“And why did you tear off your Valusian emblems?” asked Kull.
“I was angry,” growled the Spear-slayer sullenly, avoiding Kull’s eye. The king nodded without reply. It was the natural, unreasoning action of an infuriated savage, to whom no natural enemy appears to be slashed and rent.
They entered the Jeweled Room, the further wall of which was set into the natural stone of the hill on which Kamula was built.
“Manaro swore he heard a whisper as of music,” grunted Brule. “And there he leans with his ear at the crack. Hola–Manaro!”
Kull frowned as he saw the tall Valusian did not change his posture or give any heed to the hail. He did in truth lean against the panel, one hand gripping the sword which held the secret doorway apart, one ear glued to the thin crack. Kull noted the almost material darkness of that thin strip of blackness–it seemed to him that beyond that unknown opening, the darkness must lurk like a living, sentient thing.
He strode forward impatiently and clapped the soldier heavily on the shoulder. And Manaro rocked away from the wall and fell stiffly to lie at Kull’s feet with horror glazed eyes staring blankly upward.
“Valka!” swore Brule. “He’s been stabbed–I was a fool to leave him here alone–”
The king shook his lion-like head. “There’s no blood on him–look at his face.” Brule looked and cursed. The dead Valusian’s features were set in a mask of horror–and the effect was distinctly one of listening.
Kull cautiously approached the crack in the wall and then beckoned Brule. From somewhere beyond that mysterious portal sounded a thin, wailing sound as of a ghostly piping. It was so dim as to barely be heard, but it held in its music all the hate and venom of a thousand demons. Kull shrugged his giant shoulders.
Untitled Fragment
Untitled Fragment
Three men sat at a table playing a game. Across the sill of an open window there whispered a faint breezing, blowing the filmy curtains about and bearing to the players the incense of roses and vines and growing green things.
Three men sat at a table–one was a king–one a prince of an ancient house–one was the chief of a terrible and barbaric nation.
“Score!” quoth Kull, king of Valusia, as he moved one of the ivory figures. “My wizard menaces your warrior, Brule.”
Brule nodded. He was not as large a man as the king, but he was firmly knit, compactly yet lithely built. Kull was the tiger, Brule was the leopard. Brule was a Pict and dark like all his race. Immobile features set off a fine head, powerful neck, heavy trim shoulders and a deep chest. These features, with the muscular legs and arms, were characteristics of the nation to which he belonged. But in one respect Brule differed from his tribesmen, for whereas their eyes were mostly hard scintillant brown or wicked black, his were a deep volcanic blue. Somewhere in his blood was a vagrant strain of Celt or of those scattered savages who lived in ice caves close to the Arctic circle.
“A wizard is a hard man to beat, Kull,” said this man. “In this game or in the real red game of battle–Well, there was once when my life hung on the balance of power between a Pictland wizard and me–he had his charms and I had a well forged blade–”
He paused to drink deeply from a crimson goblet which stood at his elbow.
“Tell us the tale, Brule,” urged the third player. Ronaro, prince of the great atl Volante house, was a slim elegant young man with a splendid head, fine dark eyes and a keen intellectual face. He was the patrician–the highest type of intelligent aristocracy any land has ever produced. These other two in a way were his antithesis. He was born in a palace; of the others, one had been born in a wattle hut, the other in a cave. Ronaro traced his descent back two thousand years, through a line of dukes, knights, princes, statesmen, poets and kings. Brule could trace his ancestors vaguely for a few hundred years and he named among them skin clad chiefs, painted and feathered warriors, shamans with bison skull masks and finger bone necklaces–one or two island kings who held court in mud huts, and a legendary hero or two, semi-deified for feats of personal strength or whole sale murder. Kull did not know who his own parents were.
But in the countenances of all three gleamed an equality beyond the shackles of birth and circumstance–the aristocracy of the Man. These men were natural patricians, each in his own way. Ronaro’s ancestors were kings; Brule’s, skin-clad chiefs; Kull’s might have been slaves or chieftains. But about each of the three was that indefinable something which sets the superior man apart and shatters the delusion that all men were born equal.
