The Hour of the Dragon - Robert E. Howard (great reads .TXT) 📗

head of their king. Here I stand,

awaiting your lordly pleasure!”

 

The soldiers stared at him uncertainly as he strode toward them.

 

“Who is this madman?” growled a bearded ruffian. “He wears Nemedian

mail, but speaks with an Aquilonian accent.”

 

“No matter,” quoth another. “Cut him down, and then we’ll hang the old

hag.”

 

And so saying he ran at Conan, lifting his sword. But before he could

strike, the king’s great blade lashed down, splitting helmet and

skull. The man fell before him, but the others were hardy rogues. They

gave tongue like wolves and surged about the lone figure in the gray

mail, and the clamor and din of steel drowned the cries of the

circling raven.

 

Conan did not shout. His eyes coals of blue fire and his lips smiling

bleakly, he lashed right and left with his two-handed sword. For all

his size he was quick as a cat on his feet, and he was constantly in

motion, presenting a moving target so that thrusts and swings cut

empty air oftener than not. Yet when he struck he was perfectly

balanced, and his blows fell with devastating power. Three of the four

were down, dying in their own blood, and the fourth was bleeding from

half a dozen wounds, stumbling in headlong retreat as he parried

frantically, when Conan’s spur caught in the surcoat of one of the

fallen men.

 

The king stumbled, and before he could catch himself the Nemedian,

with the frenzy of desperation, rushed him so savagely that Conan

staggered and fell sprawling over the corpse. The Nemedian croaked in

triumph and sprang forward, lifting his great sword with both hands

over his right shoulder, as he braced his legs wide for the stroke-and

then, over the prostrate king, something huge and hairy shot like a

thunderbolt full on the soldier’s breast, and his yelp of triumph

changed to a shriek of death.

 

Conan, scrambling up, saw the man lying dead with his throat torn out,

and a great gray wolf stood over him, head sunk as it smelt the blood

that formed a pool on the grass.

 

The king turned as the old woman spoke to him. She stood straight and

tall before him, and in spite of her ragged garb, her features, clear-cut and aquiline, and her keen black eyes, were not those of a common

peasant woman. She called to the wolf and it trotted to her side like

a great dog and rubbed its giant shoulder against her knee, while it

gazed at Conan with great green lambent eyes. Absently she laid her

hand upon its mighty neck, and so the two stood regarding the king of

Aquilonia. He found their steady gaze disquieting, though there was no

hostility in it.

 

“Men say King Conan died beneath the stones and dirt when the cliffs

crumbled by Valkia,” she said in a deep, strong, resonant voice.

 

“So they say,” he growled. He was in no mood for controversy, and he

thought of those armored riders who were pushing nearer every moment.

The raven above him cawed stridently, and he cast an involuntary glare

upward, grinding his teeth in a spasm of nervous irritation.

 

Up on the ledge the white horse stood with drooping head. The old

woman looked at it, and then at the raven; and then she lifted a

strange weird cry as she had before. As if recognizing the call, the

raven wheeled, suddenly mute, and raced eastward. But before it had

got out of sight, the shadow of mighty wings fell across it. An eagle

soared up from the tangle of trees, and rising above it, swooped and

struck the black messenger to the earth. The strident voice of

betrayal was stilled for ever.

 

“Crom!” muttered Conan, staring at the old woman. “Are you a magician,

too?”

 

“I am Zeiata,” she said. “The people of the valleys call me a witch.

Was that child of the night guiding armed men on your trail?”

 

“Aye.” She did not seem to think the answer fantastic. “They cannot

be far behind me.”

 

“Lead your horse and follow me. King Conan,” she said briefly.

 

Without comment he mounted the rocks and brought his horse down to the

glade by a circuitous path. As he came he saw the eagle reappear,

dropping lazily down from the sky, and rest an instant on Zeiata’s

shoulder, spreading its great wings lightly so as not to crush her

with its weight.

 

Without a word she led the way, the great wolf trotting at her side,

the eagle soaring above her. Through deep thickets and along tortuous

ledges poised over deep ravines she led him, and finally along a

narrow precipice-edged path to a curious dwelling of stone, half hut,

half cavern, beneath a cliff hidden among the gorges and crags. The

eagle flew to the pinnacle of this cliff, and perched there like a

motionless sentinel.

 

Still silent, Zeiata stabled the horse in a near-by cave, with leaves

and grass piled high for provender, and a tiny spring bubbling in the

dim recesses.

 

In the hut she seated the king on a rude, hide-covered bench, and she

herself sat upon a low stool before the tiny fireplace, while she made

a fire of tamarisk chunks and prepared a frugal meal. The great wolf

drowsed beside her, facing the fire, his huge head sunk on his paws,

his ears twitching in his dreams.

 

“You do not fear to sit in the hut of a witch?” she asked, breaking

her silence at last.

 

An impatient shrug of his gray-mailed shoulders was her guest’s only

reply. She gave into his hands a wooden dish heaped with dried fruits,

cheese and barley bread, and a great pot of the heady upland beer,

brewed from barley grown in the high valleys.

