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

class="calibre2">river foams out of its channel, and the peaks are crumbling!”

 

“The ground shakes and horses and riders in armor are overthrown! The

cliffs! The cliffs are falling!”

 

With his words there came a grinding rumble and a thunderous

concussion, and the ground trembled. Over the roar of the battle

sounded screams of mad terror.

 

“The cliffs have crumbled!” cried the livid squire. “They have

thundered down into the defile and crushed every living creature in

it! I saw the lion banner wave an instant amid the dust and falling

stones, and then it vanished! Ha, the Nemedians shout with triumph!

Well may they shout, for the fall of the cliffs has wiped out five

thousand of our bravest knights-hark!”

 

To Conan’s ears came a vast torrent of sound, rising and rising in

frenzy: “The king is dead! The king is dead! Flee! Flee! The king is

dead!”

 

“Liars!” panted Conan. “Dogs! Knaves! Cowards! Oh, Crom, if I could

but stand-but crawl to the river with my sword in my teeth! How, boy,

do they flee?”

 

“Aye!” sobbed the squire. “They spur for the river; they are broken,

hurled on like spume before a storm. I see Pallantides striving to

stem the torrent-he is down, and the horses trample him! They rush

into the river, knights, bowmen, pikemen, all mixed and mingled in one

mad torrent of destruction. The Nemedians are on their heels, cutting

them down like corn.”

 

“But they will make a stand on this side of the river!” cried the

king. With an effort that brought the sweat dripping from his temples,

he heaved himself up on his elbows.

 

“Nay!” cried the squire. “They cannot! They are broken! Routed! Oh

gods, that I should live to see this day!”

 

Then he remembered his duty and shouted to the men-at-arms who stood

stolidly watching the flight of their comrades. “Get a horse, swiftly,

and help me lift the king upon it. We dare not bide here.”

 

But before they could do his bidding, the first drift of the storm was

upon them. Knights and spearmen and archers fled among the tents,

stumbling over ropes and baggage, and mingled with them were Nemedian

riders, who smote right and left at all alien figures. Tent-ropes were

cut, fire sprang up in a hundred places, and the plundering had

already begun. The grim guardsmen about Conan’s tent died where they

stood, smiting and thrusting, and over their mangled corpses beat the

hoofs of the conquerors.

 

But the squire had drawn the flap close, and in the confused madness

of the slaughter none realized that the pavilion held an occupant. So

the flight and the pursuit swept past, and roared away up the valley,

and the squire looked out presently to see a cluster of men

approaching the royal tent with evident purpose.

 

“Here comes the king of Nemedia with four companions and his squire,”

quoth he. “He will accept your surrender, my fair lord—”

 

“Surrender the devil’s heart!” gritted the king.

 

He had forced himself up to a sitting posture. He swung his legs

painfully off the dais, and staggered upright, reeling drunkenly. The

squire ran to assist him, but Conan pushed him away.

 

“Give me that bow!” he gritted, indicating a longbow and quiver that

hung from a tent-pole.

 

“But Your Majesty!” cried the squire in great perturbation. “The

battle is lost! It were the part of majesty to yield with the dignity

becoming one of royal blood!”

 

“I have no royal blood,” ground Conan. “I am a barbarian and the son

of a blacksmith.”

 

Wrenching away the bow and an arrow he staggered toward the opening of

the pavilion. So formidable was his appearance, naked but for short

leather breeks and sleeveless shirt, open to reveal his great, hairy

chest, with his huge limbs and his blue eyes blazing under his tangled

black mane, that the squire shrank back, more afraid of his king than

of the whole Nemedian host.

 

Reeling on wide-braced legs Conan drunkenly tore the door-flap open

and staggered out under the canopy. The king of Nemedia and his

companions had dismounted, and they halted short, staring in wonder at

the apparition confronting them.

 

“Here I am, you jackals!” roared the Cimmerian. “I am the king! Death

to you, dog-brothers!”

 

He jerked the arrow to its head and loosed, and the shaft feathered

itself in the breast of the knight who stood beside Tarascus. Conan

hurled the bow at the king of Nemedia.

 

“Curse my shaky hand! Come in and take me if you dare!”

 

Reeling backward on unsteady legs, he fell with his shoulders against

a tent-pole, and propped upright, he lifted his great sword with both

hands.

 

“By Mitra, it is the king!” swore Tarascus. He cast a swift look about

him, and laughed. “That other was a jackal in his harness! In, dogs,

and take his head!”

 

The three soldiers-men-at-arms wearing the emblem of the royal guards-rushed at the king, and one felled the squire with a blow of a mace.

The other two fared less well. As the fast rushed in, lifting his

sword, Conan met him with a sweeping stroke that severed mail-links

like cloth, and sheared the Nemedian’s arm and shoulder clean from his

body. His corpse, pitching backward, fell across his companion’s legs.

The man stumbled, and before he could recover, the great sword was

through him.

 

Conan wrenched out his steel with a racking gasp, and staggered back

against the tent-pole. His great limbs trembled, his chest heaved, and

sweat poured down his face and neck. But his eyes flamed with exultant

savagery and he panted: “Why do you stand afar off, dog of Belverus? I

can’t reach you; come in and die!” Tarascus hesitated, glanced at the

remaining man-at-arms, and his squire, a gaunt, saturnine man in black

mail, and took a step forward. He was far inferior in size and

strength to the giant Cimmerian, but he was in full armor, and was

famed in all the western nations as a swordsman. But his squire caught

his arm.

