Conan and the Death Lord of Thanza (22 page)

Unfortunately for him and his men, he had not reckoned on how hard Lysinka’s rage was driving her— and how hard she and Klarnides were driving their men. Or pulling them along, or pushing them, or dragging them, or spurring them to undreamed-of efforts with nothing more powerful than the rough sides of their tongues.

In much less time than Grolin found agreeable, it had become plain that he was going to have to stop and fight. The ground ahead was growing steeper. This would slow his already-weary men—but it would also give them an advantage.

If they could gain a little help from the invisible and, for some while, silent sorcerer.

“A fight now was not part of my plan,” the sorcerer said, in reply to Grolin’s unspoken question.

“Welcome to the real world of the warrior.” Grolin’s voice would have been a dry-throated rasp had he not been speaking the words only in his mind. “To survive, a plan needs the cooperation of your enemy. Lysinka is not cooperating.”

“Then I suppose you speak the truth. Lysinka and her people must be fought, if you are to come safely to the Soul and what it will give us.”

Grolin did not say “Us?” even to himself. Had he done so, the sorcerer would have heard an edge of sarcasm. What work the sorcerer was doing that entitled him to a share in Grolin’s gain, the baron did not know.

“I may need some help,” Grolin thought. “Am I valuable enough to your plans that you will give that help?”

The sorcerer hesitated so long that Grolin guessed he would have drawn his sword against any living man within a reach of his steel.

The sorcerer must have read Grolin’s thoughts. He sounded almost pleading when he spoke again.

“Do not be hasty, friend, or ask haste of me, or mistake my slowness for reluctance to aid you. I am merely studying the rocks, to see how I can best be of use to you.”

“What about sending out your flying serpents?” “They will soon have to defend their own nests.” “From Conan?”

No answer to that question came.

“Can you send magic within the mountain and halt—whoever menaces your snakes?”

“Within the mountain, I do not have such power as I would need.” The sorcerer added hastily, “The serpents would be less useful than you think. They would attack moving flesh, your men’s and Lysinka’s.”

That argument carried weight. Grolin was outnumbered already. The serpents could devour equal numbers of his men and Lysinka’s and still leave her queen of the mountain.

Unless they devoured that bitch too! Grolin briefly imagined that pleasant spectacle and the sound of Lysinka’s screams.

Except that she probably would not scream, because she would know that he anticipated hearing her cries. A man did not get much satisfaction from a woman like that, living in his bed or dying before his eyes!

The baron realized that the sorcerer was speaking again.

“Halt your men and send them into hiding. I can combine my power with that of nature to help you. Make sure you are ready to charge when I give the sign.”

“Are you a god, to speak of giving signs?”

“No. The signs the gods give are often hard for men to read. Thus do fools come to believe that their gods do not exist, or else that they must listen to priests to understand the wishes of their gods. And thus do priests become rich and strike at anyone who threatens their wealth and power.”

Grolin heard raw hatred in those last words. It was the first thing he had learned or at least reasonably suspected, about the sorcerer’s life as a man on earth.

“What I am now is of no concern to you. I offer a promise of help and intend to honour it. Trust me with your life and those of your men, and I will repay that trust.”

Something had the sorcerer approaching desperation, Grolin thought. Those last words sounded almost like a plea.

Grolin decided to give the sorcerer his chance. He waved to his men, his hands signalling them to find cover and halt.

He hoped they would not be so weary that once they went to ground, they could not rise for the attack the sorcerer said would be necessary. Even if the sorcerer had not requested the attack, Grolin would have wished to make it.

He wanted to make Lysinka, or at least her people, bleed.

Other earth tremors that Lysinka had felt seemed to rise from deep below the ground. This tremor felt different.

She was no seer or sorcerer. All she had to judge by was the soles of her feet and long experience in the Thanzas. Her feet and her experience told her that this tremor had been shallow.

Her eyes also told her that the earth was shaking under her when she and her fighters (she called the Thanza Rangers hers now, for they called her leader) were directly downhill from a field of precariously seated boulders. There seemed to be scores of them, ranging from man- to horse-sized.

