The countryside about Tarantia had escaped the fearful ravaging of the
more easterly provinces. There were evidences of the march of a
conquering army in broken hedges, plundered fields and looted granaries,
but torch and steel had not been loosed wholesale.
There was but one grim splotch on the landscape--a charred expanse of
ashes and blackened stone, where, Conan knew, had once stood the stately
villa of one of his staunchest supporters.
The king dared not openly approach the Galannus farm, which lay only a
few miles from the city. In the twilight he rode through an extensive
woodland, until he sighted a keeper's lodge through the trees.
Dismounting and tying his horse, he approached the thick, arched door
with the intention of sending the keeper after Servius. He did not know
what enemies the manor house might be sheltering. He had seen no troops,
but they might be quartered all over the countryside. But as he drew
near, he saw the door open and a compact figure in silk hose and richly
embroidered doublet stride forth and turn up a path that wound away
through the woods.
'Servius!'
At the low call the master of the plantation wheeled with a startled
exclamation. His hand flew to the short hunting-sword at his hip, and he
recoiled from the tall gray steel figure standing in the dusk before
him.
'Who are you?' he demanded. 'What is your--_Mitra!_'
His breath hissed inward and his ruddy face paled. 'Avaunt!' he
ejaculated. 'Why have you come back from the gray lands of death to
terrify me? I was always your true liegeman in your lifetime----'
'As I still expect you to be,' answered Conan. 'Stop trembling, man; I'm
flesh and blood.'
Sweating with uncertainty Servius approached and stared into the face of
the mail-clad giant, and then, convinced of the reality of what he saw,
he dropped to one knee and doffed his plumed cap.
'Your Majesty! Truly, this is a miracle passing belief! The great bell
in the citadel has tolled your dirge, days agone. Men said you died at
Valkia, crushed under a million tons of earth and broken granite.'
'It was another in my harness,' grunted Conan. 'But let us talk later.
If there is such a thing as a joint of beef on your board----'
'Forgive me, my lord!' cried Servius, springing to his feet. 'The dust
of travel is gray on your mail, and I keep you standing here without
rest or sup! Mitra! I see well enough now that you are alive, but I
swear, when I turned and saw you standing all gray and dim in the
twilight, the marrow of my knees turned to water. It is an ill thing to
meet a man you thought dead in the woodland at dusk.'
'Bid the keeper see to my steed which is tied behind yonder oak,'
requested Conan, and Servius nodded, drawing the king up the path. The
patrician, recovering from his supernatural fright, had become extremely
nervous.
'I will send a servant from the manor,' he said. 'The keeper is in his
lodge--but I dare not trust even my servants in these days. It is better
that only I know of your presence.'
Approaching the great house that glimmered dimly through the trees, he
turned aside into a little-used path that ran between close-set oaks
whose intertwining branches formed a vault overhead, shutting out the
dim light of the gathering dusk. Servius hurried on through the darkness
without speaking, and with something resembling panic in his manner, and
presently led Conan through a small side-door into a narrow, dimly
illuminated corridor. They traversed this in haste and silence, and
Servius brought the king into a spacious chamber with a high, oak-beamed
ceiling and richly paneled walls. Logs flamed in the wide fireplace, for
there was a frosty edge to the air, and a great meat pasty in a stone
platter stood smoking on a broad mahogany board. Servius locked the
massive door and extinguished the candles that stood in a silver
candlestick on the table, leaving the chamber illuminated only by the
fire on the hearth.
'Your pardon, your Majesty,' he apologized. 'These are perilous times;
spies lurk everywhere. It were better that none be able to peer through
the windows and recognize you. This pasty, however, is just from the
oven, as I intended supping on my return from talk with my keeper. If
your Majesty would deign----'
'The light is sufficient,' grunted Conan, seating himself with scant
ceremony, and drawing his poniard.
He dug ravenously into the luscious dish, and washed it down with great
gulps of wine from grapes grown in Servius' vineyards. He seemed
oblivious to any sense of peril, but Servius shifted uneasily on his
settle by the fire, nervously fingering the heavy gold chain about his
neck. He glanced continually at the diamond-panes of the casement,
gleaming dimly in the firelight, and cocked his ear toward the door, as
if half expecting to hear the pad of furtive feet in the corridor
without.
