Wolves Beyond the Border
Draft A

Chapter 1

It was the mutter of a drum that awakened me. I lay still amongst the brush where I had taken refuge, straining my ears to locate it, for such sounds are illusive in the deep forest. In the dense woods about me there was no sound. Above me the tangled vines and brambles bent close to form a massed roof, and above them there loomed the higher, gloomier arch of the branches of the great trees. Not a star shone through that leafy vault. Low-hanging clouds seemed to press down upon the very tree-tops. There was no moon. The night was dark as a witch’s hate.

The better for me. If I could not see my enemies, neither could they see me. But the whisper of that ominous drum stole through the night: thrum! thrum! thrum!: a steady monotone that seemed to hint at grisly secrets. I could not mistake the sound. Only one drum in the world makes just that deep, menacing, sullen thunder: the war-drum of the Picts, those wild painted savages who haunt the Wilderness beyond the borders of the Westermarck.

And I was beyond that border, alone, and concealed in a brambly covert in the midst of the great forest where those naked fiends have reigned since Time’s earliest dawns.

Now I located the sound; the drum was beating southwestward of my position, and I believed at no great distance. Quickly I girt my belt closer, settled war-axe and knife in their beaded sheaths, strung my heavy bow and saw that my buckskin quiver of arrows was in place at my left hip – groping with my fingers in the utter darkness – and then I crawled from the thicket and went warily in the direction of the drum.

That it personally concerned me I did not believe. If the forest-men had discovered me, their discovery would have been announced by a sudden knife in my throat, not by a drum beating in the distance. But the throb of a war-drum had a significance no forest-runner could ignore. Its sullen pulsing was a warning and a threat, a promise of doom for those white-skinned invaders whose lonely cabins and axe-marked clearings menaced the immemorial solitude of the wilderness. It meant fire and death and torture, flaming arrows dropping like falling stars through the midnight sky, and the dripping axe crunching through skulls of men and women and children.

So through the blackness of the nighted forest I went, feeling my way delicately among the mighty boles, sometimes creeping on hands and knees, and now and then my heart in my throat when a creeper brushed across my face or groping hand. For there are huge serpents in that forest which sometimes hang by their tails from branches high above and so snare their prey. But the beings I sought were more terrible than any serpent, and as the drum grew louder I went as cautiously as if I treaded on naked swords. And presently I glimpsed a red gleam among the trees, and heard a mutter of fierce voices mingling with the snarl of the drum.

Whatever weird ceremony might be taking place yonder under the black trees, it was likely that they had outposts scattered about the place, and I knew how silent and motionless a Pict could stand, merging with the natural forest-growth even in dim light, and unsuspected until his blade was through his victim’s heart. My flesh crawled at the thought of colliding with one such grim sentry in the darkness, and I drew my knife and held it extended before me. But I knew that not even a Pict could see me in that blackness of tangled forest-roof and cloud-massed sky.

The light danced and flickered and revealed itself as a fire before which silhouettes crossed and re-crossed, like black devils against the red fires of hell. And presently I crouched close in a dense thicket of alders and brambles and looked into a black-walled glade and the figures that moved therein.

There were forty or fifty Picts, naked but for loin-cloths, and hideously painted, who squatted in a wide semi-circle, facing the fire, with their backs to me. By the hawk feathers in their thick black manes, I knew them to be of the Hawk Clan, or Skondaga. In the midst of the glade there was a crude altar made of rough stones heaped togather, and at the sight of this I shuddered. For I had seen these Pictish altars before, all charred with fire and stained with blood, in empty and deserted glades, but none knew exactly for what they were used, not even the oldest frontiersmen. But now I instinctively knew that I was about to witness confirmation of the horrible tales told about them and the feathered shamans who used them.

One of these devils was dancing between the fire and the altar – a slow, shuffling dance that caused his plumes to swing and sway about him, but I could tell nothing of his features, in the uncertain light of the flames.