“Well,” Brule’s eyes filled with brooding reminiscence, “it happened in my early youth, yes, in my first war raid. Oh, I had killed a man or so in the fishing brawls and at the tribal feasts, but I had not yet been ornamented with the scars of the warrior clan–” he indicated his bare breast where the listeners saw three small horizontal marks, barely discernable in the sun bronze of the Pict’s mighty chest.
Ronaro watched him with a never failing interest as he talked. These fierce barbarians with their primitive vitality and straightforwardness intrigued the young prince. Years in Valusia as one of the empire’s strongest allies had wrought an outward change on the Pict–had not tamed him, but had given him a veneer of culture, education and reserve. But beneath that veneer burned the blind black savage of old. To a greater extent had this change worked on Kull, once warrior of Atlantis, now king of Valusia.
“You, Kull, and you, Ronaro,” Brule said, “we of The Islands are all one blood, but of many tribes, and each tribe has customs and traditions peculiar to itself alone. We all acknowledge Nial of the Tatheli as over-king but his rule is loose. He does not interfere with our affairs among ourselves, nor does he levy tribute or taxes, as the Valusians call it, from any except the Nargi and the Dano and the Whale-slayers who live on the isle of Tathel with his own tribe. These he protects against other tribes and for that reason he collects toll. But he takes no toll of my tribe, the Borni, nor of any other tribe. Neither does he interfere when two tribes go to war–unless some tribe encroaches on the three who pay tribute. When the war is fought and won, he arbitrates the matter, and his judgment is final–what stolen women shall be returned, what payment of war canoes made, what blood price paid and so on. And when the Lemurians or the Celts or any foreign nation or band of reavers come against us, he sends forth for all tribes to put aside their quarrels and fight side by side. Which is a good thing. He might be a supreme tyrant if he liked, for his own tribe is very strong, and with the aid of Valusia he might do as he liked–but he knows that though he might, with his tribes and their allies, crush all the other tribes, there would never be peace again, but revolt as long as a Borni or a Sungara or a Wolf-slayer or any of the tribesmen was left alive.
By This Axe I Rule!
By This Axe I Rule!
I
“MY SONGS ARE NAILS FOR A KING’S COFFIN!”
“At midnight the king must die!”
The speaker was tall, lean and dark, and a crooked scar close to his mouth lent him an unusually sinister cast of countenance. His hearers nodded, their eyes glinting. There were four of these–one was a short fat man, with a timid face, weak mouth and eyes which bulged in an air of perpetual curiosity–another a great somber giant, hairy and primitive–the third a tall, wiry man in the garb of a jester whose flaming blue eyes flared with a light not wholly sane–and last a stocky dwarf of a man, inhumanly short and abnormally broad of shoulders and long of arms.
The first speaker smiled in a wintry sort of manner. “Let us take the vow, the oath that may not be broken–the Oath of the Dagger and the Flame. I trust you–oh, yes, of course. Still, it is better that there be assurance for all of us. I note tremors among some of you.”
“That is all very well for you to say, Ascalante,” broke in the short fat man. “You are an ostracized outlaw, anyway, with a price on your head–you have all to gain and nothing to lose, whereas we–”
“Have much to lose and more to gain,” answered the outlaw imperturbabl
y. “You called me down out of my mountain fastnesses to aid you in overthrowing a king–I have made the plans, set the snare, baited the trap and stand ready to destroy the prey–but I must be sure of your support. Will you swear?”
“Enough of this foolishness!” cried the man with the blazing eyes. “Aye, we will swear this dawn and tonight we will dance down a king! ‘Oh, the chant of the chariots and the whir of the wings of the vultures–’”
“Save your songs for another time, Ridondo,” laughed Ascalante. “This is a time for daggers, not rhymes.”
“My songs are nails for a king’s coffin!” cried the minstrel, whipping out a long lean dagger. “Varlets, bring hither a candle! I shall be first to swear the oath!”
