Conan of Venarium Page 4

  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.”

  “When the sun goes down, more of them come out,” said Nopel. “Now get on about your business.”

  Granth obeyed, sending the Cimmerians he found still breathing on the field out of this world with such speed and mercy as he could give them: had they won the fight, as they had come so close to doing, he would have wanted a last gift of that sort from them. Vulth and Nopel and most of the Gundermen and Bossonians acted the same way. No one who had stood up against the barbarians rushing out of the woods could have reckoned them anything but worthy foes.

  Count Stercus rode up as the foot soldiers continued their grisly work. Excitement reddened the commander’s usually pale cheeks and made his eyes sparkle. “Well done, you men,” he said. “Every barbarian you slay now is a barbarian who will not try to slay you later.”

  Granth and Vulth and Sergeant Nopel all nodded. “Aye, my lord,” murmured Nopel. The sight of Stercus cheerful startled them all. The nobleman had despised his soldiers. Victory, though, seemed to have changed his mind.

  He said, “We shall seize this country, such as it is, and hold it for our own. Farmers will come north from Aquilonia and take their places here, to prosper for generation upon generation. Fort Venarium will be their center, and one day will grow into a city that can stand beside Tarantia and the other great centers of the realm.”

  That sounded good to Granth. Only one question still troubled his mind. He was bold, or rash, enough to ask it: “What about the Cimmerians, my lord?”

  Nopel hissed in alarm between his teeth, while Vulth made a horrible face and then tried to pretend he had done no such thing. But Count Stercus’ good cheer was proof even against impertinent questions. “What about the Cimmerians, my good fellow?” he echoed. “We have smashed their barbarous horde.” His wave encompassed the corpse-strewn field; that many of the corpses were those of his countrymen seemed not to have come to his notice. Grandly, he continued, “Now we subdue their haunts in these parts, and compel them to obedience. Surely every Cimmerian man and woman, every boy and every little girt”—his voice lingered lovingly over the last few words—“shall bend the knee before the might of King Numedides.”

  From all that Granth had heard and seen, the fierce folk of the north bent the knee to no man. He started to say what he thought; he was as forthright as any other Gunderman. But the thought of what Vulth and Nopel had done a moment before gave him pause, and Count Stercus rode off before he could speak. He did not care enough about the argument to call the commander back.

  “By Mitra, slaughter goes to his head like strong wine from Poitain,” said Vulth in a low voice. “You’d hardly know he was the sour son of a whore who led us here.”

  “He didn’t bite this fool’s head off,” agreed the sergeant, jerking a thumb toward Granth son of Biemur. “If that doesn’t prove he’s a happy man, curse me if I know what would.”

  “Do you suppose holding the Cimmerians down will be as easy as he says?” asked Granth.

  Before answering, Nopel spat on the blood-soaked soil. “That for the Cimmerians,” he said. “I’ll tell you this much: we have a better chance now that we’ve smashed the manhood of three or four clans. What can they do but submit?”

  Vulth stopped to search a dead man. He rose, muttering to himself and shaking his head. “I’ve not found any plunder worth keeping. The poorest, most hardscrabble Bossonian carries more in the way of loot than these dogs.”

  “What do we want with them, then?” wondered Granth. He had also searched corpses. He had found nothing worth holding on to but a curiously wrought copper amulet on a leather thong around the neck of a fallen enemy swordsman, and even that could not have been worth more than a couple of lunas at the outside. He had taken it more as a souvenir of the battle than in the hope of selling it later.

  “They’re here. They’re on our doorstep. If we don’t beat them, they’ll come down into the Bossonian Marches, into Gunderland, maybe even into Aquilonia proper,” said Nopel. “Better we should fight them, better we should whip them, in their own miserable country.”

  “Well, so it is,” said Granth. The sergeant’s words made good sense to him. He strode across the field, looking for more Cimmerians to finish. Carrion birds had already begun to settle on bodies indisputably dead.

  Conan’s bruises healed quickly, thanks to his youth and the iron constitution of the barbarian. He was not only up and about but busy in the smithy only a couple of days after his father beat him. But, though he might have been strong enough to go after Mordec, he chose to remain in Duthil instead. Belatedly, he had come to realize his father was right. If he went to fight the Aquilonians with his father and they both fell, who would tend to his mother? She had no other kin left alive in the village; she would have to rely on the kindness of those not tied to her by blood, and such kindness was always in short supply in Cimmer
ia.

