Conan: Road of Kings Read Free

bread and fists of fruit. Their arms hugged their bundles and purses and baskets to their bodies. As the condemned men reached the scaffold, the frolicking band of children yelled and danced about them. Pedlars lost interest in their frenetic hawking, turned to watch the sordid drama they had seen performed so many times before.
    Climbing the steps to the scaffold was no easy task with leg-irons, but the guards plied their halbards with a will to urge them upward. The man in front of Conan stumbled—unable to catch himself with his hands tied behind his back. A halbard spike goaded him as he struggled to rise. Conan, his hands manacled before him, reached out to the limit of the chain that connected wrist and leg-irons, caught the back of his jerkin and hauled the smaller man to his feet. Ignoring the abuse of the guards and the laughter of the crowd, they took their places beneath the gallows.
    “Thanks,” muttered his companion automatically. He seemed no more than Conan’s age—a slender youth with aristocratic features and feverish dark eyes.
    “Little cause for thanks,” the Cimmerian pointed out.
    “One likes to do these things with a certain dignity,” returned the other, echoing Conan’s thoughts. He nodded distastefully toward some of those near the head of their line: one man had fainted and had to be supported by the guards; another was pleading tearfully for mercy to the jeering mob.
    “Let those who will continue our battle see that we do not tremble to give our life to our cause,” he concluded. Conan wondered to whom these brave words were directed, decided the youth was but speaking to himself.
    They stood upon a long scaffold, the faces of the crowd on a level below their feet. Massive uprights at either end supported a huge overhead beam—more than sturdy enough to bear the weight of seven men. There was no trap to the scaffold. Instead, each waiting noose was passed through an overhead iron hook, with the other end of the rope secured to a windlass and rachet apparatus. No sudden drop and quick death from a broken neck here. This was the Dancing Floor, where the recipients of Zingaran justice were slowly hoisted from the scaffold and left to writhe and kick until strangled.
    Passing along the row of the condemned, a warder solemnly hung a placard about the neck of each man. Pausing before Conan, he took care to stand clear of the Cimmerian’s manacled hands.
    Conan scowled down at the placard that lay upon his broad chest. He tried to spell out the inverted letters, but his ability to read Zingaran was dubious under any circumstances. “What does it say?” he asked his companion.
    The thin youth glanced at the placard with ironic interest. “It says: Conan Mutineer. Congratulations.”
    “What does yours say?” Conan wanted to know.
    “Mine proclaims: Santiddio Seditionary. Our companions are sundry thieves, murderers and publishers.”
    “Publishers?”
    “No, I wasn’t merely being redundant. The fellow on the end there had the misfortune to publish my little political treatise that so incensed our beloved King Rimanendo.”
    “May your beloved king catch the pox from his catamites!” snarled Conan. “I killed an officer in a fair fight of his asking, and Rimanendo’s laws declare that to be mutiny and murder!”
    “Ah!” Santiddio’s feverish eyes studied him with sudden respect. “Then you’re that barbarian mercenary who gutted the dashing Captain Rinnova! Korst’s chief butcher, that one. I’d shake your hand, if these ropes would permit it. The people will mourn the loss of two heroes of their struggle this day.”
    “Cut the chatter, you two!” a guard warned, as he fitted nooses about their necks. “You’ll wish you’d saved that breath before long!”
    The crowd didn’t look mournful just now, Conan decided. Stoically he gazed out across the morass of bodies. Arguments and angry scuffles broke out as latecomers forced their way to the front of the crowd.