≡ Chapter 3
A hundred leagues east, Titus sat brooding in his command tent behind the Pictish front. He was into his wine and sullen about being stranded in command of savages while Sagayetha pulled the strings, orchestrating everything and leaving Titus with little doubt as to who was in charge.
The ageing nobleman had thought his plan of tricking the Picts into fighting his war for him was ingenious. He would have them do all the fighting while keeping his army of mercenaries in reserve until the last minute, when Conn’s army and the Picts had nearly wiped each other out, then he would come in and deliver the death blow, destroying the myth of Conan and the bodies of his son’s in one fell swoop. The Pict’s losses would make them vulnerable and weak and so they would be unable to stop him from wiping them out completely. He would be sole ruler of all the land between Aquilonia and the Western Ocean. A perfect plan, except for one thing.
Sagayetha.
The old man had not counted on the power of the shaman over not only the Picts, but over himself as well. Titus was no coward; in his younger days, he was known for his skill with a sword and had fought in the wars between the provinces in the days when Conan was marching toward Tarantia and the usurpation of the throne.
He had been a friend to Numedides before that king’s slide into depravity and lunacy, and when it was apparent that the kingdom of Aquilonia was bound to change hands, Titus believed it was he, the old king’s ally, who should ascend to the throne. He was not alone in this thinking; practically every man with noble blood wanted the throne for himself. But when it was learned that Conan, a freebooter from the frozen wastes of northern Cimmeria, a mercenary and pirate, a thief, nomad and raider was coming to claim the kingship of the oldest and most prominent kingdom of their time, Titus had resisted, aiding the army of Numedides, supplying them with rations and soldiers from his army.
After the bloody coup was over, Conan, in the interest of a smooth transition and on the advice of those such as Count Trocero of Poitain, had allowed some of the smaller fiefdoms to remain, and Titus’ Couthen was among them.
Stripped of his title and army and forced to swear allegiance to Conan and his heirs, Titus had decided instead to go into exile. He took what he could carry and left Aquilonia for Shem, far to the South, and waited to die.
Then word came to him of the king’s sudden departure and the crowning of his eldest son in his place. Rumors began to circulate about the king’s death; some had it that Conan had contracted a disease and went away into the wilderness of Cimmeria to die. Others said that he gone senile in his old age and his family had him removed to preserve his legacy.
Then the stories of the Red Shadows had emerged.
It was said that Conan had gone in search of the source of the mysterious phantoms that had taken the lives of so many of his closet friends, Count Trocero among them, and that he had followed them across the Western Ocean never to be seen or heard of again.
This was the news that Titus had waited twenty years for and when it finally came, he wasted no time putting his plan of conquest in action. He had servants dig up his treasure trove, large sums of gold and silver pilfered from his estates in Couthen and saved underground for the moment when his need was the greatest. He used the money to buy an army of mercenaries from Shem and Kush. He then sent envoys into the Pictish wilderness, seeking to find one among them who had the respect and power to unite them all and ally them him. So when Titus’ envoy found Sagayetha, the son of another Pictish shaman whose hatred for Conan matched his own, he thought his conspiracy complete. As it turned out, finding Sagayetha was anything but good fortune.
At first the old Pict seemed to go along with Titus’ plans for him and his people. He played the part of the ignorant savage to perfection, stringing Titus along until the former nobleman’s forces were committed, then leaving him and his small contingent of mercenaries with only a token handful of Pictish warriors to defend the boundaries between the Pictish Wilderness and the Bossonian Marches, a nearly impossible task, and now that the first battle had been decidedly not in his favor, the flavor for war had left Titus noble palate.
Slouching in his chair, Titus was a ghost of his former self. Where once his face was proud and handsome, now his jowls drooped and the skin under his gray stubbled chin hung like a turkey’s wattle. His nose was a spider’s web of ruptured blood vessels, bright red from wine and huge black bags puffed out from beneath watery eyes. His hauberk hung loosely from his gaunt frame, and his gauntlets and greaves were black with tarnish.
He bent his drunken gaze on the Pict who had been assigned to him specifically by Sagayetha to keep an eye on him and threw his goblet at him, swearing.
“Don’t stand there so,” he roared, “be useful for once and fetch me some more wine. This tastes like piss!”
The Pict grinned a knowing grin at the old man and disappeared through the tent opening leaving to him grumble to himself.
“Probably is piss,” he mumbled. “I am a Count of Couthen, by Mitra! I am no dog to kennel here in this damnable swamp, waiting for my master to order me hither or yon!” He searched around his chair for his cup, then spied it where it had landed when he threw it at his keeper. Standing up on spindly shanks, he reeled across the space, bent and retrieved his cup, nearly falling forward on his head. Teetering back and forth, he turned and staggered back to his chair. He heard the tent open behind him as he reached the settee and plopped back down.
