The one with the bolt in his thigh lay twitching feebly in a pool of blood. His comrade was still upright, though ashen-faced and chanting softly.
Conan's sword leaped at the wizard's bearded head. Leaped, then rebounded as if it had struck a castle wall. Five times Conan struck, with the same futile results.
The sixth time, the chanting grew louder and his sword not only rebounded, but flew from his hand. Conan stooped to retrieve it, but as he gripped the hilt, the blade began to smoke. A moment later the whole weapon was too hot to touch, and the sharkskin binding of the hilt was on fire.
Conan did not wait for the sword to turn into a puddle of molten steel.
The last Star Brother was building a new spell, and there was no Marr the Piper to content with him¦ only a Cimmerian ready to trade his life for the lives of those he led.
His sword useless, Conan snatched up the first weapon that came to hand, the shattered tongue of an ox-wagon. Wielding it as he would a quarterstaff, he lunged at the Star Brother. The weapon passed through the spell's barrier and drove hard against the Star Brother's ribs. All the breath hfffed out of him, and he flew backward to lie sprawled and writhing.
Whatever power the spell had against iron, it had none against wood.
Conan lunged again. This time the splintered end of the wagon tongue drove deep into the Star Brother's chest. His last spell died unuttered on his lips as he coughed blood onto the three plaits of his beard, looked for one last time at the sky, and lay still.
Conan had to lean on his weapon for a moment to keep from falling to his knees. He used that moment to look about him.
Pougoi and Guards were swarming all over the wagon circle, making sure that dead men and not-men stayed dead. A few were binding prisoners.
Conan was glad to see that the discipline of the Guards was holding.
Even the newest recruit could call himself a veteran and a soldier after this day.
Thyrin leaped onto a wagon next to Conan, then jumped down beside the Cimmerian. Cleansing his tribe's honor seemed to have taken twenty years from Wylla's father.
"Marr lives!" he shouted. "He will not pipe again, but he lives!"
"Good," Conan said. The word did not come strangely to his lips, even though he was speaking of a sorcerer who was living instead of dying.
"See Marr to safety," Conan said. "When Syzambry learns that we are in his rear, he will be desperate. I want us ready to meet him before then."
Though the new recruits might call themselves veterans and soldiers now, there would be more fighting before they could call themselves victors.
Count Syzambry was bearing more and more to his left. The ground helped him. So did the fight the royal host was making directly to his front.
Most of all, the one messenger who had returned from the left had said that the royal flank was open.
But what was he seeing to his rear? The mist and the trees as before, but also running men. Men garbed like Pougoi warriors, and others like his own levies.
He saw a warrior leap from a stump onto the back of a dismounted man-at-arms. Mail was no proof against strong arms that jerked a head back or a sharp dagger drawn swiftly across a bare throat.
"Treachery!" the count screamed. "The Pougoi are turning against us!
Kill the Pougoi!"
He hoped that enough of the loyal men in his rear yet lived to hear him and obey. Otherwise, he had the tribesmen and”gods deliver him!”the Star Brothers squarely behind him.
Syzambry spurred his horse. He was a light burden so that even after a long fight, the roan bore him forward rapidly.
His swift movement drew the eye of a tall, black-haired man who had stepped unseen from the shelter of the trees.
Aybas needed the boulder at his back that he might stand. Soon he would be unable to stand even with its aid. He had two sword wounds to match against the five men he'd slain this day, and one of those wounds would ere long send him to join the slain.
A bear reared itself before Aybas. Had the magic of the piper or the Star Brothers sent the animals of the forest into the battle on one side or another?
Aybas sat down. He could not run from the bear even if it were a foe.
Sitting gave him a moment's clear vision. He saw that the bear was Captain-General Decius's banner and that Mistress Raihna held it.
"Lord Aybas!" Decius called. "Be at ease. We have brought up men to join yours. The flank is safe. You bought us the time to make it so.
