for such a trap in the past hour. No; they have some other purpose in mind. A message, perhaps, waiting for us up the trail.'
Prospero considered this. 'Maybe they are holding the Prince for ransom.'
'Or for bait,' said Conan, his eyes blazing like those of an angry beast. 'I was a captive in Hyperborea once. What I suffered at their hands gave me no cause to love those bony devils; and what I did there, ere I took my leave of their hospitality, gave them little cause to love me!'
'What means the ivory mask?'
Conan spat and took a swig of lukewarm wine. 'It's a shadowy land of devils. Dead and barren, cloaked ever in clammy mists, ruled by naked, grinning fear. A weird cult of black-clad wizard-assassins hold power through the terror of their uncanny arts. They kill without a mark and fight only with wooden rods, tipped with balls of a strange rare, grey, heavy metal called platinum, common in their land. An old woman is their priestess-queen; they think her the incarnation of their death goddess.They who serve in her shadowy legions of skulking killers undergo strange mortification of body, mind, and will. The masks are an example of their fanaticism. They are the deadliest fighters in the world; blind faith in their devil-gods makes them immune to fear and pain.'
They rode forward without further words. In the minds of both men was a dreadful picture—a helpless boy, captive in a land of fanatical death-worshipers whose witch-queen had for years nursed a burning hatred of Conan.
Towards early afternoon, the trees thinned out as the forests of eastern Gunderland gave way to chalk moors overgrown with straggling patches of heather and bracken. They were near the limits of Conan's realm. Not far beyond lay the place where the frontiers of Aquilonia, Cimmeria, the Border Kingdom, and Nemedia met.
The sky was overcast, and there was a bite to the air. Wind ruffled the purple heather in chill, sudden gusts. The sun was a grey disk, weak and ineffectual. Birds cawed hoarsely, far on the dim moors. It was a grim, bleak land of desolation.
Conan rode in front. Suddenly he drew up his weary roan, flinging up one arm to halt his company.Then he sat slumped in the saddle, staring grimly at the thing that blocked their path. In ones and twos the men behind dismounted and came forward to stand about him, staring.
It was a light willow-wood javelin, such as a young boy might select for hunting a stag. The point was buried deep in the bracken. The haft of the spear thrust straight up into the air. Wrapped about it was a bit of white parchment.
Euric unfastened the parchment with deft fingers and handed it up to the King where he sat his roan, eyes heavy. It crackled loudly as Conan unrolled it.
The message was crudely scrawled in Aquilonian. Conan scanned it silently, his dark face sullen, then handed it down to Prospero, who spelled it out slowly for the men to hear.
THE KING SHALL GO FORWARD ALONE TO POHIOLA. IF HE DOES THIS, THE SO
N OF HIS LOINS WILL NOT BE HARMED. IF HE DOES OTHER THAN THIS, THE CHILD WILL DIE IN WAYS IT IS NOT WHOLESOME TO DESCRIBE. THE KING SHALL FOLLOW THE PATH MARKED WITH THE WHITE HAND.
Prospero examined the rusty-scrawl of runes, then gave a little exclamation of disgust. The message was written in blood.
IV
The White Hand
So Conan went forward alone into the moorland beyond the borders of Aquilonia. The conventional course would have been to return to Tanasul, muster the civil guard, and ride against misty Hyperborea in force. But, had Conan followed that course, the assassins would murder the boy. All that Conan could do was to follow the commands in the parchment scroll.
Conan had given Prospero the great seal-ring of massive gold he wore on his right thumb. Possession of that ring made the Poitanian regent of the kingdom until Conan returned. If he did not return, his infant second son would become rightful king of the Aquilonians, under the dual regency of Queen Zenobia and Prospero.
As he had voiced these instructions, staring into Prospero's eyes, he knew the gallant soldier would follow them to the letter. And there was one instruction more. Prospero should raise the levy of Tanasul and ride after him, to invade Hyperborea on his heels and make for the citadel of Pohiola.
This was to give Prospero a sense of purpose. But Conan knew that one man, well mounted, could ride farther and faster than a full troop of horses. He would be within the glowering walls of Pohiola long before Prospero's force could possibly arrive to be of any help.
This land was called the Border Kingdom. It was a dreary waste of desolate, empty moors which swept off to the dim horizon. Here and there gnarled and stunted trees grew sparsely. Waterbirds rose flapping from misty bogs. A cold, uneasy wind whined through rattling reeds with a lonely song.
Conan went forward, careful of his footing but with all possible haste. His red roan, Ymir, was winded from the night-long ride through the forest, so Conan had taken the big grey from Baron Guilaime of Imirus. The fat peer was the heaviest man in the party other than Conan himself, and his burly-chested grey was the only steed that might bear up under the weight of the giant Cimmerian. Conan had thrown off his hunting gear, donning a plain leather jerkin and a well-oiled shirt of close-linked mail. His broadsword was slung between his shoulders to leave his hands free. He had hung a powerful Hyrkanian bow, a length of supple silk cord, and a quiver of black-feathered cloth-yard shafts on his saddlebow. Then he had ridden off across the moors without a backward glance.
The Conan Chronology Page 654