“With my father and Balarg and Nectan, I would go back to Duthil whether you and your men come or not,” said Conan. “But come if you care to. The Aquilonians have a fortified camp beyond the village with enough archers and pikemen in it to glut you all on gore.”
“Forward, then,” said Herth, and forward they went.
Sickened by the sights and stinks of death all around him, Granth son of Biemur finally threw up his hands in disgust. “Enough!” he said. “Plundering a battlefield after a fight is one thing. Plundering a place like this—” He shook his head. “If only these folk had a little more, we might be robbing the houses we grew up in. It makes me want to retch.”
“Then go away,” said Benno the archer, who had no such qualms. “More for the rest of us.”
Maybe he thought he would shame Granth into going after booty with the other soldiers from the garrison. If he did, he was wrong. Granth turned and strode back toward the palisaded camp just south of Duthil. Benno had been pulling the wool stuffing out of a mattress in the hopes the Cimmerians who had slept on it had also secreted some of their valuables inside it. So far, his hope looked likely to be disappointed.
Granth almost ran into Vulth, who came out of the blacksmith’s house carrying a heavy hammer. “What good is that?” demanded Granth.
“Not much, probably,” admitted his cousin. “You look sour enough to spit vinegar. What’s your trouble?”
“This.” Granth’s wave encompassed it all. “Are we a pack of ghouls out of the desert, to batten on the dead?”
“The Cimmerians won’t miss it any more,” said Vulth. “None of them left alive except maybe the blacksmith’s son.”
“He shouldn’t have got away, either,” said Granth gloomily. “He’ll cause trouble for us.”
“What can one boy do?” asked Vulth with a dismissive shrug.
Before Granth could even begin to answer, the soldiers at the northern edge of the village, the edge closest to the endless forest, cried out in surprise and alarm. And other cries mingled with those of the Bossonians and Gundermen: fierce shouts in a language Granth had never bothered to learn. They filled the pikeman’s ears, and seemed to swell like approaching thunder.
“Cimmerians!” yelled someone, and then the storm fell on Captain Treviranus’ men.
More barbarians than Granth had imagined there were in the world came loping out of the woods. As had the northern men in the fight at Fort Venarium, they wielded a wild variety of weapons. Here, though, they took the Aquilonians altogether by surprise—and here, too, no knights would come to the rescue of the pikemen and archers. One of the barbarians brandished Stercus’ staring head.
“Form up, men! Form up!” shouted Treviranus desperately. “If we fight them all together, we still may win!”
But the Aquilonians never got the chance to follow their commander’s good advice. The enemy was upon them too suddenly and in numbers too great, while they themselves were scattered all through Duthil and not looking for battle. But whether they sought it or not, it found them, and they had to do what they could. Many of them, beset from front and rear and sides all at the same time, simply fell. Others gathered in struggling knots, islands in a sea of Cimmerians, islands bloodily overwhelmed one by one.
Granth and Vulth, near the southern edge of the village, had a few moments longer to ready themselves for the onslaught than most of their comrades. “Side by side and back to back to the palisade,” said Vulth. “It’s the only hope we’ve got, and it’s a long one.”
Side by side and back to back it was: a savage business, but somehow less so than Granth had expected. In point of fact, he had never expected to reach the palisade at all. But after he and Vulth stretched a couple of Cimmerians lifeless on the grass of the meadow, most of the barbarians ran past them rather than attacking. Had they seemed cowards, they would have been quickly dragged down and killed. The appearance of courage meant they soon required less of the genuine article.
But by the time they reached the palisade, reaching it did them no good. Cimmerians were already boosting one another up to the top and dropping down into the fortress that had held down Duthil and the surrounding countryside for the past two years. With the whole garrison inside, the fortified encampment might have put up a stout defense. With only a few men within, it would not last long.
“What do we do? Where do we go?” asked Granth, seeing that the fortress would not save them.
“Into the woods,” said Vulth. “They’re our only hope. If we can get to a settler’s farm, we may hold out against these howling devils.”
