“Yes,” said Volmana with some satisfaction, “that was your plan, Ascalante, but without my aid you could not have accomplished it. I have kin high in the court of Nemedia, and it was a simple matter to have them subtly persuade king Numa to request the presence of Trocero. And, since Conan honors the Count of Poitain above all others, he must have a large escort of royal troops, as well as his own retainers.”
The outlaw nodded.
“True. As I told you, I’ve at last managed, through Gromel, to corrupt a spendthrift officer of the Black Dragons. This man will march the guard away from the royal bed-chamber just before midnight, on one pretext or another. The various slaves who might be lurking about on duty or otherwise will also have been disposed of by him. We will be waiting with sixteen desperate rogues of mine whom I have summoned from the desert, and who now hide in various parts of the city. We will gain entrance to the palace through the secret tunnel known only to you, Volmana, and with the odds twenty to one –”
He laughed. Gromel nodded seriously; Volmana grinned bleakly; Dion turned pale and his breath sucked in. Rinaldo smote his hands together and cried out ringingly: “By Mitra, they will remember this night, who strike the golden strings! The fall of the tyrant, the death of the despot! – what songs I shall make!”
His eyes burned with a wild fanatical light, and the others regarded him dubiously, except Ascalante, who bent his head to hide a grin. Then the outlaw rose suddenly.
“Enough! The sun will soon be up, and you must not be seen leaving this place. Get back to your proper places, and not by word, deed or look do you reveal what is in your minds.” He hesitated, eying Dion. “Baron, your white face will betray you. If Conan comes to you and looks into your eyes with his searching gaze, you will collapse. Wait until the sun is well up – so as not to cause suspicion by an early morning flight – then get you out to your country estate and there wait until we send for you. We four and my rogues can turn the trick tonight.”
Dion almost collapsed then from a reaction of joy; he left, shaking like a leaf and babbling incoherencies; the others nodded to the outlaw and departed.
Ascalante stretched himself like a great cat and grinned. He called for wine and it was brought him by the sombre Stygian slave.
“Tomorrow,” quoth Ascalante, taking the goblet, “I come into the open and let the people of Aquilonia feast their eyes upon me. For months now, ever since the Rebel Four summoned me from the desert, I have been cooped in like a rat – living in the very heart of my enemies in this obscure house of Dion’s, hiding away from the light in the daytime, skulking, masked through dark alleys and darker corridors at night. Yet I have accomplished what those rebellious lords could not. Working through them and through other agents, many of whom have never seen my face, I have honeycombed the empire with discontent and unrest. I have bribed and corrupted officials, spread sedition among the people and mutiny among the regiments – in short, I, working in the shadows, have paved the downfall of the king who at this instant sits throned in the sun. By Mitra, I had almost forgotten that I was a statesman before I was an outlaw.”
“You work with strange tools,” commented the slave.
“Weak men but strong in their ways,” lazily answered the outlaw. “As for tools, they consider me that. Volmana – a shrewd man, bold and audacious, with kin in high places – but poverty-stricken and with his barren estates loaded with debts. Gromel – strong and ferocious as a lion, with considerable power among the soldiery, but lacking in real brain-power. Dion, cunning in his low way, but otherwise a fool and a coward. His immense wealth has been essential to my schemes, however – in bribing officials and soldiers, and in smuggling strong drink across the borders to madden the Picts and make them ravage the frontiers. Rinaldo – a mad poet full of hare-brained visions and out-worn chivalry. A prime favorite with the people because of his songs which tear out their heart-strings. He is our best bid for popularity. Each of these men has some clay and some steel in him – I am the center of the web – the force which has welded together the steel in them. If I die tonight under Conan’s sword, the conspiracy will crumble.”
“Who mounts the throne, if you succeed?”
“Dion, of course – or so he thinks. He has a trace of royal blood in him. Conan makes a bad mistake in letting men live who still boast descent from the old dynasty.
