Ausar, their chieftain, led them at the long stride of a mountaineer. His hair was grey and his face furrowed, but time had done little else to his body. That countenance was sharper than common in these parts, its complexion lighter. His garb was a lion skin, and on a headband shone the Sun symbol, in gold. Besides a dagger, he carried a battle axe – three-foot haft, steel head tapered at the rear to a point.
Reaching the brink, he signalled his followers to hold back and crouched for a look unseen from below. Noise and gleam of the river came to him out of shadows filling the ravine. When he peered downstream, he caught a different sound and glitter that made him nod in grim satisfaction.
He rose and returned to the men. Several hundred strong, they
stood close enough together that all could hear him. 'Aye,' he told them, 'the scout spoke truly. The Stygians did indeed go on, and are now making camp just where I deemed they would. It appears as desirable a site as can be found hereabouts, the bank wider between cliff and stream than at most places. However, they are still perforce strung out in a long line. And because the Helu is narrower at this point, it is also deeper and swifter. An armoured Stygian, merely pushed into that water, would not come back out of it.' He lifted his axe 'No cheers yet, lest they be warned. But we will strike them!'
Weapons shook aloft to catch the red beams of a sun sunken nearly under the mountaintops.
'Here is my plan,' Ausar went on. 'They outnumber us, but we will come on them behind the head of the snake that they are, chop it off, and kill those men. Mitra grant their commander be among them! Meanwhile certain of us will form a row across the bank and hold off the rest. There is no time to talk further, so I bestow that honour on those of Clan Yaro who are present. After dark, we will retreat back up the steeps – yon blundering flat-landers will never dare pursue – and tomorrow see how next we can harass them. For Mitra and Taia – now onward!'
He started off parallel to the verge. His youngest daughter Daris increased her pace to join him. Unwed women often hunted beside their brethren in this country, and fought in time of war. Though he had been unhappy about her wish to fare along in his roving force, he could not well deny it, when her sisters had infants to care for and her brothers were off on forays of their own.
'Stay behind,' he urged. 'You send a wicked arrow, but this will be fighting at close quarters, and some of the foe will not yet have doffed armour.'
A dirk slid forth in her grasp. 'I am nimble enough to make good use of this, Father,' she answered.
He sighed. 'Mitra ward you, then. Your mother was dear to me while she lived, and you are much like her.'
Daris loped on. Her rangy height did not lack curves to bespeak a woman. Her features were still more straight and finely than his, her hue still lighter, golden rather than brown midnight hair. She too wore a small Sun disc on her brow. Otherwise her garb was a cuirass of boiled cowhide over a brief tunic, and a leather skirt studded with brass. On her back she had slung a bow, quiver, and packet of dried meat such as Taians were wont to carry when travelling
'Remember,' she said, 'I vowed before Derketa that I would see dead Stygians to the number of the Farazis. It is for me to bring down as many of them as the Sable Queen will grant.'
Ausar's lips drew taut. When Clan Farazi protested a redoubled tax on livestock, Governor Wenamon invited them to Seyan for a feast of reconciliation and parley. About half came. His militia seized them for hostages. That latest act of Stygian misrule brought most of the Highlanders up in arms. When the governor then slew his prisoners, instead of terrified submission he got rebellion ablaze throughout the province.
Daris fell silent, for her father had turned toward the defile.
Quickly he scanned over its edge, nodded, raised his ax for a sign, and started down. Few people in the world could readily have crossed a slope so steep, gullied, and twilit, but these mountaineers were agile as goats, quiet as leopards. Below and ahead, the Stygians were blots of gloom, glints of metal, beside the roaring Helu. Camp fires twinkled to life through the length of their host; a breath of smoke drifted with the coolness breathed from the water.
Not until talus rattled beneath calloused feet did anybody notice the Taians. A shout lifted, trumpets blared, horses whinnied in alarm, iron clanged. 'Forward!' Ausar cried, and sped to battle.
Helmet, breastplate, greaves, shield of a sentry sheened in the dusk before him. The Stygian drew blade, stood his ground, sought to stab his oncoming foe. Ausar dodged. His ax flickered sideways. Barely did the soldier withdraw his sword arm in time.
