Part 44 (1/2)

The count's breath came quickly, for all that it made his ribs ache beneath his blued-steel armor. He had few men in hand save his mounted men-at-arms, and none too many of them. Also, they were scattered and would need summoning were they to charge in a ma.s.s behind him.

But if they charged as he knew they could, the battle was won. Won, moreover, with little owing to the Star Brothers.

The count raised the mace topped with the steel hand that was his mark of captaincy. Messengers sitting at the head of their horses leaped up and began to mount.

Now Queen Chienna would see who had the skill in war to rule this land.

Aybas had no particular place in the battle line, being a captain without a company of his own. He had no doubt that he was not yet altogether trusted.

He had made friends with a village head man who led the peasant levies, however. Decius had planned to keep them in the rear of the line, but when the Pougoi ended on the far right flank, the captain-general had to devise a new array. This brought the levies forward into the line, and it was with the levies that Aybas stood when Count Syzambry charged.

It was like no charge that Aybas had ever seen, or even imagined. The fifty or more armored hors.e.m.e.n seemed to trickle forward, like drops of water flowing down the silver face of a mirror. They formed no line, and few seemed to have proper lances to make such a line deadly even if they formed it.

Yet they were coming on swiftly, and if they had few lances, they had swords and maces in abundance. If they reached level ground in the midst of the royal line, they would pierce it like an arrow through silk.

They could also be stopped short of the line and level ground if one could deny them a little hillock a hundred paces ahead. Aybas looked along the line of peasants, saw the fear already in their faces, and knew that he must command a charge.

Whirling his sword over his head, he gave the war cry of the house into which he had been born.

”Wine of Victory!”

Then he charged, one man against fifty. He did not expect to reach the hillock alive, but somehow he did. He did not expect the levies to follow him, nor did he dare to look back, but somehow he was not alone when he started climbing.

Before he could draw breath, he found himself among the boulders with fifty men around him, all of them cheering as if the battle was already won. Two were beating on the helmet of a fallen hors.e.m.e.n with their felling axes.

”Leave be!” Aybas shouted. It was unknightly to abuse a fallen foe, as he had learned in boyhood. It was also foolish to give attention to a harmless foe when there were many still fighting. That Aybas had learned in manhood, from many rough teachers.

His shouting brought the levies around to face their front just in time. A bold horseman was spurring up the hillock. Aybas knew that his reprieve was about to end as he dashed forward.

The man whirled his mace in a fine gesture, then brought it down. He would have been better advised to forgo the gesture.

Aybas leaped up with a speed he had hardly known he had in him and caught the shaft of the descending mace. At the same time, he slashed hard at the man's leg and heaved himself backward.

His blade only clanged on armor, but the rest of Aybas's attack carried through. The man flew out of his saddle, too surprised to even cry. He struck the ground headfirst, sprawling beside Aybas with his helmet flattened and his head at an impossible angle to his neck.

Aybas leaped again and caught the reins of the dead man's horse. The stirrups danced wildly, almost defeating his efforts to mount. At last he succeeded, and the levies greeted him with a wild cheer.

Syzambry's hors.e.m.e.n did not cheer. Indeed, it seemed to Aybas that they were no longer charging and were even looking to their rear. It was hard to make out what they might be looking at between the forest and the mist.

It seemed, however, as if someone had flung himself against Syzambry's rear and was giving it a fight for its life. A moment later, Aybas's ears told him more than his eyes did as a peal of Marr's witch-thunder rolled from the forest.

Within the forest, the witch-thunder made Conan deaf for a moment. He did not care. For now, he needed only his sword, and his eyes to guide the blade. Also, perhaps, his legs to bring him to close quarters with the Star Brothers.

Not that there were no foes ready to hand. As the Guards and the Pougoi hacked their way into Syzambry's rear, they met every sort of soldier the count had not put into his battle line. They also met men who could not be called soldiers by any conceit. Most of these fled, and this was as well. Conan had no love for killing men as helpless as babes. There were enough foes worth a man's steel already, and the day was not yet won.

Conan cast a look behind him. Marr the Piper was running with the soldiers, playing as he ran. His eyes were wide but unseeing, and Conan would have sworn any oath asked of him that those eyes glowed blue.

Magic, surely! But without magic, how could the man both play and run, and without the piper close, how could Conan face the Star Brothers?

The Star Brothers were also close, more so than Conan realized. He burst through a line of dwarfish ash trees to face a circle of baggage wagons swarming with Pougoi warriors. In the middle of the circle stood two Star Brothers, chanting so loudly that Conan heard them even over the piping.