CHAPTER 8: DYING EMBERS
The countryside about Tarantia had escaped the
fearful ravaging of the more easterly provinces. There were evidences of the
march of a conquering army in broken hedges, plundered fields and looted
granaries, but torch and steel had not been loosed wholesale.
There was but one grim splotch on the landscape --
a charred expanse of ashes and blackened stone, where, Conan knew, had once
stood the stately villa of one of his staunchest supporters.
The king dared not openly approach the Galannus
farm, which lay only a few miles from the city. In the twilight he rode through
an extensive woodland, until he sighted a keeper's lodge through the trees.
Dismounting and tying his horse, he approached the thick, arched door with the
intention of sending the keeper after Servius. He did not know what enemies the
manor house might be sheltering. He had seen no troops, but they might be
quartered all over the countryside. But as he drew near, he saw the door open
and a compact figure in silk hose and richly embroidered doublet stride forth
and turn up a path that wound away through the woods.
"Servius!"
At the low call the master of the plantation
wheeled with a startled exclamation. His hand flew to the short hunting-sword
at his hip, and he recoiled from the tall gray steel figure standing in the
dusk before him.
"Who are you?" he demanded. "What
is your-- Mitra!"
His breath hissed inward and his ruddy face paled.
"Avaunt!" he ejaculated. "Why have you come back from the gray
lands of death to terrify me? I was always your true liegeman in your lifetime
-- "
"As I still expect you to be," answered
Conan. "Stop trembling, man; I'm flesh and blood."
Sweating with uncertainty Servius approached and
stared into the face of the mail-clad giant, and then, convinced of the reality
of what he saw, he dropped to one knee and doffed his plumed cap.
"Your Majesty! Truly, this is a miracle
passing belief! The great bell in the citadel has tolled your dirge, days
agone. Men said you died at Valkia, crushed under a million tons of earth and
broken granite."
"It was another in my harness," grunted
Conan. "But let us talk later. If there is such a thing as a joint of beef
on your board -- "
"Forgive me, my lord!" cried Servius,
springing to his feet. "The dust of travel is gray on your mail, and I
keep you standing here without rest or sup! Mitra! I see well enough now that
you are alive, but I swear, when I turned and saw you standing all gray and dim
in the twilight, the marrow of my knees turned to water. It is an ill thing to
meet a man you thought dead in the woodland at dusk."
"Bid the keeper see to my steed which is tied
behind yonder oak," requested Conan, and Servius nodded, drawing the king
up the path. The patrician, recovering from his supernatural fright, had become
extremely nervous.
"I will send a servant from the manor,"
he said. "The keeper is in his lodge -- but I dare not trust even my
servants in these days. It is better that only I know of your presence."
Approaching the great house that glimmered dimly
through the trees, he turned aside into a little-used path that ran between
close-set oaks whose intertwining branches formed a vault overhead, shutting
out the dim light of the gathering dusk. Servius hurried on through the
darkness without speaking, and with something resembling panic in his manner,
and presently led Conan through a small side-door into a narrow, dimly
illuminated corridor. They traversed this in haste and silence, and Servius
brought the king into a spacious chamber with a high, oak-beamed ceiling and
richly paneled walls. Logs flamed in the wide fireplace, for there was a frosty
edge to the air, and a great meat pasty in a stone platter stood smoking on a
broad mahogany board. Servius locked the massive door and extinguished the
candles that stood in a silver candlestick on the table, leaving the chamber
illuminated only by the fire on the hearth.
"Your pardon, your Majesty," he
apologized. "These are perilous times; spies lurk everywhere. It were
better that none be able to peer through the windows and recognize you. This
pasty, however, is just from the oven, as I intended supping on my return from
talk with my keeper. If your Majesty would deign -- "
"The light is sufficient," grunted Conan,
seating himself with scant ceremony, and drawing his poniard.
He dug ravenously into the luscious dish, and
washed it down with great gulps of wine from grapes grown in Servius's
vineyards. He seemed oblivious to any sense of peril, but Servius shifted
uneasily on his settle by the fire, nervously fingering the heavy gold chain
about his neck. He glanced continually at the diamond-panes of the casement,
gleaming dimly in the firelight, and cocked his ear toward the door, as if half
expecting to hear the pad of furtive feet in the corridor without.
