Conan swore. “Can’t hold this line. We’ll burn it. That should give us time to regroup.”
Sifino nodded, lurched back into the wineshop. He was back immediately with a half depleted wineskin and a full jar of lamp oil.
“This will set it burning right,” he said, and began to slosh the oil onto the pile.
Conan flung a torch, and a splash of yellow flame licked across the tottering barricade. In a moment the wooden barrier was a mass of flame—driving attacker and defender back from the searing heat and suffocating smoke. A party of Zingaran soldiers, who had been tunneling beneath the barricade, rose up from the blazing pyre, danced crazily as the flames engulfed them.
Conan tore the wineskin from Sifino’s grasp, drank greedily. “Tell Mordermi,” he growled.
Carico joined him at the second barricade. The burly smith was reaccoutred and armed with a heavy double-bitted axe. His wounded leg was stiff beneath thick bandages, but nimble footwork was not required this day.
“Any news?” Conan asked grimly.
“We seem to be holding our own still.” Carico gave his shoulder to the side of an ox cart, as Conan grasped a wheel. The stout wagonbed tilted, went over with a crash to fill the narrow gap in the barricade through which Conan’s men had retreated. Heat from the blazing barrier they had quitted scorched their faces, as they shored the cart into position with heavy timbers.
“Korst’s attack has bogged down,” Carico continued. “It remains whether he’ll keep on trying to force a major breakthrough, or launch an all-fronts assault down every airshaft and rathole that enters the Pits.”
“Korst can’t get in. We can’t get out.” Conan spat. “Well, he won’t go away, and we can’t keep retreating behind burning barricades.”
“Our best hope is to fall back to where we can establish a stable line of defense,” Carico said with optimism. “We’ve food and water enough to withstand a siege. Once the city sees that the free men of the Pit can stand firm against the tyrant’s army, they’ll rise against Rimanendo and we’ll crush Korst’s butchers in a vice.”
“To our victory,” Conan sourly toasted, and passed the wineskin to Carico. His own assessment of their situation was a gloomier one, but Carico’s fervor was hard to resist. “When does our counterattack begin?”
“Santiddio is rallying the common folk of Kordava to our cause. Avvinti has taken a portion of our loot to tempt certain ambitious lords to lend us their support. All that remains is for the Pit to hold firm against Korst’s army. Rimanendo rules through fear. When the people see that his power can be defied, then they will cease to fear—and remember only their hatred.”
“What’s this about Avvinti?” Conan blurted, not interested in Carico’s oratory. “When did this happen? Mordermi couldn’t have been fool enough to trust that silken jackanapes!”
“I’m no admirer of Avvinti,” Carico put in, “but the man would never be a traitor to the White Rose. Avvinti has highborn friends and other such connections that make him invaluable to our cause. He left before dawn on a mission to ply the golden key, as they say.”
“Before dawn?” Conan’s suspicion only deepened. “Did Avvinti have wind of Korst’s plans?”
“Oh, Korst’s attack wasn’t entirely unexpected,” Carico reminded him. “Callidios predicted such a move, and it was obvious that we should lose no time in setting our plans in motion.”
“But if Mordermi suspected that Korst would attack in force, why didn’t we just take the loot and all of us clear out when Avvinti made his break?” Conan demanded. “Korst would have marched into the Pit without resistance, found we’d fled with the gold—and there’d have been no battle.”
“No battle, no war.” Carico explained the obvious. “We needed just this sort of bloody confrontation with Rimanendo’s forces to solidify the people of Zingara behind our revolution.”
Something in Conan’s face warned him. Carico quickly amended: “All this is hindsight, of course. How could any of us have guessed that Korst would mount a full scale assault on the Pit?”
Conan remained silent, scowling moodily at the blazing wreckage of the outermost barricade. The draft had pulled most of the smoke outward, driving the king’s soldiers back along Eel Street and out of the Pit. The interlude in the fighting had given the defenders time to draw breath and shore up their fortifications. It also gave Conan time to wonder whether his friends were fools or madmen.
Sifino returned before the blaze had entirely subsided.
