Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. The Hour of the Dragon by Robert E. Howard (types of ebook readers txt) 📖
- Author: Robert E. Howard
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eyes and pointed, rat-like teeth. They did not speak. Lifting the
corpse, they bore it away.
Dismissing the matter with a wave of his hand, Xaltotun seated himself
at the ivory table about which sat the pale kings. “Why are you in
conclave?” he demanded. “The Aquilonians have risen in the west,”
answered Amalric, recovering from the grisly jolt the death of Orastes
had given him. “The fools believe that Conan is alive, and coming at
the head of a Poitanian army to reclaim his kingdom. If he had
reappeared immediately after Valkia, or if a rumor had been circulated
that he lived, the central provinces would not have risen under him,
they feared your powers so. But they have become so desperate under
Valerius’s misrule that they are ready to follow any man who can unite
them against us, and prefer sudden death to torture and continual
misery.
“Of course the tale has lingered stubbornly in the land that J Conan
was not really slam at Valkia, but not until recently have I the
masses accepted it. But Pallantides is back from exile in Ophir,
swearing that the king was ill in his tent that day, and that a manat-arms wore his harness, and a squire who but recently recovered from
the stroke of a mace received at Valkia confirms his tale-or pretends
to.
“An old woman with a pet wolf has wandered up and down the land,
proclaiming that King Conan yet lives, and will return some day to
reclaim the crown. And of late the cursed priests of Asura sing the
same song. They claim that word has come to them by some mysterious
means that Conan is returning to reconquer his domain. I cannot catch
either her or them. This is, of course, a trick of Trocero’s. My spies
tell me there is indisputable evidence that the Poitanians are
gathering to invade Aquilonia. I believe that Trocero will bring
forward some pretender who he will claim is King Conan.”
Tarascus laughed, but there was no conviction in his laughter. He
surreptitiously felt a scar beneath his jupon, and remembered ravens
that cawed on the trail of a fugitive; remembered the body of his
squire, Arideus, brought back from the border mountains horribly
mangled, by a great gray wolf, his terrified soldiers said. But he
also remembered a red jewel stolen from a golden chest while a wizard
slept, and he said nothing.
And Valerius remembered a dying nobleman who gasped out a tale of
fear, and he remembered four Khitans who disappeared into the mazes of
the south and never returned. But he held his tongue, for hatred and
suspicions of his allies ate at him like a worm, and he desired
nothing so much as to see both rebels and Nemedians go down locked in
the death grip.
But Amalric exclaimed, “It is absurd to dream that Conan lives!”
For answer Xaltotun cast a roll of parchment on the table.
Amalric caught it up, glared at it. From his lips burst a furious,
incoherent cry. He read:
To Xaltotun, grand fakir of Nemedia: Dog of Acheron, I am returning to
my kingdom, and I mean to hang your hide on a bramble.
CONAN.
“A forgery!” exclaimed Amalric.
Xaltotun shook his head.
“It is genuine. I have compared it with the signature on the royal
documents in the libraries of the court. None could imitate that bold
scrawl.”
“Then if Conan lives,” muttered Amalric, “this uprising will not be
like the others, for he is the only man living who can unite the
Aquilonians. But,” he protested, “this is not like Conan. Why should
he put us on guard with his boasting? One would think that he would
strike without warning, after the fashion of the barbarians.”
“We are already warned,” pointed out Xaltotun. “Our spies have told us
of preparations for war in Poitain. He could not cross the mountains
without our knowledge; so he sends his defiance in characteristic
manner.”
“Why to you?” demanded Valerius. “Why not to me, or to Tarascus?”
Xaltotun turned his inscrutable gaze upon the king. “Conan is wiser
than you,” he said at last. “He already knows what you kings have yet
to leam-that it is not Tarascus, nor Valerius, no, nor Amalric, but
Xaltotun who is the real master of the western nations.”
They did not reply; they sat staring at him, assailed by a numbing
realization of the truth of his assertion.
“There is no road for me but the imperial highway,” said Xaltotun.
“But first we must crush Conan. I do not know how he escaped me at
Belverus, for knowledge of what happened while I lay in the slumber of
the black lotus is denied me. But he is in the south, gathering an
army. It is his last, desperate blow, made possible only by the
desperation of the people who have suffered under Valerius. Let them
rise; I hold them all in the palm of my hand. We will wait until he
moves against us, and then we will crush him once and for all.
“Then we shall crush Poitain and Gunderland and the stupid Bossonians.
After them Ophir, Argos, Zingara, Koth-all the nations of the world we
shall weld into one vast empire. You shall rule as my satraps, and as
my captains shall be greater than kings are now. I am unconquerable,
for the Heart of Ahriman is hidden where no man can ever wield it
against me again.”
Tarascus averted his gaze, lest Xaltotun read his thoughts. He knew
the wizard had not looked into the golden chest with its carven
serpents that had seemed to sleep, since he laid the Heart therein.
Strange as it seemed, Xaltotun did not know that the Heart had been
stolen; the strange jewel was beyond or outside the ring of his dark
wisdom; his uncanny talents did not warn him that the chest was empty.
