The Conquering Sword of Conan (36 page)

I crossed Sword River in the early dawn, wading through the shallows, and was challenged by an outpost on the other bank. When he knew I was from Thandara: “By Mitra!” quoth he. “your business must be urgent, that you cross the Hawk Country, instead of coming by the longer road.

For Thandara was separated from the other provinces by the Little Wilderness east of us, but no Picts dwelt there, and there was a road through it into the Bossonian marches and thence ran road to the other provinces.

Then he desired me to tell him the state of affairs in Thandara, for he swore they in Schohira knew naught definite, but I told him that I knew little, having been on a long scout into Pictish country, and desired to be told if Hakon Strom’s son was in the fort. For I knew not how events were shaping in Schohira and wished to be acquainted with the situation before I spoke.

He told me he was not in the fort, but was at the town of Schondara, which lay a few miles east of the fort.

“I hope Thandara declares for Conan,” said he with an oath, “for I tell you plainly it is our political complection. Even now our army lies beyond Schondara, waiting the onslaught of Baron Brocas of Torh, and but for the necessity of watching the cursed Picts we would all be there.”

I said naught, but was surprized, for Brocas was lord of Conawaga, and not Schohira, whose patroon was Lord Thespius of Kormon. Thespius, I knew, was away in Aquilonia fighting in the civil war raging there, and I wondered that Brocas was not so employed.

I borrowed a horse from the fort went on to Schondara, a handsome town for a frontier village, with neat houses of squared logs, some painted, but not so much as a ditch or palisade about it, which was strange to me. For we of Thandara build our dwelling places for defense, and there is not so much as a village in all our province.

At the tavern I was told that Hakon Strom’s son had ridden to Orklay Creek where the militia-army of Schohira lay encamped, but would return shortly. So being hungry and weary, I ate a meal in the tap-room, and then lay down in a corner and slept. And was so slumbering when Hakon Strom’s son returned, close to sun-set.

He was a tall man, rangy and broad-shouldered, like most Westlanders, and clad in buckskin hunting shirt and fringed leggins and moccasins like myself.

When I named myself and told him that I had word for him, he looked at me closely, and bade me sit with him at a table in the corner where mine host brought us leathern jacks of ale.

“What is the word you bring me?” he asked.

“Has no word come through of the state of affairs in Thandara?”

“No sure word; only rumors.”

“Very well. This is the word I bring you from Brant Drago’s son, governor of Thandara, and the council of captains: Thandara has declared for Conan, and stands ready to aid his friends and defy his allies.”

At that he smiled and sighed as if in relief, and grasped my brown hand warmly with his own rugged fingers.

“Good!” he exclaimed. “A doubt has gone from my mind. We knew that which ever way Thandara went, that province would not go quietly. We have enemies on all sides, and dreaded a raid from the south, over the Hawk Country, in case Thandara held fast to Namedides.”

“What man of Thandara could forget Conan?” said I. “Nay, I was but a child in Conajohara, but I remember him when he was a forest-runner and a scout there. When his rider came into Thandara telling us that Conan had struck for the throne, and asking our support – he asked no volunteers, saying he knew all our men were needed to guard our frontier – we sent him one phrase: “Tell Conan we have not forgotten Conajohara.” Later came the Baron Attalius over the marches to crush us, but we ambushed him in the Little Wilderness and cut his host to pieces. The longbows of his Bossonians were useless; we harried them from behind trees and bushes, and then, working into close quarters, fell on them with war-axe and knife and cut them to pieces. We drove the remnants beyond the border, and I do not think any will dare attack Thandara again.”

“I would I could say as much for Schohira,” he said grimly. “Baron Thespius sent us word that we could do as we chose – he has declared for Conan and joined the rebel army. But he did not ask for any western levies.

“He removed the troops from the fort, however, and we manned it with our own foresters. Then Brocas moved against us. At least nine-tenths of us in Schohira are for Conan, and the loyalists either keep silent or have fled into Conawaga, swearing they would return and cut our throats. In Conawaga Brocas and the land-owners are for Namedides and the people who are for Conan are afraid to speak.”

