Conan and the Death Lord of Thanza (10 page)

Conan snorted with laughter. “Captain, don’t you know I’m a northerner? We’re solid bone from the neck up!”

“So the tales ran, I admit,” Klarnides said. “But I wonder how much truth they hold. My uncle was with the Gundermen who founded Venarium. He was not among those who came home, after the Cimmerians burned it. They made it plain that we were not welcome in the northland, let me tell you.”

Having himself been one of the horde who stormed over the stockaded walls of the frontier outpost and put the Gundermen to the sword, Conan needed no telling. But he held his peace about his own history.

Klarnides seemed in a talkative mood. “I—this was the first time I ever killed a man who was trying to kill me. Or anybody else. I thought—I knew I was good with a sword. Else my arms teacher cheated my father, and the count was no safe man to cheat.

“It’s different when the steel goes into living flesh, and the blood comes out and gets on you. It— well, I’m sure your own first battle was so long ago that you have no understanding of what I say.”

“But, I do,” Conan said. “Believe me, Captain, that is something no man ever forgets. Or if he does, then he stops being a man.”

Klarnides shuddered. “The gods spare me that, at least.”

Conan did not much believe in the gods answering prayers, having been brought up to honour Crom, who did no such thing. But he hoped Klarnides would be spared long enough to either become a soldier or find another way of living that suited him. Had Conan wed at the usual age in Cimmeria, his eldest son might not be much younger than Klarnides seemed to be, wearing his first sword and perhaps talking to his father of his first battle.

The night seemed briefly darker and less friendly as Conan made his way back to find what sleep the remainder of the night might allow him.

Grolin’s and Lysinka’s united bands had marched at dawn. Now they were enjoying their mid-morning halt.

The lord of Thanza stepped aside into the trees. He had given up hope that any of Lysinka’s women would disrobe and bathe in the streams. Some of his men had not, but Lysinka and her women could do as they pleased with such fools. Both the world and his band would fare better without such.

It was only as the minutes passed that Grolin became aware of the sensation of being watched. Even then it was some while longer before he dared turn and study the forest around him for some sign of the watcher. A prickling up and down his spine had told him from the first that his visitor might be friendly but was not of nature, so he expected to see nothing.

At first, that was so. Then he saw a face forming on, or perhaps in, the bole of the largest birch tree he had ever seen. It was a face full of persuasively lifelike details—long, with a high-arched nose and an undersized, pointed chin, adorned with a small beard.

At first it looked old, then it showed colour and Grolin saw a healthy flush to the skin. Finally the eyes took form—and Grolin decided not to even think about the face’s age. The eyes looking at him had seen either everything or nothing; the face was either eternal or newly born.

Regardless, it was also a face that a prudent man allowed the first word. Grolin bowed, hoping this would convey his intent.

The lips moved. The voice reached Grolin’s ears— and also his throat. He found himself hearing the words in both another’s voice—a man’s, he thought— and his own.

It was something other than a pleasure.

“You seek the Soul of Thanza.” It was not a question.

“I do.” Grolin thought an affirmation was needed.

“You have chosen the wrong companion.”

The tone in both voices stung Grolin to irritation. At least he still commanded his own heart and mind.

“You are free with advice.”

“Only to those who seek the Soul, and need it.”

“Who is this ‘wrong companion’?”

“Need I say?”

After a moment, Grolin decided that it was not a proven fact. Lysinka commanded thirty wood-wise fighters, equal to twice their number from lesser bands or Aquilonian levies. The face’s opinion weighed little against that.

“Who is the proper companion for this quest?” Grolin asked. “You?”

“Of course. I know where the Soul is.”

“Oh. You know the Mountain of Skulls?”

“It is my home. It is from there that I sent the spell to the Soul, that brought it home.”

Grolin’s mouth was suddenly dry. The voices carried conviction—and certainly the owner of the face commanded some potent spells to thus travel abroad with such messages.

“Can you offer—?”

“Proof? It is not my custom to offer proof to those who doubt.”

