Conan, sitting along the wall with Ludya, shifted so abruptly at this remark that his armor clanked. "Hell's hoary devils you say!" Scowling, he stared down at his depleted segment of the line, which took up little more than half the length of roadway it formerly covered. "I wish the deaths were shared out more evenly amongst our companies! My fighters of Dinander did not earn their victory so lightly," He turned his gaze ominously to the other warlords.
After a moment's disdainful silence, Ottislav answered up tolerantly, even soothingly. "Ah well, Baron" -neither he nor Sigmarck bothered any longer to use the name of Favian- "do not be too hard on yourself. 'Tis no surprise that a young, inexperienced commander should suffer heavy losses in the field while his seniors go unscathed. Even you will learn in time."
"Rascal!" Conan sprang to his feet, clutching his swordhilt. "I hope time never teaches me to skulk behind the lines, shirking the enemy!"
"Now, now, Baron," Sigmarck interrupted, holding up a trim, well-manicured hand to signal restraint. "Do not forget your lordly dignity. And Ottislav, do not provoke the young warlord just now. Can you not see he is distraught over his recent losses? And rightly so." Perched on the wall, the slight, slender man regarded Conan with inscrutable calm. "In particular I offer you condolence on the death of your friend, Evadne; she was a handsome piece of woman."
Before Conan could find words scathing enough to reply, the brutish Ottislav chimed in again: "Haw! I would not mope so much about it if I were he, Sigmarck. He seems to have plenty of luck finding stray wenches along the way!"
If Conan's swordhilt had been a human neck it would have snapped in the swiftly tightening grip of his fist. And yet, feeling Ludya's equally urgent grasp on his arm, and hearing her intense whisper in his ear, he checked himself.
"Stay, Conan, please! Do not start another war, for your weary army's sake!" At her tugging insistence, he shot his fellow barons a last withering glance and stalked away, his lover holding firmly to his arm.
Since leaving Lar's camp, Ludya had clothed herself more modestly in silks and laces, saved from her traveling kit. Her manner was more restrained than it had been in her days at the Manse; her judgments seemed to be cooler now, tempered by experience and hardship. Conan found her lovemaking, too, more deliberate, and less casually sensual. Yet she remained a dazzling spot of warmth and color amidst the faded greens of the countryside, and was a source of life and humor for the weary campaigners. Lightly she acknowledged the many appreciative nods and hails of the resting troopers, as she walked with Conan toward his chariot at the front of the column.
When, after Lar's death, they had finally rejoined the baronial army, the snakecult was, for all intents, defeated. Of the hideous serpent-warriors, those the least human had collapsed uncannily and simultaneously on the death of their leader. Most of them fell into swift, unnatural decay, their mortal flesh apparently unable to bear the stress of the sorcerous changes worked upon it.
Other cultists, those whose reptile-stigmata were only superficial, simply lowered their weapons and wandered about dumbstruck. They were easily cut down by the Nemedians, who soon formed wide skirmish lines in which to sweep across the plain and flush out the demoralized foe.
Still other cult followers, unmarked by sorcery, seemed at the moment of Lar's death to regain a semblance of their former wit. They fought only feebly, usually in self-defense, and fled as circumstances permitted; apparently they sought nothing but a return to their northern farms. On several occasions Conan found himself brandishing his sword, threatening and intimidating his own Nemedian officers lest their companies butcher the pitiful refugees.
By the time the last cultists were dead or scattered, the clouds and smoke began to disperse, and the land came to resemble wholesome earth again. Conan marshaled the surviving troops of Dinander who, though hard-driven and weary, were mindful of their victory and of his pivotal leadership. Like him, they were openly disdainful of the other barons' forces. There had been little communication between the allies thus far on the march homeward and now, as Conan lashed his chariot-team forward, he swore to have even less in the future.
"But after all," Ludya was reassuring him, "we should be in Dinander by dusk. If you can keep the peace until then, it may last a good many years. From what you tell me, the city's shaky new regime can ill afford another war."