  As well as he could, Conan tended to the forge and the rest of the smithy. No large jobs came his way while his father was gone, for most of the other men of Duthil had gone with Mordec into battle. But Reuda, who was married to Dolfnal the tanner, came to Conan asking for a cooking fork. “Must I wait until Mordec comes home?” she said.

  He shook his head, pausing for a moment to brush his thick mane of black hair back from his forehead with a swipe of the hand. “Nay, no need,” he told her. “Come back tomorrow, just before the sun goes down. I’ll have it for you then.”

  “And if I am not satisfied with your work?” asked Reuda. “If I see I would sooner have your father’s?”

  “Then save the fork and show it to him,” replied Conan. “If you are sorry with what I give you, he will make me sorrier that I did not suit you.”

  Reuda rubbed her chin. After a moment’s thought, she nodded. “Aye, let it be as you say. If you’ll not work your best for fear of Mordec’s heavy hand, nothing less will squeeze that best from you.”

  “I am not afraid of him,” said Conan fiercely, but an ingrained regard for the truth compelled him to add, “Still, I would not feel his fist without good cause.” Reuda laughed and nodded and went back to her husband’s tannery, taking the stink of hides and sour tanbark with her.

  Conan went to work straightaway, choosing an iron bar about as thick as his finger. He heated one end of it white-hot, then brought it back to the anvil and, with quick, cunning strokes of the hammer, shaped that end into a loop about two inches long. That done, he used a cold chisel to cut through the extremity of the loop, giving him the two tines he would need for the work. Some forks had three tines, but that was as yet beyond his skill. He did not think Reuda would complain if hers proved to be of the ordinary sort.

  Heating the iron again, he bent the tines on the heel of the anvil until something close to a right angle separated them. That way, he could work on each of them in turn more conveniently. Careful hammerstrokes flattened the tines. Conan heated the metal once more and brought the tines back to their proper position. He set the fork aside and let it cool.

  When he could safely handle it without tongs, he used brass rivets to bind a wood handle to the iron shank. He looked the work over to see if Reuda could find any way to fault it. Seeing none, he took the fork to the tanner’s wife fully a day earlier than he had promised.

  She examined it, too, plainly with the same thing in mind. Seeing nothing about which she could complain, she gave the young smith a grudging nod, saying, “I think it may serve. When your father comes home, we’ll settle on a price.”

  “All right.” Conan nodded. Almost all business in Duthil was done that way. The Cimmerians minted no coins; the few that circulated here came up from the south. Barter and haggling took the place of money and set costs.

  When Conan left Reuda’s kitchen, he saw Glemmis, who had taken word of the Aquilonian invasion from Duthil to the nearby village of Uist and then, no doubt, gone on to fight the men from the south. Glemmis limped up the street toward him; a filthy, blood-soaked rag covered most of a wound on the man’s left arm.

  Conan’s heart leaped into his mouth. “The battle—!” he blurted.

  Glemmis spoke a word Conan had never imagined he would hear: “Lost.” He went on, “We hit the Aquilonians a hard blow, but they held us, and then—Crom!—their cursed horsemen cut us down like ripe rye at harvest time.” He shuddered at the memory.

  “What of my father?” asked Conan. “What of the other warriors who left our village?”

  “Of Mordec I know nought. He may well be hale,” answered Glemmis with a certain rough kindness. “But I can tell you truly that many fell. Eoganan, for instance, I saw go down, a Bossonian’s arrow through his throat. We’ve not known such a black day for many long years.”

  Had he got away safe by running first and fastest? Even so young, Conan saw the possibility and scorned him for it. But before long other men started coming home to Duthil, many of them wounded, all hollow-eyed and shocked with defeat. Even Balarg the weaver, who prided himself on never seeming at a loss, looked as if he had grappled with demons and come off second best. Women began to wail as some men did not come home again, and as survivors began bringing word of those who never would.

  Several returning warriors had seen Conan’s father where the fighting was hottest, but none could say whether Mordec lived or had fallen. “I will wait, then, and learn,” said Conan, “and if need be avenge myself on the Aquilonians.” When he told Verina what he had learned, his mother started keening, as for one dead.

  But Mordec did come back to Duthil, limping in with a spearshaft clamped in his left fist to help bear his weight. His right arm briefly slipped around Conan in a rough embrace. “We’ll fight them again,” said Conan. “We’ll fight them again, and we’ll beat them.”

