Soon the trail of the Hyperborean horses faded out on stony soil. But there was little chance to lose the trail, for now and again he passed a sign that his son’s abductors had left to guide him; the imprint of a hand, white against rock or soil. Betimes it was seared into the dry, scrubby grass of a hummock like a pattern of frost left by a blast of preternatural cold.
Witchcraft! He growled, deep in his throat, and his napehairs prickled. His own homeland, Cimmeria, lay to the northwest. His primitive folk knew of the White Hand, dread symbol of the Witchmen of Hyperborea. He shivered at the thought that his son was their captive.
But he rode on, over the dreary plains with pools of cold black water and scrubby patches of bracken cut by meandering streamlets and dotted by hummocks of dry grass. Hour after hour he rode steadily, as the world darkened around him towards night. One by one the stars came out, though they were faint and few, for a haze overhung the sky. When at length the moon emerged, it masked its cold face behind a lacy veil of vapor.
Toward dawn he could ride no more. Stiff and aching, he climbed down and tied a bag of grain to the muzzle of his gray. He built a small fire with dry bracken, stretched out with his head pillowed on his saddle, and fell into a heavy sleep.
For three days he rode ever deeper into this dreary wasteland, skirting the swamp borders of the Great Salt Marsh. This sprawling bog may have been the remnant of a vast inland sea that had rolled over all this land ages ago, perhaps before the dawn of civilization. The ground was becoming treacherous, and the deeper he rode into the Border Kingdom, the worse the footing became. The big gray wound through the bogs, head down, testing each hummock for soundness. The pools of cold, muddy water became more numerous. Soon Conan was riding through a treeless swamp.
Twilight came, plunging the bogland in gloom. The gray stallion shied nervously, as his hooves came out of the sucking mud with a smacking sound. Bats swooped and chittered in the dusk. A mottled, clay-colored viper, thick as a man’s arm, slithered noiselessly over a mold-covered log.
As the darkness thickened, Conan set his jaw and drove the gray forward. He meant to keep going all night again and to rest toward midday if he must.
Ahead, the path branched. Conan leaned from the saddle to study the bracken. A smooth stone lay exposed by the incessant rains. Upon that stone he glimpsed again a weird white blazon in the shape of an open hand. He tugged the stallion’s head around and drove it into the pathway marked by the White Hand.
Suddenly, the muddy heather was alive with men. They were filthy, gaunt, and naked save for twists of greasy rag about their loins. Long, matted hair lay in a tangle about snarling faces.
Conan roared a deep-chested challenge and pulled the stallion up. He ripped the broadsword clear of its scabbard.
The beast-men were all about him now, grabbing at boots and stirrups, pulling at the skirt of his mail, seizing handfuls of mane to drag the horse down. But the gray’s hoofs slashed out. One caught the foremost man in the face and cracked his skull. Pulped brains splattered amidst flying blood. Another caught a big-chested man on the shoulder, shattering his arm.
Conan’s blade whistled, making heads jump from spurting necks, knocking brutish figures flying. Five he slew; a sixth he clove from pate to jaw. But the steel bit deep in tough bone. As the corpse fell back, the sword was wrenched out of Conan’s grip. He sprang after it, splashing, and the yelping herd of beastlike men were all over him. Feral eyes gleamed; talonlike fingers raked his arms. They dragged him down, muffling him beneath the weight of sheer numbers. One brought a club of knotted wood down on Conan’s temple. The world exploded, and Conan forgot all about fighting.
FIVE: A Phantom From The Past
Out of the dim and swirling mists, the rounded knoll of a hill loomed up before them on the stone-paved way. Worn and weary from days and nights of travel, Conn blinked bleary eyes at it.
The crest of the knoll was crowned with a mighty keep, a rude castle built of huge, cyclopean blocks of unmortared stone. Ghostly in the dim starlight, indistinctly seen through the crawling film of mist, it looked like an apparition. Squat towers rose at either end of the massive edifice, wreathed in coiling fog. Toward the frowning portal of the looming keep they rode. As it grew nearer, Conn saw the great portcullis slowly lifting. The half-starved boy repressed a shudder. The rise of the spiked grille of rusty iron was like the slow yawn of a gigantic monster.
Through the vast portal they rode, into an enormous hall weirdly lit with the flickering light of torches. The portcullis came down behind them, to ring against the stone pave like the knell of doom.
Cold white hands plucked the boy from the saddle and tossed him into a corner. He crouched against the dank wall of stone, staring around him. Bit by bit, the features of the vast, echoing hall began to emerge from the gloom. The keep was one tremendous hall. The roof, whose rafters were lost in the darkness, loomed far above his head. The only visible furniture was a rude wooden bench or two, a couple of stools, and a long trestle table. On the table lay a wooden platter laden with cold scraps of greasy meat and a sodden lump of coarse black bread. The boy eyed this garbage hungrily. As if sensing his thoughts, the old woman muttered a command. One of the men took the platter from the table and set it down beside Conn.
His hands were numb, for they had bound his wrists to the saddle horn during the days and nights of riding. The man cut the thong that bound his wrists and slipped a length of chain about his neck, padlocking the other end to a rusty iron ring in the wall above his head. Conn fell on the remnants of the meal as the man watched silently.
The Witchman had removed his ivory mask, so that Conn could see his face. It was pale and bony and bore an expression of inhuman serenity. Conn did not like the thin, colorless lips or the cold glitter of the green eyes but was too hungry, cold, and miserable to care what his captors looked like. Another man came over with a few pieces of dirty sackcloth draped over his arm. He tossed these down beside the chained lad; then both men left him alone. After he had eaten all there was, Conn scraped together some of the filthy straw wherewith the floor of the immense, echoing hall was strewn. He piled the sacking upon this, curled up, and fell asleep at once.
The dull sound of a gong awoke him. In this gloomy pile of stone, the light of day never pierced, so Conn had lost all sense of time.
He looked up, rubbing his eyes. A low, circular stone dais rose in the center of the hall; upon this the witch was seated tailor-fashion. A great copper bowl of glowing coals had been set before her, shedding a wavering light the color of blood upon her face.
Conn studied her narrowly. She was old. Her face was worn with a thousand furrows, and her gray hair dangled loosely about the expressionless mask of her features. But life burned strongly within those eyes of emerald flame, and their uncanny gaze was fixed upon nothingness.
At the foot of the dais one of the black-clad men crouched, striking a padded mallet against a small gong in the shape of a human skull. The dull ringing of the gong echoed eerily.
The Witchmen entered the room in single file. They had donned their ivory masks and pulled the tight black cowls up to cover their silky hair. One led a naked, shaggy-headed man. Conn remembered that while crossing the endless swamps days before, the death-worshipers had taken this man captive. They had tied a noose about his neck and made him either trot along behind their horses or fall and be dragged. The man was deformed, witless, and filthy. His mouth hung open and his eyes gleamed with fear.