On the golden and bejeweled throne of Belverus, capital of the ancient and exalted realm of Nemedia, heartland of the Hyborian world, King Archivaius IX, though barely more than a stripling in years, stared through the strands of his long brown hair with narrowed green eyes and deep suspicion at the tall, slender, shaven-headed ebon-robed form who stood before him and his assembled courtiers. The King's purple-tuniced and golden scale-mail armoured royal guards, never more than a few feet from his side, fingered their pikes and halberds nervously has they glared at the outlander before them.
"Our noble and illustrious land is known to be tolerant of faiths and philosophies other than those of Mitra, Lord of Light, whose orthodoxies are more rigorously enforced by our narrow-minded neighbours in Aquilonia to the west," quoth the youthful King in a loud but cultured voice that echoed clearly across the vast, marble-pillared hall. "But I tell you in truth, it does not please me to see a Stygian Priest of Set stand openly before my throne, nor I dare say does it raise my standing with my court that you do so. You strain my tolerance in coming here before me today."
"Would it have strained your tolerance less if I had appeared unannounced in your private chambers in the night?" replied the shaven-headed acolyte of Set with a grim smile. "For such was in my power to do. But I have come here openly and before your court, as a show of good faith from our Stygian King, whose ambassador I am, and his priesthood. I am grateful for your generosity in seeing me so, and on such short notice."
"Pleasantries be damned, in your case," replied the King, to the murmur of the assembled courtiers at this breach of protocol before a foreign ambassador – even one from the dark and dreaded realm of Stygia, far to the south. "What does you King want of me, if it may be spoken of openly?"
"Some of it may be spoken openly, and the rest in private," replied the Stygian ambassador, his copper-skinned face and dark eyes impassive despite the slight inflicted on him. "Stygia wishes no secret to be made that is wishes friendship and alliance with Nemedia, pivot of the Hyborian realms, against their common foe Aquilonia, and its usurper King."
Now there were open gasps from amongst the assembled throng, not to mention the hurried departure of a few of its members – no doubt to immediately inform the agents of the Aquilonian King in Belverus of this unsettling development, in exchange for a handsome reward in gold.
Restraining his surprise not only that such an alliance against a powerful foe would be offered, but that the offer would be made in open court, Archivaius chose his words carefully.
"We all know the current King of Aquilonia, Conan II, is not a legitimate occupant of the Lion Throne of that ancient and illustrious realm," replied the King with a shrug. "Nemedia's position in this regard is of course no secret to anyone. As every man knows, Conan II, or Conn as his courtiers often call him, is the second of a line of usurpers; his father Conan I, a Cimmerian mercenary, his mother Zenobia I regret to say it a Nemedian whore, and not a trace of royal or even noble blood in his veins. Years ago my grandfather tried to set things right in open war against the usurper King Conan I, who had murdered the legitimate Aquilonian King Numedides with his bare hands as he sat upon the Lion Throne! And yet as the whole world knows, our venture ended in failure and was at terrible cost to our realm, with the power of Aquilonia greater than ever and ours a shadow of its former self. Our noble realm of Nemedia has but recently begun to regain its strength and power of old."
"All the more reason for you to form an alliance with a powerful nation against a common foe," replied the Stygian ambassador with a smile.
"And yet who is the common foe?" shot back the King. "For your nation has been an enemy to all nations of the Hyborian race since the long-lost days of thrice-accursed Acheron, and your god has been the enemy of ours since time immemorial!"
"I did not come here to convert the worshippers of Mitra to the worship of Set," demurred the ambassador. "Has a single Nemedian soldier fallen to a Stygian blade or arrow in living memory? Of course not, as we all know. And yet despite your youth your Majesty must know, if only from your tutors in the annals of your thrice-renowned realm, how many Nemedian villages were shorn of all their healthy young men-at-arms thanks to the blades and bows of your Aquilonian cousins in the days of Conan the Usurper! And you yourself, Your Majesty, have just attested to the crippling blow dealt to Nemedia by Aquilonia but a generation ago. Surely it is clear to all present which nation is the real enemy of your own?"
There was a murmur amongst the assembled throng, at the truth of the Stygian's words. The King remained silent for some moments, weighing the chance to deal a blow to his Aquilonian foes against his well-founded distrust of the dark and hoary realm of Stygia. Silently he cursed the Stygian for making his approach in public, deliberately forcing the issue in front of his court in a way that would inevitably draw the ire of the Aquilonian King – as no doubt was intended by the sly and subtle Stygian.
"Such matters will not be discussed in public further," replied the King with a haughty tone. "If you wish a private audience, make the arrangements through my lord chamberlain. You are dismissed."
"As His Majesty commands," replied the Stygian with a sardonic smile, as he bowed low and then turned with a flourish of his long black robes to make his exit from the chamber, while a whirl of gossip echoed from one end of the vast hall to the other.
Less than two weeks later, in a cool, marble-walled chamber of far-off Tarantia, the sprawling capital of Aquilonia, young King Conn held his own private audience before the most trusted members of his own court seated about his broad, round council table of smoothly polished white marble – and he was far from pleased.
