"Are we betrayed?” gasped Ascalante, clutching at GromeFs blood-encrusted sword arm.
Gromel shook off the grasping hand and spat blood. “Betrayed or surprised, or both—^by the slimy guts of Nergal!” growled the Bossonian. "The province has risen. Our sentries are slain; our horses chased into the woods. The road north is blocked. The rebels have snaked across the river, unseen in these accursed fogs. Most of the sentries have had their throats cut by the countryfolk. WeVe caught between the two forces and helpless to fight back.”
“What’s to be done, then?” whispered Ascalante.
“Flee for your life, man,” spat Gromel. “Or surrender, as I intend to do. Here, help me to bind up these wounds, ere I bleed to death.”
First, hidden by the fog, Conan had led his pike-men across the ford of Nogara. Once the fis^ht had started, Trocero, Prospero, and Pallantides followed with the archers and mounted troops. Before a wan moon broke through the deep-piled clouds, the Count of Poitain found himself engaged in a pitched battle; for enough of the Legionnaires had gathered to make a wall of shields, behind which their long spears bristled like a giant thorn bush. Trocero led his armored knights against this barrier of interlocking
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shields and, after several unsuccessful tries, broke through. Then the slaughter began.
The Numedidean camp was a makeshift affair, strung out along the northern bank of the Alimane and backed against the forest. Its elongated shape made it difficult to defend. As a rule, Aquilonian soldiers built square encampments, walled with earthworks or palisades of logs. Neither of these defenses was practicable in the present case, and thus the camp of the Border Legion was vulnerable. The conformation of the land, together with the complete sui-prise effected by the Army of Liberation (as it came to be called) tipped the balance in favor of the rebels, even though the Legionnaires still outnumbered the combined forces of Conan and the revolting Poitanians.
Besides, the morale of the Legion had declined, so that Aquilonia’s finest soldiers for once failed to deserve their reputation. Ascalante had reported to his officers that their former chief, Amulius Procas, died by his own hand, despondent over his sorry showdng in the Argossean incursion. The soldiers of the Legion could scarcely credit this canard. They knew and loved their old general, for all his strict discipline and crusty ways.
To the officers and men, Ascalante seemed a fop and a poseur. True, the Count of Thune had some experience with the military, but in garrison duty only and on quiet frontiers. And also true, any general stepping up to greatness over battle-hardened senior officers needs time to cool the hot breath of rancor in those whom he commands. But the languid ways and courtly airs of the new arrival did little to conciliate his staff; and their discontent was wordlessly transmitted to the soldiers of the line.
The attack was well planned. When the Poitanian peasants had spilled the blood of the sentries, fired the tents, and driven off the horses from their makeshift corral, the sleeping troops, roused at last to their peril,
formed ranks to challenge their attackers along the northern boundary of the camp. But when they were simultaneously battered from the south by Conan s unexpected forces, their lines of defense crumbled, and the song of swords became a deathly clamor.
General Ascalante was nowhere to be foimd. Descrying a horse, the courtier had flung himself astride the unsaddled beast and, lacking spurs, had lashed the animal into motion with a length of branch torn from a nearby tree. He eluded the Poitanian foresters by a hair’s breadth and galloped off into the night.
A cunning opportunist like Gromel might curry favor with the victors by surrendering himself and his contingent; but for Ascalante it was quite another matter. He had a noble’s pride. Besides, the coimt divined what Thulandra Thuu would do when he learned of the debacle. The sorcerer had expected his appointee to hold the rebels south of the Alimane—a task not too diflBcult under ordinary circumstances for a commander with a modicum of military training. But the magician s arts had somehow failed to warn him of the uprising of the Poitanians—an event that would have daunted an oflBcer more seasoned than the Coimt of Thune. And now his camp was charred and cindered, and defeat was imminent. Ascalante, thus, could only quit the lieu and put as much distance as he could between himself and both the crafty rebel leader and the dark, lean necromancer in Tarantia.
