Conan nodded heavily. “When they’ve found the track, sound your horn and gather the men,” he growled.
The sun was high; the lank grasses smelled wet; the air was steamy and humid. But again the King of Aquilonia shivered as if an unseen draft of icy air were blowing upon his heart.
The sun was an hour older before they found the corpse. It had been carefully buried at the bottom of a gully, beneath a mound of dead leaves and moist earth. But the eager hounds sniffed it out, baying their deep-chested song to call the huntsmen.
Conan rode down to the bed of the gully to examine the corpse. The body had been stripped. The man had been nearly seven feet tall and gaunt. His skin was white as parchment. His hair, too, was a silky white. His throat had been slashed.
Euric crouched over the dirt-stained corpse, sniffing the blood, dipping his fingers in the wound, and thoughtfully rubbing bloody fingertips together. Conan waited in moody silence. At last the old man rose stiffly, wiping his hands.
“Sometime last night, sire,” he said.
Conan looked the corpse over, his gaze lingering on its long-jawed, narrow-chinned, high-cheekboned face.
The man was a Hyperborean: his lean height, unnatural pallor, and silky, colorless hair told Conan that. Dead cat-green eyes stared up from among the wet dirt and sodden leaves.
“Loose the hounds again, Euric. Prospero! Bid the men be wary. We are being led,” said Conan.
They rode on together.
After a time, the Poitanian general cleared his throat. “You think the mask and falchion were left behind for a purpose, sire?”
“I know it,” Conan growled. “In my bones; the way an old stiff-legged soldier knows when rain is coming. There’s a pack of those white devils ahead somewhere. They have my boy. They are herding us, damn their guts!”
“Into an ambush?” asked Prospero. Conan chewed the idea over in silence, then shook his head.
“I doubt it. We’ve ridden safely through three perfect sites for such a trap in the past hour. No; they have some other purpose in mind. A message, perhaps, waiting for us up the trail.”
Prospero considered this. “Maybe they are holding the Prince for ransom.”
“Or for bait,” said Conan, his eyes blazing like those of an angry beast. “I was a captive in Hyperborea once. What I suffered at their hands gave me no cause to love those bony devils; and what I did there, ere I took my leave of their hospitality, gave them little cause to love me!”
“What means the ivory mask?”
Conan spat and took a swig of lukewarm wine. “It’s a shadowy land of devils. Dead and barren, cloaked ever in clammy mists, ruled by naked, grinning fear. A weird cult of black-clad wizard-assassins hold power through the terror of their uncanny arts. They kill without a mark and fight only with wooden rods, tipped with balls of a strange rare, gray, heavy metal called platinum, common in their land. An old woman is their priestess-queen; they think her the incarnation of their death goddess. They who serve in her shadowy legions of skulking killers undergo strange mortification of body, mind, and will. The masks are an example of their fanaticism. They are the deadliest fighters in the world; blind faith in their devil-gods makes them immune to fear and pain.”
They rode forward without further words. In the minds of both men was a dreadful picture—a helpless boy, captive in a land of fanatical death-worshipers whose witch-queen had for years nursed a burning hatred of Conan.
Towards early afternoon, the trees thinned out as the forests of eastern Gunderland gave way to chalk moors overgrown with straggling patches of heather and bracken. They were near the limits of Conan’s realm. Not far beyond lay the place where the frontiers of Aquilonia, Cimmeria, the Border Kingdom, and Nemedia met.
The sky was overcast, and there was a bite to the air. Wind ruffled the purple heather in chill, sudden gusts. The sun was a gray disk, weak and ineffectual. Birds cawed hoarsely, far on the dim moors. It was a grim, bleak land of desolation.
Conan rode in front. Suddenly he drew up his weary roan, flinging up one arm to halt his company.Then he sat slumped in the saddle, staring grimly at the thing that blocked their path. In ones and twos the men behind dismounted and came forward to stand about him, staring.
It was a light willow-wood javelin, such as a young boy might select for hunting a stag. The point was buried deep in the bracken. The haft of the spear thrust straight up into the air. Wrapped about it was a bit of white parchment.
Euric unfastened the parchment with deft fingers and handed it up to the King where he sat his roan, eyes heavy. It crackled loudly as Conan unrolled it.
The message was crudely scrawled in Aquilonian. Conan scanned it silently, his dark face sullen, then handed it down to Prospero, who spelled it out slowly for the men to hear.
THE KING SHALL GO FORWARD ALONE TO POHIOLA. IF HE DOES THIS, THE SON OF HIS LOINS WILL NOT BE HARMED. IF HE DOES OTHER THAN THIS, THE CHILD WILL DIE IN WAYS IT IS NOT WHOLESOME TO DESCRIBE. THE KING SHALL FOLLOW THE PATH MARKED WITH THE WHITE HAND.
Prospero examined the rusty-scrawl of runes, then gave a little exclamation of disgust. The message was written in blood.
FOUR: The White Hand
So Conan went forward alone into the moorland beyond the borders of Aquilonia. The conventional course would have been to return to Tanasul, muster the civil guard, and ride against misty Hyperborea in force. But, had Conan followed that course, the assassins would murder the boy. All that Conan could do was to follow the commands in the parchment scroll.
Conan had given Prospero the great seal-ring of massive gold he wore on his right thumb. Possession of that ring made the Poitanian regent of the kingdom until Conan returned. If he did not return, his infant second son would become rightful king of the Aquilonians, under the dual regency of Queen Zenobia and Prospero.
As he had voiced these instructions, staring into Prospero’s eyes, he knew the gallant soldier would follow them to the letter. And there was one instruction more. Prospero should raise the levy of Tanasul and ride after him, to invade Hyperborea on his heels and make for the citadel of Pohiola.
This was to give Prospero a sense of purpose. But Conan knew that one man, well mounted, could ride farther and faster than a full troop of horses. He would be within the glowering walls of Pohiola long before Prospero’s force could possibly arrive to be of any help.
This land was called the Border Kingdom. It was a dreary waste of desolate, empty moors which swept off to the dim horizon. Here and there gnarled and stunted trees grew sparsely. Waterbirds rose flapping from misty bogs. A cold, uneasy wind whined through rattling reeds with a lonely song.
Conan went forward, careful of his footing but with all possible haste. His red roan, Ymir, was winded from the night-long ride through the forest, so Conan had taken the big gray from Baron Guilaime of Imirus. The fat peer was the heaviest man in the party other than Conan himself, and his burly-chested gray was the only steed that might bear up under the weight of the giant Cimmerian. Conan had thrown off his hunting gear, donning a plain leather jerkin and a well-oiled shirt of close-linked mail. His broadsword was slung between his shoulders to leave his hands free. He had hung a powerful Hyrkanian bow, a length of supple silk cord, and a quiver of black-feathered cloth-yard shafts on his saddlebow. Then he had ridden off across the moors without a backward glance.
At first he followed a clearly marked trail, for the steeds of the Hyperboreans had left a track in the muddy soil. He pushed the gray stallion hard, for he wanted to make the best possible time. There was the slimmest of chances that, with luck and the favor of Crom, his savage god, he could catch up with the white-skinned kidnappers before they reached their keep of Pohiola.