"Remember, Sergeant, this beast is probably many times older than you or I," Kalak's voice whispered solemnly at Conan's side, without apparent irony. "The elephant folk too have their gods, and they remember the ways of past dwellers in this forest. Best to let them pay their ancient homages."
Uncertain whether he was being made a fool of, Conan posed no further questions. In a while, his elephant turned to shuffle onward along the ancient track―if such it still was, for the pavement was no longer visible.
Conan glanced back to see the next elephant take its place before the pillar, raising its trunk to snuffle at the same carved sign.
He bade his driver stop their beast and wait, lest the column be
dangerously scattered by the delay. He knew his foot soldiers would welcome the rest, for the elephants, even heavily armed and armored, set a brisk pace. He stood up in the padded howdah to stretch his own cramped limbs―and with instant watchfulness saw motion ahead: a line of burdened Venji natives winding toward them, their heads and pack-baskets barely visible a hundred paces further up the jungle path.
Instantly Conan clasped each of his companions on the shoulder in silent warning and commenced whispering orders. He sent Muimur clambering down the elephant's armored side, with orders for the other pachyderms to move forward on both flanks of the trail, and for the spear phalanx to fill in the center. Muimur's final order would be to the horsemen, dispatching two of them to alert the fort. The others would follow as closely behind the elephants as their skittish steeds might be induced to go, awaiting further messages.
Kalak mounted and primed the crossbows, while Conan kept up a tense vigil forward; he urged Than to trundle their beast off the trail, closer underneath the damp, concealing foliage. But it did little good―for even as the front of the approaching party came into open view, the crashing of the elephants in the jungle on either hand alerted them.
Rebels they were―naked Hwong tribesmen guiding armed peasants in jungle-green jerkins. With surprised shouts they threw down their burdens and drew weapons, falling back along the trail in practiced order.
At their rear sounded the fluting of a shrill-toned pipe, doubtless a warning signal.
"Forward, men of Turan! Kill our enemies!" Conan's shouts were cut off by foliage lashing in his face as Than urged the elephant ahead; nevertheless the spearmen along the trail heard and broke into a charge, answering with spirited cries. Goaded by their drivers, the striding elephants began to trumpet with deafening effect. The brassy tones vibrated palpably under Conan's doubled knees and ripped through jungle galleries, the very trees seeming to wilt and tremble in their blast. At the shock of the din, many of the retreating bearers dropped their weapons and began to claw away through the forest in panic.
Now Conan's elephant reached the abandoned cargo, its trunklike limbs bursting and scattering rice-sacks and bales of green cloth. The Turanian spearmen, unable to match the animal's ponderous gait, lagged well behind. Soon the beast overtook the first of the staggering, stumbling
fugitives, a farm lad in green jerkin and pantaloons; the peasant's brief scream ended in a thudding yelp as he vanished beneath scuffing, trundling limbs. Just beyond him the central group of rebels ran and staggered, to be scythed aside and flung headlong by bronze-sheathed tusks, or else snatched up by the massive, nimble trunk and dashed against trees.
In the thick of the slaughter the behemoth trumpeted again, its deafening bellow transforming the screams of its victims to dumb, terror-stricken pantomimes. All the while, astride the neck of this vast engine of death sat the diminutive Than with his comically sloping shoulders, guiding the beast gently and murmuring singsong encouragements into its leathery ears.
Through all the carnage, Conan drifted as on a racing cloud, high above jungle shrubs and the scattering rebels, surging past curtains of flowered vines and gnarled, garlanded tree-boles. The supple smoothness of the giant animal's movements barely tossed its passengers, though the creature ramped and slaughtered madly. Time and again Conan tried to bring his crossbow to bear, only to see his chosen target trodden under or flung aside by the greedy brute.
"Better to use the side-mount for your bow, Sergeant," Kalak said, waiting patiently next to him. "Aiming forward, you risk shooting our beast's trunk or its flapping ears―and our driver."
"Aye, 'tis so." The Cimmerian, bracing his knees against the roll of the howdah's padded floor, eased his weapon down on its metal-capped pivot.
"In any event we shall soon have targets aplenty."
