Beyond the Black River Again

by Roberta E. Howard

  Chapter 6. Red Axes of the Border

  Conyn did not plunge deeply into the forest. A few hundred yards from the river, she altered her slanting course and ran parallel with it. Balthusa recognized a grim determination not to be hunted away from the river which they must cross if they were to warn the women in the fort. Behind them rose more loudly the yells of the forest women. Balthusa believed the Picts had reached the glade where the bodies of the slain women lay. Then further yells seemed to indicate that the savages were streaming into the woods in pursuit. They had left a trail any Pict could follow.

  Conyn increased her speed, and Balthusa grimly set her teeth and kept on her heels, though she felt she might collapse any time. It seemed centuries since she had eaten last. She kept going more by an effort of will than anything else. Her blood was pounding so furiously in her ear-drums that she was not aware when the yells died out behind them.

  Conyn halted suddenly.. Balthusa leaned against a tree and panted.

  "They've quit!" grunted the Cimmerian, scowling.

  "Sneaking--up--on--us!" gasped Balthusa.

  Conyn shook her head.

  "A short chase like this they'd yell every step of the way. No. They've gone back. I thought I heard somebody yelling behind them a few seconds before the noise began to get dimmer. They've been recalled. And that's good for us, but damned bad for the women in the fort. It means the warriors are being summoned out of the woods for the attack. Those women we ran into were warriors from a tribe down the river. They were undoubtedly headed for Gwawela to join in the assault on the fort. Damn it, we're farther away than ever, now. We've got to get across the river."

  Turning east she hurried through the thickets with no attempt at concealment. Balthusa followed her, for the first time feeling the sting of lacerations on her breast and shoulder where the Pict's savage teeth had scored her. She was pushing through the thick bushes that hinged the bank when Conyn pulled her back. Then she heard a rhythmic splashing, and peering through the leaves, saw a dugout canoe coming up the river, its single occupant paddling hard against the current. She was a strongly built Pict with a white heron feather thrust in a copper band that confined her square-cut mane.

  "That's a Gwawela woman," muttered Conyn. "Emissary from Zogara. White plume shows that. She's carried a peace talk to the tribes down the river and now she's trying to get back and take a hand in the slaughter."

  The lone ambassador was now almost even with their hiding-place, and suddenly Balthusa almost jumped out of her skin. At her very ear had sounded the harsh gutturals of a Pict. Then she realized that Conyn had called to the paddler in her own tongue. The woman started, scanned the bushes and called back something, then cast a startled glance across the river, bent low and sent the canoe shooting in toward the western bank. Not understanding, Balthusa saw Conyn take from her hand the bow she had picked up in the glade, and notch an arrow.

  The Pict had run her canoe in close to the shore, and staring up into the bushes, called out something. Her answer came in the twang of the bow-string, the streaking flight of the arrow that sank to the feathers in her broad breast. With a choking gasp she slumped sidewise and rolled into the shallow water. In an instant Conyn was down the bank and wading into the water to grasp the drifting canoe. Balthusa stumbled after her and somewhat dazedly crawled into the canoe. Conyn scrambled in, seized the paddle and sent the craft shooting toward the eastern shore. Balthusa noted with envious admiration the play of the great muscles beneath the sun-burnt skin. The Cimmerian seemed an iron woman, who never knew fatigue.

  "What did you say to the Pict?" asked Balthusa.

  "Told her to pull into shore; said there was a white forest runner on the bank who was trying to get a shot at her."

  "That doesn't seem fair," Balthusa objected. "She thought a friend was speaking to her. You mimicked a Pict perfectly--"

  "We needed her boat," grunted Conyn, not pausing in her exertions. "Only way to lure her to the bank. Which is worse--to betray a Pict who'd enjoy skinning us both alive, or betray the women across the river whose lives depend on our getting over?"

  Balthusa mulled over this delicate ethical question for a moment, then shrugged her shoulders and asked: "How far are we from the fort?"

  Conyn pointed to a creek which flowed into Black River from the east, a few hundred yards below them.

  "That's South Creek; it's ten miles from its mouth to the fort. It's the southern boundary of Conajohara. Marshes miles wide south of it. No danger of a raid from across them. Nine miles above the fort North Creek forms the other boundary. Marshes beyond that, too. That's why an attack must come from the west, across Black River. Conajohara's just like a spear, with a point nineteen miles wide, thrust into the Pictish wilderness."

