The Hour of the Dragon Read online

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  A Black Wind Blows

  The year of the dragon had birth in war and pestilence and unrest. Theblack plague stalked through the streets of Belverus, striking down themerchant in his stall, the serf in his kennel, the knight at his banquetboard. Before it the arts of the leeches were helpless. Men said it hadbeen sent from hell as punishment for the sins of pride and lust. It wasswift and deadly as the stroke of an adder. The victim's body turnedpurple and then black, and within a few minutes he sank down dying, andthe stench of his own putrefaction was in his nostrils even before deathwrenched his soul from his rotting body. A hot, roaring wind blewincessantly from the south, and the crops withered in the fields, thecattle sank and died in their tracks.

  Men cried out on Mitra, and muttered against the king; for somehow,throughout the kingdom, the word was whispered that the king wassecretly addicted to loathsome practises and foul debauches in theseclusion of his nighted palace. And then in that palace death stalkedgrinning on feet about which swirled the monstrous vapors of the plague.In one night the king died with his three sons, and the drums thatthundered their dirge drowned the grim and ominous bells that rang fromthe carts that lumbered through the streets gathering up the rottingdead.

  That night, just before dawn, the hot wind that had blown for weeksceased to rustle evilly through the silken window curtains. Out of thenorth rose a great wind that roared among the towers, and there wascataclysmic thunder, and blinding sheets of lightning, and driving rain.But the dawn shone clean and green and clear; the scorched ground veileditself in grass, the thirsty crops sprang up anew, and the plague wasgone--its miasma swept clean out of the land by the mighty wind.

  Men said the gods were satisfied because the evil king and his spawnwere slain, and when his young brother Tarascus was crowned in the greatcoronation hall, the populace cheered until the towers rocked,acclaiming the monarch on whom the gods smiled.

  Such a wave of enthusiasm and rejoicing as swept the land is frequentlythe signal for a war of conquest. So no one was surprised when it wasannounced that King Tarascus had declared the truce made by the lateking with their western neighbors void, and was gathering his hosts toinvade Aquilonia. His reason was candid; his motives, loudly proclaimed,gilded his actions with something of the glamor of a crusade. Heespoused the cause of Valerius, 'rightful heir to the throne'; he came,he proclaimed, not as an enemy of Aquilonia, but as a friend, to freethe people from the tyranny of a usurper and a foreigner.

  If there were cynical smiles in certain quarters, and whispersconcerning the king's good friend Amalric, whose vast personal wealthseemed to be flowing into the rather depleted royal treasury, they wereunheeded in the general wave of fervor and zeal of Tarascus' popularity.If any shrewd individuals suspected that Amalric was the real ruler ofNemedia, behind the scenes, they were careful not to voice such heresy.And the war went forward with enthusiasm.

  The king and his allies moved westward at the head of fifty thousandmen--knights in shining armor with their pennons streaming above theirhelmets, pikemen in steel caps and brigandines, cross-bowmen in leatherjerkins. They crossed the border, took a frontier castle and burnedthree mountain villages, and then, in the valley of the Valkia, tenmiles west of the boundary line, they met the hosts of Conan, king ofAquilonia--forty-five thousand knights, archers and men-at-arms, theflower of Aquilonian strength and chivalry. Only the knights of Poitain,under Prospero, had not yet arrived, for they had far to ride up fromthe southwestern corner of the kingdom. Tarascus had struck withoutwarning. His invasion had come on the heels of his proclamation, withoutformal declaration of war.

  The two hosts confronted each other across a wide, shallow valley, withrugged cliffs, and a shallow stream winding through masses of reeds andwillows down the middle of the vale. The camp-followers of both hostscame down to this stream for water, and shouted insults and hurledstones across at one another. The last glints of the sun shone on thegolden banner of Nemedia with the scarlet dragon, unfurled in the breezeabove the pavilion of King Tarascus on an eminence near the easterncliffs. But the shadow of the western cliffs fell like a vast purplepall across the tents and the army of Aquilonia, and upon the blackbanner with its golden lion that floated above King Conan's pavilion.

