by Roland Green
As to the fate of a mortal, even a sorceress, caught in such a battle, it was better not to think of such things if one needed sharp wits and untroubled sleep.
For the first few hundred paces, the path ran through stony but well-wooded land. Closely set young pines mingled their acrid scent with the softer aroma wafting from a few colossal cedars, each of which might have yielded timber enough to build an entire temple. They reared above the pines like stags above a pack of wolves, and no one who saw them needed to be told that they had stood far longer.
Beyond the trees the path wound back and forth along the floor of the valley, between terraced fields mingled with huts and more stands of timber. Twilight had already come to the valley; it was hard to make out clearly the forms of those who worked in the fields or chopped wood in the shadow of the trees.
Nor would anyone have been the worse for not seeing clearly those who served in the Valley of the
Mists. Their human semblance did not survive a close look.
At last the path began to rise, past a walled collection of thatched stone huts that almost deserved the name of a village. Here the sentries on the wall had the shape of true men, and hailed the Lady of the Mists with gestures that had been old when the priests of Stygia first tamed their sacred serpents.
Beyond the village the path became a flight of stone steps. As the crests of the mountains to the north began to show the ruddy hues of late afternoon, the five women reached a boulder, tall as two men. On the boulder was daubed, in rough vegetable colors, a crimson eye surrounded by blue swirls.
Beyond the boulder the mouth of yet another cave yawned. Within lay the Eye of the Mist.
Conan did not doubt that if waiting alone was needed, he and his Afghulis had the advantage today. The Turanians lay or stood under the desert sun, baking like flatbread on a griddle, unable to move a finger without being observed. Conan and the Afghulis had concealment, and some at least had shade.
The besiegers might have more water than the besieged; but in this desert, waterskins swiftly ran dry even among the finest regular soldiers. Irregulars would be dry-throated before dawn, with no recourse but to send out a watering party and divide their strength, or else lift the siege.
But the outcome of this siege did not depend on who could squat the longest on hot rock or yet hotter sand. It would depend on whether Conan's band could win free before the Turanians brought up new strength. Then they could hold the Afghulis besieged for weeks or overwhelm them in a single desperate assault, spending lives to save time.
Conan did not think much of the sort of captain who tossed away the lives of his men like a drunkard pissing in the streets. But he also knew far too well that the gods did not always reward virtue, whether in war, love, or thievery.
The Turanians had to be drawn into an attack.
Conan uncoiled, as stealthily as any prowling serpent of the priests of Set. He flattened himself against the side of the cleft and gripped a well-shaped stone the size of a swan's egg.
"Ho, Turanian dogs!" he shouted. "Have any of you the courage to face men? Or did your weaning on vulture's spew take away your manhood?"
Conan went on in similar vein, until among the Turanians heads bobbed up from behind bushes or turned toward the rocks. A sergeant cursed those who had let themselves be baited, and advanced to push them down again.
From aloft, an arrow whistled down, taking the sergeant in the throat. He clawed at the jutting shaft, gobblings turning into chokings as the blood welled up in his throat, then fell backward to kick briefly before life departed.
That was one less leader to force wisdom down the dry throats of foolish Turanians. Soon there might be none to hold back the besiegers from a desperate attack, or rally them when the Afghulis repelled that attack.
Curses and a few arrows replied to the sergeant's death. One Turanian showed folly at once, leaping up to aim his shaft. Conan's heavy-thewed right arm flashed around like the lash of a drover's whip. The stone flew, not as straight as it might have from a sling, but straight enough to strike the Turanian's chest.
Also hard enough to shatter his ribs and drive their jagged ends into his heart. He took longer to die than the sergeant, but his life had just as thoroughly departed when a comrade rushed out to drag the body to shelter.
Loyalty bought only death. Three Afghulis shot together, two hit, and the loyal comrade was dead before he had stretched his length on the sand beside his friend.