Finishing his meal, Conan rose and seated himself on another settle
before the fire.
'I won't jeopardize you long by my presence, Servius,' he said abruptly.
'Dawn will find me far from your plantation.'
'My lord----' Servius lifted his hands in expostulation, but Conan waved
his protests aside.
'I know your loyalty and your courage. Both are above reproach. But if
Valerius has usurped my throne, it would be death for you to shelter me,
if you were discovered.'
'I am not strong enough to defy him openly,' admitted Servius. 'The
fifty men-at-arms I could lead to battle would be but a handful of
straws. You saw the ruins of Emilius Scavonus' plantation?'
Conan nodded, frowning darkly.
'He was the strongest patrician in this province, as you know. He
refused to give his allegiance to Valerius. The Nemedians burned him in
the ruins of his own villa. After that the rest of us saw the futility
of resistance, especially as the people of Tarantia refused to fight. We
submitted and Valerius spared our lives, though he levied a tax upon us
that will ruin many. But what could we do? We thought you were dead.
Many of the barons had been slain, others taken prisoner. The army was
shattered and scattered. You have no heir to take the crown. There was
no one to lead us----'
'Was there not Count Trocero of Poitain?' demanded Conan harshly.
Servius spread his hands helplessly.
'It is true that his general Prospero was in the field with a small
army. Retreating before Amalric, he urged men to rally to his banner.
But with your Majesty dead, men remembered old wars and civil brawls,
and how Trocero and his Poitanians once rode through these provinces
even as Amalric was riding now, with torch and sword. The barons were
jealous of Trocero. Some men--spies of Valerius perhaps--shouted that
the Count of Poitain intended seizing the crown for himself. Old
sectional hates flared up again. If we had had one man with dynastic
blood in his veins we would have crowned and followed him against
Nemedia. But we had none.
'The barons who followed you loyally would not follow one of their own
number, each holding himself as good as his neighbor, each fearing the
ambitions of the others. You were the cord that held the fagots
together. When the cord was cut, the fagots fell apart. If you had had
a son, the barons would have rallied loyally to him. But there was no
point for their patriotism to focus upon.
'The merchants and commoners, dreading anarchy and a return of feudal
days when each baron was his own law, cried out that any king was better
than none, even Valerius, who was at least of the blood of the old
dynasty. There was no one to oppose him when he rode up at the head of
his steel-clad hosts, with the scarlet dragon of Nemedia floating over
him, and rang his lance against the gates of Tarantia.
'Nay, the people threw open the gates and knelt in the dust before him.
They had refused to aid Prospero in holding the city. They said they had
rather be ruled by Valerius than by Trocero. They said--truthfully--that
the barons would not rally to Trocero, but that many would accept
Valerius. They said that by yielding to Valerius they would escape the
devastation of civil war, and the fury of the Nemedians. Prospero rode
southward with his ten thousand knights, and the horsemen of the
Nemedians entered the city a few hours later. They did not follow him.
They remained to see that Valerius was crowned in Tarantia.'
'Then the old witch's smoke showed the truth,' muttered Conan, feeling a
queer chill along his spine. 'Amalric crowned Valerius?'
'Aye, in the coronation hall, with the blood of slaughter scarcely dried
on his hands.'
'And do the people thrive under his benevolent rule?' asked Conan with
angry irony.
'He lives like a foreign prince in the midst of a conquered land,'
answered Servius bitterly. 'His court is filled with Nemedians, the
palace troops are of the same breed, and a large garrison of them occupy
the citadel. Aye, the hour of the Dragon has come at last.
'Nemedians swagger like lords through the streets. Women are outraged
and merchants plundered daily, and Valerius either can, or will, make no
attempt to curb them. Nay, he is but their puppet, their figurehead. Men
of sense knew he would be, and the people are beginning to find it out.
'Amalric has ridden forth with a strong army to reduce the outlying
provinces where some of the barons have defied him. But there is no
unity among them. Their jealousy of each other is stronger than their
fear of Amalric. He will crush them one by one. Many castles and cities,
realizing that, have sent in their submission. Those who resist fare
miserably. The Nemedians are glutting their long hatred. And their ranks
are swelled by Aquilonians whom fear, gold, or necessity of occupation
are forcing into their armies. It is a natural consequence.'
