Conan turned to the Tormanna. "Who follows his king into the dark?"
The Tormanna warriors, so confident an hour before, were utterly demoralized. They found themselves without a king, outnumbered in an alien land. Finally the elder who had spoken the night before strode up to Alcuina.
"Lady, our king was of no line and left no heir. If Cambres and Thungians are to unite, then the Tormanna will become your men, too, if we all be treated as equals."
Alcuina glanced at Leovigild, and he nodded slightly. She turned back to the elder. "So be it." The pledging of fealty was a simple matter in the North. She turned to Totila's corpse. "Throw this carrion on the pyre with the false Leovigild. Totila was no real royalty."
"No!" bellowed Conan. "Build him a pyre higher than Odoac's! This was a true king. If I have to, I'll build him one myself, by Crom!"
Alcuina regarded him for a moment, then said, "Do as my champion says. Burn him with sword and helm, and with his cloak."
Dawaz the merchant looked up from the unloading ship to see a familiar figure striding toward his trading post. The long black hair swinging in the breeze was unmistakable, even at a distance.
"Conan!" he shouted, waving.
He dropped his bill of lading and rushed to meet the warrior. As he drew nearer, he saw that Conan no longer wore his bronze armor and carried a long Aquilonian sword. His arms blazed with several gem-set golden bands.
"Greeting, Dawaz," said Conan. "When does the ship sail south?"
"Tomorrow, as soon as my goods are loaded. How did it go? Did you find the North to your liking?"
Conan did not break stride, and Dawaz turned to follow him. "It was a good winter; not nearly as dull as I had feared. Did the ship bring any good southern wine?"
"The best Turanian. But what of your adventures? You must have wrought prodigies to win so much gold."
At the trading post Conan paused for a moment. "Let's have some wine, and I'll tell you. There is little to tell, though. I have had far more exciting winters." Together the two men went into the post.
The Road of the Eagles
As chieftain of this mongrel Red Brotherhood, Conan is more than ever a thorn in King Yildiz's sensitive flesh. That henpecked monarch, instead of strangling his brother Teyaspa in the approved Turanian manner, has been prevailed upon to keep him cooped up in a castle deep in the Colchian Mountains, southeast of Vilayet, as a prisoner of the Zaporoskan brigand Gleg. To rid himself of another embarrassment, Yildiz sends one of Teyaspa's strongest partisans, General Artaban, to destroy the pirate stronghold at the mouth of the Zaporoska River. This he does, but he becomes the harried instead of the harrier.
The loser of the sea fight wallowed in the crimson wash. Just out of bow-shot, the winner limped away toward the rugged hills that overhung the blue water. It was a scene common enough on the Sea of Vilayet in the reign of King Yildiz of Turan.
The ship heeling drunkenly in the blue waste was a high-beaked Turanian war galley, a sister to the other. On the loser, death had reaped a plentiful harvest. Dead men sprawled on the high poop; they hung loosely over the scarred rail; they slumped along the runway that bridged the waist, where the mangled oarsmen lay among their broken benches.
Clustered on the poop stood the survivors, thirty men, many dripping blood. They were men of many nations: Kothians, Zamorians, Brythunians, Corinthians, Shemites, Zaporoskans. Their features were those of wild men, and many bore the scars of lash or branding iron. Many were half naked, but the motley clothes they wore were often of good quality, though now stained with tar and blood. Some were bareheaded, while others wore steel caps, fur caps, or strips of cloth wound turbanwise about their heads. Some wore shirts of chain mail; others were naked to their sash-girt waists, their muscular arms and shoulders burnt almost black. Jewels glittered in earrings and the hilts of daggers. Naked swords were in their hands. Their dark eyes were restless.
They stood about a man bigger than any of them, almost a giant, with thickly corded muscles. A square-cut mane of black hair surmounted his broad, low forehead, and the eyes that blazed in his dark, scarred face were a volcanic blue.
These eyes now stared at the shore. No town or harbor was visible along this stretch of lonely coast between Khawarism, the southernmost outpost of the Turanian kingdom, and its capital of Aghrapur. From the shoreline rose tree-covered hills, climbing swiftly to the snow-tipped peaks of the Colchians in the distance, on which the sinking sun shone red.
