Conan the Liberator

THE CHAMBER OF SPHINXES

Between sunset and midnight, the men of Argos, rank upon rank, marched into camp amid ruffles of drums and rebel cheers. Salted Messantian meat, coarse barley bread, and flagons of ale from the rebels' dwindling stores were handed round to Baron Groder’s starveling regiment and Prosperous weary troop. Horses were watered, hobbled, and turned out to pasture on the lush grass, as the rebels and their new allies lit campfires and settled down to their evening repast. Soon the fitful glow of fires scattered about the Plain of Pallos rivaled the twinkling stars upon the plain of heaven; and the shouts and laughter of four thousand men, wafted northward on the evening breeze, crashed like the dissonant chords of a dirge on the ears of Procas’s retreating regulars.

In the command tent. Prince Cassio, Captain Arcadio, and the rebel leaders gathered near Conan’s bed to share a frugal meal and draft the morrows plans.

“Well all after them at dawn!” cried Trocero.

"Nay," the young prince replied. “The instructions from my royal father are explicit. Only if General Procas leads his forces further into our territory are we to join battle with him. The long hopes our presence will deter Procas from such rashness; and so it seems, since the Aquilonians are now in flight”

Conan said nothing, but the volcanic blaze in his blue eyes betrayed his angry disappointment The prince glanced at him, half in awe and half in sympathy.

"I comprehend your feelings. General Conan," he said gently. “But you must understand our position, too. We do not wish to war with Aquilonia, which outnumbers us two to one. Indeed we have risked enough already, giving haven to your force within our borders.”

With a hand that trembled from effort, Conan grasped his cup of ale and brought it slowly to his lips. Sweat beaded his forehead, as if the flagon weighed half a hundredweight. He spilled some of the contents, drank the rest, and let the empty vessel fall to the floor.

"Then let us pursue Procas on our own,” urged Trocero. "We can harry him back across the Alimane; and every man we fell will be one fewer to oppose us when we raise Poitain. If the survivors stand to make a battle of it—well, victory lies ever on the laps of the fickle gods.”

Conan was tempted. Every belligerent instinct in his barbaric soul enticed him to send his men in headlong pursuit of the royalists, to worry them like a pack of hounds, to pick them off by ones and twos all the way back beyond the Alimane. The Rabirian range seemed designed by Destiny for just the sort of action he could wage against the outnumbering invaders. Cloven into a thousand gullies and ravines, those wrinkled hills and soaring peaks begged him to ambush every fleeing soldier.

But should Procas’s troops turn to make a stand. Fate might not grant her pardon to Conan's rebels. They were poor in provisions and weak in weaponry even now; and the regiment that Prospero had rescued were worn and weary, on gaunt, shambling mounts, after days of hiding out and foraging in the field. Moreover, a general who cannot ride a horse or wield a sword cannot greatly inspire his followers to deeds of dash and daring. Enfeebled as he still was by Alcina’s poison, Conan knew full well that he had no choice except to remain in camp or to travel in a litter as a spectator at the fray.

As night slipped into misty dawn and trumpets sounded the reveille, Conan, supported by two squires, looked out across the waking camp and pondered his position. He must not let Procas get back to Aquilonia unscathed. At the same time, to overcome the mighty Border Legion, he must devise some unexpected manner of warfare—some innovation to give advantage to his lesser numbers. He required a force that was mobile and swiftly maneuverable, yet able to strike the foe from a distance.

As Conan stared at the mustering men, his brooding gaze alighted upon a single Bossonian, who flung himself upon a horse and galloped toward the palisaded gate. He must bear a message to the sentries at the circumference of the camp, Conan mused, and that message must be urgent; for the fellow had not bothered to remove the unstrung bow that hung slantwise across his shoulders nor to discard the heavy quiver of arrows that slapped against his thigh.

Years of service with the King of Turan flooded Conans memory. In that army, mounted archers formed the largest single contingent: men who could shoot their double-curved bows of horn and sinew from the back of a galloping steed as accurately as most men could shoot with feet firmly fixed upon the ground. Such a skill his Bossonian archers could not master without a decade of practice; and besides, the Bossonian longbow was much too cumbersome to be handled from horseback.