Conan nodded somberly, staring at the red reflections of the firelight
on the richly carved oaken panels.
'Aquilonia has a king instead of the anarchy they feared,' said Servius
at last. 'Valerius does not protect his subjects against his allies.
Hundreds who could not pay the ransom imposed upon them have been sold
to the Kothic slave-traders.'
Conan's head jerked up and a lethal flame lit his blue eyes. He swore
gustily, his mighty hands knotting into iron hammers.
'Aye, white men sell white men and white women, as it was in the feudal
days. In the palaces of Shem and of Turan they will live out the lives
of slaves. Valerius is king, but the unity for which the people looked,
even though of the sword, is not complete.
'Gunderland in the north and Poitain in the south are yet unconquered,
and there are unsubdued provinces in the west, where the border barons
have the backing of the Bossonian bowmen. Yet these outlying provinces
are no real menace to Valerius. They must remain on the defensive, and
will be lucky if they are able to keep their independence. Here Valerius
and his foreign knights are supreme.'
'Let him make the best of it then,' said Conan grimly. 'His time is
short. The people will rise when they learn that I'm alive. We'll take
Tarantia back before Amalric can return with his army. Then we'll sweep
these dogs from the kingdom.'
Servius was silent. The crackle of the fire was loud in the stillness.
'Well,' exclaimed Conan impatiently, 'why do you sit with your head
bent, staring at the hearth? Do you doubt what I have said?'
Servius avoided the king's eye.
'What mortal man can do, you will do, your Majesty,' he answered. 'I
have ridden behind you in battle, and I know that no mortal being can
stand before your sword.'
'What, then?'
Servius drew his fur-trimmed jupon closer about him, and shivered in
spite of the flame.
'Men say your fall was occasioned by sorcery,' he said presently.
'What then?'
'What mortal can fight against sorcery? Who is this veiled man who
communes at midnight with Valerius and his allies, as men say, who
appears and disappears so mysteriously? Men say in whispers that he is a
great magician who died thousands of years ago, but has returned from
death's gray lands to overthrow the king of Aquilonia and restore the
dynasty of which Valerius is heir.'
'What matter?' exclaimed Conan angrily. 'I escaped from the
devil-haunted pits of Belverus, and from diabolism in the mountains. If
the people rise----'
Servius shook his head.
'Your staunchest supporters in the eastern and central provinces are
dead, fled or imprisoned. Gunderland is far to the north, Poitain far
to the south. The Bossonians have retired to their marches far to the
west. It would take weeks to gather and concentrate these forces, and
before that could be done, each levy would be attacked separately by
Amalric and destroyed.'
'But an uprising in the central provinces would tip the scales for us!'
exclaimed Conan. 'We could seize Tarantia and hold it against Amalric
until the Gundermen and Poitanians could get here.'
Servius hesitated, and his voice sank to a whisper.
'Men say you died accursed. Men say this veiled stranger cast a spell
upon you to slay you and break your army. The great bell has tolled your
dirge. Men believe you to be dead. And the central provinces would not
rise, even if they knew you lived. They would not dare. Sorcery defeated
you at Valkia. Sorcery brought the news to Tarantia, for that very night
men were shouting of it in the streets.
'A Nemedian priest loosed black magic again in the streets of Tarantia
to slay men who still were loyal to your memory. I myself saw it. Armed
men dropped like flies and died in the streets in a manner no man could
understand. And the lean priest laughed and said: 'I am only Altaro,
only an acolyte of Orastes, who is but an acolyte of him who wears the
veil; not mine is the power; the power but works through me.'
'Well,' said Conan harshly, 'is it not better to die honorably than to
live in infamy? Is death worse than oppression, slavery and ultimate
destruction?'
