Conan the Guardian Page 8

  Conan was glad to hear Vandar’s faith in him, but facing magic was still no pleasure. A cold hand gripped his heart briefly as he faced the dark stairway, then passed as he plunged down it. Vandar followed, and after him four Damaos guards, two with torches.

  They hardly needed the torches. The light in the cellar might be magical, but it was real enough. Rose and crimson, turquoise and emerald, it danced and flared from every metal object, even the hoops and barrels. It distorted objects and distances, but it also showed obstacles underfoot. Conan and his men left the stairs at a dead run.

  “Where’s an entry to the tunnels?” he whispered to the nearest Damaos man. The man clutched his sword with both hands, waved it in front of him as if to exorcise the lights, and said nothing.

  The rearmost torch-bearer called, “Never heard of one, not in this house.”

  “No,” said the other torch-bearer. “But I’ve heard of strange sounds and smells and sometimes a wind, near the north-west comer of the wine cellar.”

  Conan thanked the gods that someone had at least the wits of a flea, and led the way toward the wine cellar. They found it ankle-deep in wine from leaking casks and jars. Conan stopped on the threshold and thrust his sword into the wine.

  As he did, he noticed that in a far comer of the chamber the surface of the wine was rippling. A breeze seemed to be blowing across it, growing stronger as Conan watched. A breeze, blowing from the comer of the cellar.

  Conan urgently waved his men back. As they began their retreat, a rumble and the scream of metal on stone filled the cellar. As the scream rose to tear at the ears and seemed about to sunder the earth underfoot, the magic lights died.

  So did every other light in the cellar, including the torches of Conan’s party and the few surviving torches in sconces on the walls. Conan flattened himself against the nearest pillar.

  Now he saw a section of the cellar wall turning slowly, until a narrow gap opened. One by one, men slipped through the gap. Men mostly ragged, some half naked, but all with serviceable steel in their grimy, callused hands.

  By the time a dozen had come through, the Cimmerian’s comrades had seen what was happening. Somehow they had the wits to remain silent. Prodding gently with his sword, Conan urged them all back toward the stairs. By the time the last of them departed, the cellar held a good score of invaders.

  Conan felt at his belt for his flint and steel, then measured distances with his eyes. If his memory was not playing him false and these visitors spent even a little more time rallying after their journey through the tunnels beneath the city....

  The visitors began to move as Conan reached the barrel he sought. He gripped the rim, wheeled on one foot, and brought the other booted foot crashing into the bung. The bung not only started, the barrel itself was sprung in a dozen places.

  The crash of the Cimmerian’s kicks stopped the invaders in their tracks. They looked about them, trying to judge direction and distance. None of them had Conan’s night sight, so none of them saw him turn, shielding his flint and steel with his massive body. A spark flared, tinder blazed, and the blazing tinder dropped into the fire wine pouring from the breached barrel.

  Fire wine did not travel well. Few outside Argos had ever heard of it, let alone drunk it. After one cup, Conan was ready to leave it to the Argosseans. But while it might lack flavour, fire wine had one virtue very useful to the Cimmerian at this moment. Exposed to an open flame, it would blaze up like liquid tar.

  The fire wine Conan had let loose was so mixed with common wine that it was slow to catch fire. For a long breath, Conan wondered if the common wine had drowned his flame.

  Then a blue glow like a will-o’-the-wisp spread across the cellar floor. It began where Conan had cast in the timber, but crept steadily toward the men, rising higher as it went. By the time it reached them, the glow had become actual flames, rising as high as a man’s knee.

  The men did not stand and wait for the flames to reach them. They howled, screamed, and clawed their way toward the walls or the door. Without striking a blow, Conan judged he had taken the fighting heart out of half the men.

  The other half were of stouter stuff, or perhaps feared something more than the flames of fire wine. They swarmed forward, splashing through the wine and the flames, cursing and shouting as they came,

  In a moment they were all around Conan. He set his back to the nearest wall and laid about him with his broadsword. None of the men seemed particularly expert with their steel, or perhaps it was only that they were in one another’s way. It certainly took Conan no great time to have three foes down and two more wounded past fighting.