I nodded. I had been in Conawaga before the revolt, and was aware of conditions there. It was the largest, richest and most thickly settled provinces in all the Westermarck, and only there was there an extensive, comparatively, class of titled land-holders.

“Having crushed revolt among his own people,” said Hakon, “Brocas thinks to subdue Schhiro. I think the black-jowled fool plans to rule all the Westermarck as Namedides’ viceroy. He has brought his army of Aquilonian men-at-arms, Bossonian archers, and Conawaga loyalists across the broder and now they lie at Coyaga, ten miles beyond Orklaga Creek. We know what when he will move against us. Ventrium, where our army lies, is full of refugees from the eastern country he has devastated.

“We do not fear him. He must cross Orklaga Creek to strike us, and we have fortified the west bank and blocked the road his cavalry must follow. We are outnumbered, but we will give him his needings.”

“That touches upon my mission,” I said. “I am authorized by the governor of Thandara to offer the services of a hundred and fifty Thandaran Rangers. We look for no attack from Aquilonia, and we can spare that many men from our war with the Panther Picts.”

“Good!” quoth he. “When the commandant of the fort hears of this –”

“What?” quoth I. “Are
you
not the commandant?”

“Nay,” said he, “it is my brother Dirk Strom’s son.”

“Had I known I would have given my message to him,” I said. “But Brant Drago’s son thought you were the commandant. However, it is as well.”

“Another jack of ale,” quoth Hakon, “and we’ll start for the fort so that Dirk shall hear your word first-hand.”

And I saw that Hakon was indeed not the man to command an outpost, for he was a brave man, and strong, but too reckless and having a merry devil in his heart.

“What of your landed gentry?” I asked, for though they are fewer in Schohira than in Conawaga, yet there are a few.

“Gone over the border and joined Brocas,” he answered. “All except lord Valerian. His estate lies adjacent to this town. The other lords lie to the east. He has remained, and has disbanded his retainers and his Gundermen guardsmen and promised to dwell quietly in Valerian Hall, taking no part one way or the other. He is alone at the Hall, which stands south of the town, except for a few servants. Where his fighting men have gone, none knows. But he has sent them off. We were relieved when he declared his neutrality, for he is one of the few white men to whom the wild Picts will listen. If it had entered his head to stir them up against our borders we might be hard put to it to defend ourselves against them on one side and Brocas on the other.

“Our nearest neighbors, the Hawks, look on Valerian with great friendship; and the Wildcats and Turtles are not hostile to them. Behind them all it is even said that he can visit the Wolf Picts and come away alive.”

If true that were strange indeed, for all men knew the ferocity of the great confederacy of allied clans known as the Wolf tribe which dwelt in the west beyond the hunting grounds of the three lesser tribes he had named. Mostly they held aloof from the frontier, but the threat of their invasion was ever a menace along the borders of Schohira.

Hakon looked up as a tall man in trunk-hose, boots and scarlet cloak entered the taproom.

“There is Lord Valerian now,” he said.

I stared, and was on my feet.

“That man?” I ejaculated. “I saw that man last night beyond the border, in a camp of the Hawks, witnessing the sacrifice of a war-victim!”

He turned pale and: “Damn you!” he ripped out fiercely. “You lie!”

And whipping aside his cloak he caught at the hilt of his sword. But before he could draw it I closed with him and bore him to the floor, where he snarled and snapped like a beast at my throat and failing there, caught at my throat with both hands. Then there was a stamp of feet, and men were dragging us apart, grasping my lord firmly, who stood white and panting with fury, still grasping my neckcloth in his fingers.

“If this be true –” began Hakon.

“It is true!” I exclaimed. “Look there! He has not had time to erase the paint from his bosom!”

His doublet and shirt had been torn open in the scuffle, and there, dim on his breast, showed the symbol of the skull which the Picts paint only when they mean war against the whites. He had sought to wash it off his skin, but Pictish paint stains strongly.

