I had recently been promoted lieutenant general of the ordnance and appointed to the Privy Council. Now the real William Howe was the grandson of Sophia von Kielmansegg, Countess of Leinster and Darlington, an acknowledged illegitimate half-sister of King George I. So I was a disreputable cousin of King George III.

 

The surrender of Yorktown had happened on October 19, 1781, and for all intents and purposes, the war with the Colonies was over. Or was it?

 

Well its been almost a year since the House of Commons agreed to end all further military actions against those on the other side of the pond and about 5 years since I resigned my post as Commander-in-Chief of British land forces. Being a Whig, I was in the employment of those who controlled the Bank of England, or at least they thought I was, and the Whig’s sought an end to the hostilities for the commencement of silver to return to the London merchants who suffered from unpaid debts from prior to the outbreak of the war.

 

They smartly opined that it is not the one who wins the battle, but in truth—the victory goes to the one who holds the purse strings. So we have seen, just last month, the creation of the Bank of North America. Prior Hamilton, the prime pupil of the Whig Reverend Knox, had been appointed Secretary of the Treasury on September 11th. Upon the creation of The Bank of North America, Hamilton was mentored by William Bingham, the future financier of bank. Bingham just happened to be married to the bank’s president’s daughter. Now their daughter would in time marry Alexander Baring; of Baring Brothers Bank who controlled 1/3 of the Bank of England through his father’s bank and another 1/3 through being the controlling partner in the English branch of Hope & Co. Now the future prosperity of this diverse continent with all of its resources has been guaranteed to come back to the mother country without future bloodshed. So it was for the Rothschilds to set up stakes, for at the moment they have not found inroads into the federal bank of this new country nor the grand continent it found itself within.

 

So how did I become William Howe, you might ask? Well you can blame it on the rains of Cape Breton.

 

It was the Second Siege of the Fortress of Louisbourg. It was the French and Indian War and I, Henry Sinclair was with Rogers Rangers with General Wolf making a beachhead. We were fighting to move cannons through a bog when this young officer was yanking the front of our barrel as me and my distant nephew Arthur St. Clair and John Young was pushing from the rear fighting to push it out of the bog over this slimy rock when...Israel Putnam distracted the young officer just as we got the rear out of the bog and it fell forward with a great thrust and crushed William Howe.

 

We were pushing up the last cannon in a long line and we were the only ones to have noticed. At the time I was just a foot soldier, cannon fodder. Nobody would notice if I was gone? Arthur was kin and John was appointed by my great, great, great grandson to be Grand Master of North America and the West Indies of The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry and Putnam, who got the poor boy killed was at the time an Apprentice Mason; our secret was safe. We figured it would be a good ploy, for the eventual freedom of Scotland and to keep a hand on the future growth of this new world. I figured it would not be bad to be related to a king. It was uncanny how much I looked like Howe and how his uniform was such a good fit.

 

All there was left was to try to bribe Sophia, and when she refused, blackmail for she had taken up her father’s philandering. Which was OK for Ernest Augustus the Elector of Hanover, but not for a woman even if she was a royal bastard or not.

 

So in time I headed the British forces against the Rebels, not by my desire, and it was I who conceded the war when I waged the campaign on Philadelphia and not Albany. The loss at Saratoga brought the French, at the bequest of the Marquis Lafayette, and the Spanish into the war on the side of Colonies, which led to the defeat at Yorktown.

 

Now during a campaign, I met this ineffectual young general who was only worse at poker. We met at Welch’s Tavern after the Battle of Brandywine. In those days all hostilities ended at sunset and the officers on both sides would gather together over pints. I won a piece of property, a dogleg, on the southern tip of General Lacey’s bog iron operation.

 

Yeah I know, you are getting bogged down in this story from Louisbourg bog to NJ bog; so I will get to the point.

 

The Ark of the Covenant.

 

 

Yes!

 

That Ark of the Covenant.

 

It was not one of the original Templar treasures that I sailed to the new world and hid within the tunnels of Salem in 1398. In fact, it had just come into the hands of the Sinclairs at Roslyn toward the time of the Intolerable Acts. My old friends John Young and Arthur St Clair met Israel Putnam and myself in Salem, prior to the Battle of Lexington, to deliver it to me from my grandson William. Intrigues against Scotland, from England, at the time threatened its safety as the Rothschilds sought it out; believing it should be within Jewish hands and not Christian. They also believed it could create gold out of thin air and it would provide means for them to take over the Bank of England away from Baring Brothers.

 

Their mercenaries from their city of Hesse were becoming a major force within the politics of Germany and England, which have been melded together since William of Orange. Not to mention William I of Hesse, who the Rothschilds controlled financially, was married to King George II’s daughter. It was fair to say the Rothschild financed the British Regulars as well. Ever wonder why they wore red coats? The Red Coat family sponsored them; the Rothschild family with the coat of arms of a red shield.

 

So as General John Burgoyne headed south with his Hessian force, I was moving the Ark deep into the woods of the Jersey Pine Barrens out of Philadelphia. I had made terms with Benjamin Franklin, fellow Mason, to hide the Ark under Independence Hall the night President John Hancock applied his signature to the Declaration of Independence.

 

Prior, when General Leslie brought his assault in the days prior to the Battle of Lexington, his order was to attack Robert Foster’s blacksmith shop.

 

Along with 27 cannons from Richard Derby’s ships, Foster was affixing the Ark to a field carriage to be pulled safely out of Salem. When locals put up the Old North Bridge they stopped Leslie from crossing the river, where the shop was just on the other side. Prior to his arrival the Ark was safely removed to Jonathan Mason’s home on the hill, but they still had to distract him with several verbal assaults as the citizens hung from the bridge as they pushed the 27 cannons to Mason’s house as well. Only after the cannons were moved, did the British cross. This was the hidden piece of Leslie’s Retreat.

 

 

Loyalist Dr. Edward Augustus Holyoke, a double agent, had informed us of William Brown’s and George Perkins’ treachery informing the British about the Ark. When word got out about Brown, he was forced to escape with his life as the locals came out after him and confiscated his property. Later the house of blood in which Elias Hasket Derby Jr. infamously drained his victims in would be built on that, Salem’s lot. George Perkins also fled Salem for Turkey where he was funding the Bank of England through his sales of opium from their ports to China. His cousins James and Thomas Perkins, who had also profited greatly from those sales, remained. The Perkins cousins worked with Samuel Ward, Baring Brothers agent, to confiscate the Ark. The two families were holding strange cabals at Brown’s Folly on top of Castle Hill where the infamous Indian Massacre had happened in 1624, just less than a mile away on the same ridge was the site of the hangings. That story of how I escaped with the Ark against their maniacal obsession, is for another time.

 

William Brown just became Governor of Bermuda this month. Just a little side note...

 

Afterward, through Reverend William Bentley and John Hancock I was able to secure a meeting with Benjamin Franklin within the Essex Lodge to secure a home under Independence Hall for the Ark. Franklin wanted to study it and see if it could be used as a weapon for the Patriots cause. Prior to the French and Indian War, I had ran a tavern on Winter Island in between Fort William and Richard Derby’s Wharf in which Bentley drank at as a young man. He and Putnam were the only ones who remembered my old alias, before I became Howe, within Salem. You can only be twenty-five years old for so long till someone notices…

 

So now you can understand how President John Hanson, Arthur, Israel, John, and myself find ourselves pinned down outside of Cedar Bridge Tavern deep in the Pines of NJ by some Pine Robbers led by John Bacon and Refugee Hessians, who have stolen the Ark. This tale of mine is about the last official battle of the Revolutionary War on December 27, St. Stephen’s Day. Pinned down in the mud and snow dressed in humiliating straw mummers costumes...

 

 

 

The Ark. Why were the British after it? It is a large electrical capacitor. A box of acacia wood that acted as an insulator between two gold plates placed within and without. On top were two cherubs which acted as terminals of opposite polarity. Carrying the box between two wooden posts it could be moved safely as it traveled through dry climates where the friction of the sand on the wind would build up an immense electric charge within. Its great electrical charges could be directed against an opponent and it could be used to power any sort of device. Franklin, an early proponent of electricity knew full well of its potential and it was his son the Loyalist Governor of NJ who sent these Pine Robbers to my quarters at the southern edge of General Lacey’s bog iron operation to steal the Ark.

 

The Hessians, in the employ of the Rothschilds, were hoping to be paid handsomely for this prize which could secure that family within the hallow halls of the Bank of England. What a prize it was turning out to be with the resources and wealth of this continent being guaranteed through the Bank of North America to the Bank of England.

 

When I had captured Philadelphia, Franklin had understood that there were many officers under my command that would break orders and steal the Ark for Rothschild’s Hessians. August 29, 1781 was the end of The Masonic Congress of Wilhelmsbad, Germany. William I of Hesse’s brother Karl called together the conference which was attempted to be held within the Rothschilds’ castle. Instead at Hanau-Wilhelmsbad spa the fate of Rite of Strict Observance, which was being infiltrated by Weishaupt’s Illuminati, was to be settled. Rite of Strict Observance was making a break from our Scottish Freemasonry centered in Roslyn. The new Rite was the only Masonry at the time that permitted Jews, and the Rothschilds stepped on in and learned about the removal of the Ark for Salem.

 

Now the Ark was not the only reason in which I had to run away to the Pines.

