`I came along the road, behind their main force, and I know none followed me from the fort. I sneaked through their lines and got into the town. You brought the settlers through all right, but their women and children got into Velitrium just ahead of those painted devils. If the youth Balthus and old Slasher hadn’t held them up awhile, they’d have butchered every woman and child in Conajohara. I passed the place where Balthus and the dog made their last stand. They were lying amid a heap of dead Picts – I counted seven, brained by his ax, or disemboweled by the dog’s fangs, and there were others in the road with arrows sticking in them. Gods, what a fight that must have been!’
`He was a man,’ said Conan. `I drink to his shade, and to the shade of the dog, who knew no fear.’ He quaffed part of the wine, then emptied the rest upon the floor, with a curious heathen gesture, and smashed the goblet. `The heads of ten Picts shall pay for his, and seven heads for the dog, who was a better warrior than many a man.’
And the forester, staring into the moody, smoldering blue eyes, knew the barbaric oath would be kept.
`They’ll not rebuild the fort?’
`No; Conajohara is lost to Aquilonia. The frontier has been pushed back. Thunder River will be the new border.’
The woodsman sighed and stared at his calloused hand, worn from contact with ax-haft and sword-hilt. Conan reached his long arm for the wine-jug. The forester stared at him, comparing him with the men about them, the men who had died along the lost river, comparing him with those other wild men over that river. Conan did not seem aware of his gaze.
`Barbarism is the natural state of mankind,’ the borderer said, still staring somberly at the Cimmerian. `Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph.’