He was looking ahead to where the enemy column thickened into a double file of half-naked Hwong warriors. These troops appeared to lack either the room or the inclination to fall back on their fellows. Armed with spears, bronze axes, and quivers of darts, they deployed smoothly into the greenery on either side of the trail; unlike their surprised forward party, they showed no great aspect of fear.
"Seasoned fighters, these," Conan added. "We had best order a concerted attack." Conan's elephant, although slowed by the carnage, was nevertheless closer to the enemy than the other two now lumbering up noisily on the flanks. At the Cimmerian's command, Than halted the panting beast, allowing the spearmen running along the trail to catch up.
Obeying their commander's arm-signals, the other behemoths stopped and waited as well.
"Now, men―for Tarim and Yildiz, attack!" With the spearmen fanning into the low greenery behind him, Conan bellowed the order and felt his own massive steed lurch forward. This time enemies were sheltered at either side of the trail; Conan heard Kalak's crossbow twang an instant before his own released. The two arrows drove forcefully into the bright foliage, shearing off stems to strike with audible impact, but not before Conan was levering back the taut cord and nocking a new projectile into the hardwood groove. His second shot sent a Hwong rolling out from behind a tree, coughing and clutching at a shaft embedded in his ribs.
A dozen and more times swift, twanging death rained out from the turrets of the converging elephants. Then, just as suddenly, the battle became too desperately close for arrow-play. Long spears began to jab up from the bushes at the elephants' trunks and armored faces, to be splintered and hurled back at their wielders by the impatient, snorting beasts, and Conan's foot soldiers pressed forward on either hand, making projectile fire too risky. Than drove their trumpeting mount relentlessly forward along the trail to avoid crushing friendly troops, and all at once they were among milling foes.
Abandoning their crossbows, Conan and Kalak arose to their feet and plied long spears, stabbing relentlessly to keep Hwongs and armed peasants from scaling the elephant's sides or hacking with their bolos at its soft underparts. Axes and darts were thrown high, to clash against their breastplates or go whizzing past their ears. At the fore, Than clubbed attackers with his elephant goad, while his frenzied beast used one rebel's limp body as a flail to belabor others. Yelling Turanians pressed forward from behind, fighting to surround the beast and protect its vulnerable hamstrings.
Hemmed in partway by their adversaries, the rebels did not break and run; some regrouped in a denser hedge of spears blocking the trail, while others faded back into the jungle to harry the ends of the attackers' line.
"Bismillah!" Kalak exclaimed. "I have never seen such hordes of the accursed monkeys!" Conan followed his pointing finger to see heads and shoulders bobbing among the ferns, those of several hundred more rebels streaming along the trail toward the fray.
"Crom! We must have blundered into a massing army." Conan turned to look for his second. "Muimur, dispatch the remaining couriers to the fort―have them tell the captain we need all of his cavalry, and more elephants―infantry too, since it may be a long fight."
Muimur, following a line of skirmishers to the side of the embattled elephant, shouted up to his commander. "The horsemen are already gone, Sergeant! They rode in accordance with the sharif's standing order for cavalry, to depart as soon as we met strong resistance."
"Asura's gnawing devils! Those w
orthless hay-chompers… then send back runners!" Availing himself of an assuredly temporary lull in the battle-tide, Conan laid down his spear across the howdah's rim. "Find men who know the shortest path to Sikander. Make sure they tell Murad we are engaging a thousand Hwong at least."
"Aye, Sergeant!" Muimur turned away. Before Conan could watch him carry out the order, a new hedge of enemy spears pressed near. He turned back to the fight, stabbing and parrying at the mobs of foemen who managed to circumvent the elephant's flailing trunk and tusks.
The battle on the ground was even fiercer, with the advantages of Turanian drill and maneuver virtually canceled out by tree-trunks and thorny shrubs. Hwong skirmishers had a way of falling back into brush, waiting for the oncoming line to split around an obstacle, then lashing out savagely with spears and bolo-knives at the exposed troopers, massing several fighters against one. The northerners' armor usually saved them, but inevitably one was cut down from time to time; and the rebels seemed careless of losing several casualties to their opponents' one.
