Conan Of The Isles

A pox upon this business of kinging it! he thought. It drained every last drop of juice from a man's tissues, leaving him a querulous old hairsplitter without enough red blood in his veins to swing a broadsword. Surely, after twenty weary years of wearing the crown, a man was entitled to throw over honors and titles and set out toward dim horizons for one last, gore-spattered adventure before Time's all-felling, implacable scythe cut him down ...

Conan stole a glance at the second throne, whereon sat his son, Prince Conn, the heir of Aquilonia. The lad was twenty - old enough, surely, to take the throne of the mightiest kingdom of the West. With a slight smile on his grim lips, the old king studied the bored, mutinous glower of dissatisfaction on the face of young Conn. Doubtless the lad was also dreaming of flinging off these stifling robes of state and riding off for a day's hunting, or perhaps a night of wenching in waterfront dives. Remembering his own hard-drinking, hot-blooded youth, Conan chuckled.

In truth, Prince Conn was the very image of his sire in his younger days: the same scowling black brows over deep-set eyes of volcanic blue; the same swart, square-jawed face, framed by a square-cut mane of straight, coarse black hair; the same burly blacksmith's body, sheathed in massive muscles that bulged the silks and velvets at tne broad shoulders and deep-arched chest; the same long, steel-thewed legs. Scarce out of his teens, the son of Conan towered head and shoulders over most of the men in the hall, save only his titanic sire, the greatest warrior the world had ever known.

As for King Conan, even that mightiest of champions, Time, had not yet broken him. True, sixty-odd years had strewn abundant silver in the thick, black mane and the stiff, grizzled beard, cut short and square, that now clothed his grim lips and iron jaw. Some flesh had fallen from his mighty frame, leaving him gaunt as a savage gray wolf of the northern steppes. And Time's cold hand had etched deep grooves in his somber brow and scarred cheeks.

But still unquenchable vitality surged within his titanic form. Hot flames of leashed fury smouldered in his eyes. And Time's palsying grip had sapped but little of the strength from his viselike hands - now wrinkled and corded - and his supple sinews and massive thews.

He sat on the silver throne is if he bestrode some deep-chested war stallion on the foughten field. One massive hand gripped the black-and-silver mace of justice as if it were an iron-spiked battle mace that he would heave up at any moment to strike down a foe. And the rich robes, crusted with gems and hung with golden medallions and chains, which clothed his lean but mighty form., bore somehow the look of battle harness. For wherever he went - in mirthful banquet hall, in quiet library of ancient, dusty tones, or in silken boudoir - this somber barbarian from the cloud-cloaked wastes of northern Cimmeria carried with him the grim, dangerous atmosphere of the battlefield.

It had been more than a score of years now since a trick of Fate, a whim of the gods, or perhaps his own indomitable will had lifted this black-browed outlander from the ranks of nameless adventurers to a glittering place among the great ones of the world as lord of the richest and most powerful kingdom of the West. Since that night, nearly half a century before, when as a ragged, wild-eyed youth, whirling a length of broken chain, he had fought his way out of a Hyborian slave pen and set forth barehanded on the road that leads but a chosen few to the ultimate heights of power and glory, Conan of Cimmeria had brawled and battled his way across half a world, cutting a red path through a dozen kingdoms from the thundering beaches of the Western Ocean to the misty vales of fabulous Khitai.

As thief, pirate, mercenary, adventurer, chief of barbarous tribes, and general in the armies of kings, he had ventured far and known all that the world afforded of adventure and marvel. With his irresistible sword, the mighty Cimmerian had fought demons, dragons, and shambling horrors of the Elder Dark. A thousand foes had felt the bitter kiss of his whirling blade - bronze-mailed warriors, malevolent wizards, fierce barbarian chieftains, and haughty kings. Even the eternal gods had sometimes fled the fury of his slashing brand.

But the adventure that started here, in the royal Hall of Justice in Tarantia, on this warm spring day, eight thousand years after the fall of Atlantis and seven thousand years before the rise of Egypt and Sumeria, was to be the strangest and most fantastic of all the many that thronged his far-famed and peril-filled career.

It began suddenly and unexpectedly.

One moment, Conan was frowning down upon the fat merchant and his glib, gesticulating advocate. The next, he raised a puzzled glance across the hall to where the elegant figure of his trusted old friend, Count Trocero of Poitain staggered across the polished floor.