"The Picts are still out there, those who pretend friendship and those who do not even pretend. We are more fit to meet them than we were, but they are still a hundred to our one and they know this land."
The Bamulas learned quickly, being seasoned warriors eager to begin carving a road home through Lysenius's enemies. Thrice Conan led them out on raids, and brought them all back.
They did not march with Picts on these raids, save one or two who acted as guides. This was as well. Conan knew the Pictish way of war, and would not have his Bamulas learn it. His people would return to their land with no screaming girl-children violated before their burning homes, and no graybeards left with skulls broken and unseeing eyes staring at the sky.
Then the day came when they raided across the borders into the Marches, and the Picts marched with them.
***
From a high branch, Govindue's birdcall came. It was the call of a Black Coast bird, not a native of this wilderness. Conan doubted that the caravan guards were woods-wise enough to notice the difference. Or if they were, that they would have the time to put their knowledge to any good use.
Forty Picts lay in wait along one side of the road. Conan's Bamulas lay in wait along the other side. This let both bands attack at once, but kept them apart until the moment of the attack.
That was just as well. The Picts looked askance at the "demon-men" as much as the Bamulas looked askance at the Pictish warriors. Bad blood had been avoided; although Conan and the Pictish chief had not a word in common, each was a seasoned captain who could plan a battle with gestures and scratches in the dirt.
The caravan was well into the trap now. Definitely its guards were not woods-wise, or perhaps the raiders had truly outrun their warning. The Bamulas had attacked nowhere and the Picts set upon only one isolated farmstead on the way across the border, and the forest could hide sixty men from even the most keen border patrol.
Now, if only the Picts would not shoot arrows with their eyes closed (as it sometimes seemed they did), and the Bamulas would remember that even a friendly arrow could kill”
A Pictish war yell gave the signal for the attack. Conan leapt from cover, brandishing his sword. He had smeared his face and other exposed skin with berry juice, darkening his complexion until he did not stand out among the Bamulas. Bad enough to be fighting on the side of the Picts; worse still if tales came that black warriors with a white leader fought in alliance with the Picts. That sort of tale could turn out a host to sweep the borders clean. Conan doubted that this would please Lysenius, and was certain that it would not speed the Bamulas'
homeward journey.
He leapt into the road and snatched at the bridle of the caravan's lead guard's horse with one hand. With the other, he blocked three downcuts by the rider, who had more speed than skill and no strength sufficient to get through Conan's defense.
The horse reared. Conan ducked under its belly and came up on the guard's off-side. He struck with his sword, pulling the blow so that it only stunned through the helmet rather than splitting helmet and skull.
With the other hand, he gripped the riders belt and heaved. The man flew out of the saddle and crashed into the ditch. Conan noted with regret that he fell on the Pictish side; with luck, he would recover his senses before the Picts found him.
Conan reined the horse and thrust a foot into the stirrup. The mount reared again, nearly snatching him off his feet. A guard thrust at him under the horses belly. The point of the blade only nicked Conan instead of sinking deep. He kicked the sword out of the man's hand, swung into the saddle, and slashed down with his sword. This time, skull gave as well as boiled-leather helmet; the man fell, and the horse's hooves finished the work begun by the Cimmerian's sword.
From horseback, Conan had a better view of the battle along the trail than anyone else. The guards to the rear had formed a shield wall, and those forward were retreating toward it. Not all of them reached their goal; Pictish arrows and Bamula spears were thinning their ranks. Conan even saw the one Bamula who had truly mastered the bow find a victim.
It seemed to Conan that the guards had decided to save their lives and let the wagons and packhorses go. Either that or they planned a trap.
Then he saw a flurry of righting around one wagon that clearly had not been abandoned. He raked the horse's flanks with his heels and charged down on the men there. An arrow nicked his neck, the shaft of a spear thrown awry slapped the horse's flank, then he was up to the wagon. The arrows from the trail ceased; either the Bossonian archers feared hitting friends or the Picts had beaten them down.