"Aye, girl, you're right." Bunching the reins in one hand, Conan threw his free arm around her lush shoulders, squeezing her against him with a warmth he had never shown Evadne. "Of course there is no telling what awaits us ... or whether the wretched city still stands at all. But I swear to you, if there remains but one brick standing atop another, I will be lord of it!" He laughed lustily, causing the nervous horses to flick their tails before him. "I am no longer a mock baron; I have powers I formerly lacked. Willingly or not, along with my gruel and my lessons in bowing and scraping, I have taken in the trick of rulership.
"Now I return to Dinander with an army and a victory at my back. I can see through the posturings of nobles and rebels alike, and weave my way through their snares. I tell you, girl, I will stop these Nemedians from tormenting one another if I have to crack a few skulls to do it!"
Ludya joined him in laughter, their gaiety ringing out across the sunlit meadows. The soldiers behind them soon found the merriment infectious and struck up a spirited marching chant. Against its chorus the two lovers clung together in the chariot, laying out plans and speculations.
"And you, Ludya! I can provide for you grandly, once I am installed in the Manse. Most of the rub of playing baron before was in having nobody to talk to, no one to trust. But with you as my baroness. . . ."
"Conan, wait! I pray you, think before you speak." The young woman touched a red-tipped finger to her even redder lips in order to silence him. "Is that a wise promise to be making so soon?" She gazed up with a wide-eyed, earnest look. "Usually the bedmates of princes and barons are chosen out of political expediency-to weld kingdoms together, and beget titled heirs. Some such alliance may be required of you, to stabilize your own rule . . . such as a marriage to Calissa Einharson! Even if she is mad as you say, perhaps 'twould be a union in outward seeming only. I would be happy to live modestly and consort with you outside of public view. . . ." As she spoke, her hand crept discreetly up his armored leg to demonstrate her point.
"No, girl, do not speak that way! I killed Baldomer, Calissa's father. To wed me to the daughter ... that would be too much of an insult to her, mad or sane." He dismissed the notion with a bitter laugh. "Besides, when I am ruler, I will steer my own destiny as well as that of the province, rather than letting sly courtiers harness and manipulate me." He hugged her close to his side again. "No, Ludya, you are my choice. You are a jolly girl, simple and direct and kind. Strange to think-when you used to lie abed nights, scheming to wed a baron, that your best prospect lay snoring beside you!"
The marchers proceeded down from the hills, the afternoon about them growing warm and lazy, the valley spreading wider ahead until the walls of Dinander finally appeared over low trees. No menacing smokes loomed above the town, only the usual thin plumes arising from the shops of tanners, bakers and smiths. No strange armies roved the countryside, and the serfs laboring near the road knelt to touch their grimy palms respectfully to earth as the war-chariot rumbled past. Soon the broad river curved near to hand, with skiffs and coracles bobbing along its leisurely current.
Then the city loomed before them, the iron-bound timbers of the main gate set impressively tall in the dark, beetling expanse of stone wall. Today the gates stood closed, except for a small sally-port flanked by two municipal guards. There was foot traffic passing through the portal, and there seemed a goodly number of faces atop the parapet, including a group of officers at one side. Clearly the messengers Conan sent ahead had alerted the city of his arrival.
He heard the other barons' officers ordering their troops to a halt behind him. They stopped at a respectful distance from the battlements, well out
of longbow range. But Conan kept his company marching onward in a show of confidence, straight up to the foot of the stone defensive ramp that ascended to the massive doors. As he halted his troops with a raised hand, the portals began to part before them. Smoothly the doors swung wide, and cheers from the citizens thronging within rolled out to greet the returning army.
"See, my girl, we are welcome!" Conan pinched Ludya for luck, then raised his arm once again. He gave the signal to advance-but there came none of the expected clattering of arms, armor and harness. He jerked the reins to halt his chariot-team, looking behind to see the cause.
By some prearranged plan, the troops of Dinander remained stiffly in their formations. As he watched, they drew their swords, pointed them skyward and shouted one word, two beats, in salute.
"Co-nan!"
Then the soldiers clashed their blades against gleaming shields and breastplates, adding their metallic clangor to the cheers coming from within the city.
