looking glass, in which they can see all that goes on in fee castle."
"That sounds like the place we want. Let's be off." With Alcuina across his shoulder, Conan scanned the doorways leading from the room. His splendid sense of orientation told him which one led toward the center of Ac castle, and he dashed off through it at a fast trot.
"Where have they disappeared to?" asked one of the todies impatiently.
"They must appear soon," Sarissa assured the assembled lords and ladies.
They stared into the great spyglass as it peered into the various passages of the castle, spending a few moments on each before going on to another. The barbarian had taken an unexpected exit from the chamber where Sarissa had left Alcuina. No doubt he was disoriented from his captivity. They had not seen him since.
Each person in the room had been given charge of one of the possible escape routes to the outside of the castle. Each had expended a great deal of ingenuity upon guarding and laying traps in the route he had drawn. There was much wagering over which of them would get the Cimmerian, and how far the man would get, and how Jong it would take him to die.
Certain basic rules had been laid down, of course. Venomous gases could not be employed, nor any spell against which a mere human would be powerless. He must have at least a semblance of a chance of fighting his way through, since that was what he did best, and what they found most entertaining about him. Should be be able to survive each challenge in turn and win his way to the outside, then Sarissa would have the privilege of killing him in whatever manner she chose. He
could not be allowed to escape, with or without Alcuina. That would spoil the game.
"I wish he would appear soon," said a lord, stifling a yawn. " begin to tire of this." The glass flashed onto a corridor blocked by an obscene, tentacled thing, which waited hungrily for prey.
"Is it me you search for?"
The assembled people whirled to stare at the main entrance. There stood Conan, with the nude Alcuina still slung over his shoulder. As they boggled, speech-less, Conan set Alcuina down in such wise that she could attend to the proceedings.
"Now you have spoiled our game," Sarissa said, pouting.
"I was tiring of your games anyway," Conan told her.
"I might as well kill him," said Hasta. He raised a hand and began a complicated gesture.
Before he could properly begin, Conan closed the distance between them, and his sword was buried in Hasta's skull. He wrenched the blade loose and it blurred through the air twice. The two lords to either side of Hasta fell screaming.
The others seemed to be stupefied, unable to compre-hend that they were actually being physically attacked by a lower life form. He killed three more before some made a break for the exit. He slaughtered with such speed and precision that his earlier fighting had been slow by comparison. Those who managed to escape the room he left alone. The others he slew without mercy..
One of them did not flee. Conan was wiping the strangely colored blood from his sword when he returned to the center of the room. There sat Sarissa, cradling the mangled remains of her brother. "You've slain him," she said tonelessly.
"So I have," said Conan without pity. "It is a great shame that you were so preoccupied with sorrow. You missed a fine show." He gestured at the grotesquely sprawled heaps of bodies, the faces upturned, silver eyes fast losing their gleam.
" must see to my brother's funeral rites," Sarissa said.
"You can do that later," Conan said, his voice like stone. "If I let you live."
He grasped Hasta's corpse by the front of the garments. With a powerful motion of his arm, he cast the body directly into the great mirror, which shattered with a noise that shook the whole castle to its foundations. He yanked Sarissa to her feet.
"Show us the quickest way out of here if you would live, woman!" he demanded.
Numbly Sarissa staggered toward the room's entrance. As he passed the door, Conan picked up Alcuina, this time holding her cradled so that she could see where she was going. For once she was too shaken to taunt him.
"Make her release my bonds," was all she said.
"For now," Conan answered, "I prefer you the way you are."
Sarissa led them to a portal in a wall and down a long, winding staircase. Not for a moment did Conan relax his guard. He was alert for treachery. He knew that the woman would try to kill them; it was only a question of when.
Much to his surprise she led them to a tiny portal leading onto the sward outside the castle walls. He
pressed the point of his sword into the cleft of Sarissa's spine.
"Now you will walk over into the trees, and we shall follow close behind you. I am keeping close watch on your hands, woman. At the first sign that you are casting some spell with your voice or your hands, I shall serve you as I did your brother."
With her spine rigid and her hands close at her sides, Sarissa led them toward the forest. The trees closed about them, and Sarissa slowed, but Conan kept her going for several hundred more paces, pricking her back when her pace did not suit him.
"Now you may stop," said Conan when he deemed they were sufficiently far from the castle.
A dark, cowled form emerged from the woods, bearing a bundle of goods. "Alcuina!" cried Rerin in delight. "He has indeed brought you safe from that place."
"After a fashion," Alcuina said. Conan had set her upon the turf, where she sat fuming. "If you have something in that bundle to cover me with, I would be most grateful, old friend."
Conan himself did not take his eyes from Sarissa, who had shown no sign of emotion and had spoken no word since the shattering of the mirror.
"I am at a loss as to what to do with this one, old man," Conan said. "If we turn her loose, she'll work some mischief against us with her spells. Yet, we can-not keep her with us."
"You need not fear," Sarissa said in a dead voice. "When you destroyed the great mirror, you killed me and all my people. The group-soul of my race dwelled in that ancient artifact. You, in your barbarian ignorance, smashed it."
