Beyond the Black River, Page 2

  2 The Wizard of Gwawela

  Fort Tuscelan stood on the eastern bank of Black River, the tides ofwhich washed the foot of the stockade. The latter was of logs, as wereall the buildings within, including the donjon (to dignify it by thatappellation), in which were the governor's quarters, overlooking thestockade and the sullen river. Beyond that river lay a huge forest,which approached jungle-like density along the spongy shores. Men pacedthe runways along the log parapet day and night, watching that densegreen wall. Seldom a menacing figure appeared, but the sentries knewthat they too were watched, fiercely, hungrily, with the mercilessnessof ancient hate. The forest beyond the river might seem desolate andvacant of life to the ignorant eye, but life teemed there, not alone ofbird and beast and reptile, but also of men, the fiercest of all thehunting beasts.

  There, at the fort, civilization ended. Fort Tuscelan was the lastoutpost of a civilized world; it represented the westernmost thrust ofthe dominant Hyborian races. Beyond the river the primitive stillreigned in shadowy forests, brush-thatched huts where hung the grinningskulls of men, and mud-walled enclosures where fires flickered and drumsrumbled, and spears were whetted in the hands of dark, silent men withtangled black hair and the eyes of serpents. Those eyes often glaredthrough the bushes at the fort across the river. Once dark-skinned menhad built their huts where that fort stood; yes, and their huts hadrisen where now stood the fields and log cabins of fair-haired settlers,back beyond Velitrium, that raw, turbulent frontier town on the banks ofThunder River, to the shores of that other river that bounds theBossonian marches. Traders had come, and priests of Mitra who walkedwith bare feet and empty hands, and died horribly, most of them; butsoldiers had followed, and men with axes in their hands and women andchildren in ox-drawn wains. Back to Thunder River, and still back,beyond Black River the aborigines had been pushed, with slaughter andmassacre. But the dark-skinned people did not forget that onceConajohara had been theirs.

  The guard inside the eastern gate bawled a challenge. Through a barredaperture torchlight flickered, glinting on a steel head-piece andsuspicious eyes beneath it.

  'Open the gate,' snorted Conan. 'You see it's I, don't you?'

  Military discipline put his teeth on edge.

  The gate swung inward and Conan and his companion passed through.Balthus noted that the gate was flanked by a tower on each side, thesummits of which rose above the stockade. He saw loopholes for arrows.

  The guardsmen grunted as they saw the burden borne between the men.Their pikes jangled against each other as they thrust shut the gate,chin on shoulder, and Conan asked testily: 'Have you never seen aheadless body before?'

  The face of the soldiers were pallid in the torchlight.

  'That's Tiberias,' blurted one. 'I recognize that fur-trimmed tunic.Valerius here owes me five lunas. I told him Tiberias had heard the looncall when he rode through the gate on his mule, with his glassy stare. Iwagered he'd come back without his head.'

  Conan grunted enigmatically, motioned Balthus to ease the litter to theground, and then strode off toward the governor's quarters, with theAquilonian at his heels. The tousle-headed youth stared about himeagerly and curiously, noting the rows of barracks along the walls, thestables, the tiny merchants' stalls, the towering blockhouse, and theother buildings, with the open square in the middle where the soldiersdrilled, and where, now, fires danced and men off duty lounged. Thesewere now hurrying to join the morbid crowd gathered about the litter atthe gate. The rangy figures of Aquilonian pikemen and forest runnersmingled with the shorter, stockier forms of Bossonian archers.

  He was not greatly surprised that the governor received them himself.Autocratic society with its rigid caste laws lay east of the marches.Valannus was still a young man, well knit, with a finely chiseledcountenance already carved into sober cast by toil and responsibility.

  'You left the fort before daybreak, I was told,' he said to Conan. 'Ihad begun to fear that the Picts had caught you at last.'

  'When they smoke my head the whole river will know it,' grunted Conan.'They'll hear Pictish women wailing their dead as far as Velitrium--Iwas on a lone scout. I couldn't sleep. I kept hearing drums talkingacross the river.'

  'They talk each night,' reminded the governor, his fine eyes shadowed,as he stared closely at Conan. He had learned the unwisdom ofdiscounting wild men's instincts.

  'There was a difference last night,' growled Conan. 'There has been eversince Zogar Sag got back across the river.'

  'We should either have given him presents and sent him home, or elsehanged him,' sighed the governor. 'You advised that, but----'

  'But it's hard for you Hyborians to learn the ways of the outlands,'said Conan. 'Well, it can't be helped now, but there'll be no peace onthe border so long as Zogar lives and remembers the cell he sweated in.I was following a warrior who slipped over to put a few white notches onhis bow. After I split his head I fell in with this lad whose name isBalthus and who's come from the Tauran to help hold the frontier.'

  Valannus approvingly eyed the young man's frank countenance andstrongly-knit frame.

  'I am glad to welcome you, young sir. I wish more of your people wouldcome. We need men used to forest life. Many of our soldiers and some ofour settlers are from the eastern provinces and know nothing ofwoodcraft, or even of agricultural life.'

  'Not many of that breed this side of Velitrium,' grunted Conan. 'Thattown's full of them, though. But listen, Valannus, we found Tiberiasdead on the trail.' And in a few words he related the grisly affair.

  Valannus paled. 'I did not know he had left the fort. He must have beenmad!'