Tarascus did not believe that Xaltotun knew the full extent of
Orastes’ revelations, for the Pythonian had not mentioned the
restoration of Acheron, but only the building of a new, earthly
empire. Tarascus did not believe that Xaltotun was yet quite sure of
his power; if they needed his aid in their ambitions, no less he
needed theirs. Magic depended, to a certain extent after all, on sword
strokes and lance thrusts. The king read meaning in Amalric’s furtive
glance; let the wizard use his arts to help them defeat their most
dangerous enemy. Time enough then to turn against him. There might yet
be a way to cheat this dark power they had raised.
CONFIRMATION OF THE war came when the army of Poitain, ten thousand
strong, marched through the southern passes with waving banners and
shimmer of steel. And at their head, the spies swore, rode a giant
figure in black armor, with the royal lion of Aquilonia worked in gold
upon the breast of his rich silken surcoat. Conan lived! The king
lived! There was no doubt of it in men’s minds now, whether friend or
foe.
With the news of the invasion from the south there also came word,
brought by hard-riding couriers, that a host of Gundermen was moving
southward, reinforced by the barons of the northwest and the northern
Bossonians. Tarascus marched with thirty-one thousand men to Galparan,
on the river Shirki, which the Gundermen must cross to strike at the
towns still held by the Nemedians. The Shirki was a swift, turbulent
river rushing southwestward through rocky gorges and canyons, and
there were few places where an army could cross at that time of the
year, when the stream was almost bank-full with the melting of the
snows. All the country east of the Shirki was in the hands of the
Nemedians, and it was logical to assume that the Gundermen would
attempt to cross either at Galparan, or at Tanasul, which lay to the
south of Galparan. Reinforcements were daily expected from Nemedia,
until word came that the king of Ophir was making hostile
demonstrations on Nemedia’s southern border, and to spare any more
troops would be to expose Nemedia to the risk of an invasion from the
south.
Amalric and Valerius moved out from Tarantia with twenty-five thousand
men, leaving as large a garrison as they dared to discourage revolts
in the cities during their absence. They wished to meet and crush
Conan before he could be joined by the rebellious forces of the
kingdom.
The king and his Poitanians had crossed the mountains, but there had
been no actual clash of arms, no attack on towns or fortresses. Conan
had appeared and disappeared. Apparently he had turned westward
through the wild, thinly settled hill country, and entered the
Bossonian marches, gathering recruits as he went. Amalric and Valerius
with their host, Nemedians, Aquilonian renegades, and ferocious
mercenaries, moved through the land in baffled wrath, looking for a
foe which did not appear.
Amalric found it impossible to obtain more than vague general tidings
about Conan’s movements. Scouting-pardes had a way of riding out and
never returning, and it was not uncommon to find a spy crucified to an
oak. The countryside was up and striking as peasants and countryfolk
strike-savagely, murderously and secretly. All that Amalric knew
certainly was that a large force of Gundermen and northern Bossonians
was somewhere to the north of him, beyond the Shirki, and that Conan
with a smaller force of Poitanians and southern Bossonians was
somewhere to the southwest of him.
He began to grow fearful that if he and Valerius advanced farther into
the wild country, Conan might elude them entirely, march around them
and invade the central provinces behind them. Amalric fell back from
the Shirki valley and camped in a plain a day’s ride from Tanasul.
There he waited. Tarascus maintained his position at Galparan, for he
feared that Conan’s maneuvers were intended to draw him southward, and
so let the Gundermen into the kingdom at the northern crossing.
To Amalric’s camp came Xaltotun in his chariot drawn by the uncanny
horses that never tired, and he entered Amalric’s tent where the baron
conferred with Valerius over a map spread on an ivory camp table.
This map Xaltotun crumpled and flung aside.
“What your scouts cannot learn for you,” quoth he, “my spies tell me,
though their information is strangely blurred and imperfect, as if
unseen forces were working against me.”
“Conan is advancing the Shirki river with ten thousand Poitanians,
three thousand southern Bossonians, and barons of the west and south
with the retainers to the number of five thousand. An army of thirty
thousand Gundermen and northern Bossonians is pushing southward to
join him-They have established contact by means of secret
communications used by the cursed priests of Asura, who seem to be
opposing me, and whom I will feed to a serpent when the battle is
over-I swear it by Set!
“Both armies are headed for the crossing at Tanasul, but I do not
believe that the Gundermen will cross the river. I believe that Conan
will cross, instead, and join them.”
“Why should Conan cross the river?”
“Because it is to his advantage to delay the battle. The longer he
waits, the stronger he will become, the more precarious our position.
The hills on the other side of the river swarm with people
passionately loyal to his cause-broken men, refugees, fugitives from
Valerius’s cruelty. From all over the kingdom men are hurrying to join
his army, singly and by companies. Daily, parties from our armies are
ambushed and cut to pieces by the countryfolk. Revolt grows in the
central provinces, and will soon burst into open rebellion. The
garrisons we left there
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