  "Why don't we keep to the canoe and make the trip by water?"

  "Because, considering the current we've got to brace, and the bends in the river, we can go faster afoot. Besides, remember Gwawela is south of the fort; if the Picts are crossing the river we'd run right into them."

  Dusk was gathering as they stepped upon the eastern bank. Without pause Conyn pushed on northward, at a pace that made Balthusa' sturdy legs ache.

  "Valannus wanted a fort built at the mouths of North and South Creeks," grunted the Cimmerian. "Then the river could be patrolled constantly. But the government wouldn't do it.

  "Soft-bellied fools sitting on velvet cushions with naked girls offering them iced wine on their knees.--I know the breed. They can't see any farther than their palace wall. Diplomacy--hell! They'd fight Picts with theories of territorial expansion. Valannus and women like her have to obey the orders of a set of damned fools. They'll never grab any more Pictish land, any more than they'll ever rebuild Venarium. The time may come when they'll see the barbarians swarming over the walls of the eastern cities!"

  A week before, Balthusa would have laughed at any such preposterous suggestion. Now she made no reply. She had seen the unconquerable ferocity of the women who dwelt beyond the frontiers.

  She shivered, casting glances at the sullen river, just visible through the bushes, at the arches of the trees which crowded close to its banks. She kept remembering that the Picts might have crossed the river and be lying in ambush between them and the fort. It was fast growing dark.

  A slight sound ahead of them jumped her heart into her throat, and Conyn's sword gleamed in the air. She lowered it when a dog, a great, gaunt, scarred beast, slunk out of the bushes and stood staring at them.

  "That dog belonged to a settler who tried to build her cabin on the bank of the river a few miles south of the fort," grunted Conyn. "The Picts slipped over and killed her, of course, and burned her cabin. We found her dead among the embers, and the dog lying senseless among three Picts she'd killed. She was almost cut to pieces. We took her to the fort and dressed her wounds, but after she recovered she took to the woods and turned wild.--What now, Slasher, are you hunting the women who killed your master?"

  The massive head swung from side to side and the eyes glowed greenly. She did not growl or bark. Silently as a phantom she slid in behind them.

  "Let her come," muttered Conyn. "She can smell the devils before we can see them."

  Balthusa smiled and laid her hand caressingly on the dog's head. The lips involuntarily writhed back to display the gleaming fangs; then the great beast bent her head sheepishly, and her tail moved with jerky uncertainty, as if the owner had almost forgotten the emotions of friendliness. Balthusa mentally compared the great gaunt hard body with the fat sleek hounds tumbling vociferously over one another in her father's kennel yard. She sighed. The frontier was no less hard for beasts than for women. This dog had almost forgotten the meaning of kindness and friendliness.

  Slasher glided ahead, and Conyn let her take the lead. The last tinge of dusk faded into stark darkness. The miles fell away under their steady feet. Slasher seemed voiceless. Suddenly she halted, tense, ears lifted. An instant later the women heard it--a demoniac yelling up the r
iver ahead of them, faint as a whisper.

  Conyn swore like a madman.

  "They've attacked the fort! We're too late! Come on!"

  She increased her pace, trusting to the dog to smell out ambushes ahead. In a flood of tense excitement, Balthusa forgot her hunger and weariness. The yells grew louder as they advanced, and above the devilish screaming they could hear the deep shouts of the soldiers. Just as Balthusa began to fear they would run into the savages who seemed to be howling just ahead of them, Conyn swung away from the river in a wide semicircle that carried them to a low rise from which they could look over the forest. They saw the fort, lighted with torches thrust over the parapets on long poles. These cast a flickering, uncertain light over the clearing, and in that light they saw throngs of naked, painted figures along the fringe of the clearing. The river swarmed with canoes. The Picts had the fort completely surrounded.

  An incessant hail of arrows rained against the stockade from the woods and the river. The deep twanging of the bowstrings rose above the howling. Yelling like wolves, several hundred naked warriors with axes in their hands ran from under the trees and raced toward the eastern gate. They were within a hundred and fifty yards of their objective when a withering blast of arrows from the wall littered the ground with corpses and sent the survivors fleeing back to the trees. The women in the canoes rushed their boats toward the river-wall, and were met by another shower of clothyard shafts and a volley from the small ballistae mounted on towers on that side of the stockade. Stones and logs whirled through the air and splintered and sank half a dozen canoes, killing their occupants, and the other boats drew back out of range. A deep roar of triumph rose from the walls of the fort, answered by bestial howling from all quarters.