"Crom save you, dogs! Ulla love you too!" Feeling light-headed, freed of weighty doubts for the first time since he had been thrown into Dinander's jail, Conan turned back smiling toward Ludya and the city. "Did you hear, girl? Do you know what that means?" He hugged her crushingly to his chest. "They saluted me openly, in my own name! Now we have nothing to fear in Dinander." Again he raised his arm high; this time the marching column surged forward through the city gates with him.
The victory march was a bold spectacle, grander in every way than Baldomer's homecoming on his death's eve. Rumors and fears of the snakecult's menace had grown fervid in past days, and the total victory against it was a source of great rejoicing. Additionally, it was the first holiday of the city's new reign, unfettered by the oppression and restraint that had so long worn at the people.
In consequence, the revels were wild, with lusty excesses sanctioned by state and church alike. Harlots and debauched wives danced half-clothed for gold drams before taverns, while hardier male and female celebrants splashed naked together in the town's statuary fountains. Bands of drunken revelers linked arms and roamed the streets singing bawdy songs, while troups of folk-dancers stampeded their squares and roundels through narrow intersections and stately buildings.
To be sure, Conan's marching formations were greeted as often with tears of mourning as with tears of joy. The cost of the campaign in lives had been heavy, and widows and loved ones wailed to learn of those who would not be returning, or who lay maimed in the jolting supply wagons.
Nevertheless the overall effect of the merrymaking was seductive. The marchers were strewn with ripe grain, flower petals and knotted scarves, along with select articles of more-intimate women's apparel. From street to street their thirsts were tempted by wine, rum and hot kisses; wherever the parade was slowed by the crowds, many of its marchers were drawn aside by alluring hands.
Conan's officers were not such martinets as to keep their troops rigidly in order in the face of these inducements; rather, as they approached the Manse, the companies gradually dwindled and dispersed. Finally the warlord's chariot was accompanied by only a few wagons, the mounted guard officers from the gate, and a half-dozen surviving cavalry troopers who wanted to see their horses safe into the stable before they joined the wild carnival.
Conan had acquired a wineflask along the march; now he plied it liberally to his own and Ludya's lips as he held the girl to his side. Yet he also tried to keep an ear cocked to the conversation of the officers cantering close behind. "What say you, fellow?" he called back to the nearest one. "What is that you said about Sigmarck and Ottislav?"
"Oh, Milord." The helmeted officer leaned down from the saddle to make himself heard over the tumult. "I am told that the barons have not marched onward toward the border, but are making camp outside our city wall."
"They are?" Conan pondered this news briefly. "Well, the city gates have been closed to them, have they not?"
"Yes, sire. Our standing order is to admit no foreign military personnel."
"Good, then. Doubtless they will depart in the morning." Conan turned to Ludya. "When we reach the Manse, I must see about having refreshments sent out to the Crom-blighted rogues. They are no danger to us, since there are not nearly enough of them to storm the walls."
"No, I suppose not." Ludya shook her head in wine-dazed reflection. "Unless someone were to let them in."
The mobbing of the main thoroughfare went unabated down its length, across the wooden bridge and straight up to the Manse, whose gates stood wide. Even the courtyard beyond had a festive look, adorned to Conan's surprise with potted trees and plants. But the celebrants who loitered amongst them were fewer and less demonstrative, for here order was maintained by the gate guards and sentries. As the last of the campaigners turned their horses aside to the stable, Conan drove his chariot up near the broad front steps in the company of the mounted municipal officers. He stepped out of the car, sweeping Ludya down to the cobbles beside him.
As they strode across the terrace, a courtly retinue came through the open doors of the Manse to greet them: Marshal Durwald, splendid in his newly enameled breastplate of the Red Dragons; gray old Lothian, frail and stooped in his courtly and costly attire; the sword-slinging priest of Ulla, flanked by other rebels brightly garbed in uniforms of the Reform Council; and in their midst, a tall, thin female.
