Conan the Usurper

EIGHT: Swords of Aquilonia

Dawn was tinging the dim waters an old-rose hue. Far out across the tinted waters, a fleck of white grew out of the mist …a sail that seemed to hang suspended in the pearly sky. On a bushy headland, Conan the Cimmerian held a ragged cloak over a fire of green wood. As he manipulated the cloak, puffs of smoke rose upward, quivered against the dawn, and vanished.

Belesa crouched near him, one arm about Tina. She asked: “Do you think they’ll see it and understand?”

“They’ll see it, right enough,” he assured her. “They’ve been hanging off this coast all night, hoping to sight some survivors. They’re scared stiff; there’s only half a dozen of them, and not one can navigate well enough to sail from here to the Barachan Isles. They’ll understand my signals; ’tis the pirate code. They’ll be glad to ship under me, since I’m the only captain left.”

“But suppose the Picts see the smoke?” She shuddered, glancing back over the misty sands and bushes to where, miles to the north, a column of smoke stood up in the still air.

“They’re not likely to see it. After I hid you in the woods, I crept back and saw them dragging barrels of wine and ale out of the storehouses. Already most of them were reeling. By this time, they’ll all be lying around, too drunk to move. If I had a hundred men, I could wipe out the whole horde …Crom and Mitra!” he cried suddenly. “That’s not the Red Hand after all, but a war galley! What civilized state would send a unit of its fleet hither? Unless somebody would have words with your uncle, in which case they’ll need a spell-woman to raise his ghost.”

He scowled out to sea in an effort to make out the details of the craft through the mist. The approaching ship was bow-on, so that all he could see was a gilded bow ornament, a small sail bellying in the faint onshore breeze, and the bank of oars on each side rising and falling like a single pair..

“Well,” said Conan, “at least they’re coming to take us off. It would be a long walk back to Zingara. Until we find out who they are and whether they’re friendly, say naught of who I am. I’ll think of a proper tale by the time they get here.”

Conan stamped out the fire, handed the cloak back to Belesa, and stretched like a great, lazy cat.

Belesa watched him in wonder. His unperturbed manner was not assumed; the night of fire and blood and slaughter, and the flight through the black woods afterward, had left his nerves untouched. He was as calm as if he had spent the night in feasting and revel. Bandages torn from the hem of Belesa’s gown covered a few minor wounds that he had received in fighting without armor.

Belesa did not fear him; she felt safer than she had felt since she landed on that wild coast. He was not like the freebooters, civilized men who had repudiated all standards of honor and lived without any. Conan, on the other hand, lived according to the code of his people, which was barbaric and bloody but at least upheld its own peculiar standards of honor.

“Think you he is dead?” she asked.

He did not ask her to whom she referred. “I believe so,” he replied. “Silver and fire are both deadly to evil spirits, and he got a bellyful of both.”

“How about his master?”

“Thoth-Amon? Gone back to lurk in some Stygian tomb, I suppose. These wizards are a queer lot.”

Neither spoke of that subject again; Belesa’s mind shrank from the task of conjuring up the scene when a black figure skulked into the great hall, and a long-delayed vengeance was horribly consummated.

The ship was larger, but some time would yet elapse before it made shore. Belesa asked:

“When you first came to the manor, you said something of having been a general in Aquilonia and then having to flee. What is the tale on that?”

Conan grinned. “Put it down to my own folly in trusting that quince-faced Numedides. They made me general because of some small successes against the Picts; and then, when I’d scattered five times my own number of savages in a battle at Velitrium and broken their confederacy, I was called back to Tarantia for an official triumph. All very tickling to the vanity, riding beside the king while girls scatter rose petals before you; but then at the banquet the bastard plied me with drugged wine. I woke up in chains in the Iron Tower, awaiting execution.”

“Whatever for?”

He shrugged. “How know I what goes on in what that numb-wit calls his brain? Perhaps some of the other Aquilonian generals, resentful of the sudden rise of an out-land barbarian into their sacred ranks, had worked upon his suspicions. Or perhaps he took offense at some of my frank remarks about his policy of spending the royal treasury to adorn Tarantia with golden statues of himself instead of for the defense of his frontiers. The philosopher Alcemides confided to me, just before I quaffed the drugged draught, that he hoped to write a book on the use of ingratitude as a principle of statecraft, using the king as a model. Heigh-ho! I was too drunk to realize he was trying to warn me. I had, however, friends with whose aid I was smuggled out of the Iron Tower, given a horse and a sword, and turned loose. I rode back to Bossonia with the idea of raising a revolt, beginning with my own troops. But, when I got there, I found my sturdy Bossonians gone, sent to another province, and in their place a brigade of ox-eyed yokels from the Tauran, most of whom had never heard of me. They insisted on trying to arrest me, so I had to split a few skulls in cutting my way out. I swam Thunder River with arrows whizzing about my ears… and here I am.”