  All night the fires flared the length of the valley, and the windbrought the call of trumpets, the clangor of arms, and the sharpchallenges of the sentries who paced their horses along either edge ofthe willow-grown stream.

  * * * * *

  It was in the darkness before dawn that King Conan stirred on his couch,which was no more than a pile of silks and furs thrown on a dais, andawakened. He started up, crying out sharply and clutching at his sword.Pallantides, his commander, rushing in at the cry, saw his king sittingupright, his hand on his hilt, and perspiration dripping from hisstrangely pale face.

  'Your Majesty!' exclaimed Pallantides. 'Is aught amiss?'

  'What of the camp?' demanded Conan. 'Are the guards out?'

  'Five hundred horsemen patrol the stream, your Majesty,' answered thegeneral. 'The Nemedians have not offered to move against us in thenight. They wait for dawn, even as we.'

  'By Crom,' muttered Conan. 'I awoke with a feeling that doom wascreeping on me in the night.'

  He stared up at the great golden lamp which shed a soft glow over thevelvet hangings and carpets of the great tent. They were alone; not evena slave or a page slept on the carpeted floor; but Conan's eyes blazedas they were wont to blaze in the teeth of great peril, and the swordquivered in his hand. Pallantides watched him uneasily. Conan seemed tobe listening.

  'Listen!' hissed the king. 'Did you hear it? A furtive step!'

  'Seven knights guard your tent, your Majesty,' said Pallantides. 'Nonecould approach it unchallenged.'

  'Not outside,' growled Conan. 'It seemed to sound inside the tent.'

  Pallantides cast a swift, startled look around. The velvet hangingsmerged with shadows in the corners, but if there had been anyone in thepavilion besides themselves, the general would have seen him. Again heshook his head.

  'There is no one here, sire. You sleep in the midst of your host.'

  'I have seen death strike a king in the midst of thousands,' mutteredConan. 'Something that walks on invisible feet and is not seen--'

  'Perhaps you were dreaming, your Majesty,' said Pallantides, somewhatperturbed.

  'So I was,' grunted Conan. 'A devilish dream it was, too. I trod againall the long, weary roads I traveled on my way to the kingship.'

  He fell silent, and Pallantides stared at him unspeaking. The king wasan enigma to the general, as to most of his civilized subjects.Pallantides knew that Conan had walked many strange roads in his wild,eventful life, and had been many things before a twist of Fate set himon the throne of Aquilonia.

  'I saw again the battlefield whereon I was born,' said Conan, restinghis chin moodily on a massive fist. 'I saw myself in a pantherskinloin-cloth, throwing my spear at the mountain beasts. I was a mercenaryswordsman again, a hetman of the _kozaki_ who dwell along the ZaporoskaRiver, a corsair looting the coasts of Kush, a pirate of the BarachanIsles, a chief of the Himelian hillmen. All these things I've been, andof all these things I dreamed; all the shapes that have been I passedlike an endless procession, and their feet beat out a dirge in thesounding dust.

  'But throughout my dreams moved strange, veiled figures and ghostlyshadows, and a faraway voice mocked me. And toward the last I seemed tosee myself lying on this dais in my tent, and a shape bent over me,robed and hooded. I lay unable to move, and then the hood fell away anda moldering skull grinned down at me. Then it was that I awoke.'

  'This is an evil dream, your Majesty,' said Pallantides, suppressing ashudder. 'But no more.'

  Conan shook his head, more in doubt than in denial. He came of abarbaric race, and the superstitions and instincts of his heritagelurked close beneath the surface of his consciousness.

  'I've dreamed many evil dreams,' he said, 'and most of the
m weremeaningless. But by Crom, this was not like most dreams! I wish thisbattle were fought and won, for I've had a grisly premonition ever sinceKing Nimed died in the black plague. Why did it cease when he died?'

  'Men say he sinned--'

  'Men are fools, as always,' grunted Conan. 'If the plague struck all whosinned, then by Crom there wouldn't be enough left to count the living!Why should the gods--who the priests tell me are just--slay five hundredpeasants and merchants and nobles before they slew the king, if thewhole pestilence were aimed at him? Were the gods smiting blindly, likeswordsmen in a fog? By Mitra, if I aimed my strokes no straighter,Aquilonia would have had a new king long ago.

