What my spells cannot turn aside, I wager I can outrun."
This was wagering the fate of the Border Kingdom on Marr's feet, but little save a dry throat would come of stating what all knew. Conan was silent.
As if she had read the Cimmerian's thoughts, Chienna rose. "Good people, We judge this council to have done all it can. Mistress Raihna, will you do Us the favor of pouring the wine?"
Count Syzambry would not have fought on this day, or on this ground, had he been free to choose.
He was not. His scouts had advanced unmolested until they came up against the royal vanguard. That it was the Palace Guard was no surprise. That the giant Cimmerian was captain over it was. That giant would be shorter by a head by sunset, Syzambry resolved.
First, though, he had to win the battle, and to win, he had to fight.
He could not fight on ground that would let him array his whole host, not without retreating. That would dishearten some of the weaklings, and perhaps provoke the Star Brothers. Their silence since dawn was a blessing from the gods; Syzambry would not cast it aside now.
So it would be here”in this vale”where, at best, half of his men could form line at once. This was not altogether to his disadvantage, as his foes would also suffer. The ground would slow any attack, trees protect the count's archers, and a few level patches give his mounted men room to charge.
Syzambry summoned his messengers and watched them ride out. They did not have far to go before they vanished, not only among the trees, but into the mist. Syzambry had cursed the mist without effect, except that it now seemed to lie in patches rather than equally everywhere.
At least the Pougoi and their Star Brothers were safely in the rear. In the middle of a circle of baggage carts defended by their tribesmen, the wizards could conjure as they pleased with what effect they might contrive. They could not distract a man trying to win a realm.
One of the messengers was riding back, faster than he had ridden out.
He reined in his lathered horse and gave a salutation that was all but a wave.
"The royal host is upon the field!"
"Where?"
"There!" At first the count saw nothing save a patch of mist, thicker than most. Then he saw that at the heart of the mist were marching men.
The Palace Guards were taking the field, the giant at their head.
Syzambry recognized the flowing black hair, for the man was bold enough to face him bareheaded!
Well, it would hardly matter whether the head was bare or helmeted once the count had it on a lance outside his tent.
Chapter 19
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This was the kind of battle that Conan liked less than most.
The two hosts were simply flinging themselves upon one another, with less art than pit-wrestlers for all that the combat was deadlier.
Perhaps there was no blame to the captains on either side, for the ground was broken and the mist made seeing what one was about no easy matter.
That was certainly true enough for Conan. He saw the veterans of the Palace Guard with their spears and the newer men with their swords holding their place against Syzambry's levies. He saw Raihna dashing back and forth, encouraging both her men and some of Decius's.
Every man with a bow had brought it to the field, but Conan was allowing only the best of his archers to shoot. Arrows were too few to be flung wildly into patches of mist that might hide enemies.
The Cimmerian thought he saw blue fire dancing from the treetops and in the heart of patches of mist, as Marr and the Star Brothers dueled. He also thought he saw Thyrin and the Pougoi to the right of the Guards instead of to the left, where they belonged. Perhaps they had only lost their way in the mist, not being accustomed to fighting in orderly array.
Thyrin stepped into view from a mist-shrouded clump of fir, but Conan did not ask the man about his tribesmen. How many men were fighting here today, Conan did not know; he only knew how much noise they made.
The host of Turan at the charge could hardly have outshouted them. Any question to Thyrin and any answer from the man would be lost in the din.
"Steel Hand! Steel Hand!"
This time the levies shouted the count's war cry as they advanced, not their own lord's. Conan sought for the count's standard in the misty woods beyond the levies and found nothing. A pity, because putting an end to the count would put an end to the war.
No. The Star Brothers had to meet the same fate as the count, their Brothers, and their beast. They could not be allowed to wreak more havoc.
Their deaths would leave Marr the Piper the only sorcerer in the Border Kingdom, to be sure. That was one sorcerer too many, and a good reason for Conan's being on the way south once the battle was won. But at least Marr was not one to run wild and wreak havoc, unless provoked.