“Volmana wishes to be reinstated in favor as he was under the old regime so that he may lift his estate and title to their former grandeur. Gromel, with all the stubbornness of his Bossonian blood, hates Pallantides, the commander of the Black Dragons, and thinks he himself should be general of all Aquilonia’s armies. Rinaldo – bah! I despise the man and admire him at the same time. He is your true idealist. Alone of us all he has no personal ambition. He sees in Conan a red-handed, rough-footed barbarian who came out of the north to plunder a peaceful land. He thinks he sees barbarism triumphing over culture. He already idealizes the king Conan killed, forgetting the rogue’s real nature, remembering only that he occasionally patronized the arts, and forgetting the evils under which the land groaned during his reign, and he is making the people forget. Already they openly sing ‘The Lament for the King’ in which Rinaldo lauds the saintly villain, and denounces Conan as ‘that black-hearted savage from the abyss.’ Conan laughs, but at the same time wonders why the people are turning against him.”
“But why does Rinaldo hate Conan?”
“Because he is a poet. Poets always hate those in power. To them perfection is always just behind the last corner or beyond the next. They escape the present in dreams of the past and the future. Rinaldo is a flaming torch of idealism and he sees himself as a hero, a stainless knight – which after all he is! – rising to overthrow the tyrant and liberate the people.”
“And you?”
Ascalante laughed and emptied the goblet. “Poets are dangerous because they believe what they sing – while they sing it. Well, I believe what I think, and I think Dion will not long press the throne. A few months ago I had lost all ambitions save to raid the caravans as long as I lived. Now – well, we’ll see.”
The slave shrugged his broad shoulders.
“There was a time,” he said with unconcealed bitterness, “when I, too, had my ambitions, beside which yours seem tawdry indeed. To what a state I have come! My old-time peers and rivals would stare indeed could they see Thoth-amon of the Ring serving as the slave of an outlander, and an outlaw, at that; and aiding in the petty ambitions of barons and kings!”
“You laid your trust in magic and mummery,” carelessly answered Ascalante, “I trust my wits and my sword.”
“Wits and sword are as straws against the dark wisdom of the Night,” growled the Stygian, his dark eyes flickering with menacing lights and shadows. “Had I not lost the Ring, our positions might be reversed.”
“Be that as it may,” answered the outlaw impatiently, “Ring or no Ring, you wear the stripes of my whip on your back, and are likely to continue to wear them.”
“Be not so sure!” the fiendish hatred of the Stygian glittered for an instant redly in his eyes. “Some way, some how, I will find the Ring again, and when I do, by the serpent-fangs of Set, you shall pay –”
The hot-tempered Aquilonian struck him heavily across the mouth with his open hand. Thoth reeled, blood starting from his lips.
“You grow over-bold, dog,” growled the outlaw. “Have a care; I am still your master. If you have served me, I have protected you. Go upon the house-tops and shout that Ascalante is in the city plotting against the king – if you dare.”
“I dare not,” mumbled the slave, wiping the blood from his lips.
“No, you do not dare,” Ascalante grinned bleakly. “For if I die by your stealth or treachery, a hermit priest in the southern desert will know of it, and will break the seal to a manuscript I left in his hands. And when he reads what I wrote thereon, a word will be whispered in Stygia, and a wind will creep up from the south by midnight. And where will yo
u hide your head, Thoth-amon?”
The slave shuddered and his dusky face went ashen.
“Enough!” Ascalante changed his tone peremptorily. “I have work for you. I do not trust Dion. Ride after him, and if you do not overtake him on the road, proceed to his country estate and remain with him until we send for him. Don’t let him out of your sight. He is mazed with fear, and might bolt – might even rush to Conan in a panic and reveal the whole plot, hoping to thus save his own hide. Go!”
The slave bowed, hiding the hate in his eyes, and did as he was bidden. Ascalante turned again to his wine.
CHAPTER 2
When I was a fighting-man, the kettle-drums they beat,
The people scattered gold-dust before my horse’s feet;
But now I am a great king, the people hound my track
With poison in my wine-cup, and daggers at my back.
– The Road of Kings.