Three men were struggling against four Picts and a Bamula. The guards had leather corselets and mail caps, and no little skill with their swords, which meant they were holding their own until Conan came up. He kicked one man in the back of the head without reining in, and smashed another across the helmet with the flat of his sword. Both went down.
The third man scrambled into the wagon, thrust his arms under the cover, and came out with an ironbound coffer. Small as it was, it was plainly heavy. The man staggered as he jumped to the ground, then staggered again as a Pict thrust a spear into his thigh. In spite of the wound, the man broke into a run, so swiftly that between one breath and the next, he outdistanced his assailants.
He did not outdistance Conan, on horseback. Before the archers behind the shield wall could draw and loose, the Cimmerian had overtaken the man. One massive Cimmerian arm swooped down like a kingfisher on a minnow and plucked the coffer from the man's hands.
The man squalled like a mating tomcat and stabbed at Conan with a vicious poinard. Steel tore flesh and, weighted with the hilt of his broadsword, Conan's fist stretched the man senseless on the ground.
He wheeled his horse and rode back toward the head of the caravan, to see Govindue on the trail, waving his arms. With only twenty Bamulas, there could be no division into four parts, not without keeping men out of battle in a way that the Picts would call dishonorable. But there could be a young chief with sharp eyes and a cool head perched in a tree unseen by Pictish friend and Bossonian foe alike.
"Horsemen coming!" Govindue shouted. The actual words he used were "six-legged warriors," since horses were unknown in Bamula lands.
Conan thought that he'd either scented a trap or that luck was with the caravan. Just as well, too. Without a fresh enemy to fight, the Picts'
bloodlust might lead them to beat down the shield wall with their arrows and massacre everyone. As it was, anyone from the caravan left alive now might well see tomorrow's sunrise, and as many more as fate allowed.
He waved to the Bamulas. Picts also saw the gesture, but their chief had not signaled them. Drums and shouts held them where they were.
Conan cursed. He had no wish to be impaled on the horns of this dilemma: either desert the Picts or stay until they also saw the Bossonian reinforcements, when that might be too late for the Bamulas, who were closer to the new enemy troops.
Conan shouted for the Bamulas to return to cover on either side of the road. That might give the newcomers a clear path to some of the Picts, but it would let the Bamulas survive long enough to fight back, and perhaps to rescue their northern swozhu. (That was an expressive Bamula word meaning "friends-for-one-raid," and it was not altogether praise.
It was also the most common way the Bamulas had of referring to the Picts.)
The Bamulas had barely regained the shelter of the trees when the Bossonians charged out of the shield wall. Either the rearguard had been stronger than Conan realized or more survivors of the men forward had reached the wall. Regardless, they swiftly reached close quarters with the Picts.
The Picts were not ones to fight at close quarters against armored opponents, unless they had a great advantage in numbers. This they did not have, but they had an open road into the woods, where no horseman could go. They took that road, and in moments there was not a living Pict in sight.
Since the Bamulas had to take the same road, Conan dismounted, slapped
his horse on the rump, and sent it cantering off toward the reinforcements. Then he sheathed his sword and gripped the coffer with both hands. Even for the Cimmerian, it was a trifle on the heavy side for one hand in rough country.
***
Conan made sure that there were no Picts within sight, and none hiding close enough to see, before he opened the coffer. He did this by seeking a hollow tree, the last remnants of what must have once been the size of a good temple and older than most such built by the hands of men.
While Kubwande held a tuft of burning moss tied to a stick, Conan attacked the coffers hinges with his dagger. They gave only just before the dagger was too blunt for use. Whoever had contrived this coffer had wanted to keep what lay within exceedingly well-guarded indeed.
The lid opened with a faint and more than slightly eerie scream. Conan at first thought nothing was inside at all. Then he saw that within, the coffer was lined with black velvet and stuffed with black silk. He drew out the silk and noticed a faint reflection from Kubwande's light.