Suddenly, in his mind’s eye, Conan saw a host of mounted archers pursuing the fleeing foe until, coming within range, they dismounted to loose shaft after deadly shaft, before spurring away when at last the goaded enemy turned to engage their tormentors. Conan’s explosive roar of laughter startled his camp servants, who gaped like yokels at a circus while Captain Alaricus ran to waken the physician-priest.

When Dexitheus, clad in scanty clothing, rushed to Conan's tent, Conan grinned at his bewilderment.

“No,” he chuckled, “the purple lotus has not addled my wits, my friend. But the lord Mitra, or Crom, or some such blessed god has given me an inspiration. Send someone posthaste to bid the Argossean leaders hither.”

When Prince Cassio and Captain Arcadio, already armed and armored, plodded up the slope to the headquarters tent, Conan roared a greeting, adding: "You say King Milo forbids you to attack the retreating Aquilonians. Does the royal that encompass your horses, too?”

“Our horses. General?” repeated Arcadio blankly.

Conan nodded impatiently. “Aye, your beasts. Quickly, Captain, an answer, if you will. Our steeds—the few we have—are underfed, as you can see by counting their poor ribs. But yours are fresh and of an excellent breed. Lend us five hundred mounts, and well forswear the service of a single Argossean soldier to send Amulius Procas home with his tail between his legs.”

As Conan outlined his plan. Prince Cassio grinned. More and ever more he liked this grim-visaged barbarian from the North, who made war in ways as ingenious as implausible.

“Lend him five hundred horses, Arcadio,” he said. "The king, my father, said naught of that.”

The Argossean officer clanked off to issue orders. And presently, below them on the flat where the Bossonian archers lined up for morning roll call, ten score Argossean wranglers led saddled horses into the field behind them. Trocero and Prospero converged upon the startled and disordered foot soldiers and by their authority restored them to disciplined ranks.

"Fetch me my stallion and strap me to the saddle,” growled Conan. "I must explain my plan to those who’ll carry it out.”

“General!" cried Dexitheus. “You should not, in your present state—”

“Spare me your cautions. Reverence. For a month the men have seen me not and doubtless wonder if I’m still alive.”

As Conan’s squires, with many helping hands, strained to boost Conan’s massive body into the saddle, the Cimmerian chafed at the sluggishness that chained his mighty limbs. His blue eyes blazed with the fire of inconquerable will, and his broad brows drew together with the fury of his effort to drive vitality back into his flaccid thews. Strive as he would, the blood flowed but feebly through his numbed flesh; for Alcina had concocted the deadly draft with consummate care.

At length his squires strapped Conan to his saddle, he raving oaths the while and calling upon his somber Northern gods to avenge this foul indignity. And though the palsy shook his burly body, his eyes, seething with elemental fury, commanded every upturned face to show him neither courtesy nor pity, but only the respect that was his due.

All this Prince Cassio watched, held spellbound by amazement. Back in Messantia, the courtiers had sneered at Conan as a savage, an untutored barbarian whom the Aquilonian rebel nobles had unaccountably chosen to manage their revolt. Now the prince sensed the primal power of the man, his deep reservoirs of elemental vigor. He perceived the Cimmerian’s driving purpose, his originality of thought, his dynamic presence—qualities that transformed nobles and common soldiers alike into willing captives of his personality. This man, thought Cassio, was created to command—was born to be a king.

Supported by a mounted squire on either side, Conan paced his charger slowly down the ranks toward the battalion of Bossonian archers. Although his face contorted with the effort, he managed to raise a hand in greeting as he passed row upon row of loyal followers. The men burst into frantic cheers.

Half a league to the north, a pair of royalist scouts, left behind to watch the rebel army, were breaking fast along the road that led to Saxula Pass. The cheers came faintly to their ears, and they exchanged glances of alarm.

"What betides yonder?" asked the younger man.

The other shaded his eyes. ” 'Tis too far to see, but something must have happened to hearten the rebel host. One of us had best report to General Procas. I go; you stay.”

The second speaker gulped his last bite, rose, untied his horse from a nearby tree, and mounted. The morning air echoed the fading drumbeat of hooves as he vanished up the road.

Quieting his men with a small motion of his upraised hand, Conan addressed the lines of archers. They were selected, he told them, from the entire army to inflict destruction on the retreating invaders. They were to move on silent hooves against pockets of the enemy and then dismount and nock their shafts. Shooting from cover in twos and threes, they could pick off scores of fleeing men; and when at last the enemy turned at bay, they, unencumbered by heavy armor, could quickly remount and soon outdistance the heavy-laden Aquilonian knights sent in pursuit.

