The count"s breath came quickly, for all that it made his ribs ache beneath his blued-steel armor. He had few men in hand save his mounted men-at-arms, and none too many of them. Also, they were scattered and would need summoning were they to charge in a ma.s.s behind him.
But if they charged as he knew they could, the battle was won. Won, moreover, with little owing to the Star Brothers.
The count raised the mace topped with the steel hand that was his mark of captaincy. Messengers sitting at the head of their horses leaped up and began to mount.
Now Queen Chienna would see who had the skill in war to rule this land.
Aybas had no particular place in the battle line, being a captain without a company of his own. He had no doubt that he was not yet altogether trusted.
He had made friends with a village head man who led the peasant levies, however. Decius had planned to keep them in the rear of the line, but when the Pougoi ended on the far right flank, the captain-general had to devise a new array. This brought the levies forward into the line, and it was with the levies that Aybas stood when Count Syzambry charged.
It was like no charge that Aybas had ever seen, or even imagined. The fifty or more armored hors.e.m.e.n seemed to trickle forward, like drops of water flowing down the silver face of a mirror. They formed no line, and few seemed to have proper lances to make such a line deadly even if they formed it.
Yet they were coming on swiftly, and if they had few lances, they had swords and maces in abundance. If they reached level ground in the midst of the royal line, they would pierce it like an arrow through silk.
They could also be stopped short of the line and level ground if one could deny them a little hillock a hundred paces ahead. Aybas looked along the line of peasants, saw the fear already in their faces, and knew that he must command a charge.
Whirling his sword over his head, he gave the war cry of the house into which he had been born.
"Wine of Victory!"
Then he charged, one man against fifty. He did not expect to reach the hillock alive, but somehow he did. He did not expect the levies to follow him, nor did he dare to look back, but somehow he was not alone when he started climbing.
Before he could draw breath, he found himself among the boulders with fifty men around him, all of them cheering as if the battle was already won. Two were beating on the helmet of a fallen hors.e.m.e.n with their felling axes.
"Leave be!" Aybas shouted. It was unknightly to abuse a fallen foe, as he had learned in boyhood. It was also foolish to give attention to a harmless foe when there were many still fighting. That Aybas had learned in manhood, from many rough teachers.
His shouting brought the levies around to face their front just in time. A bold horseman was spurring up the hillock. Aybas knew that his reprieve was about to end as he dashed forward.
The man whirled his mace in a fine gesture, then brought it down. He would have been better advised to forgo the gesture.
Aybas leaped up with a speed he had hardly known he had in him and caught the shaft of the descending mace. At the same time, he slashed hard at the man"s leg and heaved himself backward.
His blade only clanged on armor, but the rest of Aybas"s attack carried through. The man flew out of his saddle, too surprised to even cry. He struck the ground headfirst, sprawling beside Aybas with his helmet flattened and his head at an impossible angle to his neck.
Aybas leaped again and caught the reins of the dead man"s horse. The stirrups danced wildly, almost defeating his efforts to mount. At last he succeeded, and the levies greeted him with a wild cheer.
Syzambry"s hors.e.m.e.n did not cheer. Indeed, it seemed to Aybas that they were no longer charging and were even looking to their rear. It was hard to make out what they might be looking at between the forest and the mist.
It seemed, however, as if someone had flung himself against Syzambry"s rear and was giving it a fight for its life. A moment later, Aybas"s ears told him more than his eyes did as a peal of Marr"s witch-thunder rolled from the forest.
Within the forest, the witch-thunder made Conan deaf for a moment. He did not care. For now, he needed only his sword, and his eyes to guide the blade. Also, perhaps, his legs to bring him to close quarters with the Star Brothers.
Not that there were no foes ready to hand. As the Guards and the Pougoi hacked their way into Syzambry"s rear, they met every sort of soldier the count had not put into his battle line. They also met men who could not be called soldiers by any conceit. Most of these fled, and this was as well. Conan had no love for killing men as helpless as babes. There were enough foes worth a man"s steel already, and the day was not yet won.
Conan cast a look behind him. Marr the Piper was running with the soldiers, playing as he ran. His eyes were wide but unseeing, and Conan would have sworn any oath asked of him that those eyes glowed blue.
Magic, surely! But without magic, how could the man both play and run, and without the piper close, how could Conan face the Star Brothers?