A silent and sombre slave brought a long taper and Ridondo pricked his wrist, bringing blood. One by one the other four followed his example, holding their wounded wrists carefully so that the blood should not drip yet. Then gripping hands in a sort of circle, with the lighted candle in the center, they turned their wrists so that the blood drops fell upon it. While it hissed and sizzled, they repeated:
“I, Ascalante, a landless man, swear the deed spoken and the silence covenanted, by the oath unbreakable!”
“And I, Ridondo, first minstrel of Valusia’s courts!” cried the minstrel.
“And I, Volmana, count of Karaban,” spoke the dwarf.
“And I, Gromel, commander of the Black Legion,” rumbled the giant.
“And I, Kaanuub, baron of Blaal,” quavered the short fat man, in a rather tremulous falsetto.
The candle sputtered and went out, quenched by the ruby drops which fell upon it.
“So fade the life of our enemy,” said Ascalante, releasing his comrades’ hands. He looked on them with carefully veiled contempt. The outlaw knew that oaths may be broken, even “unbreakable” ones, but he knew also that Kaanuub, of whom he was most distrustful, was superstitious. There was no use overlooking any safe guard, no matter how slight.
“Tomorrow,” said Ascalante abruptly, “I mean today, for it is dawn now, Brule the Spear-slayer, the king’s right hand man, departs from Grondar along with Ka-nu the Pictish ambassador, the Pictish escort and a goodly number of the Red Slayers, the king’s bodyguard.”
“Yes,” said Volmana with some satisfaction. “That was your plan, Ascalante, but I accomplished it. I have kin high in the counsel of Grondar and it was a simple matter to indirectly persuade the king of Grondar to request the presence of Ka-nu. And of course, as Kull honors Ka-nu above all others, he must have a sufficient escort.”
The outlaw nodded.
“Good. I have at last managed, through Gromel, to corrupt an officer of the Red Guard. This man will march his men away from the royal bedroom tonight just before midnight, on a pretext of investigating some suspicious noise or the like. The various sentries will have been disposed of. We will be waiting, we five, and sixteen desperate rogues of mine who I have summoned from the hills and who now hide in various parts of the city. Twenty-one against one–”
He laughed. Gromel nodded, Volmana grinned, Kaanuub turned pale; Ridondo smote his hands together and cried out ringingly:
“By Valka, 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, all save Ascalante who bent his head to hide a grin. Then the outlaw rose suddenly.
“Enough! Get back to your places and not by word, deed or look do you betray what is in your minds.” He hesitated, eyeing Kaanuub. “Baron, your white face will betray you. If Kull comes to you and looks into your eyes with those icy grey eyes of his, you will collapse. Get you out to your country estate and wait until we send for you. Four are enough.”
Kaanuub almost collapsed then, from a reaction of joy; he left babbling incoherencies. The rest nodded to the outlaw and departed.
Ascalante stretched himself like a great cat and grinned. He called for a slave and one came, a somber evil looking fellow whose shoulders bore the scars of the brand that marks thieves.
“Tomorrow,” quoth Ascalante, taking the cup offered him, “I come into the open and let the people of Valusia feast their eyes upon me. For months now, ever since the Rebel Four summoned me from my mountains, I have been cooped in like a rat–living in the very heart of my enemies, 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 corruption. I have bribed and subverted officials, spread sedition among the people–in short, I, working in the shadows, have paved the downfall of the king who at the moment sits throned in the sun. Ah, my friend, I had almost forgotten that I was a statesman before I was an outlaw, until Kaanuub and Volmana sent for me.”
“You work with strange comrades,” said the slave.