 

See earlier on May 24th 1777 I received correspondence from my friend who had just been relieved of his command of Canada by Burgoyne. He informed me that I was to move north from New York City up the Hudson to provide support for Burgoyne and his Hessian force at Saratoga. But, I already had plans that were agreed to and signed by Lord Germain that I was to start the Philadelphia Campaign instead. Lord Germain also signed Burgoyne’s plans, which Burgoyne expected me to support him in New York. There was no love loss for Burgoyne within the ranks of officers who had fought during the French and Indian War with our American friends. Burgoyne and his Hessians would bayonet all the Rebel wounded that were left on the field of battle. As a man of wealth he was able to buy his rank. So by the time of the Battle of Saratoga in October 1777, I was preparing to follow that stagecoach road that led to Clamtown NJ on the shore once more, the home of the Leed’s Devil.

 

“Sir, if it was not too bold for me to speak out of my place, I would call you a damn fool!” said my old cabbie Louie. He had not recognized me yet in this life. He was a mere boy of 16 when I met him this time. Louie was my helmsman when I sailed my third-generation Viking crew from Orkney to Salem a 100 years before that Italian. “The Pines are a dark mysterious place filled with scoundrels. Many running from something. Criminals each and everyone of them. Highwaymen, Hessians, cutthroats, and lawyers. The only wealthy profession that is so disreputable, besides bankers, who could fit in with these heathens.”

 

 

“Young man, I believe you are painting with too wide of a brush. I could say the same of you and that blue scarf you wear,” I said as I started bringing him down the garden path, “Is that not, the scarf of the Sons of Liberty who gather around Center City in the taverns? The sign of the whelps who don’t have the courage to take up the musket and do more than just lauding over the foolish of what they would do, if given the chance and so on?” I was baiting the temper I knew only too well from countless times from his previous incarnations.

 

He was fit to be tied, jumping up and down in his seat as he turned to me to the road and back again. Spittle flying from his jowls like some great mastiff. Ears standing out and face turning red “Sir. Sir! It would not be hard to slit your throat and lose you in these woods where no one would ever find you…” My laughing just stopped his rage as he looked me in the eyes and saw something of a friend staring back at him offering him my flask. I was splitting my sides when he took my flask and raised it to his lips, never letting his gaze into my eyes drop. He wiped his mouth and began to crack up as well. “I do believe sir, that you are crazy enough to scare away the Leed’s Devil himself. Strange enough, I feel safe with you in these woods.”

 

Franklin’s rival almanac publisher was Titan Leeds. Franklin called him the “Leed’s Devil”. The Quakers in the area were worried about the occult and pagan symbols that his father Daniel would place within his almanac which many feared opened up ways for the Dark Man and the Elder Ones to enter the dark places of the Pines. Many accuse his father of strange practices that he wrote about within his almanac that produced the deformed child of Titan’s aunt Deborah, locals knew as “Mother” Leeds. The Jersey Devil was to be the 13th child, born in 1735, during a lightning storm. Mother Leeds cursed the child to the devil during the labor. Born as a normal child, but he soon changed into a creature with hooves, a goat’s head, bat wings, and a forked tail. Growling and screaming, it beat everyone with its tail before flying up the chimney and heading into the pines within his 13th year.

 

Not sure about the goat head and bat wings, but I bet he was dam ugly and large. Just a deformed child left to fend for itself scarring any that would fall upon him on a dark stormy night. Though on the almanacs was the Leeds’ family crest depicting a wyvern, a bat-winged dragon-like legendary creature that stands upright on two clawed feet.

 

 

Then there were rumors, that Japhet Leeds was possessed by Yog-Sothoth when he bedded Mother Leeds so he could father Crom Cruach. Maybe it was Zhothaqquah they gave birth to, for the child was rumored to take on bat like and dragon like qualities. In my opinion it does not matter which the child was rumored to be, for the tales are only that. Tales.

 

Franklin refused to join me on my trip. It seems he predicted Titan’s death by making up strange occult traditions within his almanac. Well Titan did die in fact. Now many believe they see his ghost walk through the woods. Franklin is not taking any chances… So I left on my own to meet with General Lacey.

 

Well me and my crazy young friend who led the horses through this dark dense wood where the trail vanishes every three feet behind you with just as much in view to the fore.

 

 

It was from Lacey’s I sent my resignation in October of 1777. I had been walking these woods, day and night, for over 3 months and I had not seen any sign of the Leed’s Devil. Nor did I stumble upon any dark masses with sacrifices of deer. Or had I found any backwood wizard who captured the soul of the fox to torment one of his neighbors. Neither Had I seen the sword of the Hessian which was said to have fled to these woods, only to step out to slice the throat of a Patriot to pay for his daily bread. Nor was I in truth looking for any of them. Never less, as Louie accompanied me through our many walks along the rivers, creeks, and ponds Lacey plied for the oil stains on the water that gave up the ghost of iron ore that lied below the peat, Louie did so with pistol and saber always in hand.

 

“Sir, I must say they are a clever sort,” Louie stated looking over his shoulder.

 

“Who is that? The Devil or the Hessian my dear friend?”

 

“The Devil of course, sir. For the devil resides in the heart of both. He is everywhere. Even in the hoot of the owl and the swoop of the bat.”

 

“Nonsense. The owl sits in the window of the barn outside of my own bedchambers and keeps me company; with the bat, coming out at sunset to eat all of those mosquitoes I see now that you are swatting. If it was not for the bat you would not have enough hands to swat them. Now be careful with that pistol and sword you are flailing about. You’re likely to skewer out one of your eyes or shoot your cap off through your soft palate.”

 

Many of our walks down the deer paths and those mysterious trails that led to nowhere were much the same. As we ventured I always wondered what Native city must have been here prior to the coming of the white man to have the economy to produce these infinite roads, the purpose of which have been lost aeons ago. Only a great commerce could of brought a race together to cut so many roads linking various means of production and sales together. A commerce now lost to all with only the mystery taking its place.

 

Many times I had taken the upside down sword and waded through these bogs to cut squares of peat out and dove below to find the ore grown from the bacteria which was going to be made into the cannon ball or bullet that the Quaker’s call the Devil’s Pill. Strange, how I was digging the ore that could be used to kill one of the soldiers within my ranks. Or perhaps a soldier I had fought alongside with during the French and Indian War who now sided with the cause of the Patriots, much like my young friend Louie. It was a distressing time, but it seems to be over soon.

 

On many nights within the dark silence only broken by the sound of the whippoorwill that broke the cadence of the cricket and the peeper my mind would set back to many a campaign or event during the war in which I was forced to participate within. On one such night I recalled the ill luck of a Patriot who was on the run within New York City who took to hiding on the rooftops. Till! He found himself falling through the old thatch and landing in the middle of a garrison of British soldiers. With his luck I looked up from my chair in the east and this young fellow who had grasped the situation he had found himself in made the correct hand signals lickety-split. This lad, one Joseph Burnham, we fitted out with a horse to make his way to a fishing sloop sailing south deep into the shores of the Pines. I do wonder how he ever made out; for us Lodge Brothers look out for each other no matter what side you may turn up on.

 

By April of 1778, I received news that my resignation was approved. I headed back for Philadelphia and my troops held a party for me on May 18th. Many of the Hessians already deserted deep into the Pines. Six days later I sailed back to England and I arrived in port on July 1st.

 

I had left the Ark with General Lacey and Israel Putnam back at my quarters in the woods by the bridge over the stream. What a mistake…

 

Both were almost court-martialed at different times. I rigged the battle of Breed’s Hill for Putnam to win the day, but first of all it was no easy deed, he was stationed on the wrong hill. Then he later retreated when I made the battle look like he was winning with a small force. Within the years to come many would believe he was the hero who said ‘don’t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes’. Lacey was stripped of his rank just out of pure stupidity…

 

Well Franklin’s son had spied on his father and having found out about my hiding place, informed the Rothschilds’ Hessians who had intermingled with Bacon’s Pine Robbers. They found it within the old outhouse hole, two to the left of the one that was in current use. It was guarded by Lacey’s bog workers who had plenty of cannon balls and shot, but no cannons or rifles…

 

So I was called back from England and sailed on HMS Cerberus and arrived in Clamtown on Christmas Day.

 

 

I went up the old Clamtown Stage Road for Philadelphia and veered off for Jones Road. An obscure Indian road that led to the edge of Lacey’s property. He had owned about 5 square miles of woods with no neighbors on the southern section; who was to figure anyone would ever find my quarters. Nobody did when I lived there. I was in complete isolation. There would have been members of Rothschilds’ Hessians at that time who were hunting me down for their defeat at Saratoga. Now those same Hessians had found the Ark and had burned some of the Rebel supporters homes down with its electric death rays.

 

John Hanson, who had just vacated the Presidency, had come down with Arthur and Israel Putnam, Ol’ Put, from Philadelphia. Along with them came Benjamin Franklin who they were able to get so drunk that a prostitute was able to mount their carriage with them and keep him entertained enough so that he never realized where he was heading. We needed him to dismantle the Ark safely, for we have heard the Ark had been gathering so much energy that it had become unstable and continued to discharge from the cherub posts setting thus many of the woods on fire. He received quite a shock when he realized he was in Leed’s Pines though! He swore Titan’s ghost was going to get him.

 

“Hello Franklin!” I said as I stepped down from Louie’s carriage. This was the first I had seen Louie in months. I had tried to get him to come to London with me, but he swore to never touch the soil of the King again. Now that this soil was free.

 

Franklin and the rest arrived from Philadelphia first.

 

“Henry, I should’ve realized it was you who was behind this!” said Franklin with much alarm and feigned hate.