Finishing his meal, Conan rose and seated himself
on another settle before the fire.
"I won't jeopardize you long by my presence,
Servius," he said abruptly. "Dawn will find me far from your
plantation."
"My lord -- " Servius lifted his hands
in expostulation, but Conan waved his protests aside.
"I know your loyalty and your courage. Both
are above reproach. But if Valerius has usurped my throne, it would be death
for you to shelter me, if you were discovered."
"I am not strong enough to defy him
openly," admitted Servius. "The fifty men-at-arms I could lead to
battle would be but a handful of straws. You saw the ruins of Emilius
Scavonus's plantation?"
Conan nodded, frowning darkly.
"He was the strongest patrician in this
province, as you know. He refused to give his allegiance to Valerius. The
Nemedians burned him in the ruins of his own villa. After that the rest of us
saw the futility of resistance, especially as the people of Tarantia refused to
fight. We submitted and Valerius spared our lives, though he levied a tax upon
us that will ruin many. But what could we do? We thought you were dead. Many of
the barons had been slain, others taken prisoner. The army was shattered and
scattered. You have no heir to take the crown. There was no one to lead us --
"
"Was there not Count Trocero of
Poitain?" demanded Conan harshly.
Servius spread his hands helplessly.
"It is true that his general Prospero was in
the field with a small army. Retreating before Amalric, he urged men to rally
to his banner. But with your Majesty dead, men remembered old wars and civil
brawls, and how Trocero and his Poitanians once rode through these provinces
even as Amalric was riding now, with torch and sword. The barons were jealous
of Trocero. Some men -- spies of Valerius perhaps -- shouted that the Count of
Poitain intended seizing the crown for himself. Old sectional hates flared up
again. If we had had one man with dynastic blood in his veins we would have
crowned and followed him against Nemedia. But we had none.
"The barons who followed you loyally would
not follow one of their own number, each holding himself as good as his
neighbor, each fearing the ambitions of the others. You were the cord that held
the fagots together. When the cord was cut, the fagots fell apart. If you had
had a son, the barons would have rallied loyally to him. But there was no point
for their patriotism to focus upon.
"The merchants and commoners, dreading
anarchy and a return of feudal days when each baron was his own law, cried out
that any king was better than none, even Valerius, who was at least of the
blood of the old dynasty. There was no one to oppose him when he rode up at the
head of his steel-clad hosts, with the scarlet dragon of Nemedia floating over
him, and rang his lance against the gates of Tarantia.
"Nay, the people threw open the gates and
knelt in the dust before him. They had refused to aid Prospero in holding the
city. They said they had rather be ruled by Valerius than by Trocero. They said
-- truthfully -- that the barons would not rally to Trocero, but that many
would accept Valerius. They said that by yielding to Valerius they would escape
the devastation of civil war, and the fury of the Nemedians. Prospero rode
southward with his ten thousand knights, and the horsemen of the Nemedians
entered the city a few hours later. They did not follow him. They remained to
see that Valerius was crowned in Tarantia."
"Then the old witch's smoke showed the
truth," muttered Conan, feeling a queer chill along his spine.
"Amalric crowned Valerius?"
"Aye, in the coronation hall, with the blood
of slaughter scarcely dried on his hands."
"And do the people thrive under his
benevolent rule?" asked Conan with angry irony.
"He lives like a foreign prince in the midst
of a conquered land," answered Servius bitterly. "His court is filled
with Nemedians, the palace troops are of the same breed, and a large garrison
of them occupy the citadel. Aye, the hour of the Dragon has come at last.
"Nemedians swagger like lords through the
streets. Women are outraged and merchants plundered daily, and Valerius either
can, or will, make no attempt to curb them. Nay, he is but their puppet, their
figurehead. Men of sense knew he would be, and the people are beginning to find
it out.
"Amalric has ridden forth with a strong army
to reduce the outlying provinces where some of the barons have defied him. But
there is no unity among them. Their jealousy of each other is stronger than
their fear of Amalric. He will crush them one by one. Many castles and cities,
realizing that, have sent in their submission. Those who resist fare miserably.