'When the fear of sorcery is in, reason is out,' replied Servius. 'The
fear of the central provinces is too great to allow them to rise for
you. The outlying provinces would fight for you--but the same sorcery
that smote your army at Valkia would smite you again. The Nemedians hold
the broadest, richest and most thickly populated sections of Aquilonia,
and they cannot be defeated by the forces which might still be at your
command. You would be sacrificing your loyal subjects uselessly. In
sorrow I say it, but it is true: King Conan, you are a king without a
kingdom.'
Conan stared into the fire without replying. A smoldering log crashed
down among the flames without a bursting shower of sparks. It might have
been the crashing ruin of his kingdom.
Again Conan felt the presence of a grim reality behind the veil of
material illusion. He sensed again the inexorable drive of a ruthless
fate. A feeling of furious panic tugged at his soul, a sense of being
trapped, and a red rage that burned to destroy and kill.
'Where are the officials of my court?' he demanded at last.
'Pallantides was sorely wounded at Valkia, was ransomed by his family,
and now lies in his castle in Attalus. He will be fortunate if he ever
rides again. Publius, the chancellor, has fled the kingdom in disguise,
no man knows whither. The council has been disbanded. Some were
imprisoned, some banished. Many of your loyal subjects have been put to
death. Tonight, for instance, the Countess Albiona dies under the
headsman's ax.'
Conan started and stared at Servius with such anger smoldering in his
blue eyes that the patrician shrank back.
'Why?'
'Because she would not become the mistress of Valerius. Her lands are
forfeit, her henchmen sold into slavery, and at midnight, in the Iron
Tower, her head must fall. Be advised, my king--to me you will ever be
my king--and flee before you are discovered. In these days none is safe.
Spies and informers creep among us, betraying the slightest deed or word
of discontent as treason and rebellion. If you make yourself known to
your subjects it will only end in your capture and death.
'My horses and all the men that I can trust are at your disposal. Before
dawn we can be far from Tarantia, and well on our way toward the border.
If I cannot aid you to recover your kingdom, I can at least follow you
into exile.'
Conan shook his head. Servius glanced uneasily at him as he sat staring
into the fire, his chin propped on his mighty fist. The firelight
gleamed redly on his steel mail, on his baleful eyes. They burned in the
firelight like the eyes of a wolf. Servius was again aware, as in the
past, and now more strongly than ever, of something alien about the
king. That great frame under the mail mesh was too hard and supple for a
civilized man; the elemental fire of the primitive burned in those
smoldering eyes. Now the barbaric suggestion about the king was more
pronounced, as if in his extremity the outward aspects of civilization
were stripped away, to reveal the primordial core. Conan was reverting
to his pristine type. He did not act as a civilized man would act under
the same conditions, nor did his thoughts run in the same channels. He
was unpredictable. It was only a stride from the king of Aquilonia to
the skin-clad slayer of the Cimmerian hills.
'I'll ride to Poitain, if it may be,' Conan said at last. 'But I'll ride
alone. And I have one last duty to perform as king of Aquilonia.'
'What do you mean, your Majesty?' asked Servius, shaken by a
premonition.
'I'm going into Tarantia after Albiona tonight,' answered the king.
'I've failed all my other loyal subjects, it seems--if they take her
head, they can have mine too.'
'This is madness!' cried Servius, staggering up and clutching his
throat, as if he already felt the noose closing about it.
'There are secrets to the Tower which few know,' said Conan. 'Anyway,
I'd be a dog to leave Albiona to die because of her loyalty to me. I may
be a king without a kingdom, but I'm not a man without honor.'
'It will ruin us all!' whispered Servius.
'It will ruin no one but me if I fail. You've risked enough. I ride
alone tonight. This is all I want you to do: procure me a patch for my
eye, a staff for my hand, and garments such as travelers wear.'
9
'It is the King or His Ghost!'
Many men passed through the great arched gates of Tarantia between
sunset and midnight--belated travelers, merchants from afar with heavily
laden mules, free workmen from the surrounding farms and vineyards. Now
that Valerius was supreme in the central provinces, there was no rigid
scrutiny of the folk who flowed in a steady stream through the wide
gates. Discipline had been relaxed. The Nemedian soldiers who stood on
guard were half drunk, and much too busy watching for handsome peasant
girls and rich merchants who could be bullied to notice workmen or dusty
travelers, even one tall wayfarer whose worn cloak could not conceal the
hard lines of his powerful frame.