Chienna and Decius would have the task of not provoking the piper.
Conan's own task suddenly presented itself as meeting four of Syzambry's levies. All had swords, two bore shields, and one carried a long dagger that he wielded in combination with his sword. Conan judged him the most dangerous and moved first against him.
The two-blade fighter was a small man who, until his last day, had won as much by swiftness as by skill. He had never faced Conan's combination of speed and length of reach.
The Cimmerian's blade struck his opponent's dagger out of the hand holding it and went on to gash the arm. The man had the courage to close and the speed to make that a wise move.
Conan took the swordcut on his chest and felt mail links drive through his arming doublet into his skin. His reply crashed through the small man's guard and laid open one whole side of his face.
That would have to do for the man, with three other opponents to face.
Conan saw one back away from the fight at the sight of his leader wearing a bloody mask, but the other two came on. They seemed to have fought together before, and both fought well enough that the Cimmerian had a moment's need for caution.
Then his blade crashed through the guard of the man to the right, and he kicked upward at the man to the left. His boot caught the man in the groin and lifted him clear of the ground. At the same time, Conan's steel chopped through the other man's arm just below the elbow.
Screaming, the one-armed man fled into the mist, seeking to spend his last moments among his comrades. Conan faced the small man again just as pain and bleeding drove the other to his knees. The sword stroke that clove his cap and skull together was a mercy.
Conan saw the last of the four men writhing on the ground and a Guard recruit with a spear standing over him. As the Cimmerian watched, the spearhead dipped, then thrust in deep. The man's breath bubbled in his throat, he clutched at the spear shaft and writhed, then his limbs went limp and the life went out of his eyes.
"Back to your place!" Conan shouted at the recruit. "And where did you find that spear?"
"The man who held it before me is dead," the recruit shouted back, eyes wide with battle-rage and defiance. "I will be dead, too, before I put it down."
Conan cursed under his breath. If the line of spears was falling into the hands of the recruits, the Guards might not hold much longer. When they ceased to hold, so would the right flank of the royal army.
It seemed time for a messenger to seek out Decius. This butting of heads like two rams had gone on for a good while, with no great harm to the royal cause. It had drawn the whole royal host into the battle, though, and Conan doubted that Syzambry was in the same case. He might have men to spare with which to seek a flank. Best that the royal army find his flank before he found theirs.
"I will take your place," Conan shouted to the recruit with the spear.
"You run to the captain-general and say to him
Conan's message died on his lips. Wylla ran out of the mist and the witch-fire clad only in her skin belt and ivory dagger. Her face silenced Conan's impulse to fling her over his shoulder and carry her to safety.
"Conan! Marr says that the count has
the Star Brothers and their Pougoi to his rear. He wants my father and his warriors to strike them. With his pipes warding off the star-magic
"Crom!"
The Pougoi advance would uncover the right flank of the Guard, already at full stretch. It might sow havoc in the count's rear. It might also slay all of Thyrin's Pougoi, and even Marr.
There was only one way to stave off this disaster. The Palace Guard must charge with the Pougoi. Struck in front as well as in flank, Syzambry's wing might falter and fail. Certainly it would be launching few attacks of its own until the fate of the royal charge was decided.
Conan said no prayers. This was a moment when only one god existed for a Cimmerian, and cold, grim Crom was not one to listen to mortal mewlings. He called a warrior to do his best and to accept his fate if that best was not good enough.
Which was at least as much justice as Conan expected he would receive from Decius. Captains whose battle plans were cast to the four winds by footloose underlings were not often even-tempered.
Conan sheathed his sword, cupped his hands, and ran along the line of the Guards, shouting the rally.
Count Syzambry had no idea of what might be happening on his left. The mist and the ground hid it. What noise he could hear hinted of a royal attack. Perhaps even one in some strength, for a messenger he had sent to learn what might be happening had not returned.