Through blurry, narrowed eyes he saw that it was not the Pict returning with his wine, but rather one of his own mercenaries, a man named Ninus, whom he had sent ten days before to Sagayetha to report and get new orders. Ninus strode forward and bowed slightly to the drunken noble waiting until ordered to speak.
“Well,” said Titus, belligerent in his drunkenness, “report!”
Ninus cleared his throat. “Sagayetha is gathering his forces, sir, a hundred leagues west. Thousands of Picts are pouring in from every clan, even from the coastal clans, who normally have nothing to do with their inland cousins. All along the border of the forest he has set up outposts with hundreds of Picts at each one, with the main mass at the border of Gunderland.”
Titus leaned forward. “When do we join them?”
Ninus shifted his feet nervously. “We don’t, sir.”
“We don’t? What do you mean we don’t? What are we to do then?”
“Sagayetha wishes my lord to remain here, to keep the army of Conn busy while he gathers his forces.”
“While he gathers my forces, you mean,” spat Titus, outraged that he should be relegated to a diversionary force while the old shaman gains all the glory. “I bought this army, by the gods! I paid for the weapons and I made the truce with the savages and I should be in command!”
With this he tried to stand and fell forward, catching himself with one hand, the other carefully holding his still empty goblet. Cursing sulfurously, he re-deposited himself in his chair. He looked blearily up at his lieutenant and slurred, “What else does the little mummer require of me?”
“Sagayetha sends this message: soon the daughter of our enemy will be in our hands. Until we have her, you needs must stay and harry her brothers constantly, keeping their gaze on you and away from Tarantia. Once the wench is ours, you will break off and join Sagayetha at the Wailing Tree. There you both shall wait for Conn to come to you, where you can both destroy him.”
“The Wailing Tree? What in the name of Nergal is that?”
“I know not, my lord.”
“Well, at least I know now why I am left here to rot,” said Titus, his wits somewhat returning. O this was the shaman’s plan. The Princess Radegund, thought Titus, would make a good hostage, indeed, not to mention a fitting bride for a victorious nobleman. “Go,” he ordered Ninus, “bring my generals to me. We have another attack to plan.”
Tarantia in the early spring; the snow is melting and the runoff forms tiny rivers of pure water to swell the creeks and tributaries. The buds are blooming, the bees collecting their nectar; the fish are coming to bed and feed along the river.
Throughout the outlying villages come the sounds of neighbors emerging from huts, houses and castles after a bitter winter, lords and peasants alike; in Tarantia proper, shops are opening and time is kept by the hollow ringing of the blacksmith’s anvil.
The castle appears empty, only a few servants moving about, preparing meals or washing clothes and in the outer yard a company of recruits are being drilled in swordsmanship.
From her balcony on the fourth story, Princess Radegund could smell the fires below and the aroma of breakfast cooking made her hungry. She goes to the door and asks one of her guards to send for breakfast, then returns to the balcony to watch the recruits drilling in the yard below her.
She is fair skinned, tall and slender, with an open, kind face that more closely resembles her mother the older she gets. She is fourteen, not quite a woman, but old enough to know the power a dark haired young beauty, and a Princess to boot, can have over men.
Her brothers guard her closely; more than one doddering old nobleman had cast unwelcomed eyes at their sister, and been exiled for it. It was not unusual for girls as young as Radegund to marry, but she had about her an innocence and a grace that Conn and Taurus wished to preserve for as long as possible. In fact, it made it quite difficult for Radegund to meet young men her age, because they were all frightened of her siblings to the point that none dared approach her. Still, Radegund was a happy girl and she knew how lucky she was compared to some in her family’s kingdom.
She thought these thoughts in peace, on her balcony as she looked up into morning sky, the breeze stirring her long black tresses. Suddenly, in the courtyard below her, a hue and cry arose and a tawny blur of motion captured her attention. She gasped in shock, for down in the courtyard had bounded a giant saber toothed cat, all muscle and fangs and it screamed as it tore into the company of recruits, rending flesh and sinew with razor sharp claws, breaking backs and necks with its powerful paws and lopping of limbs and heads with every slash of its two foot fangs.
Several of the old veterans who were training the recruits took up bows and began firing, but the arrows missed the vitals of the beast, fletching it in the flanks and shoulders, and then it was on them, tearing them into bloody bits.
Radegund ran to the door and yelled at the two guards outside to go to the aid of their comrades and as she turned back around to return to the balcony she stopped short, her breath catching in her throat. Before her was a gaunt, skinny dark skinned man, a Pict, with wild hair and scars covering his face, chest and torso. He pointed a taloned finger at Radegund and rasped, “You call yourself a Princess, but I see only the bitch-child of Conan. Come, Princess,” he snarled, “I have things to show you.” He took a step toward her.