The big man glared at the slowly receding galley. Its crew had been glad to break away from the death grapple, and it crawled toward a creek that wound out of the hills between high cliffs. On the poop, the pirate captain could still make out a tall figure on whose helmet the low sun sparkled. He remembered the features under that helmet, glimpsed in the frenzy of battle: hawk-nosed, black-bearded, with slanting black eyes. That was Artaban of Shahpur, until recently the scourge of the Sea of Vilayet.
A lean Corinthian spoke: "We almost had the devil. What shall we do now, Conan?"
The gigantic Cimmerian went to one of the steering-sweeps. "Ivanos," he addressed the one who had spoken, "you and Hermio take the other sweep.
Medius, pick three besides yourself and start bailing. The rest of you dog-souls tie up your cuts and then go down into the waist and bend your backs on the oars. Throw as many stiffs overboard as you need to make room."
"Are you going to follow the other galley to the creek-mouth?" asked Ivanos.
"Nay. We're too waterlogged from the holing their ram gave us to risk another grapple. But if we pull hard, we can beach her on that headland."
Laboriously they worked the galley inshore. The sun set; a haze like soft blue smoke hovered over the dusky water. Their late antagonist vanished into the creek. The starboard rail was almost awash when the bottom of the pirates' galley grounded on the sand and gravel of the headland.
The Akrim River, which wound through patches of meadow and farmland, was tinged red, and the mountains that rose on either side of the valley looked down on a scene only less old than they. Horror had come upon the peaceful valley dwellers, in the shape of wolfish riders from the outlands. They did not turn their gaze toward the castle that hung on the sheer slope of the mountains, for there too lurked oppressors.
The clan of Kurush Khan, a subchief of one of the more barbarous Hyrkanian tribes from east of the Sea of Vilayet, had been driven westward out of its native steppes by a tribal feud. Now it was taking toll of the Yuetshi villages in the valley of Akrim. Though this was mainly a simple raid for cattle, slaves, and plunder, Kurush Khan had wider ambitions. Kingdoms had been carved out of these hills before.
However, just now, like his warriors, Kurush Khan was drunk with slaughter. The huts of the Yuetshi lay in smoking ruins. The barns had been spared because they contained fodder, as well as the ricks. Up and down the valley the lean riders raced, stabbing and loosing their barbed arrows. Men howled as the steel drove home; women screamed as they were jerked naked across the raiders' saddle bows.
Horsemen in sheepskins and high fur caps swarmed in the streets of the largest village―a squalid cluster of huts, half mud, half stone. Routed out of their pitiful hiding places, the villagers knelt, vainly imploring mercy, or as vainly fled, to be ridden down as they ran. The yataghans whistled, ending in the zhukk of cloven flesh and bone.
A fugitive turned with a wild cry as Kurush Khan swooped down on him with his cloak spreading out in the wind like the wings of a hawk. In that instant the eyes of the Yuetshi saw, as in a dream, the bearded face with its thin, down-curving nose, the wide sleeve falling away from the arm that rose grasping a curving glitter of steel. The Yuetshi carried one of the few effective weapons in the valley: a heavy hunting bow with a single arrow. With a screech of desperation he nocked the arrow, drew, and loosed, just as the Hyrkanian struck at him in passing. The arrow thudded home and Kurush Khan tumbled out of the saddle, instantly dead from a cloven heart.
As the riderless horse raced awa
y, one of the two figures drew itself up on one elbow. It was the Yuetshi, whose life was welling fast from a ghastly cut across neck and shoulder. Gasping, he looked at the other form. Kurush Khan's beard jutted upwards as if in comic surprise. The Yuetshi's arm gave way and his face fell into the dirt, filling his mouth with dust. He spat red, gave a ghastly laugh from frothy lips, and fell back. When the Hyrkanians reached the spot, he, too, was dead.
The Hyrkanians squatted like vultures about a dead sheep and conversed over the body of their khan. When they rose, the doom had been sealed of every Yuetshi in the valley of Akrim.
Granaries, ricks, and stables, spared by Kurush Khan, went up in flames. All prisoners were slain, infants tossed living into the flames, young girls ripped up and flung into the bloody streets. Beside the khan's corpse grew a heap of severed heads. Riders galloped up, swinging tliese trophies by the hair, to toss them on the grim pyramid.