 

“Did I not, arrange for you to have fine company?” I asked half jokingly.

 

“Well, she has some fine points. I was quite enjoying myself, but you brought me to his woods. Henry you know better to bring me to this warlock’s place!”

 

“That is still half a days ride away...”

 

“The dead move with no restriction, Henry, as you well know!”

 

Arthur chimed in, “Henry, we have word that Bacon has headed for his home in Pemberton right before the lake in Browns Mill. We have some troops moving in within a few days.”

 

I replied that we could not wait that long, expecting that many of the troops would not be able to move after the Christmas celebrations. Plus many among their number had just wandered off for home after the surrender of Yorktown. It had been hard for Washington to keep troops within their ranks before Yorktown, now it seemed impossible after Cornwallis’ surrender. “Arthur, we are going to need a better plan.”

 

“Henry, I think I have an idea!” said Israel. He had me worried.

 

 

So that is how we found ourselves in straw mummers costumes penned down with our faces in a bog.

 

It was St Stephen’s Day in which mummers went from house to house in straw costumes performing humorous skits and singing song. Israel picked the skit, it was one in which the Jersey Devil replaced Krampus walking with St Nick. Israel loved teasing Franklin.

 

“Henry why did you let Putnam choose this silly play; you know he just did it to get my goat?” complained Franklin.

 

“Oh quiet now,” I hushed him as I opened the door to the Cedar Bridge Tavern and led the way dressed as St Nick. Arthur was dressed like a straw priest and Franklin as a straw Friar Tuck. Putnam was a straw Jersey Devil who acted as the clown. We stood in the center of the room as the Robbers grabbed their arms and we began to sing as Putnam bumped and jostled into the crowd as he openly searched for the Ark. After a few circles he chased one of the tavern girls upstairs after a few slaps on her rear. The Hessians didn’t think much of it, but they were questioning our singing. Hell I was questioning our singing too; we were horrible. Then all of a sudden Putnam came running down the stairs with the Ark being held up on the end of two wooden poles. He was straining to keep it aloft, with the girl tossing vases at him, with most of them hitting their mark. He ran past us and we joined him in a hurry. Sparks were flying from the Ark everywhere.

 

Then Bacon leads the Pine Robbers and Hessians out into the field firing at us. We end up face down in the bog under the bridge. Putnam became overstrained and dropped the Ark in the water. We all jumped out of the bog in a hurry for we were beginning to be electrocuted. How to pick it up before they regained it again? “Henry, we can leave it for now. Putnam, Arthur; grab the poles!” yelled Franklin. We crossed the river and hid behind the bridge and loaded our pistols.

 

This was not the first plan of Israel’s.

 

 

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We had a little taste of the Jersey Devil. I had lunch with the Pooka and the Devil just last week and I still have some fingernails stuck in between my teeth. I remember the good old days when the mafia ran the state; we were always eating Italian in the Pine Barrens then... Get it? Eating Italian?

 

 

 

 

The amber brown of the liquor disguised the poison it held, and I watched with a smile on my lips as he drank it. There was no pity in my heart for him. He was a jackal in the jungle of life, and I … I was one of the carnivores. It is the lot of the jackals of life to be devoured by the carnivore.

 

Suddenly the contented look on his face froze into a startled stillness. I knew he was feeling the first savage twinge of the agony that was to come. He turned his head and looked at me, and I saw suddenly that he knew what I had done.

“You murderer!” he cursed me, and then his body arched in the middle and his voice choked off deep in his throat.

For a short minute he sat, tense, his body stiffened by the agony that rode it—unable to move a muscle. I watched the torment in his eyes build up to a crescendo of pain, until the suffering became so great that it filmed his eyes, and I knew that, though he still stared directly at me, he no longer saw me.

Then, as suddenly as the spasm had come, the starch went out of his body and his back slid slowly down the chair edge. He landed heavily with his head resting limply against the seat of the chair. His right leg doubled up in a kind of jerk, before he was still.

 

I knew the time had come. “Where are you?” I asked.

 

This moment had cost me sixty thousand dollars.

 

Three weeks ago the best doctors in the state had given me a month to live. And with seven million dollars in the bank I couldn’t buy a minute more.

 

I accepted the doctors’ decision philosophically, like the gambler that I am. But I had a plan: One which necessity had never forced me to use until now. Several years before I had read an article about the medicine men of a certain tribe of aborigines living in the jungles at the source of the Amazon River. They had discovered a process in which the juice of a certain bush—known only to them—could be used to poison a man. Anyone subjected to this poison died, but for a few minutes after the life left his body the medicine men could still converse with him. The subject, though ostensibly and actually dead, answered the medicine men’s every question. This was their primitive, though reportedly effective method of catching glimpses of what lay in the world of death.

 

I had conceived my idea at the time I read the article, but I had never had the need to use it—until the doctors gave me a month to live. Then I spent my sixty thousand dollars, and three weeks later I held in my hands a small bottle of the witch doctors’ fluid.

 

The next step was to secure my victim—my Collaborator, I preferred to call him.

 

The man I chose was a nobody. A homeless, friendless non-entity, picked up off the street. He had once been an educated man. But now he was only a bum, and when he died he’d never be missed. A perfect man for my experiment.

 

I’m a rich man because I have a system. The system is simple: I never make a move until I know exactly where that move will lead me. My field of operations is the stock market. I spend money unstintingly to secure the information I need before I take each step. I hire the best investigators, bribe employees and persons in position to give me the information I want, and only when I am as certain as humanly possible that I cannot be wrong do I move. And the system never fails. Seven million dollars in the bank is proof of that.

 

Now, knowing that I could not live, I intended to make the system work for me one last time before I died. I’m a firm believer in the adage that any situation can be whipped, given prior knowledge of its coming—and, of course, its attendant circumstances.

 

For a moment he did not answer and I began to fear that my experiment had failed. “Where are you?” I repeated, louder and sharper this time.

 

The small muscles about his eyes puckered with an unnormal tension while the rest of his face held its death frost. Slowly, slowly, unnaturally—as though energized by some hyper-rational power—his lips and tongue moved. The words he spoke were clear. “I am in a … a … tunnel,” he said. “It is lighted, dimly, but there is nothing for me to see.” Blue veins showed through the flesh of his cheeks like watermarks on translucent paper.

 

He paused and I urged, “Go on.”

 

“ I am alone,” he said. “The realities I knew no longer exist, and I am damp and cold. All about me is a sense of gloom and dejection. It is an apprehension—an emanation—so deep and real as to be almost a tangible thing. The walls to either side of me seem to be formed, not of substance, but rather of the soundless cries of melancholy of spirits I cannot see.

 

“I am waiting, waiting in the gloom for something which will come to me. That need to wait is an innate part of my being and I have no thought of questioning it.” His voice died again.

 

“What are you waiting for?” I asked.

 

“I do not know,” he said, his voice dreary with the despair of centuries of hopelessness. “I only know that I must wait—that compulsion is greater than my strength to combat.”

 

The tone of his voice changed slightly. “The tunnel about me is widening and now the walls have receded into invisibility. The tunnel has become a plain, but the plain is as desolate, as forlorn and dreary as was the tunnel, and still I stand and wait. How long must this go on?”

 

He fell silent again, and I was about to prompt him with another question—I could not afford to let the time run out in long silences—but abruptly the muscles about his eyes tightened and subtly a new aspect replaced their hopeless dejection. Now they expressed a black, bottomless terror. For a moment I marveled that so small a portion of a facial anatomy could express such horror.

 

“There is something coming toward me,” he said. “A—beast—of brutish foulness! Beast is too inadequate a term to describe it, but I know no words to tell its form. It is an intangible and evasive—thing—but very real. And it is coming closer! It has no organs of sight as I know them, but I feel that it can see me. Or rather that it is aware of me with a sense sharper than vision itself. It is very near now. Oh God, the malevolence, the hate—the potentiality of awful, fearsome destructiveness that is its very essence! And still I cannot move!”

 

The expression of terrified anticipation, centered in his eyes, lessened slightly, and was replaced, instantly, by its former deep, deep despair. “I am no longer afraid,” he said.

 

“Why?” I interjected. “Why?” I was impatient to learn all that I could before the end came.

 

“Because … “ He paused. “Because it holds no threat for me. Somehow, someday, I understand—I know—that it too is seeking that for which I wait.”

 

“What is it doing now?” I asked.

 

“It has stopped beside me and we stand together, gazing across the stark, empty plain. Now a second awful entity, with the same leashed virulence about it, moves up and stands at my other side. We all three wait, myself with a dark fear of this dismal universe, my unnatural companions with patient, malicious menace.

 

“Bits of … “ He faltered. “Of … I can name it only aura, go out from the beasts like an acid stream, and touch me, and the hate, and the venom chill my body like a wave of intense cold.

 

“Now there are others of the awful breed behind me. We stand, waiting, waiting for that which will come. What it is I do not know.”

 

I could see the pallor of death creeping steadily into the last corners of his lips, and I knew that the end was not far away. Suddenly a black frustration built up within me. “What are you waiting for?” I screamed, the tenseness, and the importance of this moment forcing me to lose the iron self-control upon which I have always prided myself. I knew that the answer held the secret of what I must know. If I could learn that, my experiment would not be in vain, and I could make whatever preparations were necessary for my own death. I had to know that answer.

 

“Think! Think!” I pleaded. “What are you waiting for?”

