Chapter 58
322.
Miscellanea323.
The Phoenix on the Sword
(First submitted draft)
The Phoenix on the Sword
(First submitted draft)CHAPTER 1."My songs are torches for a king's pyre!"
"At midnight the king dies!"
The speaker was tall, dark and lean; a scar near his mouth added to his already sinister aspect.
His hearers nodded, their eyes grim. One of these was a short, fat, richly dressed man, with a weak petulant mouth and s.h.i.+fty eyes. Another was a sombre giant in gold-chased mail. The third was a tall wiry man in the garb of a jester, whose unruly yellow hair fell wildly above flaming blue eyes. The last was a dwarf with a cruel aristocratic face, whose abnormally broad shoulders and long arms contrasted strangely with his stunted figure.
The first speaker glanced unconsciously at the close-barred doors and velvet-hung windows, and smiled bleakly. "Let us take the oath of the Dagger and the Flame. I trust you of course.
Still it is better that there be a.s.surance of a sort for us all. I note tremors among some of you."
"That is all very well for you to say, Ascalante," broke in the fat man petulantly. "You are an outlaw, anyway, with a price on your head you have all to gain and nothing to lose, whereas we "
" Have much to lose and more to gain," answered the outlaw imperturbably. "You called me out of my desert fastnesses far to the south to aid you in overthrowing a king well, I have made the plans, set the snare, baited the trap and stand ready to take the prey but I must be sure that I will not be left holding the bag. Will you swear?"
"Enough of this futile talk!" cried the man in jester's garb. "Aye, we will swear this dawn and
324.tonight we will dance down a king! 'Oh, the chant of the chariots, and the whir of the wings of the vultures ' "
"Save your songs for another time, Rinaldo," laughed Ascalante. "This is a time for daggers, not rhymes."
"My songs are torches for a king's pyre!" cried the minstrel, whipping out a long dagger. "Ho, slaves, bring hither a candle! I shall be first to swear the oath."
A slave whose dusky skin revealed his Stygian blood, brought a long taper and Rinaldo p.r.i.c.ked his own wrist, bringing blood. The others followed his example, then gripping hands in a sort of circle, with the lighted candle in the center, they allowed the drops of blood to trickle upon the flame. While it hissed and flickered, they repeated:
"I, Ascalante, a landless man, swear to the deed avowed and silence covenanted, by steel and flame and blood, and the Oath unbreakable."
"And I, Rinaldo, first minstrel of Aquilonia!" exclaimed the poet.
"And I, Volmana, count of Karaban," said the dwarf.
"And I, Gromel, commander of the Black Legion of Aquilonia," rumbled the giant.
"And I, Dion, baron of Attalus, rightful heir to Aquilonia's throne," quavered the fat man.
The candle went out, quenched by the falling blood-drops.
"So fades the life of our enemy," quoth Ascalante, releasing his companions' hands and regarding them with carefully veiled contempt. He had broken too many oaths himself to regard even this vow otherwise than cynically, but he knew that Dion, whom he trusted least, was superst.i.tious. There was no reason to overlook any safe-guard, no matter how slight.
"Tomorrow," said Ascalante abruptly, " I mean today, for it is dawn now Count Trocero of Poitain, seneschal of the king, rides to Nemedia with Prospero, king Conan's righthand man, with most of the Poitanian troops and a goodly number of those Black Dragons who form the king's bodyguard. With the exception of the few squads of this regiment now in the palace, all the rest are at present patrolling the Pictish frontier thanks to the increasing activities of the barbarians along the western border. Once Conan is dead the people will rise and welcome the new regime, and the king's friends, hastening to avenge him, will find the city gates locked against them and the rest of the army particularly the Black Legion ready to defend the new dynasty or rather the old dynasty restored."
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"Yes," said Volmana with some satisfaction, "that was your plan, Ascalante, but without my aid you could not have accomplished
And, since Conan honors the Count of Poitain above all others, he must have a large escort of royal troops, as well as his own retainers."
The outlaw nodded.
"True. As I told you, I've at last managed, through Gromel, to corrupt a spendthrift officer of the Black Dragons. This man will march the guard away from the royal bed-chamber just before midnight, on one pretext or another. The various slaves who might be lurking about on duty or otherwise will also have been disposed of by him. We will be waiting with sixteen desperate rogues of mine whom I have summoned from the desert, and who now hide in various parts of the city. We will gain entrance to the palace through the secret tunnel known only to you, Volmana, and with the odds twenty to one "
He laughed. Gromel nodded seriously; Volmana grinned bleakly; Dion turned pale and his breath sucked in. Rinaldo smote his hands together and cried out ringingly: "By Mitra, they will remember this night, who strike the golden strings! The fall of the tyrant, the death of the despot! what songs I shall make!"
His eyes burned with a wild fanatical light, and the others regarded him dubiously, except Ascalante, who bent his head to hide a grin. Then the outlaw rose suddenly.
