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

heard a

mumble of voices, the groan of ponderous hinges. Through a slit in the

cloak that covered him he saw, faintly in the lurid glare of torches,

the great black arch of a gateway, and the bearded faces of men-at-arms, the torches striking fire from their spearheads and helmets.

 

“How went the battle, my fair lord?” spoke an eager voice, in the

Nemedian tongue.

 

“Well indeed,” was the curt reply. “The king of Aquilonia lies slain

and his host is broken.”

 

A babble of excited voices rose, drowned the next instant by the

whirling wheels of the chariot on the flags. Sparks flashed from under

the revolving rims as Xaltotun lashed his steeds through the arch. But

Conan heard one of the guardsmen mutter: “From beyond the border to

Belverus between sunset and dawn! And the horses scarcely sweating! By

Mitra, they—” Then silence drank the voices, and there was only the

clatter of hoofs and wheels along the shadowy street.

 

What he had heard registered itself on Conan’s brain but suggested

nothing to him. He was like a mindless automaton that hears and sees,

but does not understand. Sights and sounds flowed meaninglessly about

him. He lapsed again into a deep lethargy, and was only dimly aware

when the chariot halted in a deep, high-walled court, and he was

lifted from it by many hands and borne up a winding stone stair, and

down a long dim corridor. Whispers, stealthy footsteps, unrelated

sounds surged or rustled about him, irrelevant and far away.

 

Yet his ultimate awakening was abrupt and crystal-clear. He possessed

full knowledge of the battle in the mountains and its sequences, and

he had a good idea of where he was.

 

He lay on a velvet couch, clad as he was the day before, but With his

limbs loaded with chains not even he could break. The room in which he

lay was furnished with somber magnificence, the walls covered with

black velvet tapestries, the floor with heavy purple carpets. There

was no sign of door or window, and one curiously carven gold lamp,

swinging from the fretted ceiling, shed a lurid light over all.

 

In that light the figure seated in a silver, throne-like chair before

him seemed unreal and fantastic, with an illusiveness of outline that

was heightened by a filmy silken robe. But the features were distinct-unnaturally so in that uncertain light. It was almost as if a weird

nimbus played about the man’s head, casting the bearded face into bold

relief, so that it was the only definite and distinct reality in that

mystic, ghostly chamber.

 

It was a magnificent face, with strongly chiseled features of

classical beauty. There was, indeed, something disquieting about the

calm tranquility of its aspect, a suggestion of more than human

knowledge, of a profound certitude beyond human assurance. Also an

uneasy sensation of familiarity twitched at the back of Oman’s

consciousness. He had never seen this man’s face before, he well knew;

yet those features reminded him of something or someone. It was like

encountering in the flesh some dream-image that had haunted one in

nightmares.

 

“Who are you?” demanded the king belligerently, struggling to a

sitting position in spite of his chains.

 

“Men call me Xaltotun,” was the reply, in a strong, golden voice.

 

“What place is this?” the Cimmerian next demanded.

 

“A chamber in the palace of King Tarascus, in Belverus.”

 

Conan was not surprized. Belverus, the capital, was at the same time

the largest Nemedian city so near the border.

 

“And where’s Tarascus?”

 

“With the army.”

 

“Well,” growled Conan, “if you mean to murder me, why don’t you do it

and get it over with?”

 

“I did not save you from the king’s archers to murder you in

Belverus,” answered Xaltotun.

 

“What the devil did you do to me?” demanded Conan.

 

“I blasted your consciousness,” answered Xaltotun. “How, you would not

understand. Call it black magic, if you will.”

 

Conan had already reached that conclusion, and was mulling over

something else.

 

“I think I understand why you spared my life,” he rumbled. “Amalric

wants to keep me as a check on Valerius, in case the impossible

happens and he becomes king of Aquilonia. It’s well known that the

baron of Tor is behind this move to seat Valerius on my throne. And if

I know Amalric, he doesn’t intend that Valerius shall be anything more

than a figurehead, as Tarascus is now.”

 

“Amalric knows nothing of your capture,” answered Xaltotun. “Neither

does Valerius. Both think you died at Valkia.”

 

Conan’s eyes narrowed as he stared at the man in silence.

 

“I sensed a brain behind all this,” he muttered, “but I thought it was

Amalric’s. Are Amalric, Tarascus and Valerius all but puppets dancing

on your string? Who are you?”

 

“What does it matter? If I told you, you would not believe me. What if

I told you I might set you back on the throne of Aquilonia?”

 

Conan’s eyes burned on him like a wolf.

 

“What’s your price?”

 

“Obedience to me.”

 

“Go to hell with your offer!” snarled Conan. “I’m no figurehead. I won

my crown with my sword. Besides, it’s beyond your power to buy and

sell the throne of Aquilonia at your will. The kingdom’s not

conquered; one battle doesn’t decide a war.”

 

“You war against more than swords,” answered Xaltotun. “Was it a

mortal’s sword that felled you in your tent before the fight? Nay, it

was a child of the dark, a waif of outer space, whose fingers were

afire with the frozen coldness of the black gulfs, which froze the

blood in your veins and the marrow of your thews. Coldness so cold it

burned your flesh like white-hot iron!”

