In Conan's tent, Alcina opened her travelling chest and dug out a page's costume, into which she changed. Under the garments in the chest lay a small copper casket, which she opened by twisting the silver dragon that bestrode the lid. The casket contained a choice assortment of rings, bracelets, necklaces, ear-rings and other gem-encrusted finery. Alcina burrowed into the jewellery until she found a small oblong of copper, inscribed in Argossean. This token-a forgery provided by Quesado - entitled the bearer to change horses at the royal post stations. She made a quick selection of the jewellery, tucking the better pieces into her girdle, and filled the small purse depending from her belt with coins of gold and silver.
Then she extinguished the candle and boldly left the darkened tent. Demurely she addressed the sentry: 'The general sleeps; but he has asked me to bear an urgent message to the court of Argos. Will you kindly order the grooms to saddle a horse, forthwith, and fetch it hither?'
The sentry called the corporal of the guard, who sent a man to comply with Alcina's request, while the girl waited silently at the entrance to the tent. The soldiers, who were used to the comings and goings of the general's mistress and admired her splendid figure and easy ways, hastened to do her bidding.
When the horse was brought, she mounted swiftly and the sentry assigned to her beyond the limits of the camp. Then, at a spanking trot, she vanished into the moonlit distance.
Four days later, Alcina arrived in Messantia. She hastened In Quesado's hideaway, where she found the spy's replacement, Fadius the Kothian, feeding Quesado's carrier pigeons. She asked:
'Pray, where is Quesado?'
'Have you not heard?' replied Fadius. 'He's an ambassador now, too proud to spare time for the likes of us. He's been line but once since he arrived on his embassy.'
'Well, grandee or no grandee, I must see him at once. I bear news of the greatest import.'
Grumbling, Fadius led Alcina to the hostelry in Messantia where the Aquilonians lodged. Quesado's servant was pulling off his master's boots and preparing him for bed when Alcina mid Fadius burst in unannounced.
'Damme!' cried Quesado. 'What sort of ill-bred rabble are you, to intrude on a gentleman retiring for the night?'
'You know well enough who we are,' said Alcina. 'I came to tell you Conan is dead.'
Quesado paused with his mouth open, then closed it slowly. 'Well!' he said at last. 'That casts a different light on many matters. Pull on my boots again, Narses. I must go to the palace forthwith. What has befallen, Mistress Alcina?'
A little time later, Quesado presented himself at the palace with a peremptory demand to see the king. The Zingaran intended to urge an instant attack on Conan's army by the forces of Argos. He felt sure that the rebels, demoralized by the fall of their leader, would crumble before any vigorous assault.
Fate, however, ordained that events should march to a different tune. Roused from slumber, King Milo flew into a rage at Quesado's insolence hi demanding a midnight audience.
'His Majesty,' reported the head page to Quesado,
'commands that you depart instanter and return at a more
.seemly time. He suggests an hour before noon tomorrow.' Quesado flushed with the anger of frustration. Looking
down his nose, he said: 'My good man, you do not seem to;
realise who and what I am.' The page laughed, matching Quesado's impudence with
his own. 'Aye, sir, we all know who you are-and what you I were.' Derisive grins spread to the faces of the guards flanking the page, who continued: 'Now pray depart hence, and speedily, on pain of my sovereign lord's displeasure!'
'You shall rue those words, varlet!' snarled Quesado, turning away. He tramped the cobbled streets to his former headquarters on the waterfront, where he found Fadius and Alcina awaiting him. There he prepared a furious dispatch , to the King of Aquilonia, telling of Milo's rebuff, and sent it on its way wired to the leg of a pigeon.
In a few days, the former spy's report reached Vibius Latro, who brought it to his king's attention. Numedides, seldom able to restrain his passions under the easiest of circumstances, read of the recalcitrance of the King of Argos towards his mighty neighbour and sent another courier post-haste to General Amulius Procas. This dispatch did more I than authorise an incursion into Argos, as had the previous message. In exigent terms, it commanded the general at once to attack across the borders of Argos, with whatever force he needed, to stamp out the last embers of the rebellion,
Procas, a tough and canny old campaigner, winced at the royal command. On the night that followed his victorious I battles on the Alimane, he had quickly withdrawn from I Argossean territory the detachments he had sent across the river to harry the fleeing rebels. Those incursions could be excused on grounds of hot pursuit. But now, if he mounted a new invasion, the open violation of the border would almost certainly turn King Milo's sympathies from cautious neutrality into open hostility to the royal Aquilonian cause.
