Conan the Liberator

SATYRS BLOOD

Prince Numitor paced restlessly about the royalist camp. The cooking fires were dying down, and the regiments of Royal Frontiersmen had turned in for the night The new moon set, and in the gathering darkness the stars wheeled slowly westward like diamonds stitched upon the night-blue cloak of a dancing girl. To the west, where twilight lingered, the dodging shape of a foraging bat besmudged the horizon, while overhead the clap of a nightjar’s wings shattered the silence.

The prince passed the line of sentries and strolled toward the edge of the escarpment, where Thulandra Thuu had placed things needful for his magic. Behind him the camp vanished into forest-shadowed darkness. Ahead the precipice fell sharply away. And leftward yawned the black canyon that was called the Giant’s Notch.

Although the prince’s placid ears picked up no sound of movement in the gorge, something about the camp’s location disturbed him; but for a time he could not put a finger on the source of his unease.

After walking several bowshots’ distance, Prince Numitor sighted the dancing flames of a small fire. He hastened toward it. Thulandra Thuu, hooded and cloaked in black, like some bird of ill omen, was bending over the fire, while Hsiao, on his knees, fed the blaze with twigs. A metal tripod, from the apex of which a small brazen pot was suspended by a chain, straddled the fickle fire. To one side a large copper caldron squatted in the grass.

As Numitor approached, the sorcerer moved away from the firelight and, fumbling in a leathern wallet, extracted a crystal phial. This he unstoppered, muttering an incantation in an unknown tongue, and poured the contents into the heated vessel. A sudden hissing and a plume of smoke, shot through with rainbow hues, issued from the pot.

Thulandra Thuu glanced at the prince, said a brief “Good even, my lord!" and reached again into his wallet.

“Master Thulandra!" said Numitor.

“Sir?" The sorcerer paused in his searching.

“You insisted that the camp be set far from the precipice; I wonder at your reasoning. Should the rebels steal into the Giant's Notch, they would be upon us ere they were discovered. Why not move the camp here on the morrow, where our men can readily assail the foe with missiles from above?"

The eyes beneath the sorcerer’s cowl were veiled in purple darkness, but the prince fancied that they glowed deep in that cavernous hollow, like the night eyes of beasts of prey. Thulandra purred: “My lord Prince, if the demons I unleash perform their proper function, my spell would put your men in danger should they stand where we stand now. The final stage I shall commence at midnight, a scant three hours hence. Hsiao will inform you in good time."

The magician shook more powder into the steaming pot and stirred the molten mixture with a slender silver rod. “Now I crave your pardon, good my lord, but I must ask you to stand back whilst I construct my pentacle."

Hsiao handed Thulandra Thuu the wooden staff, ornately carved, which served him as a walking stick when he stalked about the camp. While his servant piled fresh fuel upon the dying fire, the sorcerer paced off certain distances about the conflagration and marked the bare earth with the ferule of his staff. Muttering, he drew a circle, a dozen paces in diameter, then etched deep lines back and forth across the space enclosed. Following an arcane ritual, he inscribed a symbol in each angle of the pentacle. The prince understood neither the diagram nor the lettering thereon, but felt no desire to plumb the wizard’s unholy mysteries.

Now Thulandra rose up and stood beside his fire, his back to the precipice. He intoned an utterance—a prayer or incantation—in a singsong foreign tongue. Then facing east, he repeated his invocation, and in this wise completed one rotation. Numitor saw the stars grow dim and shapeless shadows flutter through the clear night air. He heard the sinister thunder of unseen beating wings. Thinking it better not to view more of the uncanny preparations of his cousin’s favorite, he stumbled back to camp. To his captains he gave orders to rouse the men an hour before midnight to comply with the sorcerer’s directions. Then he turned in.

Three hours later Hsiao spoke to a sentry, who sent another to awaken the sleeping prince. As Numitor made his way to the cliff whereon the wizard prepared his magical spell, he came upon the column of soldiers ordered by Thulandra Thuu. Each man-at-arms gripped a bound and captive satyr. A dozen of the furry forest folk whimpered and wailed as their captors brutally hustled them into line.

Hsiao had built up the fire, and the brazen pot bubbled merrily, sending a cloud of varicolored smoke into the starlit sky. Upon Thulandra’s curt command, the first soldier in the line dragged his squirming captive to the copper cauldron standing upon the grass and forced the bleating creature’s head down over the vessels rim. As the darkness throbbed to the beat of an inaudible drum—or was it the beat of the awestruck soldiers’ hearts?—the sorcerer deftly slashed the satyr’s throat. At a signal, the man-at-arms lifted the sacrificial victim by its ankles and drained its blood into the large container. Then, in obedience to a low command, he tossed the small cadaver over the precipice.