“What did Mordermi say?” Conan asked him.
“Couldn’t talk to Mordermi,” Sifino swore. “He and that damn Stygian are in deep dark council—just the two of them—and they were not to be disturbed. I didn’t wait around. Left word with Sandokazi, and beat it back here with all the men I could find.”
“Callidios?” Conan’s scowl deepened. “Crom’s devils! Has Mordermi gone mad, too! The time is past for hatching plots and crazy schemes. We’ve got to fight if we’re going to stay alive!”
He came to a decision. “Sifino, you take over here again. I’m going to find out how the other barricades are holding out. Then I’ll report to Mordermi—and if he’s too busy scheming with Callidios to fight a battle, I’ll lead us myself if I have to!”
The Pit was a maze of twisted passageways and cellars beneath cellars. While its peculiar architecture made any forthright assault impossible, by the same token it was virtually impossible to present a stable line of defense within its labyrinth. Contemptuous of the Pit’s capability to repel an organized assault, Korst had so far elected to hold to his original battle strategy—to overrun the defenders with a massive, decisive breakthrough on any of three fronts. But Conan realized that, should they continue to frustrate Korst’s advance, the king’s general would retaliate with a mass assault down every stairway and crevice that gave access into the Pit. Initial casualties would be enormous, and his forces would be spread out across the entire district—but the Pit must inevitably be overwhelmed by the superior forces of the Royal Zingaran Army.
This awareness made the Cimmerian reckless. Unless the barricades held, the Pit would fall; if the barricades held, the Pit would fall. Only if an outside force broke the siege could the Pit be saved. Conan held little hope for Santiddio’s attempt to rally the citizens of Kordava to the doomed cause of its slum world, and he was confident that Avvinti was well on his way to Aquilonia by now with the fortune his former comrades had died to win. It was only a matter of waiting until Korst’s impatience overruled his taste for military precision.
Conan rode into Water Street and found the barricades there all but abandoned. Fires had spread throughout the dingy waterfront section, and both sides had been forced to flee as the holocaust engulfed the border of the Pit and fanned outward into Kordava proper.
At Old Market Street the defenders had undermined the columns that supported the street and buildings overhead. The resulting cave-in had killed as many rebels as soldiers, but Old Market Street was buried beneath a mountain of rubble. Korst would need a month to dig through here.
Conan made a hasty circuit of the Pit, ruthlessly forcing his mount through the aimlessly milling crowds. Everywhere there were barricades—sealing off the inconsequential passages and alleys that gave access to the buried city. Windows were boarded, doors barred. Anxious faces glared from behind cover, waiting for the enemy to attack. No soldiers were in evidence. Korst would hardly have abandoned his assault. With a sense of foreboding, Conan jabbed his heels to his horse and galloped back toward Eel Street.
Panic-stricken fugitives alerted him for what awaited him there.
Conan urged his mount onward against the rush of the mob. Turning onto Eel Street he took in the disaster at a glance.
Korst had concentrated his attack here, as the other advances failed. As his soldiers stormed the barricade, a squad of Korst’s Strikers stealthily descended into a bordello that fronted on Eel Street behind the bulwark there, slaughtering any they found within. In
the fury of combat at the barricade, their presence there was unsuspected—until the invaders burst out in force to strike the rebel defenders from behind. In the melee, exact numbers were impossible to guess. Fearing that a major breakthrough had taken place, the reserve force that Conan had left to erect a third barricade deserted their position and fled.
Conan charged into their midst, laying about him with the flat of his sword. “Stand and fight, you puke-blooded cowards!” he roared. “Where will you hide? Stand and fight—or die!”
Despite their panic, the Cimmerian’s presence overawed them. For a moment there was hesitation.
“Follow me, you gutless dogs!” Conan railed at them. “Back to the barricades! We can hold Korst’s butchers! He’s been driven back from every other front! Stand and fight, I tell you! Let them overrun us here, and we’re all of us dead men! Follow me!”
Without looking back to see if they obeyed him, Conan rode through them—intending to fight alone to the death rather than die with cowards. Some few shuffled shamefacedly away, but the main part of the mob turned and followed the giant Cimmerian.