Yet the attack could not have the strength to drive far into his rear.
Even if it did, the Star Brothers and Pougoi together would be a tough nut for any royal handful to crack.
The count's gaze returned to his front, where he could see more clearly. What he saw there was heart-lifting. The royal host was spread thinner than he would have dared believe possible. Decius was no fool; he knew the need to keep a flank strong.
Nor were the royal men”the Palace Guard, it seemed”dead at their posts.
There were too many bodies of Syzambry's men lying among the rocks and bushes, but far fewer of the Guards. In dying, had Syzambry's men broken the Guards?
The count's breath came quickly, for all that it made his ribs ache beneath his blued-steel armor. He had few men in hand save his mounted men-at-arms, and none too many of them. Also, they were scattered and would need summoning were they to charge in a mass behind him.
But if they charged as he knew they could, the battle was won. Won, moreover, with little owing to the Star Brothers.
The count raised the mace topped with the steel hand that was his mark of captaincy. Messengers sitting at the head of their horses leaped up and began to mount.
Now Queen Chienna would see who had the skill in war to rule this land.
Aybas had no particular place in the battle line, being a captain without a company of his own. He had no doubt that he was not yet altogether trusted.
He had made friends with a village head man who led the peasant levies, however. Decius had planned to keep them in the rear of the line, but when the Pougoi ended on the far right flank, the captain-general had to devise a new array. This brought the levies forward into the line, and it was with the levies that Aybas stood when Count Syzambry charged.
It was like no charge that Aybas had ever seen, or even imagined. The fifty or more armored horsemen seemed to trickle forward, like drops of water flowing down the silver face of a mirror. They formed no line, and few seemed to have proper lances to make such a line deadly even if they formed it.
Yet they were coming on swiftly, and if they had few lances, they had swords and maces in abundance. If they reached level ground in the midst of the royal line, they would pierce it like an arrow through silk.
They could also be stopped short of the line and level ground if one could deny them a little hillock a hundred paces ahead. Aybas looked along the line of peasants, saw the fear already in their faces, and knew that he must command a charge.
Whirling his sword over his head, he gave the war cry of the house into which he had been born.
"Wine of Victory!"
Then he charged, one man against fifty. He did not expect to reach the hillock alive, but somehow he did. He did not expect the levies to follow him, nor did he dare to look back, but somehow he was not alone when he started climbing.
Before he could draw breath, he found himself among the boulders with fifty men around him, all of them cheering as if the battle was already won. Two were beating on the helmet of a fallen horsemen with their felling axes.
"Leave be!" Aybas shouted. It was unknightly to abuse a fallen foe, as he had learned in boyhood. It was also foolish to give attention to a harmless foe when there were many still fighting. That Aybas had learned in manhood, from many rough teachers.
His shouting brought the levies around to face their front just in time. A bold horseman was spurring up the hillock. Aybas knew that his reprieve was about to end as he dashed forward.
The man whirled his mace in a fine gesture, then brought it down. He would have been better advised to forgo the gesture.
Aybas leaped up with a speed he had hardly known he had in him and caught the shaft of the descending mace. At the same time, he slashed hard at the man's leg and heaved himself backward.
His blade only clanged on armor, but the rest of Aybas's attack carried through. The man flew out of his saddle, too surprised to even cry. He struck the ground headfirst, sprawling beside Aybas with his helmet flattened and his head at an impossible angle to his neck.
Aybas leaped again and caught the reins of the dead man's horse. The stirrups danced wildly, almost defeating his efforts to mount. At last he succeeded, and the levies greeted him with a wild cheer.
Syzambry's horsemen did not cheer. Indeed, it seemed to Aybas that they were no longer charging and were even looking to their rear. It was hard to make out what they might be looking at between the forest and the mist.