“Take him to the gaol,” said Hakon, white to the lips.

“Give me back my neckcloth,” quoth I, but his lordship spat at me and thrust the cloth inside his shirt.

“When it is returned to you it shall be knotted in a hangman’s noose about your rebel neck,” he snarled, and then the men grasped him and took him away.

Chapter 3

At the fort we found a man who said he would take word back to Thandara, where he had kin, so I said I would remain in Schohira. Scouts gave news that Brocas still lay encamped at Coyaga, and showed no signs of moving against us, which made me believe that he was waiting for Valerian to lead his Picts against the border and so catch the free men of Schohira between two fires. Valerian had been placed in the gaol – a small building of hewn logs – and only one other prisoner there, a man in the cell next to him who had been placed there for drunkeness and fighting in the streets. Valerian said nothing, but sat in a corner and gnawed his nails, with his eyes like those of a jungle-cat.

I slept in the tavern that night, and had a room upstairs. During the night I was awakened by the forcing of my window and sat up in bed, demandin to know who it was. The next instant something rushed at me from the darkness and then there was a piece of cloth around my neck, being twisted and strangling me. I groped for my hatchet and smote one blow, and the creature fell. When I had struck a light, I saw a misshapen ape-like creature lying on the floor, and knew it for a
Chakan
, one of those semi-human beings who dwell deep in the forests, and smell out trails like bloodhounds. It still held my neck-cloth in its misshapen hands, and by that I knew that it had been set upon my trail by Lord Valerian.

Hakon and I hurried to the gaol and there found the guard lying before the door with his throat cut, and my lord gone. The drunkard in the next cell was nigh dead with fright, but he told us that a dark woman, naked but for a loin cloth, had come up to the sentry and looked into his eyes and the man had become like one in a trance. So the woman took his knife from its sheath and cut his throat with it, and released Lord Valerian. And there was a horrible monstrosity which accompanied her but which lurked in the background. So we knew the woman was his Pictish half-breed mistress by whom he had his power over the Picts; some said old Goragh’s daughter. The drunkard had pretended slumber, so they let him live. But he overheard them say that they would go to a certain hut by Lynx Creek, a few miles from the town, and there meet the retainers and Gundermen guards who had been hiding there, and then cross the border and bring back the Hawks and the Wildcats and the Turtles to cut our throats.

But the woman told him these tribes dared not fight without first consulting the wizard who dwelt in Ghost Swamp, and he said he would see that the wizard told them to fight.

So they fled away. Then Hakon roused a dozen men and we followed, and cornered the Gundermen in the cabin on Lynx Creek and slew most of them, but several of our men likewise were slain, and Lord Valerian and a dozen others got clean away.

We followed, and in fights and skirmishes slew several others, and presently all our men were slain except Hakon and I. We trailed Valerian across the border and into a camp of the war-tribes near Ghost Swamp, where the chiefs were going to consult the wizard, a pre-Pictish shaman.

We trailed Valerian into the swamp, he going secretly to give the shamans instructions, and Hakon waited on the trail to slay Valerian while I stole into the camp to slay the wizard. But both of us were captured by the wizard, who gave his consent to the war and gave them a ghastly magic to use against the white men, and the tribes went howling toward the border. But Hakon and I escaped and slew the wizard and followed, in time to turn their magic against them, and rout them.

Wolves Beyond the Border
Draft B

Chapter 1

It was the mutter of a drum that awakened me. I lay still amidst the bushes where I had taken refuge, straining my ears to locate it, for such sounds are illusive in the deep forest. In the dense woods about me there was no sound. Above me the tangled vines and brambles bent close to form a massed roof, and above them there loomed the higher, gloomier arch of the branches of the great trees. Not a star shone through that leafy vault. Low-hanging clouds seemed to press down upon the very tree-tops. There was no moon. The night was dark as a witch’s hate.