Clearing the gap in the partially completed third barricade, Conan rode down two of Korst’s Strikers before they knew their death was upon them. In the cramped quarters there was no room to maneuver—neither was there space to dodge the flailing hooves and Conan’s slashing blade. Soldiers spun about to face this new peril—giving respite to those rebels who were trapped against the second barricade. With a roar, those who had followed Conan’s one-man charge poured into the fray.
His horse screamed and stumbled—hamstrung. Conan vaulted clear of the saddle as the beast fell—its thrashing hooves and crushing weight killing several of those who could not leap back in time. Conan rolled to his knees, stunned for an instant by the impact with the street. A sword slashed downward. Conan clumsily parried, all but lost his grip on the basket hilt. His assailant grinned; a double-bitted axe split his face in a far wider grin.
Carico grasped his shoulder and hauled the Cimmerian to his feet. “Well done, lad!” he applauded. “Next time you’ve a notion to sell your sword to some great lord, enlist in his cavalry and not the infantry.”
Conan saved his breath to cut the legs out from under a soldier who vaulted over the crumbling barricade. More of Korst’s Strikers were darting out from the bordello, engaging the rebels who had followed Conan. The barricade was disintegrating before his eyes.
“Fall back!” Conan yelled. “Let’s set this ablaze!”
“No time!” Carico groaned. A section gave inward as he spoke.
Attacking in full strength, Korst’s men had used the diversion to smash through the barrier behind an improvised mantlet. Zingaran archers left fly from behind cover, as their comrades poured through the breach.
“Fall back!” Conan commanded. An arrow skidded from his burgonet. “Fall back!” His command made a strategic retreat out of a rout. “Take up positions at the third barricade!”
“And when that falls?” Carico muttered. The battle now seemed somewhat less the political exercise.
“We’ll raise another barricade and fall back to it,” Conan laughed harshly. “We’re going to crush Korst in a vice—remember?”
Eleven
The Final Guard Marches
Along Kordava’s waterfront, smoke and flame raised a lurid banner above the hell of carnage that raged within the Pit.
Beneath the leaden waters of the bay, a horror far greater emerged implacably into the flame-lit twilight.
There were none to witness its coming. At first. The harbor was ablaze to the water’s edge; Korst’s soldiers had abandoned their cordon here, had fled from the intense heat along with those whose shops and dwellings were being consumed. Elsewhere, the riot of battle and the swarming ranks of burgundy and gold clad soldiers drove the curious and the morbid back to the safety of their homes. In a fight such as this, any man not in the king’s livery was a potential enemy, and Korst’s men weren’t known for their restraint.
Had any watcher been standing upon the deserted quay, he might have noticed a sudden turmoil beneath the oily waves that surged against the stone steps that led down from the sea wall to the beach. Another glance, and he would have been startled to see a row of swimmers’ heads breaking the surface—their faces uncanny in the reflected glow of the flames. A moment later, and another row of faces would break water, as the first line thrust shoulders and chests out of the sea. Not swimmers; they were walking upon the sea bottom, striding up out of the waves.
The first of them gained the submerged row of steps and marched upward in close file. Behind them, a steady procession of silent figures continued to trudge forward from out of the troubled sea. They uttered no sounds—only the rattle of their accoutrements and the unnaturally loud tread of their sandaled feet broke the silence. In the fiery dusk, accoutrements and flesh alike seemed imbued with a dark, glossy sheen, like polished obsidian or jet. Water slid from their skin and clothing as if from waxed glass, leaving them dry and gleaming as they strode forward from the stairway to form ranks upon the quay.
Their every movement bespoke well-drilled precision, as if an elite regiment were forming for parade. Absent was the clash of steel; instead there crept sounds that were somehow like the slither of a whetted knife on oiled stone, or the shiver of icicles strummed by an arctic wind, or the scrape of nails upon dry slate, or the death-scream of shattered crystal. The flames picked out crimson stars upon spikes of maces, edges of swords, bits of war axes—and here, too, all was black and shining and sharp as broken glass.
