Conan the Marauder

by John Maddox Roberts

  Conan shrugged. "I do not know. It is the way peasants always behave when there is war. I have never been a peasant, and shall never be one. Let us ride."

  The regiment of Hyrkanians rode on, occasionally scattering panicked peasants with their whips. Sometimes they saw other bands of Hyrkanians bound upon their own errands of destruction. By the evening of their second day's ride, they were beyond the ring of chaos and the Great Road was relatively clear. From the scouts' description of the route, the distance to Bukhrosha and the condition of the road, Conan did not expect to encounter the Bukhroshan column until the next day, or perhaps the day after that. Nevertheless, he had scouts riding far ahead, to give warning should the enemy appear untimely. The unexpected was the one thing that lie knew could be relied upon in warfare.

  Now that they were past the ravaged land and the swarming refugees, Conan's main concern was to find a good spot for an ambush. There would be no negotiation, and he foresaw little chance for trickery or deception beyond the usual feints and false retreats. His orders were to fall upon the Bukhroshan column like a thunderbolt and destroy it utterly. That was exactly what he intended to do.

  As evening fell, he found the position he wanted. The Great Road rose steadily, then passed between two small peaks as symmetrical as a woman's breasts. Beyond the pass the way descended, not steeply, to a long stretch of plain over which the road led to Bukhrosha, twenty leagues away.

  With his subordinate fifty-leaders and ten-leaders, Conan rode around both hills and along the road beyond the pass, examining the terrain on which they would be fighting. The rest of the men were ordered to make a war camp, to be ready to remount at a moment's notice, and to light no betraying fires.

  Before darkness fell he had made his dispositions and issued his orders for the coming battle. He would use no complicated manoeuvres, but he needed careful control of his forces in order to make the best use of their mobility and archery and to minimize the enemy's superiority in numbers. The Hyrkanians sneered at the suggestion of a mere two-to-one advantage, but Conan was acutely aware that those were the best odds he could expect. The numbers he faced might be far greater. All depended upon the satrap of Bukhrosha, upon whether he felt goodwill toward Sogaria, and especially upon how much of his military strength he was willing to part with in anticipation of attack against his own land.

  Two hours after sunrise the next morning, the scouts rode in with word that the Bukhroshan cavalry were coining. They would be within sight in an hour.

  "Were you able to count them?" Conan asked.

  "No, lord," said the chief scout. "Your orders were not to be seen, so we kept our distance. I can say that there are more than the one thousand you were expecting."

  "Each of you has his orders," Conan said to his officers, "and you know the signals. Take your positions and await the enemy. It may be that we face far more men than we anticipated. That is no matter. Our tactics will remain the same."

  With two hundred of his men, Conan rode to the hill that flanked the road to the north. Rustuf took another two hundred and led them around the southern hill. The remaining hundred, under Fawd, stayed where they were, about five hundred paces from the pass.

  Once they were in place, neither of the larger bands would be visible to the approaching Bukhroshans. Conan rode near the top of the hill, accompanied by Guyak. The standard-bearer brought a case holding a number of coloured flags. The two sat and waited.

  "They come, captain," Guyak said. In the distance dust cloud announced the arrival of their prey. As force neared, his vantage point allowed Conan to get rough count of its numbers. He cursed as he saw the length and breadth of the column.

  "Three thousand at least. And we have five hundred. Six to one instead of two to one."

  Guyak shrugged and grinned. "What matter, captain? Each of us has more than six arrows."

  Conan laughed and clapped the standard-bearer on the shoulder. "So we have! What are mere odds to heroes such as we, eh? Be ready now, and keep your flags loose in their case."

  At the head of the Bukhroshan column, no more than five hundred paces before the main body, rode the advance guard. Conan had been fairly certain that this would be the case. In civilized armies, outlying forces were loath to lose sight of the main force. An advance guard so near was all but useless. The advance body of a Hyrkanian host rode hours, or even days, ahead of the main horde, keeping contact by relays of scouts. An ambush such as Conan had devised would have been useless against a truly efficient cavalry.

