Part 26 (2/2)

The defile was blocked by a wild and terrible band of ed, shock-headed men with spears in their hands hundreds of them And up on the cliffs appeared other faces thousands of faces wild, gaunt, ferocious faces, marked by fire and steel and starvation

”A trick of Conan's!” raged Valerius

”Conan knows nothing of it,” laughed Tiberias ”It was the plot of broken ht Conan has not divided his army We are the rabble who followed him, the wolves who skulked in these hills, the homeless men, the hopeless men This was our plan, and the priests of Asura aided us with the mist Look at them, Valerius! Each bears the mark of your hand, on his body or on his heart!

”Look at man burned upon me?

Once you knew me Once I was lord of Ahter your mercenaries ravished and slew You said I would not sacrifice hty Gods, if I had a thousand lives I would give theht it! Look on the ! Their hour has coe is your toh

Try to fight your way back through the defile: spears will block your path, boulders will crush you fro for you in hell!”

Throwing back his head he laughed until the rocks rang Valerius leaned fro shoulder-bone and breast Tiberias sank to the earth, still laughing ghastlily through a gurgle of gushi+ng blood

The druuttural thunder; boulders caclouds from the cliffs

XXIII

THE ROAD TO ACHERON

Daas just whitening the east when Amalric drew up his hosts in the mouth of the Valley of Lions This valley was flanked by low, rolling but steep hills, and the floor pitched upward in a series of irregular natural terraces On the uppermost of these terraces Conan's ar the attack The host that had joined hi down from Gunderland, had not been composed exclusively of spearmen With them had come seven thousand Bossonian archers, and four thousand barons and their retainers of the north and west, swelling the ranks of his cavalry

The pikee-shaped formation at the narrow head of the valley There were nineteen thousand of theh some four thousand were Aquilonians of the other provinces They were flanked on either hand by five thousand Bossonian archers Behind the ranks of the pikehts sat their steeds hts of Poitain, nine thousand Aquilonians, barons and their retainers

It was a strong position His flanks could not be turned, for that wouldthe steep, wooded hills in the teeth of the arrows and swords of the Bossonians His camp lay directly behind him, in a narrow, steep-walled valley which was indeedup at a higher level He did not fear a surprize froees and broken men whose loyalty to him was beyond question

But if his position was hard to shake, it was equally hard to escape from It was a trap as well as a fortress for the defenders, a desperate last stand of men who did not expect to survive unless they were victorious The only line of retreat possible was through the narrow valley at their rear

Xaltotun mounted a hill on the left side of the valley, near the wide her than the others, and was known as the King's Altar, for a reason long forgotten Only Xaltotun knew, and his memory dated back three thousand years

He was not alone His two familiars, silent, hairy, furtive and dark, ith hiirl, bound hand and foot They laid her on an ancient stone, which was curiously like an altar, and which crowned the su centuries it had stood there, worn by the ele but a curiously 232

shapen natural rock But what it was, and why it stood there, Xaltotun remembered from of old

The fanomes, and Xaltotun stood alone beside the stone altar, his dark beard blown in the wind, overlooking the valley

He could see clear back to the winding shi+rki, and up into the hills beyond the head of the valley He could see the gleae of steel drawn up at the head of the terraces, the burganets of the archers glinting ahtsabove their hel thicket

Looking in the other direction he could see the long serried lines of the Ne steel into the ay pavilions of the lords and knights and the drab tents of the common soldiers stretched back almost to the river

Like a river of reat scarlet dragon rippling over it First marched the bowers on triggers After theth of the arhts, their banners unfurled to the wind, their lances lifted, walking their great steeds forward as if they rode to a banquet

And higher up on the slopes the srihts, and, as in most Hyborian nations, it was the chivalry which was the sword of the are of the arhts There were twenty-one thousand of these, pike as they advanced, without breaking ranks, launching their quarrels with a whir and tang But the bolts fell short or rattled har shi+elds of the Gundere, the arching shafts of the Bossonians reaking havoc in their ranks

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 crossbow 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 234

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, and his voice was like the hiss of an angered serpent

”Are you mad, that you seek your doom? Ho, Baal! Chiron!”