The axhead edge clashed on his shield. Again Ausar hewed, and again, to bring the greater mass of his weapon in battering and leverage on the defence The shield slipped just enough aside, and his ax bit into the Stygian's thigh. Blood jetted. The soldier howled and stumbled. His face was unguarded. Ausar sent the point through a temple, leaped over the corpse, and plunged on. Around
him raged a wave of his men.
A mailed Stygian fought a Taian who wielded a scimitar. Unarmoured, the highlander could not stand before his opponent. Already slashed in a dozen places, he gave way step by step; at his back was a line of the enemy. Abruptly he saw an opening, yelled, and sprang closer, while his sword whirred downward. A skilful feint had caught him. The shield tilted back to intercept, while the soldier trod forward. He sheathed his blade in the native's belly, and ripped. Then Daris had an arm under his chin from behind. Her dirk made a single deep slash across his throat. He fell, gurgled, flopped, and lay still beside the Taian man. Daris was already elsewhere.
A horseman forced his way through the struggle. From above, he chopped down right and left on rebels as they combated Stygian infantry. Daris wove her way amidst violence. Heedless of danger from hooves or aught else, she glided under the horse. It screamed and reared as she hamstrung it, fell heavily, thrashed about. Daris was on the rider like a cat. Before he could recover himself, the lifeblood was pumping out of a forearm laid open on the inner side from elbow to wrist.
Daris rolled and scrambled to her feet. Seeming chaos ramped on the riverbank. But – Armour! Lines! Horses! She gasped in dismay as she realized. The Stygians had kept themselves fully ready to fight, well-nigh every last man of them. The Taian assault had only thrown them back a little, then they rallied in disciplined ranks. The confusion was among Ausar's band, suddenly made to recoil. And now torches flared out of camp fires, to light this ground for the king's troopers. Now trumpets sounded triumphant, cavalry thrust in close formation, chariots rumbled forward on sword-hubbed wheels. The Stygian standards advanced from both east and west; the defenders of Clan Yaro had gone down under weight of mail, horses, vehicles; the attackers were trapped.
'No! she dimly heard her father shout through the clamour and clangour Above the heads of men who surged back and forth, seeking to win out of the press, she saw Ausar. He had cut his way back to the talus slope. Instead of fleeing at once, he stood, ax raised high, in flickery torchlight, under the first stars, for a sign and a rallying point. Stygian arrows buzzed around him, but he
heeded them not, and they missed him in the dusk. 'Here, men of Taia, here to me!' he bugled.
His warriors had not penetrated the foe so deeply that they were boxed in beyond escape. Pantherish cries lifted from them. They hurled themselves toward him with terrifying vigour. Comrade elided comrade as they charged. The soldiers did not harvest many of them before they had reached the wall of the gorge and bounded off, unfollowable, starward into the night.
Daris glimpsed that much while she struggled for her own freedom. She had been headed out of the battle when its tides 'Wept her against two Stygian infantrymen. They seized her by the arms. She fought them in hissing fury. Once she tripped the left-hand man and all three went down in a heap. She managed to sink her teeth in his neck. Horrified, he slackened his grip. She tore loose of him and twisted about, to bring the heel of her hand under the nose of his companion. That could have been lethal, but he ducked in time and
the nose was merely broken. The first man was upon her again. His fist slugged at her jaw. She took the blow on her cheekbone instead. Yet it dazed her momentarily. He took hold of her throat and squeezed. The other Stygian hampered her resistance till she sank into blackness.
Little remained of Thuran. In the course of conquering Taia, the Stygians had besieged and largely destroyed its capital, while devastating the hinterland. Afterwards, five hundred years of neglect and weather gnawed at what had survived. Terraces crumbled, walls collapsed, canals and reservoirs silted, soil eroded, rich farmland became gaunt wilderness. When at last men returned, it was as pastoralists. They bore off the toppled stones of the city to make shelters, miles apart. Mostly they lived in skin tents, carried on ox-back, in the cycle of their wanderings. This was had country for horse, camel, or wheel; its dwellers perforce grew deep-chested and fleet-footed.