The Nemedians are glutting their long hatred. And their ranks are swelled by
Aquilonians whom fear, gold, or necessity of occupation are forcing into their
armies. It is a natural consequence."
Conan nodded somberly, staring at the red
reflections of the firelight on the richly carved oaken panels.
"Aquilonia has a king instead of the anarchy
they feared," said Servius at last. "Valerius does not protect his
subjects against his allies. Hundreds who could not pay the ransom imposed upon
them have been sold to the Kothic slave-traders."
Conan's head jerked up and a lethal flame lit his
blue eyes. He swore gustily, his mighty hands knotting into iron hammers.
"Aye, white men sell white men and white
women, as it was in the feudal days. In the palaces of Shem and of Turan they
will live out the lives of slaves. Valerius is king, but the unity for which
the people looked, even though of the sword, is not complete.
"Gunderland in the north and Poitain in the
south are yet un-conquered, and there are unsubdued provinces in the west,
where the border barons have the backing of Bossonian bowmen. Yet these
outlying provinces are no real menace to Valerius. They must remain on the
defensive, and will be lucky if they are able to keep their independence. Here
Valerius and his foreign knights are supreme."
"Let him make the best of it then," said
Conan grimly. "His time is short. The people will rise when they learn
that I'm alive. We'll take Tarantia back before Amalric can return with his
army. Then we'll sweep these dogs from the kingdom."
Servius was silent. The crackle of the fire was
loud in the stillness.
"Well," exclaimed Conan impatiently,
"why do you sit with your head bent, staring at the hearth? Do you doubt
what I have said?"
Servius avoided the king's eye.
"What mortal man can do, you will do, your
Majesty," he answered. "I have ridden behind you in battle, and I
know that no mortal being can stand before your sword."
"What, then?"
Servius drew his fur-trimmed jupon closer about
him, and shivered in spite of the flame.
"Men say your fall was occasioned by
sorcery," he said presently.
"What then?"
"What mortal can fight against sorcery? Who
is this veiled man who communes at midnight with Valerius and his allies, as
men say, who appears and disappears so mysteriously? Men say in whispers that
he is a great magician who died thousands of years ago, but has returned from
death's gray lands to overthrow the king of Aquilonia and restore the dynasty
of which Valerius is heir."
"What matter?" exclaimed Conan angrily.
"I escaped from the devil-haunted pits of Belverus, and from diabolism in
the mountains. If the people rise -- "
Servius shook his head.
"Your staunchest supporters in the eastern
and central provinces are dead, fled or imprisoned. Gunderland is far to the
north, Poitain far to the south. The Bossonians have retired to their marches
far to the west. It would take weeks to gather and concentrate these forces,
and before that could be done, each levy would be attacked separately by
Amalric and destroyed."
"But an uprising in the central provinces
would tip the scales for us!" exclaimed Conan. "We could seize
Tarantia and hold it against Amalric until the Gundermen and Poitanians could
get here."
Servius hesitated, and his voice sank to a
whisper.
"Men say you died accursed. Men say this
veiled stranger cast a spell upon you to slay you and break your army. The
great bell has tolled your dirge. Men believe you to be dead. And the central
provinces would not rise, even if they knew you lived. They would not dare.
Sorcery defeated you at Valkia. Sorcery brought the news to Tarantia, for that
very night men were shouting of it in the streets.
"A Nemedian priest loosed black magic again
in the streets of Tarantia to slay men who still were loyal to your memory. I
myself saw it. Armed men dropped like flies and died in the streets in a manner
no man could understand. And the lean priest laughed and said: 'I am only
Altaro, only an acolyte of Orastes, who is but an acolyte of him who wears the
veil; not mine is the power; the power but works through me.'"
"Well," said Conan harshly, "is it
not better to die honorably than to live in infamy? Is death worse than
oppression, slavery and ultimate destruction?"
"When the fear of sorcery is in, reason is
out," replied Servius. "The fear of the central provinces is too
great to allow them to rise for you. The outlying provinces would fight for you
-- but the same sorcery that smote your army at Valkia would smite you again.