"Ignorance!" snorted Conan. "If I had known that
was the way to slay you all, I would have destroyed the thing at the first opportunity. It need not have happened, woman. If you had shown Alcuina kindness, if you had not tried to use me for your entertainment, we would be on our way home, and you would have your brother and your castle and your accursed amusements." Conan was not one to waste much pity upon those who brought their misfortunes upon themselves.
"It is true, what she says," confirmed Rerin. "All the magical aura is gone from her."
"Let me return to the castle, so I may perish with my people," said Sarissa.
"Very well," said Conan, sheathing his sword. "I have no further use for you." He paid her no more attention as she turned and began to walk, slowly and dejectedly, back toward her castle.
When she was gone, Alcuina turned to Rerin. "And now, old friend, have you some spell to loose these magical bonds?"
Rerin bent forward and studied the cords that bound Alcuina's wrists and ankles. "Have you tried a knife?" he asked.
"I never thought of that," said Conan. He drew his dagger and slid it across the bonds, which parted easily.
"Never thought of it!" Alcuina screamed, her face turning scarlet that flooded to her breasts. In her anger she seemed to have forgotten her nudity for the mo-ment. "You deliberately left me like that so you could handle me at will and do as you liked in the castle!"
"There is much to be said," Conan assured her, "for a queen who is immobilized when there is warrior's work to be done."
"You fool! What would I have done if they had killed you while I was helpless! Did you think of that?"
" am sure that you would have done your queenly best and managed affairs as well as you have so far."
"Look!" said Rerin, anxious to forestall what was about to erupt into civil war between queen and warrior.
They looked to where he was pointing. The castle, which had been so so
lid, was beginning to melt, or rather collapse in upon itself, its outlines becoming wavery, as if all within it had grown soft, shrunken, and diminished.
"It is like a jellyfish cast upon the seashore," said Conan, scratching his beard-stubbled chin.
"Their magic must have been all that held that unstable place together," Rerin mused. Then he noticed Conan's growth of whiskers. "How long were you in that castle?"
"It must have been some three or four days," Conan said, puzzled.
"No," protested Alcuina. "It was nine or ten days at least."
"And yet I spent only a single night out here since Conan ascended the wall. Even time is strange here in the demon land."
"We must find our way home, and that swiftly," insisted Alcuina. "This place terrifies me, and I am concerned for my people at home. What may be happening to them?"
"I am hungry," Conan said. "Rerin, get a fire started. I shall be back soon with game." With that he darted off into the underbrush.
Rerin sat by Alcuina when the fire was crackling. She wore his cloak as a temporary garb. "What think you now of your champion?" he asked.
"He is like something from an old tale. I have never seen a warrior like him, yet he is so wild and self―
governed that wonder whether he serves me or his own whim."
"And yet he has possibilities. You need a king to sit beside you in the hall, and none of the neighbor kings suits you. You could do worse than this Cimmerian. He has no kingdom to swallow yours up, and with him leading your war-host you need fear no enemy."
"It might work for a while," Alcuina said, "but some night as he lay sleeping I would probably kill him."
Court of the Winter Kings
King Odoac of the Thungians, his rotund bulk swathed in rich winter furs, stood blowing on his hands. Behind him stood a band of his picked warriors, and beside him in the snow was thrust a hunting spear. They awaited the great stag that the huntsmen were to drive past them. There came a sound of crashing brush from the right.
"The stag comes!" said the king's nephew.
"I can hear that, you young fool," said Odoac.
He picked up his heavy javelin and made himself ready. According to ancient custom the king had the first cast, and after him each warrior in order of rank.
With a cloud of erupting snow the splendid beast broke from the brush. Its eyes rolled and its tongue hung from its mouth in exhaustion and panic. Behind it the huntsmen yelled and clattered, driving it toward the waiting noble hunters.
As it lumbered past, the king stepped forward and, with a straining grunt, cast his spear. The cast was
powerful but far wide of the mark. The spear glanced from the wide-spreading antlers of the beast, and the beast halted, startled by the unfamiliar impact.
While Odoac cursed in futile rage, the stag turned to face the hunters. With its head lowered, it began to trot toward them, presenting the most difficult of targets. The king's nephew, young Leovigild, stepped forward as his arm flashed back. He took three paces and cast his javelin. It sped unerringly to the stag, slipped below the antlers and beside the head, and pierced the juncture of chest and neck. With its neck artery cut and its heart pierced, the great animal collapsed and died almost instantly.
The young man stood smiling, and the others clapped him on the back, praising the superb cast. Then they all fell silent as the king strode up to his nephew, rage upon his face. With a powerful buffet of his open palm, he struck the younger man to the snowy ground.
"You insolent young puppy! I would have had him if you had not jostled my arm! Do you think your forwardness has escaped my notice! You have taken my stag just as you would like to take my throne!"
The warriors remained silent at this outburst. They all knew that no man had stood near the king, and that he had missed his cast through his own clumsiness, but none would give him the lie. These insane rages were growing more common with Odoac, as he felt his pow-ers waning through the ravages of age and overindulgence.