The Star Brothers were also close, more so than Conan realized. He burst through a line of dwarfish ash trees to face a circle of baggage wagons swarming with Pougoi warriors. In the middle of the circle stood two Star Brothers, chanting so loudly that Conan heard them even over the piping.
A roaring Cimmerian battle cry eclipsed both piping and chanting.
Guards and Pougoi swarmed through the trees to join Conan.
"Archers!" Conan thundered.
Every one of his men who had a bow seemed to nock and draw in a moment.
Arrows skewered twenty Pougoi and as many baggage animals. The shooting would have won no prizes in Turan, but this was not Turan. Conan"s archers had all the skill they needed against the target before them.
Before the Pougoi could recover, Conan was leaping forward. Also, those of his men who bore crossbows had time to nock and shoot. Some of their bolts pierced dead men or baggage animals.
One bolt, unheralded, pierced a Star Brother"s thigh. He broke his chanting to scream and lurched against his comrade.
The star-spells did not break, but their masters no longer commanded them. Some of the Pougoi closest to the Star Brothers grew old in an instant, their faces as wizened as babes and their heads either white or bald.
Their comrades stared at them, then stared at one another. The berserk spells were striking wildly and doing worse than aging those within reach.
Conan saw a man with all of his guts, and his heart and lungs as well, on the outside of his body. He saw a man suddenly grow purple scales with green spots, and claws on both hands and feet. He retained his thumbs, however, and came at the Cimmerian with a battle ax.
Conan leaped back before the lizard-man"s rush. He wanted s.p.a.ce between himself and the spells. He also wanted to give his archers another clear shot. He would ask no man to face these abominations hand-to-hand.
Now some of the baggage animals were also developing scales. Others grew batlike wings, which beat frantically and knocked down most of the Pougoi not ensorceled into something other than human.
The few left human and on their feet leaped from the circle of baggage wagons and ran screaming in mortal terror. Blind with fear, most of them ran straight into the ranks of their fellow tribesmen. Thyrin"s men laid on with a berserk fury, as if every servant of the Star Brothers they killed was one more cleansing of the tribe"s honor.
The sound of a cracking and crashing rose above the din of magic and fighting men. A huge pine beyond the ring of wagons swayed, jerked roots loose from the rocky soil, then toppled. It came down with a crash that made every other sound before seem like a mother cooing to a babe. It smashed wagons, beasts, men and not-men with blind impartiality.
As the echoes of the forest giant"s fall died away, so did the piping.
Conan felt a sharp pang of doubt that he would not yet call fear. Then Marr the Piper thudded down at the Cimmerian"s feet as if he"d leaped from a high wall. In one outflung hand he gripped the shattered pipes.
Conan had one moment of seeing his death waiting; then he saw his duty just as clearly. He leaped onto the trunk of the fallen tree, bare for most of its hundred paces. Running as fast as on level ground, he leaped down beside the Star Brothers.
The one with the bolt in his thigh lay twitching feebly in a pool of blood. His comrade was still upright, though ashen-faced and chanting softly.
Conan"s sword leaped at the wizard"s bearded head. Leaped, then rebounded as if it had struck a castle wall. Five times Conan struck, with the same futile results.
The sixth time, the chanting grew louder and his sword not only rebounded, but flew from his hand. Conan stooped to retrieve it, but as he gripped the hilt, the blade began to smoke. A moment later the whole weapon was too hot to touch, and the sharkskin binding of the hilt was on fire.
Conan did not wait for the sword to turn into a puddle of molten steel.
The last Star Brother was building a new spell, and there was no Marr the Piper to content with him... only a Cimmerian ready to trade his life for the lives of those he led.
His sword useless, Conan s.n.a.t.c.hed up the first weapon that came to hand, the shattered tongue of an ox-wagon. Wielding it as he would a quarterstaff, he lunged at the Star Brother. The weapon pa.s.sed through the spell"s barrier and drove hard against the Star Brother"s ribs. All the breath hfffed out of him, and he flew backward to lie sprawled and writhing.
Whatever power the spell had against iron, it had none against wood.
Conan lunged again. This time the splintered end of the wagon tongue drove deep into the Star Brother"s chest. His last spell died un-uttered on his lips as he coughed blood onto the three plaits of his beard, looked for one last time at the sky, and lay still.