Then the drum changed its beat to a quick one-two. Two Picts raised the pole with the bag, so that it towered, swaying, over their heads.
“Now!” breathed Hakon.
I sighted on the bag and breathed a prayer to Mitra. I had never shot this bow; the light was poor; the bag wobbled from side to side.
The drum beat changed again. Whistles and rattles sounded; sharp commands ran down the line. With a frightful ululation of whoops, hundreds of Picts streamed out of the forest toward the village and the fort, yelling like fiends.
I shot. As soon as I released my shaft, I knew I had shot awry and snatched at the quiver for a second. But the bag, swaying back and forth on its pole, chose to wobble into the path of my arrow. The shaft struck home with a sound like a bursting drumhead.
The Picts holding the pole started forward with the rest, then paused, gazing fearfully upward. A rending sound came from the bag, whence swirled a great smoky mass.
“Down flat!” yelled Hakon in my ear, pulling my arm as he threw himself down. I needed no second reminder, but joined him prone on the forest floor.
The bag sagged and drooped, losing all its plumpness. The cloud that had issued from it spread out over the far-flung Pictish force, which was now racing across fields, trampling crops, toward Schondara. And as the cloud spread, it took on a lumpy appearance, as if solidifying into solid masses. The dark masses condensed into living creatures …tall, thin beings with birdlike legs and lower parts and half-human heads and upper portions. Each had long, skinny arms ending in hands armed with huge, curved claws. As tall as a man, each demon was accompanied by a weird, flickering glow, as if the being were bathed in the cold flames of marsh fire.
I have no idea how many of the things there were. I hid my face, lest my eye meet that of a demon and he draw nigh. There may have been a hundred or five hundred.
Shrieking and howling, the demons raced hither and yon, at every stride striking down a Pict with a sweep of those talons. Shrieking even louder than the swamp-demons, the Picts ran for their lives in all directions; but the demons were faster. Near us one Pict, his head shorn clean off by a sweep of demoniac claws, took two steps without it ere he fell into the brush.
A few Picts remembered to throw themselves flat. But the great majority, taken by surprise and not having received the expected command to drop to earth, panicked and fled. That was fatal; after them bounded the furious demons on their long birds’ legs, swifter than any man could run.
One by one the flickering nimbi that veiled the swamp-demons faded away, as the devils vanished into the forest At last there was no living creature in sight.
Hakon and I arose, stretched our stiff muscles, and headed for Schondara. A Pict popped up in front of us, like a startled rabbit. Instead of coming for us with a whoop and a flourish of his war-axe, he turned his head away, pretending not to see us, and jogged off into the forest I blame him not. The thing we had just seen was enough to blast the courage of even so fierce and warlike a folk as the Picts.
We found Valerian’s head and left arm, and then the rest of him, lying beside the pole with the leathern bag. The head we took with us for proof of our tale. Kwaiada we did not see.
A ranger met us at the edge of Schondara; Dirk Strom’s son, puzzled by the scattering of the Pictish host, had sent the man out to scout. When he heard our tale, he ran back to the fort, shouting the good news. Presently we were being carried on the shoulders of a yelling, cheering throng into the fort and around the crowded courtyard.
But the picture I best remember is the face of Otho Gorm’s son, standing with his back to the outer stockade in the torchlight. He had come to Schondara after all, to pursue his quarrel with me. And now he stood with utter dumbfoundment writ on his foolish face, watching Hakon and me being hailed as the saviors of the province! I would have twitted him about it, but he slipped out and went back to Fort Kwanyara that night, rather than have to eat his hasty words.
And then came the news that the wretched Numedides was dead, and Conan was king. Since then the border has been more peaceful than ever within living memory; for all know, on both sides of the boundary, that King Conan means what he says and will stand for no trifling with treaties, either by the savages or by us. Thandara now has thriving towns and villages.
But I must admit that life was more exciting in the old days, when there was no law save as each borderer could make his own.
TEN: The Phoenix on the Sword
Storming the capital city and slaying King Numedides on the steps of his throne —which he promptly takes for his own— Conan, now in his early or mid-forties, finds himself the king of the greatest of the Hyborian nations.
A king’s life, however, proves no bed of houris. Within the year, the minstrel Rinaldo is chanting defiant ballads in praise of the “martyred” Numedides. Ascalante, Count of Thune, is gathering a group of plotters to topple the barbarian from his throne. Conan finds that people have short memories, and that he, too, suffers from the uneasiness of head that goes with a crown.
Over shadowy spires and gleaming towers lay the ghostly darkness and silence that runs before dawn. Into a dim alley, one of a veritable labyrinth of mysterious winding ways, four masked figures came hurriedly from a door which a dusky hand furtively opened. They spoke not but went swiftly into the gloom, cloaks wrapped closely about them; as silently as the ghosts of murdered men they disappeared in the darkness. Behind them a sardonic countenance was framed in the partly opened door; a pair of evil eyes glittered malevolently in the gloom.
“Go into the night, creatures of the night,” a voice mocked. “O fools, your doom hounds your heels like a blind dog, and you know it not.”
The speaker closed the door and bolted it, then turned and went up the corridor, candle in hand. He was a somber giant, whose dusky skin revealed his Stygian blood. He came into an inner chamber, where a rail, lean man in worn velvet lounged like a great, lazy cat on a silken couch, sipping wine from a huge golden goblet.
“Well, Ascalante,” said the Stygian, setting down the candle, “your dupes have slunk into the streets like rats from their burrows. You work with strange tools.”
’Tools?” replied Ascalante. “Why, they consider me that. For months now, ever since the Rebel Four summoned me from the southern desert, I have been living in the very heart of my enemies, hiding by day in this obscure house, skulking through dark alleys and darker corridors at night. And I have accomplished what those rebellious nobles could not. Working through them, and through other agents, many of whom have never seen my face, I have honeycombed the empire with sedition and unrest. In short I, working in the shadows, have paved the downfall of the king who sits throned in the sun. By Mitra, I was a statesman before I was an outlaw.”
“And these dupes who deem themselves your masters?”
“They will continue to think that I serve them, until our present task is completed. Who are they to match wits with Ascalante? Volmana, the dwarfish count of Karaban; Gromel, the giant commander of the Black Legion; Dion, the fat baron of Attalus; Rinaldo, the hare-brained minstrel. I am the force which has welded together the steel in each, and by the clay in each, I will crush them when the time comes. But that lies in the future; tonight the king dies.”
“Days ago I saw the imperial squadrons ride from the city,” said the Stygian.
“They rode to the frontier which the heathen Picts assail …thanks to the strong liquor which I’ve smuggled over the borders to madden them. Dion’s great wealth made that possible. And Volmana made it possible to dispose of the rest of the imperial troops which remained in the city. Through his princely kin in Nemedia, it was easy to persuade King Numa to request the presence of Count Trocero of Poitain, seneschal of Aquilonia; and, of course, to do him honor, he’ll be accompanied by an imperial escort, as well as his own troops, and Prospero, King Conan’s right-hand man. That leaves only the king’s personal bodyguard in the city …besides the Black Legion. Through Gromel, I’ve corrupted a spend-thrifty officer of that guard and bribed him to lead his men away from the king’s door at midnight.