The room was large and ornate, with rich tapestries on the polished-panelled walls, deep carpets on the tiled floor, and with the lofty ceiling adorned with intricate carvings and scroll-work. Behind a gold-chased writing table sat a man whose broad shoulders and sun-browned skin seemed out of place among those luxuriant surroundings. He seemed more a part of the sun and winds and high places of the outlands. His slightest movement spoke of steel-spring muscles knit to a keen brain with the co-ordination of a born fighting-man. There was nothing deliberate or measured about his movements. Either he was perfectly at rest – still as a bronze statue – or else he was in motion, not with the jerky quickness of over-tense nerves, but with a cat-like speed that blurred the sight which tried to follow him.
His garments were of rich fabric, but simple style. He wore no rings or ornaments, and his square-cut black mane was confined merely by a cloth-of-silver band about his head.
Now he laid down the golden stylus with which he had been laboriously scrawling on papyrus, rested his chin on his fist, and fixed his smoldering blue eyes enviously on the man who stood before him. This person was occupied in his affairs at the moment, for he was taking up the laces of his gold-chased armor, and abstractedly whistling – a rather unconventional performance, considering that he was in the presence of a king.
“Prospero,” said the man at the table, “these matters of statecraft weary me as all the fighting I have done never did.”
“All part of the game, Conan,” answered the dark-eyed Poitanian. “You are king – you must play the part.”
“I wish I might ride with you to Nemedia,” said Conan enviously. “It seems ages since I had a horse between my knees – but Publius says that affairs in the city require my presence. Curse him!
“When I overthrew the old dynasty,” he continued, speaking with the easy familiarity which existed only between him and the Poitanian, “it was easy enough, though it seemed bitter hard at the time. Looking back now over the wild path I followed, all those days of toil, intrigue, slaughter and tribulation seem like a dream.
“I did not dream far enough, Prospero. When King Numedides lay dead at my feet and I tore the crown from his gory head and set it on my own, I had reached the ultimate border of my dreams. I prepared myself to take the crown, not to hold it. In the old free days all I wanted was a sharp sword and a straight path to my enemies. Now no paths are straight and my sword is useless.
“When I overthrew Numedides, then I was the Liberator – now they spit at my shadow. They have put a statue of Numedides in the temple of Mitra, and people go and wail before it, hailing him as a saintly monarch who was done to death by a red-handed barbarian – when I led her armies to victory as a mercenary, Aquilonia overlooked the fact that I was a foreigner – now she can not forgive me.
“Now in the temple of Mitra, there come to burn incense to Numedides’ memory, men whom his hangmen blinded and maimed, men whose sons died in his dungeons, whose wives and daughters were dragged into his seraglio. The fickle fools!”
“Rinaldo is largely responsible,” answered Prospero, drawing up his sword belt another notch. “He sings songs that make men mad. Hang him in his jester’s garb to the highest tower in the city. Let him make rhymes for the vultures.”
Conan shook his lion head. “No, Prospero, he’s beyond my reach. A great poet is greater than any king. His songs are mightier than my sceptre, for he has near ripped the heart from my breast when he chose to sing for me. I will die and be forgotten, but Rinaldo’s songs will live forever.
“No, Prospero,” the king continued, a sombre look of doubt shadowing his eyes, “there is something hidden – some undercurrent of which we are not aware. I sense it as in my youth I sensed the tiger hidden in the tall grass. There is a nameless unrest throughout the kingdom. I feel unseen snares about me. I am like a hunter who crouches by his small fire amid the forest and hears stealthy feet padding in the darkness, and almost sees the glimmer of burning eyes. If I could but come to grips with something tangible, that I could cleave with my sword! I tell you, it’s not by chance that the Picts have of late so fiercely assailed the frontiers, so that the Bossonians have called for aid to beat them back. I should have ridden with the troops.”
“Publius feared a plot to trap and slay you beyond the frontier,” replied Prospero, smoothing his silken surcoat over his shining mail, and admiring his tall lithe figure in a silver mirror. “That’s why he urged you to remain in the city. Forget these doubts. They are born of your barbarian instincts. Let the people snarl! The mercenaries are ours, and the Black Dragons, and every rogue in Poitain swears by you. Your only danger is assassination, and that’s impossible, with men of the imperial troops guarding you day and night. What are you working at there?”
“A map,” answered Conan with pride. “The maps of the court show well the countries of the south, east and west, but in the north they are vague and faulty. I have copied my map from the best of the lot, and am adding the northern countries myself.”