  The remaining five were enough to keep even a Cimmerian’s sword fully at play. He wove a veil of steel before him, thinking that perhaps he had sent his comrades to the rear a trifle hastily.

  He also heard at last the war cries the men were shouting. It was “Onward, ever to battle,” the cry of House Lokhri.

  The House that was courting Lyvia, sending armed men against her? That made as little sense as anything Conan had ever encountered, and in his twenty-three years he had seen more of the world’s madness than most men twice his age.

  Unless they were planning an abduction? Perhaps. If so, best he finish off these men or at least confine them in the cellar, and see to matters elsewhere. Conan had no doubt there would be more than enough of such matters.

  In the next moment it seemed that it might be the men who finished off Conan. A furious attack by the leader drove Conan hard against the wall. The man gripped the Cimmerian’s sword arm with a mail-gloved hand and twisted.

  Conan’s arm snapped forward, and the leader flew backward, knocking down one of his comrades. His head met a pillar with a sodden crunch. He slid down to join the other man in the wine.

  But the movement left Conan’s grip on the sword’s hilt weakened for a moment. In that moment an over-hand cut with a tulwar struck sparks from the steel and the sword from the Cimmerian’s hand.

  In their next and last moments, Conan’s opponents learned that a Cimmerian disarmed was not a Cimmerian helpless. A handy barrel stave crushed one man’s knee. The other two gave way.

  Now Conan had time to grip a wine barrel. Full, even his strength could not have lifted it. But feasting and battle had drained most of its contents. He heaved it aloft, then flung it. It was more than heavy enough to knock both remaining enemies off their feet into the wine and hold them under until they drowned.

  Conan knelt in the wine, one hand on his dagger, and groped with the other hand until it met his sword hilt. After shaking the wine off the blade, he used the mace to stave in several more wine casks. Two were common wine, one was fire wine.

  The fire wine fed the flames, and the common vintage raised the level in the cellar. Conan watched as the wine overflowed the sill of the secret door and began rushing down into the depths beyond. A moment later he heard a chorus of screams.

  He had thought of closing the door, to bar the path of any further enemies waiting in the tunnels. Now it seemed that the flood of burning fire wine would do the work as well.

  Conan backed away from the wine-drowned cellar. The blue flames of the fire wine now lit it clearly, showing the face of the fallen leader. There was something uncanny about that face, too....

  Conan could have sworn that the leader’s face was pale and freckled, his hair light almost to fairness. A Bossonian, Aquilonian, or even Vanir, no doubt.

  Yet now the face had darkened, the hair likewise, and it was not from burning or smoke. The man seemed almost as dark as a Kushite, or one with kin in the Black Kingdoms.

  Conan told himself that it was a trick of the light and his having other matters on his mind. But the chill knowledge that unknown sorcery lurked close at hand tightened his grip on his sword as he rejoined his comrades.

  Vandar met Conan. “We locked the door to the rest of the cellar. If any had passed us, they would have gone nowhere.”

  “Aye,” the second torch-bearer sai
d. “Not that any came, save one. He ran at us, the same moment a maid tumbled down the stairs. What she had been about, I can wager, for she was as bare as a babe.”

  Vandar put his arm around a slim figure hardly more than a girl, now clad in the shirt of a man twice her size. “Indeed. The son of a Stygian must not have ever seen a woman, for he goggled and gaped until Gebro came up behind him with a mace.” He kicked a bound and gagged figure on the floor, and got a stifled grunt for reply.

  “That’s one prisoner, at least,” Conan said. “Good work.” He turned to the maid. “How go matters above?”

  The girl drew herself up, which displayed to advantage her womanly figure in the wet shirt. “I had other things on my mind, until suddenly—ah, he had to run off to fight witches or wizards or swamp demons or whatever. I came straight down here, and since then I know only what these men do.” She nestled back into Vandar’s arms, and the lad grinned.

  “Very well,” Conan said. “I’d best go up and—”

  This time they heard few screams in the din upstairs, and much shouting. Also many cries of “Onward, ever to battle.”