Lord Aybas!"
Decius's voice took on a questioning note as he called the name several times more. The man so addressed did not hear him. He heard instead his mother, calling him by his birth name.
"Peace, Mother," he said. "Peace. I am coming."
Conan measured the space of open ground between himself and Syzambry.
He also counted the archers in sight.
The sum of both was good. Conan flung his sword-belt aside but wasted no time removing his mail. It would not slow him enough to matter.
Then he hurled himself out of the trees, his long legs devouring the ground. He drove into the rear of Syzambry's guards before any of them knew that an enemy was at hand.
Then he leaped. He leaped onto the rump of the count's horse, and one hand snatched at the reins. The other arm went around the little count's throat.
"Ride toward the Silver Bear or I'll have your wind here and now!" he commanded.
Syzambry raised both hands, but one of them held a dagger. Conan dropped the reins and gripped the count's mail-sleeved arm, twisting fiercely. The count gasped and the dagger fell.
But the Cimmerian was alone in the midst of enemies. The disarmed count might be a shield against archery, but the sheer weight of numbers”
It was the sheer weight of numbers that prevailed as the Silver Bear rolled forward. Conan saw Raihna striding beside Decius and holding the banner high above a head as fair as ever, if filthy and drawn from the battle. Behind the banner streamed fifty-odd of Chienna's best fighting men, horse and foot all charging together.
Count Syzambry had no more than twenty men around him. A moment after Decius struck, he had ten. Then those ten were throwing down their weapons and raising their hands, crying for mercy.
"You may have it, but that's for the queen to say," Decius snapped.
"For now, off of your mounts and down on your knees. Conan, need you fear that we would give you no trophy of your valor, that you needed to snatch this one?"
"I've a taste for gifts that will please queens," the Cimmerian said, grinning. "Think you that this will please Chienna?"
Syzambry said something more than rude. Conan tightened his grip, and the count returned to silence.
"More than likely," Decius said. "What else have you done since you and our whole flank vanished into the woods?"
Conan waited to speak, because he saw Queen Chienna riding up with her handful of Guards. She wore armor and leather breeches, and it seemed to Conan that perhaps the Border Kingdom had found its warrior-ruler after all.
Then he told of his day's work, and as he finished speaking, Thyrin came up to say that Syzambry's men were yielding. By the time the work of disarming them was done, it had begun to rain.
The rain did not silence the cries of the wounded and dying. It did hide the chunnnkkkl as an ax took Count Syzambry's head from his shoulders and toppled it into the mud
It was not Conan's hand wielding the ax. He thought headsman's work beneath him but did not say so. Instead, he said that Syzambry should die at the hand of one of those he had offended and of his own land.
The head man of the peasant levies, who had lost half of his family when Syzambry burned his village, did the work well enough.
It was not beneath Conan, however, to lift Aybas's body onto the bier for the dead of the royal host. What sort of name Aybas had left behind on his travels, Conan did not know. The man would leave behind a honorable name in the land where his travels ended.
Chapter 20
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It was just past dawn on the eleventh day after the battle, with the promise of a day perfect for traveling fast and far. Conan's own restlessness had touched his roan stallion, once Count Syzambry's mount. It was pawing the ground gently, but persistently. From time to time it raised its head and snorted at the Cimmerian as if to say, "Will you never be done with your nattering?"
Conan threw a baleful glance at his mount. He would say a proper farewell to Decius and Raihna or the beast could start the journey south without him!
"The queen spoke well of you again lat night," Decius told him.
"Indeed," Conan said. He wondered how much Decius knew of the reasons Chienna had to speak well of the Cimmerian. "I hope she's not still after having me as chief of the Guard?"
"No," Decius replied. "The gods be praised, she understands that after your¦ disobedience, that would be impossible. She suggested that you share the post of royal huntsman with Marr. That will give you quarters in the palace
"What palace?" Conan said. All three laughed, and even the horse nickered softly. The Border Kingdom might be at peace after Syzambry's death, but peace would rebuild no ruined palaces nor pay any royal servants' wages.
