I jumped him before he could come to any conclusions. “Are those dogs yours?” I roared.
He was a bulky, hard-faced, red-haired man who didn’t like to be roared at, but he was still uncertain. “Yes,” he said surlily.
“Well, if you want any of ‘em left,” I snarled, “teach ‘em to tree what they’re after.”
A group of three more joined him as I said that. “He’s probably the fellow who picked Conan up,” one suggested.
“If he is we can run him down later,” the red man said, “but Conan’s the one we’re after, and if he’s riding the horse alone now he has a chance of getting away. Get the dogs going.”
More horsemen had joined them during their brief counsel and still more appeared as the hunt streamed away. “We may be back for you,” one of the first called tome.
I knew they’d be back. It wouldn’t take them long to find that the bay was riderless, but I could use the short reprieve. Unbuckling my sword, I commenced stacking the loose blocks of stone to form a rampart.
A loud splashing told me that there was water in our refuge; which was good news. In another minute my ally reappeared with dripping hair. He started to help me, but I waved him aside. “Rest up,” I ordered. “You’ll get plenty of exercise pretty soon.”
He sat down and for the first time since I had met him he spoke. “I’ve had some exercise already.”
He was a fine-looking chap now that he wasn’t gasping like a fish on a sun-hot rock. He had a long, powerful body topped by a long, exceedingly keen face, weathered but clear-skinned under his mop of light brown hair. His age, I judged, was about the same as mine, and he looked no more like a Frank than I did, either. Both from his name and appearance I picked him for a Breton.
Putting another block in place, I straightened and pointed to my scrip. “There’s food in there. You’d better eat something if your stomach’s stopped jumping.”
“Thanks—and for the other thing, too. I’m sorry you didn’t go on.”
“There wasn’t much sense in going on,” I answered truthfully. “The horse was spent, and they would have had to follow me to make sure I didn’t go for help.”
“Yes.” He moved his sword out of the way and reached into my scrip. “I shouldn’t have got you into this, but I wanted something to put my back against.”
I knew how he must have felt with those dogs getting steadily nearer. “Don’t blame you,” I said.
He took a huge bite of bread and meat, swallowed and took another, thinking hard. “Maybe,” he said after he’d gulped down a third, “they’ll let you go if I explain that you’re a stranger who doesn’t so much as know who I am.”
“They won’t listen,” I told him. Besides, I’d begun to remember how the Abbot had spoken to me of a man named Conan. There couldn’t, I reasoned, be many men so called thereabouts who were important enough to be hunted by a small army. And I knew who was chiefly against him. “Are those lads Chilbert’s by any chance?”
He nodded. “Oliver, the red-haired stench, is one of his chief lieutenants.”
“Then they’ll soon know,” I snickered drily, “that I not only tried to save your neck but took you up on Chilbert’s own pet horse.”
He stared at me. “Why of course it was! How the devil did you get hold of it?”
“I liked it better than my own.” I might have known, I thought, that Chilbert would continue to haunt me. That man had been fatal to me from the first.
My little wall was now nearly waist high, and I stopped there. “You’re Conan the Breton with power in these parts,” I said. “Is there any chance of friends finding you?”
He shrugged, not bothering to ask how I knew about him.
“They’ll start looking, soon, I suppose. I was on a wolf hunt, lost the others, my horse broke a leg, and I got lost myself, what with no sun to go by. Then I ran foul of Oliver. I managed to hide from him first, but he got the dogs. My men won’t know where to begin looking.”
I went to get a drink then returned to listen. “They’re coming back now,” I informed him.
He rose to stand beside me. “What’s your name?” He put his hand on my shoulder when I had told him. “Now we’ll show them that it’s one thing to corner and another to kill.” He had recovered his wind, and the respite had given him time to call on the reserve strength of a mighty frame. In spite of the weariness he must have felt he looked very capable indeed.
I cut my cape in two and we each wrapped a half around our left arms to give them some measure of protection. We had just finished when they all came in sight, one of them, I saw with regret, leading the recaptured bay. Oh well, I conceded with wry philosophy, I would soon have no use for horses.
I felt very quiet. Nothing seemed quite real, and things happened with preternatural slowness. I was not bitter at being irretrievably trapped in a quarrel whose interests were not mine. Causes were no longer important in face of the actuality that was soon to be.
They halted in a cluster, the men in front and the dogs behind this time. “We’re going to take you, Conan,” Oliver announced.
“You may,” the man with me said, “but first we’ll take some of you.”
The riders were looking the situation over and were not as cheerful as they might have been. Their horses would be useless, and not more than four or five could come at us without getting in each other’s way. The red man looked at me. “We’ll let you go free,” he offered.
I spat. “Naturally. And you’ll give me back Chilbert’s horse, too.” Conan laughed, and Oliver cursed me as grace before getting down to business.
At his order they all dismounted. Then five put their shields together and came at us. They had steel caps but no mail and muttered to each other, working themselves up to it. And suddenly anger rushed through me. My hour was near, but if it had to be I would kill meanwhile and like it.
“What’s the matter with the red dog?” I jeered. “He’s got his tail between his legs before he’s even been hit.”