  Conan sprang to the stairs, Vandar after him. “Watch the cellar,” he shouted over his shoulder. “If a handful comes through, fight and call for help. If there’s more, come up and close the door after you. The fire wine may hold them back until we settle matters upstairs, anyway.”

  The Cimmerian was halfway up the stairs when he saw that the maid was following them.

  “Crom, girl! It’s safer down there!”

  “I am seventeen, Captain. Do not call me a girl. And I must find Psiros. He—”

  “Is probably too cursed busy staying alive to think about a wench,” Vandar grumbled. Clearly he had thought the maid smitten with him, and was jealous of her seeking her lover.

  Conan briefly considered knocking their empty heads together and leaving them on the stairs. Then someone at the head of the stairs flung the door open.

  “The sorcerer!” he screamed, and started pushing the door shut. Conan covered the remaining steps in a single leap, gripped the man’s arm, and heaved. It slid into the gap between door and jamb, as the man’s comrades flung themselves against the door.

  The man screamed like a score of demons at once. Conan, his shoulder already against the door, felt the man’s comrades waver. He threw all his weight against the door, and felt it opening.

  All at once resistance vanished. The massive iron-bound oak flew open, crashing against the wall, scything down several men in its path. A swordsman ran at Conan. The Cimmerian parried the down-cut with his mace, saw that the man wore the white armband of House Damaos, and roared in his ear.

  “Ho, you fool! Friend, friend, friend!”

  Half dazed, the man stepped back, just in time to take a short sword in his belly. The attacker had to turn half away from Conan to free his sword. The Cimmerian’s broadsword split his skull from the crown to the bridge of his nose.

  Then came another of those spaces when Conan had to weave a veil of steel before himself, against opponents too numerous to count and too skilled to be slighted. He was vaguely aware that Vandar had come up to stand beside him, and the girl—woman, if she insisted!—stood behind Vandar.

  It took some time for even Conan’s stout arm to turn his opponents into bleeding corpses or fleeing survivors. As he became aware of fewer foes before him, the Cimmerian also became aware of a vast figure looming up in the foes’ rear.

  This he needed even less than a bloodthirsty wench— an opponent nearly his own size, and to all eyes fresh, when he himself—

  “Captain Conan!”

  “Reza?”

  “The gate is closed. I left enough men in the gatehouse to keep it that way, and came inside with the rest.”

  Conan got inside a final man’s guard, laid his arm open to the bone, then drove him back against the wall and set the sword point at his throat. The broadsword was no thrusting weapon, but the point still sent blood trickling down to join the sweat on the man’s lean body.

  “Do you yield? Or do I push this in?”

  “I-”

  Reza reached over Conan’s shoulder, clutched the man’s hair, and slammed his head back against the wall. The shreds of bloody tapestry hanging there were no padding for such a blow. The man slumped bonelessly to the floor.

  “There’s another prisoner downstairs,” Conan said. “And I saw something—”

  Reza held up his hand for silence. Conan held his tongue, but heard nothing except the dying uproar of the battle in the house.

  “That comes from the north staircase,” Reza said. “Come on!”

  Conan did not argue. As they set off, he asked, “What’s up the north staircase?”

  “A way to block the way to the roof, from the lady’s chambers.”

  If the house was openly attacked, Lady Livia was to gather the women and the men unfit for battle in private chambers. The entrance to them could be guarded by two men against many. A spiral stairway led from the suite to the roof, where the archers were posted. But if the attackers made their way to the upper stairway quickly, they might yet snatch victory, or at least hostages for their own safety.

  No doubt the Guardians would come to settle matters according to their notions in their own good time. But Conan now feared that their coming would not save even the lady of House Damaos, let alone a score of innocents who had trusted to her protection and his.

  Fury and offended honour drove Conan ahead of Reza. He was still in the lead as they stormed up the north staircase. The big Iranistani drew level with the Cimmerian as they reached the top.

