Conan of Venarium (22 page)

Axes rang in the forest. Trees fell. More cabins full of settlers from Gunderland rose every day. Stercus smiled to himself, for it was good.

But, by the time he got most of the way to Duthil, the road had become a track once more, and the woods pressed close on either side. This far north, few settlers had yet come. The land remained in its state of primitive barbarism.

Another horseman on the track, this one riding south, caused Stercus to rein in. The roadway was especially narrow here; they would have to go slowly as they edged past each other. By the crimson crest on his helm, the other man was a captain. “Your Excellency!” he called, recognizing Stercus. “Well met, by Mitra! I was on my way to Venarium to bring word to you.”

“Word of what, Treviranus?” asked Stercus, his voice a little chilly; his mind was on other things than duty.

The commander of the garrison by Duthil pointed back over his shoulder to the village and beyond. “The tribes are stirring, your Excellency. Out beyond where our arms have reached, Cimmeria begins to bubble and boil like a pot of stew left too long over too hot a fire.”

Stercus’ laugh was loud and long and scornful. “If the barbarians want another go at us, they are welcome to it, as far as I am concerned. We smashed them once. We can do it again.”

“Sir, we smashed three or four clans,” said Treviranus worriedly. “If three or four more rise against us, we’ll smash them again, aye. But Cimmeria has clans by the score. If thirty or forty rise against us, that is a very different business. How could we throw back such a swarm of men?”

“If you have not the courage for the work, Captain, belike I can find a man who has,” said Stercus.

Treviranus flushed angrily. “You misunderstand me, your Excellency.”

“Good. I hoped I did,” said Stercus. “Have you got any true notion how many barbarians may be in motion against our frontier? With the way the Cimmerians squabble among themselves, isn’t it likelier to be three or four clans than thirty or forty?”

“Most of the time, your Excellency, I would say yes to that,” replied Treviranus. “But not now.”

“Oh? And why not?” Again, Stercus laced his voice with scorn.

The junior officer said, “Why not, sir? Because most of the time, as you say, Cimmerians fight Cimmerians, and they break up into factions. But we know one thing about them: they all hate us. I worry that they will sink all their own feuds until they have driven us from their soil.”

Count Stercus yawned. “You grow tedious, Captain. If you want to keep an eye on the barbarians beyond the border, you may do so. But if you start at shadows like a brat waking up in its crib in the middle of the night, then you do yourself no good, you do King Numedides no good, and you do Aquilonia no good. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” said Treviranus tonelessly. He saluted with mechanical precision, then yanked his horse’s head around and rode back up the track toward Duthil. He did not look over his shoulder to see whether Stercus followed. By his stiff, outraged posture, he was doing his best to pretend Stercus did not exist.

Laughing, the Aquilonian nobleman urged his own mount into motion once more. Thirty or fort)’ clans of Cimmerians getting together for any reason, any reason whatsoever? Count Stercus laughed again. The notion was absurd on the face of it. He would have had trouble believing even three or four clans could unite, if not for the fight at Fort Venarium. If three or four more clans came, he had no doubt the Aquilonians would indeed crush them and send them off howling.

No doubt because of his outrage, Captain Treviranus rode faster than Stercus. The garrison commander had already gone back into his little fortress by the time Stercus emerged from the trees into the clearing surrounding Duthil. The count rode past the palisade toward the village. One of the Aquilonian sentries pointed his way. He saw as much out of the corner of his eye, but did not deign even to turn his head. That he was recognized gratified him. That he acknowledge being recognized never entered his mind. His notion of nobility did not include obliging.

When he came into Duthil, he did slow his horse so he would not trample any of the boys playing ball in the street. He cared nothing for them; seeing them go down under his horse’s hooves would have made him rejoice. But it would have angered and grieved Tarla, and Stercus was not a man to frighten his quarry before he brought it down.

He did not see the blacksmith’s son among the shouting boys. That left him oddly relieved. The hatred in Conan’s blazing blue eyes could not be disguised. And the Cimmerian, though still smooth-cheeked, was already six feet tall, with powerful shoulders and chest a man twice his age might have envied. When thinking of Conan, Stercus was not at all sorry he rode a charger and wore armor.

