Perhaps we could execute a couple of scapegoats…after cutting out their tongues. After a suitable time of mourning, I shall gather my army and strike to the north and to the east. My name will be lauded in history with our great conquerors of old!”
His voice rang high with excitement and his eyes shone. With an imperious gesture, he rose. “Arm yourselves, gentlemen. Don your masks. We go to Yasmina’s chambers by a secret passage. Our duty to the kingdom will be performed within the hour!”
Five black-masked nobles filed out of the room on their way to cut the throat of a defenseless woman.
The faint light of the stars sifted into the queen’s bedchamber, as Conan awoke for the second time that night.
His sharp ears caught a soft, almost inaudible sound. Any ordinary man would have muttered sleepily, attributed the disturbance to rats or bad dreams, turned over, and gone back to sleep.
Not so Conan! Instantly wide awake, he investigated. His animal instincts were on edge. As his right hand sought the hilt of his sword and drew it noiselessly from its shagreen scabbard, his left parted the hangings to get a view of the room. Yasmina lay sleeping, a faint smile on her beautiful lips.
It needed not the glint of steel in the hands of five dark figures, faintly outlined in the starlight, to tell Conan that here was deadly danger. Masked men did not nightly invade their queen’s chamber with kindly intentions.
Catlike, he crouched on the balls of his feet, sword in hand, rage in his heart.
The assassins stole closer, readying their daggers for the strokes that would seat a new ruler on the throne of Vendhya. One was already plucking at the hangings of the royal bed.
Conan went into action with blurring speed. Like a maddened tiger he sprang. The nearest man was down, disemboweled, before the others recovered from their shock. His sword flashed quick as a striking cobra. With a crash, the helmet and head of another were cloven to the chin. Conan kicked the corpse against the others, breaking their charge, while parrying a cut against his legs by one who had dodged the human missile. With a terrific backhanded swipe, he smote the sword arm from the man’s body. The limb fell jerking to the floor, while the assassin sank down in a heap.
Conan stormed against the remaining two. With flashing sabers, they fought for their lives under the maddened onslaught of the naked Cimmerian. Red fury blazed in Conan’s eyes as he rained mighty strokes upon their frantic parries, circling them to keep them from getting on opposite sides of him.
“Murder a woman sleeping in her bed, will you?” he snarled. “Cowards! Jackals! Any treacherous Stygian is a fair fighter compared to you! But no blood shall be spilt tonight but yours, curs!”
Conan’s blade flickered like a shaft of deadly light. A terrific slash shore off the head of one of his masked adversaries, with the ferocity of the Cimmerian’s attack backed the single one remaining against the wall. Their swift blows and parries shaped a glittering, ever-changing pattern of steel in the starlight.
Yasmina, now fully awake, stood beside her bed, watching with bated breath. Suddenly she cried out in terror, as Conan slipped in the blood on the floor and fell across one of the corpses.
The Vendhyan assailant sprang forward, unholy glee in his black eyes.
He raised his sword. Conan struggled to rise. Suddenly, the mouth of his foe flew open. He teetered, dropping his sword, and fell with a choking gurgle. Behind was revealed the naked, supple form of Yasmina.
Between the shoulders of the dead Kshatriya protruded the hilt of the dagger she had driven home in the nick of time to save her lover.
Conan slashed himself free from the entangling folds of a mantle and rose. From head to foot he was covered with blood, but his blue eyes blazed with their old unquenchable fire.
“Lucky for me you were quick with your sticker, girl! But for you, I should have kept these gentlemen company in Hell by now. Crom, but it was a good fight!”
Her first reply was one of feminine anxiety. “You bleed, my chieftain! Come with me to the bathroom, and we will dress your wounds.”
“It’s theirs, all but a couple of scratches,” grunted Conan, wiping the blood off with the turban cloth of one of the dead assassins. “Small price to pay to thwart these scoundrels.”
“I praise the gods you were with me, or they would have succeeded.” The Devi’s voice was vibrant with emotion. “Never have I dreamed that assassination threatened me! The people deem my rule just, and I have the backing of the army and most of the nobility. Maybe Yezdigerd of Turan has sent emissaries as masked murderers to my chambers.”
“Yezdigerd won’t bother you again,” muttered the Cimmerian. “He’s dead. I slew him on his own ship. Unmask them!”
The Devi tore the mask from the face of the man she had knifed, then recoiled in amazement and horror.
“Chengir! My own cousin! Oh, treachery, black treachery and power madness! Heads shall roll for this tomorrow!”
She shook her raven tresses and turned her dark, liquid eyes on the inscrutable face of the Cimmerian. “I know now that I need a consort. Rule Vendhya with me, Conan! Tomorrow we’ll announce our betrothal; within a month there will be nuptial feasts and ceremonies such as have not taken place in Vendhya for a hundred years! I love you, my chieftain!”
She embraced him hotly, straining with her vigorous, slim young body against his, covering his lips with kisses, until his senses swam. But he shook his head and thrust her gently from him. He held her at arm’s length.
“Crom knows, lass, that you make a tempting offer,” he rumbled. “Few women have I seen so beautiful as you, nor so wise. Any man blessed with your hand in marriage would count himself the favorite of a hundred gods. Ten years ago, when I was a wandering soldier of fortune, I would perhaps have accepted. Now I cannot. I have my own kingdom now, Aquilonia in the West, the mightiest realm in the world. But my queen has been stolen from me by an evil magician in Khitai, and I have sworn an oath to get her back. I should not be a man if I did not keep my vow. Marry one of your own people. They would rather be ruled by a king of their own blood. Tomorrow I ride for the Himelians.”
There was misty tenderness and vast love in the deep, brimming eyes of Yasmina as she regarded him. “The gods give happiness only to snatch it away. Mayhap that is as well, or life would be nothing but happiness, and we should lack the contrasts to know what real happiness means.”
Her eyes cleared, and a queer, half-whimsical smile played upon her lips. “You will go tomorrow. But there are several hours left until dawn. Let us spend them in a more profitable way than talking!”
They locked again in a fierce embrace, while the stars shone coldly upon the dead, glassy-eyed faces of the foiled assassins.
CHAPTER 7: The Demon of the Snows
The man slunk silently along the snow-covered trail. His body was bent forward; his eyes scanned the ground, and his nostrils widened like those of a hound on the scent. No man had ever before been where he now stalked; at least, none had been there and returned to tell about it.
Mist-veiled and mysterious were the icy upper wastes of the mighty Himelian mountains.
Zelvar Af had been hunting alone when he happened upon the odd tracks in the snow. Wide, splayed footprints were pressed deeply down at distances of at least four feet denoting the size of the creature that made them. Zelvar Af had never seen anything like them; but his memory stirred with the recollection of ghastly legends told in the thatched huts of the hill villages by white-bearded old men.