 

“I do not know!” The dreary despair in his eyes, sightless as they met mine, chilled me with a coldness that I felt in the marrow of my being. “I do not know,” he repeated. “I … Yes, I do know!”

 

Abruptly the plasmatic film cleared from his eyes and I knew that for the first time, since the poison struck, he was seeing me, clearly. I sensed that this was the last moment before he left—for good. It had to be now!

 

“Tell me. I command you,” I cried. “What are you waiting for?”
His voice was quiet as he murmured, softly, implacably, before he was gone.
“We are waiting,” he said, “for you.”

 

THE END

 

 

 

 

Only the age-old silence brooded over the mysterious ruins of Kuthchemes, but Fear was there; Fear quivered in the mind of Shevatas, the thief, driving his breath quick and sharp against his clenched teeth.

 

He stood, the one atom of life amidst the colossal monuments of desolation and decay. Not even a vulture hung like a black dot in the vast blue vault of the sky that the sun glazed with its heat. On every hand rose the grim relics of another, forgotten age: huge broken pillars, thrusting up their jagged pinnacles into the sky; long wavering lines of crumbling walls; fallen cyclopean blocks of stone; shattered images, whose horrific features the corroding winds and dust-storms had half erased. From horizon to horizon no sign of life: only the sheer breathtaking sweep of the naked desert, bisected by the wandering line of a long-dry river course; in the midst of that vastness the glimmering fangs of the ruins, the columns standing up like broken masts of sunken ships—all dominated by the towering ivory dome before which Shevatas stood trembling.

 

The base of this dome was a gigantic pedestal of marble rising from what had once been a terraced eminence on the banks of the ancient river. Broad steps led up to a great bronze door in the dome, which rested on its base like the half of some titanic egg. The dome itself was of pure ivory, which shone as if unknown hands kept it polished. Upon it was an inscription which sprawled about the curve of the dome in a grey hieroglyphic yards long. No man on earth could read those characters, but Shevatas shuddered at the dim conjectures they raised. For he came of a very old race, whose myths ran back to shapes undreamed of by contemporary tribes.

 

Shevatas was wiry and lithe, as became a master-thief of Zamora. His small round head was shaven, his only garment a loin-cloth of silk and a sash about his head. Like all his race, he had the vulture-like face set off by his keen black eyes. His long, slender and tapering fingers were quick and nervous as the wings of a moth. From a gold-scaled girdle hung a short, narrow, jewel hilted sword in a sheath of ornamented leather. Shevatas handled the weapon with apparently exaggerated care. He even seemed to flinch away from the contact of the sheath with his naked thigh. Nor was his care without reason.

 

This was Shevatas, a thief among thieves, whose name was spoken with awe in the dives of the Maul and the dim shadowy recesses beneath the temples of Bel, and who lived in songs and myths for a thousand years. Yet fear ate at the heart of Shevatas as he stood before the ivory dome of Kuthchemes. Any fool could see there was something unnatural about the structure; the winds and suns of three thousand years had lashed it, yet its ivory rose bright and glistening as the day it was reared by nameless hands on the bank of the nameless river.

 

This unnaturalness was in keeping with the general aura of these devil-haunted ruins. This desert was the mysterious expanse lying southeast of the lands of Shem. A few days’ ride on camel-back to the southwest, as Shevatas knew, would bring the traveller within sight of the great river Styx at the point where it turned at right angles with its former course, and flowed westward to empty at last into the distant sea. At the point of its bend began the land of Stygia, the dark-bosomed mistress of the south, whose domains, watered by the great river, rose sheer out of the surrounding desert.

 

Eastward, Shevatas knew, the desert shaded into steppes stretching to the Hyrkanian kingdom of Turan, rising in barbaric splendor on the shores of the great inland sea. A week’s ride northward the desert ran into a tangle of barren hills, beyond which lay the fertile uplands of Koth, the southernmost realm of the Hyborian races. Westward the desert merged into the meadowlands of Shem, which stretched away to the ocean.

 

All this Shevatas knew without being particularly conscious of the knowledge, as a man knows the streets of his town. He was a far traveller and had looted the treasures of many kingdoms. But now he hesitated and shuddered before the highest adventure and the mightiest treasure of all.

 

In that ivory dome lay the bones of Thugra Khotan, the dark sorcerer who had reigned in Kuthchemes three thousand years ago, when the kingdoms of Stygia stretched far northward of the great river, over the meadows of Shem, and into the uplands. Then the great drift of the Hyborians swept southward from the cradle-land of their race near the northern pole. It was a titanic drift, extending over centuries and ages. But in the reign of Thugra Khotan, the last magician of Kuthchemes, gray-eyed, tawny-haired barbarians in wolf skins and scale-mail had ridden from the north into the rich uplands to carve out the kingdom of Koth with their iron swords. They had stormed over Kuthchemes like a tidal wave, washing the marble towers in blood, and the northern Stygian kingdom had gone down in fire and ruin.

 

But while they were shattering the streets of his city and cutting down his archers like ripe corn, Thugra Khotan had swallowed a strange terrible poison, and his masked priests had locked him into the tomb he himself had prepared. His devotees died about that tomb in a crimson holocaust, but the barbarians could not burst the door, nor ever mar the structure by maul or fire. So they rode away, leaving the great city in ruins, and in his ivory-domed sepulcher great Thugra Khotan slept unmolested, while the lizards of desolation gnawed at the crumbling pillars, and the very river that watered his land in old times sank into the sands and ran dry.

 

Many a thief sought to gain the treasure which fables said lay heaped about the moldering bones inside the dome. And many a thief died at the door of the tomb, and many another was harried by monstrous dreams to die at last with the froth of madness on his lips.

 

So Shevatas shuddered as he faced the tomb, nor was his shudder altogether occasioned by the legend of the serpent said to guard the sorcerer’s bones. Over all myths of Thugra Khotan hung horror and death like a pall. From where the thief stood he could see the ruins of the great hall wherein chained captives had knelt by the hundreds during festivals to have their heads hacked off by the priest-king in honor of Set, the Serpent-god of Stygia. Somewhere near by had been the pit, dark and awful, wherein screaming victims were fed to a nameless amorphic monstrosity which came up out of a deeper, more hellish cavern. Legend made Thugra Khotan more than human; his worship yet lingered in a mongrel degraded cult, whose votaries stamped his likeness on coins to pay the way of their dead over the great river of darkness of which the Styx was but the material shadow. Shevatas had seen this likeness, on coins stolen from under the tongues of the dead, and its image was etched indelibly in his brain.

 

But he put aside his fears and mounted to the bronze door, whose smooth surface offered no bolt or catch. Not for naught had he gained access into darksome cults, had harkened to the grisly whispers of the votaries of Skelos under midnight trees, and read the forbidden iron-bound books of Vathelos the Blind.

 

Kneeling before the portal, he searched the sill with nimble fingers; their sensitive tips found projections too small for the eye to detect, or for less-skilled fingers to discover. These he pressed carefully and according to a peculiar system, muttering a long-forgotten incantation as he did so. As he pressed the last projection, he sprang up with frantic haste and struck the exact center of the door a quick sharp blow with his open hand.

 

There was no rasp of spring or hinge, but the door retreated inward, and the breath hissed explosively from Shevatas’s clenched teeth. A short narrow corridor was disclosed. Down this the door had slid, and was now in place at the other end. The floor, ceiling and sides of the tunnel-like aperture were of ivory, and now from an opening on one side came a silent writhing horror that reared up and glared on the intruder with awful luminous eyes; a serpent twenty feet long, with shimmering, iridescent scales.

 

The thief did not waste time in conjecturing what night-black pits lying below the dome had given sustenance to the monster. Gingerly he drew the sword, and from it dripped a greenish liquid exactly like that which slavered from the scimitar-fangs of the reptile. The blade was steeped in the poison of the snake’s own kind, and the obtaining of that venom from the fiend-haunted swamps of Zingara would have made a saga in itself.

 

Shevatas advanced warily on the balls of his feet, knees bent slightly, ready to spring either way like a flash of light. And he needed all his co-ordinate speed when the snake arched its neck and struck, shooting out its full length like a stroke of lightning. For all his quickness of nerve and eye, Shevatas would had died then but for chance.

 

His well-laid plans of leaping aside and striking down on the outstretched neck were put at naught by the blinding speed of the reptile’s attack. The thief had but time to extend the sword in front of him, involuntarily closing his eyes and crying out. Then the sword was wrenched from his hand and the corridor was filled with a horrible thrashing and lashing.

 

Opening his eyes, amazed to find himself still alive, Shevatas saw the monster heaving and twisting its slimy form in fantastic contortions, the sword transfixing its giant jaws. Sheer chance had hurled it full against the point he had held out blindly. A few moments later the serpent sank into shining, scarcely quivering coils, as the poison on the blade struck home.

 

Gingerly stepping over it, the thief thrust against the door, which this time slid aside, revealing the interior of the dome. Shevatas cried out; instead of utter darkness he had come into a crimson light that throbbed and pulsed almost beyond the endurance of mortal eyes. It came from a gigantic red jewel high up in the vaulted arch of the dome. Shevatas gaped, inured though he was to the sight of riches. The treasure was there, heaped in staggering profusion—piles of diamonds, sapphires, rubies, turquoises, opals, emeralds; ziggurats of jade, jet and lapis lazuli; pyramids of gold wedges; toecallis of silver ingots; jewel-hilted swords in cloth-of-gold sheaths; golden helmets with colored horsehair crests, or black and scarlet plumes; silver scaled corselets; gem-crusted harness worn by warrior-kings three thousand years in their tombs; goblets carved of single jewels; skulls plated with gold, with moonstones for eyes; necklaces of human teeth set with jewels. The ivory floor was covered inches deep with gold dust that sparkled and shimmered under the crimson glow with a million scintillating lights. The thief stood in a wonderland of magic and splendor, treading stars under his sandaled feet.

