Returning up the line of marching men, Flavius rejoined Conan at the front and delivered his message: 'Captain Arno will hold the pace you set until you signal otherwise.'
Conan nodded curtly, lips parted in a sour smile. 'Praise be to Crom,' he said.
'For what?' asked Flavius.
'For Arno's good sense to know that he knows not the frontier. So he takes my advice. In other circumstance, two commanders of one force would be an invitation to the Gods of disaster.'
'General Lucian insisted there be two of you.'
'Still I like it not. Something stinks about this whole thing.'
As the trail approached the creek, Conan turned to the soldiers in the van. 'Fill your water jugs and skins, all of you. Pass the word along, but whisper it.'
When the sun looked down from the centre of the sky, the troop had covered another league along South Creek as it tumbled over its rocky bed in its haste to reach its junction with the Black River. Aside from the rippling of the water, l lie forest was as silent as a tomb.
Suddenly a sound broke the quiet. It was the hoot of an owl. Conan whirled and dashed back toward the disorderly column of marching men.
'Form square for attack!' he roared. 'Archers, hold your shots till you see your targets plain!'
Running after him, Flavius panted: 'It was but an owl, Captain. There is no...'
'Whoever heard an owl at mid-day?' snarled Conan, as a chorus of yells from trees ahead half-drowned his words.
II
Death from the Trees
Arno, too, shouted orders, and the snakelike column dissolved into a shapeless mass of men. Then in accordance with the manoeuvres that Conan had drilled into them, the mass shook itself out into a hollow square. The perimeter bristled with the low-held points of fifty-odd pikemen, and behind each stood an archer, bow in hand and arrow nocked. The pikemen knelt on the soft, leaf-covered forest floor, their pikes butt to the ground, shafts slanting forward, points waist-high.
The wall of men had scarce been formed when a horde of painted savages erupted from the woods. Naked but for breech clouts and moccasins, and feathers in their tangled manes of knotted hair, the Picts charged the Aquilonians, shooting arrows as they came. Formidable they were, these swarthy, muscular men armed with copper-bladed hatchets and copper-headed spears. Some bore weapons of fine Aquilonian steel, stolen from the dead after the fall of Fort Tuscelan.
'Mitra! There must be thousands of them,' breathed Flavius.
'Go to yonder corner of the square,' said Conan as he positioned himself at the corner to the right. Arno and Arno's lieutenant occupied the remaining corners, facing outward toward the fast-surrounding hordes.
Several Picts fell before the withering rain of Bossonian arrows. Then the Picts were upon them. Some, in their warlike fury, impaled themselves on the points of the pikes. Others danced beyond the spears, yelling war cries and brandishing weapons. A few dropped to the ground and tried to roll beneath the jagged line of spears; but these were soon dispatched.
Defending his comer of the square, Conan whirled his heavy broadsword, lopping off a head here, an arm there. The archers, with the relentless rhythm of automatons, nocked arrows and loosed them into the surging mass. Pict after Pict fell screaming, trying to draw a shaft from his chest or writhing in his death throes. Blood flowed unchecked onto last winter's leaves and soaked into the thick humus of the forest floor. The motionless air drank in the stench of blood and sweat and fear. The screech of a bone whistle cut through the roar of the battle. Pictish chiefs ran among the battle-crazed savages, pulling them back and shouting unintelligible commands.
The frenzied tribesmen were not readily commanded; but at last they turned their backs on the foe. Trotting down the nearest aisle, limping or hobbling away, or staggering beneath the weight of wounded comrades, they faded into the budding branches and were gone.
Around the armoured square lay more than two-score dead and wounded Picts, some moaning, others feebly trying to crawl to safety. Conan wiped the blood and sweat from his face and turned to confront his soldiers, who stood expectantly beside the fallen members of the company.
'You! And you!' barked Conan, indicating two of the pikemen. 'Fall out and dispatch me those dogs who still move. If it's a Pict, spear it; they are good at shamming a lead. The rest of you, keep your places. Throw our dead out of the square. Tend our wounded.'
