by Roland Green
“Lord Skiron. I have asked a question. Is there danger, that needs all of our men here? ’ ’
Skiron swallowed. A question in return could at least buy time.
“Where else would they go?”
“To take Conan’s camp.”
“I am no soldier, but—”
“For once you speak the truth. Continue.”
‘ ‘Is not that castle proof against any strength we could bring against it?”
“Any natural strength, yes. It was built by the Watchers, or so the tales run. But it was my thought that you might well accompany us.”
Skiron swallowed again. He hoped Akimos had not noticed his shudder at the word “Watchers.” To be sure, they might not be what replied to his spells, louder each time. Much magic had been wrought in these mountains over the centuries. Some of it besides the Watchers might linger.
He told himself this while his tongue shaped words that made no sense to him but seemed to soothe Akimos. Finally the merchant prince rose.
“Very well. If you are sure that you can cast spells against the castle as well from here as from before its gate—”
“No sorcerer can cast his best spells while arrows are whistling about his ears. Also, if I do not remain here to renew the bondage of Lady Doris, you might not find her so complaisant upon your return.”
From Akimos’s expression, Skiron knew that he had struck home. To have Doris bathing his feet in her tears as she begged him to violate her had become a source of great pride for Akimos. He would not give that up lightly.
So Skiron would stay, and do what he could to aid Akimos. But he would do even more to learn what he might have awakened in the bowels of these mountains, and what all gods lawful or otherwise might let him do about them!
Doris of Lokhri lay in on a pallet sodden with sweat from her last bout with Akimos and with the tears she had shed when he left her. She hated herself for those tears, but in a comer of her mind not twisted by Skiron’s spells she knew that she had no cause for shame.
Skiron had made her need Akimos, as one enslaved to the poppy syrup needed it daily. Bound to him by this need, she would gladly wed him, then see her son wed Livia—and after that see Akimos rule both Houses.
Or would she be alive to see Akimos’s rise? One thing was certain—if Skiron’s spells were ever flawed, she might become mistress of her own will and her own hands again. Then not the gods themselves could keep her from driving a dagger into Akimos’s heart.
Agony surged through her at the thought, mixed with desire. She was a monster, to think thus of the man who so cherished her!
She rolled over, burying her face in the sodden pallet to muffle her cries. When she had command of herself again, she heard the tramp of marching feet, the clink of armour and weapons, and that big Vendhyan Partab’s voice bellowing like a drill instructor of the Guardians.
Akimos was marching out, to deal with Conan. Conan, who had sullied her body with his barbarian’s touch! Conan, who had almost made her unworthy of Akimos’s love!
“Aiyyyyeeeee!” It was half a scream, half a moan. It brought two servants at the run, and behind them Skiron.
From a rocky perch better suited to hawks than men, Conan studied the column of armed men marching downhill. It was too far for even his keen sight to recognize men, let alone badges, but he could count easily enough.
When he’d counted forty men, he knew that they had found their quarry where they expected. Had anyone else besides Akimos brought such a band into these mountains, surely the villagers would have heard of it.
Conan was looking at the merchant prince’s men. Moreover, he’d wager that he was looking at most of them marching off to attack Castle Tebroth, leaving the Caves of Zimgas scantily guarded.
The Cimmerian scrambled down to rejoin his men, and found that Talouf and Harphos were posting sentries.
“No need for that,” Conan said.
“But, Captain Conan, you always—”
“There’s no such thing as ‘always’ in war, my lord,” Conan said. “This is one of the times we don’t need sentries.” He described what he’d seen.
“Can we be sure that Akimos has truly stripped the cave?” Talouf asked.
It was Harphos who answered. “I don’t see how he could have more than fifty or sixty men. Unless he hired some free lances of his own, and would he do that if they might talk?”
“Never be sure that your enemy thinks the way you do,” Conan said. Then he added, as Harphos looked sulky, “But that’s likely enough the way Akimos thinks. We’ll move down at once.”
Leading the two men to the crest, Conan made his plans. They would move downhill to the upper end of a ravine. From there the archers could command the approaches to the cave. Their task: to keep Akimos from returning if he caught wind of the attack.
“We’ll also signal our friends from the villages,” Conan added. “If they put one or two stout bands across Akimos’s line of retreat, I’ll not wager on our seeing him again tonight.”
The Cimmerian would lead the rest of his men himself, down the ravine, across the boulders at its lower end, and straight to the cave. They would have a litter and medicine for Lady Doris, and no plan or purpose save snatching her away.
Outnumbered and surprised, the defenders of the cave should not stand in Conan’s way. Unless their number included Lord Skiron, and the Cimmerian knew that he had to gamble there. If he were Akimos, marching against Castle Tebroth with a tenth of the men needed to take it, he would bring every weapon and every spell at his command.
But as he had just told Harphos, it was not well to reckon that your enemy thought as you did.
XVIII
Conan’s men were slower into the attack than he had planned. Akimos had left only a handful of men on watch, but these seemed alert. Also, the last stretch of hillside to the head of the ravine was open, offering barely enough cover to hide cats, let alone armed men. So they went to ground in the bushes and waited for the last of daylight to die.