The Nemedians hold the broadest, richest and most thickly populated sections of
Aquilonia, and they cannot be defeated by the forces which might still be at
your command. You would be sacrificing your loyal subjects uselessly. In sorrow
I say it, but it is true: King Conan, you are a king without a kingdom."
Conan stared into the fire without replying. A
smoldering log crashed down among the flames without a bursting shower of
sparks. It might have been the crashing ruin of his kingdom.
Again Conan felt the presence of a grim reality
behind the veil of material illusion. He sensed again the inexorable drive of a
ruthless fate. A feeling of furious panic tugged at his soul, a sense of being
trapped, and a red rage that burned to destroy and kill.
"Where are the officials of my court?"
he demanded at last.
"Pallantides was sorely wounded at Valkia,
was ransomed by his family, and now lies in his castle in Attains. He will be
fortunate if he ever rides again. Publius, the chancellor, has fled the kingdom
in disguise, no man knows whither. The council has been disbanded. Some were
imprisoned, some banished. Many of your loyal subjects have been put to death.
Tonight, for instance, the Countess Albiona dies under the headsman's ax."
Conan started and stared at Servius with such
anger smoldering in his blue eyes that the patrician shrank back.
"Why?"
"Because she would not become the mistress of
Valerius. Her lands are forfeit, her henchmen sold into slavery, and at
midnight, in the Iron Tower, her head must fall. Be advised, my king -- to me
you will ever be my king -- and flee before you are discovered. In these days
none is safe. Spies and informers creep among us, betraying the slightest deed
or word of discontent as treason and rebellion. If you make yourself known to
your subjects it will only end in your capture and death.
"My horses and all the men that I can trust
are at your disposal. Before dawn we can be far from Tarantia, and well on our
way toward the border. If I cannot aid you to recover your kingdom, I can at
least follow you into exile."
Conan shook his head. Servius glanced uneasily at
him as he sat staring into the fire, his chin propped on his mighty fist. The
firelight gleamed redly on his steel mail, on his baleful eyes. They burned in
the firelight like the eyes of a wolf. Servius was again aware, as in the past,
and now more strongly than ever, of something alien about the king. That great
frame under the mail mesh was too hard and supple for a civilized man; the
elemental fire of the primitive burned in those smoldering eyes. Now the
barbaric suggestion about the king was more pronounced, as if in his extremity
the outward aspects of civilization were stripped away, to reveal the
primordial core. Conan was reverting to his pristine type. He did not act as a
civilized man would act under the same conditions, nor did his thoughts run in
the same channels. He was unpredictable. It was only a stride from the king of
Aquilonia to the skin-clad slayer of the Cimmerian hills.
"I'll ride to Poitain, if it may be,"
Conan said at last. "But I'll ride alone. And I have one last duty to
perform as king of Aquilonia."
"What do you mean, your Majesty?" asked
Servius, shaken by a premonition.
"I'm going into Tarantia after Albiona
tonight," answered the king. "I've failed all my other loyal
subjects, it seems -- if they take her head, they can have mine too."
"This is madness!" cried Servius,
staggering up and clutching his throat, as if he already felt the noose closing
about it.
"There are secrets to the Tower which few
know," said Conan. "Anyway, I'd be a dog to leave Albiona to die
because of her loyalty to me. I may be a king without a kingdom, but I'm not a
man without honor." "It will ruin us all!" whispered Servius.
"It will ruin no one but me if I fail. You've
risked enough. I ride alone tonight. This is all I want you to do: procure me a
patch for my eye, a staff for my hand, and garments such as travelers
wear."
CHAPTER 9: "IT IS THE KING
OR HIS GHOST!"
Many men passed through the great arched gates of
Tarantia between sunset and midnight -- belated travelers, merchants from. afar
with heavily laden mules, free workmen from the surrounding farms and
vineyards. Now that Valerius was supreme in the central provinces, there was no
rigid scrutiny of the folk who flowed in a steady stream through the wide
gates. Discipline had been relaxed. The Nemedian soldiers who stood on guard
were half drunk, and much too busy watching for handsome peasant girls and rich
merchants who could be bullied to notice workmen or dusty travelers, even one
tall wayfarer whose worn cloak could not conceal the hard lines of his powerful
frame.
