Conan the Great

by Leonard Carpenter

  To a questioning look from Conan, Prospero responded with a nod. “In truth, Your Majesty... the horses have been saddled behind cover, the assault equipment laid out, and the men ordered to await our signal.” The count’s neat moustache semaphored upward as he smiled confidently over the camp and the looming' wall. “Inside the city, most of the enemy will be taking their afternoon rest. The arrival of the royal party has doubtless heightened their watchfulness—and so, Sire, I think it especially important that no alarm be given now.”

  All the lesser nobles and officers, including Delvyn and the strutting Amlunia, had dismounted and come forward to hear the exchange between Conan and Prospero. The dwarf in his battle regalia drew astonished looks from the troops and officers, as did the leman in her tight suit of leather and bronze. For caution’s sake, the king now ordered his entourage to disperse to nearby tents and stand at ease. He likewise passed orders for the rest of the Black Dragons to dismount and lead their horses away without fanfare.

  Then he waited with the others in false, watchful idleness. The wisp of candle left inside the bronze lamp burned with stubborn tenacity, consuming the last droplets of wax in its socket. The wick curled in its final throes, filling the flask with grey vapour, and died.

  An uneasy silence ensued. The wall and gate towers stood unaffected, bright in the westering sun.

  Then, in the middle of the broken field between the siege camp and the wall, a narrow hole in the ground appeared. Half-naked men, short and earth-smeared, began scrambling out of the cavity like nether devils. Their sudden appearance caused the battery officer to hold back his order, and for the first time since Conan’s arrival, the catapult barrage fell silent. These changes brought a shout from one of the sentries on the wall. Behind the lofty battlement, a new stirring of helmeted heads could be seen.

  Then, eerily, the earth shuddered underfoot. A billowing fountain of dust vented from the hole in the apron before the wall, blowing with it the last of the scurrying dirt-streaked troglodytes. The thick masonry of the nearest square tower began visibly to shift; it flashed in sunlight, then twisted and settled outward and downward. From its edge, tiny human figures toppled forward into vacant air.

  Then came the sound: a vast, shuddering rumble accompanied by the shriek of tearing timbers and by thinner human screams. The din continued for long moments, as did the agitation of the earth, subsiding only when the tower lay in a sloping heap of rubble beneath clouds of sun-shafted dust.

  “Curse of Gehenna, the gate still stands!” Conan’s oath rang out in the tremulous silence.

  “Aye, Your Majesty!” Prospero cried, turning to his engineer. “What say you to this, Minias?”

  “Held up by its crossbar, no doubt.” Shading his eyes, the sapper peered thoughtfully up into the dust cloud. The metal-clad edge of the gate could be seen jutting outward at an awkward angle. He stroked his grey-grizzled jaw, but offered no further suggestion.

  “Macha and Nemain, it matters not!” Conan wheeled to find his horse. “Launch the attack, we’ll have the wall in a trice! Ladders and bill-hooks are ready at hand, are they not? Cavalry, mount up!” “Aye.” Prospero hesitated as others around them started to move. “But there is. no breach for cavalry to pass through—horses cannot cross that pile of rubble!” “Shalmanezer can,” the king said, swinging up into his warhorse’s saddle. “Follow me!”

  Egilrude and Baron Halk had passed Conan’s attack order down the ranks; now trumpets blared, making a din greater than that of the tower’s collapse. As their shrieking faded, it was taken up by trumpets farther down the line. The note diminished in the distance, drowned by the cheers of an army surging forward to its fate.

  “Onward, dogs, for loot and empire!” Conan led the charge, a lone mounted warrior at the head of a foot-borne horde raising spears, bows, and siege ladders toward the wall. Man and horse outdistanced the running troops swiftly; then they thundered through the crowd of sappers, who parted for them, cheering. Coming to the fringe of the rubble hill where the gate tower had once stood, the king reined his horse aside in search of the surest way forward. The stallion, unwilling to be restrained, reared momentarily and pawed the air, whinnying fiercely. Then the beast lunged onto the smoking granite pile.

