Chapter 28
Dawn was still a hint of whiteness in the east when the army was again on the march.
Tribesmen had raced into camp, their steeds reeling from the long ride, to report the desert horde encamped at the Well of Altaku. So through the hills the soldiers pushed hastily, leaving the wagon trains to follow. Yasmela rode with them; her eyes were haunted. The nameless horror had been taking even more awful shape, since she had recognized the coin in the Shemite's hand the night before one of those secretly molded by the degraded Zugite cult, bearing the features of a man dead three thousand years.
The way wound between ragged cliffs and gaunt crags towering over narrow valleys. Here and
166.there villages perched, huddles of stone huts, plastered with mud. The tribesmen swarmed out to join their kin, so that before they had traversed the hills, the host had been swelled by some three thousand wild archers.
Abruptly they came out of the hills and caught their breath at the vast expanse that swept away to the south. On the southern side the hills fell away sheerly, marking a distinct geographical division between the Kothian uplands and the southern desert. The hills were the rim of the uplands, stretching in an almost unbroken wall. Here they were bare and desolate, inhabited only by the Zaheemi clan, whose duty it was to guard the caravan road. Beyond the hills the desert stretched bare, dusty, lifeless. Yet beyond its horizon lay the Well of Altaku, and the horde of Natohk.
The army looked down on the Pa.s.s of Shamla, through which flowed the wealth of the north and the south, and through which had marched the armies of Koth, Khoraja, Shem, Turan and Stygia. Here the sheer wall of the rampart was broken. Promontories ran out into the desert, forming barren valleys, all but one of which were closed on the northern extremity by rugged cliffs. This one was the Pa.s.s. It was much like a great hand extended from the hills; two fingers, parted, formed a fan-shaped valley. The fingers were represented by a broad ridge on either hand, the outer sides sheer, the inner, steep slopes. The vale pitched upward as it narrowed, to come out on a plateau, flanked by gully-torn slopes. A well was there, and a cl.u.s.ter of stone towers, occupied by the Zaheemis.
There Conan halted, swinging off his horse. He had discarded the plate-armor for the more familiar chain-mail. Thespides reined in and demanded, "Why do you halt?"
"We'll await them here," answered Conan.
"'T were more knightly to ride out and meet them," snapped the count.
"They'd smother us with numbers," answered the Cimmerian. "Besides, there's no water out there. We'll camp on the plateau "
"My knights and I camp in the valley," retorted Thespides angrily. "We are the vanguard, and we, at least, do not fear a ragged desert swarm."
Conan shrugged his shoulders and the angry n.o.bleman rode away. Amalric halted in his bellowing order, to watch the glittering company riding down the slope into the valley.
"The fools! Their canteens will soon be empty, and they'll have to ride back up to the well to water their horses."
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"Let them be," replied Conan. "It goes hard for them to take orders from me. Tell the dog- brothers to ease their harness and rest. We've marched hard and fast. Water the horses and let the men munch."
No need to send out scouts. The desert lay bare to the gaze, though just now this view was limited by low-lying clouds which rested in whitish ma.s.ses on the southern horizon. The monotony was broken only by a jutting tangle of stone ruins, some miles out on the desert, reputedly the remnants of an ancient Stygian temple. Conan dismounted the archers and ranged them along the ridges, with the wild tribesmen. He stationed the mercenaries and the Khoraji spearmen on the plateau about the well. Farther back, in the angle where the hill road debouched on the plateau, was pitched Yasmela's pavilion.
With no enemy in sight, the warriors relaxed. Basinets were doffed, coifs thrown back on mailed shoulders, belts let out. Rude jests flew back and forth as the fighting-men gnawed beef and thrust their muzzles deep into ale-jugs. Along the slopes the hillmen made themselves at ease, nibbling dates and olives.
"Conan, have you heard what the tribesmen say about Natohk? They say Mitra, it's too mad even to repeat. What do you think?"
"Seeds rest in the ground for centuries without rotting, sometimes," answered Conan. "But surely Natohk is a man."
"I am not sure," grunted Amalric. "At any rate, you've arranged your lines as well as a seasoned general could have done. It's certain Natohk's devils can't fall on us unawares. Mitra, what a fog!"
"I thought it was clouds at first," answered Conan. "See how it rolls!"
What had seemed clouds was a thick mist moving northward like a great unstable ocean, rapidly hiding the desert from view. Soon it engulfed the Stygian ruins, and still it rolled onward. The army watched in amazement. It was a thing unprecedented unnatural and inexplicable.
"No use sending out scouts," said Amalric disgustedly. "They couldn't see anything. Its edges are near the outer f.l.a.n.g.es of the ridges. Soon the whole Pa.s.s and these hills will be masked "
Conan, who had been watching the rolling mist with growing nervousness, bent suddenly and laid his ear to the earth. He sprang up with frantic haste, swearing.
"Horses and chariots, thousands of them! The ground vibrates to their tread! Ho, there!" his
168.voice thundered out across the valley to electrify the lounging men. "Burganets and pikes, you dogs! Stand to your ranks!"
