Conan of Venarium (4 page)

One moment, the encampment and its surroundings were as quiet and calm as if they were back in Gunderland and not in the midst of enemy country. The next, after a horrible blast from a horn, a horde of bellowing barbarians burst from the trees and rushed toward the Aquilonians, brandishing every sort of weapon under the sun: swords, axes, spears, sickles, scythes, maces, morningstars, simple bludgeons, eating knives, even a pitchfork. Cimmerian archers sent shafts arcing over the heads of their onrushing comrades.

“Mitra!” exclaimed Granth, and snatched up his pike from where he had laid it on the ground.

“Mitra, watch over us,” echoed Vulth, grabbing his own weapon. “And the god had better, for we’re in trouble if he doesn’t.”

“Form a line!” shouted Sergeant Nopel from somewhere not far away. “Form a line, protect your comrades, and fight hard. If they break us, we’re ruined. If we stand fast, though, we’ve got a chance.” He strode up to take his place among the men he led, using his example to buoy their courage.

A captain was shouting, too: “You pikemen, ward the archers as you can. They aren’t worth so much at handstrokes.”

Bossonians were already pouring shafts into the onrushing mob of barbarians. Here and there, a dark-haired Cimmerian would clap his hands to his chest or his neck or his face and fall. Taking a handful of drops from the ocean, however, left plenty more than enough to drown a man. And now the barbarian storm crashed into—crashed over—the Aquilonians outside the palisade.

Any sensible man, Granth realized, would have been terrified. Maybe he was something less than sensible. More likely, he was so desperate, so busy fighting for his life, that he had no time for fear or any other distraction. Anything that took his attention away from simple survival would have meant him lying on the field, a hacked and gory corpse.

As things were, he might have died a dozen times in the first minute of collision. A barbarian swinging a two-handed sword almost as tall as he was thundered toward him, shouting something in Cimmerian that Granth could not understand. But even a two-handed sword had less reach than a Gunderman’s pike. Granth spitted the foe before the Cimmerian could slash him.

To his horror, the barbarian, though bellowing in anguish, tried to run up the spear so he could strike with the sword, but slumped over dead before he could. Granth had to clear the pike in a hurry; had he not, some other Cimmerian would have cut him down. At his right hand, Vulth speared an axe-wielding barbarian. With the enemy still on the pike, Granth’s cousin could not defend himself against another Cimmerian, this one swinging a wickedly spiked morningstar. Granth had no time to thrust, but used his pikestaff as if it were a cudgel, clouting the Cimmerian in the side of the head.

The enemy warrior wore a leather cap strengthened with iron strips. That kept the shaft from smashing his skull like a melon. But, though the blow did not slay, it stunned, leaving the barbarian dazed and staggering and easy meat for Vulth’s newly freed pike.

As the Cimmerian fell, Vulth bowed to Granth as if to an Aquilonian noble. “My thanks, cousin,” he said.

“My pleasure, cousin,” replied Granth, as if he were such a noble. He looked over the field: a mad, irregular excuse for a battle if ever there was one. Everywhere he saw Cimmerians surging forward, Bossonians and Gundermen giving ground. Raising his voice above the din of the fight, he said, “Looks to me as if we’re in trouble, cousin.”

“Looks to me as if you’re right,” agreed Vulth. Granth and he had to fall back several paces or be left behind by their retreating countrymen, which would have left them cut off, assailed from all directions at once, and doomed to quick destruction. Vulth risked a glance back over his shoulder. “Having a fortified camp behind us doesn’t seem so bad any more, docs it?”

“As a matter of fact, no,” said Granth, doing his best to preserve the grand manner. “All those men inside the camp look pretty good, too—or the rogues would, if they’d only come out and fight.”

There he was not being fair to his fellow soldiers. As fast as they could arm themselves, they were rushing forward into the fray. But to Granth, as to the other men who bore the brunt of the savage Cimmerian onslaught, their friends entered the fight at what seemed a glacial pace.

The barbarian who hurled himself at Granth had eyes that put the Gunderman in mind of flaming blue ice. He roared out a wordless bellow of hate and rage, his face contorted into a mask of fury that might have made any foe quail. His only weapon was a rusty scythe, but he swung it as if he had been reaping men for years. Granth jabbed with the pike to keep the warrior off him. The Cimmerian, who wore a wolfskin jacket over baggy woolen breeks, howled incomprehensible, oddly musical curses at him.