  "Shall we try to break through?" asked Balthusa, trembling with eagerness.

  Conyn shook her head. She stood with her arms folded, her head slightly bent, a somber and brooding figure.

  "The fort's doomed. The Picts are blood-mad, and won't stop until they're all killed. And there are too many of them for the women in the fort to kill. We couldn't break through, and if we did, we could do nothing but die with Valannus."

  "There's nothing we can do but save our own hides, then?"

  "Yes. We've got to warn the settlers. Do you know why the Picts are not trying to burn the fort with fire-arrows? Because they don't want a flame that might warn the people to the east. They plan to stamp out the fort, and then sweep east before anyone knows of its fall. They may cross Thunder River and take Velitrium before the people know what's happened. At least they'll destroy every living thing between the fort and Thunder River.

  "We've failed to warn the fort, and I see now it would have done no good if we had succeeded. The fort's too poorly manned. A few more charges and the Picts will be over the walls and breaking down the gates. But we can start the settlers toward Velitrium. Come on! We're outside the circle the Picts have thrown around the fort. We'll keep clear of it."

  They swung out in a wide arc, hearing the rising and falling of the volume of the yells, marking each charge and repulse. The women in the fort were holding their own; but the shrieks of the Picts did not diminish in savagery. They vibrated with a timbre that held assurance of ultimate victory.

  Before Balthusa realized they were close to it, they broke into the road leading east.

  "Now run!" grunted Conyn. Balthusa set her teeth. It was nineteen miles to Velitrium, a good five to Scalp Creek beyond which began the settlements. It seemed to the Aquilonian that they had been fighting and running for centuries. But the nervous excitement that rioted through her blood stimulated her to herculean efforts.

  Slasher ran ahead of them, her head to the ground, snarling low, the first sound they had heard from her.

  "Picts ahead of us!" snarled Conyn, dropping to one knee and scanning the ground in the starlight. She shook her head, baffled. "I can't tell how many. Probably only a small party. Some that couldn't wait to take the fort. They've gone ahead to butcher the settlers in their beds! Come on!"

  Ahead of them presently they saw a small blaze through the trees, and, heard a wild and ferocious chanting. The trail bent there, and leaving it, they cut across the bend, through the thickets. A few moments later they were looking on a hideous sight. An ox-wain stood in the road piled with meager household furnishings; it was burning; the oxen lay near with their throats cut. A woman and a man lay in the road, stripped and mutilated. Five Picts were dancing about them with fantastic leaps and bounds, waving bloody axes; one of them brandished the man's red-smeared gown.

  At the sight a red haze swam before Balthusa. Lifting her bow she lined the prancing figure, black against the fire, and loosed. The slayer leaped convulsively and fell dead with the arrow through her heart. Then the two white women and the dog were upon the startled survivors. Conyn was animated merely by her fighting spirit and an old, old racial hate, but Balthusa was afire with wrath.

  She met the first Pict to oppose her with a ferocious swipe that split the painted skull, and sprang over her failing body to grapple with the others. But Conyn had already killed one of the two she had chosen, and the leap of the Aquilonian was a second late. The warrior was down with the long sword through her even as Balthusa' ax was lifted. Turning toward the remaining Pict, Balthusa saw Slasher rise from her victim, her great jaws dripping blood.

  Balthusa said nothing as she looked down at the pitiful forms in the road beside the burning wain. Both were young, the man little more than a boy. By some whim of chance the Picts had left his face unmarred, and even in the agonies of an awful death it was beautiful. But his soft young body had been hideously slashed with many knives--a mist clouded Balthusa' eyes and she swallowed chokingly. The tragedy momentarily overcame her. She felt like falling upon the ground and weeping and biting the earth.

  "Some young couple just hitting out on their own," Conyn was saying as she wiped her sword unemotionally. "On their way to the fort when the Picts met them. Maybe the girl was going to enter the service; maybe take up land on the river. Well, that's what will happen to every woman, man, and child this side of Thunder River if we don't get them into Velitrium in a hurry."