Quick as viper, Radegund snatched up a letter opener on a nearby table for protection, spun and bolted from the room. As she crossed the threshold she turned left and raced down the curving corridor to where she knew the stairs were. She turned the corner full speed and slammed directly into what felt to her like a stone wall. She fell over backwards, landing hard on the cobbled floor.
She looked up in shock into the face of the man she had just left back in her bed chamber. There was no way he could have gotten there ahead of her, but he was there, and as he reached down to clutch her by throat, she remembered the letter opener in her hand.
With all of the strength the girl could muster, Radegund slashed at the Pict with the letter opener, opening his hand across the palm from thumb to wrist. To her dismay, he didn’t even flinch. Instead he stood, and keeping his eyes on her, transfixing her, he licked his own blood as it ran down his arm, then licked the wound itself, blood running down his chin and chest. Then he showed her his hand and before her astonished eyes, the wound miraculously closed, the blood drying around it. She slashed at it again, but this time he easily caught her wrist and twisted it cruelly until she released her grip on the letter opener. He then twisted her arm back behind her, making her cry out in pain and whispered harshly in her ear, “Know, girl, that I am Sagayetha – Sagayetha! – like my father before me, and like my father I live only to see the house of Conan reduced to hot ashes before I go to Gehenna, and I will take as many of your dogs with me as is necessary to see it done!”
He spun her around and caught both of her wrists, bruising the delicate flesh against the bone, laughing at the expression of fear and pain on her young face.
“Now sleep, Princess. You have a long journey ahead of you.” Sagayetha passed his gnarled hand across Radegund’s face and as he did so she instantly fell into an ensorcelled slumber.
The old shaman mumbled an incantation in an ancient and forgotten tongue and then the room lit up in a brilliant flash of light. When the light had dissipated, the shaman and Princess Radegund had vanished.
Out in the courtyard, the saber toothed cat raised its bloody muzzle from its afternoon meal and with a snarl bounded over the outer wall and raced away into the country side.
As the remaining retinue inside the castle came to its senses, the realization of what had just happened hit home; the castle had been attacked, it defenses decimated and the Princess Radegund was no where to be found.
Princess Radegund, the first daughter of Conan the Great, awoke groggily to a stink that instantly made her cough and retch.
She was inside the hut of Sagayetha, bound naked standing upright to a post in the center of the hut beside the ever burning embers of the witch’s fire, wherein the hearts and other vitals of man and beast had been sacrificed to the pantheon of devils the old shaman must needs have congress with to ply his evil trade. He marked her as she stirred into wakefulness.
“Good evening, Princess,” he mocked. “I had feared my magic was too much for you. I had feared you spent.”
Even though she was only fourteen and a female, Radegund was yet a child of Conan.
“Curse you, dog of a Pict. My brothers will come for me,” she said defiantly, “and when they do…”
“When they do, I will destroy them,” Sagayetha interrupted, “and their army with them, and all the white men who dwell in the lands they stole from my people.”
“Your people?” Radegund spat back. “You are the spawn of devils. What have you to do with actual men, even Picts?”
Sagayetha chuckled. “You are your father’s child,” he chided as he slowly rose and approached her. “But that is to be expected. Your father and his ancestors were all descended from apes in the Cimmerian high lands, and you and your brothers are the great grandchildren of apes, no more deserving of pity or mercy than a cur gone mad.”
His words infuriated and shamed the young Princess so that she fairly shook with rage and tears ran down her cheeks leaving white streaks in the layer of ash and dust that covered them. She was ashamed that she could think of no words, no curses to use that would have any effect on her tormentor, that he was, indeed, in full control over her.
He reached out a misshapen hand and with the tip of one finger, plucked a tear from the tip of her nose as it hung there, poised to fall into the dust. He brought the finger to his lips and tasted it, and a wicked grin creased his scraggy countenance.
Radegund shuddered in revulsion, and a new fear lit her features. She was a virgin; the fear that this creature who so hated her and her family would have no compunction over ravaging her, would in fact probably relish in it, knifed its way into her soul. She wondered if the thing could read her mind when he said to her, “Not to worry, little Princess,” he leered, “I will not take your innocence from you. Not yet. Not until after you have fulfilled your purpose.”
“What purpose? What do you mean to do with me?” she cried.
“You are to be the bait, my child, the red meat that draws in the lions to the trap. Once the trap is sprung, however, once your role is played, you will go the Wailing Tree, where your soul will be sacrificed to Father Set. Until then you will be unmolested. I cannot speak as to what will happen to your body afterwards.”
The mental images that the shaman’s words conjured up in her were too much for Radegund. Her eyes wide with fear, she dropped her head on her breast and sobbed, and as she cried, Sagayetha danced around the fire cackling with glee.