Nevertheless Thuran-on-the-Heights was holy to them. Varanghi had founded it when he led the ancestors hither, and had consecrated it to Mitra. Here a long succession of kings reigned gloriously, a civilization flowered. Here was still the olden temple of the Sun god, half in ruins but housing a few priests who still practised the pure rites and conserved something of ancient relied and lore. Here the clan chiefs and their households gathered each winter solstice for sacrifice, deliberations, trying of lawsuits, and business more worldly. Here folk made pilgrimage to cleanse themselves of guilt, swear the most sacred oaths, to find solace in the mysteries of Mitra.
Here Ausar brought his men after their defeat on the Helu. It was a natural place for all to meet who fain would join his army. The Stygians would not soon come this far; if nothing else, supply lines were too easily cut in the arid, tumbled uplands. He could hope to find new recruits waiting for him.
'But scant hope have I else,' he told Parasan.
'You do wrong to despair this early, my son,' the high priest counselled him. 'Perhaps you lost a battle, but the war is young.'
'I lost a beloved daughter,' Ausar mourned.
Parasan reached out a frail hand to clasp the leader's shoulder. 'She fell valiantly, in a just cause. Mitra, himself a warrior, has taken her home to him.'
'Aye. If she did perish – O Sun Lord, grant that she perished, that she is not captive!'
For a while there was silence. The two men sat in the priest's quarters inside the temple. Sunlight slanted through windows to reveal a pair of stone chambers, austerely furnished. Dimmed by time, a mural above a small altar depicted a youth riding a bull, between whose horns glowed the Sun disc. Elsewhere stood shelves of equally aged scrolls, tomes, bits of philosophical apparatus, graceful figurines salvaged from the ruins. Patient in his blue robe, Parasan waited.
Ausar mastered himself and said, dry-voiced: 'Can unwisdom ever be righteous? I did not imagine we could drive the Stygians altogether out of Taia. But I thought perhaps our warfare would make it too costly for them to send their tax collectors and judges through the hills; that in due course we would be left alone, and even reach an accommodation with them. Instead, they have scorched the Helu Valley to impoverish us further. I see no reason for supposing they will let it be resettled before we yield. Rather, their ruthlessness tells me that as soon as they can bring enough soldiers, they will carry fire and sword from end to end of Taia. Should I not let spokesmen of ours bring them my salted corpse in token of surrender?'
Parasan shook his wise white head. He was shorter and darker than most of his countrymen, with more Negro blood in him, but always they heard his soft words with respect. 'No, Ausar, abandon us not so soon. It would do no good in any case. You are our natural leader – chief of Clan Varanghi, descendant of our kings, thus foremost man of us and known to be a redoubtable one. But if you die, the outrage in the people will not die with you. Another will lake your place and fight on. It is for our god, our land, and our blood.'
Ausar laughed bitterly. 'Our blood? What is that? The Hyborians among our ancestors soon mingled theirs with Stygian, Kushite, and Shemite. Keshan is now almost purely black, and we can hardly call ourselves white, can we? As for our land, once it was great, but nearly all that we know about civilization today, we have from our Stygian masters.' He paused. 'And our gods... I speak no blasphemy against All-Highest Mitra, but you must agree – it surely distresses you – how bastardized his cult has become, over the centuries, from the paganisms everywhere around.'
'Aye,' Parasan murmured. 'Yet though his flame gutters low, it will never go out.' He straightened in his chair. 'Are your men as discouraged as you?'
'No. They are barbarians who take whatever fate sends them, heedless of everything but the wish to leave an honoured name in their clan sagas. I, however... You remember that as a boy I was sent here to study Taian chronicles. Afterwards I fared for some years through both Stygia and Shem, seeking to learn about civilization. I see things too clearly.'
'But you also see too shallowly, my son. Come.' Parasan rose and limped to the doorway. 'It will not be new to you, and most of it is known to them, but I will declare again the Prophecy of the Ax.'