 

“Was it chance that led the man who wore your harness to lead his

knights into the defile?-chance that brought the cliffs crashing down

upon them?”

 

Conan glared at him unspeaking, feeling a chill along his spine.

Wizards and sorcerers abounded in his barbaric mythology, and any fool

could tell that this was no common man. Conan sensed an inexplicable

something about him that set him apart-an alien aura of Time and

Space, a sense of tremendous and sinister antiquity. But his stubborn

spirit refused to flinch.

 

“The fall of the cliffs was chance,” he muttered truculently. “The

charge into the defile was what any man would have done.”

 

“Not so. You would not have led a charge into it. You would have

suspected a trap. You would never have crossed the river in the first

place, until you were sure the Nemedian rout was real. Hypnotic

suggestions would not have invaded your mind, even in the madness of

battle, to make you mad, and rush blindly into the trap laid for you,

as it did the lesser man who masqueraded as you.”

 

“Then if this was all planned,” Conan grunted skeptically, “all a plot

to trap my host, why did not the ‘child of darkness’ kill me in my

tent?”

 

“Because I wished to take you alive. It took no wizardry to predict

that Pallantides would send another man out in your harness. I wanted

you alive and unhurt. You may fit into my scheme of things. There is a

vital power about you greater than the craft and cunning of my allies.

You are a bad enemy, but might make a fine vassal.”

 

Conan spat savagely at the word, and Xaltotun, ignoring his fury, took

a crystal globe from a near-by table and placed it before him. He did

not support it in any way, nor place it on anything, but it hung

motionless in midair, as solidly as if it rested on an iron pedestal.

Conan snorted at this bit of necromancy, but he was nevertheless

impressed.

 

“Would you know of what goes on in Aquilonia?” he asked.

 

Conan did not reply, but the sudden rigidity of his form betrayed his

interest.

 

Xaltotun stared into the cloudy depths, and spoke: “It is now the

evening of the day after the battle of Vallda. Last night the main

body of the army camped by Valkia, while squadrons of knights harried

the fleeing Aquilonians. At dawn the host broke camp and pushed

westward through the mountains. Prospero, with ten thousand

Poitanians, was miles from the battlefield when he met the fleeing

survivors in the early dawn. He had pushed on all night, hoping to

reach the field before the battle joined. Unable to rally the remnants

of the broken host, he fell back toward Tarantia. Riding hard,

replacing his wearied horses with steeds seized from the countryside,

he approaches Tarantia.

 

“I see his weary knights, their armor gray with dust, their pennons

drooping as they push their tired horses through the plain. I see,

also, the streets of Tarantia. The city is in turmoil. Somehow word

has reached the people of the defeat and the death of King Conan. The

mob is mad with fear, crying out that the king is dead, and there is

none to lead them against the Nemedians. Giant shadows rush on

Aquilonia from the east, and the sky is black with vultures.”

 

Conan cursed deeply.

 

“What are these but words? The raggedest beggar in the street might

prophesy as much. If you say you saw all that in the glass ball, then

you’re a liar as well as a knave, of which last there’s no doubt!

Prospero will hold Tarantia, and the barons will rally to him. Count

Trocero of Poitain commands the kingdom in my absence, and he’ll drive

these Nemedian dogs howling back to their kennels. What are fifty

thousand Nemedians? Aquilonia will swallow them up. They’ll never see

Belverus again. It’s not Aquilonia which was conquered at Valkia; it

was only Conan.”

 

“Aquilonia is doomed,” answered Xaltotun, unmoved. “Lance and ax and

torch shall conquer her; or if they fail, powers from the dark of ages

shall march against her. As the cliffs fell at Valkia, so shall walled

cities and mountains fall, if the need arise, and rivers roar from

their channels to drown whole provinces.

 

“Better if steel and bowstring prevail without further aid from the

arts, for the constant use of mighty spells sometimes sets forces in

motion that might rock the universe.”

 

“From what hell have you crawled, you nighted dog?” muttered Conan,

staring at the man. The Cimmerian involuntarily shivered; he sensed

something incredibly ancient, incredibly evil.

 

Xaltotun lifted his head, as if listening to whispers across the void.

He seemed to have forgotten his prisoner. Then he shook his head

impatiently, and glanced impersonally at Conan.

 

“What? Why, if I told you, you would not believe me. But I am wearied

of conversation with you; it is less fatiguing to destroy a walled

city than it is to frame my thoughts in words a brainless barbarian

can understand.”

 

“If my hands were free,” opined Conan, “I’d soon make a brainless

corpse out of you.”

 

“I do not doubt it, if I were fool enough to give you the

opportunity,” answered Xaltotun, clapping his hands. ‘,’ His manner

had changed; there was impatience in his tone, and a certain

nervousness in his manner, though Conan did not think this attitude

was in any way connected with himself.

 

“Consider what I have told you, barbarian,” said Xaltotun.

 

“You will have plenty of leisure. I have not yet decided what I shall

do with you. It depends on circumstances yet unborn. But let this be

impressed upon you: that if I decide to use you in my game, it will be

better to submit without resistance than to suffer my wrath.” Conan

spat a curse at him, just as hangings that masked a