The caravan guards would sell their lives dearly when they learned the truth, of course. There would be fewer bandits by the time the survivors of the band laid hands on the caravan. Conan intended that there would be still fewer, and none of them grasping the king's goods.
The quarreling bandits were now making as much of a din as they would in a wineshop in Aghrapur. If the fight beyond the gap had not been making more, they would have given warning of their planned ambush.
As it was, the archer was not too distracted to miss Conan's reappearance. He whirled, nocked an arrow, and shot just as the leader clutched his arm. This sent the arrow flying wildly; Conan's leap behind a tree was hardly needed to save his skin.
It proved useful, though, in surprising the bandits. They stared about them as if the Cimmerian had vanished into the air. They were looking the other way when Conan burst from behind the tree, sword in one hand and bearskin in the other.
The bearskin flew through the air, wrapping itself about the archer's head and shoulders. He fought himself clear of it quickly enough to give him a shot at most men.
The Cimmerian was not most men, as the archer swiftly and direly learned. As he nocked another arrow, Conan's broadsword slashed at his bow. The string parted, splinters of ash flew from the wood, and the archer leaped back, dropping his weapon.
He also leaped back squarely into the path of his leader. For a moment, the two men were as one, and that one incapable of moving against Conan. The leader seemed to believe that no man so large could move fast enough to gain from this situation.
In the next heartbeat, he died of that misjudgment. Conan's sword hissed in a deadly arc, ending with a solid chunk! as it clove the man's head. He wore a stained leather cap reinforced with rusty iron bars, but Conan's blade sliced through it as if it were parchment.
Indeed, it sank so deep into the leader's skull that for a moment the Cimmerian was not master of his own blade.
With desperate courage, the archer drew his dagger and sought to grapple and stab. He grappled, but the stab ended in futility against the Cimmerian's mail. Then Conan's free hand slammed into the archer's jaw hard enough to snap the man's neck and fling him backward into a tree, thereby cracking his skull as well.
Conan freed his sword, stepped free of the bodies, and faced the next bandit. The man had no weapon fit to face the dark-haired giant he saw before him, and no wish to die before his time. Judging from the crashing in the bushes, his comrade felt likewise.
Much to Conan's pleasure, neither of the surviving bandits thought to shout a warning to their comrades on the far slope. The Cimmerian was free to move against those comrades as he wished.
He knelt and examined the bow. It had suffered more than a trifle when his sword knocked it out of the archer's hands, but the dead man had a spare bowstring wound about his waist. With swift and supple fingers, Conan restrung the bow, then drew one of the arrows from the ground and nocked it.
The weapon would do well enough. It was not the curved horsebow Conan had learned to use in Turan, nor the stout Bossonian longbow. With the horsebow, a man could put five arrows into a man-sized target at two hundred paces from the back of a galloping horse, with the last arrow in flight before the first struck. With the longbow, Bossonian yeomen could drive a shaft as long as a man's arm through Aquilonian mail and a hand's breadth into the man under the mail.
Conan had no need to do either today. All he had to do was to persuade the bandits across the trail that enemies now stood where they had thought friends to be. Their own fear would do the rest, as the Turanian High Captain Khadjar had so often told those he thought worth teaching among the captains of the realm's irregulars.
"He who rules his mind on a battlefield will be the victor in the end,"
Khadjar once said. "He who lets fear rule it will be either a dishonored fugitive or fare for the vultures."
Wise words from a wise man, now chasing Picts on the Aquilonian border”if no one had sent assassins after him. Perhaps Raihna had heard something?
Perhaps, but she needed to survive this battle to tell it. Conan jerked the string of the bow to his ear, then shot. The arrow darted through a gap in the trees to vanish in the forest across the trail.
It needed two more arrows before anyone over there so much as cried out. Even then, it was a curse on a friend for ill-aimed archery. It was not until the sixth arrow that a scream told Conan of drawn blood.
Two more arrows flew, and he was nocking yet another when the bandits did what he least expected. They attacked.
Not four, but at least twice that many, charged out of the woods. Conan sent the nocked arrow into one man's chest and he fell, writhing. The others came on. It seemed that they had the wits to know how to set their trap anew. Drive off this foe who had sprung from the earth and they would once more command both sides of the trail.
The bandits had more than courage. They had luck, at least at first.
Conan had no time to even think of picking his ground before the vanguard of the caravan spilled through the gap.
In a moment, bandits, pack animals, and guards” both mounted and dismounted”were as mingled as a nest of serpents in the Vendhyan jungles. Conan did not dare shoot another arrow. He had worked upon those bandits' minds, but not as he had intended. If this tangle of fighting men and frightened animals lasted for more than moments, it would block the gap as tightly as ever the bandits could wish.
When one road to victory was blocked, the Cimmerian never hesitated to take another. He flung himself downhill, leaping bushes and rocks, darting around trees, both sword and dagger gleaming in his hands.
Seeking surprise, he uttered no war cry, but the sound of his passage gave warning nonetheless.
Fortunately, it was warning to friend and foe alike. The bandits on the trail turned to face him. The guards had the wits to see this. When Conan burst onto the trail, the guards already thought him likely to be a friend.