But the royal command admitted of no arguement.
If he wished his head to continue to ride his shoulders, Procas must attack, although every instinct in his elderly bosom cried out against this hasty, ill-timed action.
Procas delayed his advance for several days, hoping that the king, on second thoughts, would countermand his order. No communication came, and Procas dared wait no longer. And so, on a bright spring morning, Amulius Procas attacked the Alimane in force. The river, which had subsided somewhat from its flood, offered no obstacle to his squadrons n littering, panoplied knights, stolid mailed spear men and leather-coated archers. They splashed across and marched implacably up the winding road that led to Saxula Pass through the Rabirian range, and thence to the rebel camp to the Plain of Pallos.
Not until the morning after Alcina's departure did Conan's followers learn of the fall of their leader. They gathered round him, laid him on his bed, and searched him for wounds. Dexitheus, still limping on a walking stick, sniffed at the dregs in the goblet from which Conan had drunk Alcina's potion.
'That drink,' he said, 'was laced with the juice of the purple lotus of Stygia. By rights, our general should be as dead as King Tuthamon; yet he lives, albeit no more than a living corpse with open eyes.'
Publius flicked his fingers as he did mental sums and mused: 'Perchance the poisoner used only so much of the drug as would suffice to slay an ordinary man, unmindful of Conan's great size and strength.'
'’twas that green-eyed witch!' cried Trocero. 'I've never trusted her, and her disappearance last night proclaims her guilt. Were she here, in my power, I'd burn her at the stake!'
Dexitheus turned on the count. 'Green eyes, quoth thee? A woman with green eyes?'
'Aye, as green as emeralds. But what of it? Surely you know Conan's concubine, the fair Alcina.'
Dexitheus shook his head with a frown of foreboding. 'I knew that our general had taken a dancing girl from the wine shops of Argos,' he murmured, 'but I try to ignore such whoredoms among my sons, and Conan tactfully kept her out of my sight. Woe unto our cause! For the lord Mitra warned me in a dream to beware a green-eyed shadow hovering near our leader, although I knew not that the evil on already walked amongst us. Woe unto me, who failed to confide the warning to my comrades!'
'Enough of this,' said Publius. 'Conan lives, and we can thank our gods that our fair poisoner is no arithmetician! Let none but his squires attend him or even enter the tent. We must tell the men that he is ill of a minor sickness, whilst we continue to rebuild our force. If he recovers, he recovers but meanwhile you must take command, Trocero.'
The Poitanian count nodded sombrely. 'I'll do what I can, since I am second in command. You, Publius, must mend the nets of your spy system, so that we shall have warning of Procas's moves. It's time for morning roll call, so I must be off. I'll drill the lads as hard as Conan ever drilled them, aye and morel'
By the time Procas began his invasion, the Lions again had their watching eyes and listening ears abroad. Reports of the strength of the invaders reache
d the leaders of the rebel army, who had gathered in Conan's tent. Trocero, wearing the silvery badge of age and the lines of weariness but self-assured withal, asked Publius:
'What know we of the numbers of the foe?'
Publius bent his head to work sums on his waxen tablets. When he raised his eyes, his expression showed alarm. 'Thrice I our strength and more,' he said heavily. 'This is a black day, my friends. We can do little save make a final stand.'
'Be of good cheer!' said the count, slapping the stout I treasurer on the back. 'You'd never make a general, Publius; you'd assure the soldiers they were beaten before the fray f began.' He turned to Dexitheus. 'How does our patient?'
'He regains some slight awareness, but as yet he cannot
dime now think he will live, praise Mitra.'
'Well, if he cannot sit a horse when the battle trumpet blows'., I must sit it for him. Have we any word of Prospero?' Publius and Dexitheus shook their heads. Trocero limited, saying: 'Then we must make do with what we have. The foe will close within striking distance on the nun row, and we must needs decide whether to fight or flee.'
