The Hour of the Dragon | Page 5

and the crown of Aquilonia shone
on his square-cut black mane; but the great sword at his side seemed
more natural to him than the regal accouterments. His brow was low
and broad, his eyes a volcanic blue that smoldered as if with some inner
fire. His dark, scarred, almost sinister face was that of a fighting- man,
and his velvet garments could not conceal the hard, dangerous lines of
his limbs.

"That man is no Hyborian!" exclaimed Xaltotun.
"No; he is a Cimmerian, one of those wild tribesmen who dwell in the
gray hills of the north."
"I fought his ancestors of old," muttered Xaltotun. "Not even the kings
of Acheron could conquer them."
"They still remain a terror to the nations of the south," answered
Orastes. "He is a true son of that savage race, and has proved himself,
thus far, unconquerable."
Xaltotun did not reply; he sat staring down at the pool of living fire that
shimmered in his hand. Outside, the hound howled again, long and
shudderingly.
Chapter 2
: The Black Wind Blows
THE YEAR OF THE DRAGON had birth in war and pestilence and
unrest. The black plague stalked through the streets of Belverus,
striking down the merchant in his stall, the serf in his kennel, the knight
at his banquet board. Before it the arts of the leeches were helpless.
Men said it had been sent from hell as punishment for the sins of pride
and lust. It was swift and deadly as the stroke of an adder. The victim's
body turned purple and then black, and within a few minutes he sank
down dying, and the stench of his own putrefaction was in his nostrils
even before death wrenched his soul from his rotting body. A hot,
roaring wind blew incessantly from the south, and the crops withered in
the fields, the cattle sank and died in their tracks.
Men cried out on Mitra, and muttered against the king; for somehow,
throughout the kingdom, the word was whispered that the king was
secretly addicted to loathsome practises and foul debauches in the
seclusion of his nighted palace. And then in that palace death stalked
grinning on feet about which swirled the monstrous vapors of the
plague. In one night the king died with his three sons, and the drums

that thundered their dirge drowned the grim and ominous bells that
rang from the carts that lumbered through the streets gathering up the
rotting dead.
That night, just before dawn, the hot wind that had blown for weeks
ceased to rustle evilly through the silken window curtains. Out of the
north rose a great wind that roared among the towers, and there was
cataclysmic thunder, and blinding sheets of lightning, and driving rain.
But the dawn shone clean and green and clear; the scorched ground
veiled itself in grass, the thirsty crops sprang up anew, and the plague
was gone-its miasma swept clean out of the land by the mighty wind.
Men said the gods were satisfied because the evil king and his spawn
were slain, and when his young brother Tarascus was crowned in the
great coronation hall, the populace cheered until the towers rocked,
acclaiming the monarch on whom the gods smiled.
Such a wave of enthusiasm and rejoicing as swept the land is frequently
the signal for a war of conquest. So no one was surprized when it was
announced that King Tarascus had declared the truce made by the late
king with their western neighbors void, and was gathering his hosts to
invade Aquilonia. His reason was candid; his motives, loudly
proclaimed, gilded his actions with something of the glamor of a
crusade. He espoused the cause of Valerius, "rightful heir to the throne";
he came, he proclaimed, not as an enemy of Aquilonia, but as a friend,
to free the people from the tyranny of a usurper and a foreigner.
If there were cynical smiles in certain quarters, and whispers
concerning the king's good friend Amalric, whose vast personal wealth
seemed to be flowing into the rather depleted royal treasury, they were
unheeded in the general wave of fervor and zeal of Tarascus's
popularity. If any shrewd individuals suspected that Amalric was the
real ruler of Nemedia, behind the scenes, they were careful not to voice
such heresy. And the war went forward with enthusiasm.
The king and his allies moved westward at the head of fifty thousand
men-knights in shining armor with their pennons streaming above their
helmets, pikemen in steel caps and brigan-dines, crossbowmen in

leather jerkins. They crossed the border, took a frontier castle and
burned three mountain villages, and then, in the valley of the Valkia,
ten miles west of the boundary line, they met the hosts of Conan, king
of Aquilonia-forty-five thousand knights, archers and men-at-arms,