Each squad would be commanded by an experienced cavalryman, who would make certain that the beasts were well handled and would hold the horses while the archers were dismounted. As for those who had seldom ridden—here Conan smiled a trifle grimly —they had but to grip the saddle or the horse’s mane; for such temporarily mounted infantry, fine horsemanship was unimportant.

Under the command of an Aquilonian soldier-of-fortune named Pallantides, who had once trained with Turanian horse-archers and who had lately deserted from the royalists, the newly mounted Bossonians swept out of the camp at a steady canter and headed north along the climbing road that led toward Aquilonia.

They caught up with the rear guard of the royalist army in the foothills of the Rabirians, short of Saxula Pass; for Procas’s retreat was slowed by his baggage train and his companies of plodding infantry. Spying the enemy, the Bossonians spread out, eased their horses through the brush to shooting range, and then went to work. A score of royalist spearmen fell, screaming or silent, or cursed less lethal wounds, before the clatter of armored horsemen told the rebel archers that Procas’s cavalry was coming to disperse the attack and to cover his withdrawal. Thereupon the Bossonians unstrung their bows and, dashing back to their tethered beasts, silently mounted and scattered through the forest. Their only casualty was an injury to one archer who, unused to horseback, fell off and broke his collar bone.

For the next three days, the Bossonians harried the retreating Aquilonians, like hounds snapping at the heels of fleeing criminals. They struck from the shadows; and when the royalists turned to challenge them, they were gone—hidden in a thousand hollows etched by wind and weather upon the wrinkled face of the terrain.

Amulius Procas and his officers cursed themselves hoarse, but little could they do. An arrow would whistle from behind a boulder. Sometimes it missed, merely causing the marching men to flinch and duck. Sometimes it buried itself in a horse’s flank, inciting the stricken animal to rear and plunge, unseating its rider. Sometimes a soldier screamed in pain as a shaft transfixed his body; or a horseman, with a clang of armor, toppled from his saddle to he where he fell. From the heights above, unseen in the gloaming, a sudden rain of arrows would slay or cripple thrice a dozen men.

Amulius Procas had few choices. He could not camp near Saxula Pass, because there little open ground and inadequate supplies of water could be found. Neither could he attack in close order, where his weight of numbers and armor would give him the advantage, because the enemy refused to close with him. If he threw his whole army against them, he could doubtless sweep away these pestilent rebels like chaff upon the wind; but such an action would carry him back to the Plain of Pallos and thus embroil him with the Argosseans.

So there was nothing for Amulius Procas to do but plod grimly on, sending out his light horse to drive away the enemy whenever they revealed their presence by a flight of arrows. Numerically his losses were trivial, only a fraction of the death toll of a joined battle. But the constant attrition depressed his men's morale; and the wind of chill foreboding, sweeping across his heart, whispered that King Numedides would not forget and still less forgive the failure of the expedition launched at the kings express command.

In the throat of Saxula Pass, an avalanche of boulders crashed down upon the hapless royalists. Procas glumly ordered the wreckage cleared, the smashed wagons abandoned, and the mortally wounded men and beasts mercifully put to the sword. On the far side of the pass, his troops moved faster, but the harassment continued unabated.

Procas realized that his Cinmierian opponent was a master of this irregular warfare; and he shook with shame that his enforced withdrawal had spurred the barbarian’s fecund inventiveness. This stain upon his honor, he swore, he would wash out in rebel blood.

On the third day of the retreat, as the gray skies turned to lead, the disheartened, exhausted royalists gathered on the southern bank of the Alimane at the ford of Nogara. There for a time Procas lingered, tormented by indecision. Even though the floods of spring had subsided, the river’s reach invited an attack when his fording men were least disposed to counter it. It would be a cruel jest of the capricious gods to ensnare the Aquilonian general in the very trap in which, not two months earlier, he had all but crushed the rebels. Moreover, to essay a crossing in the gloom of coming night would involve an almost certain loss of men and equipment.