Conan watched three of his men charge beneath a pink-flowered tree, spears shaking, and only two come staggering back out. "By Mitra, we must support the attack!" he told Kalak, who was steadfastly recharging his bow. "These elephants are no good at retreating. They would rout and trample our own men, once the cursed Hwong start pricking their nether parts with spears. We must push forward!"
"Aye, that was the plan." Kalak sped his arrow into a milling mob of enemies, then reached forward to ply the crossbow's lever. "But these monkeys refuse to scatter! They rally and fight as never before, Tarim wither their yellow hides!"
"Their closeness may yet cost them dearly," Conan answered grimly.
Laying aside his spear, he leaned forward to address the driver Than carefully in the Venji dialect. "Guide, we are stalled here while the enemy mounts an attack. Can you drive this beast into their midst?"
Turning in his seat with a cryptic smile, the scrawny driver reached to the front bulwark of the broad timber elephant-saddle. He loosened a pair of lashing-cords, then pulled down a canvas cover to expose a broad-bladed bronze weapon whose presence there Conan had not even suspected. Reaching forward with his hooked goad, Than guided his elephant's massive trunk around and back over its shoulder; the supple limb snaked though a velvet-padded ring at one end of the weapon, grasped its long, leather-bound haft, and raised the flashing blade up high into the air. A murmur of surprise sounded from onlookers on both sides of the skirmish line. The great beast bellowed, lumbering forward beyond its screen of friendly troops.
The rebels might have scattered at the sudden onslaught, but they found they had no room. Hwongs and armed peasants pressed up the trail, blocking their backward impulse. Straight at them the elephant drove, raising its new weapon.
The press of men and spears was thick, yet the first rank was thinned easily by a swipe of the great battle-ax. Long as a tall man, its broad double blades standing wide apart as a warrior's cocked elbows, the implement cut through limbs and spearshafts as smoothly as a scythe through straw. Its first stroke sundered men and set their comrades screaming in fountains of blood. Before the rest could react the brute was atop them, trundling over dead and living alike, hacking and threshing the survivors with its crimsoned, gargantuan blade.
Meanwhile, from their swaying perch on the monster's back, its riders stabbed wildly with their long, unwieldy spears, piercing victim after victim, like frenzied fishers spearing salmon from a barge. In all the dreadful carnage, hardly a weapon was raised against them. Meanwhile over the din could be heard fainter cries as the other elephants closed in, threshing the jungle with angry tusks.
"We must break free of this press!" Panting, Conan abandoned a spear which had become too deeply lodged in human sinew and gristle. He lunged back to extract another from its sheath along the elephant's side.
"If we keep the elephants circling ahead of the infantry line, the enemy will
not reform, and our men can cut them down."
As he spoke, the ambling elephant beneath him slid and stumbled across a pile of gory bodies. Lurching forward among fleeing men, it staggered headfirst against a small tree, which nearly gave way with the force of the collision. Exhausted, the animal dropped its heavy ax to stand over the half-uprooted trunk, its great flanks heaving and trembling, its frontal armor a gruesome, red-dripping mask. Before them the central mass of rebels continued to fall away, those on the trail streaming backward or aside into the jungle even as the Turanian phalanx marched chanting up from the rear.
"We cannot use the trail until the forest alongside it is clear of rebels,"
Conan announced to those on the ground. "When this brave beast is rested, we will scatter the enemy ahead of you, crossing and recrossing the trail as you advance. Beware of enemy counterattacks; it may be a long fight before reinforcements find us!"
Hours later Conan watched Muimur die, pierced through by a spear driven in sidewise between his breastplate and backplate. Kalak was already dead, shot in the eye by one of the short, unreliable Hwong arrows―probably a poisoned shaft. Tossing the bodies overside, Conan continued alone with Than atop the plodding elephant, leading a directionless assault, expending his last, precious arrows on shapes that flitted darkly and anonymously among the tree-shadows.
He knew not how many men he had slain this day―scores, hundreds perhaps, using the strength of his own hand, without trying to count the elephant's vast depredations. His troopers' tight, disciplined line had shrunk rapidly, and at least one of the other two elephants had fallen to spears. There was no safe defensive ground nearby, nor enough men and beasts left to fortify a camp. Perhaps, he told himself numbly, the time had come to form a square with the remaining elephants at the center, and wait for nightfall.
