Grumbling, Fadius led Alcina to the hostel in Messantia where the Aquilonians lodged. Quesado’s servant was pulling off his master's boots and preparing him for bed when Alcina and Fadius burst in unannounced.
“Damn!" cried Quesado. "What sort of ill-bred rabble are you, to intrude on a gentleman retiring for the night!"
"You know well enough who we are,” said Alcina. "I came to tell you Conan is dead.”
Quesado paused with his mouth open, then closed it slowly. ‘Well!” he said at last "That casts a different light on many matters. Pull on my boots again, Narses. I must to the palace forthwith. What has befallen. Mistress Alcina?”
A little time later, Quesado presented himself at the palace with a peremptory demand to see the king. The Zingaran intended to urge an instant attack on Conan’s army by the forces of Argos. He felt sure that the rebels, demoralized by the fall of their leader, would crumble before any vigorous assault.
Fate, however, ordained that events should march to a different tune. Roused from slumber. King Mile flew into a rage at Quesado’s insolence in demanding a midnight audience.
"His Majesty,” reported the head page to Quesado, “commands that you depart instanter and return at a more seemly time. He suggests an hour before noon tomorrow.”
Quesado flushed with the anger of frustration. Looking down his nose, he said: "My good man, you do not seem to realize who and what I am.”
The page laughed, matching Quesado’s impudence with his own. “Aye, sir, we all know who you are—and what you were.” Derisive grins spread to the faces of the guards flanking the page, who continued: “Now pray depart hence, and speedily, on pain of my sovereign lord’s displeasiure!”
"Thou shall rue those words, varlet!" snarled Quesado, turning away. He tramped the cobbled streets to his former headquarters on the waterfront, where he found Fadius and Alcina awaiting him. There he prepared a furious dispatch to the King of Aquilonia, telling of Milo’s rebuff, and sent it on its way wired to the leg of a pigeon.
In a few days, the former spy’s report reached Vibius Latro, who brought it to his king’s attention. Numedides, seldom able to restrain his passions under the easiest of circimistances, read of the recalcitrance of the King of Argos toward his mighty neighbor and sent another courier post-haste to General Amulius Procas. This dispatch did more than authorize an incursion into Argos, as had the previous message. In exigent terms, it commanded the general at once to attack across the borders of Argos, with whatever force he needed, to stamp out the last embers of the rebellion.
Procas, a tough and canny old campaigner, winced at the royal command. On the night that followed his victorious battles on the Alimane, he had quickly withdrawn from Argossean territory the detachments he had sent across the river to harry the fleeing rebels. Those incursions could be excused on grounds of hot pursuit. But now, if he mounted a new invasion, the open violation of the border would almost certainly turn King Milo's sympathies from cautious neutrality into open hostility to the royal Aquilonian cause.
But the royal command admitted of no argument or refusal. If he wished his head to continue to ride his shoulders, Procas must attack, although every instinct in his soldierly bosom cried out against this hasty, ill-timed instruction.
Procas delayed his advance for several days, hoping that the king, on second thoughts, would counter-command his order. But no communication came, and Procas dared wait no longer. And so, on a bright spring morning, Amulius Procas crossed the Alimane in force. The river, which had subsided somewhat from its flood, offered no obstacle to his squadrons of glittering, panoplied knights, stolid mailed spearmen, and leather-coated archers. They splashed across and marched implacably up the winding road that led to Saxula Pass through the Rabirian range, and thence to the rebel camp on the Plain of Pallos.
Not until the morning after Alcina’s departure did Conan’s officers learn of the fall of their leader. They gathered round him, laid him on his bed, and searched him for wounds. Dexitheus, still limping on a walking stick, sniffed at the dregs in the goblet from which Conan had drunk Alcina’s potion.
"That drink," he said, "was laced with the juice of the purple lotus of Stygia. By rights, our general should be as dead as King Tuthamon; yet he lives, albeit no more than a living corpse with open eyes."
Publius flicked his fingers as he did mental sums and mused: "Perchance the poisoner used only so much of the drug as would suffice to slay an ordinary man, unmindful of Conan’s great size and strength.”
" 'Twas that green-eyed witch!” cried Trocero. "I've never trusted her, and her disappearance last night proclaims her guilt. Were she in my power, I'd burn her at the stake!”
Dexitheus turned on the count "Green eyes, quotha? A woman with green eyes?"
"Aye, as green as emeralds. But what of it? Surely you know Conan’s concubine, the fair Alcina.”
Dexitheus shook his head with a frown of foreboding. "I heard that our general had taken a dancing girl from the wineshops of Argos,” he murmured, "But I try to ignore such whoredoms among my sons, and Conan tactfully kept her out of my sight. Woe unto our cause! For the lord Mitra warned me in a dream to beware a green-eyed shadow hovering near our leader, although I knew not that the evil one already walked amongst us. Woe unto me, who failed to confide the warning to my comrades!”
“Enough of this,” said Pubhus. “Conan lives, and we can thank our gods that our fair poisoner is no arithmetician. Let none but his squires attend him or even enter the tent. We must tell the men that he is ill of a minor tisick, whilst we continue to rebuild our force. If he recovers, he recovers; but meanwhile you must take command, Trocero.”
The Poitanian count nodded somberly. "I'll do what I can, since I am second in command. You, Publius, must mend the nets of your spy system, so that we shall have warning of Procas’s moves. It’s time for morning roll call, so I must be off. I'll drill the lads as hard as Conan ever drilled them, aye and morel”
By the time Procas began his invasion, the Lions again had their watching eyes and listening ears abroad. Reports of the strength of the invaders reached the leaders of the rebel army, who had gathered in Conan's tent. Trocero, wearing the silvery badge of age and the lines of weariness but self-assured withal, asked Pubhus: "What know we of the numbers of the foe?”
Pubhus bent his head to work sums on his waxen tablets. When he raised his eyes, his expression showed alarm. "Thrice our strength and more,” he said heavily. "This is a black day, my friends. We can do little save make a final stand.”
“Be of good cheer!” said the count, slapping the stout treasurer on the back. "Thou’d never make a general, Publius; you’d assure the soldiers they were beaten before the fray began." He turned to Dexitheus. “How does our patient?"
“He regains some slight awareness, but as yet he cannot move. I now think he will live, praise Mitra."
'Well, if he cannot sit a horse when the battle trumpet blows, I must sit it for him. Have we any word of Prospero?"
Publius and Dexitheus shook their heads. Trocero shrugged, saying: “Then we must make do with what we have. The foe will close within striking distance on the morrow, and we must needs decide whether to fight or flee."
Down from the mountains streamed the armored cavalry and infantry of the Border Legion. A swirl of galloping scouts preceded them, and in their midst rode General Amulius Procas in his chariot. Drawn up to confront them, the rebels formed their battle lines in the midst of the plain.
The still air offered no respite from the myriad fears and silent prayers of the waiting men. The broad front of the superior Aquilonian force allowed Count Trocero no opportunity for clever flanking or enveloping moves. Yet, to retreat now would mean the instant dissolution of the rebel force. The count knew there could be no shrewdly timed withdrawal, with rear-guard actions to delay pursuit. Such a fighting retreat was only for well-trained, self-confident troops. These men, discouraged by their fortune on the Alimane, would simply flee, every man for himself, while the Aquilonian light horse rode down the fugitives, slaying and slaying until nightfall sheltered the survivors beneath its dragon wings.