  Balthusa' knees trembled as she followed Conyn. But there was no hint of weakness in the long easy stride of the Cimmerian. There was a kinship between her and the great gaunt brute that glided beside her. Slasher no longer growled with her head to the trail. The way was clear before them. The yelling on the river came faintly to them, but Balthusa believed the fort was still holding. Conyn halted suddenly, with an oath.

  She showed Balthusa a trail that led north from the road. It was an old trail, partly grown with new young growth, and this growth had recently been broken down. Balthusa realized this fact more by feel than sight, though Conyn seemed to see like a cat in the dark. The Cimmerian showed her where broad wagon tracks turned off the main trail, deeply indented in the forest mold.

  "Settlers going to the licks after salt," she grunted. "They're at the edges of the marsh, about nine miles from here. Blast it! They'll be cut off and butchered to a woman! Listen! One woman can warn the people on the road. Go ahead and wake them up and herd them into Velitrium. I'll go and get the women gathering the salt. They'll be camped by the licks. We won't come back to the road. We'll head straight through the woods."

  With no further comment Conyn turned off the trail and hurried down the dim path, and Balthusa, after staring after her for a few moments, set out along the road. The dog had remained with her, and glided softly at her heels. When Balthusa had gone a few rods she heard the animal growl. Whirling, she glared back the way she had come, and was startled to see a vague ghostly glow vanishing into the forest in the direction Conyn had taken. Slasher rumbled deep in her throat, her hackles stiff and her eyes balls of green fire. Balthusa remembered the grim apparition that had taken the head of the merchant Tiberias not far from that spot, and she hesitated. The thing must be following Conyn. But the giant Cimmerian had repeatedly demonstrated
her ability to take care of herself, and Balthusa felt her duty lay toward the helpless settlers who slumbered in the path of the red hurricane. The horror of the fiery phantom was overshadowed by the horror of those limp, violated bodies beside the burning ox-wain.

  She hurried down the road, crossed Scalp Creek and came in sight of the first settler's cabin--a, long, low structure of ax-hewn logs. In an instant she was pounding on the door. A sleepy voice inquired her pleasure.

  "Get up! The Picts are over the river!"

  That brought instant response. A low cry echoed her words and then the door was thrown open by a man in a scanty shift. His hair hung over him bare shoulders in disorder; he held a candle in one hand and an ax in the other. His face was colorless, his eyes wide with terror.

  "Come in!" he begged. "We'll hold the cabin."

  "No. We must make for Velitrium. The fort can't hold them back. It may have fallen already. Don't stop to dress. Get your children and come on."

  "But my woman's gone with the others after salt!" he wailed, wringing his hands. Behind his peered three tousled youngsters, blinking and bewildered.

  "Conyn's gone after them. She'll fetch them through safe. We must hurry up the road to warn the other cabins."

  Relief flooded his countenance.

  "Mitra be thanked!" he cried. "If the Cimmerian's gone after them, they're safe if mortal woman can save them!"

  In a whirlwind of activity he snatched up the smallest child and herded the others through the door ahead of him. Balthusa took the candle and ground it out under her heel. She listened an instant. No sound came up the dark road.

  "Have you got a horse?"

  "In the stable," he groaned. "Oh, hurry!"

  She pushed his aside as he fumbled with shaking hands at the bars. She led the horse out and lifted the children on its back, telling them to hold to its mane and to one another. They stared at her seriously, making no outcry. The man took the horse's halter and set out up the road. He still gripped his ax and Balthusa knew that if cornered he would fight with the desperate courage of a he-panther.

  She held behind, listening. She was oppressed by the belief that the fort had been stormed and taken, that the dark-skinned hordes were already streaming up the road toward Velitrium, drunken on slaughter and mad for blood. They would come with the speed of starving wolves.

  Presently they saw another cabin looming ahead. The man started to shriek a warning, but Balthusa stopped him. She hurried to the door and knocked. A man's voice answered her. She repeated her warning, and soon the cabin disgorged its occupants--an old man, two young men, and four children. Like the other man's husband, their women had gone to the salt licks the day before, unsuspecting of any danger. One of the young men seemed dazed, the other prone to hysteria. But the old man, a stern old veteran of the frontier, quieted them harshly; he helped Balthusa get out the two horses that were stabled in a pen behind the cabin and put the children on them. Balthusa urged that he himself mount with them, but he shook his head and made one of the younger men ride.