Down from the mountains streamed the armoured cavalry and infantry of the Border Legion. A swirl of galloping wind preceded them, and hi their midst rode General Procas in his chariot. Drawn up to confront them, the rebels formed their battle lines in the midst of the plain.
The still air offered no respite from the myriad fears and faint prayers of the waiting men. The broad front of the exterior Aquilonian force allowed Count Trocero no opportunity for clever flanking or enveloping moves. Yet, to retreat now- would mean the instant dissolution of the rebel force. The count knew there could be no shrewdly timed withdrawal, with rear-guard actions to delay pursuit. Such a lighting retreat was only for well-trained, self-confident troops. These men, discouraged by their fortune on the Alimane, would simply flee, every man for himself, while the Aquilonian light horse rode down the fugitives, slaying and slaying until nightfall sheltered the survivors beneath its dragon wings.
Trocero, scanning the oncoming host from his command post on a hillock, presently signalled his groom to fetch his charger. He adjusted a strap on his armour and heaved himself into the saddle. To the few hundred horsemen who gathered around him, he said:
You know our plan, my friends. 'Tis a slim chance, but our only one.'
For Trocero had decided that their only hope lay in a suicidal charge into the Aquilonian array, in a mad effort to reach Amulius Procas himself. He knew that the enemy commander, a stout man of middle years slowed by ancient wounds, found riding hard on his ageing joints and preferred
to travel by chariot. He knew, too, that the general's charioteer would have difficulty in manoeuvring the clumsy vehicle in the press of battle. Thus, if the rebel horse could by some miracle reach and slay the Aquilonian general, his troop might falter and break.
The outlook, as Trocero had said, was black, but the plan was the best he could devise. Meanwhile he strove to give his subordinates no sign of his discomfiture. He laughed and! joked as if he faced certain victory instead of a forlorn attempt to vanquish thrice their number of the world's bean soldiery.
Once again, Destiny intervened on the side of the rebels, in the royal person of Milo, King of Argos. Even before the Aquilonian invasion began, an Argossean spy, killing three horses in his haste to reach Messantia, brought word to the court of Numedides's command to violate the territory of Argos. Thus King Milo learned of the planned attack as soon as did the rebel commanders. Already affronted by the arrogance of Ambassador Quesado, the usually even-tempered Milo flew into a rage. At once he commanded the nearest division of his army to speed north on forced marches to intercept the invasion.
In a calmer moment, Milo might have temporised. Since he did not think that Numedides meant to seize a portion of his land, as the late King Vilerus had done, he had sound reasons for delaying any irrevocable action. But, by the time his temper had cooled, his troops were already on the march northward, and with his usual stubbornness the king refused to change his decision.
Amulius Procas had halted his army and was meticulously ordering his troops for an assault when a breathless scout galloped up to his chariot.
'General!' he cried, gasping for breath, 'A great cloud of dust is rising from the southern road; it is as if another army approached!'
Procas made the scout repeat his message. Then, blowing air with curses, he tugged off his helmet and hurled it with a clang to the floor of his chariot. It was as he had King Milo had got wind of the invasion and was p p. Bring troops to block it. To his aides he barked:
Tell the men to stand at ease, and see that they have MIT. Order the scouts to swing around the rebel army and 'le to southward, to learn the numbers and composition of the approaching force. Pitch a tent, and call my high commanders to a conference.'
When, an hour later, the scouts reported that a thousand cavalry were on the march, Amulius Procas found himself might on the horns of a dilemma. Without explicit orders
I mm his king, he dared not provoke Argos into open war-In ir. Neither did he dare disobey a direct command from Numedides without some overriding reason.
True, Procas's army could doubtless crush the rebels and race Milo's cavalry back to Messantia. But such an action IMP ild presage a major war, for which Aquilonia was ill- M cpared. While his country was the larger and more populous kingdom, her king was, at least, eccentric; and his rule had gravely weakened mighty Aquilonia. The Argosseans, moreover, fighting with righteous indignation an invader on their native soil, might with the aid of a small rebel force, like ili;it assembled beneath the Lion banner, tip the scales against Procas's homeland.