Between him and the ring of squatting warriors stood a man who differed from the others so much that it was evident he was not a Pict. For he was tall as I, and they are a squat race, and his skin was light in the play of the fire. But he was clad in doe-skin loin-clout and moccasins, and there was a hawk-feather in his hair, so I knew he must be a Socandaga, one of those white savages who dwell in small clans in the great forest, generally at war with the Picts, but sometimes at peace. The Picts are a white race too, in that they are not black nor brown nor yellow, but they are black-eyed and black-haired and dark of skin, and neither they nor the Socandagas are spoken of as “white” by the people of Westermarck, who only designate thus a man of Hyborian blood.

Now as I watched, I saw three Picts drag a man into the ring of firelight – another Pict, naked and blood-stained, whom they cast down upon the altar, bound hand and foot.

Then the shaman began dancing again, weaving intricate patterns about the altar and the man upon it, and the warrior who beat the drum wrought himself into a frenzy, and presently, down from a branch overhanging the glade dropped one of those great serpents of which I spoke. The firelight glistened on its scales as it writhed toward the altar, its beady eyes glittered and its forked tongue darted in and out, but the warriors showed no fear, though it passed within a few feet of some of them. And that was strange, for ordinarily these serpents are the only things a Pict fears.

The monster reared its head up on arched neck above the altar and it and the shaman faced one another across the trembling body of the prisoner. The shaman danced with a writhing of body and arms, scarcely moving his feet, and as he danced, the great serpent danced, weaving and swaying, as though mesmerized. And presently it reared higher and began looping itself about the altar and the man upon it, upon his body was hidden by its shimmering folds, and only his head was visible, and the great head of the serpent swaying close above it.

Then the shaman cried out shrilly and cast something upon the fire and a great green cloud of smoke billowed up and rolled about the altar, so that it hid the pair upon it. But in the midst of that cloud I saw a hideous writhing and altering and for a moment I could not tell which was the serpent and which the man, and a shuddering sigh swept over the assembled Picts like a wind moaning through nighted branches.

Then the smoke cleared and man and snake lay limply on the altar, and I thought both were dead. But the shaman dragged them from the stones and let them fall limply on the earth, and he cut the raw-hide thongs that bound the man, and began to dance and chant above them.

And presently the man moved. But he did not rise. His head swayed from side to side, and I saw his tongue dart out and in again. And, Mitra, he began to wriggle away from the fire, as a great snake crawls, on his belly!

And the serpent was suddenly shaken with convulsions and arched its neck and reared up almost its full length and then fell back and tried again and again, horribly like a man trying to rise and stand and walk upright, after being deprived of his limbs.

And the wild howling of the Picts shook the night. I was sick where I crouched among the bushes, and fought an urge to retch. I had heard tales of this ghastly ceremony. The shaman had transferred the soul of a captured enemy into a serpent, so that his foe should dwell in the body of a serpent throughout his next reincarnation.

And so they writhed and agonized side by side, the man and the serpent, until a sword flashed in the hand of the shaman and boths heads fell together – and gods, it was the serpent’s trunk which but quivered and jerked and then lay still, and the man’s body which rolled and knotted and thrashed like a beheaded snake.

Then the shaman sprang up and faced the ring of warriors and threw up his head and howled like a wolf, and the firelight fell full on his face and I recognized him. And at that recognition all thought of my personal peril was swept away, and with it recollection of my mission. For that shaman was old Garogh of the Hawks, he who burnt alive my friend Jon Galter’s son.

In the lust of my hate I acted almost instinctively – whipped up my bow, notched an arrow and loosed, all in an instant. The firelight was uncertain, but the range was not great, and we of the Westermarck live by twang of bow. But he moved just as I loosed. Old Garogh yowled like a cat and reeled back and his warriors howled with amazement to see a shaft quivering suddenly in his shoulder. The tall light-skinned warrior wheeled, and Mitra, he was a white man!