Throughout the moonless night, the Count of Thune thimdered through a tunnel of tall trees, and dawn found him nine leagues east of the site of the disaster. Spurred by the thought of Thulandra’s incalculable wrath, he pushed ahead as fast as he dared go on his exhausted mount. There were places in the eastern deserts where, he hoped, even the vengeful sorcerer would never find him.
But as the hours passed, Ascalante conceived a
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fierce and abiding hatred of Conan the Cimmerian, on whom he laid the blame for his defeat and flight. In his heart the Count of Thune vowed someday in like manner to repay the Liberator.
Toward dawn Conan bestrode the Border Legion’s ruined camp, receiving information from his captains. Hundreds of Legionnaires lay dead or dying, and hundreds more had sought the safety of the forest, whence Trocero s partisans were now dislodging them. But a full regiment of royalist soldiery, seven hundred strong, had come over to Conan's cause, having been persuaded by circumstance and a Bossonian oflBcer named Gromel. The surrender of these troops— Poitanians and Bossonians, with a sprinkling of Gundermen and a few score other Aquilonians among them—pleased the Cimmerian mightily; for seasoned, well-trained professionals would bolster his fighting strength and stiffen the resolve of his motley followers.
A shrewd judge of men, Conan suspected Gromel, whom he had briefly known along the Pictish frontier, of being both a formidable fighter and a wily opportunist; but opportunism is forgivable when it serves one’s turn. And so he congratulated the burly captain on his change of heart and appointed him an oflScer in the Army of Liberation.
Squads of weaiy men labored to strip the dead of usable equipment and stack the corpses in a funeral pyre, when Prospero strode up. His armor, splashed with dried blood, was ruddy in the roseate light of dawn, and he seemed in rare good humor.
“What word?” asked Conan gruffly.
“Nothing but good. General,” grinned the other. 'We have captured their entire baggage train, with suppUes and weapons enough for twice our strength.”
“Good work!” grunted Conan. “What of the enemy’s horses?”
“The foresters have rounded up the beasts they
let run free, so we have mounts again. And we have taken several thousand prisoners, who tlirew down their arms when they saw their cause was hopeless. Pallantides fain would know what he's to do with them."
“Offer them enlistment in our forces. If they refuse, let them go where they will. Unarmed men can harm us not,'’ said Conan indifferently. “If we do win this war, we shall need all the good will we can muster. Tell Pallantides to let each choose his coinrse.”
"Very well, General; what other orders?" asked Prospero.
“We ride this mom for Culario. Trocero’s partisans report there’s not a royalist still under arms between here and the town, which waits to welcome us."
“Then we shall have an easy march to Tarantia,” grinned Prospero.
“Perhaps, and perhaps not,” Conan replied, narrowing his lids. “It will be days before news of the royalist rout arrives in Bossonia and Gunderland and the garrisons there head south to intercept us. But they will come in time.”
“Aye. Under Count Ulric of Raman, I’ll wager,” said Prospero. Then, as Trocero joined his fellow oflBcers, he added: “What is your guess, my lord Count?"
“Ulric, I have no doubt,” said Trocero. “A pity we inissed owe meeting with the northern barons. They would have held him back for quite a while."
Conan shrugged his massive shoulders. “Prepare the men to move by noon. 1'11 take a look at Pallantides’ prisone
rs.'’
A short while later, Conan stalked down the line of disarmed royalist soldiery, stopping now and then to ask a sharp question: “You wish to serve in the Army of Liberation? Why?"
In the course of this inspection, his eye caught the reflected sparkle of the morning sun on the hairy chest
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of a ragged prisoner. Looking more closely, he perr ceived that the light bounced off a small half-circle of obsidian, hung on a slender chain around the man’s burly neck. For an instant Conan stared, struggling to remember where it was that he had seen the trinket. Taking the object between thumb and forefinger, he asked the soldier with a hidden snarl:
"Where did you get this bauble?”
“May it please you, General, I picked it up in General Procas’s tent the morning after the general was—after he died. I thought it might be an amulet to bring me luck.”
Conan studied the man through narrowed lids. “It surely brought no luck to General Procas. Give it to me.