“Then you must find few willing to seek the Soul.” “Indeed. Too few. It needs a human being to become the Death Lord, before its true power is released upon the world.”

Grolin’s mouth was open, more in surprise than with intent to speak, when the face vanished. He stepped up to the birch and touched the curled white bark where the face had been. It felt unharmed, not even warm.

The lord of Thanza realized that he had perhaps just met one who deserved that title better than he. However, there were human friends and foes to deal with first.

Grolin rinsed the dryness from his mouth with the aid of his water bottle and returned to the column.

VI

Grolin returned to the marching column with a look on his face that Lysinka had never seen before. From the way his own folk stared at him, neither had they.

“We must move to strike the Aquilonians,” he said, with the same finality as he would have said, The sun will set this evening.

“Can we reach a good place for surprising them and settle into it in time?” she said. “I was thinking of letting them pass by and attacking from the rear.”

“That might let them come between us and the Mountain of Skulls or my citadel. Speak not so lightly of being so cut off, when your home is in no danger.” Lysinka had not thought she was speaking lightly, merely prudently. The Thanza Rangers were not an enemy who needed to be fought to the death. A dozen dead, and the rest would flee, to be picked off at leisure.

“Can we speak of being cut off from the mountain, when we still seek it?”

Grolin’s hard look told her that she had challenged his authority in front Of both bands, something that she had vowed (at least to herself) not to do. She spread her hands.

“Very well. Let us march swiftly, then, and if possible silently as well.”

“It shall be so.”

As the bands moved out, Grolin fell back to walk beside Lysinka, even daring to rest an arm lightly on her shoulder. She did not shrug it off, having no wish to add lesser offences when he had forgiven a greater.

“Be sure of this, my dear lady,” he whispered. “The men would not forgive me for turning away from a battle when we are this close to a sworn enemy. My power over them would weaken, and soon your band would be prey, not friend.”

Lysinka thought that an empty threat, unless Grolin’s men were such fools that they would fight rival bandits when the Aquilonian levies were practically upon their doorstep. If they were, she was not sure questing in their company was altogether wise.

But the work was begun; let them see it through to the end. Besides, she had no fear of losing authority over her folk, whether they fought the Aquilonians, evaded them, or flew over them and dropped pine-cones on their heads!

It takes time, skill, and luck to hide an ambush from the war-wisdom of a Conan or a Tharmis Rog. Grolin and Lysinka lacked all three.

So it came about that Conan, marching at the head of the Rangers, suddenly spoke out of the side of his mouth to a man marching beside him.

“Take my place. Slow the advance but otherwise act as if there’s nothing wrong. I have to speak to the captains.”

The man, who looked to be a mixture of Shemite, Bossonian, and hardened cutpurse, frowned. “Is there anything wrong?”

“There will be, and with you, if you question my next order.”

Conan barely spoke above a whisper, but the look in the ice-blue northern eyes would have silenced an entire temple chorus in full song. The man jerked his head as Conan stepped out of line and appeared to seek the shelter of the trees.

Instead, he waited until the march of the column brought Klarnides and Nestorinus abreast of him. Then he emerged and fell into step beside the two captains.

“I’ve seen signs of an ambush ahead. Up there, where the trail turns to the right, around that brush-grown spur. They are waiting for us atop the spur.”

“There?” Nestorinus raised an arm. The Cimmerian pulled it brusquely down. The captain glared.

“How dare you touch a—?”

“Assert your true birth some other time,” Klarnides snapped. He looked as if he wanted to ask Conan, what to do but dared not, in the presence of Nestorinus.

“Keep on. They’ve likely chosen a worse spot for themselves than for us,” the Cimmerian said. “If they’re few, we can charge them, and I’ll lead. If they’re many, we’ve cover to the right.”

“And if they’re on both sides?” Nestorinus sneered.

“Then we charge to the left, as before, only you can lead,” Conan said. His grin was wholly mirthless, and Nestorinus seemed to be holding his hand only because Klarnides had a firm grip on the other captain’s sword arm.

