Part 64 (1/2)

The Picts had benefitted by contact with Hyborian civilization, but they had always fiercely resisted that contact That is to say, they had learned to work crudely in copper and tin, which was found scantily in their country, and for which latter ara, or traded hides, whale's teeth, walrus tusks and such few things as savages have to trade They no longer lived in caves and tree-shelters, but built tents of hides, and crude huts, copied from those of the Bossonians They still lived ame of all sorts, and the rivers and sea with fish, but they had learned how to plant grain, which they did sketchily, preferring to steal it froarans They dwelt in clans which were generally at feud with each other, and their simple customs were blood-thirsty and utterly inexplicable to a civilized man, such as Arus of Nemedia They had no direct contact with the Hyborians, since the Bossonians acted as a buffer between theress, and events

357proved the truth of his assertion though scarcely in the way hethrown in with a chief of ence Gorhis Khan, Othman, Attila, or any of those individuals, who, born in naked lands a untutored barbarians, yet possess the instinct for conquest and e In a sort of bastard-Bossonian, the priest h extre his tribe unbutchered a case unique in the history of the race Having learned the language Arus set himself to work to eliminate the more unpleasant phases of Pictish life

such as hu alive of captives He harangued Gorth, whoination reconstructs the scene the black-haired chief, in his tiger-skins and necklace of hu on the dirt floor of the wattle hut, listening intently to the eloquence of the priest, who probably sat on a carven, skin-covered block of any provided in his honor clad in the silken robes of a Ne with his slender white hands as he expounded the eternal rights and justices which were the truths of Mitra Doubtless he pointed with repugnance at the rows of skulls which adorned the walls of the hut and urged Gor their bleached rehest product of an innately artistic race, refined by centuries of civilization; Gore of a hundred thousand years of screaer was in his stealthy step, the grip of the gorilla in his black-nailed hands, the fire that burns in a leopard's eyes burned in his

Arus was a practical ain; he pointed out the power and splendor of the Hyborian kingdos and works had lifted theh places And he spoke of cities, and fertile plains, marble walls and iron chariots, jeweled towers, and horse to battle And Gor instinct of the barbarian, passed over his words regarding Gods and their teachings, and fixed on the material powers thus vividly described

There in that mud-floored wattle hut, with the silk-robed priest on thein his tiger-hides, was laid the foundations of empire

As has been said, Arus was a practical ent man could do to aid huer-skins and wore necklaces of human teeth Like all priests of Mitra, he was instructed in s

He found that there were vast deposits of iron ore in the Pictish hills, and he taught the natives to ricultural implements, as he fondly believed

He instituted other refors he did: he instilled in Gorht the Picts hoork in iron; and he established contact between them and the civilized world At the chief's request he conducted hih the Bossonian ers stared in a outer world

358

Arus no doubt thought that he was ht and left, because the Picts listened to hi him with their copper axes But the Pict was little calculated to seriously regard teachings which bade hiive his eneery It has been said that he lacked artistic sense; his whole nature led to war and slaughter When the priest talked of the glories of the civilized nations, his dark- skinned listeners were intent, not on the ideals of his religion, but on the loot which he unconsciously described in the narration of rich cities and shi+ning lands When he told how Mitra aided certain kings to overcome their enemies, they paid scant heed to theon the description of battle-lines, hts, and maneuvers of archers and spearmen They harkened with keen dark eyes and inscrutable countenances, and they went their ithout co intentness his instructions as to the working of iron, and kindred arts

Before his co they had filched steel weapons and ararans, or had hammered out their own crude arms from copper and bronze Now a neorld opened to thehout the land And Goran to assert his dominance over other clans, partly by war, partly by craft and diplomacy, in which latter art he excelled all other barbarians

Picts now came and went freely into Aquilonia, under safe-conduct, and they returned withMore, they entered Aquilonia's ust of the sturdy Bossonians Aquilonia's kings toyed with the idea of playing the Picts against the Ci both ression in the south and east to pay uely-known lands of the west, from whichthe mercenaries

These warriors, their service coood ideas of civilized warfare, and that contempt for civilization which arises froan to beat in the hills, gathering-fires se sword- ues and forays too numerous and devious to enumerate, Gor the Picts had had in thousands of years He had waited long; he was past ainst the frontiers, not in trade, but in war

Arus saw his an, in which lurked the hard fierceness of all the ages His persuasive eloquence had not caused a ripple in the Pictish conscience Gorer-skin, but underneath he was unchanged the everlasting barbarian, unly on rapine and plunder

The Picts burst on the Bossonian frontiers with fire and sword, not clad in tiger-skins and

359brandishi+ng copper axes as of yore, but in scale- weapons of keen steel As for Arus, he was brained by a drunken Pict, while ly done Gorratitude; he caused the skull of the slayer to be set on the top of the priest's cairn And it is one of the grim ironies of the universe that the stones which covered Arus' body should have been adorned with that last touch of barbarity above a