  “Not soon.” Mordec wearily shook his head. “Not tomorrow, or next week, or next month. Not next year, all too likely. We lost too much in this round.”

  “What then?” asked Conan, aghast.

  “What then?” echoed his father. “Why, the bitter beer of the beaten, for beaten we are.”

  chapter iii

  THE TEMPLE OUT OF TIME

  Conan saw his first Aquilonians a few days after his father came home to Duthil. By then, the villagers had a good idea of who would never come home again. Women’s keening went on night and day. New mourning had broken out only the night before, when a Cimmerian died after taking a fever from his wound.

  The invaders marched up the same track the village men had used in retreating from the lost battle. The archers advanced with arrows nocked and bows ready to draw. The pikemen with them were broad-shouldered fellows with hair the color of straw. They too were alert against any ambush that might burst upon them from the woods. Not least because they were alert, no ambush came.

  All told, pikemen and archers numbered perhaps a hundred: more than three times the number of warriors Duthil had sent into the fight. Eyeing them as they approached, Conan said, “They don’t look so tough.”

  Mordec stood beside him, still leaning on the spearshaft that did duty for a cane. The blacksmith said, “One of us would likely beat one of them, despite the armor they wear. But they do not fight by ones, as we do. The pikemen fight together, in lines that support each other. The archers shoot volleys at an officer’s command, aiming where he points. It makes them more dangerous foes than they would be otherwise.”

  “A coward’s way of doing things,” sneered Conan.

  His father shrugged. “They fought well enough to win a battle. We in Duthil cannot stand against that whole company. We have not the men for it. They would slaughter us.” That would have been true before the villagers went off to war. It was doubly true now that so many of them had not returned. Conan bit his lip at the humiliation of submitting to the men from the south, but even he could see Mordec was right: resistance would only lead to massacre.

  As the Aquilonians drew ever nearer, more and more villagers came out into the main street—the continuation of the track the invaders used—to eye them. None of the men held a weapon in his hand. None had anything more dangerous than an eating knife on his belt. Could looks have killed, though, their eyes—and especially the eyes of the women who stood shoulder to shoulder with them—would have mown down the archers and pikemen by the score.

  At a shouted command, the pikemen shook themselves out into two lines in front of the archers. They made no fuss about the order. They did not argue about it or hash it over, as Cimmerians would have done. They simply obeyed, as if it was something they heard every day—and so it plainly was. “Slaves,” muttered Conan, mocking the first military discipline he had ever seen.

  The man who had given the command strode out in front of his soldiers. A scarlet crest affixed to the top of his helm singled him out as an officer. Hand on the hilt of his sword—the pommel was wrapped with gold wire, a sure sign of wealth—he strutted into Duthil. He b
awled out something in his own language.

  “He says his name is Treviranus, and asks if any here can put his words into Cimmerian for him,” said Mordec. He took a hitching step forward and spoke in Aquilonian. The officer answered him, then talked at some length. Mordec interrupted him once or twice. “I’m telling him to slow down,” he whispered to Conan.

  Although Treviranus scowled, he did speak more slowly after that. Despite Mordec’s wound, his grim appearance and even grimmer manner would have given any man pause. The blacksmith translated for the folk of Duthil: “This Aquilonian says we are now the subjects of King Numedides. He says this part of Cimmeria belongs to the Aquilonians by right of conquest.”

  He was careful not to take credit for Treviranus’ words himself, but to attribute them to the officer who uttered them. Conan thought his father wise for that. Anyone who declared Cimmerians subjects and a conquered people proved only that he knew nothing of the freedom-loving folk among whom he moved.

  Through Mordec, Treviranus went on, “There will be a garrison in the village or near it, as this officer chooses. We will have to feed the garrison and provide for it. If we ambush any of the soldiers, the Aquilonians will take hostages—ten for one—and kill them.” The officer added something else. So did Conan’s father: “Kill them slowly.”

  A low mutter ran through the crowd. In Cimmeria, only the most abandoned, most desperate robbers used such tactics. “Now I speak for myself,” said Mordec. “I say we must do as the Aquilonians tell us for now, for they have shown themselves stronger than we are. And I say we must watch what words pass our lips, for they will surely have some man or other among them who understands Cimmerian.”