From high above, Farad's voice chanted an old Afghuli verse, in honor to a worthy foe. Conan wished Mitra's favor for the dead Turanian—if Mitra or any other god cared much about how men died or had aught to do with their fate once dead.
He also wished the Turanians would either charge or flee. This endless waiting was no pleasure to him either. The sooner this came to strokes at close quarters, the better.
Conan squinted and shaded his eyes with his hand against the glare of the sun. He was seeking the captain, to see how much command he had over his men.
He found the captain swiftly, but for a long time after that, the captain showed all the animation of a temple image. At least it seemed a long time. Flies drawn by the sweat on the Cimmerian's scarred torso buzzed and stung, but he dared not slap at them, for fear the movement might draw a wild shot.
Then movement rippled along the Turanian lines, both the outer one in the distance and the hidden men closer to hand. From the outer line a drum thudded. Another drum replied, not an echo. For a moment Conan feared that the Turanian reinforcements had already arrived.
Then, from the same direction as the second drum, Turanian war cries rose into the sky. The drum redoubled its beat; a horn joined it. From above, Farad's voice howled defiance, wordless but eloquent.
Conan cursed, dry-mouthed. That Turanian captain had more wits than the Cimmerian had thought. He was launching one attack to draw the archers above. Next had to come an attack against Conan himself.
So be it. Even without the bows playing on them from above, the Turanians were about to learn more than was likely to please them about the perils of fighting desperate men.
No steps or path led to the cave of the Eye. Only bare ground lay beneath the women's feet, but ground beaten almost as hard as rock by many feet over the past three years (also, the Lady did not doubt, by feet past counting over years equally beyond her power to number).
The wide mouth of the cave narrowed swiftly to a passage so low that two of the Maidens' hair brushed the ceiling. Rock dust powdered their tresses, and small stones and the bones of bats and other dwellers in darkness crunched underfoot.
No light reached the tunnel once they were beyond the light from the cave mouth. Nor did they light torches. They had been this way many times, the Lady and her Maidens, and the path to the Eye held no surprises. Nor could it grow any, with the Lady's magic searching ahead.
Only the eye of the Lady's memory saw the carvings on the walls. To an uninitiated eye and mind, they might have appeared natural formations, eroded into their bizarre and twisted shapes by water over the aeons. To the Lady's eye, which had looked upon them in full light only once, they spoke of the work of hands so ancient that they might not have been altogether human.
Men—no, beings—with minds and skilled hands had dwelled in this and other caves in the Kezankian Mountains when other men were laying the foundations of Atlantis. "Kull of Atlantis" was a name that conjured up vistas of unbelievable antiquity, but when these carvings took shape, Kull's most remote ancestor had yet to see the light of day.
The chill breath of the cave wafting from the bowels of the mountains had no power against the Lady, for all that she remained as bare as ever. The thought of the weight of years pressing down upon her did give her a chill, the kind of chill to the heart and soul that neither hearth-fire nor posset cup can ease.
None of this showed in her steady pace or her straight back. She might have been a figure of ivory or alabaster in some buried temple.
Then the fiv
e women came out of the darkness into the light—the light of the Eye. It was a crimson light, subtly different from the light within the cup, as two rubies may differ one from the other. It flowed upward as if it had been a liquid from a hole in the floor of a rock chamber some thirty paces wide.
The hole was half a man's height in width, and the rock around its rim was worn away to glassy smoothness that made for treacherous footing. This did not halt or even slow the steady pace of the five women. They marched straight up to the rim. The Lady raised a hand, and the Maidens halted, then turned to stand two on each side of the hole.
Now the cup hung suspended over the hole—and was the lid rattling faintly, like distant bones tossed by the wind? Did what lay within the Eye call to what lay within the cup? The Lady knew that in this place it was both easy and perilous to imagine sounds beyond the ear and sights beyond the eye.
Another gesture seemed to turn the Maidens to statues. Only the slightest rise and fall of their breasts said that they yet lived. A third gesture, and the cup lifted from the leather net and rose into the air.
