The host had passed beyond the bounds of Stygia and threaded its way between the kingdoms of Keshan and Punt. The desert yielded to rolling, grassy savannas, with patches of jungle in the valleys and along the streams. In southern Punt, the Styx spread out to form vast, sluggish swamps, which they had skirted for several days. Now they were approaching the borders of mysterious Zembabwei.
There had indeed been many times when Trocero could have wished that the White Druid, Diviatix, still rode with the host. A highly civilized man, the Count of Poitain put little faith in magical mummeries. But there, in the sandy wastes of demon-haunted Stygia, the drunken old druid had acquitted himself well in the battle with Thoth-Amon’s wizardly warriors. He alone had saved them from entrapment by the sorcerers of the Black Ring. Now that the Black Ring was crushed and Thoth-Amon himself was fled to jungle-girt Zembabwei, far to the southeast, the count could have hoped that Conan would return to many-towered Tarantia.
But no! This time, Conan was determined to run the Stygian sorcerer to earth and extinguish, once and for all, the supernatural menace to his throne. With the help of that ancient talisman, the Heart of Ahriman, the White Druid had served them well at Nebthu. But Trocero knew why Conan had let Diviatix return to the West.
Dekanawatha, the high king or warlord of the savage Picts, had fallen in battle. His successor, Sagoyaga, was full of bloodthirsty ambitions. He planned to league all the Pictish tribes, and their neighbors the Ligureans as well, for an invasion of the westernmost Aquilonian provinces. Only the White Druid had enough influence in those wild parts to deter the Pictish chieftain from launching his attack while the king of Aquilonia was busy elsewhere.
So Diviatix had parted from the Aquilonian host as it paused to regroup along the northern borders of Stygia, preparing for Conan’s thunderbolt descent into the savannas and jungles of the far South. The Heart of Ahriman had gone with him, since it had to be returned for safekeeping to the great Mitraeum in Tarantia. Conan, no wizard, could not have used it effectively, anyway.
Ere he parted from the Aquilonian host, the druid had used his supernatural powers of divination to detect the refuge whither Thoth-Amon had fled. The Stygian’s northern allies, the White Hand of Hyperborea, had been crushed by the Aquilonians at Pohiola the year before. His confederates in the Far East, the Scarlet Circle, had been disorganized by the death of their master, Pra-Eun, the god-king of fabled Angkhor.
Thus there was no refuge left for Thoth-Amon save the forbidden City of Zembabwei. There his last ally, Nenaunir, the supreme wizard-priest of Damballah, ruled three million black barbarians from his skull throne. Thither, after the debacle in the ruins of Nebthu, had Thoth-Amon fled. And thither was Conan fiercely determined to follow.
TWO: Black-Winged Terror
True to Trocero’s prediction, the king of Aquilonia had pressed forward until darkness made it impossible to advance any further. The swift fall of the tropical night had caught them threading their way through the monstrous grasses that cloaked the boundless plain. Luckily, a nearby hummock allowed them to camp out of the far-spread sheet of shallow water. On that knoll, therefore, the army made its camp.
Cooking fires glimmered through the gloom. Fatigued Aquilonian men-at-arms cursed and grumbled, slapping insects, grooming their bedraggled mounts, and trying to dry their rotting boots. Sentries paced the margin of the swamp, exchanging curt passwords. Men sprawled, wearily scrubbing weapons and armor to keep the ever-present rust from gaining a foothold.
At the summit of the hillock rose the black tent of the king. The royal standard dropped from its pole in the steamy, motionless air.
Within, Conan stood, stripped to the waist, scrubbing mud and sweat from his mighty torso with hot water from a bronzen bowl. Moisture glistened in a thin sheen over his rippling thews.
Although the ruler of Aquilonia was in his late fifties, age and the civilized life of court and castle had softened his rugged physique but little. Time had streaked with gray the thick, square-cut mane of coarse black hair and the heavy mustache that swept out from his upper lip like bull’s horns. It had given a touch of gauntness to his scarred, heavy-featured face and his neck. His skin, crisscrossed with the scars of many brawls and battles, had become leathery, with an occasional pucker of little wrinkles. But the mighty muscles of arm and shoulder and trunk were still firm, and the corded belly was still flat. He toweled himself dry while his pages set out, on a low folding table, a supper of broiled steak and coarse bread for himself and his son.
The army’s supply of beer and wine had given out; so the host, including the king, was compelled to quench its thirst with swamp water. Conan insisted that the water be boiled before drinking. The aged philosopher Alcemides had told him that water so treated was less likely to carry disease. Conan had tried the system, approved it, and ordered it for his army, albeit it brought some grumbles and tapping of foreheads from his knights.
Throwing a loose cloak about his torso, Conan yawned, dismissed the pages, and attacked his simple repast. The exhausting days of plowing through scorching desert sands, hacking through jungles, and splashing across the endless, watery, reed-choked plain had not been without effect on him, even though they had tired him less than almost any man under his command. But, although physically fatigued, he was driven on by his unconquerable urge to have it out with his ancient foe.
Moreover, the wandering decades during which he had brawled and swaggered through a score of kingdoms as a footloose vagabond, thief, pirate, and mercenary soldier had given this northern barbarian a thirst for adventure and conflict which the peace of the last few years had done nothing to assuage. Thus, even when the shadow of fatigue fell upon him, he still gloried in this long trek into lands he had never seen; all the more so because the journey bade fair to end in a final confrontation with his lifelong foe.
The tent flap was twitched aside as a youth entered. Conan grunted and waved the boy to a seat across from him. “The mounts?” he inquired gruffly.
“I’ve groomed them. Father. But your camel tried to bite me.”
“You have to learn to handle the brutes.”
Prince Conn sighed. “I miss your black Ymir.”
“So do I. When we get home, I’ll make the Kothians and Ophireans return him, if I have to tum their kingdoms inside out.”
The Aquilonians’ horses had been lost at Nebthu when the Kothian and Ophirean contingents had deserted, taking the Aquilonians’ mounts with them. Conan’s men had been forced to use captured Stygian horses and camels after the rout of the Stygians by the Black Sphinx of Nebthu, together with some additional mounts they had bought from the Zuagirs.
Conan beamed fondly as the boy tore into the steak with his strong white teeth. Father and son clearly bore the stamp of the same lineage. The boy had the square-cut, coarse mane of straight black hair, the scowling brows, the fierce eyes of volcanic blue, and the stubborn jaw of his mighty sire. Scarce into his teens, Conn was already much taller than most Aquilonians of his own age. He still, however, lacked head and shoulder of his father’s towering height.
When Conan had first led the Aquilonian army across the borders of his realm into Zingara and thence through Shem into demon-haunted Stygia, he had left his son behind in Tarantia with his family. Since the war involved a struggle against the wizards of the Black Ring, Conan urgently needed the help of the Heart of Ahriman, kept under guard in a crypt below the temple of Mitra. Hence swift messengers had been sent to Tarantia to fetch the great talisman and also to fetch Conan’s heir, Prince Conn.