Eyes swung back to where Conan and his buccaneers stood at the head of the stairs. The air was taut and crackling with suspense. It was one of those moments when the fate of nations is balanced on a knife blade … when a single word, a look, or a gesture can turn the tide of events and topple empires.
And then, in that momentary silence, the word was spoken. The figure of a young girl appeared at Conan's side. She was well-rounded, with sleek olive skin, dark flashing eyes, and hair of silken jet. Though her buxom young body was garbed in a rough sailor's costume, it came to the lords of Zingara that they had seen her before, in more sumptuous rainment.
"The princess!" gasped a baron.
"Eh? Chabela?" muttered the old king, peering nervously about.
All saw that it was truly she. But, before a babble of questions could arise, the girl spoke:
"Nobles of Zingara, Captain Conan speaks the truth! Yonder black-hearted Stygian schemer has caught my father in his magical toils. Conan rescued me from the sorcerer, and we have raced back to Kordava to forestall his usurpation! Strike him down, guards!"
The captain of the royal guard snapped an order to his troops and ripped out his sword with a rasp of steel against leather. He advanced at the head of his men.
Conan and nine sailors clattered down the stairs, blades flashing in the lamplight. Chabela remained at the head of the stairs with Ninus, the priest of Mitra. The little man dropped to his knees, and his high voice rose in a frantic prayer:
"O Lord Mitra, great prince of light!" he intoned. "Stand by us in this hour against the dark power of Set! In the divine name of Sraosha and by the unthinkable name, Zurvan, lord of infinite time, we pray and conjure thee! Strike with thine holy fire, that the Old Serpent be smitten and fall from his high place!"
Whether Thoth-Amon weakened from his titanic mental exertions, or whether Villagro's command of the Cobra Crown was becoming stronger with practice, or whether in sooth Mitra took a hand in the contest, Thoth-Amon seemed to pale, shrink, and weaken. He reeled back a step. Villagro opened his mouth for a shout of triumph.
Before the cry could come forth, Thoth-Amon played his last card. His long, brown forefinger shot out toward the duke of Kordava. A nimbus of jade-green radiance flickered into being about the finger and elongated into a beam of emerald light.
The beam struck the head of Duke Villagro and the diamond-crusted crown on that head, bathing it in a blinding emerald refulgence. Then the gold itself of the crown glowed red.
Villagro uttered a piercing scream. He reeled back, clutching at his head as if trying to tear off the crown. Black smoke curled up as his black-dyed hair blazed.
Then the room was bathed in a blinding blue light as lightning flashed just outside the chamber, filling the tall windows with a furious glare. One of the windows shattered with a tinkle of glass. A narrow sheet of rain poured slantingly in. To some in the chamber, half blinded by the glare and wholly deafened by the earth-shaking boom of thunder that instantly followed, it seemed that a tendril of lightning flicked through the broken window, to lash downward like a cosmic whip at the stricken duke of Kordava.
Villagro fell headlong, face down upon the pavement. The Cobra Crown came off and rolled across the marble, leaving Villagro's body with its hair burnt to a mere stubble and the skin around the skull, where the crown had touched it, seared to a black crisp.
So ended the ambitious dreams of Duke Villagro, who, dissatisfied with his ducal coronet, had yearned after kingly crowns and died of a surfeit of dreams.
Chapter Twenty: RED BLOOD AND COLD STEEL
For three heartbeats, this startling event held all the living persons in the chamber in a state of frozen shock. Thoth-Amon was the first to recover his wits.
"Menkara! Zarono!" he bellowed. "Come here!" As the priest of Set and the buccaneer approached, the latter with his rapier in hand, the Stygian wizard said: "Collect your men and Villagro's partisans! Strike hard and fast! If you do not, your heads will answer for it! With Conan on the king's side, you have no chance of making your peace with the old regime!"
"Where are your spells?" snarled Zarono. "Why don't you sweep our foes away with a wave of your hand?"
"I will do what I can; but magic, too, has its limitations. To your arms!"
"You are right," said Zarono, spinning on his heel. "Men!" he shouted. "The duke is dead, but the prince of Stygia lives! If our swords put him on the throne, we shall all be lords! To me!"
"All loyal Zingarans to me!" roared Conan. "Strike for your king and your princess, and save Zingara from the rule of that devil from the Stygian hells!"
There was a general movement as the two parties sorted themselves out. Most of Villagro's partisans streamed toward Zarono, while most of the noblemen and officials clustered around Conan and his seamen. Some, uncertain which side to take or merely timid, slipped out of the hall.
It was soon to be seen that Zarono's party was the larger. While some palace guards joined Conan's faction, a larger number of men-at-arms, being Villagro's henchmen, sided with Zarono. All these soldiers were in half-armor, which gave them an advantage in battle.
"You are outnumbered!" shouted Thoth-Amon, from the dais. "Surrender, and you will be allowed to flee with your lives!"
Conan responded with a loud, impolite suggestion to Thoth-Amon, as to what to do with his proposal.
"Out swords for Thoth-Amon, king of Zingara!" cried Zarono, rushing upon the nearest man of Conan's party.
Swords began to clash here and there. In a glittering rush, the two factions surged together. The rasp and chime of sword against sword resounded. The hall was alive with struggling, shouting, fighting men. Sword clanged against sword, helmet, cuirass, and buckler. Here a man fell, weltering in his blood; there another. Wounds began to stream crimson, and screams of agony rose from men wounded to death.
Conan grinned recklessly, white teeth flashing in his bronzed, heavy-featured face. The time for words was over. Although the years had taught him a measure of caution and responsibility, beneath his veneer of maturity there was still nothing that the grim barbarian relished more than a good free-for-all, and this looked to be the most glorious fight that had come his way in many a moon.
He leaped from the stairway, where he had stood, and came down on the nearest of Zarono's men. He bowled the man over and descended upon him with his boot-heels with such force as to snap the fellow's spine. Landing like a cat on all fours, Conan kicked the next man in the belly and thrust his sword between the ribs of the man who bent to assist his fallen comrade.
He plunged on, moving as lithely as a striking panther, despite his size, and cutting down the Zingarans like ripe wheat. He towered over the Zingarans, who were on the average a small people, the light swords with which they tried to parry the blows of his huge cutlass snapped at the impact, and men fell before him with a head or an arm shorn off. Behind him raged his buccaneers, swinging their cutlasses.
Most of the Zingarans on both sides were skilled swordsmen, scions of a people that had raised sword-play to a fine art. But Conan, though a barbarian born and bred, had made a life-long career of fighting and had studied it with the concentration of a connoisseur. While wintering in Kordava, he had employed his spare time in taking lessons in the refined Zingaran arts of swordplay from the great Master Valerio, whose fencing academy was reputed to turn out the finest swordsmen in several kingdoms.
So the down-at-heels young nobles of Villagro's following got a surprise when they swarmed in on Conan, expecting to feint the loutish barbarian out of position and skewer him as easily as impaling an apple with a dagger. Despite Conan's size and the weight of his blade, he easily thwarted their attacks. He countered their most subtle one-twos, doubles, binds., and coupes and stretched them, one after another, lifeless or gravely wounded on the bloody pave.