He put in his hand, felt around, and gripped something smooth that had two textures, metal and stone.
He held the object up”a square-cut crystal so transparent that it had looked black against the black velvet, but it was betrayed by the age-darkened gold of its mounting. To Conan's eyes, it looked as if it might once have decorated a sword-hilt or a helmet, but there was something about it that made him uneasy.
"Hunh," Bowenu snorted. "Not enough gold in that to make it worth carrying."
"Not enough wits in your skull to make you a good judge of such matters," Kubwande replied. "If we do not wish to leave it, let us give it to Lysenius. He may find some value in it."
"That he will, from the way the guards were righting to snatch it free," Conan said. "Whoever has lost it may pay a fair-sized ransom."
He felt an urge to have it out of his hands as quickly as possible, but he was not wholly sure that Lysenius was the right destination. The jewel had a smell of sorcery to it, and that meant the farther it was from both honest folk and Lysenius, the better.
What about an honest woman? Scyra seemed to have her doubts about some of her father's schemes. Conan would trust her more if she had concealed less about them, but his trust for her was still as a gold coin to a brass piece compared to his trust for her father. He trusted no sorcerer wittingly, but for the Bamulas' sake, he would give Scyra as much trust as he thought she had earned.
"We have crystals like this in my homeland," Conan said. "They have power, but it is women's magick. Vuona is a woman, but not adept with power. Scyra, however, is both a woman and a mistress of magick. She is fit to receive the crystal."
"What if Lysenius is angered?" Bowenu asked.
"Then," Govindue said in the tone of one instructing a child (although Bowenu had to be five years his elder at least), "we shall hold our tongues about it until Scyra has been given it."
Thirteen
Lysenius did not resemble the usual notion of the sorcerer, but then, Conan had acquaintance with many sorcerers (although liking few) and knew that they were as varied as were common men.
Scyra's father was nearly as tall as Conan, and had he led an equally vigorous life, he might have been nearly the Cimmerians physical equal.
As it was, a stout belly bulged under a silk shirt that could have begun life intended for a Barachan sailor. Other signs of good living thrust out blue hose cut in the latest Aquilonian style. A short green Bossonian foresters cloak hung from broad shoulders, and the curious array was completed by a massive rawhide belt, clearly Pictish, with an equally Pictish bronze dagger thrust through it.
The broad face above the garb was almost too youthful to belong to the father of a woman Scyra's age. Or it would have been save for the altogether bald pate and the splendid beard, mostly gray shot with streaks of black. The eyes were Scyra's, an intense blue that almost seemed the image of Conan's”but the Cimmerian had the same uneasiness about what lay behind those eyes as he did about what lay in a pouch slung to his own belt.
"I am well-served by you," Lysenius said. He spoke with what Conan had come in his wars to recognize as an Aquilonian accent. "Very well-served."
He used that last phrase three more times before Conan started translating for the Bamulas. The Cimmerian translated it only once.
There was no cause yet to share his doubts about Lysenius. His instincts led him to wariness, and he trusted those instincts; had he done otherwise, he would have been long dead. Being neither god nor priest, however, he did not call them unfailing or perfect.
Conan's doubts grew as slowly as moss for some while as Lysenius rambled on. It seemed that he had come to the Pictish Wilderness in flight from first Aquilonia, then from his native Bossonia. In each place he had practiced the magick arts in a way that offended the powerful, and in Bossonia, their wrath had claimed his wife, Scyra's mother.
With nothing but his lawful knowledge of magick, he had come to the Pictish Wilderness. Conan vowed to believe that when he saw ships floating in the air. The Stygian priests had long reaches and much gold with which to buy friends. Lysenius had befriended the Picts by using his magick in ways that did not cast doubts on the powers of their shamans.