In Lysinka, two notions warred savagely.

She knew magic was at work, which meant she was in the right place for finding Conan—or so near it that those charged with defending the place were hurling spells at her.

She also knew that if those spells forced the boulders down on her and her fighters, it would be chancy for anyone to live long enough to rescue the barbarian.

She had always expected to die at the head of her band, so that the survivors would at least remember that she fell with her face to the enemy. Now she contemplated the prospect of there being no survivors, to remember how she died with her face crushed into the earth as tons of boulders rolled over her.

She challenged that thought for possession of her limbs and mind as she had challenged fear for ten years. As she had for ten years, she won.

Lysinka had drawn sword and dagger, more to lend authority to her gestures than to menace any foe, when the boulders began to move.

Grolin had reached such a pitch of rage against Lysinka that had he been promised her death in return for giving up the Soul of Thanza, he might have accepted the bargain. He wanted to see the entire hillside of boulders rolling down upon the chieftain arid hear her scream as she vanished under the crushing weight of stone.

He would even be content if her screams were lost in the roar of the rockslide, as long as he could find her body afterward and know that she had died in agony and fear, with all her comrades with her.

But instead of an entire hillside turned loose, only a few boulders started to move. They heaved themselves out of the ground like mired bullocks from the mud, and at first they rolled so slowly that a walking man could have kept pace with them.

But the slope was steep. The rocks were heavy. They gained speed, and soon they were leaping and crashing down the mountainside, toward Lysinka’s people.

Grolin saw the men scattering, with Lysinka leading one way and that boy-warrior Klarnides the other. He realized that his own men were going to have to take a hand, weary as they were. The enemy would lose a few men and perhaps a trifle of courage.

They would also lose all their positions. While they were disordered, a smaller force could strike them hard. Grolin wondered how many of his own men would return uphill after such a stroke.

Lysinka counted eight boulders thundering down upon her people. Klarnides was leading the escape to the right; she led the one to the left. The slope offered too little room for them to scatter without dividing.

The chieftain could only pray that Klarnides’s new-found shrewdness and quickness of wit would not desert him now.

Then she saw the boulders towering higher. One of them hit a firmly embedded rock and shattered into fragments, rattling off in a dozen directions. No fragment touched a man.

Another boulder also hit something solid at such a speed that it leaped into the air like a horse taking a fence. It rose so high that Lysinka could have stood upright under its arc without disordering a hair of her head.

Then the boulder crashed to the ground and split in three. Two pieces shot off harmlessly downhill. A third rolled inexorably toward one of the Rangers. At the last moment he tried to leap over it but in vain.

He could only scream before the boulder crushed the breath from his body and rolled on, leaving a bloody sack on the hard ground.

“Don’t try to run. Lie down, heads upslope. If you see one coming at you, roll to either side. But stay tow!”

That was Klarnides, and Lysinka thought she could not have done better herself.

A boulder loomed up, bearing down on her like a wounded bear. She waited until she was sure that only smooth ground lay between it and her. No bumps or rocks, to send it to either side or over her.

She rolled over a jutting root and felt her clothes and skin tear. She rolled over rocks and felt bruises that reached through garments to flesh and touched her bones. She rolled until she feared rolling out of the path of the first boulder into the path of another. She rolled until much work of healers’ hands and simple remedies was undone, and old pains screamed anew.

The boulder crashed past her. She felt the wind of its passage as dust and gravel stung her skin and eyes. She heard a hideous scream, swiftly cut off, as someone’s luck ran out.

Then at last she heard only boulders rolling away below her, while none rolled down from above. She raised her head—and immediately leaped to her feet.

Grolin was not leaving matters in the hands of whatever magic was allied with him. He was leading his men down to finish the battle hand-to-hand.

Grolin felt as if he could leap downhill like one of the boulders. Was it magic in the earth touching him, battle-fury strengthening him, or merely the act of going downhill instead of up that made his way easier?

