After following the east bank of the river Elhorotas for several days, Thulandra Thuu’s chariot neared the great bridge that King Vilerus I had flung across the river. Here the Road of Kings, after swinging around two serpentine bends in the river, rejoined the stream and promptly crossed it to the western bank. The bridge, upraised on six stone piers that towered up from the river bed, was furnished with a wooden deck and a steeply sloping ramp on either end.
At the sight of the emblazoned chariot, the toll taker bowed low and waved the carriage through; and as the vehicle ascended to the deck, Thulandra scanned the countryside. When he perceived a cloud of dust, swirling aloft from the road ahead, a meager smile of satisfaction creased his saturnine visage. If the pounding hooves of Prince Numitor’s cavalry roiled the loose soil and bore it skyward, his careful calculations of time and distance had been correct. They would meet where the Bossonian Road conjoined with the highway to Poitain.
The chariot thundered down the western ramp and continued southward, and within the hour Thulandra overtook a column of horsemen. As the painted chariot neared, a trooper at the column’s tail recognized the vehicle. When word ran up the ranks, the cavalrymen hastily pulled their mounts aside, leaving an unobstructed path for the royal sorcerer. The horses shied and danced as the black metallic steed sped past, and the milling remounts and frightened pack animals reared and plunged and much discomfited their handlers.
At the head of the column, the magician found Prince Numitor astride a massive gelding. Like his royal cousin the king, the prince was a man of heavy build, with a reddish tinge to hair and beard. Otherwise he presented quite a different aspect; guileless blue eyes graced a broad-browed, sun-browned face that bore the stamp of easy-going geniality.
“Why, Mage Thulandra!” exclaimed Numitor in amazement, when Hsiao reined in his singular steed. "What brings you hither? Do you bear some urgent message from the king?”
"Prince Numitor, you will require my sorcerous arts to check the rebels’ northward march.”
The prince’s eyes clouded with perplexity. "I like not magic in my warfare; it’s not a manly way to fight. But if my royal cousin sent you, I must make the best of it.”
A glint of malice flared up in the sorcerers hooded eyes. “I speak for the true ruler of Aquilonia,” he said. “And my commands must be obeyed. If we proceed with haste, we can reach the Imirian Escarpment before the rebels. Are these two regiments of horse all that you bring with you?”
“Nay, four regiments of foot follow. They have not yet reached the junction of the Bossonian Road with, this.”
“None too many, although we face naught but a rabble of undisciplined rogues. If we can hold them below the cliff wall until Count Ulric arrives, we shall pluck their fangs. When we attain the crest of the escarpment, I wish you to detail five of your men—experienced hunters all—for a certain task.”
“What task is that, sir?”
“Of this I shall inform you later. Suffice it to say that skilled woodsmen are necessary to the spell I have in mind.”
At last the rain ceased in Culario. The northern barons and their entourage slogged along the muddy road, where vapor steamed from puddles drying in the summer sun. Shortly thereafter, the Army of Liberation set out upon the same highway, leading northward to the central provinces and thence to proud Tarantia on the far bank of the Khorotas.
At every town and hamlet that they passed, the legions of the Liberator were infused with new recruits: old knights, eager to take part in one last glorious affray; battle-battered ex-soldiers who had served with Conan on the Pictish frontier; lean foresters and huntsmen who saw in Conan a nature-lover like themselves; outlaws and exiles, drawn by the promise of amnesty for those who fought beneath the Golden Lion; yeomen, tradesmen, and mechanics; woodcutters, charcoal burners, smiths, masons, pavers, weavers, fullers, minstrels, clerks—all hard-eyed men eager to adventure in the army of the Liberator. They so drained the armory of weapons that Conan at last insisted each recruit come already armed, if only with a woodsman’s axe.
Conan and his officers plunged into the arduous task of welding these eager volunteers into some semblance of a military force. They told the men off into squads and companies and appointed sergeants and captains from those experienced in war. During halts, these new officers exercised their road-weary men in simple drills; for, as Conan warned them:
"Without constant practice, a horde of raw recruits like these dissolve into a mass of shrieking fugitives, when the first blood is shed.”
Between the farm lands of southern Poitain and the Imirian Escarpment stretched the great Brocellian Forest, through which the highway glided like a serpent amid a bed of ferns. As the rebels neared the forest, the songs of the Poitanian volunteers diminished. More and more, Conan noted, the recruits tramped along in glum silence, apprehensively eyeing the overarching foliage.
“What ails them?" Conan asked Trocero as they sat of an evening in the command tent. “Anyone would think these woods writhed with venomous serpents.”
The gray-haired count smiled indulgently. “We have only the common viper in Poitain, and few of those. But the folk hereabouts are full of peasant superstitions, holding the forest to harbor supernatural beings who may work magic on them. Such beliefs are not without advantage; they preserve a splendid hunting ground for my barons and my friends.”
Conan grunted. “Once we scale the escarpment and gain the Imirian Plateau, they'll doubtless find some new hobgoblin to obsess them. I have not seen this part of Aquilonia before, but by my reckoning the cliff wall rises less than a day’s march ahead. How runs the pass to the plateau?”
“There’s a deep cleft in the cliff, where the turbulent Bitaxa River, a tributary of the Alimane, cascades across the wall of rock. The road, winding upward to the plateau, is borne upon a rock ledge thrust out from one side of the cleft. The gorge below—which we call the Giant’s Notch—is slippery, steep, and narrow. An evil place to meet a cliff-top foe! Pray to your Crom that Numitor’s Frontiersmen do not reach the Notch ahead of us.”
“Crom cares but little for the prayers of men,” said Conan, “or so they told me when I was a boy. He breathes into each mortal man the strength to face his enemies; and that’s all a man can reasonably ask of gods, who have their own concerns. But we must not risk attack in this murderous trap. Tomorrow at dawn, take a strong party of mounted scouts to reconnoiter the escarpment.”
Publius waddled in, arms full of ledgers, and Trocero left Conan studying the inventory of supplies. The count sought out the tents of his Poitanian horsemen and chose from amongst them forty skilled swordsmen for the morrow’s reconnaissance.
The Giant’s Notch loomed high above Trocero’s company, its beetling cliffs hiding black wells of darkness from the midday sun. The count and his scouts sat their saddles, staring upward at the crest, searching in vain for the telltale sparkle of sunlight on armor. Neither could they observe upon the elevation the smoke of any campfires. At length Trocero said:
“We shall circle round the woods and meet again upon the road, a quarter-league back, where a high rock ledge overhangs the forest path. Vopisco, take your half of the detachment east and meet me thither within the hour. I shall go westward.”