"How long am I to tolerate these insults!" quoth Conn, his light brown eyes - mirroring those of his late mother rather than his father - flashing with rage. "First I am almost murdered by an agent of Set, which amounts to agent of thrice-accursed Stygia; now I hear that Stygia proposes alliance with Nemedia in open court at Belverus, and the Nemedian king does not at once decline him! Has the world gone mad, or have the gods turned their back on us, that all our foes are in league?"
"It is disgusting that a Stygian ambassador was even admitted into the Nemedian court, and doubly so that he was not at once executed for proposing that worshippers of Mitra should align with those of Set!" cried one of the councillors, the young Prince of Poitain in the south of Aquilonia, dressed in an elaborate gown of crimson wool threaded in elegant patterns with cloth of gold.
"It is a blasphemy against Mitra!" proclaimed another, a dark-bearded man of middling years dressed in the plain white robes of one of Mitra's priests.
Conn was silent for some minutes. Much had changed in Aquilonia since his father's disappearance into the West nigh on a dozen years before, to combat the plague of the red shadows. Of those of his father's old friends and councillors who had survived the assault of the red shadows at court, not one was yet alive; all had succumbed to the grasping hand of old age. Thus not one of the old generation who has seen his father into power and supported his claim to the throne, through thick and thin and with their own reputations on the line, yet lived. A new breed now filled the halls of court and the castles and palaces of the nobility. Most of them owed nothing to Conn - and some of them, he knew, imagined themselves as having a stronger claim to the Lion Throne than did he.
"Your Majesty, I bring far graver news," said one of the men present, a man of indeterminate age and dark, leathern-faced complexion who wore plain traveler's clothes of black and brown linen cloth – quite out of keeping with the others. He went by the name of Nemalirus, though on account of his profession even Conn did not know his real name. In appearance a traveler, he was in truth a spy.
"My sources in the Nemedian capital," he continued, "tell me that their young King did in fact meet with the Stygian ambassador after the public audience behind closed doors. What happened behind those doors I know not; but shortly after the Stygian departed, the King issued orders to his generals to mobilize his army!"
The room at once erupted in a storm of fury and indignation at this news. Conn raised his hands to silence them, and then turned to Nemalirus.
"So Archivaius means war then?" asked Conn. "I would have thought the Nemedians had learned their lesson the last time they sought war with Aquilonia."
"Is His Majesty taken by surprise?" asked one of the nobles, Parlius, Baron of Lor in the east of Aquilonia; he was a young man draped in robes of crimson silk, his brown curled locks scented with oil of rosewater. "I would have thought His Majesty had special insight into the irreligious and perfidious character of the Nemedians, being half of Nemedian blood himself."
There was silence as the other nobles stared uneasily between Parlius and the King. His eyes flashing, Conn replied in a strained voice, "Mention my ancestry with disdain again, my lord, and I will collect your flapping tongue myself."
"My liege," replied Parlius as he stood to his feet with a ritual gesture of apologetic bow and flourish. He then resumed his seat, his soft features marred it seemed by the slightest trace of a sneer.
"By your leave, my lord, there is more," continued Nemalirus, "for you have not heard the worst. Our spies from Koth and Shem, who have their own leads in dark Stygia, report that the Stygian army also readies itself for war! They prepare a vast assault, against whom it is not known."
"And yet we can guess," replied Conn sourly, "for we receive tribute from Argos and Zingara along the cost, and Koth and Ophir inland. Am I then to believe the unthinkable; that Nemedia has made alliance with Stygia, the ancient enemy of all Hyborian lands, simply to avenge itself against Aquilonia?"
Cries of outrage sounded throughout the room at the very thought of such blasphemy; even Parlius of Lor appeared genuinely offended.
"My liege," replied Salutius, an aging bear of a man wearing steel armour draped in a black tunic bearing the the white lion emblem of Aquilonia, a bejeweled chain of gold about his neck; one of the highest-ranking generals of the realm. "If this news be true," he continued, "and I have no cause to doubt the word of good Nemalirus here, then our realm is in grave peril of invasion on all fronts. If Nemedia moves against us from the east, and Stygia moves against us and our vassal states from the south, we will be forced to withdraw our armies from the barbarian frontiers in order to throw them against our Nemedian and Stygian foes. But then, we will soon face raids or worse from the Picts to the west and, er, the Cimmerians to the north."
"You need not feel embarrassed to mention the Cimmerians in my presence," replied Conn evenly. "I am not their King."
Turning to his other councillors, Conn stated, "My lords, it is plain we have no choice but to mobilize our own armies at once, and to call up our own reserves. And yet I cannot believe all of this is a coincidence, or a sudden move on the part of our foes. Everything that transpires reeks of a conspiracy long in the making. Though I have no doubt that the source of this conspiracy lies in the vile realm of Stygia, that nest of evil snake-worshippers; for all their ideals of religious tolerance, the Nemedians surely would never have conceived the idea of aligning themselves with the Stygians, even tactically."
