One weary afternoon, white with road dust, they reached the shores of the Styx and camped behind a screen of willows. An hour's march away lay the Ford of Bubastes. They sat for a day and a half, resting men and horses and honing and oiling weapons, while the troops from Koth and Ophir arrived to join them.
Next morning young Prince Conn, elder of Conan's two legitimate sons, rode into camp at the head of a troop on lathered horses. At thirteen, the crown prince of Aquilonia was the spit and image of his mighty sire. Almost as tall as even the towering knights of Aquilonia, he had Conan's broad shoulders, deep-arched chest, square-cut mane of coarse black hair, and strong, square-jawed face.
The boy had ridden across Shem in six days but looked as if he had been out for an afternoon's canter. His fierce blue eyes sparkled with excitement, and fresh colour blazed in his cheeks. He galloped into camp on a big gelding, acknowledging the roar of welcome from the troops with a grin and a flip of his hand. The youth was a favourite with the men, and the Black Dragons would have ridden into the jaws of Hell for him as readily as for his mighty sire.
The prince reined his horse to a halt before the royal tent, vaulted out of the saddle, and knelt grinning before the king. Conan kept his face grave although he was bursting with pride and affection. He acknowledged the prince's salute, but as soon as they were inside the tent he crushed the boy in a rough bear-hug that might have snapped the ribs of a frailer lad.
'How fares your lady mother?' he demanded.
'She is well,' Conn replied—then, with a mischievous grin: 'but she shrieked and wailed like a wounded buffalo to hear that you wanted me in the field. Her last words were to keep warm at night and not to get my feet wet!'
'How like a woman!' grunted Conan. 'I remember my old mother, back in Cimmeria… But you should not compare your lady mother to a buffalo, boy! That's impertinent!'
'Yes, sire,' said the youth contritely. Then, eyes sparkling, 'But are we really going to cross over into Stygia, father? Do you really want me with you in battle?'
'Crom, boy, how can you learn the art of war without a little fighting? When you ascend the throne, you'll have to hold it against war and revolution. The exercise yard is all very well, but the battlefield is the schoolyard of future kings. Just see to it that you hold the place in ranks to which I assign you; no galloping alone against the foe, trying to rout them singlehanded! Come, how are your brother and sister?'
Conn relayed reports on his younger brother, seven-year-old Taurus, and baby sister, Radegund.
'Good!' said Conan. 'Did the priests come with you as commanded?'
'Aye. They bear a little box of orichalc covered with strange glyphs, and they would not tell me what was in it. Do you know, father?'
Conan nodded. 'That's what you might call our 'secret weapon.' Now get a good repast and a good night's sleep. Ere dawn we shall cross into Stygia!'
IV
Beyond Death River
The dark, gliding waters of the Styx mark the border between Shem and Stygia. Some call it the River of Death, saying that the clammy vapors that rise from the marshes are hostile; others, that the muddy waters are inimical to all forms of life, so that no fish or other creatures swim in them. This last is untrue, for at night along the banks one can hear the harsh grunt of the scaly cocodrill and the thunderous snort of the burly hippopotamus. But certain it is that the waters are hostile to human life, and he who bathes in those waters is soon stricken with a wasting and incurable disease.
Where the headwaters of the Styx rise, no man can say. It originates somewhere far to the south of the tawny sands of Stygia, in the jungled lands beyond Keshan and Punt. Some whisper that it rises in Hell itself, to flow through the lands of living men like a gliding black serpent.
Before dawn crimsoned the eastern horizon, Conan was on the move. The king, on his big black, led the way across the Ford of Bubastes to the low, reedy shore beyond. On the far side stood a half-ruined blockhouse of crumbled mud brick. Once it had guarded the crossing, but disturbances in the sinister kingdom of Stygia had led to its neglect, and it had not been repaired. The Stygians depended upon swift-moving mounted patrols along their borders to keep strangers at bay, but none of these was now to be seen.
To the right and left of the blockhouse stretched fields of yellow winter wheat, rippling in the dawn breeze. In the middle distance to the right, barely visible against the dun-coloured background, a small village of mud-brick huts crouched on the edge of the river. Ahead, as the ground sloped gently up from the Styx, the palms, shrubs, and cultivation that lined the river gradually gave way to a scattering of camel-thorn and other desert plants.
