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with red, oblique

eyes and pointed, rat-like teeth. They did not speak. Lifting the

corpse, they bore it away.

 

Dismissing the matter with a wave of his hand, Xaltotun seated himself

at the ivory table about which sat the pale kings. “Why are you in

conclave?” he demanded. “The Aquilonians have risen in the west,”

answered Amalric, recovering from the grisly jolt the death of Orastes

had given him. “The fools believe that Conan is alive, and coming at

the head of a Poitanian army to reclaim his kingdom. If he had

reappeared immediately after Valkia, or if a rumor had been circulated

that he lived, the central provinces would not have risen under him,

they feared your powers so. But they have become so desperate under

Valerius’s misrule that they are ready to follow any man who can unite

them against us, and prefer sudden death to torture and continual

misery.

 

“Of course the tale has lingered stubbornly in the land that J Conan

was not really slam at Valkia, but not until recently have I the

masses accepted it. But Pallantides is back from exile in Ophir,

swearing that the king was ill in his tent that day, and that a manat-arms wore his harness, and a squire who but recently recovered from

the stroke of a mace received at Valkia confirms his tale-or pretends

to.

 

“An old woman with a pet wolf has wandered up and down the land,

proclaiming that King Conan yet lives, and will return some day to

reclaim the crown. And of late the cursed priests of Asura sing the

same song. They claim that word has come to them by some mysterious

means that Conan is returning to reconquer his domain. I cannot catch

either her or them. This is, of course, a trick of Trocero’s. My spies

tell me there is indisputable evidence that the Poitanians are

gathering to invade Aquilonia. I believe that Trocero will bring

forward some pretender who he will claim is King Conan.”

 

Tarascus laughed, but there was no conviction in his laughter. He

surreptitiously felt a scar beneath his jupon, and remembered ravens

that cawed on the trail of a fugitive; remembered the body of his

squire, Arideus, brought back from the border mountains horribly

mangled, by a great gray wolf, his terrified soldiers said. But he

also remembered a red jewel stolen from a golden chest while a wizard

slept, and he said nothing.

 

And Valerius remembered a dying nobleman who gasped out a tale of

fear, and he remembered four Khitans who disappeared into the mazes of

the south and never returned. But he held his tongue, for hatred and

suspicions of his allies ate at him like a worm, and he desired

nothing so much as to see both rebels and Nemedians go down locked in

the death grip.

 

But Amalric exclaimed, “It is absurd to dream that Conan lives!”

 

For answer Xaltotun cast a roll of parchment on the table.

 

Amalric caught it up, glared at it. From his lips burst a furious,

incoherent cry. He read:

 

To Xaltotun, grand fakir of Nemedia: Dog of Acheron, I am returning to

my kingdom, and I mean to hang your hide on a bramble.

 

CONAN.

 

“A forgery!” exclaimed Amalric.

 

Xaltotun shook his head.

 

“It is genuine. I have compared it with the signature on the royal

documents in the libraries of the court. None could imitate that bold

scrawl.”

 

“Then if Conan lives,” muttered Amalric, “this uprising will not be

like the others, for he is the only man living who can unite the

Aquilonians. But,” he protested, “this is not like Conan. Why should

he put us on guard with his boasting? One would think that he would

strike without warning, after the fashion of the barbarians.”

 

“We are already warned,” pointed out Xaltotun. “Our spies have told us

of preparations for war in Poitain. He could not cross the mountains

without our knowledge; so he sends his defiance in characteristic

manner.”

 

“Why to you?” demanded Valerius. “Why not to me, or to Tarascus?”

 

Xaltotun turned his inscrutable gaze upon the king. “Conan is wiser

than you,” he said at last. “He already knows what you kings have yet

to leam-that it is not Tarascus, nor Valerius, no, nor Amalric, but

Xaltotun who is the real master of the western nations.”

 

They did not reply; they sat staring at him, assailed by a numbing

realization of the truth of his assertion.

 

“There is no road for me but the imperial highway,” said Xaltotun.

“But first we must crush Conan. I do not know how he escaped me at

Belverus, for knowledge of what happened while I lay in the slumber of

the black lotus is denied me. But he is in the south, gathering an

army. It is his last, desperate blow, made possible only by the

desperation of the people who have suffered under Valerius. Let them

rise; I hold them all in the palm of my hand. We will wait until he

moves against us, and then we will crush him once and for all.

 

“Then we shall crush Poitain and Gunderland and the stupid Bossonians.

After them Ophir, Argos, Zingara, Koth-all the nations of the world we

shall weld into one vast empire. You shall rule as my satraps, and as

my captains shall be greater than kings are now. I am unconquerable,

for the Heart of Ahriman is hidden where no man can ever wield it

against me again.”

 

Tarascus averted his gaze, lest Xaltotun read his thoughts. He knew

the wizard had not looked into the golden chest with its carven

serpents that had seemed to sleep, since he laid the Heart therein.

Strange as it seemed, Xaltotun did not know that the Heart had been

stolen; the strange jewel was beyond or outside the ring of his dark

wisdom; his uncanny talents did not warn him that the chest was empty.

