Part 13 (1/2)
”They bring ladders,” said Antar.
Conan peered into the dark. By the light of the bobbing lanterns he saw three ladders coming towards the tower, each carried by several men. He stepped into the armory and presently came out on the balcony again with a spear.
A pair of men were holding the base of one ladder against the ground while two more raised it by walking toward the tower holding the ladder's uprights over their heads. The ends of the ladder crunched against the lattice.
”Push it over! Throw it down!” cried the Zuagirs, and one started to thrust his sword through the lattice.
”Back!” snarled Conan. ”Let me take care of this!”
He waited until several men had swarmed up the ladder. The top man was a burly fellow with an ax. As he swung the ax to hack away the flimsy wooden latticework, Conan thrust his spear through one of the holes, placed the point against a rung, and pushed. The ladder swayed back.
The men on it screamed, dropping their weapons to clutch at the rungs.
Down crashed the ladder and its* load into the front ranks of the besiegers.
”Come! Here's another!” cried a Zuagir, and Conan hurried to another side of the balcony to push over a second ladder. The third was only half raised when arrows brought down two of the men raising it, so that it fell back.
”Keep shooting,” growled Conan, laying down his spear and bending the great bow.
The continuous rain of arrows, to which they could make no effective reply, wore down the spirits of the throng below. They broke and scattered for cover, and the Zuagirs whooped with frantic glee and sent long, arching flights of missiles after them.
In a few moments, the garden was empty except for the dead and dying, though Conan could see the movement of men along the surrounding walls and roofs.
Conan reentered the armory and climbed the stair. He pa.s.sed through several more rooms lined with arms, then came to the magical laboratory of the Magus. He spared only a brief glance at the dusty ma.n.u.scripts, the strange instruments and diagrams, and climbed the remaining flight to the observation platform.
From here he could take stock of their position. The palace, he now saw, was surrounded by gardens except in front, where there was a wide courtyard. All was enclosed by an outer wall. Lower, inner walls separated the gardens somewhat like the spokes of a wheel, with the high outer wall taking the place of the rim.
The garden in which they were at bay lay on the northwest side of the palace, next to the courtyard, which was separated from it by a wall.
Another wall lay between it and the next garden to the west. Both this garden and the Garden of the Tower lay outside the Paradise Garden, which was half-enclosed by the walls of the palace itself.
Over the outer wall that surrounded the whole of the palace grounds, Conan looked down on the roofs of the city. The nearest house was not over thirty paces from the wall. Lights blazed everywhere, in the palace, the gardens, and the adjacent houses.
The noise, the shouts and groans and curses and the clatter of arms, died down to a murmur. Then Olgerd Vladislav's voice was raised from behind the courtyard wall: ”Are you ready to yield, Conan?”
Conan laughed at him. ”Come and get us!”
”I shall-at dawn,” the Zaporoskan a.s.sured him, ”You're as good as dead now.”
”So you said when you left me in the ravine of the devil-ape, but I'm alive and the ape is dead!”
Conan had spoken in Hyrkanian. A shout of anger and unbelief arose from all quarters. Conan continued: ”Do the Yezmites know that the Magus is dead, Olgerd?”
”They know that Olgerd Vladislav is the real ruler of Yanaidar, as he has always been. I know not how you slew the ape, nor how you got those Zuagiri dogs out of their cells, but I'll have your skins hanging on this wall before the sun is an hour high!”
Presently a banging and hammering sounded on the other side of the courtyard, out of sight. Olgerd yelled: ”Do you hear that, you Cimmerian swine? My men are building a helepolis-a siege tower on wheels, which will stop your shafts and shelter fifty men behind it At dawn we'll push it up to the tower and swarm in. That will be your finish, dog!”
”Send your men on in. Tower or no tower, we'll pick them off just as fast.”
The Zaporoskan replied with a shout of derisive laughter, and thereafter there was no more parleying. Conan considered a sudden break for freedom but abandoned the idea. Men cl.u.s.tered thickly behind every wall around the garden, and such an attempt would be suicide. The fortress had become a prison.
Conan admitted to himself that if the Kushafis did not appear on time, he and his party were finished despite all his strength and speed and ferocity and the help of the Zuagirs.