A pause ensued while Thulandra added more powders to his sinister brew and pronounced another incantation. At length he beckoned to the next man in line, who dragged his satyr forward to be slain. The other soldiers shifted uneasy feet One muttered:

"This takes longer than a coronation! Would he’d get on with it and let us back to bed.”

The eastern sky was paling when the last satyr died. The fire beneath the brazen pot had burned to a bed of embers. Hsiao, at his master’s command, unhooked the steaming pot and poured its boiling contents into the blood-filled cauldron. The nearest soldiers saw—or thought they saw—ghostly forms rise from the latter vessel; but others perceived only great clouds of vapor. In the deceptive predawn half-light, none could be sure of what he saw.

Faintly in the distance those on the cliff-top heard the sound of men in motion. Among the marching men no word was spoken, but the jingle of harness and the tramp of many feet cried defiance to the silent morning air.

Thulandra Thuu raised a voice shrill with tension: “My lord! Prince Numitorl Order your men away!”

Startled out of his sleepy lethargy, the prince barked the command: “Stand to arms! Back to camp!”

The sounds of an approaching army grew. The sorcerer raised his arms and droned an invocation.

Hsiao handed him a dipper, with which he scooped up liquid from the cauldron and poured the fluid into a deep crack in the rocks. He stepped back, raised imploring arms against the lightening sky, and cried out again in unknown tongues. Then he ladled out another dipperful, and another.

Along the road from Culario, before that sandy ribbon disappeared beneath a canopy of leaves, the mage could see a pair of mounted men. They trotted toward the Giant’s Notch, and as they went, they studied the rock wall and the woods below it. Then a whole troop of cavalry came into view; and following them, files of infantry, swinging along with weapons balanced on their shoulders.

Thulandra Thuu hastily ladled out more liquid from the cauldron and once more raised his skirmy arms to heaven.

Leading the first rank of rebel horse, Conan rose in his stirrups to peer about. His scouts had seen no royalists in the greenery along the forest road, or at the Giant’s Notch, or atop the towering cliffs. The Cimmerian’s eagle glance raked the summit, now tipped a rosy pink by the slanting rays of the morning sun. Conan’s apprehension of hidden traps stirred in his savage soul. Prince Numitor was no genius, this he knew; but even such a one as he would make ready to defend the Notch.

Yet he saw no sign of a royalist mustering. Would Numitor, indeed, allow the rebels to reach the Imirian Plateau to lessen the odds against them? Conan knew the nobles of this land professed obedience to the rules of chivalry; but in all his years of war, no general had ever risked a certain chance of victory for such an abstract principle. Nay, the enemy had the upper hand; a trap was obvious! Experience with the hypocrisies of civilized men made the Cimmerian cynical about the ideals they so eloquently proclaimed.

The barbarians among whom he had grown to manhood were quite as treacherous; but they did not seek to gild their bloody actions with noble sentiments.

One scout reported a strange discovery. At the base of the escarpment, leftward of the Giant’s Notch, he had come upon a heap of satyr corpses, each with its throat ripped open. The bodies, smashed and scattered, had fallen from the heights above.

“Scorcery afootl" muttered Trocero. “The king’s he-witch has joined with Numitor, I'll wager.”

As the two lead horsemen neared the Notch, they spurred their steeds and vanished up the road that paralleled the turgid River Bitaxa. Soon they reappeared upon a rocky ledge and signaled all was quiet. Conan scanned the summit once again. He thought he caught a hint of movement—a mere black speck that might have been a trick of light or of tired eyes. Turning, he motioned the leader of the troop. Captain Morenus, to enter the tunnel of the Notch.

Conan sat his mount beside the road, watching intently. As the horsemen trotted past, his heart swelled at the soldierly appearance they made, thanks to the driving force of his incessant drilling. His own horse, a bay gelding, seemed restless, stamping its hooves and dancing sideways. Conan stroked the creature’s neck to gentle it, but the bay continued to fidget. He first thought the animal was impatient to move forward with the others of the troop; but as the horse became more agitated, a premonition took shape in Conan’s mind.