She was clad in a long-sleeved, low-cut, slit-skirted gown neither more lavish nor more modest than the garb of most of the city's festive women, and her head was bound in a silken scarf; yet something about held Conan's eye-Then he recognized her, more from the six-bladed amulet dangling loosely in the hollow of her satin-sheathed breasts than from her face, which had grown pale and gaunt since last he set eyes on it. The woman was Calissa.
Even as his hand wandered to the hilt of his sword, mailed gloves clamped his arms. In another instant, blades were jabbed warningly to his throat and the small of his back, beneath his backplate. Even so, his armor might have enabled him to break loose and fight; but Conan could see that the stern-faced guard officers also held Ludya gasping at steelpoint. Of his own recently loyal troops, there were now only a handful in evidence. These watched his arrest with frank surprise, but without making a concerted rush to his defense.
"At long last the usurper is taken in hand." Addressing the company, Calissa's voice sounded less melodious than he remembered-worn down by prolonged screaming perhaps, or rusty with disuse. Her face wore a grim smile, and her eyes, though dark and hollow, glinted with keen intelligence.
"Here, then, is the false baron who was my family's treacherous bodyguard. And his painted plaything, our former kitchen-slave!" The noblewoman's thinness became even more apparent as she walked close before the captured pair, looking them up and down with obvious distaste. "A shame that the slinking assassin, Evadne, is dead; I had an arrest order drawn up and waiting for her as well."
"I will fight rather than stand and bear your insults, Calissa." Conan shifted amidst the crowd of his captors with a surly, reckless strength that caused them to clutch him all the tighter. "As for Evadne, she died well, fighting for Dinander."
Calissa smiled grimly. "As did my father and my brother! A fitting recompense, then." She shrugged irritably, turning to stalk in another direction. "Very well, Cimmerian, I thank you for destroying the snakecult-as any able commander might have done. But if you think that a single bit of good fortune buys you the city ... if you think Dinander will bow its head to a northern savage, a bloody-handed upstart! . . . Well, you shall have more leisure to think on it chained in the stoutest wardroom of the Manse!"
Throughout Calissa's angry posturings, the coalition of nobles and rebels had stood behind her calmly, watching the scene with what seemed to be their entire approval. Conan scanned the faces in vain for any show of discontent, or for any reassurance or signal to himself. As soon as the noblewoman had recovered her faculties, they struck a bargain with her, he realized. After all, if Dinander could be convinced to accept a female ruler, the Ein
harson daughter was likely a safer figurehead than was a foreigner. As for her mystical fitness to rule-well, Conan had proven that himself, perhaps unwisely, when he strapped the ancient amulet around her neck to turn back the ancestral warrior-ghosts.
Sure now of her audience, Calissa apparently thought it a good occasion to make a speech; she moved to one side for a better view of the crowd of citizens gathering in the courtyard.
"This day was proclaimed a day of rejoicing, people of Dinander! Never forget it; now it can be doubly so. For as you see, a second and greater threat to our city has just been overcome." She raised a hand, pointing to Conan and Ludya pinioned at her side. "I promise you, this danger shall not be allowed to loom over us any longer!
"I thank Ulla for removing the illness that formerly afflicted me. A happy thing it is for our province that these noble counselors have consented to crown our justice with the splendor of tradition, pledging their loyalty to me as baroness of Dinander. Happier yet that during the recent military crisis, our neighboring barons sent couriers to keep us informed of the vile conspiracy that would have placed us all under the sway of a ruthless Cimmerian adventurer!
No, my people, the lesson of history is clear! My father and brother are dead, but their murderers must not rule Dinander! The reign of the bloody sword is ended!"
Having raised a sallow palm open and empty to the sky, she lowered it to her side. "Of course the foul hoax could scarcely have succeeded; Dinander would never accept a common foreign knave as its ruler. The king in Belverus would not have borne it! Our allied barons could not abide this pretender; even now they are camped before our gate, having pledged their aid in ousting him, had we need of it. Know you that if by some trick he had seized temporary sway, their siege would have been reinforced by a hundred companies. But now that matters are well in hand, you can expect to see our friends march away on the morrow."
The Conan Compendium Page 210