  “By Bel and Asura!” The ride at once became rough and jarring, as wild as a turn astride a raw Hyrkanian mustang. The footing was loose and uneven beneath the stallion’s massive hooves, and Conan seized Shalmenezer's mane to stay in the saddle, clamping his knees against the heaving, labouring rib cage. The mighty horse plunged and side-slipped, staggered over obstacles, trod half-buried bodies under, and leaped to clear the jagged gaps between man-sized stones. He scrabbled and faltered, starting small avalanches of shifting wreckage. Yet horse and man mounted gradually toward the ruin’s jagged crest.

  “Smokes of Belia! Faugh!” The air was yellow with rock dust and the fumes of abraded flints; yet the acrid cloud did not screen the horseman from marksmen atop the wall. Arrows and slung stones pattered onto the rocks around him, sent by a handful of city defenders who had ventured out onto the jagged edge of parapet above the fallen tower. Conan had naught but sword and ax strapped to his waist. Even if he had possessed spear or bow, he could not have loosed his grip on Shalmanezer long enough to ply them against the enemy. The siege catapults might have cleared the broken rampart, but their barrage had not resumed—understandably, in view of his own royal presence close under the wall.

  “Come, dogs, here to me!” By now the first of the following horsemen—officers, mainly, and Black Dragon guards—had reached the stone pile. Conan’s swift backward look told him they were making uncertain progress. A few spurred their steeds up the apron of rubble; others dismounted to drag their horses forward, or else abandoned them and climbed on foot. The first wave of footsoldiers jogged not far behind, their projectiles already striking high on the wall. But the returning rain of stones and shafts was heavy, and helmeted heads milled thickly atop the long, V-notched parapet. It appeared that, apart from the immediate devastation of the tower, the defence of the city would be vigorous.

  “By Crom’s ravening hounds!” Conan, clinging to the steeply canted back of his lunging, surging mount, suddenly faced a greater obstacle. As he reached the lowest point of the breach in the wall, he saw that the wreckage did not trail smoothly down into the city. The tower, undermined from without, had slumped outward, leaving a vertical drop of four or five man-lengths inside, above the paved courts of the town. There was no ramp nor stair remaining, and no chance for a safe descent. Instead, as the king gaped over the precipice into the town, his regal silhouette drew more arrow flights from below. Shafts whistled past him and clanked on his armour, augmenting those which continued to rain down from above.

  Luckily man and horse were fully armoured, and their plunging motion made both difficult targets. They never paused; Conan flicked the reins to command his fearless steed, and the stallion knew what to do. With a whickering scream he hurled his ebon bulk up onto the broad, crumbling fringe of the city wall, driving upward toward the jagged edge of the topmost parapet.

  “Crom Cruaich! By the bent, bloody Lord of the Mound!” Conan roared forth a savage war-cry, dragging his great sword out of its sheath.

  The archers had taken their most skilful shots as the horse laboured below them, and had missed. Now they loosed hastily, anxious to turn back the red-nostriled steed and its bellowing rider. But their shafts, failing to find chinks in the polished armour of horse or king, glanced harmlessly aside. A pair of them dropped their bows and turned to snatch up halberds, but they were too late.

  “Manannan’s fiery blood!” With a pantherish leap, the black destrier launched himself and his rider onto the broken rim of the wall top, bowling over one of the archers and knocking him senseless with flailing, sledge-like hooves. For a desperate moment the stallion struggled at the crumbling masonry edge. He scrabbled wildly on fetlocks and steel-shod hooves, sending loose stones showering down on the head
s of the infantry below. Then, triumphantly, the horse gained the parapet with all four limbs and catapulted forward. One of the rallying pikemen was knocked from the wall by his lunge. The other died under Conan’s sword; the great blade fell, rose, and fell again as the man turned to flee, splitting first his halberd, then his steel-helmeted skull. The last remaining archer, already in full flight, went a half-dozen strides before he was battered to a bloody shred beneath flying, steel-shod hooves. Like the others, he had had no choice but to fight or flee along the wall. On one side ran the battlement, on the other a bone-crushing drop to the alley below, with no possible escape.