That the Gunderman did not mind. When the barbarian reached out with his left hand to seize the pikestaff and shove it aside so he could close, however, Granth quickly jerked it back and then thrust forward again. He felt the soft, heavy resistance of flesh as the pike’s point pierced the man who sought to slay him. The Cimmerian howled. Granth twisted the pike to make sure the stroke was a killing one, then jerked it free. The barbarian fell, blood and bowels bursting from his belly.

Again, though, he and Vulth had to retreat to keep from being surrounded and cut off.. “How many damned Cimmerians are there?” he shouted.

“By Mitra, they’re all dammed,” answered his cousin. “But there are too many of them on the field here.”

That there were. They forced the Gundermen and Bossonians back and back, until the men from the south were fighting desperately to hold the barbarians out of the fortified encampment. If the Cimmerians forced themselves into the camp, Count Stercus’ army was probably doomed. That seemed all too plain to Granth — and to the howling savages who forced their way ever forward despite the reinforcements issuing from the camp.

A Gunderman to Granth’s left slumped to his knees, bleeding from a dozen wounds that would long since have slain a less vital man. “What are we going to do?” cried Granth. “What can we do?”

“Fight,” said Vulth. “This is where we’ll win or lose, so we’d better win.”

Granth fought, and fought hard. If the battle were to have a turning point, he and his comrades would have to make it here. If not— He shook his head. He would not think about that. It might befall him, but he would not think of it before it did.

Fight hard!” bellowed Mordec. “By Crom, wee can break them here. We can, and we must! Fight hard!”

Although he and his fellows had battled to the very gates of the Aquilonians’ camp, they could not force their way inside. For one thing, the pikemen and archers at the gates battled back with the careless fervor of men staring disaster in the face. For another, more men kept coming forth from the encampment to add their weight to the fray. And, for a third, archers galled the Cimmerians from behind the ditch and palisade surrounding the camp.

Mordec smashed at the tip of a pike seeking to drink his blood. The iron head flew off. He roared in triumph. But the Gunderman he faced defended himself so fiercely, first with the pikestaff and then with his shortsword, that Mordec could not slay him. At last, balked of his intended prey, the blacksmith sought and soon found an easier victim.

Inside the encampment, a bugler blew a long, complex call. The Aquilonians outside the gate that Mordec faced fell back into the camp. The foot soldiers who had been hurrying out to help defend the place parted to the left and to the right. A great shout of victory rose from the Cimmerians, who loped forward, ready to taste at last the sweet fruit for which they had struggled so long and hard.

But they rejoiced too soon. The archers and pikemen had not given way from despair, but because they were clearing the path for their comrades. That sweet-voiced Aquilonian bugle cried out once more —and the armored knights who up until then had not joined the battle thundered forth against the Cimmerians.

The horsemen had used the whole width of the encampment to go from walk to trot to gallop, and when they struck, they struck like an avalanche. Here in the hilly, heavily forested north, cavalry was not much used. Not only was there little room for horsemen to deploy, but most of the few horses in Cimmeria were mere ponies, ill-suited to carrying heavy men and their armor of iron.

Shouting out the name of King Numedides as if it were a thing to conjure with and not that of a slavemaster, the Aquilonian knights slammed into the oncoming Cimmerians. Lances and slashing swords and cleverly aimed iron-shod hooves and the surging power of armored men and horses took their toll. The Cimmerians fought back as best they could, but their swords and spears would not bite on the knights’ thick plate, or on the iron scales the horses wore to protect their heads and breasts.

Mordec’s axe was a different story. When he brought it down between a horse’s eyes, the beast foundered as if it had run headlong into a stone wall. Agile even in his well-articulated armor, the rider tried to scramble free. The blacksmith’s countrymen swarmed over him. Their blades probed for every chink and joint in his suit of iron. He screamed, but not for long.

