Conn shrugged off his fatigue and hunger and set his square jaw with boyish determination. At that instant he bore a striking likeness to his mighty sire: the same tanned, frowning visage framed in straight, coarse black hair: the same smoldering blue eyes, deep chest, and broad shoulders. Only twelve, he looked likely to match his father’s towering height when he came of age, for already he was taller than many Aquilonian grown men.
“Up, Marduk!” he said, thumping his heels in the ribs of the black pony. They shouldered through the wet, dripping boughs into a long grassy glade. As they entered the open place, young Conn glimpsed a flash of white against the gloom. The great white stag came floating out of the darkness, entering the clearing ahead of them with an effortless bound. The boy’s heart swelled, and the excitement of the hunt made his blood sing. Iron-shod hooves drummed through the swishing grasses. Ahead of them, ghost-white against the wet blackness, the stag cleared fallen tree trunks with graceful leaps and bounded toward the far edge of the glade, with the prince in hot pursuit.
Conn leaned over the pony’s neck, one strong brown hand clenching the light javelin. Ahead of him, like a will-o’-the-wisp, the white stag glowed. But a dense wall of trees rose beyond. His heart pounding, Conn knew the stag must slow its pace or go floundering into that barrier.
The next instant, even as he flung back one arm to hurl the javelin, it happened. The stag dissolved into mist—a mist that reformed into a tall, gaunt, human shape clothed in white robes. It was a woman, from the billowing cloud of iron-grey hair that swirled about the bony, calm, expressionless mask of its face.
Terror smote Conn. The pony reared, eyes rolling, and neighed shrilly, then came down and stood motionless, shuddering. Conn stared into the cold, cat-green eyes of the woman-thing before him.
Silence stretched taut between them. In the stillness, Conn was aware of his trembling hands, his thudding heart, the sour taste in his dry mouth. Was this fear? Who was this ghost-woman, to teach fear to the son of Conan the Conqueror?
With a violent effort of will, the boy clamped his quivering fingers about the shaft of the javelin. Ghost, witch, or were-woman—the son of Conan would show no fear!
Eyes of lambent green flame smiled with cold mockery into the boy’s imitation of his sire’s glare. With one gaunt hand, the woman gestured slowly. Leaves crackled; twigs snapped.
The boy jerked his head around, and his grim expression faltered to see the weird forms that stepped into the clearing from all sides.
They were lean men, gaunt as mummies and of superhuman stature. Taller even than the mighty Conan, many topped seven feet. From throat to wrist and heel they were clad in black garments that fitted as tightly as gloves. Even their heads were hooded in tight black cowls .Their hands were bony, thin, and long-fingered, and they bore curious weapons. These were rods or batons, over two feet long, of sleek, gleaming black wood. The ends of each rod were tipped with spherical knobs of dull, silvery metal. These knobs were slightly smaller than fowl’s eggs.
It was their faces that struck into his heart the thrill of superstitious awe. For they had no faces! Beneath the tight-fitting black cowls, their visages were smooth, blank, white ovals.
Few would have blamed the lad if he had fled in fear. But he did not flee. Though only twelve, he was sprung from a savage line of mighty warriors and brave women, and few of his forefathers had faltered in the face of danger or death. His ancestors had faced the terrible giant bear, the dread snow-dragons of the Figlophian mountains, and the rare saber-toothed tiger of the cave country. They had fought these creatures knee-deep in winter snows, while the quivering curtain of the northern lights flickered overhead. In this moment of peril, his barbaric ancestry awoke within the boy.
The woman raised her head and called out a short phrase, in strongly accented Aquilonian: “Yield, boy!”
“Never!” shouted Conn. Yelling the Cimmerian war cry learned from his mighty sire, he couched his javelin like a lance at the nearest of the black-clad faceless ones and spurred his tired pony once more.
No flicker of emotion disturbed the calm old face of the white-clad woman. Before the pony could make more than one weary bound, agonizing pain shot up Conn’s arm. He gasped, doubling over in the saddle. The javelin flew from his numb fingers, to thud into the wet grass. One of the black-clad men closing in on him had glided close with magical swiftness. With one bony hand, the man had caught the pony’s bridle. With the other, the man had whipped up his slender wooden baton. The ball on one end had stroked the hollow of Conn’s elbow. The touch of the rod, wielded with exquisite control, had struck the cluster of nerves under the joint. The pain was blinding.
The black-clad man recovered his stance and whipped back the rod for another blow. But the woman cried out in an unfamiliar tongue. She spoke in a deep, harsh, metallic, sexless voice. The faceless man in black withheld his blow.
But Conn did not yield. With an inarticulate cry, he caught with his left hand at the hilt of the falchion that hung at his hip. Clumsily he dragged it forth and reversed his grip upon it. The black-clad men were all around him now, with skinny hands reaching out from long black arms.
Conn swung backhanded at the nearest. The blade struck the man’s long neck and laid open his throat. With a gurgling groan, the tall man folded at the knees and fell face-down in the wet grass.
Conn raked his spurs against the pony’s ribs, shouting a command to the beast. The pony reared with a shrill whinny as the other faceless men glided in from all sides. Then it lashed out at them with iron-shod hoofs. Like phantoms, the men evaded the hoofs. One flicked out his rod. The knob struck Conn’s wrist with diabolical accuracy, and away went the falchion from his flaccid fingers. Another metal ball on the end of a black rod gently stroked the back of Conn’s head. The boy fell from the saddle, a bundle of loose limbs. One man caught him in gaunt, black-clad arms and eased him to the grass, while others brought the pony under control.
The green-eyed woman bent over the unconscious lad.
“Conn, Crown Prince of Aquilonia, heir apparent to the throne of Conan,” she said in her harsh voice. She uttered a dry, mirthless laugh. “Thoth-Amon will be pleased.”
THREE: Runes of Blood
Conan was hunched over in the saddle, hungrily munching a bit of roast boar, when Euric, the chief huntsman, came to him.
The king straightened wearily, spat out a bit of gristle, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Anything?” he grunted. The old huntsman nodded and held out a curious object.
“This,” he said.
Conan eyed it warily. It was an ivory mask, delicately carved to fit closely a long-jawed, narrow-chinned, high-cheekboned human face. The queer thing about it was that it was modeled featurelessly, presenting—except for the eye slits—a blank oval of sleek ivory to the eye. Conan did not like the look of it.
“Hyperborean work,” he spat. “Anything else?”
The old huntsman nodded. “Blood on the grass, the grass itself trampled, hoofmarks of a young pony, and—this.”
The fires in Conan’s eyes dulled and his face sagged. It was the falchion he had given as a gift to Conn, celebrating the latter’s twelfth birthday. The coronet of an Aquilonian prince was etched in the silver of the guard.
“Nothing else?”
“The dogs are sniffing about for a trail now,” said Euric.