"You are unjust, my liege," said Leovigild. The youth's face was pale with mortification, but he made no move against his uncle. "I cast because it was my turn, and all men know how loyally I have always served you."
"See that it remains so, puppy," said Odoac with
unbearable contempt. "It will be many years before Ymir takes me into his hall and you may sit upon the throne."
The king whirled and stalked off. He would have liked to kill his nephew, as he had killed all other rivals, some of them his own sons. But custom decreed that he must have a designated heir, and Leovigild, his murdered brother's only son, was the last remaining male of the royal line. Had he slain the boy,- his nobles would have felt free to rid themselves of Odoac and make one of their number king in his place. As an infant and a boy, the lad had been no threat. Now that he had reached man's estate, something would have to be done about him.
Some of the warriors would have aided Leovigild to stand, but he shook off their helping hands. "I should not have allowed such a blow, even from a king," he said, fearful that he had lost respect in the eyes of the warriors.
"What could you have done," said a grizzled noble-man, "save sharing the fate of your male kin? You must bide your time, youngling. It cannot be much longer." Mollified, he walked back to the hall in the midst of the warriors.
That evening, after the feasting, Odoac dismissed all from the hall save his noblest warriors and champions. With drinking-horns filled, they waited to hear their master's words. His obese bulk filling the great throne, Odoac looked around at them, his piglike eyes almost buried in the fat face. His gaze halted for a moment upon Leovigild, and the young man stared back, un-afraid. He was handsome and yellow-haired, a short, soft, blond beard framing his firm jaw. His eyes were clear and blue, in contrast to Odoac's muddy, bloodshot orbs. Odoac envied the boy's youth, strength, and fine looks as much as he feared his ambition and the way the warriors were increasingly turning to Leovigild for advice and approval.
"My warriors," the king began, "it is time we made plans concerning the future of the kingdom. For years now we Thungians have been menaced by two enemy peoples: Queen Alcuina and her Cambres, and Totila and his Tormanna." He almost spat out the last words, trying to hide his fear of Totila with a mask of contempt. If the truth was known, he secretly envied the way Totila, a mere bandit-chieftain, had built his war-band into a powerful kingdom while he himself, who had inherited a kingdom from his father, had barely been able to hold it together with murder and treachery. "Of course, I would have destroyed both of them long ago had it not been for their accursed wizards, Rerin and lilma.
"Let it not be said that I am an unreasonable man. I offered Queen Alcuina my suit, in honorable marriage. With her lands and people annexed to mine, neither of us need have feared any enemy. But did the slut eagerly accept, like my first three wives?" He glared around him and pounded on the arm of the throne with his fist. "No, she did not! She behaved as if I, King Odoac of the Thungians, were some humble crofter, instead of a mighty king whose forebears can be traced back to Father Ymir himself!" The king calmed himself with a visible effort before going on.
"I have borne this humiliation and insolence, with patience, for as long as any man could be asked. The time has now come to act. Word has come to me that, some weeks agone, Alcuina disappeared under uncanny circumstances." A murmur of conversation broke out at
this news. "I doubt not that this is the work of Totila's pet wizard, lilma. Alcuina's men are shut up inside their stockade, and they are leaderless. They have no one of royal blood to command them, so they huddle together waiting for their queen to return. I think they will have a long wait. Now is the time to strike and swallow them up, before Totila does!"
There was a savage growl of approval from the assembled warriors. Whatever their doubts concerning his erratic behavior and waning powers, they had no such doubts concerning his acquisitiveness and his predatory instincts. Of these things, they all approved. Odoac had been a decent batt
le-leader in his younger days, and perhaps he was showing a flash of his old power in this plan. After all, kings lived by preying upon rival kings, and better the Thungians should absorb the Cambres than the hated Tormanna.
"I am not so certain that this is the best course, Uncle," said Leovigild. The old king stared at him with undisguised hate, but the youth went on fearlessly. "It seems to me a shabby thing to attack Queen Alcuina's people while her fate remains unknown. This is not the way great people should deal with one another."
"Is that so?" said Odoac in a dangerously mild voice. "And yet, it is the way we have always dealt among ourselves, high and low, here in the Northland. The weak are swallowed up by the strong. That is the way of it, as I learned from my sire and he from his, and so it has always been since the wars of gods and giants/'
Many nodded at these words, for custom was the only law among them except for might. Yet others plainly wanted to hear more of what Leovigild had to say.
"I think that this way is unwise. I grant that it is good to be strong and fierce, for how can a people survive otherwise? But I think it is also good to be wise and behave with forethought. Here is my counsel: If we war upon the Cartibres at this time, both peoples will lose warriors and will be the weaker when the inevitable war comes with Totila. Instead why do we not send heralds to the Cambres in then" fortress and propose an alliance against Totila until Queen Alcuina returns? This can have only two outcomes, both of them good: If Alcuina comes not back, then the Cambres must in time acknowledge you as their king, having no king of their own and having followed you in war. Should Alcuina return, how can she again reject your suit, since you will have been the salvation of her people. In truth, her folk must demand it, since she has to wed soon." There was great approbation at words of such maturity and wisdom from so young a man.
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