Conan designated three archers to leave the square to Anther up the spent arrows lying on the ground or sunk in Pictish flesh. Arno asked:
'Why have the savages quit when they outnumbered us ten to one?'
'Crom only knows. They've probably withdrawn to plan some other devilment. Don't break formation yet.'
A gentle breeze carried the sound of a drum and a rattle shaken by a swarthy hand. The Aquilonians sighed in relief, wiped sweat from their faces, and drank deeply from their water jugs and skins. When some doffed helmets and mail-shirts, Conan roared:
'Put back your harness, dolts! How think you we slew so many more than we, ourselves, have lost?'
In the airless afternoon, flies swarmed around the bodies of the fallen, forming black clusters on the bloody wounds;
and the drumming and rattling of the savages droned on. The four officers gathered apart from the square of restless, weary men to confer in lowered voices. Conan said:
'I heard they have a new wizard, Sagayetha, nephew of old Zogar Sag. Methinks that racket means he's there among them directing the next attack.'
'Beware, Conan!' hissed Arno. If the men suspect there's sorcery afoot__'
'Anyone who wars with Picts fights sorcery,' said Conan. 'Tis the natural condition of the frontier. They cannot stand against good Aquilonian steel, the steel that plucked through Westermarck out of Pictish hands. So they turn to their black devil-magic to even up the odds.'
'What mean you, 'plucked'?' said Arno with indignation. 'The land was bought from them, piece by piece, by legal treaties bearing royal seals.'
Conan snorted. 'I know those treaties, signed by some Pictish drunken ne'er-do-well who knew not what he placed his mark upon. I love not Picts, but I can understand the fury that drives them now. We'd best march back in column of fours, pikes without and archers within. Should they again attack, we can reform our hedgehog.'
The officers returned to their posts, but before the column had proceeded a hundred paces, the rattling and drumming ceased abruptly. The marchers paused, disquieted by the sudden quiet.
A piercing scream ripped through the garment of uncanny silence. A man staggered out of ranks and fell writhing among the twisted roots. Another likewise fell; and suddenly the line vibrated with fearful cries of horror.
Snakes - Pictish vipers, some as long as a man, with wedge-shaped heads and diamond patterns down their thick, scaly bodies - dropped from the trees among the Aquilonians. On the forest floor they coiled, heads swaying, and lunged at the nearest soldier. Then slithering to their next victim, they coiled and struck again.
'Swords!' shouted Conan. 'Kill them! Keep your ranks, but kill them!'
Conan's blade divided a six-foot serpent into writhing
halves; but there seemed no end to the rain of snakes. An archer, shrieking in mindless terror, dropped his bow and broke into a run.
'Back in the ranks, you!' roared Conan.
The flat of his sword felled the fleeing Aquilonian. But it was too late; panic had taken hold. Arno, snake-bitten, lay writhing on the ground.
The Frontier Guards dissolved into a stream of fugitives, casting aside armour and weapons in their headlong flight. I he Picts swarmed out of the forest cover and rushed after them, hacking, stabbing, and cudgelling those they overlook.
Conan's whirling broadsword struck down two Picts. 'Flavius!' he cried. 'This way!'
The young lieutenant fought through the press to join Conan, as the Cimmerian strode away from the fleeing Aquilonians.
'Are you mad?' panted Flavius, catching a Pictish hatchet blow on his buc
kler and missing a swipe at the wielder.
'See for yourself,' growled Conan, running another Pict through the body. 'If you'd leave this place alive, follow me.'
The two hastened north-westward. Suddenly, there were even more Picts ahead, the nearest having given a wide berth to the two mailed warriors with bloody blades. Conan and Flavius ran down the trail and were soon out of sight of the battlefield.
The savages sprinted after the bulk of the Aquilonians, Hiring back toward Velitrium. But the Picts avoided the place where the Aquilonians had formed their square, for I here lay bodies heaped and serpents still slithered and coiled as they struck.
III
Blood Money
In time the creek spread itself voluptuously beneath the blue sky, which it caught in reflected splendour. As Conan and Flavius pushed through the lush greenery cradling its shores, the sharp clap shattered the stillness. A splash roiled the placid
surface of the pond, and drops of water leaped up the slanting rays of the afternoon sun, glittering like topaz.