  Thus was unleashed, so legends tell, Crom’s holy vengeance on the city of Numalia. The parapet lay open ahead; the runway atop it was broad—and so was Shalmanezer, massive in black-draped armour and savagely afire with battle lust. The smooth, level course freed Conan’s hands to wield both sword and ax from the saddle; the king, wise with the horse lore of Turan, rode as one with his mount, leaning agilely left and right to let his blades reap a rich red harvest. Limbs, heads, and entire bodies fell sundered in their hurtling wake, while the mad-eyed demon steed lashed out with hooves and gnashing, red-stained teeth.

  The Numalians on the parapet stood little chance before Conan’s onslaught. Summoned hastily to meet the challenge from below, they had no time or means to defend against a marauding horseman. Conan galloped the length of the wall, riding men down, scathing them with steel, or driving them from the edge. Those few who found shelter on ladders and stairways cringed helpless at his passing. Man and horse thundered by so rapidly, clearing the way as they went, that none could hope to pursue them; even an arrow flight seemed a forlorn chance.

  The Aquilonian king’s ride was well-timed for his host. In his wake, those defenders who mounted to the battlement found themselves face to face with besiegers swarming from knotted ropes and siege ladders. Their fight was joined late, on terms fatally advantageous to the city’s foes.

  Conan, his vision bathed in a pulsating red mist, watched each enemy loom before him, receive his blow, and crumple aside in a welter of red. Slash with sword, strike with ax; some died facing him, some plunging madly away. The king’s mailed body moved with the supple swiftness of a rattlesnake, arching, leaning, and striking from the saddle. His knees clung to his mount’s heaving sides, giving subtle guidance to the horse; the surging, clamouring rhythm of the charge was altered only when Shalmanezer veered aside to ride down an occasional shrinking coward. Conan had no care for what lay ahead; he might circle the whole city wall and then, for all he knew, turn and circle it again. He was Crom’s holy warrior, lost in the moment, only vaguely aware of the cheers and battle cries roaring up at him from one side of the wall and the screams, moans, and imprecations rising from the other.

  A halberdier raised his blade high, but then faltered. He turned to flee and died beneath Conan’s pitiless ax. An archer dropped his bow, sought to lower himself down the edge of the wall, and slipped out of sight with a forlorn cry. Another threw himself flat on the parapet, in evident hope that the horse would avoid him—a mistaken hope, as Shalmenezer's only momentarily broken, muffled gait told.

  Ahead a group of striving bodies signalled a fight. A ladder was set against the battlement, and black-helmeted men atop it fenced and sparred with Numalians who tried to dislodge them. Most of the nearby defenders had rushed to the spot, their swords and hook-headed pikes flashing in the sunlight. Shalmanezer, momentarily unopposed, broke into a faster pace, eager to rend and crush the mass of puny mortals ahead.

  Then the hindmost of the defenders turned—the captain of a spear company, judging by his grey tunic, unarmored but metal-capped. The long steel blade of his spear swung down through the air toward the fast-closing horseman. He grounded the butt of his weapon in a pavement-crack and crouched in place over the base of the shaft, holding the blade up at a low, vicious angle.

  There was no time to slow the frenzied horse, and no place to veer; the stallion continued his charge straight onto the unmoving warrior. With a dragging, sickening impact, Conan felt the spear point lodge in Shalmenezer's vitals. Yet the enraged horse lunged and staggered onward. Though impaled, he strained his massive neck forward as the spear man arose from his crouch. With a shrill, whinnying scream, he sank his teeth into the man’s throat.

  The hellish paroxysms of rage and pain that followed bore horse, rider, and horse’s victim over the back edge of the parapet. Conan felt himself plummeting through empty air; he clutched the mane and saddle before him, clawing at horseflesh for purchase. Then he was dashed face-first into the rough horsehair, striking, as luck would have it, atop his mount rather than beneath.

  The breath battered out of his lungs was slow in returning. His armour had protected him in places and crimped his flesh painfully in others. Beyond that, he felt no grave injury.

  Expecting to be set upon at any moment by the vengeful inhabitants, he hauled himself up. He retrieved his sword, which had clashed to earth nearby. But the alleyway he found himself in was empty of watchers. Except for a distant clamour from the wall above, it lay silent. The great stallion was dead, as was his heroic slayer, who lay in a spatter of blood mere paces away.