The better for me. If I could not see my enemies, neither could they see me. But the whisper of that ominous drum stole through the night: thrum! thrum! thrum! a steady monontone that grunted and growled of nameless secrets. I could not mistake the sound. Only one drum in the world makes just that deep, menacing, sullen thunder: a Pictish war-drum, in the hands of those wild painted savages who haunted the Wilderness beyond the border of the Westermarck.

And I was beyond that border, alone, and concealed in a brambly covert in the midst of the great forest where those naked fiends have reigned since Time’s earliest dawns.

Now I located the sound; the drum was beating westward of my position and I believed at no great distance. Quickly I girt my belt more firmly, settled war-axe and knife in their beaded sheaths, strung my heavy bow and made sure that my quivers was in place at my left hip – groping with my fingers in the utter darkness – and then I crawled from the thicket and went warily toward the sound of the drum.

That it personally concerned me I did not believe. If the forest-men had discovered me, their discovery would have been announced by a sudden knife in my throat, not by a drum beating in the distance. But the throb of the war-drum had a significance no forest-runner could ignore. It was a warning and a threat, a promise of doom for those white-skinned invaders whose lonely cabins and axe-marked clearings menaced the immemorial solitude of the wilderness. It meant fire and torture, flaming arrows dropping like falling stars through the darkness, and the red axe crunching through skulls of men and women and children.

So through the blackness of the nighted forest I went, feeling my way delicately among the mighty boles, sometimes creeping on hands and knees, and now and then my heart in my throat when a creeper brushed across my face or groping hand. For there are huge serpents in that forest which sometimes hang by their tails from branches and so snare their prey. But the creatures I sought were more terrible than any serpent, and as the drum grew louder I went as cautiously as if I trod on naked swords. And presently I glimpsed a red gleam among the trees, and heard a mutter of barbaric voices mingling with the snarl of the drum.

Whatever weird ceremony might be taking place yonder under the black trees, it was likely that they had outposts scattered about the place, and I knew how silent and motionless a Pict could stand, merging with the natural forest growth even in dim light, and unsuspected until his blade was through his victim’s heart. My flesh crawled at the thought of colliding with one such grim sentry in the darkness, and I drew my knife and held it extended before me. But I knew not even a Pict could see me in that blackness of tangled forest-roof and cloud-massed sky.

The light revealed itself as a fire before which black silhouettes moved like black devils against the red fires of hell, and presently I crouched close among the dense tamarack and looked into a black-walled glade and the figures that moved therein.

There were forty or fifty Picts, naked but for loin-cloths, and hideously painted, who squatted in a wide semi-circle, facing the fire, with their backs to me. By the hawk feathers in their thick black manes, I knew them to be of the Hawk Clan, or Onayaga. In the midst of the glade there was a crude altar made of rough stones heaped together, and at the sight of this my flesh crawled anew. For I had seen these Pictish altars before, all charred with fire and stained with blood, in empty forest glades, and though I had never witnessed the rituals wherein these things were used, I had heard the tales told about them by men who had been captives among the Picts, or spied upon them even as I was spying.

A feathered shaman was dancing between the fire and the altar, a slow, shuffling dance indescribably grotesque, which caused his plumes to swing and sway about him, and his features were hidden by a grinning scarlet mask that looked like a forest-devil’s face.

In the midst of the semi-circle of warriors squatted one with the great drum between his knees and as he smote it with his clenched fist it gave forth that low, growling rumble which is like the mutter of distant thunder.

Between the warriors and the dancing shaman stood one who was no Pict. For he was tall as I, and his skin was light in the play of the fire. But he was clad only in doe-skin loin-clout and moccasins, and his body was painted, and there was a hawk-feather in his hair, so I knew he must be a Ligurean, one of those light-skinned savages who dwell in small clans in the great forest, generally at war with the Picts, but sometimes at peace and allied with them. Their skins are white as an Aquilonian’s. The Picts are a white race too, in that they are not black nor brown nor yellow, but they are black-eyed and black-haired and dark of skin, and neither they nor the Ligureans are spoken of as “white” by the people of Westermarck, who only designate thus a man of Hyborian blood.