It seemed, however, as if someone had flung himself against Syzambry's rear and was giving it a fight for its life. A moment later, Aybas's ears told him more than his eyes did as a peal of Marr's witch-thunder rolled from the forest.
Within the forest, the witch-thunder made Conan deaf for a moment. He did not care. For now, he needed only his sword, and his eyes to guide the blade. Also, perhaps, his legs to bring him to close quarters with the Star Brothers.
Not that there were no foes ready to hand. As the Guards and the Pougoi hacked their way into Syzambry's rear, they met every sort of soldier the count had not put into his battle line. They also met men who could not be called soldiers by any conceit. Most of these fled, and this was as well. Conan had no love for killing men as helpless as babes. There were enough foes worth a man's steel already, and the day was not yet won.
Conan cast a look behind him. Marr the Piper was running with the soldiers, playing as he ran. His eyes were wide but unseeing, and Conan would have sworn any oath asked of him that those eyes glowed blue.
Magic, surely! But without magic, how could the man both play and run, and without the piper close, how could Conan face the Star Brothers?
The Star Brothers were also close, more so than Conan realized. He burst through a line of dwarfish ash trees to face a circle of baggage wagons swarming with Pougoi warriors. In the middle of the circle stood two Star Brothers, chanting so loudly that Conan heard them even over the piping.
A roaring Cimmerian battle cry eclipsed both piping and chanting.
Guards and Pougoi swarmed through the trees to join Conan.
"Archers!" Conan thundered.
Every one of his men who had a bow seemed to nock and draw in a moment.
Arrows skewered twenty Pougoi and as many baggage animals. The shooting would have won no prizes in Turan, but this was not Turan. Conan's archers had all the skill they needed against the target before them.
Before the Pougoi could recover, Conan was leaping forward. Also, those of his men who bore crossbows had time to nock and shoot. Some of their bolts pierced dead men or baggage animals.
One bolt, unheralded, pie
rced a Star Brother's thigh. He broke his chanting to scream and lurched against his comrade.
The star-spells did not break, but their masters no longer commanded them. Some of the Pougoi closest to the Star Brothers grew old in an instant, their faces as wizened as babes and their heads either white or bald.
Their comrades stared at them, then stared at one another. The berserk spells were striking wildly and doing worse than aging those within reach.
Conan saw a man with all of his guts, and his heart and lungs as well, on the outside of his body. He saw a man suddenly grow purple scales with green spots, and claws on both hands and feet. He retained his thumbs, however, and came at the Cimmerian with a battle ax.
Conan leaped back before the lizard-man's rush. He wanted space between himself and the spells. He also wanted to give his archers another clear shot. He would ask no man to face these abominations hand-to-hand.
Now some of the baggage animals were also developing scales. Others grew batlike wings, which beat frantically and knocked down most of the Pougoi not ensorceled into something other than human.
The few left human and on their feet leaped from the circle of baggage wagons and ran screaming in mortal terror. Blind with fear, most of them ran straight into the ranks of their fellow tribesmen. Thyrin's men laid on with a berserk fury, as if every servant of the Star Brothers they killed was one more cleansing of the tribe's honor.
The sound of a cracking and crashing rose above the din of magic and fighting men. A huge pine beyond the ring of wagons swayed, jerked roots loose from the rocky soil, then toppled. It came down with a crash that made every other sound before seem like a mother cooing to a babe. It smashed wagons, beasts, men and not-men with blind impartiality.
As the echoes of the forest giant's fall died away, so did the piping.
Conan felt a sharp pang of doubt that he would not yet call fear. Then Marr the Piper thudded down at the Cimmerian's feet as if he'd leaped from a high wall. In one outflung hand he gripped the shattered pipes.
Conan had one moment of seeing his death waiting; then he saw his duty just as clearly. He leaped onto the trunk of the fallen tree, bare for most of its hundred paces. Running as fast as on level ground, he leaped down beside the Star Brothers.
The Conan Compendium Page 359