He frowned out toward the approaching ship again. “By Crom, I’d swear yonder ensign bore the leopard of Poitain, did I did not know it were a thing impossible. Come.”

He led the girls down to the beach as the chant of the coxswain became audible.

With a final heave on the oars, the crew drove the galley’s bow with a rush up the sand. As men tumbled off the bow, Conan yelled:

“Prospero! Trocero! What in the name of all the gods are you doing…”

“Conan!” they roared, and closed in on him, pounding his back and wringing his hands. All spoke at once, but Belesa did not understand the speech, which was that of Aquilonia. The one referred to as “Trocero” must be the Count of Poitain, a broad-shouldered, slim-hipped man who moved with the grace of a panther despite the gray in his black hair.

“What do you here?” persisted Conan.

“We came for you,” said Prospero, the slim, elegantly-clad one.

“How did you know where I was?”

The stout, bald man addressed as “Publius” gestured toward another man in the black robe of a priest of Mitra. “Dexitheus found you by his occult arts. He swore you still lived and promised to lead us to you.”

The black-robed man bowed gravely. “Your destiny is linked with that of Aquilonia, Conan of Cimmeria,” he said. “I am but one small link in the chain of your fate.”

“Well, what’s this all about?” said Conan. “Crom knows I’m glad to be rescued from this forsaken sand-spit, but why came you after me?”

Trocero spoke: “We have broken with Numedides, being unable longer to endure his follies and oppressions, and we seek a general to lead the forces of revolt. You’re our man!”

Conan laughed gustily and stuck his thumbs in his girdle. “It’s good to find some who understand true merit Lead me to the fray, my friends!” He glanced around and his eyes caught Belesa, standing timidly apart from the group. He gestured her forward with rough gallantry. “Gentlemen, the Lady Belesa of Korzetta.” Then he spoke to the girl in her own language again. “We can take you back to Zingara, but what will you do then?”

She shook her head helplessly. “I know not. I have neither money nor friends, and I am not trained to earn my living. Perhaps it would have been better had one of those arrows struck my heart.”

“Do not say that, my lady!” begged Tina. “I will work for us both!”

Conan drew a small leather bag from his girdle. “I didn’t get Tothmekri’s jewels,” he rumbled, “but here are some baubles I found in the chest where I got the clothes I’m wearing.” He spilled a handful of flaming rubies into his palm.

“They’re worth a fortune, themselves.” He dumped them back into the bag and handed it to her.

“But I can’t take these …” she began.

“Of course you shall take them! I might as well leave you for the Picts to scalp as to take you back to Zingara to starve,” said he. “I know what it is to be penniless in a Hyborian land. Now, in my country, sometimes there are famines; but people go hungry only when there’s no food in the land at all. But in civilized countries I’ve seen people sick of gluttony while others were starving. Aye, I’ve seen men fall and die of hunger against the walls of shops and storehouses crammed with food. Sometimes I was hungry, too, but then I took what I wanted at sword’s point. But you can’t do that. So you take these rubies. You can sell them and buy a castle, and slaves, and fine clothes, and with them it won’t be hard to get a husband, because civilized men all desire wives with these possessions.”

“But what of you?”

Conan grinned and indicated the circle of Aquilonians. “Here’s my fortune. With these true friends, I shall have all the wealth in Aquilonia at my feet.”

The stout Publius spoke up: “Your generosity does you credit, Conan, but I wish you had consulted with me first. For revolutions are made not only by wrongs, but also by gold; and Numedides’ publicans have so beggared Aquilonia that we shall be hard put to find the money to hire mercenaries.”

“Ha!” laughed Conan. “I’ll get you gold enough to set every blade in Aquilonia swinging!” In a few words he told of the treasure of Tranicos and of the destruction of Valenso’s settlement. “Now the demon’s gone from the cave; the Picts will be scattering to their villages. With a detail of well-armed men, we can make a quick march to the cavern and back before they realize we’re in Pictland. Are you with me?”

They cheered until Belesa feared that their noise would draw the attention of the Picts. Conan cast her a sly grin and muttered in Zingaran, under cover of the racket:

“How d’you like ‘King Conan’? Sounds not bad, eh?”