 

“I have found the brooding silence of the glens more pleasing than the

babble of city streets,” she said. “The children of the wild are

kinder than the children of men.” Her hand briefly stroked the ruff

of the sleeping wolf. “My children were afar from me today, or I had

not needed your sword, my king. They were coming at my call.”

 

“What grudge had those Nemedian dogs against you?” Conan demanded.

 

“Skulkers from the invading army straggle all over the countryside,

from the frontier to Tarantia,” she answered. “The foolish villagers

in the valleys told them that I had a store of gold hidden away, so as

to divert their attentions from their villages. They demanded treasure

from me, and my answers angered them. But neither skulkers nor the men

who pursue you, nor any raven will find you here.”

 

He shook his head, eating ravenously.

 

“I’m for Tarantia.”

 

She shook her head.

 

“You thrust your head into the dragon’s jaws. Best seek refuge abroad.

The heart is gone from your kingdom.”

 

“What do you mean?” he demanded. “Battles have been lost before, yet

wars won. A kingdom is not lost by a single defeat.”

 

“And you will go to Tarantia?”

 

“Aye. Prospero will be holding it against Amalric.”

 

“Are you sure?”

 

“Hell’s devils, woman!” he exclaimed wrathfully. “What else?”

 

She shook her head. “I feel that it is otherwise. Let us see. Not

lightly is the veil rent; yet I will rend it a little, and show you

your capital city.”

 

Conan did not see what she cast upon the fire, but the wolf whimpered

in his dreams, and a green smoke gathered and billowed up into the

hut. And as he watched, the walls and ceiling of the hut seemed to

widen, to grow remote and vanish, merging with infinite immensities;

the smoke rolled about him, blotting out everything. And in it forms

moved and faded, and stood out in startling clarity.

 

He stared at the familiar towers and streets of Tarantia, where a mob

seethed and screamed, and at the same time he was somehow able to see

the banners of Nemedia moving inexorably westward through the smoke

and flame of a pillaged land. In the great square of Tarantia the

frantic throng milled and yammered, screaming that the king was dead,

that the barons were girding themselves to divide the land between

them, and that the rule of a king, even of Valerius, was better than

anarchy. Prospero, shining in his armor, rode among them, trying to

pacify them, bidding them trust Count Trocero, urging them to man the

wall and aid his knights in defending the city. They turned on him,

shrieking with fear and unreasoning rage, howling that he was

Trocero’s butcher, a more evil foe than Amalric himself. Offal and

stones were hurled at his knights.

 

A slight blurring of the picture, that might have denoted a passing of

tune, and then Conan saw Prospero and his knights filing out of the

gates and spurring southward. Behind him the city was in an uproar.

 

“Fools!” muttered Conan thickly. “Fools! Why could they not trust

Prospero? Zelita, if you are making game of me, with some trickery—”

 

“This has passed,” answered Zelata imperturbably, though somberly. “It

was the evening of the day that has passed When Prospero rode out of

Tarantia, with the hosts of Amalric almost within sight. From the

walls men saw the flame of their pillaging. So I read it in the smoke.

At sunset the Nemedians rode into Tarantia, unopposed. Look! Even now,

in the royal hall of Tarantia—”

 

Abruptly Conan was looking into the great coronation hall. Valerius

stood on the regal dais, clad in ermine robes, and Amalric, still in

his dusty, bloodstained armor, placed a rich and gleaming circlet on

his yellow locks-the crown of Aquilonia! The people cheered; long

lines of steel-clad Nemedian warriors looked grimly on, and nobles

long in disfavor at Conan’s court strutted and swaggered with the

emblem of Valerius on their sleeves.

 

“Crom!” It was an explosive imprecation from Conan’s lips as he

started up, his great fists clenched into hammers, his veins on his

temples knotting, his features convulsed. “A Nemedian placing the

crown of Aquilonia on that renegade-in the royal hall of Tarantia!”

 

As if dispelled by his violence, the smoke faded, and he saw Zeiata’s

black eyes gleaming at him through the mist.

 

“You have seen-the people of your capital have forfeited the freedom

you won for them by sweat and blood; they have sold themselves to the

slavers and the butchers. They have shown that they do not trust their

destiny. Can you rely upon them for the Winning back of your kingdom?”

 

“They thought I was dead,” he grunted, recovering some of his poise.

“I have no son. Men can’t be governed by a memory. What if the

Nemedians have taken Tarantia? There still remain the provinces, the

barons, and the people of the countrysides. Valerius has won an empty

glory.”

 

“You are stubborn, as befits a fighter. I cannot show you the future,

I cannot show you all the past. Nay, I show you nothing. I merely make

you see windows opened in the veil by powers un-guessed. Would you

look into the past for a clue of the present?”

 

“Aye.” He seated himself abruptly.

 

Again the green smoke rose and billowed. Again images unfolded before

him, this time alien and seemingly irrelevant. He saw great towering

black walls, pedestals half hidden in the shadows upholding images of

hideous, half-bestial gods. Men moved in the shadows, dark, wiry men,

clad in red, silken loincloths. They were bearing a green jade

sarcophagus along a gigantic black corridor. But before he could tell

much about what he saw, the scene shifted. He saw a cavern, dim,

shadowy and haunted with a strange intangible horror. On an altar of