This man carried himself with an erect, aggressive bearing that was too
natural for him to realize it himself, much less dissemble it. A great
patch covered one eye, and his leather coif, drawn low over his brows,
shadowed his features. With a long thick staff in his muscular brown
hand, he strode leisurely through the arch where the torches flared and
guttered, and, ignored by the tipsy guardsmen, emerged upon the wide
streets of Tarantia.
Upon these well-lighted thoroughfares the usual throngs went about their
business, and shops and stalls stood open, with their wares displayed.
One thread ran a constant theme through the pattern. Nemedian soldiers,
singly or in clumps, swaggered through the throngs, shouldering their
way with studied arrogance. Women scurried from their path, and men
stepped aside with darkened brows and clenched fists. The Aquilonians
were a proud race, and these were their hereditary enemies.
The knuckles of the tall traveler knotted on his staff, but, like the
others, he stepped aside to let the men in armor have the way. Among the
motley and varied crowd he did not attract much attention in his drab,
dusty garments. But once, as he passed a sword-seller's stall and the
light that streamed from its wide door fell full upon him, he thought
he felt an intense stare upon him, and turning quickly, saw a man in the
brown jerkin of a free workman regarding him fixedly. This man turned
away with undue haste, and vanished in the shifting throng. But Conan
turned into a narrow by-street and quickened his pace. It might have
been mere idle curiosity; but he could take no chances.
The grim Iron Tower stood apart from the citadel, amid a maze of narrow
streets and crowding houses where the meaner structures, appropriating a
space from which the more fastidious shrank, had invaded a portion of
the city ordinarily alien to them. The Tower was in reality a castle, an
ancient, formidable pile of heavy stone and black iron, which had itself
served as the citadel in an earlier, ruder century.
Not a long distance from it, lost in a tangle of partly deserted
tenements and warehouses, stood an ancient watchtower, so old and
forgotten that it did not appear on the maps of the city for a hundred
years back. Its original purpose had been forgotten, and nobody, of such
as saw it at all, noticed that the apparently ancient lock which kept it
from being appropriated as sleeping-quarters by beggars and thieves, was
in reality comparatively new and extremely powerful, cunningly disguised
into an appearance of rusty antiquity. Not half a dozen men in the
kingdom had ever known the secret of that tower.
No keyhole showed in the massive, green-crusted lock. But Conan's
practised fingers, stealing over it, pressed here and there knobs
invisible to the casual eye. The door silently opened inward and he
entered solid blackness, pushing the door shut behind him. A light would
have showed the tower empty, a bare, cylindrical shaft of massive stone.
Groping in a corner with the sureness of familiarity, he found the
projections for which he was feeling on a slab of the stone that
composed the floor. Quickly he lifted it, and without hesitation lowered
himself into the aperture beneath. His feet felt stone steps leading
downward into what he knew was a narrow tunnel that ran straight toward
the foundations of the Iron Tower, three streets away.
The bell on the citadel, which tolled only at the midnight hour or for
the death of a king, boomed suddenly. In a dimly lighted chamber in the
Iron Tower a door opened and a form emerged into a corridor. The
interior of the Tower was as forbidding as its external appearance. Its
massive stone walls were rough, unadorned. The flags of the floor were
worn deep by generations of faltering feet, and the vault of the ceiling
was gloomy in the dim light of torches set in niches.
The man who trudged down that grim corridor was in appearance in keeping
with his surroundings. He was a tall, powerfully built man, clad in
close-fitting black silk. Over his head was drawn a black hood which
fell about his shoulders, having two holes for his eyes. From his
shoulders hung a loose black cloak, and over one shoulder he bore a
heavy ax, the shape of which was that of neither tool nor weapon.
As he went down the corridor, a figure came hobbling up it, a bent,
surly old man, stooping under the weight of his pike and a lantern he
bore in one hand.
'You are not as prompt as your predecessor, master headsman,' he
grumbled. 'Midnight has just struck, and masked men have gone to
milady's cell. They await you.'