The soldier hastily stripped off the ornament and, trembling, handed it to Conan. At that moment Trocero approached, and Conan, holding up the object to his gaze, muttered: “I know where I have seen this thing before. The dancer Alcina wore it around her neck.”
Trocero’s eyebrows rose. "Ahal then that explains—”
“Later,” said Conan. And nodding to the prisoner, he continued his inspection.
As the level shafts of the morning sun inflamed the clouds that hngered in the eastern sky, Conan’s baggage train and rear guard lumbered across the Alimane; and soon thereafter the Army of Liberation be^an its march across Poitain to Culario and thence toward great Tarantia and the palace of its kings. To tread the soil of Aquilonia after so many months of scaling crags in a lost and hostile land heartened the rebel warriors. Bone-weary as they were after a night of slaughter, they bellowed a marching song as they threaded their way north among the towering Poitanian oaks.
Ahead, swifter than the wiad, flew the glad tidings: The Liberator comesl From farm and hamlet to town and city, it winged its way—a mere whisper at first, but swelling as it went into a mighty shout—^a cry that monarchs dread, presaging as it does the toppling of a throne or the downfall of a dynasty.
Conan and his oflBcers, pacing the van on fine horseflesh, were jubilant The progress through Count Trocero’s desmene would be, as it were, on eagles’ wings. The nearest royalist forces, unapprized of their arrival, lay several hundred leagues away. And since Amulius Procas was in his grave, they had no enemy to fear imtil they reached the very gates of fair Tarantia. There they would find the city portals locked and barred against them, this they knew; and the Black Dragons, the monarch’s household guard, in harness to defend their king and capital. But because the people stood behind them and a throne lay before, they would hack down all defenses and trample every foe.
In this the rebels were mistaken. One foe remained of whom they knew but little. This was the sorcerer Thulandra Thuu.
In his pmple-pendant oratory, lighted by corpse-tallow candles, Thulandra Thuu brooded on his sable throne. He stared into his obsidian mirror, seeking by sheer intensity of purpose to wrest from the opaque pane bright visions of persons and events in distant places. At length, with a small sigh, he settled back and rested his tired eyes. Then, frowning, he once again studied the sheet of parchment on which, in his spidery hand, were inscribed the astrological aspects he deemed conducive to communication by this occult means. He peered at the gilded crystal water clock and found no error of day or hour to explain his imsuccess. Whatever the cause, Alcina had failed to
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commune with him at the appointed time, now and for many days gone by.
A knock distiurbed his melancholy meditation. TEnterl'’ said Thulandra Thuu through lips Hvid with frustration.
The drapery parted, and Hsiao stood on the marble threshold. Bowing, the Khitan intoned in his quavering voice: "Master, the Lady Alcina would confer with you.”
"Alcinal” The sharpness of the sorcerers tone betrayed his agitation. '‘Show her in at oncel"
The hangings fell together silently, then parted once again. Alcina staggered in. Her page’s garb, tattered and torn, was gray with dust and caked with sun-dried mud. Her black hair formed a tangled web around a face stiff with soil and apprehension. She dragged weary feet, scarce able to support her drooping frame. The beautiful girl, who had gallantly set off for Messantia, now seemed a worn woman in the winter of her years.
“Alcina!” cried the wizard. “Whence come you? What brings you here?”
In a scarcely audible whisper, she replied: “Master, may I sit? I am fordone.”
“Be seated, then.” As Alcina sank down upon a marble bench and closed her eyes, Thulandra Thuu projected his siblant voice across the echoing chamber: 'Hsiao! Wine for Mistress Alcina. Now, good wench, relate all that has befallen you.”
The girl drew a sobbing breath. 'T have been eight days on the road, scarce halting to snatch a cat nap and a bite to eat.”
“Ah, sol And wterefore?”
“I came to say—to tell you—^that Amulius Procas is dead— ^
”Good!” said Thulandra Thuu, pinwheels of light dancing in his hooded eyes.
"—^but Conan lives!”