This man carried himself with an erect, aggressive
bearing that was too natural for him to realise it himself, much less dissemble
it. A great patch covered one eye, and his leather coif, drawn low over his
brows, shadowed his features. With a long thick staff in his muscular brown
hand, he strode leisurely through the arch where the torches flared and
guttered, and, ignored by the tipsy guardsmen, emerged upon the wide streets of
Tarantia.
Upon these well-lighted thoroughfares the usual
throngs went about their business, and shops and stalls stood open, with their
wares displayed. One thread ran a constant theme through the pattern. Nemedian
soldiers, singly or in clumps, swaggered through the throngs, shouldering their
way with studied arrogance. Women scurried from their path, and men stepped
aside with darkened brows and clenched fists. The Aquilonians were a proud
race, and these were their hereditary enemies.
The knuckles of the tall traveler knotted on his
staff, but, like the others, he stepped aside to let the men in armor have the
way. Among the motley and varied crowd he did not attract much attention in his
drab, dusty garments. But once, as he passed a sword-seller's stall and the
light that streamed from its wide door fell full upon him, he thought he felt
an intense stare upon him, and turning quickly, saw a man in the brown jerkin
of a free workman regarding him fixedly. This man turned away with undue haste,
and vanished in the shifting throng. But Conan turned into a narrow bystreet
and quickened his pace. It might have been mere idle curiosity; but he could
take no chances.
The grim Iron Tower stood apart from the citadel,
amid a maze of narrow streets and crowding houses where the meaner structures,
appropriating a space from which the more fastidious shrank, had invaded a
portion of the city ordinarily alien to them. The Tower was in reality a
castle, an ancient, formidable pile of heavy stone and black iron, which had
itself served as the citadel in an earlier, ruder century.
Not a long distance from it, lost in a tangle of
partly deserted tenements and warehouses, stood an ancient watchtower, so old
and forgotten that it did not appear on the maps of the city for a hundred
years back. Its original purpose had been forgotten, and nobody, of such as saw
it at all, noticed that the apparently ancient lock which kept it from being
appropriated as sleeping-quarters by beggars and thieves, was in reality
comparatively new and extremely powerful, cunningly disguised into an
appearance of rusty antiquity. Not half a dozen men in the kingdom had ever
known the secret of that tower.
No keyhole showed in the massive, green-crusted
lock. But Conan's practised fingers, stealing over it, pressed here and there
knobs invisible to the casual eye. The door silently opened inward and he
entered solid blackness, pushing the door shut behind him, A light would have
showed the tower empty, a bare, cylindrical shaft of massive stone.
Groping in a corner with the sureness of
familiarity, he found the projections for which he was feeling on a slab of the
stone that composed the floor. Quickly he lifted it, and without hesitation
lowered himself into the aperture beneath. His feet felt stone steps leading
downward into what he knew was a narrow tunnel that ran straight toward the
foundations of the Iron Tower, three streets away.
The Bell on the citadel, which tolled only at the
midnight hour or for the death of a king, boomed suddenly. In a dimly lighted
chamber in the Iron Tower a door opened and a form emerged into a corridor. The
interior of the Tower was as forbidding as its external appearance. Its massive
stone walls were rough, unadorned. The flags of the floor were worn deep by
generations of faltering feet, and the vault of the ceiling was gloomy in the
dim light of torches set in niches.
The man who trudged down that grim corridor was in
appearance in keeping with his surroundings. He was a tall, powerfully-built
man, clad in close-fitting black silk. Over his head was drawn a black hood
which fell about his shoulders, having two holes for his eyes. From his
shoulders hung a loose black cloak, and over one shoulder he bore a heavy ax,
the shape of which was that of neither tool nor weapon.
As he went down the corridor, a figure came
hobbling up it, a bent, surly old man, stooping under the weight of his pike
and a lantern he bore in one hand.
"You are not as prompt as your predecessor,
master headsman," he grumbled. "Midnight has just struck, and masked
men have gone to milady's cell. They await you."