Granth laughed wildly. “We’ll make them pay for hunting us down, anyhow.”
Into the woods they plunged.
More blood flooded Duthil’s muddy main street. Here, though, Conan watched in delight, not horror, for these were Aquilonians who fell. And the blacksmith’s son used Count Stercus’ sword to wicked effect, bringing down a pair of Bossonian archers and a Gunderman who relied on the length of his pike to hold foes at bay but who fatally underestimated his foe’s pantherish quickness.
Before long, the only Aquilonians left in Duthil lay dead in the street. Few of the invaders had tried to surrender; none had succeeded: Cimmerians plundered the corpses, taking for their own weapons and armor finer than what they had brought south with them.
Herth strode along the street. The clan chief bled from a cut on his forehead and another on his leg. He said, “They are men after all. When I saw they’d put a village to the sword, I took them for cowards and murderers and nothing more. But they are warriors as well, and they did not flee.”
“They are brave enough,” said Mordec. “They beat us in battle once. And belike the village was roused against them after Stercus stole Balarg’s daughter.”
“He paid with his life, as he deserved to,” said Conan.
Balarg nodded. “He did indeed. And yet I would have let him live, if only that would bring back Tarla with him.”
“And I.” Conan nodded, too.
“That cannot be now,” said Herth. “Now there is vengeance, a great glut of vengeance, to take.”
Mordec went into the smithy. When he came out, grief etched his harsh-featured face. His great shoulders slumped. As he strode toward Conan, fear suddenly filled the youth’s heart—fear not of danger, nor of foes, but of the news he was about to hear. That fear must have shown on his face, for Mordec nodded heavily. “She’s dead, boy. Your mother’s dead,” he said hoarsely. But a somber admiration also filled his voice: “She took up a sword and made them earn what they took. And there’s blood on the blade, so they paid a price for it.”
Herth set a hand on the blacksmith’s shoulder. “Any warrior can take pride in such a wife.”
“I do,” said Mordec. He turned to Conan. “And so should you.”
“Pride?” Conan shook his head. “After today, what care I for pride? After today, with my mother dead”—he did not speak of Tarla, who was Balarg’s to mourn, and whose place in his affections was more recent—“what care I if I live or die?”
“I will tell you, if you truly need telling,” answered his father. “Herth had the right of it: to be sure she did not die for nothing, and to be sure the accursed Aquilonians will pay dearly for robbing us of what they had no right to touch. Do you suppose Crom would care to hear you snivel? You know better, and so do I. We still have a job of work to do before we can die content.”
Conan considered. He looked down at the gold-chased, gold-hilted blade he held in his hand. Slowly, he nodded. Stercus’ sword had not yet slaked its full thirst for Aquilonian blood. “Let it be as you say, Father. For vengeance’s sake, I will live. I will live, and the invaders shall die.”
“Why else do you think I still walk and breathe?” returned Mordec.
“Come, then.” Herth pointed ahead. The gate to the palisaded Aquilonian encampment had come open. Cimmerians poured in, although the mere fact that those gates had opened argued that there was no need for more
fighting men within the palisade. The clan chief saw as much, saying, “Let us go south. And wherever we meet them, death to the Aquilonians.”
There was a war cry Conan would eagerly shout. He went into the smithy. Mordec took a step toward him and reached out as if to halt his progress, but Conan twisted past. The blacksmith started to go after him, then checked himself. To Herth, he said, “Best he should see, I suppose.”
“Belike,” said the clan chief. “If he needs one more reason to fight, what better?” After a moment, as if reminding himself, Herth added, “I’m sorry, Mordec.”
“So am I,” answered Conan’s father. “She did not fear death, not when she’d been battling it for years. This might have been quicker and cleaner than she would have got in the natural course of things. Still, though, the invaders will pay for robbing her of the time she would have had left.”
When Conan came out into the street once more, his face was as set and grim as Mordec’s. His eyes burned with a dry, terrible fire. “Death to the Aquilonians,” he said. In his mouth, it was not a war cry after all. It was simply a promise.