Conan, flanked by Trocero and Pallantides, commander of the Black Dragons and second in command Conan, kicked his horse up the slope of a knoll. He watched gloomily as, company by company, the Aquilonian host splashed through the ford in a long double column. As each unit of infantry emerged from the water, its captain led it to a vacant spot along the marge. There the men were made to sit, pull off their boots, and dry their feet and footgear. The king had so commanded. The men muttered at this strange proceeding. But Conan, who had been in these parts before, deemed it a vital precaution against the disease that lurked in the black waters of Death River.
Meanwhile a few troops of light horse cantered up and down the river and inland to scout for possible trouble. Sitting in his saddle beside Conan, Count Trocero chewed his moustache. At last he spoke:
'Sire, isn't it time you shared your thoughts with us?'
Conan grunted moodily and nodded. 'Aye, my friend, I have kept you in the dark long enough.'
'Then why in Mitra's name are we in accursed Stygia?' asked Pallantides.
'Because this is the land of our secret enemy, Thoth-Amon the sorcerer.'
Conn, sitting his gelding nearby, pricked up his ears. 'Thoth-Amon!' he exclaimed. 'The one that got the old witch of Pohiola to kidnap me last year, trying to get you into her clutches?'
'There is only one Thoth-Amon,' said Conan broodingly, 'and Crom knows the earth will be cleaner without him. The White Druid bore warning of his schemes.'
'Do you mean that spindle-shanked little old winesop, Diviatix?'
'That spindle-shanked old winesop is the greatest white magician alive on earth in our age,' said Conan. Trocero gulped and shuddered, remembering the times he had snarled at the staggering old tosspot to get out of his way. Conan continued grimly:
'The oracle of the Great Grove in Pictland reveals that the Stygian wizard was behind Pantho's crazy thrust. The sorcerer either bribed Pantho or seized command of his mind through his black arts.'
'But to what purpose?' asked Trocero. Pallantides had ridden away down the hill to get the army into formation for the next march. Conan continued:
'Merely a diversion, to get me away from Tarantia. The Stygian knew I would ride to join you against the Zingarans. He hoped that Pantho and I should play hide-and-seek in the hills for a fortnight or two, keeping me so busy I should not have time to worry about Tarantia—'
'Tarantia! Not the queen?'
'Be calm, man. Zenobia and the royal heirs are safe. But there's something in Tarantia that Thoth-Amon desires more than anything on earth—even more than my life. He hoped to get it in my absence. He hired the world's cleverest thieves—the High Guild of Arenjun—to steal that thing.
'But Thoth-Amon miscalculated. He never dreamed that I should smash Pantho so quickly, nor that the oracle of Nuadwyddon would send the White Druid to apprise me of the plot. Nor did he know that the spring rains would block the mountain passes out of Zamora, delaying the master thieves and ruining his delicate timing.
'He thinks me still in the North, chasing Pantho over the hilltops of Poitain. Believing me ignorant of his plan, he has no cause to suspect otherwise. The White Druid has kept our descent into Stygia invisible to the magical vision of the Stygian, or as invisible as possible. With luck, we shall be at his gates ere he knows we are within a hundred leagues of him.'<
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'What is this thing he so desperately wants?' asked Trocero.
'I know, Count!' said the boy. 'It is—'
Pallantides cantered up and saluted. 'The baggage is over the river, O King!' said the general. 'The men are ready to march.'
Conan nodded. 'Give the signal: east along the river for three leagues, till we come to a small tributary, the Bakhr. Then south, ascending that stream for half a league. I am coming shortly.'
Conan glared inland, into the dawn-reddened reaches of shadow-haunted Stygia.
'Twice in as many years,' he mused, 'a plot has struck at my throne out of this accursed land of crumbling tombs and crawling sands. This time I will carry the battle to the enemy's doorstep. Mayhap his sorcery will strike us dead, but I think not. The Gods of Light fight on our side. And, come death or victory, I shall beard Thoth-Amon in his lair and see if he can magic away a yard of good Aquilonian steel through his guts!'