  After the advance guard, at the very head of the host, was a band. Conan marvelled at the sound and the sight: mounted drummers, flute-players, musicians with horns and tinkling instruments, even goatskin bagpipes, all splendidly mounted and draped with colourful horse trappings, as if they rode to a parade instead of to a battle. The satrap of Bukhrosha seemed determined to impress his brother-monarch.

  Guyak gaped at the approaching host. "Are these really warriors, captain?"

  "Some of them are," Conan acknowledged. "And do not be lulled by the spoils and the glitter. I have known some very fierce peoples to like music to accompany their war-making. There are up-country Bossonians

  who have pipes that set up a snarling fit to curl your hair, and the knights of Poitain go into war with fiddlers playing stringed instruments as if at a dance. They fight none the less fiercely for the music."

  "If you say so, lord," said the standard-bearer doubtfully.

  They lowered themselves as the enemy drew nearer, and then the forward elements were entering the pass.

  "Red flag," said Conan.

  Guyak stood below the crest of the hill, unfurled the banner and waved it above his head vigorously. Below, Fawd and his one hundred mounted and began to ride toward the pass as if they were merely out hunting loot. They slowed and then halted as the advance element of the Bukhroshan force came through the pass. Fawd and his men stood uncertainly, watchful as the enemy cavalry began to pour, rank after rank, from between the hills.

  Conan had given strict orders that they were not to turn tail until a clearly overwhelming number of the foe were within sight. A too-hasty Right would seem suspicious and might cause the Bukhroshan commander to scent a trap.

  In the pass, horsemen shouted back over their shoulders, and one or two wheeled from the rear rank of the advance guard and hastened back to the main body to report that the enemy had been sighted. They were forced to ride around the musicians in the narrow con- I fines of the pass, and they went straight away to a splendidly armed man who sported a formidable moustache and side-whiskers. He shouted out orders and waved a ceremonial mace glittering with jewels. The scouts returned to the advance guard, which was then beginning to deploy at the mouth of the little pass. Conan noted that this manoeuvre was accomplished efficiently. The:

  were not show-soldiers, despite their swagger and excessive display.

  Fawd's men began to grow restive. So expert were they with their mounts that they made the horses appear nervous, dancing from side to side and seemingly difficult to control. Fawd screamed a few nonsensical orders, as if trying to egg on half-mutinous troops, and a few of his men made half-hearted but stinging bowshots into the Bukhroshan host.

  A Bukhroshan officer shouted a high, clear command, and a trumpet sounded a brief call of ascending a»id descending notes. As one man, the forward element began to advance, the horses' hooves striking the earth in unison. The first rank of the armoured mass rode with lowered lances, the riders slightly crouched behind their shields as they bore down upon the Hyrkanians.

  Fawd and his men held fast until Conan feared that it was almost too late; then they turned tail and fled, a few of them twisting and firing over their horses' rumps at the advancing enemy. The archers made their casts panicked and hasty, but Conan saw that almost every shaft dropped into the massed horsemen with deadly effect.

  Conan had hoped that the enemy would go charging after the fleeing Hyrkanians heedlessly, but this disciplined pursuit wa
s acceptable. He knew well the folly of expecting an enemy to behave foolishly. As the armoured troops thundered through the pass, he made a count of ranks, of banners and formations. At length he judged that half of the enemy force had gone through the pass.

  "Black flag!" Conan called.

  At the signal, the Hyrkanian horsemen came riding around the two hills. They halted on the hillsides, fifty paces above the Bukhroshan host. Immediately they began pouring a deadly, plunging crossfire into the horsemen milling in the pass. The scene below disintegrated into panic and confusion as some tried to ride on through, others to go back out of the pass. A few bold riders sought to charge uphill against their foemen, but none made a score of paces before being brought down by a shaft.

  Within a few minutes the pass was a ghastly morass of inert armoured forms. At Conan's command, Guyak waved a yellow flag. The Hyrkanians poured off the hillsides and charged against the Bukhroshan soldiers who had already cleared the pass. The steppe warriors rode against the rear of the column, raining arrows into the confused mass as they came.