After another glance at the escarpment Conan, a scowl on his scarred face, swung off his beast and dropped with a clash of armor to the ground. Gripping his reins, he shut his eyes. His barbarian senses, keener than those of city-bred men, had not deceived him. Through the soles of his boots he felt a faint quivering in the earth. Not the vibration that a group of galloping horsemen sends through the ground, this was something slower, more deliberate, with more actual motion, as if the earth had waked to yawn and stretch.

Conan hesitated no longer. Cupping his hands around his mouth and filling his great lungs, he bellowed: “Morenus, come back! Get out of the Notch! Spur your horses, all come back!”

There was a moment of confusion in the Notch, as the command was passed along and the soldiers sought to turn their steeds on the narrow way. Above them on the cliff, the sorcerer shrieked a final invocation and struck the rocks outside his pentacle with his curiously carven staff.

A rumble—a deep-toned roll that scarcely could be heard—issued from the earth. Above the retreating cavalrymen, the cliffs swayed. Pieces of black basalt detached themselves and toppled, with deceptive slowness, then faster and faster, striking ledges, shattering, and bounding off to crash into the gorge. From the river Bitaxa, towering jets of spray fountained aloft to dwarf the downward fall of the cascade.

Conan found his stirrup with some difficulty, as his terror-stricken beast danced around him in a circle. His foot secured, he swung cursing into the saddle and wheeled to face the column of infantry, still marching briskly toward the Notch.

“Get back! Get back!” he roared, but his words were lost in the grumbling, grinding thunder of the earthquake. He moved his horse into the column’s path, making frantic gestures. The lead men understood and checked their gait; but those behind continued to press forward, so that the column bunched up into a milling mass.

Within the Notch the cliffs swayed, reeled, and crumbled. With the roar of an angry god, millions of tons of rock cascaded into the gap. The earth beneath the soldiers’ feet so swayed and bounced that men clutched one another to stay erect; a few fell, their weapons clattering to the rocky ground.

Down from the deadly flume raced Conan’s troop of cavalry, lashed by their panic. The leaders crashed into the infantry column, downing some horses, spilling riders from their saddles, and injuring many foot soldiers caught in the pincer's jaws. Men’s shouts and horses' screams soared above the thunder of the quake.

The Bitaxa River foamed out of its bed, as waves sent downstream by the fall of rock spread out on the flatlands below and lapped across the road. Soldiers splashed ankle-deep in water and prayed to their assorted gods.

Controlling his frantic mount by a savage grip on the reins, Conan sought to restore order. “Morenus!” he shouted. “Did all your men get out?”

“All but a dozen or so in the van. General.”

Glowering at the Giant’s Notch, Conan cursed the loss. A vast cloud of dust obscured the pass, until a wind sprang up and swept it out. As the dust thinned, Conan saw that the Notch was now much wider than before and that its slopes were less than vertical. The flume was filled with a huge talus of broken rock—stones of all sizes, from pebbles to fragments as large as a tent. From time to time small slides continued to issue from the sloping walls and clatter down upon the talus. Any man caught beneath that fall of rock would be entombed forever.

One section to the left side of the cliff had curiously remained in place; it now rose from the slope like a narrow buttress. At the pinnacle of this strange formation, Conan saw a pair of small figures, black-robed and cowled. One tossed its arms on high, as if in supplication.

“That’s the king’s sorcerer, Thulandra Thuu, or I’m a Stygian!” rasped a voice nearby.

Conan turned to see Gromel at his elbow. "Think you he sent the earthquake?”

“Aye. And if he'd waited till we were all within the Notch, we’d all be dead. He’s too far for a bowshot; but if I had a bow, I'd chance it.”

An archer heard and handed up his bow, saying: try mine, sir!

Gromel dismounted, drew an arrow to the head, shifted aim by a hair’s breadth, and let fly. The arrow arched high and struck the cliff a score of paces below the top. The small figures vanished.

“A good try,” grunted Conan. “We should have set up a ballista. Gromel, there are broken bones in need of splints; see that the physicians do their work,”

Under lowering brows Conan stared at the talus. His barbarian instincts told him to rally his men, dismount the cavalry, and lead them all in a headlong charge up the steep incline, leaping from rock to rock with naked steel in hand. But experience warned him that this would be a futile gesture, throwing away men's lives to no good purpose. Progress would be slow and laborious; the struggling climbers would be raked by arrows from above; those who survived the climb would be too winded to do battle.

He looked around. "Ho there, Trocero! Prospero! Morenus, send a trooper to tell Publius and Paliantides that I want them here. Now, friends, what next?”

