"You hear many things about a battle, perhaps one tenth of them true,” said Conan. He told the tale of the ambush at Mevano and asked: 'How fared you at Tunais?”
“Procas smashed us as badly as he shattered you. I believe that he himself commanded. He laid his ambush on the south bank of the river and assailed us from both sides as we prepared to cross. I had not thought that he would dare so grossly to violate Argossean territory.”
“Amulius Procas is nobody’s fool,” said Conan, "nor does he scruple to snatch at a long chance when he must. But how came you hither? Through Saxula Pass?"
“Nay. When we approached it, a strong force of Procas’s men were there encamped. Luckily, one of my horsemen, a smuggler by trade, knew a narrow, little-used opening through which he led us. It was a dizzy climb, but we got through with the loss of but two beasts. Now, say you that Saxula Pass is open?”
"It was last night, at least,” said Conan. He looked around. ”Let’s go on, posthaste, back to our base camp oh the Plain of Pallos. My men together with yours make above a thousand fighters."
"A thousand scarce an army makes" grumbled Publius. " 'Tis but a remnant of the ten thousand who marched northward with us.”
“It’s a beginning,” said Conan, whose gloom of the night before had vanished with the light of day. “I can recall when our whole enterprise numbered only five stout hearts.”
As the renmant of the rebels marched, more bands that had escaped the slaughter joined the host, and individual survivors and small groups came straggling in. Conan kept glancing back with apprehension, expecting at any moment to see Procas’s whole Border Legion pour down the Rabirian Hills in hot pursuit. But Publius thought differently.
"Look you. General,” he said. "King Milo has not yet betrayed us or turned against us, or surely he would have come pounding at our rear whilst Procas engaged us in the van. Methinks not even the mad King of Aquilonia dare risk a full and open war with the sovereign state of Argos; the Argosseans are a hardy lot. Amulius Procas knows his politics; he would not have so long survived in Niunedides' service had he rashly affronted neighboring kingdoms. Once we regain our base camp and shore up our barricades, we should be safe for the moment The reserve supplies and the camp followers await us.”
Conan scowled. "Until Numedides bribes or bullies Milo into turning his hand against us.”
In a sense, Conan was right. For even at that hour, the agents of Aquilonia were closeted with King Milo and his councilmen. Chief among these agents was Quesado the Zingaran, who had reached Messantia with his party by a long, hard ride from Teurantia, swinging wide of the embattled armies.
Quesado, now resplendent in black velvet with boots of fine red Kordavan leather, had changed; and the change was not to his employer’s advantage. Hearing of the spy’s exploits in the service of Vibius Latro, a delighted King Numedides had insisted on promoting Quesado to the diplomatic corps. This proved a mistake.
The Zingaran had been an excellent spy, long trained to affect an miassuming, inconspicuous air. Now suddenly raised in pay and prestige, he let his facade of humility crumble, and the pompous pride and hauteur of a would-be Zingaran gentleman began to show through the gaps. Looking down his beak of a nose, he endeavored by thinly veiled threats to persuade King Milo and his councillors that it were wiser to court the favor of the King of Aquilonia than to support his raggle-taggle foes.
“My lord King and gentlemen,” said Quesado in a sharp, schoolmasterish voice, "surely you know that, if you choose to be no friend of my master, you must be counted amongst his enemies. And the longer you permit your realm to shelter our rebellious foes, the more you will be tainted with the poison of treason against my sovereign lord, the mighty King of Aquilonia."
King Milo’s broad face flushed with anger, and he sat up sharply. A heavy-set man of middle years, whose luxuriant gray beard overspread his chest, Milo gave the impression of stolid taciturnity, more like some honest peasant than the ruler of a rich and sophisticated realm. Slow to make up his mind, he could be exceedingly stubborn once he had reached his decision. Glaring at Quesado, he snapped:
“Argos is a free and sovereign state, sirrah! We have never been and, Mitra willing, never shall be subject to the King of Aquilonia. Treason means a misdeed of a subject against his overlord. Do you claim that fat Numedides is overlord of Argos?”
Quesado began to perspire; his bony forehead gleamed damply in the soft light that streamed in ribbons of azure, vert, and scarlet through the stained-glass windows of the council chamber.
“Such was not my intention. Your Majesty," he hastily apologized. More humbly, he pleaded: “But with all respect, sire, I must point out that my master can hardly overlook assistance given by a neighboring brother monarch to rebels against his divinely established Ruby Throne.”
"We have given them no help,” said Milo, glowering. "Your spies will have apprized you that their remnants are encamped upon the Plain of Pallos and, lacking supplies from Messantia, are desperately scouring the countryside for food. Their famed Bossonian archers employ their skill in pursuing ducks and deer. You say your General Procas’s victory was decisive? What, then, has mighty Aquilonia to fear from a gaggle of fugitives, reduced by starvation to mere banditry? We are told they have but a tithe of their original strength and that desertions further reduce their numbers day by day.”
"True, my lord King,” said Quesado, who had recovered his poise. "But, by the same token, what has cultured Argos to gain by sheltering such a band? Unable to assail their rightful ruler, they must needs maintain themselves by depredations against your own loyal subjects.”
Scowling, Milo lapsed into silence, for he had no convincing answer to Quesado’s argument. He could hardly say that he had given his word to an old friend. Count Trocero, to let the rebels use his land as a base for operations against a neighboring king. Moreover, he resented the Aquilonian envoy’s efforts to rush him into a decision. He liked to make up his own mind in his own time, without hectoring.
Lumbering to his feet, the king curtly adjourned the session: “We will consider the requests of our brother monarch, Ambassador Quesado. Our gentlemen shall inform you of our decision at our pleasure. You have our leave to withdraw.”
Lips curled in a false smile, Quesado bowed his way out, but venom ate at his heart. Fortune had favored the rebellious Cimmerian this time, he thought, but the next throw of the dice might have a different outcome. For though he knew it not, Conan nursed a viper in his bosom.
The Army of the Lion was in no wise so enfeebled or reduced to famine as Milo and Quesado believed. Now numbering over fifteen hundred, it daily rebuilt its strength and gathered supplies. The lean horses grazed on the long grass of the plain; the women camp followers, who had been left at the base camp when the army marched northward, nursed the wounded. Much of the baggage train had been salvaged, and ragged survivors continued to limp and straggle in, to swell the thin but resolute ranks of the rebellion. The forests whispered to the footfalls of hunters and rang to the axes of woodcutters, while in the camp, fletchers whittled spear and arrow shafts, and the anvils of blacksmiths clanged with the beat of hammers on point and blade.
Most encouraging was the tale that the rear guard, a thousand strong under the Aquilonian Baron Groder, had escaped the debacle at Timais and was wandering in the mountains to the east. To investigate, Conan sent Prospero with a troop of light horse to search for their lost comrades and guide them to the base. Dexitheus prayed to Mitra that this rumor might prove true, for the addition of Groder s force would nearly double their strength. Kingdoms had fallen ere this to fewer than three thousand determined warriors.