Tarascus did not believe that Xaltotun knew the full extent of

Orastes’ revelations, for the Pythonian had not mentioned the

restoration of Acheron, but only the building of a new, earthly

empire. Tarascus did not believe that Xaltotun was yet quite sure of

his power; if they needed his aid in their ambitions, no less he

needed theirs. Magic depended, to a certain extent after all, on sword

strokes and lance thrusts. The king read meaning in Amalric’s furtive

glance; let the wizard use his arts to help them defeat their most

dangerous enemy. Time enough then to turn against him. There might yet

be a way to cheat this dark power they had raised.

Chapter 21: Drums of Peril

CONFIRMATION OF THE war came when the army of Poitain, ten thousand

strong, marched through the southern passes with waving banners and

shimmer of steel. And at their head, the spies swore, rode a giant

figure in black armor, with the royal lion of Aquilonia worked in gold

upon the breast of his rich silken surcoat. Conan lived! The king

lived! There was no doubt of it in men’s minds now, whether friend or

foe.

 

With the news of the invasion from the south there also came word,

brought by hard-riding couriers, that a host of Gundermen was moving

southward, reinforced by the barons of the northwest and the northern

Bossonians. Tarascus marched with thirty-one thousand men to Galparan,

on the river Shirki, which the Gundermen must cross to strike at the

towns still held by the Nemedians. The Shirki was a swift, turbulent

river rushing southwestward through rocky gorges and canyons, and

there were few places where an army could cross at that time of the

year, when the stream was almost bank-full with the melting of the

snows. All the country east of the Shirki was in the hands of the

Nemedians, and it was logical to assume that the Gundermen would

attempt to cross either at Galparan, or at Tanasul, which lay to the

south of Galparan. Reinforcements were daily expected from Nemedia,

until word came that the king of Ophir was making hostile

demonstrations on Nemedia’s southern border, and to spare any more

troops would be to expose Nemedia to the risk of an invasion from the

south.

 

Amalric and Valerius moved out from Tarantia with twenty-five thousand

men, leaving as large a garrison as they dared to discourage revolts

in the cities during their absence. They wished to meet and crush

Conan before he could be joined by the rebellious forces of the

kingdom.

 

The king and his Poitanians had crossed the mountains, but there had

been no actual clash of arms, no attack on towns or fortresses. Conan

had appeared and disappeared. Apparently he had turned westward

through the wild, thinly settled hill country, and entered the

Bossonian marches, gathering recruits as he went. Amalric and Valerius

with their host, Nemedians, Aquilonian renegades, and ferocious

mercenaries, moved through the land in baffled wrath, looking for a

foe which did not appear.

 

Amalric found it impossible to obtain more than vague general tidings

about Conan’s movements. Scouting-pardes had a way of riding out and

never returning, and it was not uncommon to find a spy crucified to an

oak. The countryside was up and striking as peasants and countryfolk

strike-savagely, murderously and secretly. All that Amalric knew

certainly was that a large force of Gundermen and northern Bossonians

was somewhere to the north of him, beyond the Shirki, and that Conan

with a smaller force of Poitanians and southern Bossonians was

somewhere to the southwest of him.

 

He began to grow fearful that if he and Valerius advanced farther into

the wild country, Conan might elude them entirely, march around them

and invade the central provinces behind them. Amalric fell back from

the Shirki valley and camped in a plain a day’s ride from Tanasul.

There he waited. Tarascus maintained his position at Galparan, for he

feared that Conan’s maneuvers were intended to draw him southward, and

so let the Gundermen into the kingdom at the northern crossing.

 

To Amalric’s camp came Xaltotun in his chariot drawn by the uncanny

horses that never tired, and he entered Amalric’s tent where the baron

conferred with Valerius over a map spread on an ivory camp table.

 

This map Xaltotun crumpled and flung aside.

 

“What your scouts cannot learn for you,” quoth he, “my spies tell me,

though their information is strangely blurred and imperfect, as if

unseen forces were working against me.”

 

“Conan is advancing the Shirki river with ten thousand Poitanians,

three thousand southern Bossonians, and barons of the west and south

with the retainers to the number of five thousand. An army of thirty

thousand Gundermen and northern Bossonians is pushing southward to

join him-They have established contact by means of secret

communications used by the cursed priests of Asura, who seem to be

opposing me, and whom I will feed to a serpent when the battle is

over-I swear it by Set!

 

“Both armies are headed for the crossing at Tanasul, but I do not

believe that the Gundermen will cross the river. I believe that Conan

will cross, instead, and join them.”

 

“Why should Conan cross the river?”

 

“Because it is to his advantage to delay the battle. The longer he

waits, the stronger he will become, the more precarious our position.

The hills on the other side of the river swarm with people

passionately loyal to his cause-broken men, refugees, fugitives from

Valerius’s cruelty. From all over the kingdom men are hurrying to join

his army, singly and by companies. Daily, parties from our armies are

ambushed and cut to pieces by the countryfolk. Revolt grows in the

central provinces, and will soon burst into open rebellion. The

garrisons we left there

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