“Weak men, but strong in their ways,” lazily answered the outlaw. “Volmana–a shrewd man, bold, audacious, with kin in high places–but poverty stricken, and his barren estates loaded with debts. Gromel–a ferocious beast, strong and brave as a lion, with considerable influence among the soldiers, but otherwise useless–lacking the necessary brains. Kaanuub, cunning in his low way and full of petty intrigue, but otherwise a fool and a coward–avaricious but possessed of immense wealth, which has been essential in my schemes. Ridondo, a mad poet, full of hare-brained schemes–brave but flighty. A prime favorite with the people because of his songs which tear out their heart-strings. He is our best bid for popularity, once we have achieved our design. I am the power that has welded these men, useless without me.”
“Who mounts the throne, then?”
“Kaanuub, of course–or so he thinks! He has a trace of royal blood in him–the old dynasty, the blood of that king whom Kull killed with his bare hands. A bad mistake of the present king. He knows there are men who still boast descent from the old dynasty but he lets them live. So Kaanuub plots for the throne. 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 hates Kelka, commander of the Red Slayers, and thinks he should have that position. He wishes to be commander of all Valusia’s armies. As to Ridondo–bah! I despise the man and admire him at the same time. He is your true idealist. He sees in Kull, an outlander and a barbarian, merely a rough footed, red handed savage who has come out of the sea to invade a peaceful and pleasant land. He already idolizes the king Kull slew, forgetting the rogue’s vile nature. He forgets the inhumanities under which the land groaned during his reign, and he is making the people forget. Already they sing ‘The Lament for the King’ in which Ridondo lauds the saintly villain and vilifies Kull as ‘that black hearted savage’–Kull laughs at these songs and indulges Ridondo, but at the same time wonders why the people are turning against him.”
“But why does Ridondo hate Kull?”
“Because he is a poet, and poets always hate those in power, and turn to dead ages for relief in dreams. Ridondo is a flaming torch of idealism and he sees himself as a hero, a stainless knight, which he is, rising to overthrow the tyrant.”
“And you?”
Ascalante laughed and drained the goblet. “I have ideas of my own. Poets are dangerous things, because they believe what they sing–at the time. Well, I believe what I think. And I think Kaanuub will not hold the throne seat overlong. A few months ago I had lost all ambitions save to waste the villages and the caravans as long as I lived. Now, well–now we shall see.”
II
“THEN I WAS THE LIBERATOR–NOW–”
A room strangely barren in contrast to the rich tapestries on the walls and the deep carpets on the floor. A small writing table, behind which sat a man. This man would have stood out in a crowd of a million. It was not so much because of his un
usual size, his height and great shoulders, though these features lent to the general effect. But his face, dark and immobile, held the gaze and his narrow grey eyes beat down the wills of the onlookers by their icy magnetism. Each movement he made, no matter how slight, betokened steel spring muscles and brain knit to those muscles with perfect coordination. There was nothing deliberate or measured about his motions–either he was perfectly at rest–still as a bronze statue, or else he was in motion, with that cat-like quickness which blurred the sight that tried to follow his movements. Now this man rested his chin on his fists, his elbows on the writing table, and gloomily eyed the man who stood before him. This man was occupied in his own affairs at the moment, for he was tightening the laces of his breast-plate. Moreover he was abstractedly whistling–a strange and unconventional performance, considering that he was in the presence of a king.
“Brule,” said the king, “this matter of statecraft wearies me as all the fighting I have done never did.”
“A part of the game, Kull,” answered Brule. “You are king–you must play the part.”
“I wish that I might ride with you to Grondar,” said Kull enviously. “It seems ages since I had a horse between my knees–but Tu says that affairs at home require my presence. Curse him!
“Months and months ago,” he continued with increasing gloom, getting no answer and speaking with freedom, “I overthrew the old dynasty and seized the throne of Valusia–of which I had dreamed ever since I was a boy in the land of my tribesmen. That was easy. Looking back now, over the long hard path I followed, all those days of toil, slaughter and tribulation seem like so many dreams. From a wild tribesman in Atlantis, I rose, passing through the galleys of Lemuria–a slave for two years at the oars–then an outlaw in the hills of Valusia–then a captive in her dungeons–a gladiator in her arenas–a soldier in her armies–a commander–a king!