 

“Nay, Your Majesty, do not throw away your life. I will summon archers

to shoot this barbarian, as we shoot lions.”

 

Neither of them had noticed that a chariot had approached while the

fight was going on, and now came to a halt before them. But Conan saw,

looking over their shoulders, and a queer chill sensation crawled

along his spine. There was something vaguely unnatural about the

appearance of the black horses that drew the vehicle, but it was the

occupant of the chariot that arrested the king’s attention.

 

He was a tall man, superbly built, clad in a long unadorned silk robe.

He wore a Shemitish head-dress, and its lower folds hid his features,

except for the dark, magnetic eyes. The hands that grasped the reins,

pulling the rearing horses back on their haunches, were white but

strong. Conan glared at the stranger, all his primitive instincts

roused. He sensed an aura of menace and power that exuded from this

veiled figure, a menace as definite as the windless waving of tall

grass that marks the path of the serpent.

 

“Hail, Xaltotun!” exclaimed Tarascus. “Here is the king of Aquilonia!

He did not die in the landslide as we thought.”

 

“I know,” answered the other, without bothering to say how he knew.

“What is your present intention?”

 

“I will summon the archers to slay him,” answered the Nemedian. “As

long as he lives he will be dangerous to us.”

 

“Yet even a dog has uses,” answered Xaltotun. “Take turn alive.”

 

Conan laughed raspingly. “Come in and try!” he challenged. “But for my

treacherous legs I’d hew you out of that chariot like a woodman hewing

a tree. But you’ll never take me alive, damn you!”

 

“He speaks the truth, I fear,” said Tarascus. “The man is a barbarian,

with the senseless ferocity of a wounded tiger. Let me summon the

archers.”

 

“Watch me and learn wisdom,” advised Xaltotun.

 

His hand dipped into his robe and came out with something shining-a

glistening sphere. This he threw suddenly at Conan. The Cimmerian

contemptuously struck it aside with his sword-at the instant of

contact there was a sharp explosion, a flare of white, blinding flame,

and Conan pitched senseless to the ground.

 

“He is dead?” Tarascus’s tone was more assertion than inquiry.

 

“No. He is but senseless. He will recover his senses in a few hours.

Bid your men bind his arms and legs and lift him into my chariot.”

 

With a gesture Tarascus did so, and they heaved the senseless king

into the chariot, grunting with their burden. Xaltotun threw a velvet

cloak over his body, completely covering him from any who might peer

in. He gathered the reins in his hands.

 

“I’m for Belverus,” he said. “Tell Amalric that I will be with him if

he needs me. But with Conan out of the way, and his army broken, lance

and sword should suffice for the rest of the conquest. Prospero cannot

be bringing more than ten thousand men to the field, and will

doubtless fall back to Tarantia when he hears the news of the battle.

Say nothing to Amalric or Valerius or anyone about our capture. Let

them think Conan died in the fall of the cliffs.”

 

He looked at the man-at-arms for a long space, until the guardsman

moved restlessly, nervous under the scrutiny.

 

“What is that about your waist?” Xaltotun demanded.

 

“Why, my girdle, may it please you, my lord!” stuttered the amazed

guardsman.

 

“You lie!” Xaltotun’s laugh was merciless as a sword-edge. “It is a

poisonous serpent! What a fool you are, to wear a reptile about your

waist!”

 

With distended eyes the man looked down; and to his utter horror he

saw the buckle of his girdle rear up at him. It was a snake’s head! He

saw the evil eyes and the dripping fangs, heard the hiss and felt the

loathsome contact of the thing about his body. He screamed hideously

and struck at it with his naked hand, felt its fangs flesh themselves

in that hand-and then he stiffened and fell heavily. Tarascus looked

down at him without expression. He saw only the leathern girdle and

the buckle, the pointed tongue of which was stuck in the guardsman’s

palm. Xaltotun turned his hypnotic gaze on Tarascus’s squire, and the

man turned ashen and began to tremble, but the king interposed: “Nay,

we can trust him.”

 

The sorcerer tautened the reins and swung the horses around. “See that

this piece of work remains secret. If I am needed, let Altaro,

Orastes’ servant, summon me as I have taught him. I will be in your

palace at Belverus.”

 

Tarascus lifted his hand in salutation, but his expression was not

pleasant to see as he looked after the departing mesmerist.

 

“Why should he spare the Cimmerian?” whispered the frightened squire.

 

“That I am wondering myself,” grunted Tarascus. Behind the rumbling

chariot the dull roar of battle and pursuit faded in the distance; the

setting sun rimmed the dins with scarlet flame, and the chariot moved

into the vast blue shadows floating up out of the east.

 

Chapter 4: “From What Hell Have You Crawled?”

 

OF THAT LONG ride in the chariot of Xaltotun, Conan knew nothing. He

lay like a dead man while the bronze wheels clashed over the stones of

mountain roads and swished through the deep grass of fertile valleys,

and finally dropping down from the rugged heights, rumbled

rhythmically along the broad white road that winds through the rich

meadowlands to the walls of Belverus.

 

Just before dawn some faint reviving of life touched him. He