“By Mitra,” said Prospero, “those lands are known to few. All know that east of Aquilonia lies Nemedia, then Brythunia, then Zamora; south lies Koth and the lands of Shem; west, beyond the Bossonian marches stretches the Pictish wilderness; beyond the northern Bossonian marches lies Cimmeria. Who knows what lies beyond that country?”
“I know,” answered the king, “and am setting down my knowledge on this map. Here is Cimmeria, where I was born. Here –”
“Asgard and Vanaheim,” Prospero scanned the map. “By Mitra, I had almost believed those lands to be fabulous.”
Conan grinned and involuntarily touched the various scars on his dark face. “By Mitra, had you spent your youth on the northern frontier of Cimmeria, you had known otherwise! Asgard lies to the north, and Vanaheim to the northwest of Cimmeria, and there is continual war along the borders. The western part of Vanaheim lies along the shores of the western sea, and east of Asgard is the country of the Hyperboreans, who are civilized and dwell in cities. East beyond their country are the deserts of the Hyrkanians.”
“What manner of men are these northern folk?” asked Prospero curiously.
“Tall and fair and blue-eyed, and of like blood and language, save that the AEsir have yellow hair and the Vanir, red hair. Their chief god is Ymir, the frost-giant, and they own no over-lord, but each tribe has its king. They are wild and wayward and fierce. They fight all day and drink ale and roar their wild songs all night.”
“Then I think you are more like them than you are like your own race,” laughed Prospero. “You laugh greatly, drink deep and bellow good songs, whereas I never saw another Cimmerian who drank aught but water, or who ever laughed, or ever sang save to chant dismal dirges.”
“Perhaps it’s the land they live in,” answered Conan. “A gloomier land never existed on earth. It is all of hills, heavily wooded, and the trees are strangely dusky, so that even by day all the land looks dark and menacing. As far as a man may see his eye rests on the endless vistas of hills beyond hills, growing darker and darker in the distance. Clouds hang always a
mong those hills; the skies are nearly always gray. Winds blow sharp and cold, driving rain or sleet or snow before them, and moan drearily among the passes and down the valleys. There is little mirth in that land.”
“Little wonder men grow moody there,” quoth Prospero with a shrug of his shoulders, thinking of the smiling sun-washed plains and blue lazy rivers of Poitain, Aquilonia’s southern-most province.
“Strange and moody, indeed,” answered Conan. “Life seems bitter and hard and futile. The men of those dark hills brood overmuch on unknown things. They dream monstrous dreams. Their gods are Crom and his dark race, and they believe the world of the dead is a cold, sunless place of everlasting mist, where wandering ghosts go wailing forevermore. They have no hope here or hereafter, and they brood too much on the emptiness of life. I have seen the strange madness of futility fall upon them when a little thing like a spinning dust-cloud, or the hollow crying of a bird, or the moan of the wind through bare branches brought to their gloomy minds the emptiness of life and the vainness of existence. Only in war are the Cimmerians happy. Mitra! The ways of the AEsir were more to my liking.”
“Well,” grinned Prospero, “the dark hills of Cimmeria are far behind you. And now I go. I’ll quaff a goblet of white Nemedian wine for you at Numa’s court.”
“Good,” grunted the king, “but kiss Numa’s dancing girls for yourself only, lest you involve the states!”
His gusty laughter followed Prospero out of the chamber. The carven door closed behind the Poitanian, and Conan turned back to his task. He paused a moment, idly listening to his friend’s retreating footsteps, which fell hollowly on the tiles. And as if the empty sound struck a kindred chord in his soul, a rush of revulsion swept over him. His mirth fell away from him like a mask, and his face was suddenly old, his eyes worn. The unreasoning melancholy of the Cimmerian fell like a shroud about his soul, paralyzing him with a crushing sense of the futility of human endeavor and the meaninglessness of life. His kingship, his pleasures, his fears, his ambitions, and all earthly things were revealed to him suddenly as dust and broken toys. The borders of life shrivelled and the lines of existence closed in about him, numbing him. Dropping his lion head in his mighty hands, he groaned aloud.