"The tones of the bell still echo among the
towers," answered the executioner. "If I am not so quick to leap and
run at the beck of Aquilonians as was the dog who held this office before me,
they shall find my arm no less ready. Get you to your duties, old watchman, and
leave me to mine. I think mine is the sweeter trade, by Mitra, for you tramp
cold corridors and peer at rusty dungeon doors, while I lop off the fairest
head in Tarantia this night.
The watchman limped on down the corridor, still
grumbling, and the headsman resumed his leisurely way. A few strides carried
him around a turn in the corridor, and he absently noted that at his left a
door stood partly open. If he had thought, he would have known that that door
had been opened since the watchman passed; but thinking was not his trade. He
was passing the unlocked door before he realized that aught was amiss, and then
it was too late.
A soft tigerish step and the rustle of a cloak
warned him, but before he could turn, a heavy arm hooked about his throat from
behind, crushing the cry before it could reach his lips. In the brief instant
that was allowed him he realized with a surge of panic the strength of his
attacker, against which his own brawny thews were helpless. He sensed without
seeing the poised dagger.
"Nemedian dog!" muttered a voice thick
with passion in his ear. "You've cut off your last Aquilonian head!"
And that was the last thing he ever heard.
In a dank dungeon, lighted only by a guttering
torch, three men stood about a young woman who knelt on the rush-strewn flags
staring wildly up at them. She was clad only in a scanty shift; her golden hair
fell in lustrous ripples about her white shoulders, and her wrists were bound
behind her. Even in the uncertain torchlight, and in spite of her disheveled
condition and pallor of fear, her beauty was striking. She knelt mutely, staring
with wide eyes up at her tormentors. The men were closely masked and cloaked.
Such a deed as this needed masks, even in a conquered land. She knew them all
nevertheless; but what she knew would harm no one-after that night.
"Our merciful sovereign offers you one more
chance, Countess," said the tallest of the three, and he spoke Aquilonian
without an accent. "He bids me say that if you soften your proud,
rebellious spirit, he will still open his arms to you. If not -- " he
gestured toward a grim wooden block in the center of the cell. It was blackly
stained, and showed many deep nicks as if a keen edge, cutting through some
yielding substance, had sunk into the wood.
Albiona shuddered and turned pale, shrinking back.
Every fiber in her vigorous young body quivered with the urge of life. Valerius
was young, too, and handsome. Many women loved him, she told herself, fighting
with herself for life. But she could not speak the word that would ransom her
soft young body from the block and the dripping ax. She could not reason the
matter. She only knew that when she thought of the clasp of Valerius's arms,
her flesh crawled with an abhorrence greater than the fear of death. She shook
her head helplessly, compelled by an impulsion more irresistible than the
instinct to live.
"Then there is no more to be said!"
exclaimed one of the others impatiently, and he spoke with a Nemedian accent.
"Where is the headsman?"
As if summoned by the word, the dungeon door
opened silently, and a great figure stood framed in it, like a black shadow
from the underworld.
Albiona voiced a low, involuntary cry at the sight
of that grim shape, and the others stared silently for a moment, perhaps themselves
daunted with superstitious awe at the silent, hooded figure. Through the coif
the eyes blazed like coals of blue fire, and as these eyes rested on each man
in turn, he felt a curious chill travel down his spine.
Then the tall Aquilonian roughly seized the girl
and dragged her to the block. She screamed uncontrollably and fought hopelessly
against him, frantic with terror, but he ruthlessly forced her to her knees,
and bent her yellow head down to the bloody block.
"Why do you delay, headsman?" he exclaimed
angrily. "Perform your task!"
He was answered by a short, gusty boom of laughter
that was indescribably menacing. All in the dungeon froze in their places,
staring at the hooded shape -- the two cloaked figures, the masked man bending
over the girl, the girl herself on her knees, twisting her imprisoned head to
look upward.
"What means this unseemly mirth, dog?"
demanded the Aquilonian uneasily.
The man in the black garb tore his hood from his
head and flung it to the ground; he set his back to the closed door and lifted
the headsman's ax.
"Do you know me, dogs?" he rumbled.
"Do you know me?"
The breathless silence was broken by a scream.