'The tones of the bell still echo among the towers,' answered the
executioner. 'If I am not so quick to leap and run at the beck of
Aquilonians as was the dog who held this office before me, they shall
find my arm no less ready. Get you to your duties, old watchman, and
leave me to mine. I think mine is the sweeter trade, by Mitra, for you
tramp cold corridors and peer at rusty dungeon doors, while I lop off
the fairest head in Tarantia this night.'
The watchman limped on down the corridor, still grumbling, and the
headsman resumed his leisurely way. A few strides carried him around a
turn in the corridor, and he absently noted that at his left a door
stood partly open. If he had thought, he would have known that that door
had been opened since the watchman passed; but thinking was not his
trade. He was passing the unlocked door before he realized that aught
was amiss, and then it was too late.
A soft tigerish step and the rustle of a cloak warned him, but before he
could turn, a heavy arm hooked about his throat from behind, crushing
the cry before it could reach his lips. In the brief instant that was
allowed him he realized with a surge of panic the strength of his
attacker, against which his own brawny thews were helpless. He sensed
without seeing the poised dagger.
'Nemedian dog!' muttered a voice thick with passion in his ear. 'You've
cut off your last Aquilonian head!'
And that was the last thing he ever heard.
* * * * *
In a dank dungeon, lighted only by a guttering torch, three men stood
about a young woman who knelt on the rush-strewn flags staring wildly up
at them. She was clad only in a scanty shift; her golden hair fell in
lustrous ripples about her white shoulders, and her wrists were bound
behind her. Even in the uncertain torchlight, and in spite of her
disheveled condition and pallor of fear, her beauty was striking. She
knelt mutely, staring with wide eyes up at her tormenters. The men were
closely masked and cloaked. Such a deed as this needed masks, even in a
conquered land. She knew them all nevertheless; but what she knew would
harm no one--after that night.
'Our merciful sovereign offers you one more chance, Countess,' said the
tallest of the three, and he spoke Aquilonian without an accent. 'He
bids me say that if you soften your proud, rebellious spirit, he will
still open his arms to you. If not--' he gestured toward a grim wooden
block in the center of the cell. It was blackly stained, and showed many
deep nicks as if a keen edge, cutting through some yielding substance,
had sunk into the wood.
Albiona shuddered and turned pale, shrinking back. Every fiber in her
vigorous young body quivered with the urge of life. Valerius was young,
too, and handsome. Many women loved him, she told herself, fighting with
herself for life. But she could not speak the word that would ransom her
soft young body from the block and the dripping ax. She could not reason
the matter. She only knew that when she thought of the clasp of
Valerius' arms, her flesh crawled with an abhorrence greater than the
fear of death. She shook her head helplessly, compelled by an impulsion
more irresistible than the instinct to live.
'Then there is no more to be said!' exclaimed one of the others
impatiently, and he spoke with a Nemedian accent. 'Where is the
headsman?'
As if summoned by the word, the dungeon door opened silently, and a
great figure stood framed in it, like a black shadow from the
underworld.
Albiona voiced a low, involuntary cry at the sight of that grim shape,
and the others stared silently for a moment, perhaps themselves daunted
with superstitious awe at the silent, hooded figure. Through the coif
the eyes blazed like coals of blue fire, and as these eyes rested on
each man in turn, he felt a curious chill travel down his spine.
Then the tall Aquilonian roughly seized the girl and dragged her to the
block. She screamed uncontrollably and fought hopelessly against him,
frantic with terror, but he ruthlessly forced her to her knees, and bent
her yellow head down to the bloody block.
'Why do you delay, headsman?' he exclaimed angrily. 'Perform your task!'
He was answered by a short, gusty boom of laughter that was
indescribably menacing. All in the dungeon froze in their places,
staring at the hooded shape--the two cloaked figures, the masked man
bending over the girl, the girl herself on her knees, twisting her
imprisoned head to look upward.
'What means this unseemly mirth, dog?' demanded the Aquilonian uneasily.
The man in the black garb tore his hood from his head and flung it to
the ground; he set his back to the closed door and lifted the headsman's
ax.
'Do you know me, dogs?' he rumbled. 'Do you know me?'
The breathless silence was broken by a scream.
'The king!' shrieked Albiona, wrenching herself free from the slackened
grasp of her captor. 'Oh, Mitra, the king!'
