“No movement out there, friendly or otherwise. And no more couriers.” He glanced at his elder subordinate, looming gray and still in the twilight. “Perhaps we should dispatch an elephant battery mounted with torches, to seek out any lost troops and guide them back?”
“I would not recommend it. Such a small force would be prey to ambush.” The captain’s voice, though low and discreet, scraped with weary exasperation in the evening stillness. ” ‘Tis an ill practice to send forth units piecemeal; better we had sent our main force out at noontide to support the embattled patrol, as I counseled.”
“That would have been over-reacting, I still say!” The young sharif shook his head stubbornly, his crimson turban bobbing darkly in the gloom. “Our returning couriers advised us of no such need. The thirty fresh horsemen we sent were surely enough to defeat any foe the barbarian’s patrol blundered into.”
“Perhaps—assuming they managed to find him in the jungle.” Murad spoke restrainedly, without inflection. “But what of the runner who staggered up to the gate bleeding, telling us that Conan’s band faced five thousand Hwong?”
“Nonsense! The fellow was maddened by the same arrow-poison that killed him! Yet even so, that insubordinate black officer—Juma is it?—insisted on marching his whole troop off to their aid. I should not have permitted it.” The sharif did not bother to pitch his self-justifications in a low voice. “Remember, Captain, we face other dangers than jungle ambushes! This skirmishing may only be a ruse to draw our strength out of the fort.”
“How could there be a ruse, when you yourself did not fix the route of the patrol until this very morning?” Murad shook his head in long-suffering exasperation. “Do you not understand the virtue of a fort, that a few troops may defend it against many? You should have backed up your probe with full regimental force, as planned. Likely they met a Hwong army there in the jungle and were wiped out, along with the few cavalry and infantry you sent. ‘Tis poor strategy to do things by half-measures.”
Jefar Sharif turned a supercilious eye on the captain.
“You display even less sound strategy, Captain, by addressing your superior officer thus. True, you have gained a certain fitness through long experience. But my fitness is greater, I remind you, for it comes as the natural result of my noble birth!” He posed arrogantly before the older man, confident in large part because the captain’s solemn gray stare was obscured by gathering dusk.
A moment later, appeased by the lack of any further response from his minion, the sharif turned back to the rail. “At any rate, supposing the brawling brute and his handful of troops are dead, with a few elephants to boot—small risk, small loss! You yourself told me that an officer must learn to spend lives freely.”
The captain nodded, watching Jefar solemnly. “True enough. And what of the secret orders that arrived today?”
Frowning, Jefar lowered his tone to a rueful laugh. “Could you have imagined it? We are instructed to take special care of the barbarian, because of some unlikely interest he commands at court! I ask you, could a despatch be more astonishing, or more ill-timed?” He cleared his throat raggedly. “Still, ‘tis no great loss. We can tell Abolhassan that his exotic pet died a hero. It makes me feel safer, indeed; I would have hated to show that unwashed savage special consideration. But say, what moves yonder?” He turned his gaze across the adzed tops of the palisade’s timbers. “Halt, there, you! Stand and declare yourself!”
At the sharif’s nervous hail, men stirred atop the watchtowers. Likewise came shouts and bustlings from within the fort enclosure; the garrison had been kept alert for a siege all afternoon, with the villagers and camp followers summoned inside. In moments, Jefar and Murad were joined from below by torch-bearing sentries, whose lights revealed an armored elephant approaching in the gloom. Ragged and blood-spattered, it shambled forward with steps that thudded slackly on the packed earth, shaking the parapet underfoot.
“It is our beast,” Murad announced, “unless the rebels have draped one of their own in Imperial trappings. I see no driver, so beware of tricks and sorcery. Bring your ballistas to bear on the animal, but keep watching the jungle rim all the same!”
From somewhere beyond the elephant a deep, resonant voice hailed the wall. “Captain, do not shoot!” The watchers began to discern another figure approaching, whose black skin matched the jungle gloom.
“Who comes?” a dozen sentries cried, leveling their crossbows.
“Sergeant Juma, sir! With my troop, plus survivors of the battle.” His voice was broken by panting, his weapons clanking as he slowed his trot. “We met the beast in the forest and followed it back here, though we were never able to halt it.” As the black man approached, other dim, turbaned figures became visible in a straggling line behind him. “It saved us from being lost in the jungle by night.”
