Bran Mak Morn: The Last King by Robert E. Howard, Gary Gianni Read Free Book Online Page A

such things as they think proper magic �and prance and yell and rattle snakeskins, and dabble about in human blood and chicken livers.� Cormac looked at the ancient with new interest. The semi-madness of his appearance had vanished. He was no longer the charlatan, the spell-mumbling shaman. The starlight lent him a dignity which seemed to increase his very height, so that he stood like a white-bearded patriarch.
    �ran, your doubt lies there.�The lean arm pointed to the fourth ring of fires.
    �ye,�the king nodded gloomily. �ormac �you know as well as I. Tomorrow� battle hinges upon that circle of fires. With the chariots of the Britons and your own Western horsemen, our success would be certain, but �surely the devil himself is in the heart of every Northman! You know how I trapped that band �how they swore to fight for me against Rome! And now that their chief, Rognar, is dead, they swear that they will be led only by a king of their own race! Else they will break their vow and go over to the Romans. Without them we are doomed, for we can not change our former plan.� �ake heart, Bran,�said Gonar. �ouch the jewel in your iron crown. Mayhap it will bring you aid.� Bran laughed bitterly. �ow you talk as the people think. I am no fool to twist with empty words. What of the gem? It is a strange one, truth, and has brought me luck ere now. But I need now, no jewels, but the allegiance of three hundred fickle Northmen who are the only warriors among us who may stand the charge of the legions on foot.� �ut the jewel, Bran, the jewel!�persisted Gonar.
    �ell, the jewel!�cried Bran impatiently. �t is older than this world. It was old when Atlantis and Lemuria sank into the sea. It was given to Brule, the Spear-slayer, first of my line, by the Atlantean Kull, king of Valusia, in the days when the world was young. But shall that profit us now?� �ho knows?�asked the wizard obliquely. �ime and space exist not. There was no past, and there shall be no future. NOW is all. All things that ever were, are, or ever will be, transpire now. Man is forever at the center of what we call time and space. I have gone into yesterday and tomorrow and both were as real as today �which is like the dreams of ghosts! But let me sleep and talk with Gonar. Mayhap he shall aid us.� �hat means he?�asked Cormac, with a slight twitching of his shoulders, as the priest strode away in the shadows.
    �e has ever said that the first Gonar comes to him in his dreams and talks with him,�answered Bran. � have seen him perform deeds that seemed beyond human ken. I know not. I am but an unknown king with an iron crown, trying to lift a race of savages out of the slime into which they have sunk. Let us look to the camps.�
    As they walked Cormac wondered. By what strange freak of fate had such a man risen among this race of savages, survivors of a darker, grimmer age? Surely he was an atavism, an original type of the days when the Picts ruled all Europe, before their primitive empire fell before the bronze swords of the Gauls. Cormac knew how Bran, rising by his own efforts from the negligent position of the son of a Wolf clan chief, had to an extent united the tribes of the heather and now claimed kingship over all Caledon. But his rule was loose and much remained before the Pictish clans would forget their feuds and present a solid front to foreign foes. On the battle of the morrow, the first pitched battle between the Picts under their king and the Romans, hinged the future of the rising Pictish kingdom.
    Bran and his ally walked through the Pictish camp where the swart warriors lay sprawled about their small fires, sleeping or gnawing half-cooked food. Cormac was impressed by their silence. A thousand men camped here, yet the only sounds were occasional low guttural intonations. The silence of the Stone Age rested in the souls of these men.
    They were all short �most of them crooked of limb. Giant