  “I know the way better than you,” Reza said. “And I guard the honour of House Damaos.” He sheathed his tulwar and unslung from his broad back a two-handed mace. It looked well used, and told Conan that Reza must have served in the very pick of the irregulars, the Band of Haruk. Alone in the hosts of Turan, they were trained to fight both mounted, with the bow and lance, and afoot, with the tulwar and mace. It would be no dishonour to let such a man be first into this fight. “Leave a few for me, Reza.”

  “The lady would pluck me beardless if I did not, Cimmerian. Never fear!”

  The two big men stormed up the stairs, drawing their followers up behind them like buckets from a well. At the top of the stairs, Reza sent four of the Damaos men to search the side chambers.

  “Take prisoners if you can, but keep yourselves whole and save our own people before everything!”

  The door to the second stairway to the roof was easy to pick out. Half a dozen armed men guarded it, looking in all directions at once. At their feet lay the two Damaos guards, in pools of their own blood.

  A wildcat’s screech tore at Conan’s ears. The girl from the cellar leaped forward, snatching a dagger from inside her shirt. The invaders gaped at this apparent madwoman rushing upon them.

  They were too busy gaping to notice Conan hard upon the madwoman’s heels. All the gods forbid that a slip of a girl beat him into a battle!

  His sword whined, reaching out over the girl’s head like a deadly tongue. The tongue licked at a man’s head, and suddenly the man was falling, with no face. The girl leaped on another man’s back, clawing at his eyes with one hand, stabbing wildly with the dagger in the other.

  The remaining men had the craft to give way before Conan. Doubtless they hoped to draw him forward, then close in behind. Their hopes were in vain, for as they began that manoeuvre Reza came up.

  The Iranistani steward was not as fast on his feet as Conan, but made up for this when he finally reached his enemies. The great mace whirled, light blazing from its polished head. Then the polish vanished under clotting blood, as the mace crushed skulls and ribs, shattered knees and hips, and ruined limbs with awful speed.

  Reza and his mace wrought such havoc, indeed, that Conan and the others found themselves short of opponents. From the sounds floating down the stairs, however, this could be cured on the roof.

  “Follow me!”
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  Conan had been swift to close in the hall. Now he seemed to fly up the winding stairs. Halfway up an arrow cracked into the stone by his head and bounced off downward. A few steps farther up lay a body, an arrow between its ribs. Oozing blood made the stairs slippery, but Conan was still on his feet when two living men rolled down the stairs, locked in a death-grapple.

  Conan waited until the man without the armband was uppermost. Then he gripped the man by one arm and his hair, heaved him off his opponent, and slammed him against the stone. The man went limp, but Conan thought he could see breathing.

  He had no time to be sure, though, for the uproar from the roof was reaching a climax. As Conan reached the head of the stairs, he saw the archers backed into one comer against the chimneys, defending themselves as best they could with shortswords and knives. Several were already down, likewise several of their opponents.

  As long as the archers were too busy at close quarters to shoot, the gardens were a free path for the enemy, in or out.

  Conan ran to the edge of the roof, nearly tumbling over the edge into the branches of an apple tree. Everyone he could see in the garden was running frantically toward the walls. The invaders had the edge in numbers, but their pursuers of House Damaos were driving them like leaves in an autumn wind.

  Conan whirled, ready to free the archers for long-range work. He found that Reza and the rest of their party had already come up to do that. A seething mass of bodies surrounded the chimneys, hacking, screaming, and clawing at one another.

  As Conan closed, the mass spewed out a tall fair-haired man with a long moustache. He took one look at the blood-splattered Cimmerian and darted aside.

  “Stop him!” came a shout from within the melee. “The one with the moustache., he’s the leader!”

  Conan’s sword sliced air a hand’s-breadth from the leader. Instead of riposting, he flung his weapon down. Then he sprang on to the coping stones and hurled himself into the air. When Conan looked down, the man lay sprawled on the garden stairs, his head at an impossible angle to his neck.

  Desertion by their leader took the heart out of the remaining invaders. They could not cry for quarter loudly or quickly enough. It took much shouting and a few smart blows for Conan and Reza to persuade their men to grant that quarter.