Part 2 (1/2)

It was in the darkness before dawn that King Conan stirred on his couch, which was no more than a pile of silks and furs thrown on a dais, and awakened He started up, crying out sharply and clutching at his sword

Pallantides, his coht, his hand on his hilt, and perspiration dripping froely pale face

'Your Majesty!' exclaiht auards out?'

'Five hundred horseeneral 'The Neht They wait for dawn, even as we'

'By Cro that dooht'

He stared up at the great golden las and carpets of the great tent They were alone; not even a slave or a page slept on the carpeted floor; but Conan's eyes blazed as they ont to blaze in the teeth of great peril, and the sword quivered in his hand Pallantides watched hi

'Listen!' hissed the king 'Did you hear it? A furtive step!'

'Seven knights guard your tent, your Majesty,' said Pallantides 'None could approach it unchallenged'

'Not outside,' growled Conan 'It seemed to sound inside the tent'

Pallantides cast a swift, startled look around The velvet hangings ed with shadows in the corners, but if there had been anyone in the pavilion besides theain he shook his head

'There is no one here, sire You sleep in thein thethat walks on invisible feet and is not seen--'

'Perhaps you were drea, your Majesty,' said Pallantides, sorunted Conan 'A devilish drea, weary roads I traveled on shi+p'

He fell silent, and Pallantides stared at hieneral, as to most of his civilized subjects

Pallantides knew that Conan had walked e roads in his wild, eventful life, and had been s before a twist of Fate set hiain the battlefield whereon I was born,' said Conan, resting his chin moodily on a massive fist 'I sawmy spear at the ain, a het the Zaporoska River, a corsair looting the coasts of Kush, a pirate of the Barachan Isles, a chief of the His I've been, and of all these things I dreamed; all the shapes that have been I passed like an endless procession, and their feet beat out a dirge in the sounding dust

'But throughout hostly shadows, and a faraway voiceon this dais in my tent, and a shape bent over me, robed and hooded I lay unable to rinned down at me Then it was that I awoke'

'This is an evil drea a shudder 'But no more'

Conan shook his head, more in doubt than in denial He came of a barbaric race, and the superstitions and instincts of his heritage lurked close beneath the surface of his consciousness

'I've drealess But by Croht and won, for I've had a grisly preue Why did it cease when he died?'

'Men say he sinned--'

'Men are fools, as always,' grunted Conan 'If the plague struck all who sinned, then by Cro!

Why should the Gods--who the priests tell me are just--slay five hundred peasants and , if the whole pestilence were ai blindly, like swordshter, Aquilonia would have had a new king long ago

'No! The black plague's no coian to only by wizards I was a swordsia, and of his thirty thousand, fifteen thousand perished by Stygian arrows, and the rest by the black plague that rolled on us like a wind out of the south I was the only man who lived'

'Yet only five hundred died in Neued Pallantides