"The king!" shrieked Albiona, wrenching
herself free from the slackened grasp of her captor. "Oh, Mitra, the
king!"
The three men stood like statues, and then the
Aquilonian started and spoke, like a man who doubts his own senses.
"Conan!" he ejaculated. "It is the
king, or his ghost! What devil's work is this?"
"Devil's work to match devils!" mocked
Conan, his lips laughing but hell flaming in bis eyes. "Come, fall to, my
gentlemen. You have your swords, and I this cleaver. Nay, I think this
butcher's tool fits the work at hand, my fair lords!"
"At him!" muttered the Aquilonian,
drawing his sword. "It is Conan and we must kill or be killed!"
And like men waking from a trance, the Nemedians
drew their blades and rushed on the king.
The headsman's ax was not made for such work, but
the king wielded the heavy, clumsy weapon as lightly as a hatchet, and his
quickness of foot, as he constantly shifted his position, defeated their
purpose of engaging him all three at once.
He caught the sword of the first man on his
ax-head and crushed in the wielder's breast with a murderous counterstroke
before he could step back or parry. The remaining Nemedian, missing a savage
swipe, had his brains dashed out before he could recover his balance, and an
instant later the Aquilonian was backed into a corner, desperately parrying the
crashing strokes that rained about him, lacking opportunity even to scream for
help.
Suddenly Conan's long left arm shot out and ripped
the mask from the man's head, disclosing the pallid features.
"Dog!" grated the king. "I thought
I knew you. Traitor! Damned renegade! Even this base steel is too honorable for
your foul head. Nay, die as thieves die!"
The ax fell in a devastating arc, and the
Aquilonian cried out and went to his knees, grasping the severed stump of his
right arm from which blood spouted. It had been shorn away at the elbow, and
the ax, unchecked in its descent, had gashed deeply into his side, so that his
entrails bulged out.
"Lie there and bleed to death," grunted
Conan, casting the ax away disgustedly. "Come, Countess!"
Stooping, he slashed the cords that bound her
wrists and lifting her as if she had been a child, strode from the dungeon. She
was sobbing hysterically, with her arms thrown about his corded neck in a
frenzied embrace.
"Easy all," he muttered. "We're not
out of this yet. If we can reach the dungeon where the secret door opens on
stairs that lead to the tunnel -- devil take it, they've heard that noise, even
through these walls."
Down the corridor arms clanged and the tramp and
shouting of men echoed under the vaulted roof. A bent figure came hobbling
swiftly along, lantern held high, and its light shone full on Conan and the
girl. With a curse the Cimmerian sprang toward him, but the old watchman,
abandoning both lantern and pike, scuttled away down the corridor, screeching
for help at the top of his cracked voice. Deeper shouts answered him.
Conan turned swiftly and ran the other way. He was
cut off from the dungeon with the secret lock and the hidden door through which
he had entered the Tower, and by which he had hoped to leave, but he knew this
grim building well. Before he was king he had been imprisoned in it.
He turned off into a side passage and quickly
emerged into another, broader corridor, which ran parallel to the one down
which he had come, and which was at the moment deserted. He followed this only
a few yards, when he again turned back, down another side passage. This brought
him back into the corridor he had left, but at a strategic point. A few feet
farther up the corridor there was a heavy bolted door, and before it stood a
bearded Nemedian in corselet and helmet his back to Conan as he peered up the
corridor in the direction of the growing tumult and wildly waving lanterns.
Conan did not hesitate. Slipping the girl to the
ground, he ran at the guard swiftly and silently, sword in hand. The man turned
just as the king reached him, bawled in surprize and fright and lifted his
pike; but before he could bring the clumsy weapon into play, Conan brought down
his sword on the fellow's helmet with a force that would have felled an ox.
Helmet and skull gave way together and the guard crumpled to the floor.
In an instant Conan had drawn the massive bolt
that barred the door -- too heavy for one ordinary man to have manipulated --
and called hastily to Albiona, who ran staggering to him. Catching her up
unceremoniously with one arm, he bore her through the door and into the outer
darkness.
They had come into a narrow alley, black as pitch,
walled by the side of the Tower on one hand, and the sheer stone back of a row
of buildings on the other. Conan, hurrying through the darkness as swiftly as
he dared, felt the latter wall for doors or windows, but found none.
