Conan The Hero (21 page)

“Aye. The code of Tarim forbids him to boast of his exploits with the softer sex.” Juma grinned back heartily. “But he still looks as smug as the fox who ate the pheasant; the tavern matron must have been kind to him.”

Continuing to speak in this light-hearted vein, they dined on the juicy yellow flesh of the melons and a spiced, sweet mash of boiled roots. Juma pitched in alongside host and hostess, content to eat a second breakfast and stay on as bodyguard. After belching politely, Conan donned his tunic, turban, and weapons. Making a tearless parting with Sariya, he went to Fort Sikander.

He chose the main gate and the most frequented ways, striding with aggressive confidence in the day’s mounting heat. After Juma’s warnings, he was keenly aware of the looks every eye flashed at him—some friendly, a few of the watchers even stopping him to exchange pleasantries. But the majority eyed his passing with mute surprise, or with more veiled feelings. As he passed the black, yawning tent-mouths, he fancied he could hear the feverish murmur of odds being laid for and against his survival.

Rounding the end of the palm-fringed staff barrack, he nodded a half salute to the guards, stepped up into the shade of the porch, and waited. A grunt from Captain Murad summoned him inside. He saw that Jefar Sharif was also seated in the dimness, busy having his cavalry boots polished by a kneeling lackey.

“Reporting for duty, sir!” He kept his tone blunt, avoiding any courtly flourishes, while praying to the god of fools that the sullen Sharif would keep his mouth closed. “I am fit for action.”

“Good, Sergeant.” The captain’s voice was equally restrained. “We have fresh orders for you. You can take charge of the assigned troops at once, and march by noon.”

Conan felt his throat clenching, yet he had to speak. “So… so soon, Captain? Aghrapur is many leagues away, it will take me time to prepare…”

“Aghrapur!” Jefiar Sharif’s voice rang out from the corner of the room in wry amusement. “Nay, that order is not passed down yet. When it is, I will be pleased to accompany you north to the capital as your superior officer! But not just now; the order your captain refers to is a battle command.”

“Aye, Sergeant.” Gray-turbaned Murad finished scribbling on a stub of parchment and pushed it across his map-table, as if the Cimmerian could read it. “Our scouts have located an enemy camp at the base of the Durba Hills, here!” The captain kept his eyes on his stubby finger as it point at the stained, tattered map, refusing to look up and meet Conan’s gaze. “A probative assault is ordered. You will command two companies of heavy foot.”

“Aye, barbarian!” Jefar’s laugh scratched in Conan’s already buzzing ears. “Here is a chance for you to earn the title of hero!”

Battle surged along the jungle ridge, breaking in a shouting, red-foaming tide against low promontories of clanking shields. On all sides arrows flocked through air like swooping seabirds, while green, drooping fronds and flower-vines thrashed and toppled like sea-wrack, driven relentlessly by weapon-strokes and swirling attacks.

“Reform the square! You, trooper, move up and fill that gap! We must hold our formation at all costs—and keep advancing!”

Conan’s shouts, already grating out hoarsely, were in this instance wasted; for the trooper he harangued tumbled to earth, plucking at an arrow lodged in the unarmored flesh of his calf. His commander muttered an oath; the rebel bowmen were loosing their arching shafts high overhead, or straight downward from the trees. They might spell the Turanians’ end, Conan knew, unless the armored troop somehow managed to seize higher ground.

The Cimmerian himself strode forward to fill the embroiled gap, not bothering to pick up the fallen soldier or his shield. He drew and swung his yataghan swiftly to hack off a spearpoint that probed inside the marching square; then he slashed the arm of its owner, and the face of another knife-wielding Hwong who pressed dangerously close. Abruptly the shield-walls on either side of him closed once more against the yelling crowd of rebels, and Conan was swallowed back inside the scant breathing-space of the square formation.

“Keep up the advance, Turanians! Close ranks behind,” his voice grated doggedly above the battle-din. “Ahead are ruins, where we can hold off these monkeys until the tolling of Set’s black doom! Steady, men, and forward!”

Fluidity was an advantage of the moving formation, even among the obstructing tree-boles and jungle shrubs; another boon was the chance of escaping the most concentrated arrow-fire. Conan tried not to dwell on the sole disadvantage of movement: the brutal choice it called for, whether to drag their wounded with them or leave them behind, mercifully slain as time permitted.