At this astounding information, the sorcerer for the second time that day lost his composure. “Set and KaH!’' he cried. “How did that happen? Out with it, girl; out with itl"
Before answering, Alcina paused to sip from the cup of saffron wine that Hsiao handed her. Then, haltingly, she recounted her adventures in the camp of the Border Legion—how she stabbed Procas; how she learned that Conan Hved; and how she escaped the guard.
“And so,” she concluded, “fearing that you knew not of the barbarian s miraculous survival, I deemed it my duty to report to you forthwith.”
Brows drawn in a ferocious frown, the sorcerer contemplated Alcina with his hypnotic gaze. Then he purred with the controlled rage of an- angry feline: “Instead of undertaking this weary journey, why did you not withdraw a prudent distance from the Legion’s camp, and commune with me at the appropriate hour by means of your fragment of yonder mirror?”
“I could not. Master.” Alcina wrung her hands distractedly.
“Wherefore not?” Thulandra Thuu’s voice suddenly jabbed like a thrown knife. “Have you mislaid the table of positions of the planets, with which I did supply you?”
“Nay, my lord; it’s worse than that. I lost my fragment of the mirror—I lost my talisman!”
Lips drawn back in a snarl, Thulandra uttered an ophidian hiss. “By Nergal’s demons!” he grated. “You little fool! What devil of carelessness possessed you? Are you mad? Or did you set your silly heart on some lusty lout, like unto a she-cat in heat? For this I will punish you in ways unknown to mortal men! I will not only flog your body but flay your very soul! You shall live the pains of all your previous lives, from the first
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bit of protoplasmal slime up through the worm, the fish, and the apel You shall beg me for death, but—”
“Pray, Master, do but HstenI” cried Alcina, falling to her knees. "You know men’s lusts mean naught to me, save as I rouse them in your service.” Weeping, she told of the death struggle in the dark with Amuhus Procas and of her later discovery of the loss of the tahsman.
Thulandra Thuu bit his lip to master his rising wrath. “I see,” he said at length. “But when striking for great prizes, one cannot aflFord mistakes. Had your dagger traveled true, Procas would not have lingered long enough to seize your amulet.”
"I knew not that he wore a shirt of mail beneath his tunic. Can you not cut another fragment from the master mirror?^
'1 could, but the enchantment of the fragment for tr£insmitting distant messages is such a tedious process that the war were over ere it was completed.” Thulandra Thuu stroked his sharp chin. “Did you ma
ke certain of Procas’s death?”
“Yes. I felt his pulse and listened for his heart beat”
“Aye. But you did not so with the Cimmerian! That was the greater error.”
Alcina made a gesture of despair. "I served hlni with sufficient poison to have slain two ordinary men; but betwixt his great size and the unnatural vitaHty that propelled him… .” She drooped abjectly at her master s feet and let her voice trail oflF.
Thulandra Thuu rose; and towering above the trembling girl, pointed a skinny forefinger toward heaven. “Father Set, can none of my servants carry out my simplest demand?” Then, turning his sudden anger on the huddled girl, he added; “Little idiot, would you feed a boarhound on a lapdog’s rations?”
“Master, you warned me not, and who am I to
calculate the grains of lotus venom needed for a giant?” Alcina’s voice rose and fury rode upon it. “You sit in comfort in your palace, whilst this poor servant courses the countryside in good and evil weather, risking her skin to do your desperate deeds. And not a kindly word have you to ofiFer herl”
Thulandra Thuu spread his arms wide, palms upturned in a gesture of forgiveness. ‘'Now, now, my dear Alcina, let us speak no ill of one another. When alhes part, the enemy wins the battle by default. If I ask you to poison another of my foes. Til send along a clerk skilled in reckoning to calculate the dose."
He seated himself with a thin and rueful smile. “Truly, the gods must laugh like fiends at the irony oJF it. Having sent AmuHus Procas to whatever nether world the Fates decreed, I earnestly wish that the old ruffian were alive again; for on none but him can I rely to defeat the barbarian and his rebel following.
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