Conan of Venarium

At long last, the serpent lay still. Conan approached the great corpse with a hunter's caution, for he knew that even a seemingly dead snake often had one final bite left to give. He tapped the snake's snout with the end of his bow, held out at arm's length before him. And sure enough, the serpent snapped convulsively, but only on empty air.

When he was sure it would in fact move no more, Conan drew his knife from his belt and used it to pry the snake's mouth open. Then, stoically ignoring the fetid reptilian musk that rose from the creature, he dipped the heads and upper shafts of the arrows remaining in his quiver in the greenish venom still dribbling from its fangs. That done, he cut out one of the fangs and, handling it with the greatest of care lest he be poisoned himself, dropped it into the quiver.

He peered down into the chamber whence the serpent had crawled, wondering whether another of its fearsome breed still lingered there. But of that there was no sign; only the one, it appeared, had come through the ages with this ancient shrine. Shaking his head in wonder, Conan left by the twisting pathway he had used to enter.

Once outside the temple, he followed the track past the enormous fir. Then he stopped, suddenly wishing he had taken both fangs instead of the one. He turned around.

The fir was not there.

Conan took several steps back toward where it had stood. He still saw no sign of it, and rubbed his eyes in disbelief. A tree like that could not simply have vanished off the face of the earth —except that it had. He rubbed his eyes again, which did nothing to make it reappear. Instead of leading back toward the temple from forgotten days, the track took him to a part of the woods he knew well.

He rubbed his eyes again and scratched his head, wondering whether he had somehow imagined the entire episode. But when he unslung his quiver and examined the arrows it held, he saw that their heads and the upper inches of their shafts were discolored by the venom of the titanic serpent's needlelike fang. Whatever his experience had been, a dream it was not.

He decided to set those arrows aside, not to take them on ordinary hunting trips but to save them for panthers, wolves, bears, Aquilonians, and other dangerous game. Now he had no trouble retracing his steps to Duthil. His return journey took him past the encampment Count Stercus' Gundermen and Bossonians had set up near the village. As always, the invaders —the occupiers, now—were alert, with sentries posted all around the palisade. Conan snarled a soft curse he had heard from his father. No one could hope to surprise them.

He had nearly reached his home village when he suddenly stopped in his tracks. "No one could hope to surprise them by day!" he exclaimed, as if someone had claimed otherwise. "But by night-"

From then on, he ran as if his heels had sprouted wings. "What is it, Conan?" called Tarla as he dashed past Balarg's house. He did not stop—did not so much as slow—even for her, which proved if anything could how important he thought his idea was.

"Father!" he panted, skidding to a stop in the smithy's doorway.

Mordec was giving a new axehead an edge with a foot-powered grinding wheel. As he took his foot off the pedal, the shower of sparks from the axehead died away. "What is it?" he asked, unconsciously echoing Balarg's daughter. "Whatever it is, it must be a thought of weight, to have you running through Duthil as if demons dogged your tracks."

That took Conan's mind back to the fane from out of time, but only for a moment. The present and what might lie ahead were more important to him. "If we were to strike the Aquilonian camp at night, we could take the foe by surprise," he burst out, his voice cracking with excitement.

"We could, aye, but what would happen if we did?" asked Mordec.

"Why, we'd be free of them," answered Conan. How could his father not see that?

As he soon discovered, though, Mordec saw further than he did. "Duthil would be free of them —for a little while," said the blacksmith. "Cimmeria would not. And when the rest of the Aquilonians learned what we had done, they would come back in force and work a fearful vengeance on us."

"Then we need to strike all their camps on the same night," declared Conan. "If we do, they would be gone forever."

"If we could, they would be gone forever," said Mordec. "How do you propose to bring it off?"

"Send men to all the villages," answered Conan. "Tell them to attack on such and such a night. When that night comes, the Aquilonians go." He made a fist to show exactly what he meant.