Roland Green - Conan at the Demon's Gate

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2024-12-20 0 0 2.81MB 254 页 5.9玖币

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Prologue

The Pictish Wilderness, in the reign of Conan the Second, known as Conn:

My name is Nidaros, son of one who did not care to acknowledge me. Likely enough

he was a noble with a full purse and influence at Court, both of which he used

for my advancement. Otherwise I might be in the ranks of the Tenth Black River

Guards instead of commanding a company.

On the edge of the Pictish Wilderness, the patrols beyond the outpost line wait

for spring. The Picts in their native forests are no easy prey even when one

does not have to fight the snow and cold as well.

In the sixth year of the reign of Conn, son of Conan, King of Aquilonia, Great

Count of Poitain, Protector of Bossonia, and bearer of too many other titles to

burden you with here, spring came early. It was decided (I do not know by whom,

and it hardly matters anyway) that we should begin our patrols at once.

I looked from the sky to the face of the messenger (an officer of the elite

Black Dragons, the royal bodyguards) and back to the sky.

"At once?"

"At once."

"The ground is not yet dry enough to let a soldier put one foot in front of

another."

"That does not seem to stop the Picts. They have already raided farms along

Silver Creek."

I wished, not aloud, that demons fly away with Silver Creek and all its

Poitainian colonists. I cannot believe that any part of Poitain is so crowded

that folk with their wits about them would flee to a land where a Pict can spit

in their soup kettles any evening.

The messenger seemed to read my thoughts. He tapped the seal on the parchment. I

did not suspect forgery, only the wits of whoever penned the command.

"As it is ordered, so it shall be done," I said. "But the wet ground is a fact

that all the generals of ten realms cannot alter. A barefoot Pict can skip

lightly where a booted and battle-ready soldier will sink."

"The orders do not say how the patrols shall be equipped," the man said. "Or how

far they shall go."

I must have gaped. A Black Dragon with his wits about him was a marvel, like a

two-headed calf, or a babe with one arm a bird's wing. The man replied with a

grin and a shrug.

"I have kin who fought the Picts when Conan the Great commanded on the border,"

he said. "Those kin told many tales around the fireside, and I have not

forgotten all I heard then."

"Nor have I forgotten what became of friends who sought dry ground and ran into

a Pictish ambush," I said. I added a few details, half-expecting the man to turn

pale and excuse himself. Since the wars of Conan's early reign, the Black

Dragons have mostly stayed close to the palace. Few of this man's apparent years

(ten less than my forty) were battle-seasoned.

Instead, he nodded. "I never thought my kin lied, but hearing and seeing are not

the same." He frowned. "The next fort is my last duty. If you have not led out

your men when I return, may I come with you?"

"If you are your own master—" I began.

"I am," he said.

I could hardly put into words my suspicion that he was a spy for one of rank,

perhaps even for one at Court. Nor in truth did I feel any great desire to do

so. I trusted my men (half Bossonians, half the best sort of Gunderman

mercenaries) and my sergeants as I did myself.

Barring ill luck, no bad reports would return to this fellows master. If ill

luck did come, nothing and no one would return from the wilderness at all.

Moreover, this man looked to be a worthy addition to our ranks. I judged he

might have had Gunderman, or even Cimmerian, blood himself, from his height and

breadth of shoulder. I could not see his hair under a rain-sodden hood, nor his

eyes clearly in the dim lamplight of my hut.

The mail I glimpsed at his wrists seemed well-wrought, though, the sword and

dagger on his belt were both for use rather than show, and his riding clothes

had seen long journeys if not hard fighting. None of these would keep a Pictish

arrow from his gizzard if his luck was not in, but they showed he did not trust

altogether to luck. Such a man knew the first lesson of border warfare, and so

might live to learn others.

"You will be welcome. Make haste, though. If we march swiftly enough, we may

catch some of the woodsrunners' hunting parties. No Pict is ever easy prey, but

one with an empty belly gives honest men a fighting chance."

As a toast to his safe journey and good hunting afterward, we drank the last

wine fit to offer a guest. My second sergeant saw him to his horse while the

first and third turned out the men.

***

Battlements of thundercloud rose to the west the morning we at last found the

Picts, or they found us.

They found us at a disadvantage, because we were a watering party of twenty. I

led, because it was my turn, and Sarabos of the Black Dragons came because he

wished it. I did not wish to have two leaders away from the camp at the same

time, but one could argue that Sarabos had no real rank.

The men obeyed him readily enough, however, when the Picts struck. This was just

after we had picked our next campsite, a stretch of open ground at the foot of a

frowning rocky hill.

They came out of the woods howling fit to waken the dead and put the living in

their tombs, behind a shower of arrows and throwing-spears. Knowing that our

bows had the range of theirs, they waited until the lay of the ground and the

pattern of the trees let them slip close, all in that silence that none except

cats and Picts on the hunt can maintain.

Our archers had time for but one flight before five times their number of Picts

let loose. The Picts still favor flint for their arrowheads, but try telling a

man struck deep by one that it is a child's weapon. That we suffered little was

due more to the stoutness of our armor than the weakness of the Picts' weapons.

The Picts were of two different clans, and as is often the case, one attacked a

trifle before the other. So we had warning and escaped being surrounded,

although by the margin of the thinnest hair in the mane of a newborn foal. We

turned and ran for the best place at hand for defense, that open ground at the

foot of the outcrop.

Our archery took some of the heart out of the first clan, not to mention leaving

two-score warriors kicking or still among the ferns and rotted logs. We covered

some hundreds of paces through tangled second growth with only one man dead, his

comrades able to carry him, and no one else hurt past fighting.