Now as I watched I saw three warriors drag a man into the ring of the firelight – another Pict, naked and blood-stained, who still wore in his tangled mane a feather that identified him as a member of the Raven Clan, with whom the Hawkmen were ever at war. His captors cast him down upon the altar, bound hand and foot, and I saw his muscles swell and writhe in the firelight as he sought in vain to break the rawhide thongs which prisoned him.

Then the shaman began dancing again, weaving intricate patterns about the altar, and the man upon it, and he who beat the drum wrought himself into a fine frenzy, thundering away like one possessed of a devil. And suddenly, dowm from an overhanging branch dropped one of those great serpents of which I have spoken. The firelight glistened on its scales as it writhed toward the altar, its beady eyes glittered, and its forked tongue darted in and out, but the warriors showed no fear, though it passed within a few feet of some of them. And that was strange, for ordinarily these serpents are the only living creatures a Pict fears.

The monster reared its head up on arched neck above the altar, and it and the shaman faced one another across the prone body of the prisoner. The shaman danced with a writhing of body and arms, scarcely moving his feet, and as he danced, the great serpent danced with him, weaving and swaying as though mesmerized, and from the mask of the shaman rose a weird wailing that shuddered like the wind through the dry reeds along the sea-marshes. And slowly the great reptile reared higher and higher, and began looping itself about the altar and the man upon it, until his body was hidden by its shimmering folds, and only his head was visible, with that other terrible head swaying close above it.

The shrilling of the shaman rose to a crescendo of infernal triumph, and he cast something into the fire. A great green cloud of smoke billowed up and rolled about the altar, so that it almost hid the pair upon it, making their outlines indistinct and illusive. But in the midst of that cloud I saw a hideous writhing and
changing
– those outlines melted and flowed together horribly, and for a moment I could not tell which was the serpent and which the man. A shuddering sigh swept over the assembled Picts like a wind moaning through nighted branches.

Then the smoke cleared and man and snake lay limply on the altar, and I thought both were dead. But the shaman seized the neck of the serpent and unlooped the limp trunk from about the altar and let the great reptile ooze to the ground, and he tumbled the body of the man from the stones to fall beside the monster, and cut the rawhide thongs that bound wrist and ankle.

Then he began a weaving dance about them, chanting as he danced and swaying his arms in mad gestures. And presently the man moved. But he did not rise. His head swayed from side to side, and I saw his tongue dart out and in again. And Mitra, he began to
wriggle
away from the fire, squirming along on his belly, as a snake crawls!

And the serpent was suddenly shaken with convulsions and arched its neck and reared up almost its full length, and then fell back loop on loop, and reared up again vainly, horribly like a man trying to rise and stand and walk upright, after being deprived of his limbs.

The wild howling of the Picts shook the night, and I was sick where I crouched among the bushes, and fought an urge to retch. I understood the meaning of this ghastly ceremony now. I had heard tales of it. By black, primordial sorcery that spawned and throve in the depths of this black primal forest, that painted shaman had trnasferred the soul of a captured enemy into the foul body of a serpent. It was the revenge of a fiend. And the screaming of the blood-mad Picts was like the yelling of all hell’s demons.

And the victims writhed and agonized side by side, the man and the serpent, until a sword flashed in the hand of the shaman and both heads fell together – and gods, it was the serpent’s trunk which but quivered and jerked a little and then lay still, and the man’s body which rolled and knotted and thrashed like a beheaded snake. A deathly faintness and weakness took hold of me, for what white man could watch such black diabolism unmoved? And these painted savages, smeared with war-paint, howling and posturing and triumphing over the ghastly doom of a foe, seemed not humans at all to me, but foul fiends of the black world whom it was a duty and an obligation to slay.

The shaman sprang up and faced the ring of warriors, and ripping off his mask, threw up his head and howled like a wolf. And as the firelight fell full on his face, I recognized him, and with that recognition all horror and revulsion gave place to red rage, and all thought of personal peril and the recollection of my mission, which was my first obligation, was swept away. For that shaman was old Teyanoga of the South Hawks, he who burnt alive my friend Jon Galter’s son.