 

But his eyes were focussed on the dais of crystal which rose in the midst of the shimmering array, directly under the red jewel, and on which should be lying the moldering bones, turning to dust with the crawling of the centuries. And as Shevatas looked, the blood drained from his dark features; his marrow turned to ice, and the skin of his back crawled and wrinkled with horror, while his lips worked soundlessly. But suddenly he found his voice in one awful scream that rang hideously under the arching dome. Then again the silence of the ages lay among the ruins of mysterious Kuthchemes.

 

 

 

Rumors drifted up through the meadowlands, into the cities of the Hyborians. The word ran along the caravans, the long camel-trains plodding through the sands, herded by lean, hawk-eyed men in white kaftans. It was passed on by the hook-nosed herdsmen of the grasslands, from the dwellers in tents to the dwellers in the squat stone cities where kings with curled blue black beards worshipped round-bellied gods with curious rites. The word passed up through the fringe of hills where gaunt tribesmen took toll of the caravans. The rumors came into the fertile uplands where stately cities rose above blue lakes and rivers: the rumors marched along the broad white roads thronged with ox-wains, with lowing herds, with rich merchants, knights in steel, archers and priests.

 

They were rumors from the desert that lies east of Stygia, far south of the Kothian hills. A new prophet had risen among the nomads. Men spoke of tribal war, of a gathering of vultures in the southeast, and a terrible leader who led his swiftly increasing hordes to victory. The Stygians, ever a menace to the northern nations, were apparently not connected with this movement; for they were massing armies on their eastern borders and their priests were making magic to fight that of the desert sorcerer, whom men called Natohk, the Veiled One; for his features were always masked.

 

But the tide swept north westward, and the blue-bearded kings died before the altars of their pot-bellied gods, and their squat-walled cities were drenched in blood. Men said that the uplands of the Hyborians were the goal of Natohk and his chanting votaries.

 

Raids from the desert were not uncommon, but this latest movement seemed to promise more than a raid. Rumor said Natohk had welded thirty nomadic tribes and fifteen cities into his following, and that a rebellious Stygian prince had joined him. This latter lent the affair an aspect of real war.

 

Characteristically, most of the Hyborian nations were prone to ignore the growing menace. But in Khoraja, carved out of Shemite lands by the swords of Kothic adventurers, heed was given. Lying southeast of Koth, it would bear the brunt of the invasion. And its young king was captive to the treacherous king of Ophir, who hesitated between restoring him for a huge ransom, or handing him over to his enemy, the penurious king of Koth, who offered no gold, but an advantageous treaty. Meanwhile, the rule of the struggling kingdom was in the white hands of young princess Yasmela, the king’s sister.

 

Minstrels sang her beauty throughout the western world, and the pride of a kingly dynasty was hers. But on that night her pride was dropped from her like a cloak. In her chamber whose ceiling was a lapis lazuli dome, whose marble floor was littered with rare furs, and whose walls were lavish with golden frieze work, ten girls, daughters of nobles, their slender limbs weighted with gem-crusted armlets and anklets, slumbered on velvet couches about the royal bed with its golden dais and silken canopy. But princess Yasmela lolled not on that silken bed. She lay naked on her supple belly upon the bare marble like the most abased suppliant, her dark hair streaming over her white shoulders, her slender fingers intertwined. She lay and writhed in pure horror that froze the blood in her lithe limbs and dilated her beautiful eyes, that pricked the roots of her dark hair and made goose-flesh rise along her supple spine.

 

Above her, in the darkest corner of the marble chamber, lurked a vast shapeless shadow. It was no living thing of form or flesh and blood. It was a clot of darkness, a blur in the sight, a monstrous night-born incubus that might have been deemed a figment of a sleep-drugged brain, but for the points of blazing yellow fire that glimmered like two eyes from the blackness.

 

Moreover, a voice issued from it—a low subtle inhuman sibilance that was more like the soft abominable hissing of a serpent than anything else, and that apparently could not emanate from anything with human lips. Its sound as well as its import filled Yasmela with a shuddering horror so intolerable that she writhed and twisted her slender body as if beneath a lash, as though to rid her mind of its insinuating vileness by physical contortion.

 

“You are marked for mine, princess,” came the gloating whisper. “Before I wakened from the long sleep I had marked you, and yearned for you, but I was held fast by the ancient spell by which I escaped mine enemies. I am the soul of Natohk, the Veiled One! Look well upon me, princess! Soon you shall behold me in my bodily guise, and shall love me!”

 

The ghostly hissing dwindled off in lustful titterings, and Yasmela moaned and beat the marble tiles with her small fists in her ecstasy of terror.

 

“I sleep in the palace chamber of Akbatana,” the sibilance continued. “There my body lies in its frame of bones and flesh. But it is but an empty shell from which the spirit has flown for a brief space. Could you gaze from that palace casement you would realize the futility of resistance. The desert is a rose garden beneath the moon, where blossom the fires of a hundred thousand warriors. As an avalanche sweeps onward, gathering bulk and momentum, I will sweep into the lands of mine ancient enemies. Their kings shall furnish me skulls for goblets, their women and children shall be slaves of my slaves’ slaves. I have grown strong in the long years of dreaming …

 

But thou shalt be my queen, oh princess! I will teach thee the ancient forgotten ways of pleasure.” Before the stream of cosmic obscenity which poured from the shadowy colossus, Yasmela cringed and writhed as if from a whip that flayed her dainty bare flesh.

 

“Remember!” whispered the horror, “The days will not be many before I come to claim mine own!”

 

Yasmela, pressing her face against the tiles and stopping her pink ears with her dainty fingers, yet seemed to hear a strange sweeping noise, like the beat of bat wings. Then, looking fearfully up, she saw only the moon that shone through the window with a beam that rested like a silver sword across the spot where the phantom had lurked. Trembling in every limb, she rose and staggered to a satin couch, where she threw herself down, weeping hysterically. The girls slept on, but one, who roused, yawned, stretched her slender figure and blinked about. Instantly she was on her knees beside the couch, her arms about Yasmela’s supple waist.

 

“Was it—was it-?” Her dark eyes were wide with fright. Yasmela caught her in a convulsive grasp.

 

“Oh, Vateesa. It came again! I saw It—heard It speak! It spoke Its name—Natohk! It is Natohk! It is not a nightmare—it towered over me while the girls slept like drugged ones. What oh, what shall I do?”

 

Vateesa twisted a golden bracelet about her rounded arm in meditation.

 

“Oh, princess,” she said, “it is evident that no mortal power can deal with It, and the charm is useless that the priests of Ishtar gave you. Therefore seek you the forgotten oracle of Mitra.”

 

In spite of her recent fright, Yasmela shuddered. The gods of yesterday become the devils of tomorrow. The Kothians had long since abandoned the worship of Mitra, forgetting the attributes of the universal Hyborian god. Yasmela had a vague idea that, being very ancient, it followed that the deity was very terrible. Ishtar was much to be feared, and all the gods of Koth. Kothian culture and religion had suffered from a subtle admixture of Shemite and Stygian strains. The simple ways of the Hyborians had become modified to a large extent by the sensual, luxurious, yet despotic habits of the East.

 

“Will Mitra aid me?” Yasmela caught Vateesa’s wrist in her eagerness. “We have worshipped Ishtar so long-”

 

“To be sure he will!” Vateesa was the daughter of an Ophirean priest who had brought his customs with him when he fled from political enemies to Khoraja. “Seek the shrine! I will go with you.”

 

“I will!” Yasmela rose, but objected when Vateesa prepared to dress her. “It is not fitting that I come before the shrine clad in silk. I will go naked, on my knees, as befits a suppliant, lest Mitra deem I lack humility.”

 

“Nonsense!” Vateesa had scant respect for the ways of what she deemed a false cult. “Mitra would have folks stand upright before him—not crawling on their bellies like worms, or spilling blood of animals all over his altars.”

 

Thus objurgated, Yasmela allowed the girl to garb her in the light sleeveless silk shirt, over which was slipped a silken tunic, bound at the waist by a wide velvet girdle. Satin slippers were put upon her slender feet, and a few deft touches of Vateesa’s pink fingers arranged her dark wavy tresses. Then the princess followed the girl, who drew aside a heavy gilt-worked tapestry and threw the golden bolt of the door it concealed. This let into a narrow winding corridor, and down this the two girls went swiftly, through another door and into a broad hallway. Here stood a guardsman in crested gilt helmet, silvered cuirass and gold-chased greaves, with a long-shafted battle-ax in his hands.

 

A motion from Yasmela checked his exclamation and, saluting, he took his stand again beside the doorway, motionless as a brazen image. The girls traversed the hallway, which seemed immense and eery in the light of the cressets along the lofty walls, and went down a stairway where Yasmela shivered at the blots of shadows which hung in the angles of the walls. Three levels down they halted at last in a narrow corridor whose arched ceiling was crusted with jewels, whose floor was set with blocks of crystal, and whose walls were decorated with golden friezework. Down this shining way they stole, holding each other’s hands, to a wide portal of gilt.

