Part 12 (1/2)
Conan stood among the spearmen. He knew the invaders would not try to drive a chariot charge up the pa.s.s in the teeth of the archers, but he grunted with surprise to see the riders dismounting. These wild men had no supply trains. Canteens and pouches hung at their saddle peaks. Now they drank the last of their water and threw the canteens away.
”This is the death grip,” he muttered as the lines formed on foot. ”I'd rather have had a cavalry charge; wounded horses bolt and ruin formations.”
The horde had formed into a huge wedge, of which the tip was the Stygians and the body, the mailed a.s.shuri, flanked by the nomads. In close formation, s.h.i.+elds lifted, they rolled onward, while behind them a tall figure in a motionless chariot lifted wide-robed arms in grisly invocation.
As the horde entered the wide valley mouth, the hill-men loosed their shafts. In spite of the protective formation, men dropped by dozens.
The Stygians had discarded their bows; helmeted heads bent to the blast, dark eyes glaring over the rims of their s.h.i.+elds, they came on in an inexorable surge, striding over their fallen comrades. But the Shemites gave back the fire, and the clouds of arrows darkened the skies. Conan gazed over the billowing waves of spears and wondered what new horror the sorcerer would invoke. Somehow he felt that Natohk, like all his kind, was more terrible in defense than in attack; to take the offensive against him invited disaster.
But surely it was magic that drove the horde on in the teeth of death.
Conan caught his breath at the havoc wrought in the onsweeping ranks.
The edges of the wedge seemed melting away, and already the valley was strewn with dead men. Yet the survivors came on like madmen unaware of death. By the very numbers of their bows, they began to swamp the archers on the cliffs. Clouds of shafts sped upward, driving the hillmen to cover. Panic struck at their hearts at that unwavering advance, and they plied their bows madly, eyes glaring like trapped wolves.
As the horde neared the narrower neck of the Pa.s.s, boulders thundered down, crushed men by the scores, but the charge did not waver. Conan's wolves braced themselves for the inevitable concussion. In their close formation and superior armor, they took little hurt from the arrows. It was the impact of the charge Conan feared, when the huge wedge should crash against his thin ranks. And he realized now there was no breaking of that onslaught. He gripped the shoulder of a Zaheemi who stood near.
”Is there any way by which mounted men can get down into the blind valley beyond that western ridge?”
”Aye, a steep, perilous path, secret and eternally guarded. But---”
Conan was dragging him along to where Amalric sat his great war-horse.
”Amalric!” he snapped. ”Follow this man! He'll lead you into yon outer valley. Ride down it, circle the end of the ridge, and strike the horde from the rear. Speak not, but go! I know it's madness, but we're doomed anyway; we'll do all the damage we can before we die! Haste!”
Amalric's mustache bristled in a fierce grin, and a few moments later his lancers were following the guide into a tangle of gorges leading off from the plateau. Conan ran back to the pikemen, sword in hand.
He was not too soon. On either ridge Shupras' hill-men, mad with antic.i.p.ation of defeat, rained down their shafts desperately. Men died like flies in the valley and along the slopes-and with a roar and an irresistible upward surge the Stygians crashed against the mercenaries.
In a hurricane of thundering steel, the lines twisted and swayed. It was war-bred n.o.ble against professional soldier.
s.h.i.+elds crashed against s.h.i.+elds, and between them spears drove in and blood spurted.
Conan saw the mighty form of Prince Kutamun across the sea of swords, but the press held him hard, breast to breast with dark shapes that gasped and slashed. Behind the Stygians the a.s.shuri were surging and yelling.
On either hand the nomads climbed the cliffs and came to hand-grips with their mountain kin. All along the crests of the ridges the combat raged in blind, gasping ferocity. Tooth and nail, frothing mad with fanaticism and ancient feuds, the tribesmen rent and slew and died.
Wild hair flying, the naked Kus.h.i.+tes ran howhng into the fray.
It seemed to Conan that his sweat-blinded eyes looked down into a rising ocean of steel that seethed and eddied, filling the valley from ridge to ridge. The fight was at a b.l.o.o.d.y deadlock. The hillmen held the ridges, and the mercenaries, gripping their dripping pikes, bracing their feet in the b.l.o.o.d.y earth, held the pa.s.s. Superior position and armor for a s.p.a.ce balanced the advantage of overwhelming numbers. But it could not endure. Wave after wave of glaring faces and flas.h.i.+ng spears surged up the slope, the a.s.shuri filling the gaps in the Stygian ranks.
Conan looked to see Amalric's lances rounding the western ridge, but they did not come, and the pikemen began to reel back under the shocks.
And Conan abandoned all hope of victory and of life. Yelling a command to his gasping captains, he broke away and raced across the plateau to the Khoraja reserves who stood trembling with eagerness. He did not glance toward Yasmela's pavilion. He had forgotten the princess; his one thought was the wild beast instinct to slay before he died.
”This day you become knights!” he laughed fiercely, pointing with his dripping sword toward the hillmen horses, herded near by. ”Mount and follow me to h.e.l.l!”
The hill steed reared wildly under the unfamiliar clash of the Kothic armor, and Conan's gusty laugh rose above the din as he led them to where the eastern ridge branched away from the plateau. Five hundred footmen -pauper patricians, younger sons, black sheep-on half-wild Shemite horses, charging an army, down a slope where no cavalry had ever dared charge before!
Past the battle-choked mouth of the pa.s.s they thundered, out onto the corpse-littered ridge. Down the steep slope they rushed, and a score lost their footing and rolled under the hoofs of their comrades. Below them men screamed and threw up their arms-and the thundering charge ripped through them as an avalanche cuts through a forest of saplings.
On through the close-packed throngs the Khorajis hurtled, leaving a crushed-down carpet of dead.
And then, as the horde writhed and coiled upon itself, Amalric's lancers, having cut through a cordon of hors.e.m.e.n encountered in the outer valley, swept around the extremity of the western ridge and smote the host in a steel-tipped wedge, splitting it asunder. His attack carried all the dazing demoralization of a surprise on the rear.