“Sire, men are riding in the howdah!” cried a sentry on the palisade, looking down on the animal as it trundled to a stop before the gate. “Two of them. Dead, by the look of them.”
Jefar’s voice grated sharply over the murmurs which immediately arose. “You, Sergeant—if such you really are! Form up your companions there in the torchlight. Then we can decide whether or not to admit you.”
In a matter of minutes the gate had been thrown open and the survivors brought inside. The elephant was calmed by a guide and induced to kneel beside a cargo ramp in the entry-yard. Jefar and Murad supervised as the bodies were lifted out and laid on the wooden dock, to be inspected under brilliant torchlight.
“This is the driver, Than, one of our best.” Somberly Murad tilted up the sallow face. “Pierced through the chest by a spear, as you can see. The beasts are loyal; they often pick up their fallen drivers and try to rescue them. And here”—the captain reached out to brush lank black hair aside from a death-pale face—“here is Conan, the patrol officer himself! Bled dry by this wound in his thigh, perhaps—or more likely, poisoned by it. He must have died in his place of command on the howdah.”
“A sad loss.” Jefar Sharif moved up beside the dock to face the troopers gathered around. “And yet, I am told, it was in the course of a fierce fight, resulting in the slaughter of a small but spirited enemy force. A harsh price, yet not too much to pay for the greater glory of—”
“Wretched slacker… coward!” A sepulchral voice arose eerily behind the sharif. Suddenly it took tangible form—a pale hand clutching at his shoulder.
“You promised to relieve us! We fought the day through… I watched my men die!”
Those nearest stood stunned, seeing the terror-stricken sharif dragged back against the platform. The spectral handgrip doubled abruptly, shifting to his neck; meanwhile, a skull-white face, scarcely recognizable as human, snarled into his ear. “Where were our reinforcements, rogue? Why did you betray us?”
“Enough! Restrain him at once!” Murad leaped to Jefar Sharif’s side, gesturing troopers up onto the dock to lay hold of the vengeful, undead sergeant and pry his hands from his gasping commander. One of them was Juma, who murmured urgent, soothing phrases to the half-delirious Conan while forcing him back onto the planks.
“Hold him down, and shut up his raving!” Murad supported the red-faced sharif, slapping his back to help him draw breath. “The man is wild with spear-poison! Tend to him; save him if he can be saved.”
“Aye, we will try,” Juma said, clasping Conan’s shoulders.
“Aarghhauh!” Waving an arm, Jefar tried to shout in wrath or fear from a throat still too constricted to form sounds.
“Take him to the infirmary—the Cimmerian, not the sharif,” Murad added, keeping hold of his frenzied superior officer. “And guard him carefully. Though doubtless he will lose that leg!”
“So, Ibn Uluthan, how go your divinations?” General Abolhassan strode officiously among the chests and tables cluttering the star-patterned tiles of the Court of Seers. “The eunuchs say that the Venji magic still defies your best efforts.” Stopping at the center of the echoing dome, the black-turbaned warrior folded his arms across his chest in an imperious, mocking pose. “Can you and your apprentices yet foresee a day when you will be of any real value to the war effort?”
Azhar and the lesser acolytes, meekly apprehensive, kept their heads bent over scrolls and magical paraphernalia. But their master, Ibn Uluthan, looked up with an air of irritated righteousness from his carved lectern and the sheaf of yellowed pages on it.
“No, Abolhassan, I confess that we have made negligible progress, to your lord and land’s regret.” Pale and hollow-eyed from his nightlong vigils, the mage squinted skeptically at his military visitor, whom he equaled in height if not in robustness. “Although we, unlike some, labor selflessly and whole-spiritedly for our emperor’s aims, using every conceivable means”—Uluthan swept one arm wide, indicating the array of materials and workbenches assembled to deal with the Venji riddle—“I cannot always claim that our exertions are blessed with quick or easy success. Nor do I see why our misfortune, and your emperor’s, should be a source of noxious levity.”
“Nay, Wizard, I meant you no insult.” Smiling, Abolhassan shifted his broad, black-draped shoulders easily without actually changing position. “Even if at times I have said the support of our imperial treasury for your arcane tampering may be… excessive… still, I would not want you to think that I question your sincerity.” The general’s smile became placid, tolerant. “I meant only to express my surprise that a seer as illustrious as yourself could fail to triumph over old-fashioned jungle taboos and dried lizard fetishes!”