'Fish?' whispered Flavius.
'Beaver. They splash with tails like broadswords to warn the others when danger approaches. See you their dam downstream of the pond? That's their abode.'
'Mean you they live beneath the water?'
'Nay, in dry nests of twigs above the surface within the confines of the dam. Can you see that opening beyond the dam?'
On the right bank of South Creek, below the beaver dam, Flavius saw a clearing. Once neglected and overgrown, it had been lately cleared again. Through the trees that crowned this promontory, Flavius glimpsed the steel blue water of the Black River.
In the midst of the clearing rose a granite statue twice the height of a man. Little more than a large upright boulder, it was roughly trimmed to suggest a human shape. In front of this rude area, a smaller flat-topped boulder appeared above the long grass.
'The Council Rocks,' muttered Conan. 'The Picts were wont to meet here before the Aquilonians drove them out of Conajohara. Now they've cleared the place again and use it for their gatherings. We'll hide behind the beaver house to watch and listen. They'll hold a council, now that our forces are in disarray.'
'But they'll spy us, Conan, and take us prisoner or worse!'
'I think not.' Conan pulled ferns and water plants from the margin of the pond and fastened them about his helmet.; 'Tie plants about your helm, like mine.'
'This hides our heads full well,' said Flavius. 'But what about mail-clad bodies?'
'All is invisible in brackish water, son.'
'Mean you we must lurk within this pond, in all out harness, like some scaly creatures of the deep?'
'That's it. Better wet than dead.'
Flavius sighed. 'I suppose you are right.'
'The day I'm wrong, they'll hang my head in one of altar huts. Come on!'
Conan stepped into water no deeper than his waist and led his young companion across the pond to the beaver house, a wide mound of sticks two feet above the water. As they approached, a turtle, sunning itself on the wattled dam, slipped off into the water and vanished.
As they crouched until the water reached their chins, only their heads, all but undetectable under the leafy disguises, showed above the surface.
'I'd rather pray to Mitra in a temple than kneeling on
I his dank leaf-mould,' said Flavius with a wry little smile.
'Be still; our lives depend upon it. Can you hold this pose for hours if need be?' 'I'll try,' said the lieutenant gamely. Conan grunted approvingly, and, like a crouching leopard,
poised to move.
Insects hummed around them, and the frogs, which had fallen silent when the men appeared, resumed their croaking chorus. A red sun hung low above the fan of greenery that dabbled its feet in the roseate water. Slowly the woods darkened.
Flavius whispered desperately, 'Something is biting me.'
'Bloodsucker,' said Conan. 'Fear not; it will not steal enough of your blood to weaken you.'
With a shudder, Flavius pinched the writhing thing and it fell from him.
'Hist! They come,' murmured Conan.
Flavius quieted, hardly daring to breathe, as Picts in ones and in twos flitted among the darkening trees, whooping with laughter. Flavius was surprised. From what he had seen of Picts, he deemed them a dour and silent folk. Evidently these savages could rejoice as well as other men.
The clearing filled as Picts, in clan regalia, squatted in
rows and passed around skins of weak native beer, amid the banter and boasting.
'I see Wolves, Hawks, Turtles, Wildcats, and Ravens,' whispered Flavius, 'all in seeming amity.'
They are learning to put aside their clannish feuds,' muttered Conan. 'If ever the tribes unite at once, let Aquilonia In-ware. Ha! Look at those twain!'
Two figures, distinct from the throng of nearly naked savages, stepped into the clearing. One was a Pictish shaman, wearing a harness of leather in which was set a score of tinted ostrich feathers. These plumes, Flavius knew, must have been borne for nearly a thousand leagues over trade routes that wound like ribbons through the deserts and savannahs of the south.
The other man was a lean, weather-beaten Aquilonian in buckskins. Conan whispered:
'Sagayetha, and - by Crom - that's Edric, the scout whom Lucian foisted on us!'