 

Vateesa thrust open the door, revealing a shrine long forgotten except by a faithful few, and royal visitors to Khoraja’s court, mainly for whose benefit the fane was maintained. Yasmela had never entered it before, though she was born in the palace. Plain and unadorned in comparison to the lavish display of Ishtar’s shrines, there was about it a simplicity of dignity and beauty characteristic of the Mitran religion.

 

The ceiling was lofty, but it was not domed, and was of plain white marble, as were the walls and floor, the former with a narrow gold frieze running about them. Behind an altar of clear green jade, unstained with sacrifice, stood the pedestal whereon sat the material manifestation of the deity. Yasmela looked in awe at the sweep of the magnificent shoulders, the clear-cut features—the wide straight eyes, the patriarchal beard, the thick curls of the hair, confined by a simple band about the temples. This, though she did not know it, was art in its highest form the free, uncramped artistic expression of a highly esthetic race, unhampered by conventional symbolism.

 

She fell on her knees and thence prostrate, regardless of Vateesa’s admonition, and Vateesa, to be on the safe side, followed her example; for after all, she was only a girl, and it was very awesome in Mitra’s shrine. But even so she could not refrain from whispering in Yasmela’s ear.

 

“This is but the emblem of the god. None pretends to know what Mitra looks like. This but represents him in idealized human form, as near perfection as the human mind can conceive. He does not inhabit this cold stone, as your priests tell you Ishtar does. He is everywhere—above us, and about us, and he dreams betimes in the high places among the stars. But here his being focusses. Therefore call upon him.”

 

“What shall I say?” whispered Yasmela in stammering terror.

 

“Before you can speak, Mitra knows the contents of your mind-” began Vateesa. Then both girls started violently as a voice began in the air above them. The deep, calm, bell-like tones emanated no more from the image than from anywhere else in the chamber. Again Yasmela trembled before a bodiless voice speaking to her, but this time it was not from horror or repulsion.

 

“Speak not, my daughter, for I know your need,” came the intonations like deep musical waves beating rhythmically along a golden beach. “In one manner may you save your kingdom, and saving it, save all the world from the fangs of the serpent which has crawled up out of the darkness of the ages. Go forth upon the streets alone, and place your kingdom in the hands of the first man you meet there.”

 

The unechoing tones ceased, and the girls stared at each other. Then, rising, they stole forth, nor did they speak until they stood once more in Yasmela’s chamber. The princess stared out of the gold-barred windows. The moon had set. It was long past midnight. Sounds of revelry had died away in the gardens and on the roofs of the city. Khoraja slumbered beneath the stars, which seemed to be reflected in the cressets that twinkled among the gardens and along the streets and on the flat roofs of houses where folk slept.

 

“What will you do?” whispered Vateesa, all a-tremble.

 

“Give me my cloak,” answered Yasmela, setting her teeth.

 

“But alone, in the streets, at this hour!” expostulated Vateesa.

 

“Mitra has spoken,” replied the princess. “It might have been the voice of the god, or a trick of a priest. No matter. I will go!”

 

Wrapping a voluminous silken cloak about her lithe figure and donning a velvet cap from which depended a filmy veil, she passed hurriedly through the corridors and approached a bronze door where a dozen spearmen gaped at her as she passed through. This was in a wing of the palace which let directly onto the street; on all other sides it was surrounded by broad gardens, bordered by a high wall. She emerged into the street, lighted by crescents placed at regular intervals.

 

She hesitated; then, before her resolution could falter, she closed the door behind her. A slight shudder shook her as she glanced up and down the street, which lay silent and bare. This daughter of aristocrats had never before ventured unattended outside her ancestral palace. Then, steeling herself, she went swiftly up the street. Her satin-slippered feet fell lightly on the pave, but their soft sound brought her heart into her throat. She imagined their fall echoing thunderously through the cavernous city, rousing ragged rat-eyed figures in hidden lairs among the sewers. Every shadow seemed to hide a lurking assassin, every blank doorway to mask the slinking hounds of darkness.

 

Then she started violently. Ahead of her a figure appeared on the eerie street. She drew quickly into a clump of shadows, which now seemed like a haven of refuge, her pulse pounding. The approaching figure went not furtively, like a thief, or timidly, like a fearful traveller. He strode down the nighted street as one who has no need or desire to walk softly. An unconscious swagger was in his stride, and his footfalls resounded on the pave. As he passed near a cresset she saw him plainly—a tall man, in the chain-mail hauberk of a mercenary. She braced herself, then darted from the shadow, holding her cloak close about her.

 

“Sa-ha!” his sword flashed half out of his sheath. It halted when he saw it was only a woman that stood before him, but his quick glance went over her head, seeking the shadows for possible confederates.

 

He stood facing her, his hand on the long hilt that jutted forward. The torchlight glinted dully on the polished blue steel of his greaves and crested helm. A more baleful fire glittered bluely in his eyes. At first glance she saw he was no Kothian; when he spoke she knew he was no Hyborian. He was clad like a captain of the mercenaries, and in that desperate command there were men of many lands, barbarians as well as civilized foreigners. There was a wolfishness about this warrior that marked the barbarian. The eyes of no civilized man, however wild or criminal, ever blazed with such a fire. Wine scented his breath, but he neither staggered nor stammered.

 

“Have they shut you into the street?” he asked in barbarous Kothic, reaching for her. His fingers closed lightly about her rounded wrist, but she felt that he could splinter its bones without effort. “I’ve but come from the last wine-shop open Ishtar’s curse on these white-livered reformers who close the grog-houses! ‘Let men sleep rather than guzzle,” they say—aye, so they can work and fight better for their masters! Soft-gutted eunuchs, I call them. When I served with the mercenaries of Corinthia we swilled and wenched all night and fought all day aye, blood ran down the channels of our swords. But what of you, my girl? Take off that cursed mask-”

 

 

She avoided his clutch with a lithe twist of her body, trying not to appear to repulse him. She realized her danger, alone with a drunken barbarian. If she revealed her identity, he might laugh at her, or take himself off. She was not sure he would not cut her throat. Barbaric men did strange inexplicable things. She fought a rising fear.

 

“Not here,” she laughed. “Come with me-”

 

“Where?” His wild blood was up, but he was wary as a wolf. “Are you taking me to some den of robbers?”

 

“No, no, I swear it!” She was hard put to avoid the hand which was again fumbling at her veil.

 

“Devil bite you, hussy!” he growled disgustedly. “You’re as bad as a Hyrkanian woman, with your damnable veil. Here—let me look at your figure, anyway.”

 

Before she could prevent it, he wrenched the cloak from her, and she heard his breath hiss between his teeth. He stood holding the cloak, eyeing her as if the sight of her rich garments had somewhat sobered him. She saw suspicion flicker sullenly in his eyes.

 

“Who the devil are you?” he muttered. “You’re no street-waif—unless your leman robbed the king’s seraglio for your clothes.”

 

“Never mind.” She dared to lay her white hand on his massive iron-clad arm. “Come with me off the street.”

 

He hesitated, then shrugged his mighty shoulders. She saw that he half believed her to be some noble lady, who, weary of polite lovers, was taking this means of amusing herself. He allowed her to don the cloak again, and followed her. From the corner of her eye she watched him as they went down the street together. His mail could not conceal his hard lines of tigerish strength. Everything about him was tigerish, elemental, untamed. He was alien as the jungle to her in his difference from the debonair courtiers to whom she was accustomed. She feared him, told herself she loathed his raw brute strength and unashamed barbarism, yet something breathless and perilous inside her leaned toward him; the hidden primitive chord that lurks in every woman’s soul was sounded and responded. She had felt his hardened hand on her arm, and something deep in her tingled to the memory of that contact. Many men had knelt before Yasmela. Here was one she felt had never knelt before any one. Her sensations were those of one leading an unchained tiger; she was frightened, and fascinated by her fright.

 

She halted at the palace door and thrust lightly against it. Furtively watching her companion, she saw no suspicion in his eyes.

 

“Palace, eh?” he rumbled. “So you’re a maid-in-waiting?”

 

She found herself wondering, with a strange jealousy, if any of her maids had ever led this war-eagle into her palace. The guards made no sign as she led him between them, but he eyed them as a fierce dog might eye a strange pack. She led him through a curtained doorway into an inner chamber, where he stood, naively scanning the tapestries, until he saw a crystal jar of wine on an ebony table. This he took up with a gratified sigh, tilting it toward his lips. Vateesa ran from an inner room, crying breathlessly, “Oh my princess-”

 

“Princess!”

 

The wine-jar crashed to the floor. With a motion too quick for sight to follow, the mercenary snatched off Yasmela’s veil, glaring. He recoiled with a curse, his sword leaping into his hand with a broad shimmer of blue steel. His eyes blazed like a trapped tiger’s. The air was supercharged with tension that was like the pause before the bursting of a storm. Vateesa sank to the floor, speechless with terror, but Yasmela faced the infuriated barbarian without flinching. She realized her very life hung in the balance: maddened with suspicion and unreasoning panic, he was ready to deal death at the slightest provocation. But she experienced a certain breathless exhilaration in the crisis.

 

“Do not be afraid,” she said. “I am Yasmela, but there is no reason to fear me.”

 

“Why did you lead me here?” he snarled, his blazing eyes darting all about the chamber. “What manner of trap is this?”

 

“There is no trickery,” she answered. “I brought you here because you can aid me. I called on the gods—on Mitra—and he bade me go into the streets and ask aid of the first man I met.”

 

This was something he could understand. The barbarians had their oracles. He lowered his sword, though he did not sheathe it.