For the dozenth time that day, his weary steed paused to drink at a shallow stream. It sucked up water noisily, seemingly by the barrel. Then the beast hooked its trunk high in the air and emitted a thick spray, drenching itself and Conan with a sudden, forceful downpour. Amidst the blinding torrent, he saw Than suddenly driven from the neck of the elephant by the sweep of a long spear.
With a shout, he seized his sword and leaped from the howdah after the driver, only to meet the point of a second spear thrusting upward in midair. Hard-driven, the blade pierced his thigh, scraping agonizingly against bone before it sliced out through the back of his leg.
At the bottom of his fall, his yataghan clove the face of the spear-wielder. An instant later he struck hard earth, shrieking in agony as the grounded spearshaft pushed and twisted in his leg. While he writhed in the jungle filth, he was dimly aware of the elephant spewing out the last of its water and trundling after one of the attackers with an angry scream, to catch him up and dangle him from a bulging, furiously knotted trunk.
Of Than he saw no more. He could spare little heed, for pain clutched him, gnawing at him as a snarling, ravening wolf gnaws a hapless hare caught in its jaws.
Pain overmastered his every impulse, surging and swelling like hot acid in his veins and venting from his throat in racking, moaning gasps. He fought to regain control, dragging his paralytic frame through mud and leaf-litter in an effort to ease the torturing pressure of the spearshaft in his riven flesh.
Fighting oblivion, he managed to sit up and brace the spear across the dead or dying body of his attacker. A dozen pain-wracked blows of his yataghan were enough to hack through the tough bamboo pole. That left him free to topple onto his back with a cubit of the knuckled green shaft, cord-wound and bronze-tipped, still transfixing his leg. He hesitated at trying to draw it out through the wound, lest it increase his blood's steady trickle to a spurting torrent. Fumbling at his waist, he undid his swordbelt and looped it around his blood-slimed thigh.
He passed the end of the strap through the buckle-loop and cinched it tight, then tighter yet, knotting it clumsily when he began to feel light-headed with pain. Then, reaching around his half-bent leg with both hands, he laid hold of
the corded shaft just behind the spearpoint. He pulled mightily, hearing a grating moan escape his own taut lips as he did so. Under steady pressure the spear-haft gradually shifted, its last flaring bamboo joint slipping deeper into the swollen, gory lips of his wound.
Then black pain billowed up from the center of Conan's being, obscuring his vision as he plunged out of the conscious realm.
Jefar Sharif waited restlessly beside the parapet, watching the dark fringe of jungle grow even dimmer and more impenetrable under the
purpling sky. He would have paced to and fro, had there been adequate room on the uneven bamboo treadings over the gate. But there was not, so he vented his nervousness in idle comments to Murad at his side.
"No movement out there, friendly or otherwise. And no more couriers."
He glanced at his elder subordinate, looming gray and still in the twilight.
"Perhaps we should dispatch an elephant battery mounted with torches, to seek out any lost troops and guide them back?"
"I would not recommend it. Such a small force would be prey to ambush." The captain's voice, though low and discreet, scraped with weary exasperation in the evening stillness. " 'Tis an ill practice to send forth units piecemeal; better we had sent our main force out at noontide to support the embattled patrol, as I counseled."
"That would have been over-reacting, I still say!" The young sharif shook his head stubbornly, his crimson turban bobbing darkly in the gloom. "Our returning couriers advised us of no such need. The thirty fresh horsemen we sent were surely enough to defeat any foe the barbarian's patrol blundered into."
"Perhaps―assuming they managed to find him in the jungle." Murad spoke restrainedly, without inflection. "But what of the runner who staggered up to the gate bleeding, telling us that Conan's band faced five thousand Hwong?"
"Nonsense! The fellow was maddened by the same arrow-poison that killed him! Yet even so, that insubordinate black officer―Juma is it?―insisted on marching his whole troop off to their aid. I should not have permitted it." The sharif did not bother to pitch his self-justifications in a low voice. "Remember, Captain, we face other dangers than jungle ambushes! This skirmishing may only be a ruse to draw our strength out of the fort."
The Conan Compendium Page 269