"There is more than mortal scheming at work here, my liege," said Olivaiant, High Priest of Mitra in the Aquilonian realm, a hoary, grey-bearded figure gowned in robes of plain white wool, as was the other priest present, but also crowned with a wreath of laurel. He was by far the oldest man in the room though he had but recently attained his position as hierophant after the demise of his even more ancient predecessor, the High Priest of King Conan I's time.
"The world is but a chessboard, and men are but the pieces on the board, be they kings or pawns," continued Olivaiant, his voice cracked and weary, but his grey eyes and furrowed brow laden with wisdom. "The real players are behind the scenes, beyond the sight of ordinary men. And behind all of these manoeuvres and politicking, I deem we see at work the scaly claws of Set the Thrice-Accursed, false god of darkness and the void. Stygia cares not a farthing for Nemedia; they merely use its vengeful and idiot boy-king as their pawn. And what Stygia seeks is surely nothing less than overthrowing Aquilonia, bulwark of the West, as the first phase of overthrowing all Hyborian realms and all those who worship Mitra, Lord of Light. Once again they seek to establish a dark Stygian empire to further the control of the followers of Set over all the lands of their long-lost sister realm of Acheron, upon whose smoking ruins the foundations of the Hyborian realms were laid in the days of our forefathers!"
A grim silence filled the room, as none doubted the truth of the words of the High Priest.
"Your words are dark," quoth Conn, "but for my part I do not believe we men are merely pawns. There may be greater powers behind the scenes, but we are masters of our own fates; so my father believed, and if any man's life is truth of that belief it is his. Let the gods do what they will; we must take matters into our own hands. I will not stand idly by and wait for invasion to come to us on all fronts. Salutius, you are to take command of the mobilization of our armies and muster of our reserves. As soon as all is ready, we will strike the first blow! Archivaius will soon learn there is a high price to be paid for tweaking the tail of the Lion Throne."
"As for our Stygian foes, in the first instance we shall use our vassals against them! Tell Argos and Zingara that Aqulonia will pay a bounty of a hundred gold pieces for every Stygian ship proven sunk by their efforts, in any waters anywhere, from this time forth! The rumour alone shall unleash a horde of pirates and privateers from every port in Argos and Zingara, aye and the Barachan Isles too, hell bent on sending every Stygian galley and scow to the bottom! Their greed for gold will soon overcome their fear of the snake crawlers. Aye, and while we are at it, Salutius, inform our own officers and men that ten-thousand gold pieces shall be paid for the sack of black Khemi, Stygia's greatest port-city, by our own troops, and another ten-thousand apiece for the head of the Stygian puppet-king and the High Priest of Set who rules the realm through him! Aye, and another ten-thousand each for the sack of Belverus, and yet another ten-thousand for the head of Archivaius himself!"
Half those present gave a resounding cheer to the King's bold commands, while the other half gasped in horror at his transgression of so many laws of gods and men.
"My liege, how can you give such orders?" demanded Parlius, his soft lower lip quivering with indignation. "Is the Crown of Aquilonia to treat with pirates, the lowest of all scum? Are we to offer gold for the head of your brother Hyborian King as if he were a common bandit? Civilized peoples do not behave in this way. Nay, I deem you protest too much! You seek to distract us from your own blood links to our Nemedian foes, by unleashing outrages upon them fit only for a Cimmerian savage!"
"I'll show you a Cimmerian savage!" snarled Conn as, like panther unleashed by a coiled spring, he shot out of his council chair straight at Parlius! Quicker than the eye could see, he drew his bejewelled dagger and slashed at the foppish nobleman's soft ivory throat, which yielded like a knife though butter, sending a fountain of hot scarlet blood soaring into the air!
As the foolish noble gurgled in his death agonies, his crimson blood blotted up by his crimson robes, he crashed heavily to the marble floor. The others present gasped in shock at this explosive display of violence in council, but wisely stayed their tongues as Conn turned his eyes upon them, seeming for a moment the very image of his celebrated - and much feared - father.
"My father took the Lion Throne by strength of his own swordarm, and those of his loyal followers!" cried Conn, brandishing his blood-stained dagger. "And by Mitra himself, aye and by Crom and Ymir too as my father would have sworn, I will exact the price for my Crown in the blood of all my foes, within Aquilonia and without! Let one more of my subjects ever insult me or disobey my commands again, and he shall meet the fate of yon worthless dog! Aquilonia is in a state of war, against Nemedia and Stygia, East and South, and the discipline of a camp of war shall prevail in this realm from this time forth! Or does anyone else here dare to insult me, or usurp my authority, or question my commands as King?"
The silence that met his questions was answer enough.
"This council has ended," quoth Conn, laying his bloodied dagger on the council table. "Go now, and fulfil my commands, in righteous might through to ultimate victory! For Mitra and the Lion Throne!"
"For Mitra and the Lion Throne!" cried those assembled, givng the proper formula in reply before they exited the council chamber, whatever their private thoughts might be.