That was first among the reasons Conan was departing to resume his journey to Nemedia. It was likewise the reason why he was taking little save the horse, a new sword, enough armor to discourage bandits from thinking him easy prey, and enough silver to purchase food for man and beast.
"Marr seemed willing to share the work," Raihna added. "After the betrothal ceremony, we both swore to carry the queen's offer to you.
What answer shall we carry back?" She smiled as she had so often done before when she already knew what Conan would say.
"Tell her that you last saw me spurring desperately”no, I'll not insult her. Say that I cherish the honor of having served her well, which is enough reward for one like me." To lighten everyone's spirits, Conan changed the matter of their talk. "I trust that the betrothal went well enough. Thyrin held his peace?"
"He did," Raihna said. "I know not if he is truly happy with his daughter marrying merely the royal huntsman, not Marr the Piper. I do know that Wylla had words with her father two nights ago. She said, 'Marr has lost his pipes and with them, their magic. He still has what he needs to make the magic between men and women.' I do not think Thyrin has been speechless for so long since his manhood ordeal!"
"Trust Wylla to see to the heart of things," Conan said. A retired sorcerer and a wild girl from the hills were an odd match, but Conan had seen odder. Such as a warrior noble of the Border Kingdom and the daughter of a Bossonian yeoman who would now be the first lady of the realm next to Queen Chienna¦
"You will not even stay for our betrothal?" Decius asked.
"Could you swear that Queen Chienna would not use the time to scheme some new way of keeping me here?"
"I would rather swear to fly to Dembi Castle by waving my arms," Decius replied.
"Wise of you," Conan said. "I will return for the queen's betrothal if I hear of it in time to make the journey. That I swear. I also advise you to start hunting a suitable husband for her."
"Indeed," Decius said. "We will need a man of proven valor and keen wits to stand beside Chienna. It will also be best if he is tall of stature and black-haired."
Conan's mouth opened. Decius's face was a mask, the mask of a man holding within himself so much laughter that if he let it out, he would laugh himself into a fit. Raihna looked at her betrothed and her face twisted and turned red.
Then the three of them let out all the laughter inside until it echoed from the rocks. By the time the echoes had died, Conan was spurring his horse downhill. On level ground, he let the mettlesome beast out to a full gallop, and by the time he turned to look behind him, Decius and Raihna were gone.
Conan the Defender
PROLOGUE
Sunlight streaming through marble-arched windows illumined the tapestry-hung room. The servants, tongueless so that they could not speak of whom they saw in their master's house, had withdrawn, leaving five people to sip their wine in silence.
Cantaro Albanus, the host, studied his guests, toying idly with the heavy gold chain that hung across his scarlet tunic. The lone woman pretended to study the intricate weaving of the tapestries; the men concentrated on their winecups.
Midmorning, Albanus reflected, was exactly the time for such meetings, though it rubbed raw the nerves of his fellows. Traditionally such were held in the dark of night by desperate men huddled in secret chambers sealed to exclude so much as a moonbeam. Yet who would believe, who could even suspect that a gathering of Nemedia's finest in the bright light of day, in the very heart of the capital, could be intent on treason?
His lean-cheeked face darkened at the thought, and his black eyes became obsidian. With his hawk nose and the slashes of silver at the temples of his dark hair, he looked as if he should have been a general. He had indeed been a soldier, once, for a brief year. When he was but seventeen his father had obtained him a commission in the Golden Leopards, the bodyguard regiment of Nemedian Kings since time beyond memory. At his father's death he had resigned. Not for him working his way up the ladder of rank, no matter how swiftly aided by high birth. Not for one who by blood and temperament should be King. For him nothing could be treason.
