Part 46 (2/2)

”Captain, I might not be able to warn you. What if you and Raihna are close-grappled with the Transformed? Best you trust me to hit them and not you.”

Conan couldn't help laughing. The boy was right, of course. And anyone who could grin like that, in what might indeed be his last minutes of life-

”Bora, perhaps you shouldn't join the army after all. In five years, you would be giving me orders!”

”They would never make a hillman-” Bora began soberly. Raihna's shout interrupted him.

”Here they come!”

Conan sprang to his post by the barricade. Eremius had taken longer than they expected to form up his creations for battle. What Illyana had done with that time, Conan did not know. He and Raihna had narrowed the cave mouth so that only two or three of the Transformed could attack at once. He had also placed a few throwing stones ready to hand.

The Transformed stormed up the hill in two ragged lines. At Raihna's signal Bora sent a stone hurtling low through the cave mouth. It struck a Transformed in the chest, without so much as knocking him down. Conan flung a fist-sized stone. He aimed for eyes and struck a forehead.

Again the Transformed did not even fall. It howled in rage and pain and seemed to climb faster.

”I think we have the pick of the Transformed coming up,” Conan said.

”The pick of Bossonia and Cimmeria stand here,” Raihna replied. She tossed her head. The Jewel-light s.h.i.+mmered on her hair as it flowed about her shoulders. Then she tossed her sword and caught it by the hilt.

A Transformed flung a stone. It drove chips and dust from the barricade into Conan's face. As he blinked, Bora replied. The slingstone struck a Transformed in the knee, hard enough to leave it limping.

Then the spearhead of the attack reached the defenders. Conan and Raihna had practiced together since the return to Fort Zheman. Now Conan's training in the rude school of surviving and Raihna's training from Master Barathres merged as easily as their bodies did in love.

Conan feinted high to draw the attention of a Transformed upward. His sword crashed into a scaly arm. That upraised arm left an armpit exposed. Raihna's dagger leaped upward into the armpit, finding the expected weak spot where the scales were thin to allow free movement.

The Transformed reeled back, holding a crippled arm. A human would have been dead, and this one at least was out of the fight.

Another Transformed gripped the top of the barricade. Conan hewed at the nearest hand, three, four, five cuts, as if chopping firewood with his sword. At the fifth stroke, the hand flopped limply. At the sixth it fell off entirely, landing on Conan's side of the barricade. Reeking blood sprayed into Conan's face, neither looking nor smelling anything like human gore. The Transformed's howls echoed around the cave.

Conan's fight against the climbing Transformed left Raihna to hold the opening single-handed. Two Transformed who came at her jammed in the opening, letting her slash and thrust until they reeled away b.l.o.o.d.y and daunted. The next enemy was swifter.

Conan turned to find Raihna in the clutches of a Transformed, being drawn toward it. She had blinded it and thrust deep into its chest, without reaching its unnatural life. The talons were already gas.h.i.+ng her flesh. The fangs would reach her throat before the creature died.

They had not done so, when Conan's sword came down across the bridge of the creature's nose. Under the scale armor, the bones there were still thin enough to be vulnerable. Shattering under the Cimmerian's sword, they drove splinters into the Transformed's brain. It convulsed, arching backward. Raihria leaped free, kicking out. The Transformed crashed into an approaching comrade. Both went down.

Raihna stripped off her tunic, used it to roughly wipe her oozing wounds, then tossed it aside. Bare to the waist, she raised her weapons again.

”You won't distract them that way,” Conan said, laughing. ”You might distract Bora, though.”

Bora certainly seemed not to mind fighting in the presence of two splendid and nearly unclothed women. His eye for targets was still keener than his eye for the women. As the Transformed knocked down by the latest kill struggled to its feet, a stone caught it in the eye.

The stone was sharp and reached the brain. The Transformed fell, kicked wildly, but did not rise. Other Transformed held back until the kicking ceased.

”That's five down or out against your scratches and tunic,” Conan said.

”How many left?”

”Oh, not more than forty or so.”

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