“Conan, what of our reinforcements?” Babrak jostled up behind his sergeant, keeping his eye on the rear of the formation, which was his own newly designated command. “If we march too far through this jungle, will they be able to find us?”

“Reinforcements! Two hundred Venji Imperials…!” Conan’s laugh was bitter, his voice low to keep from spreading bad morale. “Even if our courier reaches them, I would be surprised to see them come running to our aid. Methinks whoever assigned us such a paltry reserve was the same fool who under-reckoned the number of our foes by forty score!” He stepped forward, swinging his sword to cut down a fallen rebel who appeared to be stirring and groping for a weapon underfoot; after wiping his blade clean on the man’s bright green sash, he veered back to Babrak’s side. “Nay, if we survive, ‘twill be by our own grit and discipline! Then I shall have a word to say about it to our commanders.” His voice abruptly swelled above the yells and moans to a raw shout, a battle cry to cover his own gloom. “Fight on, Turanians! Know you, each man of you is worth ten of these howling rebels!”

His cry raised but scattered, breathless shouts in answer. True, an armored infantryman, fighting shoulder-to-shoulder in line, might account for ten naked attackers and more. But as every veteran trooper knew, once their formation broke up into a disorganized retreat through the forest, their armor would slow them fatally, making them easy prey for their jungle-swift foes. So they braved the sleets of arrows and the yelling hordes, hacking their way onward along the crest toward the brushy jumble of stones and tents that had been pointed out from the hilltop as their objective.

“Ahead, sir, lies the gate of the ruined town!” Babrak muttered in his commander’s ear. “See there, the wall is but a brushy hillock! Thank Tarim they have not repaired the defenses! But who is that, standing atop the broken tower?”

Conan followed Babrak’s pointing finger, shading his eyes to pinpoint a figure stooping beneath a long cloak bright with colored feathers. Leaning on a tall stave, whose upper end terminated in a familiar, glinting sphere, the ancient-seeming one glared down at the battle a long moment before yielding to the insistent tugs of two half-visible rebels behind him. Then he shuffled down out of sight beyond the gap-toothed battlement.

“Mojurna! So this is where the devil has been lurking!” Conan clutched Babrak’s shoulder, loosening his grip only after his friend’s face registered real pain. “That was the old witch-man himself, high priest of all the Hwong; I have seen him before this! We must storm the camp without delay!”

“Aye, Sergeant—if you say so.” Though disciplined enough not to show undue fear, the junior officer pressed close to offer his counsel. “Know you, Conan, there is a risk in breaking our square amidst a superior enemy.”

“A risk indeed, old friend; we must weigh it against the chance of winning this war with a single swordstroke!” Conan wasted no more time in deliberation. “Our best strength must go to the fore—you fight on my left, Babrak!” Raising his bloody yataghan high, he forced his rasping voice once again to a husky bellow. “Turanians, form a wedge! Follow me to take the camp! A year’s extra pay to the man who slays the warlock Mojurna!”

Conan’s shouts raised a furor among the embattled troops. Drawing fearful looks from some, blood-lusting shouts from others, the giant northerner strode swiftly to the center of the reforming line. “Kill Mojurna, troopers! Let no rebel live! For Tarim and Yildiz… charge!”

A threshing, slaying machine was then set in motion through the jungle. Swords hacked through flesh and foliage, spears plowed up their moist red tilth, and shields breasted the lashing jungle to part its green waves like the prow of a racing war-galley. The line chanted now as it moved—a deep, throaty song older than Tarim or the land of Turan itself, primal as a heartbeat, setting a savage rhythm for step and thrust, slash and shield-stroke. The Turanians’ line moved faster than before, fast enough to keep the press of enemies ahead of them off balance and retreating, briskly enough to outrun attacks on their vulnerable rear and the worst of the arrowfire.

Conan, striding at the center of the human wedge, fought like an enraged demon. His sword slashed and thrust in a mad, blinding frenzy, stitching death across the ranks of faceless mortality that pressed up before him. Its remorseless metal trailed screams and bright ribbons of gore in the air as it dashed through unprotected enemy flesh and bone.

Some few rebels, especially the green-jerkined peasants, were thrust helplessly to the fore of the battle by the mere pressure of the milling ranks behind. Not guessing the steel-clad savagery of their adversaries until too late, and never even raising their blades against Conan and his hewing slaughter-mates, they died in terror, trying to push and claw back out of harm’s way.