Yet to pitch a camp on the Argossean side would doom sentries and sleeping men to death by flights of phantom arrows from the forest Procas gnawed his lip. Since his troops could not effectively defend themselves against such tactics, the sooner he led them across the Alimane, the safer they would sleep. Although the river was broad and swift, making the fords formidable, it would at least place his army beyond bowshots from the southern shore.

While these thoughts shambled through the mind of Amulius Procas, one of his officers approached the chariot in which he stood, atop a small rise along the river bank. The officer, a heavy-shouldered giant of a man—a Bossonian from his accent—with a surly expression on his coarse-featured face, saluted.

“Sir, we await your orders to begin the fording," he said. "The longer we stay, the more of our men will those damnable hidden archers wing.”

“I am aware of that, Gromel,” said the general stiffly. Then he heaved a sigh and made a curt gesture. “Very-well, get on with it! Naught’s to be gained by loitering here. But it goes against my grain to let these starveling rascals harry us home without repaying them in their own coin. Were it not for political considerations …"

Gromel raked the hills behind them with a contemptuous glance. “Curse these politics, which tie the soldier’s hands!” he growled. “The cowards will not stand and fight, knowing we should wipe them out. So there is nothing for it save to gather on the soil of Poitain, there to stand ready to crush them if they essay the fords again.”

"We shall be ready,” said Procas sternly. “Sound the trumpets.”

The retreat across the Alimane proceeded in good order, although night dimmed the twilight before the last company splashed into the river bed. As the men moved away from the southern bank, ten score archers, lurking in the undergrowth, stepped into view with bows strung and arrows nocked.

Procas had left his chariot to heave himself, grunting with pain from ancient wounds, into the saddle of his charger. Commanding a small rear guard of light horse, the dour old veteran was among the last to wade his steed into the darkling flood, while arrows from shore whistled past like angry insects.

In midstream the general suddenly exclaimed, clapping a hand to his leg. At his cry, the Bossonian officer who had addressed him earlier rode nigh and reined in. He opened thick lips to ask what was amiss, then spied the rebel arrow that had pierced the old man’s thigh above the knee. A gleam of satisfaction flickered in Gromel’s porcine eyes and quickly vanished; for he was a man implacably bent on pursuit of promotion, however he might attain it.

Stoically, Procas sat his steed across the river; but once amid the bushes that fringed the northern shore, he suffered his aides to lift him from the beast while Gromel trotted ahead to summon the surgeon.

After plucking forth the barb and binding the wound, the physician said: "It will be many days, General, ere you will be well enough to travel again.”

"Very well," said Procas stolidly. "Pitch my tent on yonder hillock. Here we shall camp and let the rebels come to us, if they’ve the stomach for it.”

Ghostly among the shadows of the trees nearby, a slender figure clad in the garments of a page, much worn and travel-stained, watched and listened. Had any viewer with catlike eyes perceived the swelling roundure of that youthful figure, he would have recognized a lithe and lovely woman. Now, with a mirthless smile, she unhitched her horse and quietly led the animal to a prudent distance from the camp that the Border Legion was hastily erecting.

That his rival, Amulius Procas, had been wounded during a cowardly retreat before a rabble would be pleasing news for Thulandra Thuu, thought the Lady Alcina. Now that the mighty Cimmerian was dead, Procas had served his purpose and could safely be sacrificed to her master's vaulting ambition. She must get word to the wizard as soon as the aspects of the stars and planets again permitted the use of her obsidian talisman. She melted into the darkness and vanished from the scene.

Bending toward his magical mirror of burnished obsidian, Thulandra Thuu learned with delight of the injury to General Procas. As the image of Alcina faded from the gleaming glass, the sorcerer thoughtfully stroked the bridge of his hawklike nose. Reaching out a slender hand, he raised a metal mallet and smote the skull-shaped gong that hung beside his iron throne, and its sonorous note echoed dully through the purple-shrouded chamber.

Presently the draperies drew aside, revealing Hsiao the Khitan. Arms tucked into the voluminous sleeves of his green silk robe, he bowed, silently awaiting his master’s commands.

"Does the Count of Thune still wait upon me in the antechamber?” the sorcerer inquired.

”Master, Count Ascalante attends your pleasure,” murmured the yellow servant.

Thulandra Thuu nodded. ”Excellent! I will speak to him forthwith. Inform him that I shall receive him in the Chamber of the Sphinxes, and go yourself to notify the king that I shall presently request an audience upon urgent business of state. You have my leave to go.”