Oliver ran forward at that and shouldered into the line just as it reached us. “That’s better!” Conan approved and sliced off part of his shield.
The wall protected our legs, but they had bucklers for the upper half of their bodies. I caught two swords with mine, dodged under an axe, and swept my counterstroke at their shanks to make them step back. One of the others had his foot on the wall, and Conan took it off at the ankle. They all withdrew a minute to carry the maimed man away.
“Good work!” I applauded.
Conan picked up the foot and hit Oliver in the back of the neck. “You left something,” he reminded them.
They were angry men when they came again, more swiftly. Holding shields together is sound defense; but it limits sword play, and they could only hack at me with overhead strokes which signaled themselves. The axe-man, however, was bothering me, for he kept trying to hit my blade and break it. But as axe work requires both hands he lifted his shield with every full stroke. With my left hand I drew my heavy-bladed knife and threw it underhand just as he was getting set for a blow. It stuck in his stomach, and he folded up, out of fighting for some days to come.
I had a couple of cuts but nothing worse, I saw, when they withdrew to get him out of the way; and Conan was only scratched. We had worked that time, though, and we were both panting a little. “That’s what I call giving a man his stomach full,” Conan cheered me.
“Did you nick any of them?”
He grinned. “Oliver hasn’t as much of one ear as he used to have. The only trouble with whittling away that man is you improve his appearance.”
He was enjoying himself, and I, too, was in a fine mood. We were no longer impersonal but good friends, and spontaneously we shook hands and laughed. They would wear us down, but meanwhile it was good to be giving them a rough time.
But they were in no hurry to come back, and it was easy to see why. The cloudy sky was bringing an early night, and the fact that we were in the vault looking out gave us
a marked advantage of light that they naturally begrudged. They’d wait for morning, and I heard Oliver giving instructions about preparations for the night. But they had scarcely unsaddled their horses when rain started falling.
“That means my own dogs will be of no help in locating me now,” Conan said. “Still they probably wouldn’t have found me in time anyhow.” He raised his voice. “Hey, Oliver! Why don’t you come in here out of the rain?”
Save myself no one present liked that joke. They had to stay right before us in the open or lose us. So they huddled wretchedly in the rain, which soon became hard and steady. Their sorry plight was a constant source of joy to us in the shelter of the vault, and we commented frequently.
Chapter
Five
OUR last sign of them as a black night fell showed that they and the dogs had formed a close ring around us. We were fairly satisfied, however, that none of them would risk attacking us when he could not see to strike. “Sleep if you can,” I told Conan. “You’ve had a hard day.”
Rainy nights are warmer than clear ones, so it was not too cool. I could see nothing shortly, and the teeming blotted out other sounds; but I kept some sort of watch. In the end, though, the myriad splashings worked on my drowsiness, and I, too, slept until a mighty yawn of Conan’s reached through to me. It was still raining hard, and I could not perceive the hand I passed before my eyes to test the darkness. But the marked chill indicated it was well past midnight; and as it was, in fact, too cold for me to go back to sleep I sat up stiffly, shaking my head a little.
For the first time since having become involved in that disastrous affair I was neither too busy nor too tired to consider more than its factual aspects. Musing over the sequence of events responsible for leading me to where I then was, I couldn’t help but seriously ponder the extent of the Pict’s complicity. Well, if his had been the motivating influence he had certainly done a thorough job of fixing me up.
It was queer to sit blending with the night, conscious of savage reality that was yet rendered improbable by its silent invisibility. Out in the vague but proximate somewhere men were enduring the punishment of . ceaseless drenching in order to be sure of killing me come morning. They would be real enough then, but now, although ‘hey were hardly further off than I could toss a mountain, I wouldn’t so much as feel their vindictive presence, let alone picture them in their malice, fortitude and misery.
Conan, on the other hand, though equally concealed from me, had a credible existence. It was pleasant to know that he was stretched out a few feet away, a man I already thought of with a degree of warmth that surprised me. As long as I had allowed myself to be trapped I was glad to know that I had done so for no ordinary man.
He yawned again. “Giving up sleep?” I asked, hoping that he might feel in the mood to talk.
He grunted, and when he finally replied I could tell that he, too, was sitting up. “It gave me up. Next time you rescue me bring along a couple of blankets.”
“Well, we’re warm and cozy compared to the fresh-air fiends out there. Who do you think built this place?”
“It’s Roman work. They had great farms hereabouts. I guess this was a cooler.”
“It’s a good thing you knew about it.”
“I used to come here as a boy. This is my land, though I’ve been much away. I’m glad I’m dying on it.”
“I never had any place,” I said after considering his remark. “I made the mistake of being born to a third son of a chief, so all that they could think to do with me was to farm me out to the Church. But the only thing that caught hold was the poetry I found in the monastery library. So I left when I was ready and have been footloosing it ever since.”
“I was in school in Ireland myself,” he said. “My mother sent me there when my father was killed, so that his local rivals wouldn’t have me done away with also. Yet this land always called to me, and I was determined to have it back. Danes captured me before I was ready, but I didn’t stay a thrall; and I was glad enough to spend some years at Viking work to round out my education at points where it had been neglected. I returned about a year and a half ago.”