The bugles blew and they rode down the slope to join the host.
V
The City of Tombs
A curse seemed to overhang Stygia. The further the Aquilonian warriors marched into it, the more they became aware of it. It was a subtle thing: mocking whispers in an eerie wind, muttering voices that spoke too low to be understood. Small, whispering winds slunk among the dunes and rattled the palm fronds. The soldiers had the haunting sensation of unseen eyes at their backs. The sun glared pitilessly from behind a thin veil of white cirrus, and the dry air gave the marchers a feeling of constant thirst.
They passed another village—a jumble of low, dun-coloured mud huts whose brown-skinned inhabitants fled yammering over the waste at the sight of the mailed host. The Bakhr proved to be a small, stagnant, muddy watercourse, from whose banks several monstrous cocodrills slithered ponderously into the water at the approach of the force.
The army turned inland—south—and marched up the tributary, skirting the reed banks and thickets that flanked it. The men muttered uneasily and fingered amulets or mumbled litanies and mantras under their breath. But the force strode on, ever deeper into shadow-haunted Stygia.
Prince Conn cast an eye at the sun and cantered forward to come up with his sire. 'Father, are we not riding due south?'
Conan grunted assent.
'But,' persisted the boy, 'I have always heard that this Thoth-Amon dwelt in an oasis called Khajar, far to the west of here!'
Conan shrugged. 'At least, lad, your tutors have taught you to read maps. But Thoth-Amon dwells no more in that scarlet sink of iniquity. Now he makes his lair in Nebthu.'
'Nebthu?'
'A ruined city to the south; we shall be there soon. Years ago, lad, Thoth-Amon rose to power in this land and became prince of the Black Ring, the world-wide guild of black magicians, whose secret headquarters, I am told, lies at Nebthu. The better to keep this unholy brotherhood under his governance, he removed from his lair in the west to Nebthu.
'Once he lost his magical ring of power, and his enemies among the sorcerers cast him out. He fell into the hands of slavers and was brought as far from his home as Aquilonia.'
'Was it he who sent the demon that would have slain you, but for the sign of the phoenix on your sword?'
'The same. By happenstance, Thoth-Amon recovered his ring and returned to Khajar. Meanwhile a rival sorcerer, Thutothmes, had risen to command of the Black Ring, making his headquarters in Khemi. Thutothmes based his power upon a mighty talisman called the Heart of Ahriman.
'For a time, the Black Ring was riven into two factions, that of Thutothmes and that of Thoth-Amon. But, ere the battle between them was fairly joined, Thutothmes perished in combat with a crew of Khitan wizards who had followed me thither to slay me.The Khitans died also, and I bore the Heart back to Tarantia.
'Now however, Thoth-Amon has again seized control of the Black Ring, seeking to draw all the black magicians of the world into his circle of confederates. The oracle tells me that he is at Nebthu.'
Conn nodded thoughtfully. Count Trocero, who had been listening closely, asked:
'Is this city well guarded?'
Conan shrugged. 'Mitra knows. The last rumour I heard was that it was long since abandoned and crumbling into ruin. Perchance the wizards have rebuilt it and patched its walls. But even if they have, with ten thousand sharp swords at our backs I am sure we can storm it.'
'We shall be doing just that, belike.' said the shrill voice of the druid, bumping along behind them in his mule cart.
Trocero turned in his saddle to look at the little man, who seemed to be drunk as usual. The count forced a polite smile and muttered:
'It likes me not, this empty, accursed land.' Conan made no answer; they rode on in silence.
The sun was declining when scouts came galloping back to the column to report. Nebthu was dead.
Soon the army came within sight of the ruin. The huge wall that had once encircled the city had crumbled, leaving upright only the great pylons that once flanked the gate. These pylons, carved with the leering gargoyle masks of grinning monsters, still rose above the drifted sands.
Save for a few birds that rose from the ruins and whirred away, there was no sign of life. No plume of smoke rose from cooking hearth or guardhouse Fire. Roofs had fallen in; buildings had decayed into mere mounds of crumbling mud brick.