Neither could Procas retreat. Since his troops outnumbered In; combined rebel and Argossean forces, King Numedides might readily read his withdrawal as an act of cowardice or
treachery and shorten him by a head for his disobedience.
As the sun rode down the western sky, Procas, deep in discussion with his officers, still delayed his decision. At last he said:
''Tis too late to start an action this day. We shall withdraw to northward, where we have left the baggage train, and set up a fortified camp. Send a man to order the engineers to begin digging.'
Trocero, narrowly watching the royalists from his rise, had long since dismounted. Beside him stood Publius, munching I mi a Cowl's leg. At last the treasurer said:
'What in Mitra's name is Procas doing? He had us where lie wanted us, and now he pulls back and pitches camp. Is he mad? For aught he knows, we might slip away in the coming night, or steal past him to enter Aquilonia.'
Trocero shrugged. 'Belike the report we had, of Argosseans approaching, has something to do with his actions. It remains to be seen whether these Argossean horsemen mean to help or harm us. We could be caught between the two forces and ground to powder, unless Procas counts on the Argosseans to do his dirty work for him.'
Even as the count spoke, hoofbeats summoned his glance southward across the plain. Soon a small party of mounted men cantered up the rise —a group of Argosseans, guided in by a rebel cavalryman. Two of these new arrivals dismounted with a clank of armour and strode forward. One was tall, lean, and leathery of visage, with the look of a professional soldier. His companion was younger and short of stature, with a wide-cheeked, snub-nosed face and bright, interested eyes. He wore a gilded cuirass and a purple cloak edged with scarlet, and purple-and-scarlet were the plumes that danced on the crest of his helm.
The lean veteran spoke first: 'Hail, Count Trocero! I am Arcadio, senior captain of the Royal Guard, at your service, sir. May I present Prince Cassio of Argos, heir apparent to the throne? We desire a council with your general, Conan the Cimmerian.'
Nodding to the officer and making a slight bow to the Prince of Argos, Trocero said: 'I remember you well, Prince Cassio, as a mischievous child and a harum-scarum youth. As for General Conan, I regret to say he is indisposed. But you may state the purpose of your visit to me as seco
nd-in-command.'
'Our purpose, Count Trocero,' said the prince, 'is to thwart this Aquilonian violation of our territorial integrity. To that endeavour, my royal father has sent me hither with such as could readily be mustered. I assume my officers and I may consider you and your followers as allies?'
Trocero smiled. 'Thrice welcome, Prince Cassio! From
your aspect, you have had a long and dusty ride. Will you
mill Captain Arcadio come to our command tent for refresh-
ment, while your escort take their ease? Our wine has long
iii'-c gone, but we still have ale.'
On the way back to the tent, Trocero spoke privately to Publius: 'This explains Procas's withdrawal when he all but INI, I us in his jaws. He dare not attack for fear of starting mi unauthorised war with Argos, and he dare not retreat first he be branded a poltroon. So he camps where he is, waiting.'
'Trocero!' A deep roar came from within the tent. Who l it you are talking to, besides Publius? Fetch him in!'
'That's General Conan,' said Trocero, dissembling his iartlement. 'Will you step inside, gentlemen?'
They found Conan, in shirt and short breeks, propped up on his bunk. Under the ministrations of Dexitheus, he had recovered full consciousness, his mighty frame having thrown nil' the worst effects of a draught that would have doomed mi ordinary man. While he could think and speak, he could do little else; for the residue of the poison still chained his brawny limbs. Unable to rise without help, he chafed at his infirment.
'Gods and devils!' he fumed. 'Could I but stand and lift it sword, I'd show Procas how to cut and thrust! And who are these Argosseans?'
Trocero introduced Prince Cassio and Captain Arcadio and recounted Procas's latest move. Conan snarled :
'This I will see for myself. Squires! Raise me to my feet. Procas may be shamming a withdrawal, the better to surprise us by a night attack.'
With an arm around the neck of each squire, Conan tottered to the entrance. The sun, impaled upon the peaks of the Rabirian Hills to westward, spilled dark shadows down the mountainsides. In the middle distance, the departing rays struck scarlet sparks from the armour of the Aquilonians as tiny laboured to set up a camp. The tap of mallets on tend pegs came softly through the evening air.
The Conan Chronology Page 599