“What did the family enemies do about that?”
“Oh, they were all dead or elsewhere, and this immediate district was in such a disorganized state that nobody had any power worth mentioning. The absence of any purposeful active force, not enemies to break, was the first problem with which I found myself confronted. Anyhow, I didn’t really care about vengeance. All I wanted was my land and my people. After my father there was no one capable of looking after them.”
“A man who can look after himself is doing well these days,” I said.
“Yes, but because I saw what had to be done, and knew how it could be done, and because men will follow me I could accomplish things for my people which they couldn’t for themselves.” He was citing a fact, not boasting, and I noted that he, as I had also caught myself doing, was thinking of himself in the past tense. “I didn’t,” he went on, “want my people to be forced either to rot as outlaws or slink through life like starved whores. “
“Chilbert was no help to you,” I suggested.
“No. He used to pillage this locality and now in accordance with his new ambition to be a count he wants to own it. I’ve beat off his raiding parties, but this fall, I hear, he’s going to start a concerted drive for conquest. Originally my scheme called only for retrieving my own, but because Chilbert would not be content with bullying his own domain I have tried to gather strength to break him. Well, I’ve lost out to him—lost other things, too.”
I took it that he referred to a wife and possible children—a man who had such definite knowledge of what he wanted to do with his time as Conan manifested would probably have an ordered domestic scheme as well—but I forbore to ask. There was no woman to mourn for me, I was grateful to think, and the few men who might care would never hear where and in what manner I ended.
I rose to see my last day, looking through the rain at the dim figures of water-logged enemies. “Did you have a nice night, Oliver?” I called solicitously.
“A pretty seedy bunch, if you ask me,” Conan said, clicking his tongue. “What do you figure they’re doing out there, anyhow?”
“They claim as how they’re going to fight us.”
“What? With just those few, scroungy, little warts?” Conan raised his voice in protest. “Look here, Oliver; you’d better get Chilbert to send you some help.”
“They’d probably do better,” I opined, “if they kept out of it altogether and let the dogs do the fighting.”
Conan seemed astonished. “Why, hell, I thought they were dogs! All their parents were.”
Some of them started for us at that, but Oliver snarled at them. “Wait till the light’s better!” he ordered.
We ostentatiously ate our breakfast before those hungry men, then we stretched and flexed to work the kinks out of us. Shortly the rain slacked off, stopped soon after; and the sky began clearing. “The sun won’t bother us till late,” Conan remarked, “but then it’ll shine right in our eyes and be the death of us—if we last that long.”
Oliver had the patience of a good leader. He waited until his sodden men had some of the stiffness and dankness worked out of them, while we watched blue spread over a shiny green corner of the earth. “They’re going to rush us this time,” I said, watching them line up three deep.
In a minute they charged at us, four abreast. “Up on the wall!” Conan roared, and we leaped on it to strike down.
The men in front promptly became more interested in warding off our blows than in going forward, but the rear ranks had no such deterrent. They knocked the slowing leaders off balance, and we swooped on the confusion. My blade bit almost through a man’s neck, and I heard another death cry as Conan struck.
The falling men in turn compounded the troubles of our attackers by tumbling back against the on-surging men behind. The force of the rush was broken, and while they jostled eac
h other in an effort to close ranks we hewed at them to wreak havoc. I was wounded in the calf, but once they were no longer charging there were too many of them for their own good, a condition aggravated by the anxiety of all of them to do their share. I drew blood three times in return, and as the last of my victims stumbled I sliced him to his death.
Oliver, who had taken no part in the charge, was quick to see the futility of their broken attack. “Back out of there!” he howled. And then a moment later: “The shields, you fools, the shields!”
It was too late. They had drawn off without the corpses, not risking to stoop for them, and Conan was over the wall. Before they could do anything about it he had chopped the shield arms from two and tossed them into the vault. I have never seen a readier man.
Oliver was shrieking enraged commands, but I had worked the grips from the stiffening fingers by the time he had achieved any reorganization. It was certainly good to have a shield snuggling at my shoulder. I’d felt pretty naked before.
“This is more like it,” Conan grinned. “Now we’ll let them know they’re in a fight.”
“I don’t think they’ll rush us again anyhow,” I said cheerfully.
As a matter of fact they left us entirely alone for a short time while Oliver took stock of the new situation. I tied up my wound, while my friend looked after a gash in his thigh. “Oliver’s a sub-louse, but not an especially stupid sub-louse,” he said in a low voice. “It won’t take him long to see that the way to finish us is to keep hammering at us, never give us a chance to rest. Do you think you could give them a song while he’s making up his mind?”
Pleased at the idea, I took up my harp. It would perhaps be the last time a song of mine was ever heard, for who can know that his work will live after him? I strummed, trying to decide which verses would be most fitting, then determined to improvise. My mind was quick with excitement, and line after line fell in place. The Frankish tirade, excellent for the purpose, was the form I chose. I didn’t have enough time to polish it, of course, but it served well enough.
The Harp and the Blade Page 5