Regardless, he wished that he could inflict as much harm as the boulders had done with as little effort. Out of more than forty fighters, Lysinka and Klarnides appeared to have five or six down and most of the rest scattered. Grolin had barely a dozen with him, but they were in a compact body.

They were also the strongest of his men and the longest-enduring. The gods willing, they would be the hardest to kill.

“Stay together!” Grolin shouted. “Strike when the odds are with you! A wound is enough!”

A bloodthirsty growl answered his last admonition. Grolin understood it. He felt as his men did. But wounded fighters on this slope were as useless in battle as dead ones. Worse, their comrades could not leave them behind. They would have to carry the injured out of reach of rolling boulders and other mountainside terrors.

Grolin drew his sword, sheathed it again, and unslung his old battleaxe. He had not used it in years; and before he removed it from the wall of his old family seat, no one had used it for generations. The weapon was heavy and needed a strong man to wield it for long.

But it gave satisfaction as no sword could, to feel the blade sunder flesh and crush bone. The screams it drew from those who died under it satisfied a warrior’s soul. Life that departed under it fled. It did not simply ebb away like a receding tide.

Grolin whirled the axe overhead with both hands, and shouted his house’s ancient war cry.

Lysinka saw Grolin charging down upon her tattered line, at the head of a compact wedge of his men. He was screaming and brandishing an axe. Was he mad? Or had he become the Death Lord already?

Lysinka’s own cry rallied a handful of men around her. Klarnides had gathered twice as many and was running toward her. But some of his men bore hurts from the boulders; all were winded from the climb. They would not arrive soon enough.

The chieftain did not look behind her to see if her back was guarded. She would not show doubt now. If it was protected, she was safe. If it was not—well, Grolin or his men would have to find their way behind her before they could use her bare back to their advantage.

This time Lysinka gave no war cry. She merely screamed like a lost soul and rushed forward at Grolin.

Grolin knew no fear at the sight of Lysinka for all that she had been his master in combat the last time they met. Fear now seemed something that he had heard of, perhaps even seen, in other men.

It was no part of him.

So he met Lysinka without regard for his own safety, and with less studied weapons craft than he might have used. Lysinka owed her life to that, for Grolin wielded the axe with blurring speed and terrifying strength.

Thrice it slashed only air where Lysinka’s head had been a heartbeat before. Twice it struck where it would have sliced off the arm of a slower opponent. Once it struck sparks from the rocky ground, Where Lysinka’s bleeding foot might otherwise have lain.

Lysinka knew that she could, in theory, get in under the swing of that axe with sword and dagger. Even a less than mortal wound could slow Grolin enough to let her inflict more harm later. At least it might slow him enough so that she would not stumble or exhaust herself from the frantic speed she used to avoid the axe now.

Meanwhile, Grolin’s own men were doing their share of harm. Two or three of them would charge one of Lysinka’s people, slashing and stabbing with small regard for anything save drawing their opponent’s blood. The moment the blood flowed, they would leave the first opponent and move on to another.

If this went on, Lysinka would have a band of the crippled and maimed to nurse downhill. Fortunately most of the wounded fighters were still on their feet, even if slowed, and still fighting, even if one-handed. The Thanzas bred hardy folk, or they made hardy those who came to them from elsewhere and survived long enough.

She spared a glance for Klarnides, whose men were approaching at the best pace they could manage. Was it her imagination, or had the ground before their feet suddenly grown steeper and rougher since she last looked upon it?

The ground beneath her feet seemed to grow cold. The chill made her miss a step—and in the next moment Grolin struck with the strength and fury of desperation.

Lysinka’s sword seemed to fly up of its own accord. It broke across the handle of the descending axe, and a piece tore Lysinka’s flesh. The axe handle smashed her across the shoulder and back, and pain roared through her.

She went down, but it was half a fall, half a roll, and she came up where Grolin could not easily see or strike at her. Before he could do either, she uncoiled like a striking serpent, and rammed her dagger up to its hilt in Grolin’s belly.