Read "The Phoenix on the Sword" by Robert E. Howard online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
_When I was a fighting man, the kettle drums they beat, The people scattered gold-dust before my horses feet; But now I am a great king, the people hound my track With poison in my wine-cup, and daggers at my back._
The room was large and ornate, with rich tapestries on the polished- panelled walls, deep rugs on the ivory floor, and with the lofty ceiling adorned with intricate carvings and silver scrollwork. Behind an ivory, gold-inlaid writing-table sat a man whose broad shoulders and sun-browned skin seemed out of place among those luxuriant surroundings. He seemed more a part of the sun and winds and high places of the outlands. His slightest movement spoke of steel-spring muscles knit to a keen brain with the co-ordination of a born fighting man. There was nothing deliberate or measured about his actions. Either he was perfectly at rest--still as a bronze statue--or else he was in motion, not with the jerky quickness of overtense nerves, but with a catlike speed that blurred the sight which tried to follow him.