As if obedient to silent command, the first group to form up marched forward from the quay and into the flame-lit streets. Behind them, a second group took their position; and behind them, a continuous file of obsidian warriors emerged from the sea and onto the quay. And like the waves of the sea, they came forth upon the shore in tireless, numberless measure.
The holocaust that had driven Korst’s soldiers back from their attack along Water Street (so called because an occasional spring tide flooded it) threatened to raze this squalid section of Kordava’s waterfront. There were some few who scurried desperately about the edges of the blaze, seeking to salvage whatever they might from the conflagration. These were the first to look upon the coming of the Final Guard. They fled.
Their reaction was understandable. The fire had leaped across two decrepit storehouses that shouldered the street that led down to the quay. Portions of wall had toppled into the street, and explosive gouts of intense flame rolled like molten thunderheads between the two blazing structures. Through this firestorm marched the first hundred of the Final Guard, as heedless as if they strode past blowing leaves.
Beyond the flames, the army’s cordon still maintained a patient watch for fugitives from below—a circle of cats waiting to pounce. At the sound of frightened shouts, they turned to see the century of warriors impassively advancing through a wall of fire. Some fled. The others died.
With the breakthrough along Eel Street imminent, Korst had brought up the main body of his troops to this sector. Despite earlier setbacks and heavy losses from the unexpected resistance, the action promised to conclude to the general’s satisfaction. He had drawn the rebels to pitched battle, and now he would crush them in one decisive engagement. Some might flee—to be hunted down in the aftermath—but the abortive revolution would be smashed, annihilated root and branch. Rimanendo would be generous with the general whose victory avenged the king’s honor and by the same stroke destroyed those who threatened his rule.
Their weapons crimson now with bright blood, the Final Guard advanced upon Eel Street.
Their brief, deadly skirmish with the cordon had already alerted the main body of Korst’s soldiers to the presence of the Final Guard. A few survivors had blurted out garbled reports too fantastic to be regarded as anything more than panic-stricken delusion. Expecting no more than a desperate sortie by the beleaguered rebels, the Royal Zingaran Army marched quickly to cont
ain their counterattack. In the gathering darkness beyond the flames, they may not immediately have remarked upon the unnatural appearance of their foe—perhaps assuming that the rebels had smeared themselves with some black pigment as a stratagem for night combat.
A shower of arrows greeted the silent warriors as they emerged through the smoke-filled gloom. They neither sought cover, nor did their line falter. Korst’s archers passed it off to poor light and good armor, and stepped back to let the infantry deal with the rebel sortie.
Their battle cries strangely shrill without an answering roar from their impassive foemen, the Zingaran soldiers hurled themselves upon the Final Guard. It was as if an immense wave had thundered against a basalt cliff. The wave broke apart in a surging explosion of spray. This spray was red.
Weapons of steel shattered against adamantine flesh. Blades that shimmered like black diamond ripped through mail and flesh and bone as if it were one. Korst’s soldiers were literally torn apart. War cries became death shrieks, blunted by the sickening soft chopping sound of sundered flesh, the pattering plash of blood, the dull fall of dismembered limbs.
Elder sorcery had transmuted human warriors into indestructible killing machines. Creatures of living stone, the Final Guard moved with all the speed and reflexes of the master warriors they once had been. But now their invulnerable bodies were driven by muscles of supernatural strength. Diamond-hard weapons ripped and smashed through armor and flesh; obsidian fists closed upon human limbs, tearing muscle and sinew from crushed bone.
The horror was so intense that those who witnessed it seemed momentarily paralyzed. Then, as the front ranks were butchered without mercy, their comrades who followed them shook off the numbness of shock and turned in panic. The soldiers to the rear, still unaware of the doom that marched toward them, heard the cries and—assuming only that the front ranks had met unexpected rebel resistance—came forward in double time to aid them. They collided with those who sought to flee. Officers shouted orders; panic-stricken soldiers yelled incoherently, gibbered mindless answers to questions. Confined by the narrow street, front and rear ranks locked together in a tangled mass of immobility.
Conan: Road of Kings Page 11