The horrid shock of that surprize held me paralyzed for a moment, and had almost undone me. For the Picts instantly sprang up and rushed into the forest like panthers, knowing the general direction from which the shaft had come, if not the actual spot. Then I jerked out of the spell of my amazement and horror, sprang up and raced away, ducking and dodging among trees which I avoided more by instinct than anything else, for it was dark as ever. But I knew the Picts could not strike my trail in the dark but must hunt as blindly as I fled.

I headed southward, and behind me presently I heard a hideous howling, whose blood-mad fury was enough to freeze the blood, even, of a forest-runner. And I believed that they had plucked my arrow from the shaman’s shoulder and discovered it to be a white man’s shaft.

But I fled on, my heart pounding from fear and excitement, and the horror of the nightmare I had witnessed. And that a white man, a Hyborian, should have stood there as a welcome and evidently honored guest was so monstrous I wondered if after all, the whole thing were a nightmare. For never before had a white man observed a Pictish ceremony save as a prisoner, or a spy, as I had. And what monstrous thing it portended I knew not, but I was shaken with foreboding and horror at the thought.

And because of my horror I went more carelessly than is my wont, seeking haste at the expense of stealth, and occasionally blundering into a tree I ciuld have avoided had I taken more care. And I doubt it was the noise of this blundering which brought the Pict upon my trail, for he could not have seen me or my footprints in that blackness.

But once he had crept to within a score of feet of me he located me by the faint noises I made, and came like a devil of the black night. I knew of him first by the swift faint pad of his naked feet across the ground and wheeled and could not even make out the dim bulk of him, but knew that he must have seen me, for they see like cats in the dark. But he could not have seen me very well, for he impaled himself on the knife I thrust out blindly, and his death-yell rang like a note of doom under the forest-roof as he went down. And was answered by a score of wild shouts behind me. And I turned and ran for it, abandoning stealth for speed, and trusting to luck that I would not dash out my brains against a tree-stem in the darkness.

But I had come to a place where there was little underbrush and something almost like light filtered in through the branches, for the clouds were clearing a little. And through this forest I fled like a damned soul pursued by demons, until the yells grew fainter and fell away behind me, for in a straight-away race no Pict can match the long legs of a white forest-runner. And presently as I advanced, I saw a glimmer through the trees far ahead of me and knew it was the light of the first outpost of Schohira.

Chapter 2

Perhaps, before continuing with this chronicle of the bloody years, it might be well were I to give an account of myself, and the reason for which I traversed the Pictish Wilderness, by night and alone.

My name is Gault Hagar’s son. I was born in the province of Conajohara But when I was five years of age, the Picts broke over Black River and stormed Fort Tuscelan and slew all within save one man, and drove all the settlers of the province east of Thunder River. Conajohara was never reconquered, but became again part of the Wilderness, inhabited only by wild beasts and wild men. The people of Conajohara scattered throughout the Westermarck, in Schohira, Conawaga, or Oriskonie, but many of them went southward and settled near Fort Thandara, an isolated outpost on the Warhorse River, my family among them. There they were later joined by other settlers for whom the older provinces were too thickly inhabited, and presently there grew up the province of Thandara. It was known as the Free Province of Thandara, because it was not ruled by grant or patent of any lord, as were the other provinces, since its people had cut it out of the wilderness without aid of the nobility. We paid no taxes to any baron beyond the Bossonian marches who claimed the land by right of royal grant. Our governor was not appointed by any lord, but we elected him ourselves, from our own number, and he was responsible only to the king. We manned the forts with our own men, and sustained ourselves in war as in peace. And Mitra knows war was a constant state of affairs, for our neighbors were the wild Panther, Alligator and Otter tribes of Picts, and there was never peace between us.