Every place that might hide a shuddering wretch was ripped apart.
One tribesman, prodding into a stack of hay, discerned a movement in the straw. With a wolfish yell, he pounced upon the stack and dragged his victim to light. It was a girl, and no dumpy, apelike Yuetshi woman either. Tearing off her cloak, the Hyrkanian feasted his eyes on her scantily covered beauty.
The girl struggled silently in his grip. He dragged her toward his horse. Then, quick and deadly as a cobra, she snatched a dagger from his girdle and sank it under his heart. With a groan he crumpled, and she sprang like a she-leopard to his horse. The steed neighed and reared, and she wrenched it about and raced up the valley. Behind her the pack gave tongue and streamed out in pursuit. Arrows whistled about her head.
She guided the horse straight at the mountain wall on the south of the valley, where a narrow canyon opened out. Here the going was perilous, and the Hyrkanians reined to a less headlong pace among the stones and boulders. But the girl rode like a windblown leaf and was leading them by several hundred paces, when she came to a low wall or barrier across the mouth of the canyon, as if at some time somebody had rolled boulders together to make a crude defense. Feathery tamarisks grew out of the ridge, and a small stream cut through a narrow notch in the center. Men were there.
She saw them among the rocks, and they shouted to her to halt. At first she thought them more Hyrkanians and then saw otherwise. They were tall and strongly built, chain mail glinting under their cloaks, and spired steel caps on their heads. She made up her mind instantly. Throwing herself from her steed, she ran up to the rocks and fell on her knees, crying: "Aid, in the name of Ishtar the merciful!"
A man emerged, at the sight of whom she cried out: "General Artaban!"
She clasped his knees. "Save me from those wolves that follow!"
"Why should I risk my life for you?" he asked indifferently.
"I knew you at the court of the king at Aghrapur! I danced before you.
I am Roxana, the Zamorian."
"Many women have danced before me."
"Then I will give you a password," said she in desperation. "Listen!"
As she whispered a name in his ear, he started as if stung. He stared piercingly at her. Then, clambering upon a great boulder, he faced the oncoming riders with lifted hand.
"Go your way in peace, in the name of King Yildiz of Turan!"
His answer was a whistle of arrows about his ears. He sprang down and waved. Bows twanged all along the barrier and arrows sheeted out among the Hyrkanians. Men rolled from their saddles; horses screamed and bucked. The other riders fell back, yelling in dismay. They wheeled and raced back down the valley.
Artaban turned to Roxana: a tall man in a cloak of crimson silk and a chain-mail corselet threaded with gold. Water and blood had stained his apparel, yet its richness was still notable. His men gathered about him, forty stalwart Turanian mariners, bristling with weapons. A miserable-looking Yuetshi stood by with his hands bound.
"My daughter," said Artaban, "I have made enemies in this remote land on your behalf because of a name whispered in my ear. I believed you―"
"If I lied, may my skin be stripped from me."
"It will be," he promised gently. "I will see to it personally. You named Prince Teyaspa. What do you know of him?"
"For three years I have shared his exile."
"Where is he?"
She pointed down the valley to where the turrets of the castle were just visible among the crags. "In yonder stronghold of Gleg the Zaporoskan."
"It would be hard to take," mused Artaban.
"Send for the rest of your sea hawks! I know a way to bring you to the heart of that keep!"
He shook his head. "These you see are all my band." Seeing her incredulity he added: "I am not surprised that you wonder. I will tell you…"
With the frankness that his fellow Turanians found so disconcerting, Artaban sketched his fall. He did not tell her of his triumphs, which were too well-known to need repetition. He was famous as a general for his swift raids into far countries―Brythunia, Zamora, Koth, and Shem ―when five years before, the pirates of the Sea of Vilayet, working in league with the outlaw kozaki of the adjoining steppes, had become a formidable menace to that westernmost Hyrkanian kingdom, and King Yildiz had called upon Artaban to redress the situation. By vigorous action Artaban had put down the pirates, or at least driven them away from the western shores of the sea.
But Artaban, a passionate gambler, had gotten deeply in debt. To discharge his debts he had, while on a lone patrol with his flagship, seized a legitimate merchantman out of Khorusun, put all her people to the sword, and taken her cargo back to his base to sell secretly. But, though his crew was sworn to secrecy, somebody blabbed. Artaban had kept his head only at the price of a command from King Yildiz that almost amounted to suicide: to sail across the Sea of Vilayet to the mouth of the Zaporoska River and destroy the encampments of the pirates. Only two ships happened to be available for this enterprise.