The message ran up and down the column. Conan saw several men look dubiously for safe paths of flight, find none, and apparently decide that safety lay with their comrades. That was a good beginning for the Rangers today. If it was enough to bring victory, there would be time to teach them the rest of a warrior’s skills.

“They are two to our one, and we strike only one flank,” Fergis said. “Is Grolin—?”

Lysinka put a finger to her lips, then her lips to her comrade’s ear. “Grolin seems to fear a rival among his men. He would neither refuse battle nor attack from the rear.”

“Then why should we—?”

“Because he has seen something of which he will not speak, but which has put him in fear.”

Fergis made a gesture of aversion. “The magic of the Soul of Thanza?”

“Or something very nearly as potent.”

“If he cannot hurl it at us—”

“Perhaps he can. Nor can we depart now without dishonour, as well as sleeping lightly ever afterward until Grolin and his last man are dead. Do you wish to court both, and lose the Soul into the bargain?”

Fergis muttered something about her body being worth ten Souls, but Lysinka chose to ignore it.

In the next moment, she had to ignore Fergis, as battle flamed across the slope below.

What ignited the flame was a chance arrow, shot up the slope with little discipline and less aim, by one of the Rangers’ handful of archers. Tharmis Rog howled in fury at the archer’s folly—then somebody above the slope let out another kind of howl, as the arrow found its mark.

A man clad in a rawhide tunic and fur leggings leaped up from behind a bush, the arrow jutting from his chest. He spun in a circle, lifted unseeing eyes to the grey sky, then plunged blindly downhill.

He covered perhaps twenty paces before the arrow in his chest bled vitality out of him. He fell on his face, then rolled downhill.

As if he were a magnet drawing iron filings, he drew his comrades out of cover.

Suddenly twenty men were charging down the brush-grown spur, howling, throwing stones, and waving spears and swords. None were archers, and if any still hid above, they seemed chary of shooting for fear of striking comrades.

The Rangers’ archers had no such problem. None of them were masters of the bow, but they had plenty of targets coming straight at them and were well-supplied with arrows. They put down three or four men in the first moments of the charge.

Then Conan, having studied the forest to his right to be sure it held no enemies, led the counter-charge.

Birds did not drop dead from the sky nor trees splinter and topple at the Cimmerian’s war cry, as men told their children in later years. But it was a blood-freezing roar, that echoed around the rocks and trees, and it told everyone within hearing that the battle had suddenly become far more deadly for this man’s foes.

Conan stormed up the slope with the speed only a born hillman could have managed, sword in right hand, dagger in left. He wore no more armour than a helmet and corselet, so little slowed his feet.

He struck the first rank of the charging bandits like a maul striking a wooden piling. All the men in that rank visibly recoiled, and two of them went down at the same moment. One was dead from a dagger in the throat, the other dying from a sword-gashed thigh.

The second rank came up, and now archers up the slope were shooting back. Arrows flew over Conan and his opponents, to plunge into the ranks of the Rangers with a force that only Bossonian longbows could manage.

Then the combined ranks of the bandits lapped around Conan like a flood around a hill, and he could see nothing farther than the end of his steel. Nor could his comrades see him.

The thought of leaving Conan to die amidst the ranks of bandits seemed to spur a dozen men up the slope in the Cimmerian’s wake. None of them were as sure-footed on slopes as was the man they followed, but they had the edge over the bandits in armour and weapons.

So some of them fell and not all of these rose again, but the rest came to close quarters, and the bandits around Conan suddenly found themselves pressed inward. At the same time, the Cimmerian was hewing his way out from within the circle. Blood flew, and once a severed arm; and now still other Rangers were coming up from below.

Seeing that Conan needed no help, these newcomers charged straight at the hidden archers. They knew this much about fighting: at close quarters a swordsman has the edge over an archer. The trick was to live to get to close quarters, and the Bossonian longbows saw to it that not all of the Rangers who began the climb finished it.

It was Klarnides who found the wits to rally the Rangers’ archers. He bid them find a place on the flank of the enemy’s bowmen and shoot as fast as they could nock and draw.

“We’ll have the field when this is done!” he shouted. “You’ll have your arrows back and theirs too!”