The three men stood like statues, and then the Aquilonian started and
spoke, like a man who doubts his own senses.
'Conan!' he ejaculated. 'It is the king, or his ghost! What devil's work
is this?'
'Devil's work to match devils!' mocked Conan, his lips laughing but hell
flaming in his eyes. 'Come, fall to, my gentlemen. You have your swords,
and I this cleaver. Nay, I think this butcher's tool fits the work at
hand, my fair lords!'
'At him!' muttered the Aquilonian, drawing his sword. 'It is Conan and
we must kill or be killed!'
And like men waking from a trance, the Nemedians drew their blades and
rushed on the king.
The headsman's ax was not made for such work, but the king wielded the
heavy, clumsy weapon as lightly as a hatchet, and his quickness of foot,
as he constantly shifted his position, defeated their purpose of
engaging him all three at once.
He caught the sword of the first man on his ax-head and crushed in the
wielder's breast with a murderous counterstroke before he could step
back or parry. The remaining Nemedian, missing a savage swipe, had his
brains dashed out before he could recover his balance, and an instant
later the Aquilonian was backed into a corner, desperately parrying the
crashing strokes that rained about him, lacking opportunity even to
scream for help.
Suddenly Conan's long left arm shot out and ripped the mask from the
man's head, disclosing the pallid features.
'Dog!' grated the king. 'I thought I knew you. Traitor! Damned renegade!
Even this base steel is too honorable for your foul head. Nay, die as
thieves die!'
The ax fell in a devastating arch, and the Aquilonian cried out and went
to his knees, grasping the severed stump of his right arm from which
blood spouted. It had been shorn away at the elbow, and the ax,
unchecked in its descent, had gashed deeply into his side, so that his
entrails bulged out.
'Lie there and bleed to death,' grunted Conan, casting the ax away
disgustedly. 'Come, Countess!'
Stooping, he slashed the cords that bound her wrists and lifting her as
if she had been a child, strode from the dungeon. She was sobbing
hysterically, with her arms thrown about his corded neck in a frenzied
embrace.
'Easy all,' he muttered. 'We're not out of this yet. If we can reach
the dungeon where the secret door opens on stairs that lead to the
tunnel--devil take it, they've heard that noise, even through these
walls.'
Down the corridor arms clanged and the tramp and shouting of men echoed
under the vaulted roof. A bent figure came hobbling swiftly along,
lantern held high, and its light shone full on Conan and the girl. With
a curse the Cimmerian sprang toward him, but the old watchman,
abandoning both lantern and pike, scuttled away down the corridor,
screeching for help at the top of his cracked voice. Deeper shouts
answered him.
Conan turned swiftly and ran the other way. He was cut off from the
dungeon with the secret lock and the hidden door through which he had
entered the Tower, and by which he had hoped to leave, but he knew this
grim building well. Before he was king he had been imprisoned in it.
He turned off into a side passage and quickly emerged into another,
broader corridor, which ran parallel to the one down which he had come,
and which was at the moment deserted. He followed this only a few yards,
when he again turned back, down another side passage. This brought him
back into the corridor he had left, but at a strategic point. A few feet
farther up the corridor there was a heavy bolted door, and before it
stood a bearded Nemedian in corselet and helmet, his back to Conan as he
peered up the corridor in the direction of the growing tumult and wildly
waving lanterns.
Conan did not hesitate. Slipping the girl to the ground, he ran at the
guard swiftly and silently, sword in hand. The man turned just as the
king reached him, bawled in surprise and fright and lifted his pike; but
before he could bring the clumsy weapon into play, Conan brought down
his sword on the fellow's helmet with a force that would have felled an
ox. Helmet and skull gave way together and the guard crumpled to the
floor.
In an instant Conan had drawn the massive bolt that barred the door--too
heavy for one ordinary man to have manipulated--and called hastily to
Albiona, who ran staggering to him. Catching her up unceremoniously with
one arm, he bore her through the door and into the outer darkness.
They had come into a narrow alley, black as pitch, walled by the side of
the Tower on one hand, and the sheer stone back of a row of buildings on
the other. Conan, hurrying through the darkness as swiftly as he dared,
felt the latter wall for doors or windows, but found none.