  'No! The black plague's no common pestilence. It lurks in Stygiantombs, and is called forth into being only by wizards. I was a swordsmanin Prince Almuric's army that invaded Stygia, and of his thirtythousand, fifteen thousand perished by Stygian arrows, and the rest bythe black plague that rolled on us like a wind out of the south. I wasthe only man who lived.'

  'Yet only five hundred died in Nemedia,' argued Pallantides.

  'Whoever called it into being knew how to cut it short at will,'answered Conan. 'So I know there was something planned and diabolicalabout it. Someone called it forth, someone banished it when the work wascompleted--when Tarascus was safe on the throne and being hailed as thedeliverer of the people from the wrath of the gods. By Crom, I sense ablack, subtle brain behind all this. What of this stranger who men saygives counsel to Tarascus?'

  'He wears a veil,' answered Pallantides; 'they say he is a foreigner; astranger from Stygia.'

  'A stranger from Stygia!' repeated Conan scowling. 'A stranger fromhell, more like!--Ha! What is that?'

  'The trumpets of the Nemedians!' exclaimed Pallantides. 'And hark, howour own blare upon their heels! Dawn is breaking, and the captains aremarshaling the hosts for the onset! Mitra be with them, for many willnot see the sun go down behind the crags.'

  'Send my squires to me!' exclaimed Conan, rising with alacrity andcasting off his velvet night-garment; he seemed to have forgotten hisforebodings at the prospect of action. 'Go to the captains and see thatall is in readiness. I will be with you as soon as I don my armor.'

  Many of Conan's ways were inexplicable to the civilized people he ruled,and one of them was his insistence on sleeping alone in his chamber ortent. Pallantides hastened from the pavilion, clanking in the armor hehad donned at midnight after a few hours' sleep. He cast a swift glanceover the camp, which was beginning to swarm with activity, mail clinkingand men moving about dimly in the uncertain light, among the long linesof tents. Stars still glimmered palely in the western sky, but long pinkstreamers stretched along the eastern horizon, and against them thedragon banner of Nemedia flung out its billowing silken folds.

  Pallantides turned toward a smaller tent near by, where slept the royalsquires. These were tumbling out already, roused by the trumpets. And asPallantides called to them to hasten, he was frozen speechless by a deepfierce shout and the impact of a heavy blow inside the king's tent,followed by the heart-stopping crash of a falling body. There sounded alow laugh that turned the general's blood to ice.

  Echoing the cry, Pallantides wheeled and rushed back into the pavilion.He cried out again as he saw Conan's powerful frame stretched out onthe carpet. The king's great two-handed sword lay near his hand, and ashattered tent-pole seemed to show where his stroke had fallen.Pallantides' sword was out, and he glared about the tent, but nothingmet his gaze. Save for the king and himself it was empty, as it had beenwhen he left it.

  'Your Majesty!' Pallantides threw himself on his knee beside the fallengiant.

  Conan's eyes were open; they blazed up at him with full intelligence andrecognition. His lips writhed, but no sound came forth. He seemed unableto move.

  Voices sounded without. Pallantides rose swiftly and stepped to thedoor. The royal squires and one of the knights who guarded the tentstood there.

  'We heard a sound within,' said the knight apologetically. 'Is all wellwith the king?'

  Pallantides regarded him searchingly.

  'None has entered or left the pavilion this night?'

  'None save yourself, my lord,' answered the knight, and Pallantidescould not doubt his honesty.

  'The king stumbled and dropped his sword,' said Pallantides briefly.'Return to your post.'

  As the knight turned away, the general covertly motioned to the fiveroyal squires, and when they had followed him in, he drew the flapclosely. They turned pale at the sight of the king stretched upon thecarpet, but Pallantides' quick gesture checked their exclamations.

  The general bent over him again, and again Conan made an effort tospeak. The veins in his temples and the cords in his neck swelled withhis efforts, and he lifted his head clear of the ground. Voice came atlast, mumbling and half intelligible.

