≡ Chapter 2
Across the vast Pictish wilderness, the same darkness fell over an encampment and the mud huts they used as dwellings. The cooking fires were blazing, casting an orange glow on the surrounding cover of forest that encircled the camp and female Picts, their naked breasts shining blackly in the light, moved here and about it preparing the meal for the group of warriors camped there.
Several of these warriors sat in a group by them selves around a smaller fire, talking and gesticulating, describing their prowess in battle or deriding their counterparts’ skills, laughing and yelling at one another as they waited for their repast. They had not been in the previous day’s conflict; none who had still lived. They had been summoned here by Sagayetha, for what they knew not and did not deign to ask. The mysterious holy man was as much an enigma to them as to their foes and they would rather have faced his great saber toothed cat than question his commands. They simply knew that he wanted them there and that was all they cared to know.
Apart from the main camp, another, larger hut was erected, with a high roof and wide doorways. It was coated in a black pitch like mud so that were it not for the torches alight at the entrance, one could have easily stumbled into it before one saw it clearly. At the entrance to this larger building, a great cat lounged, loudly cracking the bone of some prey beast it had between its enormous paws. It was a saber-toothed cat, supposedly extinct but obviously very much alive and guarding the entrance to this giant mud hut.
Languorously it stretched its massive forepaws, the muscles rippling elegantly beneath its tawny hide and yawned, exposing rows of razor sharp teeth and a pair of two-foot long canines that curved out of either side of its giant head. Its stretch completed, the monstrous twenty-foot throwback to another age put the end of the big bone it was cradling back in its mouth and continued extracting the nutrient rich marrow from it. The loud cracking sound of the bone giving way reverberated through the night air.
Inside the hut, a rank fume-like haze hung like a blanket in the air. The stench of death permeated the atmosphere and the dirt floor crawled with insects, roaches and centipedes scurrying underfoot, fighting one another for the detritus that lay strewn about the place.
A fire was lit in the center of the hut and the heat from it turned the place into a sauna. Behind the fire, cross-legged and naked, sweat pouring from his every pour, sat Sagayetha.
His curly gray hair was long and matted, tendrils of it like the arms of some wooly kraken standing out in all directions. His face, gaunt and haggard in the firelight, was decorated with the ritual scars of his calling and painted white except around the eyes, giving his countenance a skull like quality. Deep in the recesses of these dark pits, his eyes glowed redly and shone like the slag of hell.
Moaning in a low voice and swaying back and forth, Sagayetha raised his hands over an object placed in front of him before the fire, thumbs together. He began to shake, then, his body twitching, his hands seeming to vibrate over the object and his moaning turned to wailing, a high-pitched keening note that got louder and louder until it no longer resembled a human voice at all but rather the voice of a demon from the pits of the abyss. As it reached its crescendo, a lightning bolt struck from a clear sky outside the hut and the great cat guarding the entrance leaped to its feet and screamed, adding its throaty snarl to its master’s incantation.
Around the cooking fire, the warriors gathered there became deathly silent, the whites of their eyes gleaming, the women trembling with fear. Then all was silent.
Back inside the tent, Sagayetha sat still, his wooly head bowed and his arms limp at his side. Finally, after some minutes, he raised his head and regarded the object at his feet.
It was the severed head of an old Pict, remarkably alike in appearance to Sagayetha himself. It was, in fact, the head of Sagayetha’s own father, for whom he was named, and though dead for three decades, its eyes were open and, impossibly, words issued from its gory mouth.
“What trick is this? Why am I trapped in this place? Who has summoned me into Limbo?”
“It is I father, your son, who summons you.”
The fire flared dangerously and hot as the shriveled ancient head of Old Sagayetha wailed.
“AIEEEEEEEEEEEE! You have ripped me from my place in Gehenna! You have disturbed my resssssst! Oh, pain and torment! Why? What do you want of me?”
“I require your sight, O Father, for my enemy is close and I must know where to strike at him next. Look, O Father, through the Great Veil and guide me so that I can revenge you and destroy the house of Conan forever!”
The severed head rolled it eye’s back into their withered sockets and its mouth opened, its black tongue protruding blackly like a moldering slug. A worm crawled from it nostrils and into the black maw as it wailed again.
“AIEEE! Conan! A thousand curses on that barbarian cur! May Father Set eat his liver for a thousand years!”
“Yes, Father, Conan has left these lands and is rumored dead. His heir now sits on the throne of Aquilonia, but he is not his sire. He has not the teeth his father had; he can be beaten. See for me Father, peer through the Veil and tell me where to strike at him!”
The eyes rolled back down and looked into the eyes of Sagayetha. “I will look, O Son, but you must never use me again in this way! You must never pull me away from my resting place in the pits of Gehenna, for the fires cannot touch me there! Here I burn! I BURN! AIEEEEE!”
“Forgive me, Father, but only through your eyes beyond the Veil can I see what needs to be seen.”
“I will look now, O Son. I will peer through the Veil…”
With that the severed head’s eyes glazed white and a blue glow issued from them. For several minutes all was quiet save for the crackling of the fire. Then the glow retreated and once again the head of the ancient shaman spoke.
“I have seen, O Son, I have seen! The force of Aquilonia is gathered in the Bossonian Marches and only a small contingent of guards stays behind in Tarantia. Go there and find the daughter of Conan! Find Radegund! Bring here to the Tree…take her to the Wailing Tree…”
A light went on in Sagayetha’s head.
“Of course!” he exclaimed, “of course! The Wailing Tree!”
The Wailing Tree was a massive willow that grew in the darkest section of the forest that was home to the Picts. Shamans from before the time of the Cataclysm had ensorcelled the tree and imbued it with the power to extract from anyone trapped within its feathery creepers whatever information they required and when the tree was done with its victims, it extracted their souls as payment. Tens of thousands of Picts and their enemies had died gibbering to satisfy the vampiric willow tree’s parasitic thirst over the eons and now Sagayetha planned on feeding it the daughter of his greatest foe and in the process learn the secrets he needed to wipe out the seed of Conan of Cimmeria for all time!
“RELEASE ME! RELEASE MEEEEEE! I have told you what you need to know! Let me go back into my cairn, away from the fire! RELEASE MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
Sagayetha placed his hands back where they had been during the incantation and mumbled three words under his breath. With a final howl, his father’s soul ran screaming back to Gehenna.
Rising, Sagayetha staggered to the door of his hut and called out for his chieftain, Mobutu. Warily, the swarthy Pict chieftain approached the witch hut and stammered, “You called, O Master?”
“Bring me food and water,” Sagayetha snapped, “then come inside. We have things to discuss.”
