The Hour of the Dragon, Robert E. Howard [best ebook reader for laptop txt] 📗

are not sufficient, and we can hope for no

reinforcements from Nemedia for the time being. I see the hand of

Pallantides in this brawling on the Ophirean frontier. He has kin in

Ophir.

 

“If we do not catch and crush Conan quickly the provinces will be in

blaze of revolt behind us. We shall have to fall back to Tarantia to

defend what we have taken; and we may have to fight our way through a

country in rebellion, with Conan’s whole force at our heels, and then

stand siege in the city itself, with enemies within as well as

without. No, we cannot wait. We must crush Conan before his army grows

too great, before the central provinces rise. With his head hanging

above the gate at Tarantia you will see how quickly the rebellion will

fall apart.”

 

“Why do you not put a spell on his army to slay them all?” asked

Valerius, half in mockery.

 

Xaltotun stared at the Aquilonian as if he read the full extent of the

mocking madness that lurked in those wayward eyes.

 

“Do not worry,” he said at last. “My arts shall crush Conan finally

like a lizard under the heel. But even sorcery is aided by pikes and

swords.”

 

“If he crosses the river and takes up his position in the Goralian

hills he may be hard to dislodge,” said Amalric. “But if we catch him

in the valley on this side of the river we can wipe him out. How far

is Conan from Tanasul?”

 

“At the rate he is marching he should reach the crossing sometime

tomorrow night. His men are rugged and he is pushing them hard. He

should arrive there at least a day before the Gundermen.”

 

“Good!” Amalric smote the table with his clenched fist. “I can reach

Tanasul before he can. I’ll send a rider to Tarascus, bidding him

follow me to Tanasul. By the time he arrives I will have cut Conan off

from the crossing and destroyed him. Then our combined force can cross

the river and deal with the Gundermen.”

 

Xaltotun shook his head impatiently.

 

“A good enough plan if you were dealing with anyone but Conan. But

your twenty-five thousand men are not enough to destroy his eighteen

thousand before the Gundermen come up. They will fight with the

desperation of wounded panthers. And suppose the Gundermen come up

while the hosts are locked in battle? You will be caught between two

fires and destroyed before Tarascus can arrive. He will reach Tanasul

too late to aid you.”

 

“What then?” demanded Amalric.

 

“Move with your whole strength against Conan,” answered the man from

Acheron. “Send a rider bidding Tarascus join us here. We will wait his

coming. Then we will march together to Tanasul.”

 

“But while we wait,” protested Amalric, “Conan will cross the river

and join the Gundermen.”

 

“Conan will not cross the river,” answered Xaltotun.

 

Amalric’s head jerked up and he stared into the cryptic dark eyes.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Suppose there were torrential rains far to the north, at the head of

the Shirki? Suppose the river came down in such flood as to render the

crossing at Tanasul impassable? Could we not then bring up our entire

force at our leisure, catch Conan on this side of the river and crush

him, and then, when the flood subsided, which I think it would do the

next day, could we not cross the river and destroy the Gundermen? Thus

we could use our full strength against each of these smaller forces in

turn.”

 

Valerius laughed as he always laughed at the prospect of the ruin of

either friend or foe, and drew a restless hand jerkily through his

unruly yellow locks. Amalric stared at the man from Acheron with

mingled fear and admiration.

 

“If we caught Conan in Shirki valley with the hill ridges to his right

and the river in flood to his left,” he admitted, “without whole force

we could annihilate him. Do you think-are you sure—do you believe

such rains will fall?”

 

“I go to my tent,” answered Xaltotun, rising. “Necromancy is not

accomplished by the waving of a wand. Send a rider to Tarascus. And

let none approach my tent.”

 

That last command was unnecessary. No man in that host could have been

bribed to approach that mysterious black silken pavilion, the door-flaps of which were always closely drawn. None but Xaltotun ever

entered it, yet voices were often heard issuing from it; its walls

billowed sometimes without a wind, and weird music came from it.

Sometimes, deep in midnight, its silken walls were lit red by flames

flickering within, limning misshapen silhouettes that passed to and

fro.

 

Lying in his own tent that night, Amalric heard the steady rumble of a

drum in Xaltotun’s tent; through the darkness it boomed steadily, and

occasionally the Nemedian could have sworn that a deep, croaking voice

mingled with the pulse of the drum. And he shuddered, for he knew that

voice was not the voice of Xaltotun. The drum rustled and muttered on

like deep thunder, heard afar off, and before dawn Amalric, glancing

from his tent, caught the red flicker of lightning afar on the

northern horizon. In all other parts of the sky the great stars blazed

whitely. But the distant lightning flickered incessantly, like the

crimson glint of firelight on a tiny, turning blade.

 

At sunset of the next day Tarascus came up with his host, dusty and

weary from hard marching, the footmen straggling hours behind the

horsemen. They camped in the plain near Amalric’s camp, and at dawn

the combined army moved westward.

 

Ahead of him roved a swarm of scouts, and Amalric waited impatiently

for them to return and tell of the Poitanians trapped beside a furious

flood. But when the scouts met the column it was with the news that

Conan had crossed the river!