  "He's with child," grunted the old man. "I can walk--and fight, too, if it comes to that."

  As they set out, one of the young men said: "A young couple passed along the road about dusk; we advised them to spend the night at our cabin, but they were anxious to make the fort tonight. Did--did--"

  "They met the Picts," answered Balthusa briefly, and the man sobbed in horror.

  They were scarcely out of sight of the cabin when some distance behind them quavered a long high-pitched yell.

  "A wolf!" exclaimed one of the men.

  "A painted wolf with an ax in her hand," muttered Balthusa. "Go! Rouse the other settlers along the road and take them with you. I'll scout along behind."

  Without a word the old man herded his charges ahead of him. As they faded into the darkness, Balthusa could see the pale ovals that were the faces of the children twisted back over their shoulders to stare toward her. She remembered her own people on the Tauran and a moment's giddy sickness swam over her. With momentary weakness she groaned and sank down in the road, her muscular arm fell over Slasher's massive neck and she felt the dog's warm moist tongue touch her face.

  She lifted her head and grinned with a painful effort.

  "Come on, girl," she mumbled, rising. "We've got work to do."

  A red glow suddenly became evident through the trees. The Picts had fired the last hut. She grinned. How Zogara Sag would froth if she knew her warriors had let their destructive natures get the better of them. The fire would warn the people farther up the road. They would be awake and alert when the fugitives reached them. But her face grew grim. The men were traveling slowly, on foot and on the overloaded horses. The swift-footed Picts would run them down within a mile, unless--he took her position behind a tangle of fallen logs beside the trail. The road west of hers was lighted by the burning cabin, and when the Picts came she saw them first--black furtive figures etched against the distant glare.

  Drawing a shaft to the head, she loosed and one of the figures crumpled. The rest melted into the woods on either side of the road. Slasher whimpered with the killing lust beside her. Suddenly a figure appeared on the fringe of the trail, under the trees, and began gliding toward the fallen timbers. Balthusa' bow-string twanged and the Pict yelped, staggered and fell into the shadows with the arrow through her thigh. Slasher cleared the timbers with a bound and leaped into the bushes. They were violently shaken and then the dog slunk back to Balthusa' side, her jaws crimson.

  No more appeared in the trail; Balthusa began to fear they were stealing past her position through the woods, and when she heard a faint sound to her left she loosed blindly. She cursed as she heard the shaft splinter against a tree, but Slasher glided away as silently as a phantom, and presently Balthusa heard a thrashing and a gurgling; then Slasher came like a ghost through the bushes, snuggling her great, crimson-stained head against Balthusa' arm. Blood oozed from a gash in her shoulder, but the sounds in the wood had ceased for ever.

  The women lurking on the edges of the road evidently sensed the fate of their companion, and decided that an open charge was preferable to being dragged down in the dark by a devil-beast they could neither see nor hear. Perhaps they realized that only one woman lay behind the logs. They came with a sudden rush, breaking cover from both sides of the trail. Three dropped with arrows through them--and the remaining pair hesitated. One turned and ran back down the road, but the other lunged over the breastwork, her eyes and teeth gleaming in the dim light, her ax lifted. Balthusa' foot slipped as she sprang up, but the slip saved her life. The descending ax shaved a lock of hair from her head, and the Pict rolled down the logs from the force of hers wasted blow. Before she could regain her feet Slasher tore her throat out.

  Then followed a tense period of waiting, in which time Balthusa wondered if the woman who had fled had been the only survivor of the party. Obviously it had been a small band that had either left the fighting at the fort, or was scouting ahead of the main body. Each moment that passed increased the chances for safety of the men and children hurrying toward Velithum.

  Then without warning a shower of arrows whistled over her retreat. A wild howling rose from the woods along the trail. Either the survivor had gone after aid, or another party had joined the first. The burning cabin still smoldered, lending a little light. Then they were after her, gliding through the trees beside the trail. She shot three arrows and threw the bow away. As if sensing her plight, they came on, not yelling now, but in deadly silence except for a swift pad of many feet.

  She fiercely hugged the head of the great dog growling at her side, muttered: "All right, girl, give 'em hell!" and sprang to her feet, drawing her ax. Then the dark figures flooded over the breastworks and closed in a storm of flailing axes, stabbing knives and ripping fangs.