  Sheathing the sword and turning from the carnage, he strode back along the alley toward the embattled gate. The narrow lane was one of a series that ran in the shadow of the wall. Where clusters of ramshackle buildings leaned up against the massive structure for support, the way angled into the town. The few defenders and city folk he saw did not pause to challenge him. Most Numalians had evidently left the neighbourhood of the wall, or taken refuge indoors, forsaking the streets.

  The only active fighters Conan saw were those who looked down from the wall top—and who occasionally plunged to the pavement near him with a bone-breaking crash, or rolled and slithered down the adjoining roofs. All of those were defenders, some already dead, some merely wounded as their side was driven from the wall. Drawing near an open casement of stairs leading up to the parapet, Conan saw it hastily abandoned by a last few Numalian soldiers. They ran into the slums and disappeared, leaving the upper flights of the stairway crowded with descending Aquilonians and Nemedian allies. Cheering as they spied Conan, they rallied at the bottom to his lusty cry:

  “Follow me, troopers, to the city gate!”

  Some, but not all, fell in after him, and their ranks swelled with fresh arrivals as they went.

  But the west gate, when at length they found it, had already been forced. Infantry or sappers had managed to deepen the breach in the wall; in so doing they had created a new, inward-sloping pile of rubble, its jagged surface interspersed with dusty, arrow-pierced bodies.

  Down this grisly ramp the attackers must have swarmed, to seize the remaining gate tower and open the unblocked valve of the gate from within. Windrows of grey-clad Numalian corpses, mingled with a few in black and brown uniforms, attested to the savagery of the fight. Now boisterous invaders moved through the plaza with a stream of black-mailed horsemen clattering in through the gate, probably following Prospero to the assault on the municipal palace,

  Conan scanned the crowd for a horse to commandeer. The first he saw was too small and light for him, though it already bore two riders: the leather-clad Amlunia, waving a flask of Numalian wine, and, riding pillion behind her, the dwarf Delvyn in his brass armour.

  Conan glanced back and found his troop disintegrating in the frenzied atmosphere of the gateyard. He told their ranking officer to lead them against the citadel, pointing him the way. Then he strode forward and hailed his companions.

  “Hail, Conan the Invulnerable,” Delvyn cried as the horse wheeled to a stop. “Lone conqueror of the great wall of Numalia—can you be slain by any mortal hand?” He raised his dagger Hearts-pang and flourished it overhead. The gesture summoned cheers and salutes from passing soldiers, to whom Conan waved magnanimously.

  “If I am invulnerable,” the king confided to his boon friends, “I wish the last foeman h
ad aimed his spear at me, and not at my horse! Alas, brave Shalmenezer's like will not be found soon.”

  “Not likely,” Amlunia agreed, leaning down from her saddle to tip her wine flask to Conan’s lips. “But what matters a horse, O Master of the World? You can mount any horse—or any other creature you want, any time!” She laughed boldly and straightened up in the saddle. “Numalia is yours, Lord! You told me you once lived as a thief in these streets—now you have stolen the whole city!”

  “Aye,” Conan said, casting about restlessly. “But I would trade the whole miserable place for a strong horse. I need one to carry me to the fight at the palace.”

  “Another fight?” Amlunia cried petulantly. “Have you not had enough of fighting this day? The wall is breached, the city is ours! Now it is time for pillage and massacre, for rapine and frenzy in the true barbaric spirit!”

  “Indeed, Master,” Delvyn added solemnly from behind the leman, “the cry of havoc is already loosed. The troops have begun the sack, and by tomorrow this once proud town will be on her knees.”

  “A great mistake, that, if it makes them forget their duty to me!” Conan growled. “But ho, Baron Halk! And Egilrude, what tidings?”

  The two riders trotted up and reined in their steeds. “Hail, O King! How happy to find you well! I saw you unhorsed—” Egilrude swung down from his saddle even as he spoke. “Here, milord, take my steed! The west and north walls are cleared, thanks to your noble charge, and the south garrison has accepted our terms—”