  The Hyrkanians split right and left and rode around the cavalry procession, riddling it from both flanks and then converging at its front, bringing down warrior and musician without distinction. They re-formed, now joined I by Fawd's detachment, wheeled and rode back. The remaining Bukhroshans tried to fight or sought escape, but were successful at neither. The arrows poured in again, piercing man and horse, passing through mail and scale and hardened leather as if they had been cobwebs.

  The marauders did not slow but kept riding toward the twin hills, though they did not attempt to use the corpse-choked, narrow pass. Again they split into two I forces and took opposite routes around the bases of the hills. Screaming their wild war cries, they fell upon the ' rear half of the Bukhroshan column, which was still ' trying to force its way into the pass. Conan watched as the two pincers of his force closed on the foe like the claws of a gigantic monster. Futilely the city troops tried to change from marching order to order of battle.

  They succeeded only in throwing their ranks into greater disorder.

  The Hyrkanians rode up and down the lines of Bukhroshans, raining their shafts into the helpless, stymied mass of packed soldiery. The rear guard had had enough. In twos and threes, then in squadrons, they broke away from the slaughter and galloped down the road leading back to Bukhrosha. Some of the Hyrkanians pursued, shooting mercilessly at the fleeing soldiers.

  "White flag," Conan ordered. As they saw the signal, the horse-archers gave up pursuit and wheeled their mounts to return. Conan descended from his vantage point. It had been a great victory, but he could take little pride in it. For all their numbers, the city men had had no more chance against the steppe warriors than unarmed children. Conan relished battle, but he could not enjoy a massacre.

  As he reached the foot of the hill, his men were moving among the bodies, retrieving arrows and stripping the dead of arms and valuables. The smell of blood was strong, and already the flies were gathering. Overhead, the vultures soared in broad circles. Rustuf rode up to him, looking uncharacteristically solemn.

  "Your plan worked," the Kozak said. "But this is not a manly way to fight."

  "Aye," said Conan. "Sword to sword is better. These men will not have it so easy when we camp around the walls of Sogaria. Never have I taken part in a siege where the besiegers did not suffer. You cannot break a fortress with arrows."

  The Kagan's camp was a two-day march from Sogaria when the Cimmerian and his five hundred rode in and deposited their loot before the great tent, Conan dismissed his men with orders to erect his quarters while he went within to tender his report. The space before the tent was filled with the loot of other expeditions, and commandeered carts were being gathered to transport the goods.

  His report concluded, Conan sought out his quarters. He found his men gathered near his tent, jabbering excitedly and with looks of fear upon their countenances. He wondered what could instil fear in these men, and felt sure that it boded ill.

  "What is it, Rustuf?" he asked.

  "These fools set up your tent," Rustuf said, "then their own. Come look at this."

  The Kozak led him to the entrance of the tent. A pole had been thrust into the ground, and from its top a bundle of some sort dangled on a leather thong. Conan leaned close and studied it. He recognized the feathers, beaks and claws of birds. There were bones and herbs as well, and things that looked somehow unnatural, all bound in skins and coloured cords.'

  He snorted in disgust. "What means this trash?"

  "You have been cursed, captain," said Guyak. "This is a shaman's curse. If it is not lifted, you cannot prosper. All your undertakings must fail, and you will sicken and soon die." The other men nodded and muttered, eyeing Conan fearfully.

  "What!" said Conan scornfully. "Are these the men who just slew six times their number of enemies, now standing in fear of a bundle of filth?" He glared at them, and they would not meet his eyes. "Which shaman did this?"

  "We saw no one, captain," said Guyak. "The shamans can make themselves invisible. But in this camp, none can work magic without the permission of Danaqan."

  "Where is the snag-toothed old villain?" the Cimmerian demanded. "I shall wring his scrawny neck for him."

  The men would say nothing. With a blistering curse, Conan seized a flaming brand from the nearest fire and strode to the pole. He held the brand beneath the bundle, which began to smoke and catch flame. Then his hair rose as the bundle began to twist and writhe. From inside came a hideous screaming, and the thong burned through, dropping the thing to the ground where it ceased to burn.