Count Trocero reined his horse closer to Conan’s and studied the mass of broken rock. “The army can in no way ascend the slope. Men afoot might slowly pick their way up—if Numitor did not assail them and the sorcerer cast no other deadly spell. But horses never, nor yet the wains."

“Could we build our own road, replacing the rock-ledge path that lies beneath the rocks?” suggested Prospero.

Trocero considered the idea. “With a thousand workmen, several months, and gold to spare, I’d build you as fine a road as you could wish.”

“We do not have such time, nor money either,' rumbled Conan. “If we cannot go through the Notch, we must go over, under, or around it. Order the men to march a quarter-league back along the road and pitch camp under the forest trees.”

In the royalist camp Thulandra Thuu confronted a furious prince. The exhausted sorcerer, looking much older than was his wont, leaned on Hsiao’s sturdy shoulder. The area on which his pentacle was marked had not fallen with the balance of the cliff, and he had walked the narrow bridge to safety.

"You fool necromancer!” grumbled Numitor. "Since you would resort to magic, you should have waited till the Notch was filled with rebels. Thus we had slain them all. Now they have fled with little scathe.”

“You do not understand these matters. Prince,” replied Thulandra coolly. “I withheld the final step of the enchantment until I saw that something—or someone—had warned the rebel leader of the trap and the rebels had begun to flee. Had I withheld my hand the longer, they would have all escaped scot-free. In any case the flume is blocked. The rebels must needs march east to the Khorotas or west to the Alimane, for they cannot now breach the escarpment.

“And now Your Highness must excuse me. The spell has drained my psychic forces, and I must rest.”

“I never did think much of miracle-mongers,” growled Nimiitor as he turned away.

In the sheltered forest camp that evening, Conan and his officers reviewed a map. “To bypass the escarpment,” said Conan, “we must return to the village of Pedassa, whence the roads depart for the two rivers. But that’s a lengthy march.”

“If there were some little-known break in the long cliff wall,” said Prospero wistfully, “we could, by moving quietly through the woods, steal a march on Numitor and fall upon him unawares."

Conan frowned. "This map shows no such pass; but long ago I learned not to trust mapmakers. You're lucky if they show the rivers flowing in the true direction. Trocero, know you any alternate route?”

Trocero shook his head. “Nay.”

“There must be streams other than the Bitaxa that cut a channel in the cliff.”

Trocero shrugged helplessly. Pallantides entered, saying: “Your pardon. General, but two men of Serdicus’ company have deserted.”

Conan snorted. “Every time we win, men desert from the royalists to join us; every time we lose, they desert us for the king. It is like a game of chance, following Fate’s decree. Send scouts to look for them and hang them if you catch them; but do not make a public matter of it. Order woodsmen at dawn to study the cliff face in both directions for the distance of a league to see if they can find a pathway to the top. And now, friends, leave me to ponder finiiier on the matter.”

Beside his camp bed Conan brooded over a flagon of ale. He restudied the map and cudgeled his braia for a way his army might surmount the escarpment.

Absently he fingered the half-circle of obsidian, which once had hung between the opulent breasts of the dancing girl Alcina, and which was now clasped around his massive neck. He stared down at the object, thinking how right had been his friend Trocero’s suspicion that she had caused the death of old Amulius Procas.

Little by little, the pieces of the puzzle fitted together. Alcina had been sent—either by the king’s spymaster or by the royal sorcerer—to try to murder him. Later she succeeded in slaying General Procas. Why Procas? Because with Conan in his grave, Procas was no longer needed to defend Aquilonia’s mad king. Hence, neither she nor her master knew, at the time of Procas’s death, that Conan had recovered from her deadly elixir.

Well, thought Conan, not without bitterness, he must hereafter be more cautious in choosing his bed-mates. But why should Procas die? Because Alcina's master, whoever he might be, wanted the old man out of his way. This thought led Conan to Thulandra Thuu, for the rivalry between the sorcerer and the general for the king’s favor was notorious.

Conan gripped the ebony talisman as this enlightenment burst upon him. And as he did so, he became aware of a curious sensation. It seemed that voices carried on a dialogue within his skull.

A shadowy form took shape before his eyes. As Conan tensed to snatch his sword, the vision solidified, and he saw a female figure sitting on a black wrought-iron throne. The vision was to some extent transparent—Conan could dimly see the tent wall behind the image—and too nebulous to recognize the woman’s features. But in the shadowy face burned eyes of emerald green.