It had barely risen above the Maidens' heads when they came to life, drawing aside and back with more haste than dignity. No command reached them; none was needed. They had not been among those who saw the fate of a Maiden who was a laggard in drawing away from the Eye, but all of the Maidens had heard the tale.
They had heard how the Mist rose from the Eye before the Maiden was beyond its reach. They had heard of how obscenely it dealt with her, as though it had the mind of a mad executioner. They had, above all, heard how she screamed as she died.
The Maidens withdrew all the way to the mouth of the tunnel, leaving the Lady alone with the cup and the crimson incandescence from the Eye. She sat down, cross-legged, as ever insensible of cold stone against her flesh, and raised both hands. She also closed her eyes. Even guarded by sorcery, mortal eyes were not meant to see what came next.
The crimson light grew stronger. Now it gave a demonic hue to the flesh of the Lady and her Maidens. There were no words in lawful tongues to describe what it did to the cup and above all to the sigil-bearing lid.
The light also drove every vestige of darkness from the chamber. In that hellish illumination, one might have seen that the walls of the chamber were as bare as the Lady, but too smooth to be the work of nature. Here again was the work of races long dead, and perhaps leaving the world the better for their passing.
The light began to dance, and at the same time turn color. The crimson faded, and an unwholesome shade of purple took its place. Then the purple faded to a livid blue that might have seemed natural had it not swirled and danced like a mist being blown away by a strong wind. The Mist rose the height of two men from the Eye, but did not reach a finger's breadth over the edge of the hole.
The Mist might have been held within a bottle of marvelously clear glass, except that nothing confined it save the Lady's magic—and perhaps the will of the Mist of Doom.
The Lady was now as devoid of the power to move or speak as the Maidens were. In this moment her magic passed directly from her mind to the Mist, or not at all. With arts learned long ago and in great suffering, she drove down to the lowest levels of her mind any fear of what might happen if the Mist did not respond as it had in the past.
In the next moment, the Lady's fear and the cup alike were gone. The Mist whirled until it seemed only a column of blue light rising from the Eye. Then it shot up until it reached the ceiling and sprayed across it, more like a jet of water than something as intangible as mist.
The cup burst aloft with the rising Mist. It was still beyond the Lady to move, but she turned the focus of her mind from the Mist to the cup. She shaped her will into invisible fingers, slid them under the cup, and held it as the Mist drew back into the Eye.
Only then was the bond broken, and the Lady able to use her body, limbs and mouth alike, to conjure the cup to a gentle landing. It was some while before the Maidens came out to pick it up, because they had to wait until the Lady herself ceased trembling.
When they had the cup safely within the net again, they gathered around their mistress. They did not need to speak, only lift her gently and guide her back to the tunnel. Perhaps one of them might have looked at the rock pressing down overhead and uttered a short prayer to her patron gods that they all live to stand under the open sky again.
If they did, it did not concern the Mist of Doom.
Enough time for a hasty meal had already crawled by, the slower for the sun. Soon it would be long enough for a banquet since the Turanians at Conan's rear had attacked, and still those before him remained low or out of bowshot.
Conan wondered if some cunning climber among the Turanians had found a way up the far side of the rocks and led his comrades into a battle at close quarters. Or at least high enough to lie in wait, ready to swarm forward when their comrades attacked from the south.
They would learn a harsh lesson about attacking hillmen among rocks if they had been so bold. But teaching that lesson might well keep the Afghulis too busy to help Conan.
He was about to call up to Farad, to bid him scout the north face of the rocks, when a trumpet sounded far to the Turanian right, out of Conan's sight. A brazen reply floated on the breeze from the left, the trumpeter as invisible as his comrade.
Plain to anyone but a blind man was a score or more of Turanians gathering themselves to plunge forward in a desperate attack. Conan had barely finished counting them when he saw a half-score of horsemen caracoling just outside bowshot. At first he thought the reinforcements had arrived. Then he recognized some of the Turanians' headdresses.
