Amric the Bull shivered, signed himself with the sign of Mitra, and meekly turned to obey the behest of the White Druid.
Conan sent his commanders away, ordered hot spiced wine, and sat back. He ignored the sting of his bandaged wounds to listen to the spindle-shanked little messenger from Pictland.
The king of Aquilonia cared little for the priests of any god. His own shadowy Cimmerian god, Crom, was indifferent to the woe or weal of mankind, as befitted one of the Old Gods who one day chanced playfully to mold the earth from a lump of mud and set it spinning amid the stars for an idle jest—thereafter paying it little heed, perhaps forgetful they had wrought it at all. But, like Amric, Conan had borne a blade against the howling Pictish hordes and deeply respected their prowess. Not even the mighty warriors of the frozen North, in their berserker madness, could long stand against the inhuman ferocity of the Picts, whose neighbors and allies the Ligureans were only a shade less fierce.
As for the mystic wizard-priests of the Ligureans—Conan’s long, bloody career had brought him into contact with half the cults and creeds of the world. Of them all, he thought, none stood so near the blinding flame of ultimate truth as did the quiet, smiling, white-robed men who wore the oak-leaf crown.
It took several cups of mulled vintage to get the whole message out of Diviatix. Conan had heard of the priest, for he was first among the world’s druids. More than once had the gods spoken to the men of his age through the lips of this unimpressive sleepy-looking old man, notoriously fond of the juice of the grape. Even the bloodthirsty war chief of the Pictish Confederation, Dekanawatha Blood-Ax, who knelt to no man or devil, groveled in the dirt as Diviatix ambled past his palace-hut, its mud-bricks dyed russet with the blood of countless foes.
From the Great Grove at Nuadwyddon had the chief druid come, obeying the Lord of the Great Abyss, Nuadens Argatlam of the Silver Hand. Diviatix bore a message from the Lords of Creation to the grim giant they had brought out of wintry Cimmeria long years before to crush evil in the world’s West. The token they bade the White Druid bring was a small tablet of nameless stone, slick and heavy as jade but as purple as the towers of age-forgotten Valusia. Conan knew of that stone, albeit ’not even the iron-bound Book of Skelos dared whisper of it.
For an hour by the ringed time candle, Conan listened to the White Druid’s sleepy, wine-befuddled discourse. The moon sank; dawn ensanguined the east. The heir to the throne of Zingara, daughter of the late King Ferdrugo, had come out of exile with her husband to beg the king of Aquilonia for help in regaining the crown. But Conan kept Princess Chabela, with her consort Olivero and their highborn entourage, waiting on the slope below his tent while he queried the sleepy little man in tattered robes that had once been white.
With dawn, the trumpets sang. The tents were struck, and the knights of Aquilonia mounted up. Conan settled the problem of the Zingaran royal succession in ten minutes. He had known Chabela twenty years before, when she had been a buxom lass still in her teens and he, captain of a Zingaran privateer. Then Conan had saved the throne and fortunes of old King Ferdrugo from the villainous schemes of the Stygian master-sorcerer, Thoth-Amon.
In the intervening years Chabela had put on weight. She was still a handsome woman but in a plump, matronly fashion. The graying king kissed her heartily, asked after her eleven children, but did not linger to hear her account of their inches and illnesses. He bade her harried consort kneel, slapped Olivero on both shoulders with the flat of his nicked broadsword, and heard his oath of allegiance and fealty. Conan issued a curt fiat proclaiming the flustered couple rightful king and queen of Zingara under the overlordship of Aquilonia. He dispatched them in haste to Kordava, with a troop of Aquilonian knights to see them safely installed.
Then, stifling a prodigious yawn, Conan swung up on his black stallion, and the lion banner moved southeast to the tread of six thousand horses and foot. Southeast to the Argossean border and beyond that toward Stygia.
THREE: The March to the Styx
They marched southeast by stages often hours each. The steady stride of the strong Aquilonian yeomen ate up the leagues, and the army was across the border of Argos before the Argosseans learned that Duke Pantho, whose incursions had shattered their peace, was no more. Conan sent a message to Milo’s second son, young Ariostro, who was trying to rally the scattered Argossean forces in the South. This princeling was told that the Zingaran menace had been dissipated, so that nought prevented Ariostro from proclaiming himself king of Argos. Meanwhile, King Conan would count it a courtesy if Ariostro would graciously permit the Aquilonian force to pass through his dominion on their way to Stygia.
Then Conan dispatched heralds in black-and-gold tabards to his vassal-kings, Ludovic of Ophir and Balardus of Koth. He curtly bade them each to raise a force of two thousand horse and foot. These forces were to rendezvous with the Aquilonians at the ford of Bubastes on the Styx, between the green meadows of Shem and the tawny sands of Stygia.
League after league, Conan drove deeper southeast in grim silence, pressing his men hard. With them came the little druid in a rattling mule cart. Conan told none why he had sent the senior herald, Black Wyvern King at Arms, back to Tarantia guarded by a troop of light horse. Even Prospero and Trocero dared not ask him about his intentions. His old comrades knew better than to question him when he was in one of these dour, secretive, taciturn moods.
Conan descended upon Shem like a steel whirlwind. By forced marches, he drove his army across the meadow-lands in fifteen days. From time to time they passed one or another of the Shemitish cities, each of which raised its drawbridge and locked its gates in alarm, rousing archers to man the walls.
Conan dispatched Trocero with heralds to pacify each agitated Shemitish kinglet in turn. The old Count, a silver-tongued master diplomat, soothed the tempers ruffled by this unexpected intrusion. To the ruler of each petty city-state he explained that the Aquilonian army was but passing peacefully through, with—it was hoped—the kind permission of the Shemitish princelings. A token tribute of good Aquilonian silver was paid over, each thick coin stamped with Conan’s square-jawed, scowling profile. Relieved, their ruffled pride sleeked by Trocero’s oratory, the kinglets beamed graciously and waved the Aquilonian host on with their blessings.
The army, of course, had meant to go on anyway. But it is better, Conan had learned, to do these things with official blessing when possible. To be fair, Conan saw that his troops observed his laws against looting and raping. The few of his soldiers who turned aside to chase a dark-eyed Shemitish wench into a thicket or to leaven their field rations with some peasant’s fat pig were promptly hanged in view of their comrades. It went against Conan’s grain to deprive the poor fools of their lives, for as a young mercenary, he, too, had done the same offenses many times.
But the law is the law. The last thing Conan wanted when he reached the borders of ominous, hostile Stygia with his modest force was to leave an aroused countryside at his back buzzing with outraged petty kings and swarming with vengeful soldiery. Ordinarily the Shemitish city-states did not bother the neighboring nations, being occupied with their internal royal feuds and theological bickerings. The one thing that would unite them, however, was the passage of a marauding, murdering foreign army. Conan had fought with Shemites before, both at their side and against them. He knew that the hooknosed, black-bearded, mailed asshuri were, man for man, as tough and ferocious as any soldiers in the world.