Part 2 (2/2)

The bandits looked Conan up and down. One of them s.h.i.+fted position, until a look from both Conan and a comrade nailed his feet to the ground. ”Your backs are safe from me as long as mine is safe from you,”

Conan added.

The st.u.r.diest of the bandits seemed to reach a decision. ”Four men on either side of the trail, on this side of the spur,” he said. He jerked a thumb toward the spur.

”No more?”

”Half again as many to the other side of the spur. Runs across the valley, it does, with a gap for the trail. The others, they jump out, drive the caravan through the gap. 'Stead o' safety, they find us, blocking the trail.”

Then the first bandits would pour through the gap, taking the caravan in the rear. Unable to move, mounted men lost their greatest advantage in fighting those on foot. Conan himself had learned as much in Turanian service, where light-armed foot frequently overmatched mounted nomads if the foot could chose their ground.

”Well and good,” Conan said. ”Where do you want me?”

The bandit leader jerked a thumb again, this time toward the left.

Conan understood. That flank would trap him between the other bandits and the spur. If he had thoughts of treachery or flight, he might not live to act upon them.

Or so the bandits intended. Conan would not quarrel with their folly, or with anything else about them, unless they gave him cause. Before he took his leave of them, though, he might teach them a lesson or two about judging Cimmerians.

The bandits now spread out in a line some forty paces long. The farther end of the line was out of Conan's sight in the underbrush. The bandit leader was just barely in view, and Conan knew it meant that the man probably could not see him. A glance also showed Conan several places where, with a few steps, he could become as invisible as the air. One of the places, he judged, would not only hide him from his new and dubious comrades, but would allow him to see clearly what lay on the trail.

It was no part of Conan's plan to follow the bandits into a fight against impossible odds or against folk he might not wish to have as enemies.

The Cimmerian had just finished settling into place when the bandits beyond the spur launched their attack. Bloodcurdling shrieks rose, echoed by the screams of horses torn by sharp steel or arrowheads.

Those men not shrieking hurled war cries at one another, and more than war cries. Conan heard stones cracking hard against s.h.i.+elds.

Then he caught a single word in one of the war cries. It was a name, and at the sound of it, Conan's blood leaped in his veins.

”Raihna! Raihna! Raihna!”

Chapter 2.

Conan had never known the woman by any name save ”Raihna,” the name a score of leather-lunged men were now shouting as a war cry. But he had known her well as battle comrade, shrewd judge of horseflesh, cheerful bedmate-and companion on an adventure into the Ibars Mountains that had been the stuff of nightmares.

If this was the same Raihna. It was not an uncommon name in Bossonia and several other lands. Conan felt no call to bare steel in defense of a total stranger.

He dropped his bearskin, s.h.i.+fted his sword so that it would not clatter against the rock, and flung himself at the face of the spur. Fingers with an iron grip and booted feet found holds, and the Cimmerian swiftly mounted the height. As he climbed, he drew steadily to the right, to where he could catch a glimpse through the gap.

The bandits had once again forgotten that they had backs that might be vulnerable, and this time they also forgot that they had flanks. Conan scrambled up to his intended perch without so much as a glance from below.

It was his Raihna. The woman who sat a scrubby but strong-limbed mare in the middle of the fight wore a helmet that covered a good part of her face. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s now strained a much-repaired hauberk. Conan recognized the wide, gray eyes, the freckles on the uptilted nose, and the long, fine neck.

Then she shouted a string of orders, and certainty became more certain still. The voice had roughened a trifle since they had parted, but dust and winters on the road would leave their traces on a throat of bra.s.s.

A man leaped from a tree onto the rump of Raihna's mount. The mare staggered under the a.s.sault, but her rider was equal to the situation.

Unable to swing her sword for fear of hitting comrades, Raihna drove the pommel into the man's face. His short sword grated on her mail; then its point caught in a broken link and drove through. Conan saw Raihna's lips tighten.

He also saws her hand rise, holding a stout Aquilonian dagger drawn from her boot. The bandit was so busy trying to press home his sword thrust that he never saw the steel that opened his throat. His eyes were wide but unseeing as he toppled off the horse, leaving both Raihna and the mare drenched in another's blood.

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