  '_The thing--the thing in the corner!_'

  Pallantides lifted his head and looked fearfully about him. He saw thepale faces of the squires in the lamplight, the velvet shadows thatlurked along the walls of the pavilion. That was all.

  'There is nothing here, your Majesty,' he said.

  'It was there, in the corner,' muttered the king, tossing his lion-manedhead from side to side in his efforts to rise. 'A man--at least helooked like a man--wrapped in rags like a mummy's bandages, with amoldering cloak drawn about him, and a hood. All I could see was hiseyes, as he crouched there in the shadows. I thought he was a shadowhimself, until I saw his eyes. They were like black jewels.

  'I made at him and swung my sword, but I missed him clean--how, Cromknows--and splintered that pole instead. He caught my wrist as Istaggered off balance, and his fingers burned like hot iron. All thestrength went out of me, and the floor rose and struck me like a club.Then he was gone, and I was down, and--curse him!--I can't move! I'mparalysed!'

  Pallantides lifted the giant's hand, and his flesh crawled. On theking's wrist showed the blue marks of long, lean fingers. What handcould grip so hard as to leave its print on that thick wrist?Pallantides remembered that low laugh he had heard as he rushed into thetent, and cold perspiration beaded his skin. It had not been Conan wholaughed.

  'This is a thing diabolical!' whispered a trembling squire. 'Men say thechildren of darkness war for Tarascus!'

  'Be silent!' ordered Pallantides sternly.

  Outside, the dawn was dimming the stars. A light wind sprang up from thepeaks, and brought the fanfare of a thousand trumpets. At the sound aconvulsive shudder ran through the king's mighty form. Again the veinsin his temples knotted as he strove to break the invisible shackleswhich crushed him down.

  'Put my harness on me and tie me into my saddle,' he whispered. 'I'lllead the charge yet!'

  Pallantides shook his head, and a squire plucked his skirt.

  'My lord, we are lost if the host learns the king has been smitten! Onlyhe could have led us to victory this day.'

  'Help me lift him on the dais,' answered the general.

  They obeyed, and laid the helpless giant on the furs, and spread asilken cloak over him. Pallantides turned to the five squires andsearched their pale faces long before he spoke.

  'Our lips must be sealed for ever as to what happens in this tent,' hesaid at last. 'The kingdom of Aquilonia depends upon it. One of you goand fetch me the officer Valannus, who is a captain of the Pellianspearmen.'

  The squire indicated bowed and hastened from the tent, and Pallantidesstood staring down at the stricken king, while outside trumpets blared,drums thundered, and the roar of the multitudes rose in the growingdawn. Presently the squire returned with the officer Pallantides hadnamed--a tall man, broad and powerful, built much like the king. Likehim, also, he had thick black hair. But his eyes were gray and he didnot resemble Conan in his features.

  'The king is stricken by a strange malady,' said Pallantides briefly. 'Agreat honor is yours; you are to wear his armor and ride at the head ofthe host today. None must know that it is not the king who rides.'

  'It is an honor for w
hich a man might gladly give up his life,'stammered the captain, overcome by the suggestion. 'Mitra grant that Ido not fail of this mighty trust!'

  And while the fallen king stared with burning eyes that reflected thebitter rage and humiliation that ate his heart, the squires strippedValannus of mail shirt, burganet and leg-pieces, and clad him in Conan'sarmor of black plate-mail, with the vizored salade, and the dark plumesnodding over the wyvern crest. Over all they put the silken surcoat withthe royal lion worked in gold upon the breast, and they girt him with abroad gold-buckled belt which supported a jewel-hilted broadsword in acloth-of-gold scabbard. While they worked, trumpets clamored outside,arms clanged, and across the river rose a deep-throated roar as squadronafter squadron swung into place.

  Full-armed, Valannus dropped to his knee and bent his plumes before thefigure that lay on the dais.

  'Lord king, Mitra grant that I do not dishonor the harness I wear thisday!'

  'Bring me Tarascus' head and I'll make you a baron!' In the stress ofhis anguish Conan's veneer of civilization had fallen from him. His eyesflamed, he ground his teeth in fury and blood-lust, as barbaric as anytribesmen in the Cimmerian hills.