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

discovered. In these days none is

safe. Spies and informers creep among us, betraying the slightest deed

or word of discontent as treason and rebellion. If you make yourself

known to your subjects it will only end in your capture and death.

 

“My horses and all the men that I can trust are at your disposal.

Before dawn we can be far from Tarantia, and well on our way toward

the border. If I cannot aid you to recover your kingdom, I can at

least follow you into exile.”

 

Conan shook his head. Servius glanced uneasily at him as he sat

staring into the fire, his chin propped on his mighty fist. The

firelight gleamed redly on his steel mail, on his baleful eyes. They

burned in the firelight like the eyes of a wolf. Servius was again

aware, as in the past, and now more strongly than ever, of something

alien about the king. That great frame under the mail mesh was too

hard and supple for a civilized man; the elemental fire of the

primitive burned in those smoldering eyes. Now the barbaric suggestion

about the king was more pronounced, as if in his extremity the outward

aspects of civilization were stripped away, to reveal the primordial

core. Conan was reverting to his pristine type. He did not act as a

civilized man would act under the same conditions, nor did his

thoughts run in the same channels. He was unpredictable. It was only a

stride from the king of Aquilonia to the skin-clad slayer of the

Cimmerian hills.

 

“I’ll ride to Poitain, if it may be,” Conan said at last. “But I’ll

ride alone. And I have one last duty to perform as king of Aquilonia.”

 

“What do you mean, your Majesty?” asked Servius, shaken by a

premonition.

 

“I’m going into Tarantia after Albiona tonight,” answered the king.

“I’ve failed all my other loyal subjects, it seems-if they take her

head, they can have mine too.”

 

“This is madness!” cried Servius, staggering up and clutching his

throat, as if he already felt the noose closing about it.

 

“There are secrets to the Tower which few know,” said Conan. “Anyway,

I’d be a dog to leave Albiona to die because of her loyalty to me. I

may be a king without a kingdom, but I’m not a man without honor.”

“It will ruin us all!” whispered Servius.

 

“It will ruin no one but me if I fail. You’ve risked enough. I ride

alone tonight. This is all I want you to do: procure me a patch for my

eye, a staff for my hand, and garments such as travelers wear.”

 

Chapter 9: “It Is the King or His Ghost!”

 

MANY MEN PASSED through the great arched gates of Tarantia between

sunset and midnight-belated travelers, merchants from afar with

heavily laden mules, free workmen from the surrounding farms and

vineyards. Now that Valerius was supreme in the central provinces,

there was no rigid scrutiny of the folk who flowed in a steady stream

through the wide gates. Discipline had been relaxed. The Nemedian

soldiers who stood on guard were half drunk, and much too busy

watching for handsome peasant girls and rich merchants who could be

bullied to notice workmen or dusty travelers, even one tall wayfarer

whose worn cloak could not conceal the hard lines of his powerful

frame.

 

This man carried himself with an erect, aggressive bearing that was

too natural for him to realise it himself, much less dissemble it. A

great patch covered one eye, and his leather coif, drawn low over his

brows, shadowed his features. With a long thick staff in his muscular

brown hand, he strode leisurely through the arch where the torches

flared and guttered, and, ignored by the tipsy guardsmen, emerged upon

the wide streets of Tarantia.

 

Upon these well-lighted thoroughfares the usual throngs went about

their business, and shops and stalls stood open, with their wares

displayed. One thread ran a constant theme through the pattern.

Nemedian soldiers, singly or in clumps, swaggered through the throngs,

shouldering their way with studied arrogance. Women scurried from

their path, and men stepped aside with darkened brows and clenched

fists. The Aquilonians were a proud race, and these were their

hereditary enemies.

 

The knuckles of the tall traveler knotted on his staff, but, like the

others, he stepped aside to let the men in armor have the way. Among

the motley and varied crowd he did not attract much attention in his

drab, dusty garments. But once, as he passed a sword-seller’s stall

and the light that streamed from its wide door fell full upon him, he

thought he felt an intense stare upon him, and turning quickly, saw a

man in the brown jerkin of a free workman regarding him fixedly. This

man turned away with undue haste, and vanished in the shifting throng.

But Conan turned into a narrow bystreet and quickened his pace. It

might have been mere idle curiosity; but he could take no chances.

 

The grim Iron Tower stood apart from the citadel, amid a maze of

narrow streets and crowding houses where the meaner structures,

appropriating a space from which the more fastidious shrank, had

invaded a portion of the city ordinarily alien to them. The Tower was

in reality a castle, an ancient, formidable pile of heavy stone and

black iron, which had itself served as the citadel in an earlier,

ruder century.

 

Not a long distance from it, lost in a tangle of partly deserted

tenements and warehouses, stood an ancient watchtower, so old and

forgotten that it did not appear on the maps of the city for a hundred

years back. Its original purpose had been forgotten, and nobody, of

such as saw it at all, noticed that the apparently ancient lock which

kept it from being appropriated as sleeping-quarters by beggars and

thieves, was in reality comparatively new and extremely powerful,

cunningly disguised into an appearance of rusty antiquity. Not half a

dozen men in the kingdom had ever known the secret of that tower.

