refuse battle nor attack from the rear.”
“Then why should we—?”
“Because he has seen something of which he will not speak, but which has put him in fear.”
Fergis made a gesture of aversion. “The magic of the Soul of Thanza?”
“Or something very nearly as potent.”
“If he cannot hurl it at us—”
“Perhaps he can. Nor can we depart now without dishonour, as well as sleeping lightly ever afterward until Grolin and his last man are dead. Do you wish to court both, and lose the Soul into the bargain?”
Fergis muttered something about her body being worth ten Souls, but Lysinka chose to ignore it.
In the next moment, she had to ignore Fergis, as battle flamed across the slope below.
What ignited the flame was a chance arrow, shot up the slope with little discipline and less aim, by one of the Rangers’ handful of archers. Tharmis Rog howled in fury at the archer’s folly—then somebody above the slope let out another kind of howl, as the arrow found its mark.
A man clad in a rawhide tunic and fur leggings leaped up from behind a bush, the arrow jutting from his chest. He spun in a circle, lifted unseeing eyes to the grey sky, then plunged blindly downhill.
He covered perhaps twenty paces before the arrow in his chest bled vitality out of him. He fell on his face, then rolled downhill.
As if he were a magnet drawing iron filings, he drew his comrades out of cover.
Suddenly twenty men were charging down the brush-grown spur, howling, throwing stones, and waving spears and swords. None were archers, and if any still hid above, they seemed chary of shooting for fear of striking comrades.
The Rangers’ archers had no such problem. None of them were masters of the bow, but they had plenty of targets coming straight at them and were well-supplied with arrows. They put down three or four men in the first moments of the charge.
Then Conan, having studied the forest to his right to be sure it held no enemies, led the counter-charge.
Birds did not drop dead from the sky nor trees splinter and topple at the Cimmerian’s war cry, as men told their children in later years. But it was a blood-freezing roar, that echoed around the rocks and trees, and it told everyone within hearing that the battle had suddenly become far more deadly for this man’s foes.
Conan stormed up the slope with the speed only a born hillman could have managed, sword in right hand, dagger in left. He wore no more armour than a helmet and corselet, so little slowed his feet.
He struck the first rank of the charging bandits like a maul striking a wooden piling. All the men in that rank visibly recoiled, and two of them went down at the same moment. One was dead from a dagger in the throat, the other dying from a sword-gashed thigh.
The second rank came up, and now archers up the slope were shooting back. Arrows flew over Conan and his opponents, to plunge into the ranks of the Rangers with a force that only Bossonian longbows could manage.
Then the combined ranks of the bandits lapped around Conan like a flood around a hill, and he could see nothing farther than the end of his steel. Nor could his comrades see him.
The thought of leaving Conan to die amidst the ranks of bandits seemed to spur a dozen men up the slope in the Cimmerian’s wake. None of them were as sure-footed on slopes as was the man they followed, but they had the edge over the bandits in armour and weapons.
So some of them fell and not all of these rose again, but the rest came to close quarters, and the bandits around Conan suddenly found themselves pressed inward. At the same time, the Cimmerian was hewing his way out from within the circle. Blood flew, and once a severed arm; and now still other Rangers were coming up from below.
Seeing that Conan needed no help, these newcomers charged straight at the hidden archers. They knew this much about fighting: at close quarters a swordsman has the edge over an archer. The trick was to live to get to close
“Then why should we—?”
“Because he has seen something of which he will not speak, but which has put him in fear.”
Fergis made a gesture of aversion. “The magic of the Soul of Thanza?”
“Or something very nearly as potent.”
“If he cannot hurl it at us—”
“Perhaps he can. Nor can we depart now without dishonour, as well as sleeping lightly ever afterward until Grolin and his last man are dead. Do you wish to court both, and lose the Soul into the bargain?”
Fergis muttered something about her body being worth ten Souls, but Lysinka chose to ignore it.
In the next moment, she had to ignore Fergis, as battle flamed across the slope below.
What ignited the flame was a chance arrow, shot up the slope with little discipline and less aim, by one of the Rangers’ handful of archers. Tharmis Rog howled in fury at the archer’s folly—then somebody above the slope let out another kind of howl, as the arrow found its mark.
A man clad in a rawhide tunic and fur leggings leaped up from behind a bush, the arrow jutting from his chest. He spun in a circle, lifted unseeing eyes to the grey sky, then plunged blindly downhill.
He covered perhaps twenty paces before the arrow in his chest bled vitality out of him. He fell on his face, then rolled downhill.
As if he were a magnet drawing iron filings, he drew his comrades out of cover.
Suddenly twenty men were charging down the brush-grown spur, howling, throwing stones, and waving spears and swords. None were archers, and if any still hid above, they seemed chary of shooting for fear of striking comrades.
The Rangers’ archers had no such problem. None of them were masters of the bow, but they had plenty of targets coming straight at them and were well-supplied with arrows. They put down three or four men in the first moments of the charge.
Then Conan, having studied the forest to his right to be sure it held no enemies, led the counter-charge.
Birds did not drop dead from the sky nor trees splinter and topple at the Cimmerian’s war cry, as men told their children in later years. But it was a blood-freezing roar, that echoed around the rocks and trees, and it told everyone within hearing that the battle had suddenly become far more deadly for this man’s foes.
Conan stormed up the slope with the speed only a born hillman could have managed, sword in right hand, dagger in left. He wore no more armour than a helmet and corselet, so little slowed his feet.
He struck the first rank of the charging bandits like a maul striking a wooden piling. All the men in that rank visibly recoiled, and two of them went down at the same moment. One was dead from a dagger in the throat, the other dying from a sword-gashed thigh.
The second rank came up, and now archers up the slope were shooting back. Arrows flew over Conan and his opponents, to plunge into the ranks of the Rangers with a force that only Bossonian longbows could manage.
Then the combined ranks of the bandits lapped around Conan like a flood around a hill, and he could see nothing farther than the end of his steel. Nor could his comrades see him.
The thought of leaving Conan to die amidst the ranks of bandits seemed to spur a dozen men up the slope in the Cimmerian’s wake. None of them were as sure-footed on slopes as was the man they followed, but they had the edge over the bandits in armour and weapons.
So some of them fell and not all of these rose again, but the rest came to close quarters, and the bandits around Conan suddenly found themselves pressed inward. At the same time, the Cimmerian was hewing his way out from within the circle. Blood flew, and once a severed arm; and now still other Rangers were coming up from below.
Seeing that Conan needed no help, these newcomers charged straight at the hidden archers. They knew this much about fighting: at close quarters a swordsman has the edge over an archer. The trick was to live to get to close
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