But we throve, and seldom questioned what went on east of the marches in the kingdom whence our grandsires had come. But at last an event in Aquilonia did touch upon us in the wilderness. Word came of civil war, and a fighting man risen to wrest the throne from the ancient dynasty. And sparks from that conflagration set the frontier ablaze, and turned neighbor against neighbor and brother against brother. And so I was hastening alone through the stretch of wilderness that separated Thandara from Schohira, with news that might well change the destiny of all the Westermarck.

I crossed Sword River in the early dawn, wading through the shallows, and was challenged by an outpost on the other bank. When he knew I was from Thandara: “By Mitra!” quoth he. “your business must be urgent, that you cross the Hawk Country, instead of coming by the longer road.

For Thandara was separated from the other provinces by the Little Wilderness east of us, but no Picts dwelt there, and there was a road through it into the Bossonian marches and thence ran road to the other provinces.

Then he desired me to tell him the state of affairs in Thandara, for he swore they in Schohira knew naught definite, but I told him that I knew little, having been on a long scout into Pictish country, and desired to be told if Hakon Strom’s son was in the fort. For I knew not how events were shaping in Schohira and wished to be acquainted with the situation before I spoke.

He told me he was not in the fort, but was at the town of Schondara, which lay a few miles east of the fort.

“I hope Thandara declares for Conan,” said he with an oath, “for I tell you plainly it is our political complection. Even now our army lies beyond Schondara, waiting the onslaught of Baron Brocas of Torh, and but for the necessity of watching the cursed Picts we would all be there.”

I said naught, but was surprized, for Brocas was lord of Conawaga, and not Schohira, whose patroon was Lord Thespius of Kormon. Thespius, I knew, was away in Aquilonia fighting in the civil war raging there, and I wondered that Brocas was not so employed.

I borrowed a horse from the fort went on to Schondara, a handsome town for a frontier village, with neat houses of squared logs, some painted, but not so much as a ditch or palisade about it, which was strange to me. For we of Thandara build our dwelling places for defense, and there is not so much as a village in all our province.

At the tavern I was told that Hakon Strom’s son had ridden to Orklay Creek where the militia-army of Schohira lay encamped, but would return shortly. So being hungry and weary, I ate a meal in the tap-room, and then lay down in a corner and slept. And was so slumbering when Hakon Strom’s son returned, close to sun-set.

He was a tall man, rangy and broad-shouldered, like most Westlanders, and clad in buckskin hunting shirt and fringed leggins and moccasins like myself.

When I named myself and told him that I had word for him, he looked at me closely, and bade me sit with him at a table in the corner where mine host brought us leathern jacks of ale.

“What is the word you bring me?” he asked.

“Has no word come through of the state of affairs in Thandara?”

“No sure word; only rumors.”

“Very well. This is the word I bring you from Brant Drago’s son, governor of Thandara, and the council of captains: Thandara has declared for Conan, and stands ready to aid his friends and defy his allies.”

At that he smiled and sighed as if in relief, and grasped my brown hand warmly with his own rugged fingers.

“Good!” he exclaimed. “A doubt has gone from my mind. We knew that which ever way Thandara went, that province would not go quietly. We have enemies on all sides, and dreaded a raid from the south, over the Hawk Country, in case Thandara held fast to Namedides.”

“What man of Thandara could forget Conan?” said I. “Nay, I was but a child in Conajohara, but I remember him when he was a forest-runner and a scout there. When his rider came into Thandara telling us that Conan had struck for the throne, and asking our support – he asked no volunteers, saying he knew all our men were needed to guard our frontier – we sent him one phrase: “Tell Conan we have not forgotten Conajohara.” Later came the Baron Attalius over the marches to crush us, but we ambushed him in the Little Wilderness and cut his host to pieces. The longbows of his Bossonians were useless; we harried them from behind trees and bushes, and then, working into close quarters, fell on them with war-axe and knife and cut them to pieces. We drove the remnants beyond the border, and I do not think any will dare attack Thandara again.”