Hsiao bowed and withdrew, and the draperies fell back into place, concealing the door through which the Khitan had passed.

The Chamber of the Sphinxes, which Thulandra Thuu had converted to his own use from a disused room in the palace, was aptly named. Tomblike in its barrenness, it was walled and floored in roseate marble and contained no visible furnishings beyond a limestone seat, placed against the further wall. This seat, shaped like a throne, was upheld by a pair of stone supports carved in the likeness of feline monsters with human heads. This motif was repeated in the matching tapestries that hung in rich array against the wall behind the throne. Here, cunningly crafted in glittering threads, two catlike beasts with manlike faces, bearded and imperious, stared out with cold and supercilious eyes. The only light in this chill chamber was provided by a pair of copper torcheres, the flames of which danced in the silver mirrors set into the wall behind them.

Not unlike the sphinxes was Ascalante, officer-adventurer and self-styled Count of Thune. A tall and supple man, elegantly clad in plum-colored velvet, he prowled around the chamber with a feline grace. For all his military bearing and debonaire deportment, his eyes, like those of the embroidered monsters, were cold and supercilious; but they were wary, too, and a trifle apprehensive.

For some time now, Ascalante had awaited an audience with the all-powerful sorcerer of unknown origin. Although Thulandra Thuu had recalled Ascalante from the eastern frontier and demanded his daily presence at court, the magician had let him cool his heels outside the audience chamber for several days. Now it might be that his fortunes were about to change.

Suddenly Ascalante froze, his hand instinctively darting to the hilt of his dagger. One of the tapestries lifted to reveal a narrow doorway, within which stood a slender, dark-skinned man, silently regarding him. The cool, amused intelligence behind those hooded eyes seemed capable of reading a man’s thoughts as if they were painted on his forehead. Recovering his composure, Ascalante made a courtly obeisance as Thulandra Thuu entered the room. The sorcerer bore an ornately carven staff, which writhed with intertwined inscriptions in characters unknown to Ascalante.

Thulandra strode unhurriedly across the chamber and seated himself on the sphinx-supported throne. He acknowledged the other s bow with a nod and the shadow of a smile, saying: "I trust you are well. Count, and that your enforced inactivity has not wearied you?”

Ascalante murmured a polite reply.

“Count Ascalante,” said the magician, “your experience and accomplishments have not eluded those who serve as my eyes and ears in distant places. Neither, I may add, has your lust for high office, nor a certain lack of scruple as regards the means whereby you hope to attain it. I hasten to assure you that the king and I approve of your ambition and of your—ah, practicality."

"I thank you, my lord,” replied the count with a show of composure that aped the suavity of the sorcerer.

"I shall come directly to the point," said Thulandra Thuu, “for events move ever forward through the passing hours, and mortal men must scurry to keep abreast of them. Briefly, this is the situation: it has pleased His Majesty to withdraw his favor from the honorable Amulius Procas, commander of the Border Legion."

Amazement burned in the inscrutable eyes of Ascalante, for the news astounded him. All knew that Procas was the ablest commander Aquilonia could put in the field, now that Conan had left the king’s service. If anyone could subdue the restive barons in the North and crush the rebellion in the South, it was Amulius Procas. To remove him from command at such a time, before either menace had been obliterated, was madness.

“I can divine the feelings that your loyalty rests in," purred Thulandra with a narrow smile. “The fact is that our General Procas has led a rash and ill-planned raid across the Alimane, thus risking open war with Milo, King of Argos."

“Forgive me, lord, but I find this almost impossible of credence," said Ascalante. “To invade a friendly neighboring state without our monarch’s express command is tantamount to treason!"

“It is precisely that,” smiled the sorcerer. “And that the king imprudently did order a punitive expedition into Argos is a datum that, I fear, history will fail to record, since every copy of the document has strangely disappeared. You take my meaning, sir?"

Amusement gleamed in Ascalante’s eyes. "I believe I do, my lord. But pray continue." The Count of Thune appreciated a subtle act of villainy much as a connoisseur of wines might savor a rare vintage.

"The general might have avoided censure,” Thulandra Thuu added with mock regret, “if he had stamped out the last sparks of the rebellion; for the rumors you have heard about the self-styled Army of Liberation, now gathered north of the Rabirians, are true. An adventurer who called himself Conan the Cimmerian— "

"That giant of a man who last year led the Lion Regiment of Aquilonia to victory over the marauding Picts?" cried Ascalante.