Other rebels, in particular the lean, wiry Hwong hunters, chewed lotus leaves to increase their willingness to face pain. Their bolo knives were sharp and lovingly familiar, tied to their wrists even in sleep; and their very adornment was for death—for the multicolored cords binding their sinewy elbows, shoulders, and thighs served as tourniquets. Ready to be shrugged instantly tighter in battle, the constricting cords diminished pain and blood loss from weapon-strokes, letting their wearers fight on with wounds that would have turned other men into helpless, mewling casualties.

To these fierce warriors, Conan often found it necessary to deliver two, three, and more death-blows in quick succession, lashing out with sword in one hand and long, needle-pointed dagger in the other. He hewed away limbs and vitals deftly and ruthlessly, leaving the fallen tribesmen thrashing and jabbering underfoot. Even so, they clutched at discarded weapons or at the boots of the striding Turanians, unwilling to admit the fact of their own dismemberment.

Conan’s bloodletting fury was well-matched by the gruesome efficiency of his fellow troops; even Babrak at his side plied spear and shield with a frenzy seldom seen. On both wings of the flying wedge, Turanians strove valiantly to keep pace with their leaders’ swift, bloody progress along the jungle trail. But these troops, fighting through denser growth with defenders pressing in from side and rear, could scarcely keep the same pace. The advancing wedge inevitably deepened and narrowed into an elongated spear-blade. The raging Cimmerian made its flashing, gouging tip, but it was from the trailing ends that the casualties were taken: armored troopers gradually outflanked or drawn off in a separate combat with fleet-footed skirmishers. One after another, inevitably, they turned to defend their own backs and those of their comrades—sometimes with too great success. Once they let themselves be cut off from the fast-striding line, their deaths followed swiftly.

Yet the momentum of the heavy phalanx carried the survivors in among the ruins. The last fringe of rebels, faltering at the sight of the blood-caked marauders, scattered before their onslaught.

“Hold the gate,” came Conan’s voice, croaking between heaving gasps, “and search yon mounds and tents! Mojurna is old and slow; he must be somewhere within.”

Reeling with exhaustion, letting his weapons dangle low to rest his throbbing shoulders, the Cimmerian led the way down the vine-hung lane beyond the broken gate. Babrak panted at his side; though both men staggered visibly, the rebels flitted back before them; few sought to defend the low, brushy mounds of weathered stone as the Turanians moved in to occupy them.

“Conan… what of Mojurna’s magic?” Babrak’s voice too was broken and gasping. “Will he use some fiendish spell to turn the battle against us?”

“No, I think not.” Conan lifted the now-ponderous weight of his sword and swung it once again to lay open the green fabric of a lean-to pitched against a crumbling wall; it was empty, with only a crumpled blanket within. “The wizard threw handfuls of sorcerous fire at my men, when we nearly cornered him before… but he has never fought in a real battle. They say his true power lies in fighting foreign magicians, such as your priests of Tarim.”

“Can such a devil be slain with steel?” Keeping pace with Conan, Babrak scrambled after him over briary stones into a weedy canyon that might once have been an avenue or marketplace. “Does anyone really know?”

“We’ll find out soon now. Look.” Raising his blade, Conan pointed it toward a handful of rebel farmers hurriedly transfering goods from tents into tall pack-baskets. Nearby, another pair lifted a rude litter, one pole of which was the skull-headed staff; on it lay a brightly robed figure.

“Dogs, hither!” Conan bellowed, forgetting his mortal exhaustion and breaking into a run. “Here is Mojurna!” he proclaimed with an effort that almost belched his laboring heart into his dry throat. He heard Babrak’s steps clattering at his heels, but any other answering cries and clanks of shields were remote, the bulk of his men having fallen behind or spread out to the sides. Now just ahead more Hwong came running, crowding together in the narrow ravine between him and the escaping wizard.

The first one dashed at him with an ill-aimed spear; Conan’s blade severed the knuckles that held it, then demolished the man’s throat on the backswing. A second rebel leaped forward, slashing with a bolo in either hand; neither knife was bulky enough to turn the yataghan, which clove open his forehead, masking him instantly in a red torrent of blood. Even so, it took a lethal body thrust to check his blind, drug-dazed rush and topple him; by then, two more tribesmen had closed in. Conan charged between, slashing one as he rushed past, confident that Babrak would engage the other.