“I would I could say as much for Schohira,” he said grimly. “Baron Thespius sent us word that we could do as we chose – he has declared for Conan and joined the rebel army. But he did not ask for any western levies.

“He removed the troops from the fort, however, and we manned it with our own foresters. Then Brocas moved against us. At least nine-tenths of us in Schohira are for Conan, and the loyalists either keep silent or have fled into Conawaga, swearing they would return and cut our throats. In Conawaga Brocas and the land-owners are for Namedides and the people who are for Conan are afraid to speak.”

I nodded. I had been in Conawaga before the revolt, and was aware of conditions there. It was the largest, richest and most thickly settled provinces in all the Westermarck, and only there was there an extensive, comparatively, class of titled land-holders.

“Having crushed revolt among his own people,” said Hakon, “Brocas thinks to subdue Schhiro. I think the black-jowled fool plans to rule all the Westermarck as Namedides’ viceroy. He has brought his army of Aquilonian men-at-arms, Bossonian archers, and Conawaga loyalists across the broder and now they lie at Coyaga, ten miles beyond Orklaga Creek. We know what when he will move against us. Ventrium, where our army lies, is full of refugees from the eastern country he has devastated.

“We do not fear him. He must cross Orklaga Creek to strike us, and we have fortified the west bank and blocked the road his cavalry must follow. We are outnumbered, but we will give him his needings.”

“That touches upon my mission,” I said. “I am authorized by the governor of Thandara to offer the services of a hundred and fifty Thandaran Rangers. We look for no attack from Aquilonia, and we can spare that many men from our war with the Panther Picts.”

“Good!” quoth he. “When the commandant of the fort hears of this –”

“What?” quoth I. “Are you not the commandant?”

“Nay,” said he, “it is my brother Dirk Strom’s son.”

“Had I known I would have given my message to him,” I said. “But Brant Drago’s son thought you were the commandant. However, it is as well.”

“Another jack of ale,” quoth Hakon, “and we’ll start for the fort so that Dirk shall hear your word first-hand.”

And I saw that Hakon was indeed not the man to command an outpost, for he was a brave man, and strong, but too reckless and having a merry devil in his heart.

“What of your landed gentry?” I asked, for though they are fewer in Schohira than in Conawaga, yet there are a few.

“Gone over the border and joined Brocas,” he answered. “All except lord Valerian. His estate lies adjacent to this town. The other lords lie to the east. He has remained, and has disbanded his retainers and his Gundermen guardsmen and promised to dwell quietly in Valerian Hall, taking no part one way or the other. He is alone at the Hall, which stands south of the town, except for a few servants. Where his fighting men have gone, none knows. But he has sent them off. We were relieved when he declared his neutrality, for he is one of the few white men to whom the wild Picts will listen. If it had entered his head to stir them up against our borders we might be hard put to it to defend ourselves against them on one side and Brocas on the other.

“Our nearest neighbors, the Hawks, look on Valerian with great friendship; and the Wildcats and Turtles are not hostile to them. Behind them all it is even said that he can visit the Wolf Picts and come away alive.”

If true that were strange indeed, for all men knew the ferocity of the great confederacy of allied clans known as the Wolf tribe which dwelt in the west beyond the hunting grounds of the three lesser tribes he had named. Mostly they held aloof from the frontier, but the threat of their invasion was ever a menace along the borders of Schohira.

Hakon looked up as a tall man in trunk-hose, boots and scarlet cloak entered the taproom.

“There is Lord Valerian now,” he said.

I stared, and was on my feet.

“That man?” I ejaculated. “I saw that man last night beyond the border, in a camp of the Hawks, witnessing the sacrifice of a war-victim!”

He turned pale and: “Damn you!” he ripped out fiercely. “You lie!”