Two men burst out of the woods at the edge of Melcer’s field of barley. The farmer threw down his hoe and snatched up his pike. The men were so ragged and haggard and dirty, he thought they had to be Cimmerians. But the hair peeping out from under their helmets was as blond as his own, which meant they were Gundermen like himself. He did not set down the pike even so. Gundermen too could be robbers and brigands.
“Who are you?” he asked sharply. “What are you doing on my land? Answer me right this minute, or by Mitra I’ll run you off it.”
They could not answer him immediately. They both stood there panting, as if they had run a long, long way. At last, the younger one, a fellow with formidably wide shoulders and a face friendly despite its weariness, managed to gasp out, “The Cimmerians are over the border.”
To Melcer, that was the worst news in the world. “Are you sure?” he said. “How many of them?”
The newcomers carried pikes, too, the pikes of foot soldiers. They held them out, not threateningly but so that Melcer could see the fresh bloodstains on the spearshafts. “We’re sure, all right,” said the older one. “How many?” He turned to his comrade. “How many do you suppose, Granth?”
“Oh, about a million,” answered Granth, the broad-shouldered one. “Maybe more.”
“They ran us out of Duthil,” added the other Gunderman. “To hell with me if I know whether anybody else from the garrison is left alive. Stercus is dead, not that he’s any great loss. And those barbarian devils have been baying at our heels ever since. If you’re going to save yourself, you’d better do it now, or you’re a dead man. You may be a dead man anyhow.”
Melcer looked around his farm. He saw all the work of the past two years: stout cabin, barn, garden, fields. Then he looked to the north. He knew where he was likely to see smoke rising, and how much. More fires were burning than could be accounted for by the settlers’ usual business, and some of the columns of smoke rising from the accustomed places were thicker and blacker than they should have been, as if rising from buildings rather than chimneys. Melcer was not afraid to make a stand if that stand had some hope of success. Dying to no purpose was something else again.
He nodded to the two pikemen. “My thanks. Go on and warn more folk.” Even as the words left his mouth, a southbound horseman galloped past winding a horn and shouting out danger to all who would heed him. Melcer nodded again. Now he had confirmation, not that he truly needed it. “Aye, go on, both of you. I’ll tend to my business here.”
On the very edge of hearing came howls that might have burst from wolves’ throats—that might have, but had not. Those were the war cries of barbarians, barbarians on the loose, such swarms of savages had no business running loose within the bounds of the province. They had no business running loose, but here they came.
“We’re off, then,” said the older pikeman. “We’ll make for Fort Venarium, I expect. If we can throw back the Cimmerians anywhere, that will be the place. And what of you?”
“If things go ill, perhaps I’ll see you there,” said Melcer. Above the uproar of the barbarians, a bell began to ring, loudly and insistently. “That is the signal for the yeomen of the countryside to gather. You only garrisoned this land. We live on it, and we will not give it up.”
“They’ll smash you,” said Granth. “You don’t know their numbers.”
Melcer answered with a shrug. “If they do, then they do. But if they take us down to hell, you had best believe we’ll have a fine Cimmerian escort to lead the way.”
The two pikemen began arguing. Melcer had no time for them. He ran back toward the farmhouse—and met his wife hurrying his way, with their baby daughter on one hip and Tarnus, their son, hurrying beside her. “The alarm bell!” exclaimed Evlea.
“Sure enough,” said Melcer. “The Cimmerians are over the border—over the border in a great horde, all too likely. We can flee or we can fight. I aim to fight.”
“What are the odds?” asked Evlea.
He shrugged again. “I know not. All I know is, this is my land. If I must die for it, then die I will, and be buried on it.” He quickly kissed her. “Get out while you can, dear.”
She shook her head. “If I can find someplace to leave the children, I’ll fight beside you. This is not your land alone.”
One of the pikemen came over to them. “Vulth thinks he has a better chance in Venarium,” said Granth. “Me, I’d sooner make my stand as far north as I can. I’m with you, if you’ll have me.”