And here was the house of Balarg the weaver. Count Stercus swung down off his steed, and his armor clattered about him. Then, feeling foolish, he mounted again, for he saw Tarla coming up the street carrying a bucket of water from the stream that ran by the village. He rode up to her, saying, “Good day, my sweet.”

“Good day,” she answered, and looked down at the ground.

Eyeing her, Stercus wondered how he had contented himself with Ugaine even for a moment. This was what he really wanted: unspoiled, lovely, and young, so young. But he had been patient for a long time —a very, very long time, to his way of thinking. Every heartbeat left Tarla older. Soon, too soon, she would no longer be his image of perfection, only what might have been.

Thinking of that made all Stercus’ hard-kept patience blow away like the mist. “We’ve already waited too long, my darling,” he said urgently. “Come away with me now.”

She shook her head. “I cannot. I will not. I belong here.”

Rage rose up like black smoke from the fire that burned inside Stercus. Had she been playing him along all this time, playing him for a fool? She would be sorry—sorrier—if she had. “You belong with me,” the nobleman said. “You belong to me.”

At that Tarla’s chin came up in defiance. She shook her head again, more firmly this time. “No. I belong to myself, and to no one else,” she declared, as full of native love of freedom as any other Cimmerian ever born.

Count Stercus cared nothing for the freedom of Cimmerians. “By Mitra, you are mine!” he cried, and, leaning down, snatched her up onto his saddlebow. The bucket went flying, water splattering the already muddy street. Tarla shrieked. Stercus cuffed her. She shrieked again. He hit her once more, harder this time.

One of the boys playing ball in the street threw a rock at Stercus. It clanged off his backplate and did him no harm. Another youngster ran toward Count Stercus with a stick of firewood —the first weapon he could find —in his hand. Stercus’ sword sprang free. He swung it in a shining arc of death. The Cimmerian boy tried to block it with the wood, but to no avail. The blade bit. The boy fell, spouting blood, his head all but severed from his body.

“Wirp!” cried Tarla. But Wirp would never answer.

The rest of the barbarians in the street roared. They ran not away from Stercus but toward him, intent on pulling him from the saddle. He set spurs to the destrier. Snorting, the great horse sprang forward. Lashing out with its hooves, it stretched another boy dead in the street, his skull smashed. Left arm encircling Tarla’s supple waist, Stercus thundered out of Duthil and into the woods.

Granth son of Biemur knelt on one knee in a soldiers’ hut. The dice had been going his way—he was up twelve lunas, and hoped to make it more on his next cast. Before he could throw, though, a trumpeter blew the assembly call. “Damnation!” he said, scooping up the silver he had won. “Why did the captain have to decide to hold a drill now?”

“We’ll get back to the game soon enough,” said Vulth, “and then I’ll clean you out.”

“Ha!” said Granth. He got to his feet. “Come on —let’s get it over with.”

Gundermen and Bossonians hurried out to the open space between huts and palisade. They clapped helms on their heads, fastened mailshirts, and had pikes and bows ready. If by some accident this were no drill, they were ready for war.

“Foolishness,” grumbled Benno. But his bow was strung and his quiver full.

“No doubt,” said Granth. Then Captain Treviranus strode out in front of the Aquilonians. Seeing his grim countenance, Granth began to wonder how foolish the horn call was.

“Something’s gone wrong in Duthil,” said Treviranus bluntly. “Count Stercus rode into the village a while ago, and he hasn’t come out—at least, not this way. And the barbarians in there have been whooping and hollering ever since he did ride in. We’d better find out why they’re in an uproar and calm them down —if we can.”

“What if we can’t?” called someone. Granth could not see who it was, but the same question had crossed his mind. What would he and his friends have to do to pull Stercus’ chestnuts out of the fire?

Treviranus faced the question squarely. “If they want trouble, we’ll give them all they want and more. We can’t let them think they can rise up against us. If they do, the whole countryside is liable to boil over.” He waited to see if any more questions would come. When none did, he nodded. “All right, then. Let’s go.”

He led the Bossonians and Gundermen — the whole garrison except for a handful of men left behind to hold the camp —toward Duthil. That he led made the archers and pikemen follow willingly. Some officers would simply have sent the soldiers forth, but Treviranus was not one of that stripe.