Then the second clan attacked, without the warning of an arrow shower but

instead charging from cover to reach close quarters almost at once. As with most

Picts, they wore feathers and tattoos, breechclouts and war paint, and precious

little else. But more of them than I cared to see had swords and knives of

metal, sometimes their own bronze or copper, sometimes captured steel.

I do not know how long the fight lasted. I had my broadsword, a short-handled

mace, and good Aquilonian mail with a helm of Zingaran style standing between me

and the Picts. All did good service, too. I know I slew a fair hand'sworth and

more, and took only two grazes in return.

Others were less fortunate. Six of us died or were hurt past fighting in that

brawl at close quarters. It ended in our favor because, as was most often the

case, the two clans' war parties had leapt into battle without any common plan.

Most Pictish chiefs would sooner serve up their sons in a stew than take orders

from another chief.

So there was no one to tell the first clan to hold their arrows until the second

had drawn away from us. The first clan began shooting again, and their arrows

rained down alike on friend and foe. Foes mostly bore armor, although a

Gunderman died with an arrow in the eye. Friends were mostly naked, and another

score of Picts died howling or moaning with Pictish arrows through their

gizzards.

Sarabos leapt into the midst of this fratricidal slaughter with a broadsword in

one hand and a long dagger in the other. I saw him behead one Pict, geld a

second, chop the arm from a third, and break the leg of a fourth with a kick

like a mule's, all in one continuous flow of movement. A circle grew around him,

inhabited only by the dead or those about to die.

At last he sheathed his weapons, hoisted the fallen Gunderman over one shoulder

like a miller hoisting a sack of grain, and pointed toward the rocks.

"I thought I heard you bid us withdraw that way," he said to me. "I see at least

one cave in that ravine to the south." With a long arm covered in other men's

blood, he pointed.

His eyes were keener than mine, and his ears had heard no such orders, but I

thanked him with a nod for saving my authority over my surviving men. I put

myself with the rearguard while Sarabos and his burden led, and we tramped up

the slope.

It was my plan, formed in my mind as we moved, to climb to the crest of the

rocks and light our smoke torches. That would tell the camp where we were, and

they would be up with us long before the surviving Picts could muster numbers or

courage to come at us on the high ground.

Conan the Great had a favorite saying: "A man can think out a battle beforehand

as much as he pleases, but Fate will still spit in the beer." (Although he did

not say "spit.") He never called it his own invention, and I much doubt that it

was. Kull of Atlantis could have coined it in his wars against the Snakemen of

Valusia.

What spat in our particular tankard that day was the thunderstorm. The clouds

swept over the rocks before we could reach the heights. As Sarabos laid the dead

Gunderman down, the first drops of rain fell.

Thunder crashed overhead. I looked up to see a thunderbolt sear the ridge. I

spat from an all-but-dry mouth. If we climbed to that crest in our armor and the

lightning went on playing, more than torches might be set alight.

I looked downslope to judge the closeness of our pursuers. To my surprise, I saw

them running off as if we had turned into a band of demons and were on their

heels. They were even leaving the weapons of the dead, and it takes great fear

to make a Pict do that.

It struck me that whatever so daunted Picts might also be something Aquilonians

could justly fear. I saw the same thought on faces around me, but—and all honor

to my men and their kin—no one said a craven word.

We did keep our formation as we searched the slope for that cave. It was well

that it was not far, for in about the time it takes to change the guard, the

rain was coming down in a deluge. We might have been standing under a waterfall,

and neither good leather nor oiled wool nor any armor ever forged could keep us

from being sodden to the skin.

We covered the final paces to the cave with more haste than dignity, and with

small regard for a proper formation. Once inside, with the rain no longer

battering on our helmets until it addled our wits, I quickly arrayed the men.

Sentries at the mouth of the cave, sentries toward the rear, the driest and

cleanest place for the wounded, and those neither standing sentry nor tending

the wounded allowed to strip and dry their weapons, armor, and clothes.

I set myself to counting our resources in the matter of food and water. Each of

us had come out with two days' salt meat and hard bread, and a full water-bottle

besides the ones we were to fill. If the Picts did not cut us off from the

streams, the rills would be swollen full by the rain, and there might be water

toward the rear of the cave, which seemed to lead far into the rocks. Such rocks

in Pictland were usually honeycombed with underground springs and—

"Captain! To the rear!"

It was one of the rear sentries, a clear-headed Bossonian who would not have let

confusion or fear show in his voice without good cause. I ordered all to their

feet and all weapons readied, and went to stand beside the sentry.

At the edge of the torchlight, I saw worked stone. It was far too fine to be

Pictish work, and far too fresh to have come down from the time of the old

Hyborian invasions. I thought I could make out lintels, doorways, benches of

living rock, and unwholesomely sinuous figures.

I lit another torch and remembered that this had best be the last I used, or we

might not be able to signal the camp when the rain ceased. The spread of the

light extended. I saw that the sinuousity of the figures was no fancy; the

worship of Set had once found a home in this cave. I recognized Stygian

hieroglyphs and even more arcane signs, of which I neither knew nor wished to

know the meaning.

I strode farther to the rear, saw that the cave made a bend, and moved on until

I could look beyond the bend into what appeared to be a chamber. Something tall

and upright loomed at the outer edge of the light. I took two more steps—

"Crom!"

It was not an image of the Great Serpent, as I had feared. It was the life-sized

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PrologueThePictishWilderness,inthereignofConantheSecond,knownasConn:MynameisNidaros,sonofonewhodidnotcaretoacknowledgeme.LikelyenoughhewasanoblewithafullpurseandinfluenceatCourt,bothofwhichheusedformyadvancement.OtherwiseImightbeintheranksoftheTenthBlackRiverGuardsinsteadofcommandingacompany.Ontheed...

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Roland Green - Conan at the Demon's Gate

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