With every nerve atingle, Conan watched the figure and hearkened to the voices. One was a woman’s dusky voice, and her words followed the movements of the shadow’s lips. The voice was Alcina’s, but she seemed unaware of Conan s scrutiny.

The other voice was dry, metallic, passionless, and spoke Aquilonian with a siblant slur. Conan had never exchanged a word with Thulandra Thuu, although he had seen the mage across the throne room during courtly functions in Tarantia when he was general to the king. But from descriptions of the wizard, he imagined the king’s favorite would speak thus. The voice proceeded:

“… I know not who betrayed my plan; but some treacher must have forewarned the rebel chieftain."

Alcina replied: “Perhaps not. Master. The barbarian pig has senses keener than those of ordinary men; he might have detected the coming cataclysm by some stirring of the air above the earth. What do you now?”

“I must needs remain here to guard that ninny Numitor against some asinine misjudgment, until Count Ulric arrives. The stars inform me of his coming in three days’ time. Yet I am weary. Calling up the spirits of the earth has prostrated me. I can work no further spells until I recoup my psychic forces."

"Then pray, come back forthwith!" urged the vision of Alcina. "Ulric will surely arrive before the rebels can surmount the cliffs, and I have need of your protection."

"Protection? Why so?"

“His maggotty Majesty, the King, importunes me constantly to join him in his bestial amusements. I am afraid."

"What has this walking heap of excrement been urging you to do?"

“His desires beggar all description. Master. At your command, some men I have lain with, and some I have slain. But this I will not do."

“Set and Kali!" exclaimed the dry male voice. “When I have finished with Numedides, he'll wish he were in hell! I shall set forth for Tarantia on the morrow."

“Have a care that you fall not into rebel hands along the way! Insurgent bands have been reported along the Road of Kings, and the barbarian pig might lead a swift raid into loyal territory. He is a worthy adversary."

The male voice chuckled faintly. “Fear not for me, my dear Alcina. Even in my present depleted state, I can with my peculiar powers slay any mortal at close quarters. And now, farewell.”

The voices fell silent, and the vision faded. Conan shook himself like one awakening from a vivid dream. With Thulandra gone from the scene of battle and Ulric not yet arrived, he had a chance to fall on Numitors army and rout it—^if only he could reach the plains above before the Count of Raman came with reinforcements.

He needed air to clear his rampant thoughts and rose to leave his narrow sleeping quarters. In the adjacent section of the tent, the bodyguards whom Prospero had assigned him were so engrossed in a game of chance that none looked up as Conan, soundless as a shadow, glided past them.

Outside, the sentries, used to his night prowls, supposed that he was making an inspection. They saluted as he wandered to the edge of the encampment and continued into the nighted woods. Prospero, he thought with a grim smile, would be perturbed to know that Conan once again had given his bodyguards the slip.

He fumbled in his wallet for the bone whistle Cola had given him, retrieved it, and fingered it. The satyr had said that if he ever wanted help from the people of these woods, he had but to blow upon it. Half in jest, he put the tiny whistle to his lips and blew. Nothing happened. More urgently, he blew another silent blast.

Perhaps the remnant of the satyrs had departed from the scene of their destruction. Even if they heard the call, they might need time to come to him. Conan stood motionless with the wary patience of a crouching panther waiting for its prey, listening to the buzz and chirp of insects and the rustle of a passing breeze. Now and then he put the soundless whistle to his lips and blew again.

At length he felt a movement in the shrubbery.

"Who you, blow whistle call satyr?" asked a small high-pitched voice in broken Aquilonian.

"Gola?’'

“Nay, me Zudik, chief. Who you?" The shrubbery parted.

“Conan the Cimmerian. Do you know Gola?” Conan, whose eyes had adjusted to the darkness, could see this was a bent and ancient satyr, whose pelt was tinged with silver.

“Aye,” replied the satyr chieftain. “He tell about you. Save him and four others. What you want?”

“Your help to kill the men atop the cliff.”

“How Zudik help big man like you?”

“We need a pathway to the top,” said Conan, “now that the Giant’s Notch is filled with rocks. Know you another way?”

The night sang with the sound of insects in the silence. Then Zudik answered slowly: “Is small path that way.” The satyr pointed eastward.

“How far?” The satyr replied in his own language, and his words were like the caws of crows.

Puzzled, the Cimmerian asked: “Can we get there within a day’s march?”

“Walk hard. Can do.”

“Will you show us the way?”

“Aye. Be ready before sunup.”