But the neeapons and h to break the lines For years the superior are of the Bossonians held the invaders at bay, aided, when necessary, by i this time the Hyrkanians came and went, and Zamora was added to the empire

Then treachery from an unexpected source broke the Bossonian lines Before chronicling this treachery, it lance briefly at the Aquilonian edom, untold wealth had been rolled in by conquest, and sumptuous splendor had taken the place of sieneracy had not yet sapped the kings and the people; though clad in silks and cloth-of-gold, they were still a vital, virile race But arrogance was supplanting their for conteos, Zingara, Ophir, Zaated provinces, which was especially galling to the proud Zingarans, who often revolted, despite savage retaliations

Koth was practically tributary, being under Aquilonia's ”protection” against the Hyrkanians

But Nemedia the western eh the latter's triuenerally attained with the aid of Hyperborean ar this period Aquilonia's only defeats were: her failure to annex Nemedia; the rout of an army sent into Cimmeria; and the almost complete destruction of an army by the aesir Just as the Hyrkanians found thees of the Aquilonians, so the latter, invading the snow countries, were overwhel of the Nordics But Aquilonia's conquests were pushed to the Nilus, where a Stygian aria sent tribute once at least to divert invasion of his kingdom Brythunia was reduced in a series of ars, and preparations were ate the ancient rival at last Nereatly increased by ainst their old-time foe, and it seemed as if the thrust were destined to crush the last shadow of Nemedian independence But contentions arose between the Aquilonians and their Bossonian auxiliaries

As the inevitable result of ihty and intolerant They derided the ruder, unsophisticated Bossonians, and hard feeling greeen the the Bossonians, and the latter resenting the attitude of their

360masters who now boldly called themselves such, and treated the Bossonians like conquered subjects, taxing the them for their wars of territorial expansion wars the profits of which the Bossonians shared little Scarcely enough uard the frontier, and hearing of Pictish outrages in their hon and marched to the western frontier, where they defeated the dark-skinned invaders in a great battle

This desertion, however, was the direct cause of Aquilonia's defeat by the desperate Neht down on the Bossonians the cruel wrath of the ihted as iiht to the borders of the reat conclave, and, in the guise of an expedition against the Picts, bands of savage Sheers The unarmed chiefs were massacred, the Shemites turned on their stunned hosts with torch and sword, and the armored i people Froed and the Aquilonian ar a ruined and devastated land behind them

And then the Pictish invasion burst in full power along those borders It was no mere raid, but the concerted rush of a whole nation, led by chiefs who had served in Aquilonian armies, and planned and directed by Gorm an old man now, but with the fire of his fierce aes in their path, manned by sturdy archers, to hold back the rush until the iht up The remnants of the Bossonians were swept out of existence, and the blood-, before the legions, warring again with the Neara seized this opportunity to throw off the yoke, which exaiments of mercenaries and vassalsand burning as they went The Picts surged irresistibly eastward, and host after host was trampled beneath their feet Without their Bossonian archers the Aquilonians found themselves unable to cope with the terrible arrow-fire of the barbarians Froions were recalled to resist the onrush, while from the wilderness horde after horde swarmed forth, in apparently inexhaustible supply And in the midst of this chaos, the Ci the ruin

They looted cities, devastated the country, and retired into the hills with their plunder, but the Picts occupied the land they had over-run And the Aquilonian eain the Hyrkanians rode froions from Zamora was their incitement Za established his capital in the largest city of the country This invasion was frodom of Turan, on the shores of the inland sea, but another, e Hyrkanian thrust caalloped around the northern

361extremity of the inland sea, traversed the icy deserts, entered the steppes, driving the aborigines before thedoms These newcomers were not at first allies with the Turanians, but skirmished with them as with the Hyborians; new drifts of eastern warriors bickered and fought, until all were united under a great chief, who ca from the very shores of the eastern ocean With no Aquilonian armies to oppose theated Brythunia, and devastated southern Hyperborea, and Corinthia They swept into the Ci the black- haired barbarians before the the hills, where cavalry was less effectual, the Cimmerians turned on them, and only a disorderly retreat, at the end of a whole day of bloody fighting, saved the Hyrkanian hosts from complete annihilation

While these events had been transpiring, the kingdoms of Shem had conquered their ancient master, Koth, and had been defeated in an atteia But scarcely had they coradation of Koth, when they were over-run by the Hyrkanians, and found theated by sterner masters than the Hyborians had ever been Meanwhile the Picts had made the out the inhabitants They had broken over the borders of Zingara, and thousands of Zingarans, fleeing the slaughter into Argos, threw the Hyrkanians, who settled theos was enveloped in the flahter of Pictish conquest, and the slayers swept into Ophir and clashed with the ard-riding Hyrkanians The latter, after their conquest of Sheian army at the Nilus and overrun the country as far south as the black kingdoht back thousands as captives, settling the the Shemites Possibly they would have co eainst their western conquests