Conan's horse shied at a round white stone in the roadway. As the black's hoof grazed it, the thing rolled a little way before halting. Black holes peered up. It was a skull, fit emblem of Nebthu, city of immemorial tombs. Naught moved here save the scuttling scorpion, the gliding sand viper, or perhaps the wandering ghosts of long-buried Stygian kings.
'Now what do we do?' murmured the count of Poitain.
'Make camp and fetch water from the Bakhr,' growled the king. 'After that, we shall see.' The skull grinned up at them in silent mockery.
VI
The Thing That Crouched in the Waste
They made camp outside the broken walls of the ruined city. Conan knew that his warriors would not sleep easily in the sand-drifted streets or rubble-choked squares of the Stygian metropolis. Magical influences often lingered about any ancient ruin, and this was all the more true of age-accursed Stygia than of other, more wholesome, lands.
While a detachment of soldiers cut armfuls of the feathery reeds that grew along the Bakhr, for fodder for the horses, scouts explored the desert about the walls of Nebthu. Soon the scouts rode back to report that nothing lived or moved amidst the dunes. They had, however, found one thing in the waste: a gigantic idol or monument. As the afternoon waned, Conan led a party to investigate, while the cooking fires were lit in the camp. Conan's big black shied, rolled its eyes, and laid back its ears as they approached the stone monster.
'Crom, Mitra, and Varuna!' said Conan as he gazed upon the stone titan that loomed before them against lurid sunset skies. Trocero cursed; as for the White Druid, he called on Nuadens, Danu, and Epona and took a hasty swig from his wineskin as if to fortify himself.
The statue crouched amid the waste like some primal monster. It was made of some smooth, lustrous black stone, like jet or basalt. Its form was sphinxlike, but its head was neither that of a lion nor that of a man, but of some beast of prey with a long skull, round ears, and massive jaws. It crouched doglike, as if it were some gaunt jackal.
'I thought the black magicians of this hellish land all worshiped Set the Old Serpent,' said Trocero. 'What hell-spawned devil-thing is that?'
Diviatix rubbed his eyes. 'By the horns of Cernunnos, 'tis the ghoul-hyena of Chaos!' he said. 'I had not thought ever to see its likeness wrought by human hands.'
As Conan peered more closely in the fading dusk, he saw that the sculptor of the hyena-sphinx had achieved an extraordinary fidelity to life. The loose lips of the beast were slightly drawn back to reveal its blunt, bone-crushing fangs, as if it would rise up any moment and hurl itself, slobbering and snapping, upon them. Conan's nape hairs stirred and a cold breath of ominous foreboding chilled his blood.
The coals of sunset smoldered out; gloom enshrouded the sands of Stygia. The new moon closely followed the sun down the sky and out of sight, leaving the vault of heaven to a vast multitude of brilliant stars which glowed and twinkled red and green and white in strangely unfamiliar constellations.
A town of tents sprang up in the desert near Nebthu. Cookfires blazed, casting a cheerful orange glow over the dim sands. A subdued host ate its rations and lay down, wrapped in blankets, to seek an uneasy slumber. Sentries—twice the usual number—alertly paced the perimeter. The desert night was empty, dark, and silent; but alive—and waiting.
Weary from many days of forced marching, Conan was too restless to sleep. After midnight, he rose and called a squire to light an oil lamp. He poured himself a small stoup of wine and sat on his camp stool, senses tingling with alertness, as if his barbarian instincts had roused him to some unseen danger.
Growling a curse, he pulled on breeches and padded haqueton. 'My armour,' he told the squire. 'Nay, nay, not the plate; the chain shirt. We wend afoot tonight.'
He disregarded his full knightly panoply because it would have taken too long for the squire to buckle the many straps and because its great weight would have slowed him down on foot. Donning boots, steel cap, and baldric, he stood for a moment, brooding. Then he unlocked his strongbox and took out the small box of orichalc, which the priests of Mitra had brought from Tarantia.
Entering the nearest tents, Conan shook Trocero and Conn awake. Then he went in to rouse the White Druid. He found the little man wide awake, wrapped in a blanket and huddled shivering before a brazier. Diviatix seemed like one in a daze, like the Khitans whom Conan had seen bemused on the fumes of the poppy.
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