Now it was time to take his revenge on those who had exiled him and deprived him of his wife. He would find the Picts a champion. The statue of an ancient warrior lay in a distant cave. Vitalized by Lysenius's spells, the statue would come forth, an invincible protector of the Picts. They would swarm across the border, and those who had wronged Lysenius would rue the day they did so, as they listened to the screams of their kin before their own throats were cut¦
Lysenius went on at considerable length about the red ruin the Picts would leave in their wake. Conan, who had seen more such campaigns than most men twice his age, listened with grave attention. He was not learning much about Lysenius's plans, but he was gleaning a good deal about the sorcerer's mind.
Mostly, he decided, he was recognizing that Lysenius was mad. Whether the mage had been so before (and Conan had even less use for Stygian magick than for most other kinds), he certainly was so now. Mad from loneliness perhaps, and even perhaps with some cause, but there could be no cause for unleashing the Pictish nation on the Bossonian Marches.
Conan was about to ask what part he and his band might play in this scheme, when Lysenius seemed to pluck the Cimmerian's thoughts from his head. It was so uncanny that Conan dared not look at the pouch on his belt to see if Lysenius had also plucked the crystal from it by sheer force of will.
"I cannot give to any one tribe or clan of the Picts the honor of entering the cave of the statue. Not without making all the others jealous enough to fly at my throat, or at least at the throats of the tribe so honored. I am already unfriends with the Snakes more than I could wish, and there would be others in like case."
Again Lysenius rambled, evoking the vision of the Snakes returning to loyalty and trust once the statue walked and victory seemed assured.
Conan began to wish that the Snakes would demonstrate their lack of friendship by raiding the cave in this moment. Fighting Picts would surely be less tedious than listening to a sorcerer with more ambition than sense (the most common kind, in Conan's experience).
"It will fall to you and your warriors of the Bamula to travel to the cave. You are of no nation among the Picts. You are proven in valor and skill. Above all, you have already passed through the world-walker, and what you have done before, you shall do again."
It took Conan a moment to realize that Lysenius was referring to the demon's gate. He used that name when he translated, and he heard hisses of indrawn breath all across the chamber behind him. Lysenius, fortunately, seemed to take these as signs of eagerness, and Conan thanked various minor gods that the sorcerer knew nothing of Bamula customs.
"Let honor be done to Lysenius," Conan said. The Bamulas hissed again and began to chant.
"Ohbe Lysenius. Ohbe Lysenius. Ohbe Lysenius."
Conan
rather hoped they would be allowed to continue until they had gone on as long as the sorcerer. However, it seemed that only one man in these caves was allowed to be tedious. Lysenius made an unmistakable gesture of dismissal, and Conan arrayed his men, bowed in the Hyborian style, and led them out.
They passed down three corridors, and on the fourth and final one to their quarters, Conan signaled to Kubwande.
"Yes, Conan?"
Conan tapped his pouch. He had kept the crystal on his person even while in the chamber with Lysenius as he wished no other man endangered for possessing it. Sorcerers had tried to kill him more often than he could count on fingers and toes together; the Bamulas were not so seasoned.
"I am taking this where we have agreed that it belongs."
"Take care, Conan. The Bamulas need you more than they need Scyra. I do not mean only the Bamulas here, either."
"Time enough for the others when we see them again," Conan said. The mans transparent flattery had lost its power to anger him. Kubwande was no fool, and indeed a fine hand in battle, but intrigue was in his blood as much as vengeance was in Lysenius's.
***
Lysenius had not precisely discouraged roaming about the caves, but he had made it clear that it was not without its dangers. He did not describe these dangers, so Conan had no idea whether they were magickal, human, animal or simply holes in the floor ready to tumble the unwary into the abyss.
Being seasoned at skulking in the darkness from his days as a thief, Conan cared little for vague menaces. He was not slow to learn his way around the tunnels. Before the band had been ten days guests of the sorcerer, Conan had learned the tortuous way from the warriors'
quarters to Scyra's private chambers as thoroughly as he had learned the way to the well when he was thirsty.
He did not enter those chambers. Scyra seemed to have told him all that she cared to, and he had no wish to strain her loyalty by asking for more.
The Conan Compendium Page 415