Part 33 (1/2)

A little of this, a futile atte back in disorder Their arbows The western archers were sheltered by bushes and rocks Moreover, the Ne of theas they did that they were being used hts

The cross-bow lines the pikeely mercenaries, and theirthehts until the latter ithin s distance So while the arbalesters plied their bolts froe, the pikemen marched into the teeth of the blast frohts caan to falter beneath the savage hail of death that whistled down the slopes aht and left, and through thehts thundered

They ran full into a cloud of stinging death The clothyard shafts found every crevice in their arrassy terraces reared and plunged backward, bearing their riders with thee wavered and ebbed back

Back down in the valley A with draord under the scarlet dragon, but it was the baron of Tor who colanced at the forest of lance-tips visible above and beyond the head-pieces of the Gunderhts out in a charge down the slopes after him, to be raked from either flank by his bowmen and swamped by the numbers of his horseht skins of water frohts doffed their hel heads The wounded on the slopes screas supplied the defenders They did not thirst that long, hot spring day

On the King's Altar, beside the ancient, carven stone, Xaltotun watched the steel tide ebb and flow On cah a whistling cloud of arrows they plowed to break like a thundering wave on the bristling wall of spears and shi+elds Axes rose and fell above the plu down horses and riders The pride of the Gunderhts They were not spear-fodder, to be sacrificed for the glory of better men They were the finest infantry in the world, with a tradition thatlearned the worth of unbreakable infantry They held their forreat lion banner, and at the tip of the wedge a giant figure in black ar ax that split steel and bone alike

The Nee dee, and from the wooded knolls on either hand arrows raked their close-packed ranks mercilessly

Their oere useless, their pikerips with the Bossonians Slowly, stubbornly, sullenly, the gri their empty saddles Above them the Gundermenup the gaps made by the fallen Sweat ran into their eyes froripped their spears and waited, their fierce hearts swelling with pride that a king should fight on foot with thehts had not ht spurred a sweating horse up the hill called the King's Altar, and glared at Xaltotun with bitter eyes

'Aic, wizard,' he said 'We are dying like flies down there in the valley We cannot break their ranks'

Xaltotun seerow tall and awesome and terrible

'Return to Ae, but to await ht that he will reht saluted as if coainst his will, and thundered down the hill at breakneck pace

Xaltotun stood beside the dark altar-stone and stared across the valley, at the dead and wounded rim, blood-stained band at the head of the slopes, at the dusty, steel-clad ranks reforlanced down at the slier inlaid with archaic hieroglyphs, he intoned an immemorial invocation:

'Set, God of darkness, scaly lord of the shadows, by the blood of a virgin and the sevenfold symbol I call to your sons below the black earth! Children of the deeps, below the red earth, under the black earth, awaken and shake your awful manes! Let the hills rock and the stones topple upon row dark above them, the earth unstable beneath their feet! Let a wind from the deep black earth curl up beneath their feet, and blacken and shrivel theer lifted In the tense silence the roar of the hosts rose beneath him, borne on the wind

On the other side of the altar stood a man in a black hooded robe, whose coif shadowed pale delicate features and dark eyes cal of Asura!' whispered Xaltotun, his voice was like the hiss of an angered serpent 'Are you mad, that you seek your doo of Acheron!' said the other, and laughed 'Summon them loudly They will not hear, unless your shouts reverberate in hell'

Froe of the crest ca over her shoulders, a great gray wolf following at her heels

'Witch, priest and wolf,' hed 'Fools, to pit your charlatan's ainst my arts! With a wave of my hand I brush you fro of Python,' answered the Asurian

'Have you wondered why the shi+rki did not come down in flood and trap Conan on the other bank? When I saw the lightning in the night I guessed your plan, and my spells dispersed the clouds you had summoned before they could empty their torrents You did not even know that your rain- wizardry had failed'

'You lie!' cried Xaltotun, but the confidence in his voice was shaken

'I have felt the iainst ic, once made, unless he possessed the very heart of sorcery'

'But the flood you plotted did not come to pass,' answered the priest

'Look at your allies in the valley, Pythonian! You have led thes of the trap, and you cannot aid thee of the upper valley, behind the Poitanians, a horse about his head that flashed in the sun Recklessly he hurtled down the slopes, through the ranks of the Gundermen, who sent up a deep-throated roar and clashed their spears and shi+elds like thunder in the hills On the terraces between the hosts the sweat-soaked horse reared and plunged, and his wild rider yelled and brandished the thing in his hands like one demented It was the torn rely on the golden scales of a serpent that writhed thereon