And whipping aside his cloak he caught at the hilt of his sword. But before he could draw it I closed with him and bore him to the floor, where he snarled and snapped like a beast at my throat and failing there, caught at my throat with both hands. Then there was a stamp of feet, and men were dragging us apart, grasping my lord firmly, who stood white and panting with fury, still grasping my neckcloth in his fingers.

“If this be true –” began Hakon.

“It is true!” I exclaimed. “Look there! He has not had time to erase the paint from his bosom!”

His doublet and shirt had been torn open in the scuffle, and there, dim on his breast, showed the symbol of the skull which the Picts paint only when they mean war against the whites. He had sought to wash it off his skin, but Pictish paint stains strongly.

“Take him to the gaol,” said Hakon, white to the lips.

“Give me back my neckcloth,” quoth I, but his lordship spat at me and thrust the cloth inside his shirt.

“When it is returned to you it shall be knotted in a hangman’s noose about your rebel neck,” he snarled, and then the men grasped him and took him away.

Chapter 3

At the fort we found a man who said he would take word back to Thandara, where he had kin, so I said I would remain in Schohira. Scouts gave news that Brocas still lay encamped at Coyaga, and showed no signs of moving against us, which made me believe that he was waiting for Valerian to lead his Picts against the border and so catch the free men of Schohira between two fires. Valerian had been placed in the gaol – a small building of hewn logs – and only one other prisoner there, a man in the cell next to him who had been placed there for drunkeness and fighting in the streets. Valerian said nothing, but sat in a corner and gnawed his nails, with his eyes like those of a jungle-cat.

I slept in the tavern that night, and had a room upstairs. During the night I was awakened by the forcing of my window and sat up in bed, demandin to know who it was. The next instant something rushed at me from the darkness and then there was a piece of cloth around my neck, being twisted and strangling me. I groped for my hatchet and smote one blow, and the creature fell. When I had struck a light, I saw a misshapen ape-like creature lying on the floor, and knew it for a Chakan, one of those semi-human beings who dwell deep in the forests, and smell out trails like bloodhounds. It still held my neck-cloth in its misshapen hands, and by that I knew that it had been set upon my trail by Lord Valerian.

Hakon and I hurried to the gaol and there found the guard lying before the door with his throat cut, and my lord gone. The drunkard in the next cell was nigh dead with fright, but he told us that a dark woman, naked but for a loin cloth, had come up to the sentry and looked into his eyes and the man had become like one in a trance. So the woman took his knife from its sheath and cut his throat with it, and released Lord Valerian. And there was a horrible monstrosity which accompanied her but which lurked in the background. So we knew the woman was his Pictish half-breed mistress by whom he had his power over the Picts; some said old Goragh’s daughter. The drunkard had pretended slumber, so they let him live. But he overheard them say that they would go to a certain hut by Lynx Creek, a few miles from the town, and there meet the retainers and Gundermen guards who had been hiding there, and then cross the border and bring back the Hawks and the Wildcats and the Turtles to cut our throats.

But the woman told him these tribes dared not fight without first consulting the wizard who dwelt in Ghost Swamp, and he said he would see that the wizard told them to fight.

So they fled away. Then Hakon roused a dozen men and we followed, and cornered the Gundermen in the cabin on Lynx Creek and slew most of them, but several of our men likewise were slain, and Lord Valerian and a dozen others got clean away.

We followed, and in fights and skirmishes slew several others, and presently all our men were slain except Hakon and I. We trailed Valerian across the border and into a camp of the war-tribes near Ghost Swamp, where the chiefs were going to consult the wizard, a pre-Pictish shaman.

We trailed Valerian into the swamp, he going secretly to give the shamans instructions, and Hakon waited on the trail to slay Valerian while I stole into the camp to slay the wizard. But both of us were captured by the wizard, who gave his consent to the war and gave them a ghastly magic to use against the white men, and the tribes went howling toward the border. But Hakon and I escaped and slew the wizard and followed, in time to turn their magic against them, and rout them.