"Lord Albanus," Barca Vegentius said suddenly, "we have heard much of the... special aid you bring to our... association. We have heard much, but thus far we have seen nothing." Large and square of face and body, the current Commander of the Golden Leopards pronounced his words carefully.
He thought to hide his origins by hiding the accents of the slums of Belverus, and was unaware that everyone knew his deception.
"Such careful words to express your doubts, Vegentius," Demetrio Amarianus said. The slender youth touched a perfumed pomander to his nose, but it could not hide the sneer that twisted his almost womanly mouth. "But then you always use careful words, don't you? We all know you are here only to-"
"Enough!" Albanus snapped.
Both Demetrio and Vegentius, whose face had been growing more purple by the second, subsided like well-trained animals at the crack of the trainer's whip. These squabbles were constant, and he tolerated them no more than he was forced to. Today he would not tolerate them at all.
"All of you," Albanus went on, "want something. You, Vegentius, want the generalship you feel King Garian has denied you. You, Demetrio, want the return of the estates Garian's father took from your grandfather. And you, Sephana. You want revenge against Garian because he told you he liked his women younger."
"As pleasantly stated as is your custom, Albanus," the lone woman said bitterly. Lady Sephana Galerianus' heartshaped face was set with violet eyes and framed by a raven mane that hung below her shoulders. Her red silk robe was cut to show both the inner and outer slopes of her generous breasts, and slashed to expose her legs to the hip when she walked.
"And what do I want?" the fourth man in the room asked, and everyone started as if they had forgotten he was there.
It was quite easy to forget Constanto Melius, for the middle-aged noble was vagueness personified.
Thinning hair and the pouches beneath his constantly blinking eyes were his most prominent features, and his intelligence and abilities matched the rest of him.
"You want your advice listened to," Albanus replied. "And so it shall be, when I am on the throne."
It would be listened to for as long as it took to order the man banished, the hawk-faced lord thought.
Garian had made the mistake of rebuffing the fool, then leaving him free in the capital to foment trouble.
Albanus would not make the same mistake.
"We seem to have passed by what Vegentius said," Sephana said abruptly, "but I, too, would like to see what help we can count on from you, Albanus. Demetrio and Vegentius provide information. Melius and I provide gold to buy disorders in the street, and to pay brigands to b
urn good grain. You keep your plans to yourself and tell us about the magicks that will make Garian give the throne to you, if we do these other things as well. I, too, want to see these magicks."
The others seemed somewhat abashed that she had brought the promised sorcery out into the open, but Albanus merely smiled.
Rising, he tugged a brocade bellpull on the wall before moving to a table at the end of the room, a table where a cloth covered certain objects. Cloth and objects alike Albanus had placed there with his own hands.
"Come," he told the others. Suddenly reluctant, they moved to join him slowly.
With a flourish he whisked the cloth aside, enjoying their starts. He knew that the things on that table-a statuette in sapphire, a sword with serpentine blade and quillons of ancient pattern, a few crystals and engraved gems-were, with one exception, practically useless. At least, he had found little use prescribed for them in the tomes he had so painfully deciphered. Items of power he kept elsewhere.
Ten years earlier, slaves on one of his estates north of Numalia had dug into a subterranean chamber.
Luckily he had been there at the time, been there to recognize it as the storehouse of a sorcerer, been there to see that the luckless slaves were buried in that chamber once he had emptied it.
A year it had taken him just to discover how ancient that cache was, dating back to Acheron, that dark empire ruled by the vilest thaumaturgies and now three millenia and more gone in the dust. For all those years he had studied, eschewing a tutor for fear any sorcerer of ability would seize the hoard for his own.
It had been a wise decision, for had he been known to be studying magicks he would surely have been caught up in Garian's purge of sorcerers from the capital. Garian. Thinking dark thoughts, Albanus lifted a small red crystal sphere from the table.
"I mistrust these things," Sephana said, shuddering. "Better we should rely on ways more natural. A subtle poison-"
The Conan Compendium Page 360