Later Conan sought out Publius and said: “We move at dawn for a path the satyrs say leads to the bluff; but it’s too narrow for the wagons. You will take the baggage train back to Pedassa and follow the road thence to the Khorotas. If we join you on the road to Tarantia, we shall have vanquished Numitor; if not”— Conan drew, a finger across his throat—"you'll go alone.”

The second gap in the escarpment was much narrower than the Giant’s Notch. From below it was invisible, hidden by lush greenery and overhanging rocks. The horsemen had to lead their mounts across the brook that gurgled at the bottom of the cleft and up the rocky way. More than one horse, frightened by the narrowing canyon walls, held up the others while it whinnied, rolled frightened eyes, and reared.

The men afoot, walking in single file, could just squeeze through. When dusk made the path darker and more sinister, Conan urged each man to grasp the garments of the man ahead and stumble forward. Morning saw the last man through.

While the Army of Liberation rested from their forced march and arduous climb, Conan sent scouts to probe Numitor s position. On their return the leader reported:

"Numitor has struck his camp and fallen back for several leagues along the road. His men have pitched camp in the forest, straddling the highway.”

Conan looked a question at his officers. Pallantides said: “What’s this? Even if Numitor is stupid, I’ve never heard he was a coward!"

“More likely,” Trocero put in, “he learned that we have found a way up the escarpment and feared we would drive him to the precipice.”

"The sorcerer might have warned him,” ventured Prospero.

“That is not all. General,” said the chief scout “Four more regiments have arrived to reinforce the enemy. We recognized their banners.”

Conan grunted. “Numitor has stripped the Wester-marck of regulars, leaving the defense against the Picts to the local militia. So we are again outnumbered; and the Royal Frontiersmen are skillful fighting men. I’ve fought beside them and I know.” He paused a moment, then added: “Friends, that satyr Gola said something about using pipes against a foe. What think you that he meant?”

None knew. At last Conan said: “I see I must consult our little folk again.”

As dusk drew a gray veil of mist along the tumbling stream, Conan worked his way down the narrow path up which his men had so laboriously clambered. He stood alone in the enshrouding dark of the Brocellian Forest, listening in vain for any footfall. He blew on the bone whistle and, as before, he waited in the shadow of an ancient tree. When at last his call was answered, he was relieved to find it was Zudik, the satyr who had directed his army to the pass. In answer to a question, Zudik said:

“Aye, we use pipes. Make your men stop up ears.”

"Plug up our ears?” asked Conan wonderingly.

"Aye. Use beeswax, cloth, clay—so can no longer hear. Then we help you.”

Numitor’s Frontiersmen lay in a crescent across the highway to Tarantia. The prince seemed prepared to stand on the defensive until the arrival of Count Ulric. His men were digging earthworks with implanted pointed stakes to impede an attacker. Because of the dense stands of trees, the rebels could not outflank the royalists’ long line.

Silently, the Army of Liberation spread out before the crescent, their presence hidden by the shrubbery. But when a royal sentry perceived a movement in the bushes, he sounded an alarm. Men dropped their shovels, snatched weapons, and took positions on the line.

Conan signaled to his aides, whose ears were plugged, to tell the archers to ply the foe with arrows; and presently, the thrum of bowstrings and the whistle of arrows rent the air. But Conan’s men heard nothing.

To the royalist defenders on the ends of the line came a chilling sound—a shrill, ululating, unearthly piping. It came from nowhere into everywhere. It made men’s teeth ache and imbued them with a strange, unreasoning panic. Soldiers dropped their weapons to clutch at pain-racked heads. Some burst into hysterical laughter; others dissolved in tears.

As the sound drew nearer, the feeling of dire doom expanded until it overflowed their souls. The impulse to be gone, which at first they mastered, overcame their years of battle training. Here and there a man tinned from his position on the line to run, screaming madly, to the rear. More joined the flight, until the outer limits of the line dissolved into a mass of terrified fugitives, running from they knew not what As the prince’s flanks were swept away, the unseen pipers moved toward the center, until that, too, disintegrated. Trocero’s cavalry rode down the fleeing men, slaying and taking prisoners.

“Anyway,” said Conan as he looked at the abandoned royalist camp, “they left us weapons enough for twice our number. So now we can recruit whatever volunteers we find."

“That was an easy victory,” exulted Prospero.

"Too easy,” replied Conan grimly. “An easy victory is oft as false as a courtiers smile. I'll say the road to Tarantia is open when I see the city walls, and not before.”