This doubtless saved his life in the next moment. He thrust with his dagger at one opponent, but the man lunged for the Cimmerian's legs.
The dagger thrust passed over the man, and Conan's sword was occupied with another opponent. Caught off balance, Conan reeled.
Then a guard vaulted over a pack mule and landed on the back of the bandit gripping the Cimmerian's legs. The guard drew no weapon and needed none. Above the din of the battle, Conan heard the man's spine crack and felt his arms ease their grip.
Conan stepped clear of the dying bandit and held his other opponent at arm's length for a moment with deft swordplay. Then his instincts warned of new danger. He feinted at the first man, whirled, and sliced from a bare, hairy shoulder an arm wielding a tulwar. The man shrieked, tried vainly to stanch the blood, then stopped shrieking as his strength failed him.
By the time Conan could return to his first opponent, the man was dead.
He had backed into easy reach of the guard, who had no lack of weapons or dearth of skill to use them. The bandit lay with a gaping neck wound that half severed his head.
By now the outpouring of blood was turning the rocky ground of the path into a ruddy ooze that offered precarious footing. Conan leaped onto a boulder, then down onto drier ground. This not only gave him better footing, it put him closer to the foremost edge of the battle.
A bandit who thought no foe was within reach learned otherwise as he bent to slit the saddlebags of a dying horse. He died before the horse did as Conan gripped a greasy pigtail with one hand and rammed his dagger into the man with the other. The bandit fell on saddlebags already half-open and spilling vials and pots whose seals bore runes Conan did not recognize.
The guard who'd already fought beside Conan came to join him, and now each man had a safe back as he faced the bandits. One of the bandits who had fled emerged from under a tangle of bushes, his courage renewed, or perhaps hoping for easy pickings.
Whether from courage or greed, his return to the battle brought him only swift death. Conan was ready for th
e bandit's leap into the middle of the fight. A stoutly booted foot shot up like a stone from a siege engine to catch the man in mid-leap. He doubled up with a sound that was half gasp, half scream. As he toppled to the ground, Conan's sword split the back of his skull.
After that the battle swiftly took on the common shape of such affairs: a confused blur of steel flashing and clanging, men shouting and screaming, and bodies writhing or lying still. It began to seem to Conan that he had far more opponents than the bandits could have furnished. He had a moment's chilling thought, that new bandits were indeed rising from the ground, or that those he had slain were coming back to life.
A moment later he realized that the abundance of foes was owing to the bandits trying to flee past him. Raihna, or someone with his wits about him, had blocked the gap and thus the retreat of every foe who had passed through it. The gap was now working against the very men who had thought to use it. Their one remaining, thought was to flee, an endeavor that led them past Conan.
This, in turn, led to butcher's work for the Cimmerian. When he finished, he awoke as from a daze to find himself standing in the trail. He was bloody from chin to boots, his weapons hardly less so, and the ground around him a mosaic of blood and bodies.
As the battle rage ebbed, he noticed that the surviving guards were keeping their distance from him. One archer had not slung his bow, although he had not yet nocked an arrow. Another, a dark-faced, bearded man, was making what Conan recognized as a sign against the evil eye, over and over again.
"Raihna!" Conan shouted. The name came out like the croak of a giant frog. The Cimmerian realized then that he must have been fighting like an Aesir berserker. Small wonder that even those he had aided were wary of him!
"Raihna!" This time the name came out as if spoken in a known human tongue. The guards recognized it and stared at him. The bearer of the name also recognized it but did not stare. Under the helmet, her fair, freckled face had its own share of bloody smears. Now her features were drawn together in an intent frown.
Conan laughed. He could almost hear her wondering, "When in my travels did I meet this giant berserker, that he calls my name as if we were old friend?"
"Raihna of Bossonia," Conan said more quietly. "I am Conan the Cimmerian. I swear this, by the gods of my own people and by anything else you want me to swear by."
He knew much about her that would remove all questions of who he was¦
and he doubted that she would much care for having these matters talked of in broad daylight before her men.
Raihna's frown trembled, then vanished. Her full lips trembled also, before curving into a smile. In a single fluid series of movements, she sheathed her sword, slid from her saddle, and crossed the bloody ground to the Cimmerian.
"Conan?" She sounded delighted and wondering at the same time.
"I've no twin brother that I know of, and no sorcerer has ever done much with an image of me. Trust me, Raihna. I am here."
"Oh, Mitra!"
For a moment it seemed to Conan that Raihna would swoon. He raised a hand, ready to save her from this indignity. It would cost her some obedience from her men, that he did not doubt. Without the battle haze in his eyes, he saw them for a stout band who would not readily take orders from a woman. No, better said: would not take orders from most women.
But Raihna was not most women. It hardly surprised Conan to see her with her own band of caravan guards in less than two years after she had left Turan as a simple guard in another's band.
What did surprise him was that their paths should cross again here, in this dreary wilderness that called itself the Border Kingdom. Yet that was most probably another tale best saved until later.
Raihna now seemed to have regained command of herself. She reached up and tugged at a stray lock of Conan's black hair.