Talouf grumbled a trifle at this. “We’ll not do our best in the dark. I could go down now, unseen, and draw the guards off.”
“Treachery!” growled one of Reza’s men.
Conan had hasty work to keep Talouf from spilling the other’s blood on the rock. Then he growled in the thief’s ear:
“I thought you worked best by night.”
“I do, but what about the rest of the lads? No cause to risk their necks.”
“Nor my mother’s, either,” Harphos put in. “Even if Talouf drew off the guards, their going might warn Skiron and any men left inside the cave.”
Conan grinned. He’d made no mistake, thinking that Talouf was now more captain than thief and that Harphos was fast learning war. “Enough,” he said. “Or the guards will hear us arguing. I’ve no mind to chase Lady Doris all across these hills by night, with spells and arrows whistling about my ears.”
The Great Watcher had rested, so its strength was almost restored. What it needed to finish that task was food—the precious sky-food that was so easy to catch yet gave so much strength.
It no longer needed spells cast by men to awaken or strengthen it. But as such spells were being cast, and in a cave no great distance above it, they could well be used for guidance.
The Great Watcher assumed a shape that would allow it to flow through cracks in the rock too small for a dog, then began its climb toward the sky.
In whispers, Conan pointed out the aiming marks for the archers.
“And if any of you puts one arrow short of those, I’ll ram his quiver up his arse sideways,” the Cimmerian added. “I want you dangerous to Akimos, not us.”
The archers nodded. It was no small task they were facing, but they were the pick of the archers of both House Damaos and Conan’s Company. Both had come to take pride in carrying out Captain Conan’s orders, for they only seemed impossible and were always more dangerous to the enemy than to the men carrying them out.
Conan
sat and pulled off his boots. On uneven ground in the dark, he could move faster with his leather-tough soles to guide him. Then he sheathed his sword, took the iron-shod staff Talouf handed him, and began his slow descent of the ravine.
He had just reached the top of the loose boulders when the ground quivered underfoot. It was only a faint quivering, like a bowl of gruel lightly tapped by a child’s hand. But even in the dark, Conan could make out boulders shifting.
Go back or wait? The shock might be the only one, but if it was not, the next might send all the boulders roaring down the ravine. All the boulders, and anyone crossing them, to give the guards all the warning they could need.
He needed surprise, and that might vanish with the next shock. So what else to do, but be among the guards before it came?
Conan abandoned caution and silence, leaping from boulder to boulder like a lion launched upon its prey. He felt some shift under his feet, but the earth itself remained quiet.
At least it remained quiet until he was more than halfway down the ravine. He could see the guards’ torches moving about briskly, as though they sensed danger but not its nature. Then the ground heaved underfoot, and all the boulders were moving at once.
Any man but the Cimmerian would have gone down then and there, to be ground to bloody pulp by the tumbling boulders. Even Conan’s speed and agility was barely enough to take him clear of the boulders. If he had been ten paces farther from the solid rock at one side of the ravine even these gifts would not have saved him.
The solid rock was still quivering as he felt it underfoot, but he did not let that slow him. Using his staff over the rough patches, he slipped along the edge of the ravine until the ground began to level out. Then he broke into a run. The boulders were making such a din and raising so much dust that a company of Guardians could have marched behind them without discovery. Instead of killing him, the earthquake had given Conan back the surprise he needed.
Conan came up to a man-high drop at a run and took it without breaking stride. He landed, rolled to break his fall, felt stones gouge and even tear skin, but came up with staff in both hands. It whirled about him like a windmill in a gale, and the iron-shod ends broke shoulders and arms, smashed faces, and cracked skulls in fine fashion.
Conan put three men down and two more to flight before he even heard anyone coming down the ravine. He did not dare turn to see who it might be, since half a dozen more guards were swarming out of the cave. He also did not dare give ground, even against odds of six to one.
Two quakes might not be all. The third one could be enough to tumble the cave down on top of Lady Doris, unless someone was close enough to snatch her free.
For now, Conan was the only friend so close. A dozen stout companions would have been welcome, but not waiting until they came downhill if that meant losing surprise. He shifted his staff to his left hand, for parrying as well as striking, and drew his broadsword.
“Come on, you mewling milksops!” he roared, as loud as the rockslide. “Come on and try my steel. Or I’ll hunt you down and then go tell your master that he pissed away his silver on cowards!”
Stung, the men came on. Steel met steel with a clanging that rose into the night like the din of a blacksmith hard at work.
Livia awoke from a pleasurable dream of Conan to find Reza shaking her by both shoulders. She threw her head back and tried to pull away. The iron hands let her go, and she fell back on the pallet.
Then a skyful of cold water seemed to descend on her. She screamed and jumped up, forgetting that she was clad as usual when she slept. Reza put down the bucket and instead of politely offering a blanket, threw her a towel and a tunic.
“And pick up your dagger before it takes rust, my lady,” he said severely. “We’re being attacked.”
Now with waking senses, Livia saw men running, heard a trumpet sounding from beyond the wall, and smelled burning pine tar. She snatched up her dagger and ran down the stairs, tunic and towel under her arm.