"The same," replied Thulandra. "But time presses and affords us little leisure for profitless gossip, however diverting. Had General Procas shattered the rebel remnant and then retreated across the Alimane before King Milo learned of the incursion, all had been well. But Procas bungled the mission, stirred up the wrath of Argos, and fled from the field of battle without spilling a single drop of rebel blood. He so botched the fording of the Alimane that rebel archers targeted scores of our finest soldiers. And his errors were compounded in Messantia by the blunders of a stupid spy of Vibius Latro-—a Zingaran named Quesado—whom His Majesty had impulsively urged upon the diplomatic corps.

"The upshot was that, during the retreat, the general himself was wounded—so severely that, I fear, he is no longer able to command. Fortunately for us, the rebel leader Conan also perished. So to return to you, my dear Count— “

“To me?" munnured Ascalante, affecting an air of infinite modesty.

"To yourself,” said the sorcerer with a sliver of a smile. "Your service on the Ophirean and Nemedian frontiers, I find, qualifies you to take command of the Border Legion, which has fallen from the failing hands of General Procas—or shortly will, once he receives this document.”

The sorcerer paused and withdrew from the deep sleeve of his garment a scroll, richly embellished with azure and topaz ribbons, upon which the royal seal blazed like a clot of freshly shed blood.

"I begin to understand,” said Ascalante. And eagerness welled up within his heart, like a bubbling spring beneath a stone.

"Thou have long awaited the call of opportunity to ascend to high office in the realm and earn the preferment of your king. That opportunity approaches. But, ”and here Thulandra raised a warning finger and continued in a voice sibilant with emphasis: "You must fully understand me, Count Ascalante.”

"My lord?”

“I am aware that the Herald’s Court has not as yet approved your assumption of the Countship of Thune, and that certain—ah—irregularities surround the demise of your elder brother, the late lamented count, who perished in a limiting accident.”

Flushing, Ascalante opened his lips to make an impassioned protest; but the sorcerer silenced him with lifted hand and a bland, uncaring smile.

"These are but minor disagreements, which shall be swept away in the acclaim that greets the laureled victor, I will see you well rewarded for your service to the crown,” Thulandra Thuu continued craftily. "But you must obey my orders to the letter, or the County of Thune will never fall to you.

"I am aware that you have little actual experience in border warfare, or in commanding more men than constitute a regiment. The actual command of the Border Legion, then, I shall place in the hands of a certain senior officer, Gromel the Bossonian by name, who has been well blooded in our recent warfare against the Picts. I have long had Gromel under observation, and I plan to bind him to me with hopes of recompense. Therefore, while he shall deploy and order the actual battle lines, you will retain the nominal command. Is this quite understood?”

"It is, my lord,” hissed Ascalante between clenched teeth.

“Good. Now that Conan lies dead, you and Gromel between you can easily immobilize the remaining rebels south of the Alimane until the fractious horde disintegrates from hunger and lack of accomplishment.”

Thulandra Thuu proffered the scroll, saying: "Here are your orders. An escort awaits you at the South Gate. Ride for the ford of Nogara on the Alimane with all dispatch."

“And what, lord, if Amulius Procas refuses to accept my bona fides?” inquired Ascalante, who liked to make certain that he held all the winning pieces in any game of fortune.

"A tragic accident may befall our gallant general before your arrival to assume command,” smiled Thulandra Thuu. "An accident which—when you officially report it—will be termed a suicide due to despondency over cowardice in the face of insubstantial foemen and repentance for provoking hostilities against a neighboring realm. When this occurs, be sure to send the body home to Tarantia. Alive, Procas would not have been altogether welcome here; dead, he will play the leading role in a magnificent funeral.

“Now be on your way, good sir, and forget not to obey orders to be given to you from time to time by one Alcina, a trusted green-eyed woman in my service.”

Grasping the embossed scroll, Ascalante bowed deeply and departed from the Chamber of Sphinxes.

Watching his departure, Thulandra Thuu smiled a slow and mirthless smile. The instruments that served his will were all weak and flawed, he knew; but a flawed instrument is all the more dispensable should it need to be discarded after use.