"Enough! The sun will soon be up, and you must not be seen leaving this place. Get back to your proper places, and not by word, deed or look do you reveal what is in your minds." He hesitated, eying Dion. "Baron, your white face will betray you. If Conan comes to you and looks into your eyes with his searching gaze, you will collapse. Wait until the sun is well up so as not to cause suspicion by an early morning flight then get you out to your country estate and there wait until we send for you. We four and my rogues can turn the trick tonight."
Dion almost collapsed then from a reaction of joy; he left, shaking like a leaf and babbling incoherencies; the others nodded to the outlaw and departed.
Ascalante stretched himself like a great cat and grinned. He called for wine and it was brought him by the sombre Stygian slave.
"Tomorrow," quoth Ascalante, taking the goblet, "I come into the open and let the people of Aquilonia feast their eyes upon me. For months now, ever since the Rebel Four summoned me from the desert, I have been cooped in like a rat living in the very heart of my enemies in this obscure house of Dion's, hiding away from the light in the daytime, skulking, masked through
326.dark alleys and darker corridors at night. Yet I have accomplished what those rebellious lords could not. Working through them and through other agents, many of whom have never seen my face, I have honeycombed the empire with discontent and unrest. I have bribed and corrupted officials, spread sedition among the people and mutiny among the regiments in short, I, working in the shadows, have paved the downfall of the king who at this instant sits throned in the sun. By Mitra, I had almost forgotten that I was a statesman before I was an outlaw."
"You work with strange tools," commented the slave.
"Weak men but strong in their ways," lazily answered the outlaw. "As for tools, they consider me that. Volmana a shrewd man, bold and audacious, with kin in high places but poverty- stricken and with his barren estates loaded with debts. Gromel strong and ferocious as a lion, with considerable power among the soldiery, but lacking in real brain-power. Dion, cunning in his low way, but otherwise a fool and a coward. His immense wealth has been essential to my schemes, however in bribing officials and soldiers, and in smuggling strong drink across the borders to madden the Picts and make them ravage the frontiers. Rinaldo a mad poet full of hare-brained visions and out-worn chivalry. A prime favorite with the people because of his songs which tear out their heart-strings. He is our best bid for popularity. Each of these men has some clay and some steel in him I am the center of the web the force which has welded together the steel in them. If I die tonight under Conan's sword, the conspiracy will crumble."
"Who mounts the throne, if you succeed?"
"Dion, of course or so he thinks. He has a trace of royal blood in him. Conan makes a bad mistake in letting men live who still boast descent from the old dynasty.
"Volmana wishes to be reinstated in favor as he was under the old regime so that he may lift his estate and t.i.tle to their former grandeur. Gromel, with all the stubbornness of his Bossonian blood, hates Pallantides, the commander of the Black Dragons, and thinks he himself should be general of all Aquilonia's armies. Rinaldo bah! I despise the man and admire him at the same time. He is your true idealist. Alone of us all he has no personal ambition. He sees in Conan a red-handed, rough-footed barbarian who came out of the north to plunder a peaceful land. He thinks he sees barbarism triumphing over culture. He already idealizes the king Conan killed, forgetting the rogue's real nature, remembering only that he occasionally patronized the arts, and forgetting the evils under which the land groaned during his reign, and he is making the people forget. Already they openly sing 'The Lament for the King' in which Rinaldo lauds the saintly villain, and denounces Conan as 'that black-hearted savage from the abyss.' Conan laughs, but at the same time wonders why the people are turning against him."
"But why does Rinaldo hate Conan?"
"Because he is a poet. Poets always hate those in power. To them perfection is always just
327.behind the last corner or beyond the next. They escape the present in dreams of the past and the future. Rinaldo is a flaming torch of idealism and he sees himself as a hero, a stainless knight which after all he is! rising to overthrow the tyrant and liberate the people."
"And you?"
Ascalante laughed and emptied the goblet. "Poets are dangerous because they believe what they sing while they sing it. Well, I believe what I think, and I think Dion will not long press the throne. A few months ago I had lost all ambitions save to raid the caravans as long as I lived. Now well, we'll see."
The slave shrugged his broad shoulders.
"There was a time," he said with unconcealed bitterness, "when I, too, had my ambitions, beside which yours seem tawdry indeed. To what a state I have come! My old-time peers and rivals would stare indeed could they see Thoth-amon of the Ring serving as the slave of an outlander, and an outlaw, at that; and aiding in the petty ambitions of barons and kings!"
"You laid your trust in magic and mummery," carelessly answered Ascalante, "I trust my wits and my sword."
"Wits and sword are as straws against the dark wisdom of the Night," growled the Stygian, his dark eyes flickering with menacing lights and shadows. "Had I not lost the Ring, our positions might be reversed."
"Be that as it may," answered the outlaw impatiently, "Ring or no Ring, you wear the stripes of my whip on your back, and are likely to continue to wear them."