At that, as the warriors scrambled into their lines, hastily donning head-pieces and thrusting arms through s.h.i.+eld-straps, the mist rolled away, as something no longer useful. It did not slowly lift and fade like a natural fog; it simply vanished, like a blown-out flame. One moment the whole desert was hidden with the rolling fleecy billows, piled mountainously, stratum above stratum; the next, the sun shone from a cloudless sky on a naked desert no longer empty, but thronged with the living pageantry of war. A great shout shook the hills.
At first glance the amazed watchers seemed to be looking down upon a glittering sparkling sea of bronze and gold, where steel points twinkled like a myriad stars. With the lifting of the fog the invaders had halted as if frozen, in long serried lines, flaming in the sun.
First was a long line of chariots, drawn by the great fierce horses of Stygia, with plumes on their heads snorting and rearing as each naked driver leaned back, bracing his powerful legs, his dusky arms knotted with muscles. The fighting-men in the chariots were tall figures, their hawk-like faces set off by bronze helmets crested with a crescent supporting a golden ball.
Heavy bows were in their hands. No common archers, these, but n.o.bles of the South, bred to war and the hunt, who were accustomed to bringing down lions with their arrows.
Behind these came a motley array of wild men on half-wild horses the warriors of Kush, the first of the great black kingdoms of the gra.s.slands south of Stygia. They were s.h.i.+ning ebony, supple and lithe, riding stark naked and without saddle or bridle.
After these rolled a horde that seemed to encompa.s.s all the desert. Thousands on thousands of the war-like Sons of Shem: ranks of hors.e.m.e.n in scale-mail corselets and cylindrical helmets the a.s.shuri of Nippr, Shumir, and Eruk and their sister cities; wild white-robed hordes the nomad clans.
Now the ranks began to mill and eddy. The chariots drew off to one side while the main host came uncertainly onward. Down in the valley the knights had mounted, and now Count Thespides galloped up the slope to where Conan stood. He did not deign to dismount but spoke abruptly from the saddle.
"The lifting of the mist has confused them! Now is the time to charge! The Kus.h.i.+tes have no bows and they mask the whole advance. A charge of my knights will crush them back into the ranks of the Shemites, disrupting their formation. Follow me! We will win this battle with one stroke!"
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Conan shook his head. "Were we fighting a natural foe, I would agree. But this confusion is more feigned than real, as if to draw us into a charge. I fear a trap."
"Then you refuse to move?" cried Thespides, his face dark with pa.s.sion.
"Be reasonable," expostulated Conan. "We have the advantage of position "
With a furious oath Thespides wheeled and galloped back down the valley where his knights waited impatiently.
Amalric shook his head. "You should not have let him return, Conan. I look there!"
Conan sprang up with a curse. Thespides had swept in beside his men. They could hear his impa.s.sioned voice faintly, but his gesture toward the approaching horde was significant enough. In another instant five hundred lances dipped and the steel-clad company was thundering down the valley.
A young page came running from Yasmela's pavilion, crying to Conan in a shrill, eager voice, "My lord, the princess asks why you do not follow and support Count Thespides?"
"Because I am not so great a fool as he," grunted Conan, reseating himself on the boulder and beginning to gnaw a huge beef-bone.
"You grow sober with authority," quoth Amalric. "Such madness as that was always your particular joy."
"Aye, when I had only my own life to consider," answered Conan. "Now what in h.e.l.l "
The horde had halted. From the extreme wing rushed a chariot, the naked charioteer las.h.i.+ng the steeds like a madman; the other occupant was a tall figure whose robe floated spectrally on the wind. He held in his arms a great vessel of gold and from it poured a thin stream that sparkled in the sunlight. Across the whole front of the desert horde the chariot swept, and behind its thundering wheels was left, like the wake behind a s.h.i.+p, a long thin powdery line that glittered in the sands like the phosph.o.r.escent track of a serpent.
"That's Natohk!" swore Amalric. "What h.e.l.lish seed is he sowing?"
The charging knights had not checked their headlong pace. Another fifty paces and they would crash into the uneven Kus.h.i.+te ranks, which stood motionless, spears lifted. Now the foremost knights had reached the thin line that glittered across the sands. They did not heed that crawling menace. But as the steel-shod hoofs of the horses struck it, it was as when steel strikes flint
170.but with more terrible result. A terrific explosion rocked the desert, which seemed to split apart along the strewn line with an awful burst of white flame.
In that instant the whole foremost line of the knights was seen enveloped in that flame, horses and steel-clad riders withering in the glare like insects in an open blaze. The next instant the rear ranks were piling up on their charred bodies. Unable to check their headlong velocity, rank after rank crashed into the ruins. With appalling suddenness the charge had turned into a shambles where armored figures died amid screaming mangled horses.
Now the illusion of confusion vanished as the horde settled into orderly lines. The wild Kus.h.i.+tes rushed into the shambles, spearing the wounded, bursting the helmets of the knights with stones and iron hammers. It was all over so quickly that the watchers on the slopes stood dazed; and again the horde moved forward, splitting to avoid the charred waste of corpses.
From the hills went up a cry: "We fight not men but devils!"
On either ridge the hillmen wavered. One rushed toward the plateau, froth dripping from his beard.