The great door clanged open behind them, and men
poured out, with torches gleaming on breastplates and naked swords. They glared
about, bellowing, unable to penetrate the darkness which their torches served
to illuminate for only a few feet in any direction, and then rushed down the
alley at random -- heading in the direction opposite to that taken by Conan and
Albiona.
"They'll learn their mistake quick
enough," he muttered, increasing his pace. If we ever find a crack in this
infernal wall -- damn! The street watch!"
Ahead of them a faint glow became apparent, where
the alley opened into a narrow street, and he saw dim figures looming against
it with a glimmer of steel. It was indeed the street watch, investigating the
noise they had heard echoing down the alley.
"Who goes here?" they shouted, and Conan
grit his teeth at the hated Nemedian accent.
"Keep behind me," he ordered the girl.
"We've got to cut our way through before the prison guards come back and
pin us between them."
And grasping his sword, he ran straight at the
oncoming figures.
The advantage of surprize was his. He could see
them, limned against the distant glow, and they could not see him coming at
them out of the black depths of the alley. He was among them before they knew
it, smiting with the silent fury of a wounded lion.
His one chance lay in hacking through before they
could gather their wits. But there were half a score of them, in full mail,
hardbitten veterans of the border wars, in whom the instinct for battle could
take the place of bemused wits. Three of them were down before they realized
that it was only one man who was attacking them, but even so their reaction was
instantaneous. The clangor of steel rose deafeningly, and sparks flew as
Conan's sword crashed on basinet and hauberk. He could see better than they,
and in the dim light his swiftly moving figure was an uncertain mark. Flailing
swords cut empty air or glanced from his blade, and when he struck, it was with
the fury and certainty of a hurricane.
But behind him sounded the shouts of the prison
guards, returning up the alley at a run, and still the mailed figures before
him barred his way with a bristling wall of steel. In an instant the guards
would be on his back -- in desperation he redoubled his strokes, flailing like
a smith on an anvil, and then was suddenly aware of a diversion. Out of nowhere
behind the watchmen rose a score of black figures and there was a sound of
blows, murderously driven. Steel glinted in the gloom, and men cried out,
struck mortally from behind. In an instant the alley was littered with writhing
forms. A dark, cloaked shape sprang toward Conan, who heaved up his sword,
catching a gleam of steel in the right hand. But the other was extended to him
empty and a voice hissed urgently: "This way, your Majesty! Quickly!"
With a muttered oath of surprize, Conan caught up
Albiona in one massive arm, and followed his unknown befriender. He was not
inclined to hesitate, with thirty prison guardsmen closing in behind him.
Surrounded by mysterious figures he hurried down
the alley, carrying the countess as if she had been a child. He could tell
nothing of his rescuers except that they wore dark cloaks and hoods. Doubt and
suspicion crossed his mind, but at least they had struck down his enemies, and
he saw no better course than to follow them.
As if sensing his doubt, the leader touched his
arm lightly and said: "Fear not, King Conan; we are your loyal
subjects." The voice was not familiar, but the accent was Aquilonian of
the central provinces.
Behind them the guards were yelling as they
stumbled over the shambles in the mud, and they came pelting vengefully down
the alley, seeing the vague dark mass moving between them and the light of the
distant street. But the hooded men turned suddenly toward the seemingly blank
wall, and Conan saw a door gape there. He muttered a curse. He had traversed
that alley by day, in times past, and had never noticed a door there. But
through it they went, and the door closed behind them with the click of a lock.
The sound was not reassuring, but his guides were hurrying him on, moving with
the precision of familiarity, guiding Conan with a hand at either elbow. It was
like traversing a tunnel, and Conan felt Albiona's lithe limbs trembling in his
arms. Then somewhere ahead of them an opening was faintly visible, merely a
somewhat less black arch in the blackness, and through this they filed.
After that there was a bewildering succession of
dim courts and shadowy alleys and winding corridors, all traversed in utter silence,
until at last they emerged into a broad lighted chamber, the location of which
Conan could not even guess, for their devious route had confused even his
primitive sense of direction.