  Slowly the bundle unfolded into a bat-winged homunculus, as black as the midnight sky and perhaps two feet tall. It hissed at Conan, baring a double row of sharp, needle teeth. It was entirely hairless, with eyes like burning black coals. Smoke continued to rise from the thing as it advanced. The Hyrkanians jabbered in fear and backed away.

  The creature squalled and launched itself at the Cimmerian. Conan ripped out his sword, slicing upward and cutting through the little demon, splitting it in twain as easily as if it had been made of smoke. The sundered halves rejoined and once again the thing came toward him. He slashed it in two sideways. This time, as it sought to re-form, he speared the still-smoking bundle Mi the tip of his sword and jammed its tattered remnants into the fire.

  The winged homunculus hissed loudly and began to spin in ever-tightening circles in mid-air. As the last bits of the bundle were consumed by the flames, the creature faded into black smoke, then disappeared entirely.

  "The thing was naught but a phantom," Conan said contemptuously. "It was a conjurer's trick, no more substantial than fog."

  "No, captain," said Guyak. "It was an ulu-bekh. A spirit of the air, it obeys the shaman. Shamans have great powers over the spirits."

  "You are like children!" Conan barked. "Your shamans are nothing but mountebanks and frauds who keep you cowed with their trickery.'' He saw that his words were having little effect. Efforts to convince them would be of no avail. Once men were persuaded of anything supernatural, mere facts and demonstration would accomplish nothing.

  "Go to your beds," he ordered. "The magic show is over for this night.''

  Slowly, muttering among themselves, they obeyed. Rustuf and Fawd joined Conan in the tent they shared. Fawd passed Conan a wineskin as the three sat cross-legged upon the floor and the Cimmerian washed the day's accumulation of trail dust from his throat.

  "On the morrow," he said, "I shall cut down the whole pack of these shamans. Bartatua should promote me for it. They are no friends of his."

  "It is an attractive idea," Rustuf said. "But what wizard ever lived who did not let it be known that his death would bring a curse on everyone nearby?"

  "It is true," said Fawd. "Ask these tribesmen and they will all tell you that if a shaman dies by violence, disaster must befall the horde. Shamans must have it so for they have many enemies. If you move openly against the shamans, the
tribesmen will kill you."

  "But how can I control my men if they believe I am accursed and unlucky? And what have I done to earn the enmity of these filthy conjurers? I have not attacked them." The Cimmerian grew more morose by the minute. He detested sorcery at the best of times, but it was especially galling to be stymied by such petty, contemptible medicine men.

  "I think," Conan said, "that it is time for me to pay these bone-rattling magicians a visit."

  "You may not have to go far," said Rustuf. "Unless I am much mistaken, I hear the drum of a shaman drumming nearby."

  The three rose and walked noiselessly from the tent. The drum was being played quietly, but it was no more than a score of paces away. They trod lightly to a spot where a knot of Conan's men sat in a circle around a lire. Close to the fire sat the old shaman, Danaqan, near him an effeminate boy. With his fingertips the hoy was softly tapping on a drum made of human skin stretched over the open top of a human skull. The eye sockets of the skull were inlaid with silver and they glinted evilly in the firelight.

  "Woe to you all!" the old man was saying to the assemblage. "It is an evil thing that the Kagan has devoted a foreign slave to the rank of officer among us. This man has no family, clan or tribe. His ancestors are not entombed in a sacred burial place on the steppe. His gods are not our gods. The spirits of the endless steppe row angry. They will bring the storms of hail and lightning if you continue to follow the foreigner. They will bring the great grass fires, and the smoke will darken the Everlasting Sky. You must not—"

  The shaman's voice faltered and died away as a hand fell heavily upon his shoulder. It was a very large, battle-scarred hand, and he tried to shrug it off, but the thumb was curled around the back of his neck and began to squeeze. A terrible pain shot up the old man's neck, although the hand had barely flexed.