“But what of you?”
Conan grinned and indicated the circle of Aquilonians. “Here’s my fortune. With these true friends, I shall have all the wealth in Aquilonia at my feet.”
The stout Publius spoke up: “Your generosity does you credit, Conan, but I wish you had consulted with me first. For revolutions are made not only by wrongs, but also by gold; and Numedides’ publicans have so beggared Aquilonia that we shall be hard put to find the money to hire mercenaries.”
“Ha!” laughed Conan. “I’ll get you gold enough to set every blade in Aquilonia swinging!” In a few words he told of the treasure of Tranicos and of the destruction of Valenso’s settlement. “Now the demon’s gone from the cave; the Picts will be scattering to their villages. With a detail of well-armed men, we can make a quick march to the cavern and back before they realize we’re in Pictland. Are you with me?”
They cheered until Belesa feared that their noise would draw the attention of the Picts. Conan cast her a sly grin and muttered in Zingaran, under cover of the racket:
“How d’you like ‘King Conan’? Sounds not bad, eh?”
NINE: Wolves Beyond the Border
The revolution progresses with hurricane speed. While knights and sergeants in gleaming mail clash in charge and countercharge on the Aquilonian plains, civil war rages along the Pictish frontier between the partisans of Conan and those of Numedides. The Picts, naturally, see their opportunity. Here is the tale of some of the events of that strife-torn land, as told by one of the survivors of the conflict; for the Hyborian Age was a time of stirring events in many times and places, not merely those in which Conan was present.
It was the mutter of a drum that awakened me. I lay still amidst the bushes where I had taken refuge, straining my ears to locate it, for such sounds are illusive in the deep forest. In the dense woods about me, there was no sound.
Above me, the tangled vines and brambles bent close to form a massed roof, and above them loomed the higher, gloomier arch of the branches of the great trees.
Not a star shone through that leafy vault. Low-hanging clouds seemed to press down upon the very treetops. There was no moon; the night was as dark as a witch’s hate.
The better for me. If I could not see my enemies, neither could they see me. But the whisper of that ominous drum stole through the night: thrum! thrum! thrum! …a steady monotone that grunted and growled of nameless secrets. I could not mistake the sound. Only one drum in the world makes just that deep, menacing, sullen thunder: a Pictish war-drum, in the hands of those wild painted savages who haunt the wilderness beyond the border of the Westermarck.
And I was beyond that border, alone, and concealed in a brambly covert in the midst of the great forest, where those naked fiends have reigned since Time’s earliest dawn.
Now I located the sound; the drum was beating westward of my position and, I believed, at no great distance.
Quickly I girt my belt more firmly, settled war-axe and knife in their beaded sheaths, strung my heavy bow, and made sure that my quiver was in place at my left hip …groping with my fingers in the utter darkness …and then I crawled from the thicket and went warily toward the sound of the drum.
That it personally concerned me I did not believe. If the forest men had discovered me, their discovery would have been announced by a sudden knife in my throat, not by a drum beating in the distance. But the throb of the war-drum had a significance no forest-runner could ignore. It was a warning and a threat, a promise of doom for those invaders whose lonely cabins and axe-marked clearings menaced the immemorial solitude of the wilderness. It meant fire and torture, flaming arrows dropping like falling stars through the darkness, and the red axes crunching through skulls of men and women and children.
So through the blackness of the nighted forest I went, feeling my way delicately among the mighty boles, sometimes creeping on hands and knees, and now and then my heart in my throat when a creeper brushed across my face or groping hand. For there are huge serpents in that forest, which sometimes hang by their tails from branches and so snare their prey. But the creatures I sought were more terrible than any serpent, and as the drum grew louder I went as cautiously as if I trod on naked swords. And presently I glimpsed a red gleam among the trees and heard a mutter of barbaric voices mingling with the snarl of the drum.
Whatever weird ceremony might be taking place yonder under the black trees, it was likely that they had outposts scattered about the place; and I knew how silent and motionless a Pict could stand, merging with the natural forest even in dim light, and unsuspected until his blade was through his victim’s heart. My flesh crawled at the thought of colliding with one such grim sentry in the darkness, and I drew my knife and held it extended before me. But I knew not even a Pict could see me in that blackness of tangled forest-roof and cloud-massed sky.
The light revealed itself as a fire, before which silhouettes moved like black devils against the red fires of Hell. And presently I crouched close among the dense tamarack and looked into a black-walled glade and the figures that moved therein.
There were forty or fifty Picts, naked but for loincloths and hideously painted, who squatted in a wide semicircle, facing the fire, with their backs to me. By the hawk feathers in their thick black manes, I knew them to be of the Hawk Clan, or Onavaga. In the midst of the glade there was a crude altar made of rough stones heaped together, and at the sight of this my flesh crawled anew.
For I had seen these Pictish altars before, all charred with fire and stained with blood, in empty forest glades. And, though I had never witnessed the rituals wherein these things were used, I had heard the tales told about them by men who had been captives among the Picts, or spied upon them even as I was spying.
A feathered shaman was dancing between the fire and the altar, a slow, shuffling dance indescribably grotesque, which caused his plumes to swing and sway about him. And his features were hidden by a grinning scarlet mask that looked like a forest-devil’s face.
In the midst of the semicircle of warriors squatted one with the great drum between his knees, and as he singed it with his clenched fist it gave forth that low, growling rumble which is like the mutter of distant thunder.
Between the warriors and the dancing shaman stood one who was no Pict. For he was as tall as I, and his skin, light in the play of the fire. But he was clad only in doeskin loinclout and moccasins, and his body was painted, and there was a hawk feather in his hair. So I knew he must be a Ligurean, one of those light-skinned savages who dwell in small clans in the great forest, generally at war with the Picts but sometimes at peace and allied with them. Their skins are white as an Aquilonian’s. The Picts are a white race, too, in that they are not black or brown or yellow; but they are black-eyed and black-haired and dark of skin. Neither they nor the Ligureans are spoken of as “white” by the people of Westermarck, who only designate thus a man of Hyborian blood.
Now, as I watched, I saw three warriors drag a man into the ring of the firelight …another Pict, naked and bloodstained, who still wore in his tangled mane a feather that identified him as a member of the Raven Clan, with whom the Hawkmen were ever at war. His captors cast him down upon the altar, bound hand and foot, and I saw his muscles swell and writhe in the firelight as he sought in vain to break the rawhide thongs which prisoned him.
Then the shaman began dancing again, weaving intricate patterns about the altar and the man upon it; and he who beat the drum wrought himself into a fine frenzy, thundering away like one possessed of a devil. And suddenly, down from an overhanging branch dropped one of those great serpents of which I have spoken. The firelight glistened on its scales as it writhed toward the altar, its beady eyes glittering and its forked tongue darting in and out; but the warriors showed no fear, though it passed within a few feet of some of them. And that was strange, for ordinarily those serpents are the only living creatures a Pict fears.