 

“Well, if you’re Yasmela, you need aid,” he grunted. “Your kingdom’s in a devil of a mess. But how can I aid you? If you want a throat cut, of course-”

 

“Sit down,” she requested. “Vateesa, bring him wine.”

 

He complied, taking care, she noticed, to sit with his back against a solid wall, where he could watch the whole chamber. He laid his naked sword across his mail-sheathed knees. She glanced at it in fascination. Its dull blue glimmer seemed to reflect tales of bloodshed and rapine; she doubted her ability to lift it, yet she knew that the mercenary could wield it with one hand as lightly as she could wield a riding-whip. She noted the breadth and power of his hands; they were not the stubby undeveloped paws of a troglodyte. With a guilty start she found herself imagining those strong fingers locked in her dark hair.

 

He seemed reassured when she deposited herself on a satin divan opposite him. He laid his helm on the table, as she watched his massive shoulders. She saw more fully now his unlikeness to the Hyborian races. In his dark face there was a suggestion of moodiness; and without being marked by depravity, or definitely evil, there was more than a suggestion of the sinister about his features, set off by his smoldering blue eyes. A broad forehead was topped by his long mane.

 

“Who are you?” she asked abruptly.

 

“Conan, a captain of the mercenary spearmen,” he answered, emptying the wine-cup at a gulp and holding it out for more. “I was born in Cimmeria.”

 

The name meant little to her. She only knew vaguely that it was a wild grim hill-country which lay far to the north, beyond the last outposts of the Hyborian nations, and was peopled by a fierce moody race. She had never before seen one of them.

 

Resting her chin on her hands, she gazed at him with the deep dark eyes that had enslaved many a heart.

 

“Conan of Cimmeria,” she said, “you said I needed aid. Why?”

 

“Well,” he answered, “any man can see that. Here is the king your brother in an Ophirean prison; here is Koth plotting to enslave you; here is this sorcerer screaming hell-fire and destruction down in Shem—and what’s worse, here are your soldiers deserting every day.”

 

She did not at once reply; it was a new experience for a man to speak so forthrightly to her, his words not couched in courtier phrases.

 

“Why are my soldiers deserting, Conan?” she asked.

 

“Some are being hired away by Koth,” he replied, pulling at the wine-jar with relish. “Many think Khoraja is doomed as an independent state. Many are frightened by tales of this dog Natohk.”

 

“Will the mercenaries stand?” she asked anxiously.

 

“As long as you pay us well,” he answered frankly. “Your politics are nothing to us. You can trust Amalric, our general, but the rest of us are only common men who love loot. If you pay the ransom Ophir asks, men say you’ll be unable to pay us. In that case we might go over to the king of Koth, though that cursed miser is no friend of mine. Or we might loot this city. In a civil war the plunder is always plentiful.”

 

“Why would you not go over to Natohk?” she inquired.

 

“What could he pay us?” he snorted. “With fat-bellied brass idols he looted from the Shemite cities? As long as you’re fighting Natohk, you may trust us.”

 

“Would your comrades follow you?” she asked abruptly.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“I mean,” she answered deliberately, “that I am going to make you commander of the armies of Khoraja!”

 

He stopped short, the goblet at his lips, which curved in a broad grin. His eyes blazed with a new light.

 

“Commander? Crom! But what will your perfumed nobles say?”

 

“They will obey me!” She clasped her hands to summon a slave, who entered, bowing deeply. “Have Count Thespides come to me at once, and the chancellor Taurus, lord Amalric, and the Agha Shupras.

 

“I place my trust in Mitra,” she said, bending her gaze on Conan, who was now devouring the food placed before him by the trembling Vateesa. “You have seen much war?”

 

“I was born in the midst of a battle,” he answered, tearing a chunk of meat from a huge joint with his strong teeth. “The first sound my ears heard was the clang of swords and the yells of the slaying. I have fought in blood-feuds, tribal wars, and imperial campaigns.”

 

“But can you lead men and arrange battle-lines?”

 

“Well, I can try,” he returned imperturbably. “It’s no more than sword-play on a larger scale. You draw his guard, then stab, slash! And either his head is off, or yours.”

 

The slave entered again, announcing the arrival of the men sent for, and Yasmela went into the outer chamber, drawing the velvet curtains behind her. The nobles bent the knee, in evident surprise at her summons at such an hour.

 

“I have summoned you to tell you of my decision,” said Yasmela. “The kingdom is in peril-”

 

“Right enough, my princess.” It was Count Thespides who spoke—a tall man, whose black locks were curled and scented. With one white hand he smoothed his pointed mustache, and with the other he held a velvet chaperon with a scarlet feather fastened by a golden clasp. His pointed shoes were satin, his cote-hardie of gold-broidered velvet. His manner was slightly affected, but the thews under his silks were steely. “It were well to offer Ophir more gold for your royal brother’s release.”

 

“I strongly disagree,” broke in Taurus the chancellor, an elderly man in an ermine-fringed robe, whose features were lined with the cares of his long service. “We have already offered what will beggar the kingdom to pay. To offer more would further excite Ophir’s cupidity. My princess, I say as I have said before: Ophir will not move until we have met this invading horde. If we lose, he will give king Khossus to Koth; if we win, he will doubtless restore his majesty to us on payment of the ransom.”

 

“And in the meantime,” broke in Amalric, “the soldiers desert daily, and the mercenaries are restless to know why we dally.” He was a Nemedian, a large man with a lion-like yellow mane. “We must move swiftly, if at all-”

 

“Tomorrow we march southward,” she answered. “And there is the man who shall lead you!”

 

Jerking aside the velvet curtains she dramatically indicated the Cimmerian. It was perhaps not an entirely happy moment for the disclosure. Conan was sprawled in his chair, his feet propped on the ebony table, busily engaged in gnawing a beef-bone which he gripped firmly in both hands. He glanced casually at the astounded nobles, grinned faintly at Amalric, and went on munching with undisguised relish.

 

“Mitra protect us!” exploded Amalric. “That’s Conan the Northron, the most turbulent of all my rogues! I’d have hanged him long ago, were he not the best swordsman that ever donned hauberk-”

 

“Your highness is pleased to jest!” cried Thespides, his aristocratic features darkening. “This man is a savage—a fellow of no culture or breeding! It is an insult to ask gentlemen to serve under him! I-”

 

“Count Thespides,” said Yasmela, “you have my glove under your baldric. Please give it to me, and then go.”

 

“Go?” he cried, starting. “Go where?”

 

“To Koth or to Hades!” she answered. “If you will not serve me as I wish, you shall not serve me at all.”

 

“You wrong me, princess,” he answered, bowing low, deeply hurt. “I would not forsake you. For your sake I will even put my sword at the disposal of this savage.”

 

“And you, my lord Amalric?”

 

Amalric swore beneath his breath, then grinned. True soldier of fortune, no shift of fortune, however outrageous, surprised him much.

 

“I’ll serve under him. A short life and a merry one, say I—and with Conan the Throat-slitter in command, life is likely to be both merry and short. Mitra! If the dog ever commanded more than a company of cut-throats before, I’ll eat him, harness and all!”

 

“And you, my Agha?” she turned to Shupras.

 

He shrugged his shoulders resignedly. He was typical of the race evolved along Koth’s southern borders—tall and gaunt, with features leaner and more hawk-like than his purer-blooded desert kin.

 

“Ishtar gives, princess.” The fatalism of his ancestors spoke for him.

 

“Wait here,” she commanded, and while Thespides fumed and gnawed his velvet cap, Taurus muttered wearily under his breath, and Amalric strode back and forth, tugging at his yellow beard and grinning like a hungry lion, Yasmela disappeared again through the curtains and clapped her hands for her slaves.

 

At her command they brought harness to replace Conan’s chain-mail—gorget, sollerets, cuirass, pauldrons, jambes, cuisses and sallet. When Yasmela again drew the curtains, a Conan in burnished steel stood before his audience. Clad in the plate armor, vizor lifted and dark face, there was a grim impressiveness about him that even Thespides grudgingly noted. A jest died suddenly on Amalric’s lips.

 

“By Mitra,” said he slowly, “I never expected to see you cased in coat-armor, but you do not put it to shame. By my finger bones, Conan, I have seen kings who wore their harness less regally than you!”

 

Conan was silent. A vague shadow crossed his mind like a prophecy. In years to come he was to remember Amalric’s words, when the dream became the reality.

 

In the early haze of dawn the streets of Khoraja were thronged by crowds of people who watched the hosts riding from the southern gate. The army was on the move at last. There were the knights, gleaming in richly wrought plate-armor, colored plumes waving above their burnished sallets. Their steeds, caparisoned with silk, lacquered leather and gold buckles, caracoled and curvetted as their riders put them through their paces. The early light struck glints from lancepoints that rose like a forest above the array, their pennons flowing in the breeze. Each knight wore a lady’s token, a glove, scarf or rose, bound to his helmet or fastened to his sword-belt. They were the chivalry of Khoraja, five hundred strong, led by Count

 

Thespides, who, men said, aspired to the hand of Yasmela herself.

 

They were followed by the light cavalry on rangy steeds. The riders were typical hillmen, lean and hawk-faced; peaked steel caps were on their heads and chain-mail glinted under their flowing kaftans. Their main weapon was the terrible Shemitish bow, which could send a shaft five hundred paces. There were five thousand of these, and Shupras rode at their head, his lean face moody beneath his spired helmet.