The mounted men, it seemed, were a second wave, to follow on the heels of the first one. Conan's respect for the enemy captain rose higher. A good plan—if the first wave could ever be persuaded to move forward.
Then in the next moment that work of persuasion was done, and the Turanians leaped from cover and ran toward the rocks. Conan nocked an arrow, shot, nocked another, shot it, and was nocking a third when arrows from above tumbled two more Turanians in the sand.
That made one in five down before they even reached close quarters, but no more arrows came from above and the Turanians came on as if a purse of gold lay ahead or demons snapped at their heels. Conan continued shooting. The Turanians were coming as straight toward him as if the rocks were glass or a tavern dancer's veils, covering all, concealing nothing.
One more Turanian fell, but to no mortal hurt; he unslung his bow and began scattering arrows about the rocks above Conan's head. His comrades ran on—and now from above, Conan heard familiar Turanian war cries, Afghuli curses, and oaths in the tongues of more than a few other folk.
The Turanian host was like the gallows—it refused no man who came to it. Conan owed his own career in Turan to that habit.
Only moments after battle was joined above, it was joined below. The remaining Turanians crossed to the foot of the rocks unmolested from above. Now even an Afghuli with no foes closer to hand could hardly strike at them, or they at him.
The bow had not, however, made other and more ancient weapons harmless. How many rocks the Afghulis had piled ready, Conan did not know, but they seemed to rain from the sky. Three Turanians went down, two rose again, and one of these died as Conan flung a smaller stone to crack his skull.
Now the Cimmerian's long legs drove his feet against one of the boulders placed ready. It squealed like a slaughtered pig as it rubbed past another rock, then reached the open slope and began to roll.
Before it was well launched, Conan threw his feet against a second boulder. Then a third, and on to a fourth that needed one foot and both arms. Even the Cimmerian's thews strained at the last rock, fresh sweat made slime of the dust on his forehead, and for a dreadful moment it seemed that the boulder would be his match.
Then it followed the others. Conan leaped back as arrows whistled through the space he had occupied. He had just time to see half the Turanians scattering before the onslaught of th
e boulders, before the vanguard of the other half reached him.
Now it was the deadliest kind of close-quarters fighting, with all the art of a tavern brawl but much more steel and therefore far more bloodshed. Conan had two aims: to kill as many Turanians as he could, and to keep the fight so tangled that no Turanian with a bow could end the fight with a single arrow.
Conan had not despised bowmen as cowards even before he learned the art of the bow, for the art of the sling was well-known in his native land. But no one could doubt that a well-aimed shaft had brought many a fine swordsman to an untimely end.
Conan would accept his end when the gods called him to it. But their call would reach him among the ranks of his enemies, sword in hand.
The Cimmerian had a head's advantage in height and two spans in reach over the stoutest of his opponents. Add that his broadsword was better fitted for this battle than the tulwars of Turan, and ten-to-one odds were not so long as they might have seemed.
Conan hewed the sword arm from his first opponent and sundered the skull of the second. Both fell so as to block the narrow passage to the Cimmerian for those behind. The first one to hesitate did so within reach of the Cimmerian's sword, and died of that mistake. Two others leaped free with only minor wounds, but barred a clear shot to archers behind.
Conan feared that this good fortune would not last; now more than ever he would not assume his foes were witlings. So he took the fight to the enemy, closing the distance to the two nearest in a single leap.
He struck them with as much force as a boulder. One man toppled against the rock wall, hard enough to knock himself senseless. Conan kicked the other, hard enough to double him over. A tulwar fell from one hand, a dagger from the other, and the man himself fell on top of them when the Cimmerian split his skull with a down-cut.
Another Turanian leaped up to contest the rock with Conan. Now blood from the already fallen flowed over it, making it slick. The Cimmerian was a hillman of the breed of whom it is said they have eyes in their feet. He knew how to keep his footing on slippery rock, and make an opponent lose his.