 

No keyhole showed in the massive, green-crusted lock. But Conan’s

practised fingers, stealing over it, pressed here and there knobs

invisible to the casual eye. The door silently opened inward and he

entered solid blackness, pushing the door shut behind him, A light

would have showed the tower empty, a bare, cylindrical shaft of

massive stone.

 

Groping in a comer with the sureness of familiarity, he found the

projections for which he was feeling on a slab of the stone that

composed the floor. Quickly he lifted it, and without hesitation

lowered himself into the aperture beneath. His feet felt stone steps

leading downward into what he knew was a narrow tunnel that ran

straight toward the foundations of the Iron Tower, three streets away.

 

The Bell on the citadel, which tolled only at the midnight hour or for

the death of a king, boomed suddenly. In a dimly lighted chamber in

the Iron Tower a door opened and a form emerged into a corridor. The

interior of the Tower was as forbidding as its external appearance.

Its massive stone walls were rough, unadorned. The flags of the floor

were worn deep by generations of faltering feet, and the vault of the

ceiling was gloomy in the dim light of torches set in niches.

 

The man who trudged down that grim corridor was in appearance in

keeping with his surroundings. He was a tall, powerfully-built man,

clad in close-fitting black silk. Over his head was drawn a black hood

which fell about his shoulders, having two holes for his eyes. From

his shoulders hung a loose black cloak, and over one shoulder he bore

a heavy ax, the shape of which was that of neither tool nor weapon.

 

As he went down the corridor, a figure came hobbling up it, a bent,

surly old man, stooping under the weight of his pike and a lantern he

bore in one hand.

 

“You are not as prompt as your predecessor, master headsman,” he

grumbled. “Midnight has just struck, and masked men have gone to

milady’s cell. They await you.”

 

“The tones of the bell still echo among the towers,” answered the

executioner. “If I am not so quick to leap and run at the beck of

Aquilonians as was the dog who held this office before me, they shall

find my arm no less ready. Get you to your duties, old watchman, and

leave me to mine. I think mine is the sweeter trade, by Mitra, for you

tramp cold corridors and peer at rusty dungeon doors, while I lop off

the fairest head in Tarantia this night.”

 

The watchman limped on down the corridor, still grumbling, and the

headsman resumed his leisurely way. A few strides carried him around a

turn in the corridor, and he absently noted that at his left a door

stood partly open. If he had thought, he would have known that that

door had been opened since the watchman passed; but thinking was not

his trade. He was passing the unlocked door before he realized that

aught was amiss, and then it was too late.

 

A soft tigerish step and the rustle of a cloak warned him, but before

he could turn, a heavy arm hooked about his throat from behind,

crushing the cry before it could reach his lips. In the brief instant

that was allowed him he realized with a surge of panic the strength of

his attacker, against which his own brawny thews were helpless. He

sensed without seeing the poised dagger.

 

“Nemedian dog!” muttered a voice thick with passion in his ear.

“You’ve cut off your last Aquilonian head!”

 

And that was the last thing he ever heard.

 

In a dank dungeon, lighted only by a guttering torch, three men stood

about a young woman who knelt on the rush-strewn flags staring wildly

up at them. She was clad only in a scanty shift; her golden hair fell

in lustrous ripples about her white shoulders, and her wrists were

bound behind her. Even in the uncertain torchlight, and in spite of

her disheveled condition and pallor of fear, her beauty was striking.

She knelt mutely, staring with wide eyes up at her tormentors. The men

were closely masked and cloaked. Such a deed as this needed masks,

even in a conquered land. She knew them all nevertheless; but what she

knew would harm no one-after that night.

 

“Our merciful sovereign offers you one more chance, Countess,” said

the tallest of the three, and he spoke Aquilonian without an accent.

“He bids me say that if you soften your proud, rebellious spirit, he

will still open his arms to you. If not—” he gestured toward a grim

wooden block in the center of the cell. It was blackly stained, and

showed many deep nicks as if a keen edge, cutting through some

yielding substance, had sunk into the wood.

 

Albiona shuddered and turned pale, shrinking back. Every fiber in her

vigorous young body quivered with the urge of life. Valerius was

young, too, and handsome. Many women loved him, she told herself,

fighting with herself for life. But she could not speak the word that

would ransom her soft young body from the block and the dripping ax.

She could not reason the matter. She only knew that when she thought

of the clasp of Valerius’s arms, her flesh crawled with an abhorrence

greater than the fear of death. She shook her head helplessly,

compelled by an impulsion more irresistible than the instinct to live.

 

“Then there is no more to be said!” exclaimed one of the others

Impatiently, and he spoke with a Nemedian accent. “Where is the

headsman?”

 

As if summoned by the word, the dungeon door