A brilliant strategist and an insatiable plunderer, Yezdigerd had more than doubled the size of the kingdom inherited from his weak predecessor Yildiz. He had wrung tribute from the city-states of Brythunia and eastern Shem. His gleaming horsemen had beaten the armies of such distant nations as Stygia and Hyperborea. The crafty king of Zamora, Mithridates, had been shorn of border provinces and had kept his throne only at the price of groveling before his conqueror.
Arrayed in a splendor of silk and cloth-of-gold, the long lolled on the shining throne with the deceptive ease of a resting panther.
At his right sat a woman. Conan felt his blood run hot with recognition. Thanara! Her voluptuous body was draped in the seductive robes of a Turanian noblewoman. A diamond-studded diadem glittered in her lustrous black hair. Her eyes fastened triumphantly on the trussed and weaponless figure of her captive. She joined in the laughter of the courtiers round the throne at some grim jest uttered by the king.
The detail halted before the throne. Yezdigerd’s eyes blazed with triumphant glee. At last he held in his power the man who had slaughtered his soldiers, burnt his cities, and scuttled his ships. The lust for vengeance churned up within him, but he held himself in check while the guardsmen knelt and touched their foreheads to the marble floor.
Conan made no obeisance. His blue eyes aflame with icy fire, he stood still and upright, clashing with the Turanian king in a battle of looks. Every inch of his body expressed defiance and contempt. Unclad as he was, he still commanded the attention of all by the aura of power that radiated from him. The rumor of his fabulous exploits was whispered back and forth among the members of the glittering throng.
Many knew him under other dreaded names in their own distant lands.
Sensing the strain upon the rope he held, Ardashir looked up from his kneeling posture. Black rage seethed in his face as he saw the disdain of the Cimmerian for court etiquette. He tugged viciously at the rope, tightening the noose about Conan’s neck. A lesser man would have stumbled and fallen, but Conan stood steady as a rock. The massive muscles of his bull-neck swelled in ridges against the pressure of the rope. Then he suddenly bent forward and straightened up again, pulling the rope backwards. Ardashir was jerked off his knees and sprawled with a clatter of gear on the marble.
“I pay homage to no Hyrkanian dog!” Conan’s roar was like a peal of thunder. “You wage your wars with the help of women. Can you handle a sword yourself? I’ll show you how a real man fights!”
During his short speech, Conan relaxed the taut muscles of his arms, so that the rope binding them went slack.
By stretching, he got the tips of his left fingers around one end of the log on his back. With a quick jerk he slipped his right arm out of the loose coils of rope and brought the log around in front of him. Then he swiftly freed his left arm.
Ardashir scrambled up and lunged towards him, drawing his scimitar.
Conan whipped the end of the log around with a thud against the Turanian’s helmet. The officer was hurled across the floor, his body spinning like that of a thrown doll.
For a split second, everybody stood unmoving, struck still by this seemingly magical feat. With the fighting instinct of the barbarian, Conan took instant advantage of this pause. One end of the log shot out and caught a guardsman in the face. The man flew over backwards, his face a mere smear of blood and broken bones. Then Conan whirled and threw the log into the nearest group of guards on the other side of him, even as they started to rise and draw their weapons. The men were bowled over in a clattering heap.
Lithe and quick as a leopard, Conan bounded forward, snatching up the scimitar that Ardashir had dropped when knocked unconscious. A couple of courtiers tried to bar the Cimmerian’s way at the foot of King Yezdigerd’s dais, but he easily cut his path through them, slashing and thrusting. He bounded up the steps of the dais.
As he came, the king rose to meet him, sweeping out his own scimitar.
The jewels in its hilt flashed as Yezdigerd brought the blade up to parry a terrific right cut that Conan aimed at his head. Such was the force of the blow that the king’s sword snapped. Conan’s blade cut through the many folds of the snow-white turban, cleaving the spray of bird-of-paradise feathers that rose from the front of it and denting the steel cap that Yezdigerd wore beneath.
Though the blow failed to split the king’s skull as Conan intended, it threw the Turanian backwards, stunned.
Yezdigerd fell back over the arm of his throne and overset the gleaming chair. King and throne rolled off the dais, down the steps on the other side, and into a knot of onrushing guardsmen, spoiling their charge.
Conan, beside himself with battle lust, would have bounded after the king to finish him off. But loyal arms dragged Yezdigerd out of the press, and from all sides sword blades and spear points pressed in upon the unprotected Cimmerian.
Conan’s scimitar wove a lethal net of steel around him. He surpassed himself in brilliant swordsmanship.
Despite his stay in the dungeon and the aftereffects of the drug he had inhaled, he was fired with vitality. If he must die, he would now die sword in hand, laughing and slaying, to carve a niche for himself in the Hall of Heroes.
He whirled in gleeful frenzy. A quick slash sent an antagonist tumbling backwards with his entrails spilling out; a lightning thrust burst through mail links into a Turanian heart. Stabbing, slicing, smiting, and thrusting, he wrought red havoc. For an instant, raging like a mad elephant about the dais, he cleared it of soldiers and courtiers except for those who lay in a tangle about his feet.
Only the lady Thanara remained, sitting petrified in her chair. With a grating laugh, Conan tore the glittering diadem from her hair and flung her into the throng that milled about the platform.
Soldiers now advanced grimly from all sides, their spearheads and sword blades forming a bristling hedge in front of an ordered line of shields. Behind them, archers nocked their shafts. Noncombatants stood in clumps in the farther parts of the throne room, watching fascinated.
Conan flexed his muscles, swung his scimitar, and gave a booming laugh.
Blood ran down his naked hide from superficial cuts in scalp, arm, chest, and leg. Surrounded and unarmored, not even his strength and speed could save him from the thrust of many keen blades all at once.
The prospect of death did not trouble him; he only hoped to take as many foes as he could into the darkness with him.
Suddenly there came the clash of steel, the spurt of blood, and the icy gleam of a northern longsword. A giant figure hewed its way through the armored lines, leaving three blood-spattered corpses on the floor. With a mighty bound, the fair-haired northerner leaped to the dais. In his left arm he cradled a couple of heavy, round objects … bucklers of bronze and leather picked up from the floor where the victims of Conan’s first outburst had dropped them.
“Catch this!” cried the newcomer, tossing one of the shields to Conan.
Their glances met and locked. Conan cried:
“Rolf! What do you here, old polar bear?”
“I will tell you later,” growled the northerner, grasping the handle of the other buckler. “If we live, that is. If not, I am prepared to fight and die with you.”
The unexpected advent of this formidable ally raised Conan’s spirits even higher.
“Rush in, jackals,” he taunted, waving his bloodstained scimitar. “Who will be the next to consign his soul to Hell? Attack, damn you, or I’ll carry the fight to you!”
The steel-sheathed ranks of the Turanian soldiery had halted, forming a square about the dais. The two giant barbarians stood back to back, one black-haired and almost naked, the other blond and clad in somber black. They seemed like two royal tigers surrounded by timorous hunters, none of whom dared to strike the first blow.