Her appearance in the courtyard, bare as the day of her birth, nearly turned the tide of battle—against Castle Tebroth’s defenders. So many eyes fixed themselves upon her that few watched the gate or the path to it. It was at that very moment that Akimos’s men launched their attempt to carry the gate by storm.
Conan had not counted as well as he commonly did. Akimos had closer to seventy men than forty, and he flung them all up the path in one desperate assault. The archers made the best practice they could, but that was not good enough. They had no light save a few burning pine knots flung over the walls. Even those arrows that struck human marks struck armour as often as flesh.
Akimos’s men reached the gateway with as many losses from falling off the path as from the defenders’ arrows. They came up to the barricade with thrice the strength of the defenders there, rose up it like a wave, and threatened to spill over it.
As they did, Livia ran up, screaming words she had not thought she knew and waving her dagger in one hand, her tunic in the other. Facing what seemed a naked goddess of war, the attackers in turn stopped to gape.
That was more fatal to them than to the defenders. By now it no longer mattered greatly how Lady Livia chose to dress for the night’s battle. It did matter that their lives and honour were at stake, and about to be lost. They took full advantage of their enemies’ moment of confusion to shorten the odds by a good half score of men.
Then the attackers recovered and rallied, but another five or six went down along with three of the defenders. Livia herself leaped up on to the barricade, faced a man unsure of his footing, and remembered some of what Conan had taught her about real wrestling.
A shapely leg hooked the man’s feet out from under him. He fell with a crash, denting his helmet and the skull under it on the stones. Writhing, he rolled down the barricade under the feet of two comrades trying to climb it. One went down, the other leaped over him to reach Livia.
But he reached her with one thought in his mind: this was the woman Lord Akimos wanted taken alive. So he ignored his steel and tried to grapple her about the waist. In doing this, he forgot that his throat was just at the level of Livia’s knife hand.
He remembered this when a slash of the dagger opened his throat from ear to ear. Blood fountained as he slumped down, seeming to kiss Livia’s feet in his last movement. Then Livia felt herself seeming to fly into the air, as Reza snatched her off the barricade and half dropped, half threw her to the scant safety lying behind it.
She went to her knees, tried to stand, then realized that she was in the middle of a battle wearing only sweat, dust, and the blood of a man she had killed with her own hand. She remained on her knees while her stomach rebelled and emptied itself, then lurched to her feet and groped for the tunic she vaguely remembered having in her hand.
While she searched, Reza and Sergeant Kirgesthes were turning the tide of the battle. Atop the barricade, Reza was at first mistaken for Conan himself. That frightened the wits out of those attackers who had survived the battle at House Damaos. Even when they realized who it was they faced, fear did not leave them. Reza, they remembered, had been nearly as formidable as the Cimmerian.
Another half dozen attackers died at Reza’s hands alone before they could master their fear. As many more went down to other defenders. From walls and towers the women and children joined the fray, hurling stones with more abandon than skill.
Now the attackers’ line gaped wide in places. Reza ordered his men through the gaps.
“Take them in the rear!” he thundered. “Take them in the rear, and we’ve the lot!”
Meanwhile, Kirgesthes was rallying the archers. Enough pine knots now blazed to make the courtyard reek of their smoke, but also to let archers tell friend from foe. Akimos had sent few opposing archers, and these were the first to fall. Then Kirgesthes himself shot down Akimos’s captain, and his men began emptying their quivers at good speed.
With the counter-attack from the barricade before them and arrows showering from above,
Akimos’s men had but one path to follow if they wished to live. They abandoned the attack and retreated through the gateway. It was a retreat, not a flight, although they did it with more haste than dignity.
By the time Livia had decently garbed herself (her tunic, with nothing under it save the towel wrapped around her loins), the gateway was secure. She was sitting on a fallen block, with her head in her hands, when Reza came up.
“My lady, we have beaten them off this time.” “Will they come again?”
“I may answer that when I have counted—”
A cheer interrupted him. Then another echoed it, and finally everyone in the castle was cheering with one voice.
-“Livia of Damaos! Livia of Damaos! Long live House Damaos and Lady Livia!”
Tears that she had held back until now filled Livia’s eyes. She needed the strength of Reza’s arm to stand, wished for a moment that it was Conan’s arm, then turned to face those she had led.
The cheers swelled until they echoed from the stones of the mountainside as well as of the castle. Livia contrived to smile and wave; she was weeping too hard to find words.
In the next moment the ground seemed to ripple underfoot, like a silken coverlet tossed carelessly upon a bed. The rippling came and went in the space of a single deep breath, but it thoroughly silenced the cheering.
Livia shook her head, brushed her tangled hair back from her face, and found her voice.
“Thank you, and the gods bless and keep you. Now, those sons of she-goats may come again. So let us be ready!”
The cheers this time were thinner, but only because a fair number of the defenders were already at work, gathering the wounded. Livia sat down again, discreetly drew the towel from under her tunic, and began cleansing her legs of blood and dust.
The third earthquake did not even make Harphos break stride. It was not strong enough to unsettle the boulders underfoot, and anything else he could ignore. Anything else, that is, except reaching Captain Conan in time.