Cutting a path through the squatting warriors, who swayed like fields of grain to let them pass, the shaman and the scout came through the throng and climbed the smaller boulder. The Aquilonian spoke in his native language to the Picts, pausing betimes for Sagayetha to translate.
'You have seen, my children,' began Edric. 'that your great and loyal friend, General Viscount Lucian, is not one whose words are straw. He said he would betray a company of Aquilonians into your hands, and did he not? Even so, when he promises you all of Schohira, he will not fail you.'
'Now the time has come for the reckoning. In return for aiding you to recover the land that was stolen from you but a few decades ago, he now asks payment of the promised treasure.'
Sagayetha translated the last phrase and ripped out a short speech of his own.
'What says he?' whispered Flavius.
'He told them to fetch the money. Now hush.'
Four Picts appeared, staggering under a stout chest slung from a pole, which the Picts carried on their shoulders. As they lowered the chest to the ground, Sagayetha and Edric jumped down from the boulder and raised the lid. From their watery lurking place, Conan and Flavius could not see the contents; but Edric dipped a hand in, brought up a fistful of the gleaming coins, and let them trickle back into the container. Flavius could hear the metallic clatter. 'Where would the Picts get so much gold and silver?' ho
whispered. 'They use not coins, save now and then for trading with the Aquilonians.'
'Valannus' pay chest,' muttered Conan. 'A full one had arrived at Fort Tuscelan just before it fell, and the Picts got their hands on it before it could be paid out to the soldiers.'
'Why in the name of all the gods would Lucian betray his own folk and sell their land to savages?'
'I know not, albeit I have some ideas.'
'I will slay those villains or die trying. One quick rush might reach them ere they struck me down -'
'Try it and I'll throttle you,' growled Conan. 'This news we hear is more important than aught that you could do. II we live not, it will never reach Velitrium. Now keep your head low and stay your tongue.'
The two men in the beaver pond watched in silence as the four Picts hoisted the pole, from which hung the chest, and made off with Edric into the forest. Sagayetha mounted the boulder again and launched into an oration, telling the Picts of their past heroism and future glories. His gaudy plumage swayed and flapped with his fiery gestures.
Before Sagayetha finished, the sun had set, leaving overhead a scattering of scarlet clouds in a sapphire sky. In the fathering dark, the Picts began a victory dance, hopping, shuffling, and stamping in long lines, while others
applied themselves to the beerskins.
By the time a few stars appeared through the canopy of leaves, the dance had become a savage thing of leaping, shadowy figures. Maddened by the liquor of their victory, I he Picts cast off restraint, reverting to the beast that sleeps within all men. As the roistering became obscene, Conan grunted in disgust.
The moon was high when the forest grew still, save for I he croaking of frogs and the hum of mosquitoes. Fireflies washed their elfin lights as they soared above the recumbent Picts. Conan said:
'They're all asleep. We go.'
Across the beaver pond they waded, bent low to shield (heir passage from the sight of any waking Pict. As they emerged dripping and sought the shelter of the trees, Flavius
shivered in the chilly evening air. He suppressed a groan as he stretched his stiffened muscles and fought down an urge to sneeze.
Conan struck out along the trail that had led them to the beaver pond. The Cimmerian seemed to possess the ability to see in darkness as well as by day, and moved through the trees with catlike ease. So little moonlight penetrated the dense cover that Flavius had much ado to keep from straying off the path or blundering into clumps of brush or trunks of trees. The best way to travel, Flavius found, was to follow Conan closely and trust blindly in his barbarian instincts.
The forest was alive with the chirp and buzz and twitter of nocturnal insects, as they passed the site of the past day's battle, where rotting corpses had already begun to exude a foetid stench. Flavius started at the sound of some unseen beast crashing through the darkness.
When Flavius began to gasp at the stiff pace set by Conan's long legs, the Cimmerian halted to rest his young companion. When his breath returned, Flavius said:
'Why did Lucian turn traitor to his country? You said you knew.'
'Tis plain enough,' said Conan, drawing his sword to cleanse it of the water of the pond. 'After the fall of Tuscelan, Lucian became the temporary governor of Conajohara and commander of what troops here remain in this rump province.'
The Conan Chronology Page 578