The great door clanged open behind them, and men poured out, with
torches gleaming on breast-plates and naked swords. They glared about,
bellowing, unable to penetrate the darkness which their torches served
to illuminate for only a few feet in any direction, and then rushed
down the alley at random--heading in the direction opposite to that
taken by Conan and Albiona.
'They'll learn their mistake quick enough,' he muttered, increasing his
pace. 'If we ever find a crack in this infernal wall--damn! The street
watch!'
Ahead of them a faint glow became apparent, where the alley opened into
a narrow street, and he saw dim figures looming against it with a
glimmer of steel. It was indeed the street watch, investigating the
noise they had heard echoing down the alley.
'Who goes there?' they shouted, and Conan grit his teeth at the hated
Nemedian accent.
'Keep behind me,' he ordered the girl. 'We've got to cut our way through
before the prison guards come back and pin us between them.'
And grasping his sword, he ran straight at the oncoming figures. The
advantage of surprise was his. He could see them, limned against the
distant glow, and they could not see him coming at them out of the black
depths of the alley. He was among them before they knew it, smiting with
the silent fury of a wounded lion.
His one chance lay in hacking through before they could gather their
wits. But there were half a score of them, in full mail, hard-bitten
veterans of the border wars, in whom the instinct for battle could take
the place of bemused wits. Three of them were down before they realized
that it was only one man who was attacking them, but even so their
reaction was instantaneous. The clangor of steel rose deafeningly, and
sparks flew as Conan's sword crashed on basinet and hauberk. He could
see better than they, and in the dim light his swiftly moving figure was
an uncertain mark. Flailing swords cut empty air or glanced from his
blade, and when he struck it was with the fury and certainty of a
hurricane.
But behind him sounded the shouts of the prison guards, returning up the
alley at a run, and still the mailed figures before him barred his way
with a bristling wall of steel. In an instant the guards would be on his
back--in desperation he redoubled his strokes, flailing like a smith on
an anvil, and then was suddenly aware of a diversion. Out of nowhere
behind the watchmen rose a score of black figures and there was a sound
of blows, murderously driven. Steel glinted in the gloom, and men cried
out, struck mortally from behind. In an instant the alley was littered
with writhing forms. A dark, cloaked shape sprang toward Conan, who
heaved up his sword, catching a gleam of steel in the right hand. But
the other was extended to him empty and a voice hissed urgently: 'This
way, your Majesty! Quickly!'
With a muttered oath of surprise, Conan caught up Albiona in one
massive arm, and followed his unknown befriender. He was not inclined to
hesitate, with thirty prison guardsmen closing in behind him.
Surrounded by mysterious figures he hurried down the alley, carrying the
countess as if she had been a child. He could tell nothing of his
rescuers except that they wore dark cloaks and hoods. Doubt and
suspicion crossed his mind, but at least they had struck down his
enemies, and he saw no better course than to follow them.
As if sensing his doubt, the leader touched his arm lightly and said:
'Fear not, King Conan; we are your loyal subjects.' The voice was not
familiar, but the accent was Aquilonian of the central provinces.
Behind them the guards were yelling as they stumbled over the shambles
in the mud, and they came pelting vengefully down the alley, seeing the
vague dark mass moving between them and the light of the distant street.
But the hooded men turned suddenly toward the seemingly blank wall, and
Conan saw a door gape there. He muttered a curse. He had traversed that
alley by day, in times past, and had never noticed a door there. But
through it they went, and the door closed behind them with the click of
a lock. The sound was not reassuring, but his guides were hurrying him
on, moving with the precision of familiarity, guiding Conan with a hand
at either elbow. It was like traversing a tunnel, and Conan felt
Albiona's lithe limbs trembling in his arms. Then somewhere ahead of
them an opening was faintly visible, merely a somewhat less black arch
in the blackness, and through this they filed.
After that there was a bewildering succession of dim courts and shadowy
alleys and winding corridors, all traversed in utter silence, until at
last they emerged into a broad lighted chamber, the location of which
Conan could not even guess, for their devious route had confused even
his primitive sense of direction.
10