"Good. But send a second man in case the first meets with ill luck. I am going to Decius. Our rallying point is the Chamber of the Red Fish."
"So be it, Captain Conan."
Conan thought of giving a second rallying place, outside the palace.
But that would be admitting doubts about the outcome of the battle before it had even begun, an admission that stuck in his throat.
In silence the Cimmerian stalked toward the Chamber of the Red Fish.
Taking its name from the mosaic in what had once been an ornamental pool, the chamber could be defended by a handful against a stout band.
It also had a staircase, battered by the years but still fit to let a nimble man climb to the roof and look about him.
Conan reached the chamber to find that half of Raihna"s men were already there. Leaving them to build barricades of stone and ancient furniture, Conan scrambled up the stairs.
The horns and drums in the distance were silent now. Darkness hid whatever they had been rallying, be it men or monsters. Conan looked at the sky, where lowering clouds veiled the moon more often than not. He half-expected to hear the witch-thunder.
Instead, he saw a pinpoint of ruby-tinted light spring to life in the darkness downhill from the palace. The pinpoint grew into a ball of fire, and its color changed from that of rubies to that of old wine.
By that light Conan saw what seemed a mighty host drawn up before the palace. A second look showed him that it was not mighty, and indeed barely a host.
Count Syzambry was well to the fore, mounted on his roan stallion and surrounded by some two-score riders. Many more men stood behind the hors.e.m.e.n, most of them archers, bearing scanty armor and few weapons save their bows. A final band of perhaps three-score had surrounded the huts and the remainder of the Palace Guard there. From the way they kept their distance from the huts, it seemed that the Guards were neither asleep nor yielding.
That was enough for Conan. Syzambry might command sorcery, but all it had done so far was to reveal how few men he had. They were no band of beardless boys, but neither were they the predestined victors of tonight"s battle.
Now, if only the Guards in the barracks could strike into Syzambry"s rear at the moment his men went forward-
The globe of light had turned the hue of old blood. It spread so far that Conan could barely make out the count. Then the little man flung his hands wide apart and something fell smoking from the globe of light.
A vagrant breeze brought the Cimmerian the smell of heated metal and burned gra.s.s. An angry hiss rose, along with clouds of smoke and steam, as what had fallen struck a puddle.
Then the globe of light shrank back to barely more than a pinpoint. The smoke curled up to form a stalk swaying in the breeze, the light bobbing at the end of it like a flower.
The earth quivered. Smoke and blood-hued light began to move toward the palace as if drawn inexorably forward by something just out of human sight.
Not quite out of sight, either, as Conan saw in the next moment. What drew the fire-flower after it was also making a furrow in the earth, an arm"s length wide. Smoke poured out of it, stones and earth flew to either side, and the quivering of the earth doubled and redoubled.
Conan abandoned thoughts of rallying the Guards to surround Syzambry"s men. The first task for all of the king"s captains now had to be keeping their men clear of this sorcerous monstrosity rumbling toward the palace. If that meant leaving the palace so that it would not topple on their heads and bury them in the ruins-
One of the barracks huts did collapse, the sound lost in the rumble of the ravaged earth. Dust and smoke swirled up, and Guards poured out like ants from a kicked hill. They came with their weapons in hand, though, and dragging or carrying wounded comrades.
Conan forced himself down the stairs. For better or worse, the Guards caught in the barracks would have to make their own way tonight. His battle would be here, so far as a man could fight sorcery.
The Cimmerian was three steps from the floor when the earth heaved fiercely. The steps cracked. So did a section of wall and several sections of roof. Conan leaped as the stairs sagged under him, leaped again to avoid falling stones, went down, caught himself on his hands, and ended kneeling at Raihna"s feet.
She had a grin for him, but he could see that she was trying to hearten herself as well as her men. He returned the grin and sprang to his feet.
Most of the men who"d been in the chamber when Conan climbed up were there when he came down. Few had fled, and Raihna had brought the rest of her band with her. But there was more than one man who had remained because falling stone pinned him to the floor.