  'He was,' answered Conan. 'Like the other four; each one, when his timecame, went mad and rushed into the woods to meet his death like a harerunning down the throat of a python. _Something_ called to them from thedeeps of the forest, something the men call a loon, for lack of a bettername, but only the doomed ones could hear it. Zogar Sag has made a magicthat Aquilonian civilization can't overcome.'

  To this thrust Valannus made no reply; he wiped his brow with a shakyhand.

  'Do the soldiers know of this?'

  'We left the body by the eastern gate.'

  'You should have concealed the fact, hidden the corpse somewhere in thewoods. The soldiers are nervous enough already.'

  'They'd have found it out some way. If I'd hidden the body, it wouldhave been returned to the fort as the corpse of Soractus was--tied upoutside the gate for the men to find in the morning.'

  Valannus shuddered. Turning, he walked to a casement and stared silentlyout over the river, black and shiny under the glint of the stars. Beyondthe river the jungle rose like an ebony wall. The distant screech of apanther broke the stillness. The night pressed in, blurring the soundsof the soldiers outside the blockhouse, dimming the fires. A windwhispered through the black branches, rippling the dusky water. On itswings came a low, rhythmic pulsing, sinister as the pad of a leopard'sfoot.

  'After all,' said Valannus, as if speaking his thoughts aloud, 'what dowe know--what does anyone know--of the things that jungle may hide? Wehave dim rumors of great swamps and rivers, and a forest that stretcheson and on over everlasting plains and hills to end at last on the shoresof the western ocean. But what things lie between this river and thatocean we dare not even guess. No white man has ever plunged deep intothat fastness and returned alive to tell us what he found. We are wisein our civilized knowledge, but our knowledge extends just so far--tothe western bank of that ancient river! Who knows what shapes earthlyand unearthly may lurk beyond the dim circle of light our knowledge hascast?

  'Who knows what gods are worshipped under the shadows of that heathenforest, or what devils crawl out of the black ooze of the swamps? Whocan be sure that all the inhabitants of that black country are natural?Zogar Sag--a sage of the eastern cities would sneer at his primitivemagic-making as the mummery of a fakir; yet he has driven mad and killedfive men in a manner no man can explain. I wonder if he himself iswholly human.'

  'If I can get withi
n ax-throwing distance of him I'll settle thatquestion,' growled Conan, helping himself to the governor's wine andpushing a glass toward Balthus, who took it hesitatingly, and with anuncertain glance toward Valannus.

  The governor turned toward Conan and stared at him thoughtfully.

  'The soldiers, who do not believe in ghosts or devils,' he said, 'arealmost in a panic of fear. You, who believe in ghosts, ghouls, goblins,and all manner of uncanny things, do not seem to fear any of the thingsin which you believe.'

  'There's nothing in the universe cold steel won't cut,' answered Conan.'I threw my ax at the demon, and he took no hurt, but I might havemissed, in the dusk, or a branch deflected its flight. I'm not going outof my way looking for devils; but I wouldn't step out of my path to letone go by.'

  Valannus lifted his head and met Conan's gaze squarely.

  'Conan, more depends on you than you realize. You know the weakness ofthis province--a slender wedge thrust into the untamed wilderness. Youknow that the lives of all the people west of the marches depend on thisfort. Were it to fall, red axes would be splintering the gates ofVelitrium before a horseman could cross the marches. His majesty, or hismajesty's advisers, have ignored my plea that more troops be sent tohold the frontier. They know nothing of border conditions, and areaverse to expending any more money in this direction. The fate of thefrontier depends upon the men who now hold it.

  'You know that most of the army which conquered Conajohara has beenwithdrawn. You know the force left me is inadequate, especially sincethat devil Zogar Sag managed to poison our water supply, and forty mendied in one day. Many of the others are sick, or have been bitten byserpents or mauled by wild beasts which seem to swarm in increasingnumbers in the vicinity of the fort. The soldiers believe Zogar's boastthat he could summon the forest beasts to slay his enemies.

  'I have three hundred pikemen, four hundred Bossonian archers, andperhaps fifty men who, like yourself, are skilled in woodcraft. They areworth ten times their number of soldiers, but there are so few of them.Frankly, Conan, my situation is becoming precarious. The soldierswhisper of desertion; they are low-spirited, believing Zogar Sag hasloosed devils on us. They fear the black plague with which he threatenedus--the terrible black death of the swamplands. When I see a sicksoldier I sweat with fear of seeing him turn black and shrivel and diebefore my eyes.

  'Conan, if the plague is loosed upon us, the soldiers will desert in abody! The border will be left unguarded and nothing will check the sweepof the dark-skinned hordes to the very gates of Velitrium--maybe beyond!If we can not hold the fort, how can they hold the town?

  'Conan, Zogar Sag must die, if we are to hold Conajohara. You havepenetrated the unknown deeper than any other man in the fort; you knowwhere Gwawela stands, and something of the forest trails across theriver. Will you take a band of men tonight and endeavour to kill orcapture him? Oh, I know it's mad. There isn't more than one chance in athousand that any of you will come back alive. But if we don't get him,it's death for us all. You can take as many men as you wish.'

  'A dozen men are better for a job like that than a regiment,' answeredConan. 'Five hundred men couldn't fight their way to Gwawela and back,but a dozen might slip in and out again. Let me pick my men. I don'twant any soldiers.'

  'Let me go!' eagerly exclaimed Balthus. 'I've hunted deer all my life onthe Tauran.'

  'All right. Valannus, we'll eat at the stall where the foresters gather,and I'll pick my men. We'll start within an hour, drop down the river ina boat to a point below the village and then steal upon it through thewoods. If we live, we should be back by daybreak.'