Ausar obeyed, half unwilling, half eager to have his spirits restored, if the priest could do that for him. They trod out on the portico of the building. The marble, once white, had worn to a deep golden tone. The friezes were nearly gone, and the fluting of the pillars was blurred. Only snags and rubble showed that once the: had been two wings behind. Nonetheless this remnant dream is gracious, in an odour and a whisper of sun-dried grass.
The warriors, males and a few fiercely chaste females, were encamped on the slope below, among fragments of walls and fallen columns. The smoke of their camp fires drifted on a warm breeze, into a sky where hawks caught sunlight on wings. Upon seeing their leader and his companion, they hurried to stand below the staircase, rank after rank of lithe brown bodies.
Parasan lifted a hand. Somehow his thin voice carried:
'You who fight for Taia the beloved, hearken. Hear, though you have heard before, the story of your motherland.
'Mighty were your forebears. They came down from afar, from the cold North, Hyborea of the legends, first as wanderers, then as conquerors, then as settlers. Barbarians, they bore a destiny just the same. For they adored Mitra, and the Sun Lord desired them to bring his clean faith to these realms where flourished beast gods, I human sacrifice, black magic, and all other manner of abominations.
'Some crossed the highlands and entered Keshan. There they founded cities which became great; but presently they languished in that sultry clime, the jungle reclaimed most of what they built, and nothing is left but a rude black kingdom – which, however, stands yet as a bulwark against cruel outsiders.
'Better did the Hyborians fare in these cooler, drier hills. Varanghi led that branch of them to victory. Even over sorceries, heritage of lost races who were not human, did Varanghi prevail. For he bore into battle an ax given him by Mitra's own hand. As long as the wielder was worthy, this weapon made him invincible,
'It became the treasure and the emblem of the dynasty Varanghi begot. Long did his kingdom of Taia flourish, in achievement, wealth, happiness, and the radiance of Mitra. That light was unendurable to dark Stygia. Again and again through centuries, the worshippers of Set strove to overthrow Taia, and ever were they repulsed.
'At last, though, an unworthy heir mounted the throne. He allowed himself to be seduced by Stygian magic and fell in battle. '
'He fell childless, too; your leader Ausar, here beside me, descends from an upright brother. The Stygians overran and annexed Taia. I''or centuries has it groaned beneath their yoke.
'The Ax of Varanghi lay not on the stricken field where the last king died. No living person has seen it since. Yet a holy man prophesied up and down the country that it had been hidden away, to await the coming of a deliverer fit to bear it; and he will be of the old Northern blood. The Stygians captured and crucified the prophet; but they could not kill his words, which live to our own day.
'Often in prayer have the priests
of Mitra, at this sacred place, asked him for a sign. He has given dreams and visions, which tell us we must never abandon hope.
'They say nothing about the advent of the liberator. But they do not deny that verse in the prophecy which says that this shall come to pass after a hand of centuries.
'A hand of centuries – five fingers, five hundred years? I know not. But that is indeed how long Taia has been enslaved. Yours may be the generation that sets her free!'
The warriors brandished weapons and roared forth the savage cries of their clans.
The Stygians bound the few prisoners they had taken but did not otherwise abuse any. At dawn, when mists rolled chill off the river, Shuat came on inspection. For a minute or two he regarded the Taians, and they glared defiance at him. The noises of the torrent and of the regiment moving about seemed remote.
'Is this all?' he growled. 'And we scarcely killed more of them than they of us.' To his adjutant: 'I do not abide by a plan that is a failure. We return at once.' His gaze went back and came to rest on Daris. 'Who is the woman?'
'If it please my lord, I helped capture her,' a sergeant said. 'And a hellcat she was.' He leered. 'I and my friends can soon tame her. We'll forego breakfast.'
Daris snarled. Shame seared her.
'No, you idiot,' the commander rapped. 'See that golden disc on her brow. The natives reserve it for their highest-ranking family. I
will not have her hostage or exchange value lessened.' He addressed her. 'Who are you?'
Conan the Rebel Page 4
