NINE: Night of Blood and Fire
Conan snatched up the copper bowl. The heat remaining in it seared his fingers, but he flung the huge vessel into the first rank of the charging Witchmen. They went down in a tangle of arms and legs. Conan whirled in time to see the mighty black fade from view in a second flare of soundless green fire. That magic, it seemed, could bridge the vast distances of space between frigid Hyperborea and far, jungled Zembabwei. It was obvious that the adepts had used much the same method to travel here in the first place.
“Cimmerian!”
Something in the tone of that lisping voice froze Conan. He turned his head.
The Kambujan was a sorry sight. His fantastic jewel-covered robes were black with soot, ripped and torn. His gem-encrusted crown had fallen away, revealing his shaven skull. His face was hideously blackened and blistered. But through the seared mask his eyes blazed with deadly power into Conan’s.
One hand, covered with burns, blisters, and glittering rings, was extended. But a weird force flashed from the tense, quivering fingers to bathe the mighty Cimmerian.
Conan gasped. His flesh numbed as if he had been suddenly plunged into the depths of an icy river. Paralysis seized his limbs.
Setting his teeth, he struggled against the spell with all his might. His face blackened with effort; his eyes bulged in their sockets. Then the tension drained from him. He was frozen into immobility, and all his giant strength could not break the spell.
Crouched amidst the coals, the little Kambujan smiled, although his burned face winced at the movement of seared lips. Unholy glee blazed in his cold, ophidian eyes.
Slowly he extended his arm to its full length, mumbling strange words of power.
Pain ripped through Conan’s mighty heart. Darkness swept about him, sucking him down.
And then, with a sharp thud, the vaned butt of a crossbow bolt appeared, protruding from the side of Pra-Eun’s shaven skull. The rest of the missile was buried in the Kambujan’s brain. The cold black eyes glazed and went dull.
A shudder swept through the crouched figure. Then the dead thing wobbled and fell forward. The spell snapped, and Conan was free.
He staggered, caught himself, and stood gasping as strength and vitality flooded back into his benumbed flesh.
He raised his eyes and looked over the corpse of Pra-Eun. At the far extremity of the hall, Euric the huntsman lowered his massive crossbow. It had been the riskiest shot of his career, hitting the crouching sorcerer across the length of the gloom-drenched hall.
Behind him, crowding into the hall, came a dozen mail-clad knights and a hundred stout guardsmen in the livery of Tanasul. Prospero had come at last.
As dawn lit the east with pink flame, Conan wrapped a warm wool cloak about the shoulders of his son. Although his hands were bandaged over the burns inflicted by the copper cauldron, he lifted the weary boy astride one of the guardsmen’s horses. The long, terrible night of blood and fire was over, and the ending was a happy one. Prospero’s knights had swept the keep from end to end, slaughtering every last member of the Witchwoman’s following. A good night’s work, the crushing of the cult of death-worshipers which had ruled the north with the cold hand of terror.
Conan looked back. Flames shot through the arrow slits of the fortress of Pohiola. Already the roof of the keep had fallen in. Buried in the rubble, under tons of crushed stone, lay the corpses of Pra-Eun and Louhi. Had he not warned Louhi that he would be her doom? Prospero had ridden like the wind back to Tanasul, had pulled together a fighting force in hours, and had plunged back on the long trail across Gunderland and the Border Kingdom as if a thousand devils were at his back.
By day and by night, he and his grim-faced levy had flogged their horses on, haunted by the fear that they might arrive too late. But they had come, as it chanced, at just the right time. Even as they rode within bowshot of the great keep, no eye had been at battlement or loophole to observe their approach. And the reason was that Conan was holding at bay half a hundred Witchmen and the four most deadly magicians on earth.
The portcullis was up and the great iron-studded door had swung open at a touch. The servants of the White Hand were too contemptuous of lesser men and too confident in the powers of their cat-eyed queen to bother with bolting the door.
Thunder shook the earth. Flames shot up to the heavens. Behind them the great keep came crashing down in ruins. Pohiola was no more, but its evil would linger in myth and fable for thousands of years.
Weary and travel stained, but with heart-deep content shining in his eyes, Prospero came up to where Conan stood, leaning upon the horse that bore the sleepy boy. Conan’s eyes flashed.
“You even remembered to bring my Black Wodan!” he grinned, slapping the great stallion on the flanks. It nosed him affectionately.
“Shall we go home now, sire?” Prospero asked.
“Aye—home to Tarantia! I’ve had a bellyful of hunting. And of being hunted! Devil take these Hyperborean fogs! I’ve the sour taste of them in my throat” Conan growled. He thoughtfully gazed about.
“What is it, sire?”
“I was just wondering—would you have any more of that good red wine of the Poitanian vineyards? As I recall, after the hunt, there was a little left…”
Conan broke off, flushing. For Prospero had begun to laugh until the tears were pouring down his cheeks, cutting runnels through the caked dust.
BLACK SPHINX OF NEBTHU
ONE: Place of Skulls
Night lay like an ebon pall on the trampled, blood-soaked earth of Zingara. Through flying tatters of mist, as through a ragged shroud, the cold white skull of the moon leered down on a scene of horror. For the rolling, barren plain that sloped down to the shallow Alimane was encumbered with the sprawled, gore-splashed corpses of men and their mounts. In silent hundreds dead knights and yeomen lay, some face-down in pools of congealing blood, others on their backs, with dead eyes staring up into the grinning jaws of the mocking moon. The hideous mirth of hyenas rang weirdly through the still air as the scavengers crunched and gobbled.
Few dwelt in this dreary northeastern corner of Zingara, and those few had been further thinned by centuries of war with and raids from Poitain, across the Alimane. The land had been largely abandoned to the prowling wolf and the slinking leopard. Some whispered that the semi-human ghouls, legended to haunt certain hills in central Zingara, had recently been seen in this region also. Tonight there were the makings of a feast for both ghouls and hyenas.
The Zingarans called this grim region the Place of Skulls. Never before had it so well earned its name; never had the bitter sands drunk so deeply of hot blood. Never before had so many hacked and shaft-pierced men gone wailing down.the red road to Hell, to litter the bleak waste with their bones.
And here the bright imperial dreams of Pantho, duke of Guarralid, had been drowned in darkness, and the fires of his vaulting ambition had been quenched in blood. The throne of Zingara was vacant. For that prize, Pantho had gambled all. He had led his band of adventurers into Argos and made himself master of its western provinces. Old King Milo of Argos and his elder son had fallen in battle before him.
Then Duke Pantho had suddenly thrust his army deep into sunny Poitain, across the Alimane. Men supposed that he had done this to secure his rear before striking for the Zingaran capital of Kordava. But they could only guess, since none knew for certain, and Pantho’s tongue had been silenced forever by an Aquilonian sword.