Artaban had found the fortified camp of the Vilayet pirates and had taken it by storm, because only a few of the pirates were in it at the time. The rest had gone up the river to fight a band of wandering Hyrkanians, similar to Kurush Khan's band, that had attacked the native Zaporoskans along the river, with whom the pirates were on friendly terms. Artaban destroyed several pirate ships in their docks and captured a number of old or sick pirates.
To cow the absent pirates, Artaban had ordered that those taken alive should be impaled, burned by slow fires, and flayed alive all at once.
This sentence was in the midst of being executed when the main body of the pirates had returned. Artaban had fled, leaving one of his ships in their hands. Knowing the penalty for failure, he had struck out for the wild stretch along the southwestern shore of Vilayet Sea where the Colchian Mountains came down to the water. He was soon pursued by the pirates in the captured ship and overtaken when the western shore was already in sight The resulting battle had raged over the decks of both ships until dead and wounded lay everywhere. The greater numbers and superior equipment of the Turanians, together with Artaban's adroit use of his ram, had barely given them a defensive, indecisive victory.
"So we ran the galley ashore in the creek. We might have repaired it, but the king's fleet rules all of Vilayet Sea, and he will have a bowstring ready for me when he knows I've failed. We struck into the mountains, seeking we know not what―a way out of Turanian dominions or a new kingdom to rule."
Roxana listened and then without comment began her tale. As Artaban well knew, it was the custom of the kings of Turan, upon coming to the throne, to kill their brothers and their brothers' children in order to eliminate the chance of a civil war. Moreover it was the custom, when the king died, for the nobles and generals to acclaim as king the first of his sons to reach the capital after the event.
Even with this advantage, the weak Yildiz could not have conquered his aggressive brother Teyaspa had it not been for his mother, a Kothian woman named Khushia. This formidable old dame, the real ruler of Turan, preferred Yildiz be
cause he was more docile, and Teyaspa was driven into exile. He sought refuge in Iranistan but discovered that the king of that land was corresponding with Yildiz in regard to poisoning him.
In an attempt to reach Vendhya, he was captured by a nomadic Hyrkanian tribe, who recognized him and sold him to the Turanians. Teyaspa thought his fate was sealed, but his mother intervened and stopped Yildiz from having his brother strangled."
Instead, Teyaspa was confined in the castle of Gleg the Zaporoskan, a fierce semibandit chief who had come into the valley of the Akrim many years before and set himself up as a feudal lord over the primitive Yuetshi, preying on them but not protecting them. Teyaspa was furnished with all luxuries and forms of dissipation calculated to soften his fiber.
Roxana explained that she was one of the dancing girls sent to entertain him. She had fallen violently in love with the handsome prince and, instead of seeking to ruin him, had striven to lift him back to manhood.
"But," she concluded, "Prince Teyaspa has sunk into apathy. One would not know him for the young eagle who led his horsemen into the teeth of the Brythunian knights and the Shemitic asshuri. Imprisonment and wine and the juice of the black lotus have drugged his senses. He sits entranced on his cushions, rousing only when I sing or dance for him.
But he has the blood of conquerors in him. He is a lion who but sleeps.
"When the Hyrkahians rode into the valley, I slipped out of the castle and went looking for Kurush Khan, in hope of finding a man bold enough to aid Teyaspa. But I saw Kurush Khan slain, and then the Hyrkanians became like mad dogs. I hid from them, but they dragged me out. O my lord, help us! What if you have but a handful? Kingdoms have been built on less! When it is known that the prince is free, men will flock to us! Yildiz is a fumbling mediocrity, and the people fear his son Yezdigerd, a fierce, cruel, and gloomy youth.
"The nearest Turanian garrison is three days' ride from here. Akrim is isolated, known to few but wandering nomads and the wretched Yuetshi.
Here an empire can be plotted unmolested. You too are an outlaw; let us band together to free Teyaspa and place him on his throne! If he were king, all wealth and honor were yours, while Yildiz offers you naught but a bowstring!"
The Conan Compendium Page 481
