Part 29 (1/2)
”We're going out to fight”
”Seven against seven hundred?” said Antar ”I am no craven, but-”
In a feords Conan told hierd springs his trap, we can take the Yezht just be able to turn the tide We have nothing to lose, for if Olgerd destroys my friends he'll come back and finish us”
”But how shall we be known froir
”Your reavers will hew us doith the rest and ask questions afterwards”
”In here,” said Conan In the armory, he handed out silvered coats of scale mail and bronze helmets of an antique pattern, with tall, horsehair crests, unlike any he had seen in Yanaidar ”Put these on
Keep together and shout 'Conan!” as your war-cry, and we shall do all right” He donned one of the helht of the armor and complained that they were half blinded by the helmets, whose cheek plates covered most of their faces
”Put theht, no desert jackal's slash-and-ran raid Noait here until I fetch you”
He climbed back to the top of the tower The Free Co the road in compact companies Then they halted Balash was too crafty an old wolf to rush headlong into a city he knew nothing about A few men detached themselves from the mass and ran towards the town to scout They disappeared behind the houses, then reappeared again, running back towards thein ragged formation
The invaders spread out into a battle line The sun glinted on sheets of arrows arching between the two groups A few Yezmites fell, while the rest closed with the Kushafis and the kozaki There was an instant of dusty confusion through which sparkled the whirl of blades Then the Yezmites broke and fled back towards the houses Just as Conan feared, the invaders poured after the like blood-mad demons Conan knew the hundred had been sent out to draw his erd would never have sent such an inferior force to charge the invaders otherwise
They converged froh Balash was unable to check their headlong rush, he did at least e to beat and curse theed into the end of the street
Before they reached it, not fifty paces behind the last Yez down the stairs
”Come on!” he shouted ”Nanaia, bolt the door behind us and stay herd”
Down the stair to the first storey they pelted, out the door, past the deserted siege tower, and through the gap in the wall nobody barred their way Olgerd must have taken from the palace every man who could bear arh the front entrance As they eiven by a deafening roar of a dozen long bronze truerd's Hyrkanians By the time they reached the street, the trap had closed Conan could see the backs of athe street from side to side, while archers poured arrows into the mass from the roofs of the houses on either side
With a silent rush Conan led his little group straight into the rear of the Yezirs thrust theh the back As the first victims fell, the desert Sheain, while in theskulls and lopping off arms at the shoulder As the pikes broke or becairs dropped them and took to their swords
Such was the ht that he and his little squad had felled thrice their own number before the Yezmites realized they were taken in the rear As they looked around, the unfaive back with cries of dis and chopping attackers seeirs
At the cry, the trapped force roused itself There were only two h by the kozak facing hiht his ax down on the other's helmet so hard that it not only split helm and head but also broke the ax handle
In an instant of lull, when Conan and the Zuagirs faced the kozaki and nobody was sure of the others' identity, Conan pushed his helmet back so that his face showed
”To -brothers!”
”It is Conan!” cried the nearest Free Coh the host
”Ten thousand pieces of gold for the Cierd Vladislav