"Gods, it is no bad thing to see you again. Better still, when you have put me”us”so much in your debt. I swear that I will find some way to
"Pay that debt?" Conan said with a grim smile. Again thinking of her authority, he lowered his voice. "Best pay it by rallying your men and moving on." He told of his own battle in the trees in a few words, leaving out altogether his first notions about joining the bandits.
"You have the right of it, Conan. If these wretches have friends, that one you put to flight may send them warning. And we are hardly in a fit state to meet them if they come."
Raihna seemed to grow a hand's breadth in height, and Conan would have sworn that her eyes glowed. When she turned their gaze on her men and snapped out a half-score of commands, they leaped to obey as if a warrior goddess was among them.
Conan resolved to worry less about Raihna's authority among her men and more about his own welcome. He would have her favor, but many in the southern lands did not know Cimmerians. Some of those, like fools everywhere, feared what they did not know.
Seeing that Raihna had matters well in hand, Conan strode off uphill.
He returned with the leader's body and the discarded weapons of the bandits he had slain.
"Best not to leave anything lying about that some witling can pick up,"
he said of the weapons. Raihna nodded, then looked a silent question about the body.
"He has some rank among these mongrels," Conan said. "There's also a public gallows a bit farther on, at the foot of a hill with a ruined castle atop it. Hang this fellow up and it might send a message to any friends who think of trying us again."
Raihna nodded. "You were always a longheaded man for one of your years."
Conan laughed. "You make me sound like a green lad!"
"No," she said, and both her voice and her eyes held memories that made Conan's blood leap. "No lad."
Then she was the war captain again, calling to her men to contrive a pack animal or a litter for the bandit's body.
Conan stood apart, smiling. The promise had been made and returned. Now they needed only darkness.
Chapter 3
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A few of Raihna's men wanted to track the fleeing bandits.
"Keep 'em from warnin' their friends, be there any," one man said.
"And loot anything the friends stole from other caravans, I'll be bound?" Raihna smiled as she spoke, but her voice was as hard as the rock where she sat.
"Well”I'll not deny that, Mistress."
"Good. You're truthful, if not wise. We have four dead and six hurt past fighting again today. This forest is no place to be dividing our strength against foes who likely know it well."
The man took the rebuke with a shrug and a smile and set to work mending the harness of a pack mule.
In less time than Conan needed for a meal at a good wineshop, the caravan was on the march again. As they retraced Conan's path from the ruined castle and gallows, the Cimmerian rode in the van. Raihna rode in the center, well out of earshot, which denied Conan the chance for a discreet word with her.
Not that he would have taken it had they been riding side by side.
Every eye and every ear would be needed until they left the forest, and every mouth had best remain closed.
Clouds and the passing of the day had brought twilight to the land before they reached the gallows. It was then that Raihna drew rein beside the Cimmerian and studied the ruined village.
"I like not the looks of that place, Conan. Know you anything of it, for good or for ill?"
"You have no one from this realm among your men?"
"Folk of the Border Kingdom who have won free of it seem not overeager to return, I have learned. I had good men of my own, and no wish to burden them with fainthearts."
Conan nodded. One willing man was worth three dragged into an undertaking. Moreover, a native of this land could well have been in league with the bandits.
"Castle or village?" Conan asked.
"The path up to the castle's too steep for the beasts, and I'll not be dividing the men here, either," Raihna said.
"Then it's the village or sleep wet and cold to
night," Conan said, looking at the sky. It had grown yet more sullen in the time they sat their mounts, watching the bandit's body rise to the gallows.
"That would ill serve our wounded," Raihna said. She cupped her hands.
"Ho! We camp in the village tonight. Find the softest stones and the driest mud it offers, and see to the animals. Blue Watch takes first guard."
She turned to Conan. "That means me. The sergeant of Blue Watch is among the wounded. But I will not be awake all night."
Conan grinned. "You mean, you'll not be standing guard all night.
Whether you sleep or not
"You seem sure of your prowess, Cimmerian!"
"Have I no reason?"
Raihna returned Conan's grin. "If you press me for an answer, I would not deny it. But before I see to the men”what brought you from Turan?
The service of spylord Mishrak again?"
Conan suggested that Mishrak defiled he-goats and pissed in wells, then laughed. "Not Mishrak, nor anyone in Turan, bade me here. Indeed, the farther the better from Turan for a few years."
He told of his final year in the Turanian service and of how it had ended in flight when a high-ranking officer took offense at the Cimmerian's ways with the man's mistress. He told more briefly of his travels afterward, north to Cimmeria and then south again.
"I doubt not that Mishrak had a finger in one or two of my journeys before I dusted Turanian soil from my boots," Conan said. "But Crom spare me from ever having to serve him again as we once did."
A shadow passed over Raihna's face, and she gripped Conan's hand. Then she smiled again and dismounted. "I must be about my work. You see to our mounts and baggage, and I will join you in good time."
Conan watched Raihna stride toward where her men were tethering the pack animals and unloading them. She was as fair as ever to a man's eye, but it seemed that far more years than before sat upon her shoulders.
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