“Gladly,” said Melcer. Evlea nodded. The bell tolled out its warning cry. Melcer went on, “We’re to make for it when it rings, and do what needs doing once we’re gathered there.”
Melcer hoped he could find a place to leave his children—and his wife—in safety before they came to the bell. But he discovered none, none he would trust against an assault by more than a handful of barbarians. By all the signs, far more than a handful were loose in the land. The bell rang in front of the house of a farmer named Sciliax. Pointing to the cabin, a bigger, fancier, stronger building than Melcer’s, Sciliax said, “Women and children in there. We’ll defend it with all we have.”
All they had, at the moment, consisted of about thirty farmers armed with the sort of weapons farmers carried, plus perhaps half a dozen real soldiers like Granth. More men were coming their way. Would they be enough? Melcer saw, recognized, and worried about the expression on Granth’s face: the pikeman did not like the odds. Slowly, Melcer said,
“Maybe we ought to serve out swords and spears and whatever else we’ve got to the women who will take them.”
“Yes, by Mitra!” cried Evlea.
But Sciliax said, “What if they’re taken?”
“What if we lose?” returned Melcer. “They’ll surely be taken then, and they won’t have us at their sides to save them.”
Sciliax was older than most of the settlers who had come north out of Gunderland, and plainly set on old ways of doing things. But he glanced toward Granth, as if wondering what a real soldier thought of the question. Granth did not hesitate. “This fellow’s right,” he said, pointing Melcer’s way. “Whatever you do—whatever we do, I should say—our chances are bad. The more fighters we have, the better we’re likely to fare. I’ve seen Cimmerian women fight. Are ours weaker than theirs?”
Before Sciliax could answer, Evlea said, “I’ll see to it, then.” She rushed into the farmhouse. Women began spilling out of it, women tough enough to make a go of things beyond the frontier of Gunderland. They all clamored for weapons. Some were young, some not so young. Before long, most of them had spears and axes and swords. Some of the men who wore helms gave them to women. With a sort of bow, Granth presented his to Melcer’s wife.
“Here they come!” Suddenly, the cry rose from a dozen throats. Melcer’s gaze went to the woods north of Sciliax’s farm. Black-haired Cimmerians loped out from among the trees. They saw the de
fenders mustered in front of the farmhouse, saw them and swarmed toward them. The barbarians advanced in no neat formation, but they were ready—more than ready—to fight.
“Form a line!” shouted Granth. “Everyone—help your neighbor. If you save him, he may save you next. No point in running. They’ll just slay you from behind.” No one had appointed him general of this little force. He simply took the job—and the embattled farmers and their wives obeyed him.
Here came a Cimmerian swinging a scythe. He was lean and dirty and looked weary, as if he had traveled a long way with nothing more in mind than murdering Melcer. He shouted something in his own language. Melcer could not understand it, but doubted it was a compliment. The Cimmerian swung back the scythe—and Melcer speared him in the belly.
The soft, heavy resistance of flesh tugged at the pike. For a moment, the barbarian simply looked very surprised. Then he opened his mouth wide and shrieked. Melcer felt like shrieking, too. He had never killed a man before. He had to kick out with his foot to clear the Cimmerian from his pike.
Another Cimmerian swung a two-handed sword, a stroke that would have taken off Melcer’s head had it connected. But the weapon was as cumbersome as it was frightful, and he easily ducked under it. He had gone a lifetime without killing anyone, but claimed his second victim only moments after the first.
He had no time to look around and see how the fight as a whole was going. He could only do his best to stay alive himself and make sure any barbarian who came near him fell. Some of the screams and shouts on the battlefield in front of Sciliax’s house came from women’s throats. Melcer could not even look to see if Evlea remained hale. “Please, Mitra,” he whispered, and fought on.
Cimmerians fell. So did Gundermen. Some lay still, and would never rise again. Others thrashed and wailed and moaned, crying out their torment to the uncaring sky. The wounded on both sides sounded much alike. At first, the sounds of anguish tore at Melcer; as the fight went on, though, he heard them less and less.
Conan of Venarium Page 20