 

“What?” exclaimed Amalric. “Did he cross before the flood?”

 

“There was no flood,” answered the scouts, puzzled. “Late last night

he came up to Tanasul and flung his army across.”

 

“No flood?” exclaimed Xaltotun, taken aback for the first time in

Amalric’s knowledge. “Impossible! There were mighty rains upon the

headwaters of the Shirki last night and the night before that!”

 

“That may be your lordship,” answered the scout. “It is true the water

was muddy, and the people of Tanasul said that the river rose perhaps

a foot yesterday; but that was not enough to prevent Conan’s

crossing.”

 

Xaltotun’s sorcery had failed! The thought hammered in Amalric’s

brain. His horror of this strange man out of the past had grown

steadily since that night in Belverus when he had seen a brown,

shriveled mummy swell and grow into a living man. And the death of

Orastes had changed lurking horror into active fear. In his heart was

a grisly conviction that the man-or devil-was invincible. Yet now he

had undeniable proof of his failure.

 

Yet even the greatest of necromancers might fail occasionally, thought

the baron. At any rate, he dared not oppose the man from Acheron-yet.

Orastes was dead, writhing in Mitra only knew what nameless hell, and

Amalric knew his sword would scarcely prevail where the black wisdom

of the renegade priest had failed. What grisly abomination Xaltotun

plotted lay in the unpredictable future. Conan and his host were a

present menace against which Xaltotun’s wizardry might well be needed

before the play was all played.

 

They came to Tanasul, a small fortified village at the spot where a

reef of rocks made a natural bridge across the river, passable always

except in times of greatest flood. Scouts brought in the news that

Conan had taken up his position in the Gpralian hills, which began to

rise a few miles beyond the river. And just before sundown the

Gundermen had arrived in his camp.

 

Amalric looked at Xaltotun, inscrutable and alien in the light of the

flaring torches. Night had fallen.

 

“What now? Your magic has failed. Conan confronts us with an army

nearly as strong as our own, and he has the advantage of position. We

have a choice of two evils: to camp here and await his attack, or to

fall back toward Tarantia and await reinforcements.”

 

“We are ruined if we wait,” answered Xaltotun. “Cross the river and

camp on the plain. We will attack at dawn.”

 

“But his position is too strong!” exclaimed Amalric.

 

“Fool!” A gust of passion broke the veneer of the wizard’s calm. “Have

you forgotten Valkia? Because some obscure elemental principle

prevented the flood do you deem me helpless? I had intended that your

spears should exterminate our enemies; but do not fear: it is my arts

shall crush their host. Conan is in a trap. He will never see another

sun set. Cross the river!”

 

They crossed by the flare of torches. The hoofs of the horses clinked

on the rocky bridge, splashed through the shallows. The glint of the

torches on shields and breastplates was reflected redly in the black

water. The rock bridge was broad on which they crossed, but even so it

was past midnight before the host was camped in the plain beyond.

Above them they could see fires winking redly in the distance. Conan

had tamed a bay in the Goralian hills, which had more than once before

served as the last Stand of an Aquilonian king. Amalric left his

pavilion and strode restlessly through the camp.

 

A weird glow flickered in Xaltotun’s tent, and from time to time a

demoniacal cry slashed the silence, and there was a low sinister

muttering of a drum that rustled rather than rumbled.

 

Amalric, his instincts whetted by the night and the circumstances,

felt that Xaltotun was opposed by more than physical force. Doubts of

the wizard’s power assailed him. He glanced at the fires high above

him, and his face set in grim lines. He and his army were deep in the

midst of a hostile country. Up there among those hills lurked

thousands of wolfish figures out of whose hearts and souls all emotion

and hope had been scourged except a frenzied hate for their

conquerors, a mad lust for vengeance. Defeat meant annihilation,

retreat through a land swarming with blood-mad enemies. And on the

morrow he must hurl his host against the grimmest fighter in the

western nations, and his desperate horde. If Xaltotun failed them now-Half a dozen men-at-arms strode out of the shadows. The firelight

glinted on their breastplates and helmet crests. Among them they half

led, half dragged a gaunt figure in tattered rags. Saluting, they

spoke: “My lord, this man came to the outposts and said he desired

word with King Valerius. He is an Aquilonian.”

 

He looked more like a wolf-a wolf the traps had scarred. Old sores

that only fetters make showed on his wrists and ankles. A great brand,

the mark of hot iron, disfigured his face. His eyes glared through the

tangle of his matted hair as he half crouched before the baron.

 

“Who are you, you filthy dog?” demanded the Nemedian. “Call me

Tiberias,” answered the man, and his teeth clicked in an involuntary

spasm. “I have come to tell you how to trap Conan.”

 

“A traitor, eh?” rumbled the baron.

 

“Men say you have gold,” mouthed the man, shivering under his rags.

“Give some to me! Give me gold and I will show you how to defeat the

king!” His eyes glazed widely, his outstretched, upturned hands were

spread like quivering claws.

 

Amalric shrugged his shoulders in distaste. But no tool was too base

for his use.

 

“If you speak the truth you shall have more gold than you can carry,”