Conan gripped the nearest such stone, wrapped his ma.s.sive arms around it, and heaved it clear. In the last moment of silence before the fallen men began screaming, Conan heard his own breath coming hard.
He also heard, so faint that it might have been a trick of the night wind, the distant trill of pipes.
The pipes were indeed distant and faint. But to Count Syzambry, they might have been shrilling in his ear.
He knew what they meant. He also knew what the Pougoi wizards had said, so many times that he had become weary of hearing even the truth.
"Let fear break your will, and your will drags down our power with it.
Wield what we have given you without fear, and it will do what must be done. We cannot keep our promises to a man who lets fear rule him."
That was as close as any man had come to calling Syzambry a coward since he had been old enough to know that he could have blood for such an insult. He let it pa.s.s, for he did not doubt that the wizards spoke the truth and that all of his schemes would fail if his courage faltered.
So the count willed himself to shut the piping out of his mind even if he could not close his ears to the distant, silvery voice. He would not let it surround him, enwrap him like swaddling clothes on a baby, echo within his skull until all awareness of anything but the pipes fled-
Between one moment and the next, Count Syzambry knew that he had won the first victory. The pipes now seemed a long, wailing lamentation for the dead and the dying, for the doomed who knew not their fate. They did not master the count"s thoughts.
Instead, the power flowing from the pipes turned against the Pougoi magic unleashed against the palace. The furrow had almost reached the outer wall of the palace when the earth itself heaved up into another wall. Stones poured down from the new wall and into the furrow.
The furrow vomited smoke, so thick that it seemed almost solid. The stones flew out as fast as they fell in, and so violently that some of them nearly struck Syzambry"s men. Horses reared, their panicky squeals lost in the din of the tormented earth, and even men began to turn pale faces toward one another.
Syzambry once more found himself battling fear that threatened to eat not merely his magic, but his very wits from within.
Furrow and earthen wall now seemed to fling themselves at each other like maddened monsters. Stones flew high over the ranks of Syzambry"s men, dropping among the Guards" huts.
One smashed a hut to rubble, and the count thought he heard the cries of men trapped within. He would have prayed that the stones bury the rest of the Palace Guard, except that praying to G.o.d, or even to demon, seemed unwise in the presence of the star-magic.
Syzambry forced himself to look beyond the duel of magic, trying to pierce the palace"s veil of dust. In places, the night breeze had torn the veil, and there the count saw what made his heart leap.
The palace was crumbling before his eyes. It could hardly have been crumbling faster had it borne the full weight of the sky-magic. Walls sagged, roofs gaped, whole chambers opened themselves to the sky in the moment before they crumbled into rubble. More dust streamed up, renewing the veil until the count"s eyes could no longer penetrate it.
They had no need. There must be defenders ready within the palace. But those defenders would have to fear peril not merely at their flanks and rear, but from the sky above and the earth below. They would be in no condition to make a determined fight.
The wizards had said that the count"s will was all that mattered, not where he stood. What better way to steel his will and that of his men than to lead the way into the palace?
Count Syzambry flung the reins of his mount to the horse-holder and scrambled from the saddle. The earth rocked under his feet like the deck of a boat in a flood-swollen river, but he would not let himself fall.
Instead, he drew his sword with both hands, tossed it, caught it by the blade, then raised the point toward the palace.
"The G.o.ds themselves cast down Eloikas and all his men! Follow me!"
For a heart-stopping moment, Syzambry heard nothing save the roar of the embattled earth. Then, behind him, blades rasped from their scabbards and the war cries rose.
"Steel Hand! Steel Hand! Forward, the Steel Hand!"
In the palace of King Eloikas, chaos reigned. Chaos past description of belief, even for seasoned warriors such as Conan and Raihna.
Not that either of them gave a thought to describing what was happening about them. Their thoughts were wholly aimed at keeping their men from being caught under the falling rubble.
Then they heard the war cries, louder even than the rumble and crash of stone and the roar of the tormented earth. Out of the thundering darkness, out of the blood-tinted clouds of dust, Count Syzambry"s men swarmed to the attack.