Yet even as he died, his comrades spurred ahead, spearing and hacking, their great mounts whinnying fiercely and rising on command to their hind legs so they could lash out with their front hooves. Along with Numedides’ name, the knights cried out that of Count Stercus, and, whenever they did, one of the foremost riders gaily waved. His visor was down, so Mordec could not see his face, but he fought like a man who had no regard for his own life. Again and again, he urged his charger into the thickest part of the press. Again and again, the other Aquilonians followed to save him from his own folly—if folly it was, for even as he risked himself he routed the Cimmerians.

Had they been used to facing armored horsemen, they surely would have acquitted themselves better. But the Aquilonian knights had, along with the advantages of armor and momentum, that of striking from above and, greatest of all, that of surprise. Never had any of their foes here, no matter how ferocious, tried to stand against such an onslaught.

With the mercurial nature that marked the barbarian, the horde of Cimmerians who had been rampaging forward now suddenly turned to panic-stricken flight. Turning their backs to the knights who pressed them, they dashed for the safety of the woods.

“Stand! Hold fast, you fools!” shouted Mordec. “You but give yourselves into the enemy’s hands if you run from him!” His was not the only voice raised trying to stem the rout, but all resounded in vain. Faster by far than they had advanced on the Aquilonians’ camp, the Cimmerians fled from it.

And they paid the inevitable price for their folly. Laughing at the sport, the Aquilonian knights speared them down from behind, as if they were so many plump partridges. Bossonian archers sped the Cimmerians on their way with cleverly aimed shafts. More than a few bold warriors from those gloomy woodlands suffered the humiliation of taking their death wounds in the back.

Mordec had to run away with the rest. Had he stood at bay, alone, he would only have thrown his own life away— and for what? For nothing, not when his countrymen thought only of escape. And so, cursing fate and his fellow Cimmerians in equal measure, he ran. He was among the last to leave the field: a small” sop for his spirit, but the only one he could take from the sudden rout and disaster.

He had almost reached the safety of the trees when an arrow pierced his left calf. He snarled one last curse at the Cimmerians who had given up the fight too soon, and limped on. Once hidden from the now rampaging foe, he paused and tried to pull out the arrow. The barbs on the point would not let him free it from his flesh. Setting his teeth, Mordec pushed it forward instead. Out came the point. He broke off the fletching and pulled the shaft through the track it had made. Then he bandaged the bleeding wounds with cloth cut from his breeks. That done, he limped on toward Duthil.

When Mordec came upon a dead man who had fallen still holding on to his spear, he pried the other Cimmerian’s hand, now pale from loss of blood, off the spearshaft and used the weapon as a makeshift stick to keep some of his weight off the injured leg. He would have gone on without the stick; he was determined enough to have gone on with only one leg. But having it made his progress easier.

“Home,” he said, as if someone had claimed he might not go there. And so the Aquilonians had. They had done their best to stretch him out stiff and stark like the warrior from whom he had taken the spear. They had done their best, and they had failed: he still lived, while more than a few of them lay dead at his hands.

In the larger sense, his countrymen had lost their battle. Mordec, though, stubbornly reckoned his own fight a triumph of sorts.

A wounded Cimmerian, too proud and fierce to beg for his own life, glared up at Granth. The Gunderman hesitated before thrusting home with his pike. “Seems a shame to slaughter all these barbarians,” he remarked. “The healers could keep a lot of them alive, and they’d fetch us a good price in the slave markets, eh?”

Vulth and Sergeant Nopel both guffawed. His cousin said, “You try to sell a slave dealer Cimmerians, and he’ll laugh in your face and spit in your eye. But he won’t give you a counterfeit copper for ‘em, let alone the silver lunas you’re dreaming about.”

“Why not?” Granth still did not slay the barbarian at his feet. “They’re big and bold and strong. Mitra! We found out everything we wanted to know about how strong they are.”

“And you should have noticed none of them surrendered,” said Vulth. “They aren’t known for yielding to another man’s will”—he rolled his eyes at the understatement—“and what good is a slave who won’t?”

Before Granth could answer, the Cimmerian on the ground hooked an arm around his ankle and tried to drag him off his feet. Only a hasty backward leap saved him from a grapple. His cousin speared the Cimmerian, who groaned, spat blood, and at last, long after a civilized man would have, died.

“You see?” said Vulth.

“Well, maybe I do at that,” admitted Granth. “They’re like serpents, aren’t they? You’re never sure they’re dead until the sun goes down.”