In the lust of my hate I acted almost instinctively – whipped up my bow, nothced an arrow and loosed, all in an instant. The firelight was uncertain, but the range was no great, and we of the Westermarck live by twang of bow. Old Teyanoga yowled like a cat and reeled back and his warriors howled with amaze to see a shaft quivering suddenly in his breast. The tall, light-skinned warrior wheeled, and for the first time I saw his face – and Mitra, he was a white man!

The horrid shock of that surprize held me paralyzed for a moment and had almost undone me. For the Picts instantly sprang up and rushed into the forest like panthers, seeking the foe who fired that arrow. They had reached the first fringe of bushes when I jerked out of my spell of amaze and horror, and sprang up and raced away in the darkness, ducking and dodging among trees which I avoided more by instinct than otherwise, for it was dark as ever. But I knew the Picts could not strike my trail, but must hunt as blindly as I fled.

And presently, as I ran northward, behind me I heard a hideous howling whose blood-mad fury was enough to freeze the blood even of a forest-runner. And I believed that they had plucked my arrow from the shaman’s breast and discovered it to be a white man’s shaft. That would bring them after me with fiercer blood-lust than ever.

I fled on, my heart pounding from fear and excitement, and the horror of the nightmare I had witnessed. And that a white man, a Hyborian, should have stood there as a welcome and evidently honored guest – for he was armed – I had seen knife and hatchet at his belt – was so monstrous I wondered if, after all, the whole thing were a nightmare. For never before had a white man observed The Dance of the Changing Serpent save as a prisoner, or a spy, as I had. And what monstrous thing it portended I knew not, but I was shaken with foreboding and horror at the thought.

And because of my horror I went more carelessly than is my wont, seeking haste at the expense of stealth, and occasionally blundering into a tree I could have avoided had I taken more care. And I doubt not it was the noise of this blundering progress which brought the Pict upon me, for he could not have seen me in that pitch-darkness.

Behind me sounded no more yells, but I knew that the Picts were ranging like fire-eyed wolves through the forest, spreading in a vast semi-circle and combing it as they ran. That they had not picked up my trail was evidenced by their silence, for they never yell except when they believe only a short dash is ahead of them, and feel sure of their prey.

The warrior who heard the sounds of my flight could not have been one of that party, for he was too far ahead of them. He must have been a scout ranging the forest to guard against his comrades being surprized from the north.

At any rate he heard me running close to him, and came like a devil of the black night. I knew of him first only by the swift faint pad of his naked feet, and when I wheeled I could not even make out the dim bulk of him, but only heard the soft thudding of those inexorable feet coming at me unseen in the darkness.

They see like cats in the dark, and I know he saw well enough to locate me, though doubtless I was only a dim blur in the darkness. But my blindly upswung hatchet met his falling knife and he impaled himself on my knife as he lunged in, his death-yell ringing like a peal of doom under the forest-roof. And it was answered by a ferocious clamor to the south, only a few hundred yards away, and then they were racing through the bushes giving tongue like wolves, certain of their quarry.

I ran for it in good earnest now, abandoning stealth entirely for the sake of speed, and trusting to luck that I would not dash out my brains against a tree-stem in the darkness.

But here the forest opened up somewhat; there was no underbrush, and something almost like light filtered in through the branches, for the clouds were clearing a little. And through this forest I fled like a damned soul pursued by demons, hearing the yells at first rising higher and higher in blood-thirsty triumph, then edged with anger and rage as they grew fainter and fell away behind me, for in a straight-away race no Pict can match the long legs of a white forest-runner. The desperate risk was that there were other scouts or war-parties ahead of me who could easily cut me off, hearing my flight; but it was a risk I had to take. But no painted figures started up like phantoms out of the shadows ahead of me, and presently, through the thickening growth that betokened the nearness of a creek, I saw a glimmer through the trees far ahead of me and knew it was the light of Fort Kwanyara, the southern-most outpost of Schohira.