 

Close on their heels marched the Khoraja spearmen, always comparatively few in any Hyborian state, where men thought cavalry the only honorable branch of service. These, like the knights, were of ancient Kothic blood—sons of ruined families, broken men, penniless youths, who could not afford horses and plate-armor, five hundred of them.

 

The mercenaries brought up the rear, a thousand horsemen, two thousand spearmen. The tall horses of the cavalry seemed hard and savage as their riders; they made no curvets or gambades. There was a grimly business-like aspect to these professional killers, veterans of bloody campaigns. Clad from head to foot in chain-mail, they wore their vizor less head-pieces over linked coifs. Their shields were unadorned, their long lances without guidons. At their saddle-bows hung battle-axes or steel maces, and each man wore at his hip a long broadsword. The spearmen were armed in much the same manner, though they bore pikes instead of cavalry lances.

 

They were men of many races and many crimes. There were tall Hyperboreans, gaunt, big-boned, of slow speech and violent natures; tawny-haired Gundermen from the hills of the northwest; swaggering Corinthian renegades; swarthy Zingarians, with bristling black mustaches and fiery tempers; Aquilonians from the distant west. But all, except the Zingarians, were Hyborians.

 

Behind all came a camel in rich housings, led by a knight on a great war-horse, and surrounded by a clump of picked fighters from the royal house-troops. Its rider, under the silken canopy of the seat, was a slim, silk-clad figure, at the sight of which the populace, always mindful of royalty, threw up its leather cap and cheered wildly.

 

Conan the Cimmerian, restless in his plate-armor, stared at the bedecked camel with no great approval, and spoke to Amalric, who rode beside him, resplendent in chain-mail threaded with gold, golden breastplate and helmet with flowing horsehair crest.

 

“The princess would go with us. She’s supple, but too soft for this work. Anyway, she’ll have to get out of these robes.”

 

Amalric twisted his yellow mustache to hide a grin. Evidently Conan supposed Yasmela intended to strap on a sword and take part in the actual fighting, as the barbarian women often fought.

 

“The women of the Hyborians do not fight like your Cimmerian women, Conan,” he said. “Yasmela rides with us to watch the battle. Anyway,” he shifted in his saddle and lowered his voice, “between you and me, I have an idea that the princess dares not remain behind. She fears something-”

 

“No. One of her maids talked—babbled about Something that came into the palace by night and frightened Yasmela half out of her wits. It’s some of Natohk’s deviltry, I doubt not. Conan, it’s more than flesh and blood we fight!”

 

“Well,” grunted the Cimmerian, “it’s better to go meet an enemy than to wait for him.”

 

He glanced at the long line of wagons and camp-followers, gathered the reins in his mailed hand, and spoke from habit the phrase of the marching mercenaries, “Hell or plunder, comrades—march!”

 

Behind the long train the ponderous gates of Khoraja closed. Eager heads lined the battlements. The citizens well knew they were watching life or death go forth. If the host was overthrown, the future of Khoraja would be written in blood. In the hordes swarming up from the savage south, mercy was a quality unknown.

 

All day the columns marched, through grassy rolling meadowlands, cut by small rivers, the terrain gradually beginning to slope upward. Ahead of them lay a range of low hills, sweeping in an unbroken rampart from east to west. They camped that night on the northern slopes of those hills, and hook-nosed, fiery-eyed men of the hill tribes came in scores to squat about the fires and repeat news that had come up out of the mysterious desert. Through their tales ran the name of Natohk like a crawling serpent. At his bidding the demons of the air brought thunder and wind and fog, the fiends of the underworld shook the earth with awful roaring. He brought fire out of the air and consumed the gates of walled cities, and burnt armored men to bits of charred bone. His warriors covered the desert with their numbers, and he had five thousand Stygian troops in war chariots under the rebel prince Kutamun.

 

Conan listened unperturbed. War was his trade. Life was a continual battle, or series of battles, since his birth. Death had been a constant companion. It stalked horrifically at his side; stood at his shoulder beside the gaming-tables; its bony fingers rattled the wine-cups. It loomed above him, a hooded and monstrous shadow, when he lay down to sleep. He minded its presence no more than a king minds the presence of his cupbearer. Some day its bony grasp would close; that was all. It was enough that he lived through the present.

 

However, others were less careless of fear than he. Striding back from the sentry lines, Conan halted as a slender cloaked figure stayed him with an outstretched hand.

 

“Princess! You should be in your tent.”

 

“I could not sleep.” Her dark eyes were haunted in the shadow.

 

“Conan, I am afraid!”

 

“Are there men in the host you fear?” His hand locked on his hilt.

 

“No man,” she shuddered. “Conan, is there anything you fear?”

 

He considered, tugging at his chin. “Aye,” he admitted at last, “the curse of the gods.”

 

Again she shuddered. “I am cursed. A fiend from the abysses has set his mark upon me. Night after night he lurks in the shadows, whispering awful secrets to me. He will drag me down to be his queen in hell. I dare not sleep—he will come to me in my pavilion as he came in the palace. Conan, you are strong keep me with you! I am afraid!”

 

She was no longer a princess, but only a terrified girl. Her pride had fallen from her, leaving her unashamed in her nakedness. In her frantic fear she had come to him who seemed strongest. The ruthless power that had repelled her, drew her now.

 

For answer he drew off his scarlet cloak and wrapped it about her, roughly, as if tenderness of any kind were impossible to him. His iron hand rested for an instant on her slender shoulder, and she shivered again, but not with fear. Like an electric shock a surge of animal vitality swept over her at his mere touch, as if some of his superabundant strength had been imparted to her.

 

“Lie here.” He indicated a clean-swept space close to a small flickering fire. He saw no incongruity in a princess lying down on the naked ground beside a campfire, wrapped in a warrior’s cloak. But she obeyed without question.

He seated himself near her on a boulder, his broadsword across his knees. With the firelight glinting from his blue steel armor, he seemed like an image of steel—dynamic power for the moment quiescent; not resting, but motionless for the instant, awaiting the signal to plunge again into terrific action. The firelight played on his features, making them seem as if carved out of substance shadowy yet hard as steel. They were immobile, but his eyes smoldered with fierce life. He was not merely a wild man; he was part of the wild, one with the untameable elements of life; in his veins ran the blood of the wolf-pack; in his brain lurked thebrooding depths of the northern night; his heart throbbed with the fire of blazing forests.

 

So, half meditating, half dreaming, Yasmela dropped off to sleep, wrapped in a sense of delicious security. Somehow she knew that no flame-eyed shadow would bend over her in the darkness, with this grim figure from the outlands standing guard above her. Yet once again she wakened, to shudder in cosmic fear, though not because of anything she saw.

 

It was a low mutter of voices that roused her. Opening her eyes, she saw that the fire was burning low. A feeling of dawn was in the air. She could dimly see that Conan still sat on the boulder; she glimpsed the long blue glimmer of his blade. Close beside him crouched another figure, on which the dying fire cast a faint glow. Yasmela drowsily made out a hooked beak of a nose, a glittering bead of an eye, under a white turban. The man was speaking rapidly in a Shemite dialect she found hard to understand.

 

“Let Bel wither my arm! I speak truth! By Derketo, Conan, I am a prince of liars, but I do not lie to an old comrade. I swear by the days when we were thieves together in the land of Zamora, before you donned hauberk!

 

“I saw Natohk; with the others I knelt before him when he made incantations to Set. But I did not thrust my nose in the sand as the rest did. I am a thief of Shumir, and my sight is keener than a weasel’s. I squinted up and saw his veil blowing in the wind. It blew aside, and I saw—I saw—Bel aid me, Conan, I say I saw! My blood froze in my veins and my hair stood up. What I had seen burned my soul like a red-hot iron. I could not rest until I had made sure.

 

“I journeyed to the ruins of Kuthchemes. The door of the ivory dome stood open; in the doorway lay a great serpent, transfixed by a sword. Within the dome lay the body of a man, so shrivelled and distorted I could scarce make it out at first—it was Shevatas, the Zamorian, the only thief in the world I acknowledged as my superior. The treasure was untouched; it lay in shimmering heaps about the corpse. That was all.”

 

“There were no bones-” began Conan.

 

“There was nothing!” broke in the Shemite passionately. “Nothing! Only the one corpse!”

 

Silence reigned an instant, and Yasmela shrank with a crawling nameless horror.

 

“Whence came Natohk?” rose the Shemite’s vibrant whisper. “Out of the desert on a night when the world was blind and wild with mad clouds driven in frenzied flight across the shuddering stars, and the howling of the wind was mingled with the shrieking of the spirits of the wastes. Vampires were abroad that night, witches rode naked on the wind, and werewolves howled across the wilderness. On a black camel he came, riding like the wind, and an unholy fire played about him; the cloven tracks of the camel glowed in the darkness. When Natohk dismounted before Set’s shrine by the oasis of Aphaka, the beast swept into the night and vanished. And I have talked with tribesmen who swore that it suddenly spread gigantic wings and rushed upwards into the clouds, leaving a trail of fire behind it. No man has seen that camel since that night, but a black brutish manlike shape shambles to Natohk’s tent and gibbers to him in the blackness before dawn. I will tell you, Conan, Natohk is—look, I will show you an image of what I saw that day by Shushan when the wind blew aside his veil!”

 

Yasmela saw the glint of gold in the Shemite’s hand, as the men bent closely over something. She heard Conan grunt; and suddenly blackness rolled over her. For the first time in her life, princess Yasmela had fainted.

 

 

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