“My good General.” Ibn Uluthan’s reply was patient. “Age can hardly be said to weaken a religion or a spell. And the Venji have possessed powerful empires of their own, as their temple ruins clearly show. In the remote past, some of their dynasties may even have rivaled or exceeded our modern Turanian splendor.” The sage shook his turbaned head. “But these influences have faded; our great obstacle is still Venjipur’s distance from here.”
Drawn once again to consider the problem, he spoke thoughtfully. “Supreme as our power is in Aghrapur, it scarcely bears exportation to a wild land of few folk and fewer Faithful, lacking true shrines or relics, and never even traversed by the holy feet of our mystics. A savage place it is, gripped by degraded, elemental deities, with foul Mojurna as their croaking prophet.”
“Of course, such a pagan cult poses little danger to us here; you see no jungle demons prowling the streets of Aghrapur. Our star-castings have a high rate of accuracy, and our various prognostications within the settled empire are of unquestioned value. Our power, in fact, remains unchallenged—except when we try to channel it southward to the devil-plagued Tarqheban coast!”
The sorcerer’s gaze, leaving the general’s ironic face, wandered absently across the room to the tall, black-silled window, where hung gloom relieved by only the palest radiance. Through the casement, if one peered deep into the dim obscurity, could be seen the faint, half-illusory image of a jewel-bedecked skull.
“Very well, Ibn Uluthan,” Abolhassan said in his deep, faintly amused voice. “I thank you for rendering me a more thorough accounting than I could have wished. I only wondered whether Mojurna’s magic has been overcome—whether it will soon be possible, as you once showed us, for our beloved Emperor Yildiz to stand in this chamber and see with his own eyes the events transpiring in far-off Venjipur.”
“In answer to your question: no.” Ibn Uluthan turned a sullen shoulder to his visitor, moving back behind his lectern. “But with the blessings of Tarim and gracious Emperor Yildiz, our efforts will continue. Some aspect of the problem must inevitably yield to our scrutiny, and in time you may expect a breakthrough. But for the moment, no.”
“Thank you, Mage. I expected as much.” Showing no great dissatisfaction, Abolhassan spun on his heel and left the hall.
Of course, he told himself as he crossed the outer balconies, the spells would have been a convenience. Oversight of the battlefront, even direct command, would benefit all concerned with the campaign, especially that detestable busybody Yildiz. But the present situation, with all its delays and indirections, afforded advantages he was in a unique position to exploit.
Leaving the shade of a filigreed trellis, Abolhassan strode through blazing sun to a gilded, onion-pointed archway. The cool, perfumed halls of the palace swallowed him again, its smoothly descending rampways taking him to the judicial galleries.
There murmured and echoed the business of state, proceeding as it did every day and late into the night. Merchant squabbles, family vendettas, pleadings of law, tax, and troth—those interminable questions, nominally the domain of the emperor, were now adjudged and enforced by eunuchs.
Abolhassan was careful to skirt the public corridors with their mad assortment of chained felons, unkept clans of litigating goatherds, and clusters of dicing advocates. There a general’s noble garb and exalted bearing would be met by fatuous looks or cries of beseechment. Happily, the meeting for which he was now overdue lay in the Court of Protocols, a large inner gallery reserved for ceremonies involving His Resplendency and His highest satraps.
A pair of household guards at the Court’s double doors bowed him through. Once inside, he was surprised by the strident tone of the interview already underway.
“You beguile our sons and brothers into your armies, or else impress them outright! You send them to die far away from their homes and families! You teach them to murder and pillage, so that their hearts can never be at peace in the grace of Tarim!” The speaker, holding forth at full pitch, was female, a comely woman expensively garbed. From her head waved an unruly banner of pale yellow hair which Abolhassan thought he recognized from previous petitionings and civil delegations. The target of her diatribe, sitting alone on a stool and looking distinctly ill-at-ease, was the medium-sized, pudgy Emperor Yildiz.
Seemingly heedless of his divinity, the woman railed on. “I ask you, Resplendency, is any thought given to the cost of these excursions to savage lands like Venjipur? Not only the cost in lives, but in suffering and ill-will here at home? And what of the public works that are set aside, the temples and roads that go unbuilt? Are these crying needs less important, I wonder, than horsy heroics in some far-off wilderness?”