Even before leaving the fortified encampment, Granth could hear the Cimmerians shouting and their women keening. A man came out of Duthil and strode straight at the oncoming Aquilonians. One man against a company of soldiers—but such was his fury that Granth almost halted and did tighten his grip on his pikestaff.

“Two!” shouted the Cimmerian in bad but understandable Aquilonian. “He kill two boys, steal girl. He pay! You all pay!”

“Count Stercus did this?” demanded Treviranus.

“Aye, he do! Dog and son of dog!” the Cimmerian said. “We catch, we kill.”

Granth knew Captain Treviranus had no more love for Stercus than any other Aquilonian did. Treviranus might have been able to soothe the villagers — except that they did not want to be soothed. The man who had advanced on the soldiers stopped, picked up a stone, and flung it at them.

The stone thudded off a pikeman’s buckler. The response of the Bossonian archers was altogether automatic. Bowstrings thrummed. Half a dozen shafts whistled through the air. They all pierced the Cimmerian. He took a couple of staggering steps toward the men from the south, as if still intending to assail them, then slowly crumpled.

“Damnation,” said Treviranus quietly. “I wish that hadn’t happened. Well, no help for it now. Forward, men. Battle line —pikemen in front of the archers. We’re likely going to have a fight on our hands now.”

He proved a good prophet. No sooner had the Cimmerian fallen than more stones began flying at the Aquilonians from Duthil. At least two archers also began shooting from the village. A Bossonian cried out and sat down hard with an arrow through his thigh.

Vulth reached up and settled his conical helm more firmly on his head. “We’re going to have to clean the place out now,” he said, “and the barbarians in there are going to try to clean us out, too.” Granth nodded. His cousin struck him as a good prophet, too.

Along with his comrades, Granth pressed on into Duthil. He saw no one on the street—but, down at the far end of it, two bodies sprawled in ugly death. The Cimmerian had not lied. Granth had not really thought he had.

A door flew open. A barbarian charged out swinging an axe. He chopped down one Bossonian and left another bowman pouring blood from a great gash in his leg. The pikemen turned on the barbarian then and stretched him lifeless in the mud, but not before he had taken more from the Aquilonians than they could ever take from him.

An arrow from the house next to the blacksmith’s caught a pikeman three soldiers down from Granth in the throat. The other Gunderman clawed at the shaft that drank his life. He fell to his knees and then over on to his side. “Dever!” cried Granth, but Dever would never hear him again.

“Now we have to crush them,” Captain Treviranus said. “One house at a time, if we must, but crush them we will!”

Even after the battle in front of Fort Venarium, Granth had never imagined work like this. Men fought to the death with whatever weapons they had. Women snatched up kitchen knives and flung themselves at pikemen and archers. More often than not, they would plunge the blades into their own breasts rather than risk capture. The Aquilonians spared children —until a boy who could not have been eight years old stabbed a Bossonian in the back. He had to reach up to get the knife between the bowman’s ribs, but it found his heart. After that, the soldiers behaved as if they were destroying a nest of serpents.

Serpents, though, never stung back so savagely. Granth was one of the Gundermen who used a log to batter down the door to the smithy. The only person they found inside was a skeletally skinny woman whose gray eyes blazed in a face ghost-pale. She came at them not with a kitchen knife but with a long, heavy sword. She wounded two men, one of them badly, and fought with such ferocity that she made the Gundermen slay her.

“Mitra!” said Granth. “These aren’t barbarians — they’re demons, demons straight from hell!”

“Mitra carry Count Stercus straight down to hell,” panted Vulth. “If not for him, everything would be quiet here. Now-“

Now the Cimmerians of Duthil, making their final stand, thought of nothing but taking as many of their foes with them as they could. Wounded barbarians feigned death, lying quiet until they could spring up and strike one last telling blow. The shrieks of the sorely hurt and the dying on both sides rose up into the uncaring sky.

At last, all the Cimmerians in Duthil above the age of five or so lay unmoving. Granth’s pikestaff was scarlet along half its length. Gore splashed his mailshirt. He no longer hesitated about spearing Cimmerians on the ground to make sure they would not rise again —he had seen too many of them do just that. Vulth had a bandage on his right arm. Benno had taken an arrow through his left hand. Daverio was dead, his head smashed in by a Cimmerian despite his helm.