Conan of Venarium

Chapter Two The Fight by the Fort

Granth son of Biemur looked out toward the woods beyond Fort Venarium. A dirt track led farther north, but the Aquilonian army had not taken it. Instead, Count Stercus seemed content to linger here and let the Cimmerians hurl themselves against his men if they would.

Whatever Granth hoped to see escaped his eyes. One tall, dark-needled tree merged with another until he wished for color, wished for motion, wished for anything but the endless forest stretching out and out to infinity.

Vulth looked out toward the woods, too. Granth's cousin realized that what he was not seeing might be there nonetheless. He said, "Mitra smite 'em, the Cimmerians could be hiding an army amongst those trees, and we'd never be the wiser till they rushed out howling like maniacs."

That made Granth cast another worried glance in the direction of the forest. After a moment, he realized he was foolish to peer ever to the north. Although that was the direction in which the Aquilonians had been going, the barbarians who dwelt in gloomy Cimmeria might as readily come at them from east or west or south.

A harsh chattering came from the woods. Granth's hand leaped to the hilt of the shortsword on his belt. "What was that?" he said.

"A bird," said Vulth.

"What kind of bird?" asked Granth. "I've never heard a bird that sounded like that before."

"Who knows?" said his cousin. "They have funny birds here, birds that won't live where it's warmer and sunnier. One of those."

"They have other things, too," said Granth. Vulth waved impatiently, as if to say he could not bother to worry about the Cimmerians. That angered Granth, who snapped, "If this was going to be an easy conquest, Count Stercus wouldn't have needed to bring an army into the north. He could have come by himself, and the barbarians would have run away before him."

Vulth looked back toward the camp. Stercus' silk pavilion towered over the other officers' shelters, which in turn dwarfed the canvas tents in which ordinary soldiers slept. "Count Stercus thinks he could have driven the barbarians away all by himself," said Vulth.

Before answering, Granth looked around for Nopel. Not seeing the sergeant, he said, "We all think a lot of things that aren't so. Half the time, for instance, I think you make sense." Vulth stuck his tongue out at him. Before either of them could say anything more, that chattering bird call again resounded from the woods. Granth peered in the direction from which the sound had come. Though he saw nothing untoward, he frowned. "And I don't think that's any natural bird."

"Where are the Cimmerians, then?" asked Vulth.

Granth shrugged. "I don't know, but we're liable to find out before very long."

Mordec slid forward through the forest with the speed and silence that marked the true barbarian. Not a single twig crackled under the soles of his boots; not a single branch swayed to mark his passage. He might have been a ghost in Crom's grim underworld for all he impinged on the world of the living. Nor was he the only Cimmerian gliding toward the invaders' encampment; far from it. The Aquilonians seemed unaware the woods around them swarmed with warriors.

From in back of the trunk of a fat spruce, Mordec loosed a bird call to let his fellow know where he was. Another Cimmerian answered him a moment later. He looked out from behind the trunk. Most of the soldiers who fought under the gold lion on black went about their business, oblivious to the calls. A handful of the enemy—mostly yellow-headed Gundermen who had some small store of woodscraft—looked up at the sounds, but even they seemed more curious than truly alarmed.

A soundless laugh passed Mordec's lips. Soon now, very soon, the Aquilonians would find reason to be alarmed. They had come into Cimmeria before, never yet learning the lesson of how unwelcome they were here. The blacksmith tightened his grip on the axe handle. They would have to find out once more, then.

More bird calls resounded, all around the encampment. Some of them said the Cimmerians were in position, others that the Aquilonian scouts and sentries were silenced. Mordec smiled grimly. The men in the clearing would get no warning before the attack.

Not far from Mordec, a clan chief raised a trumpet to his lips. The discordant blast he blew would have made any arrogant Aquilonian bugler double up with laughter. But the signal did not need to be beautiful. It only needed to be heard from one side of the clearing to the other, and heard it was.

Yelling like demons, the Cimmerians burst from concealment and thundered toward the enemy. Mordec swung up the axe. For most men, it would have been a two-handed weapon. The great-thewed blacksmithswung it effortlessly in one. That let him carry the shield as well.

When the Cimmerians swarmed from the woods at them, the Gundermen and Bossonians yelled, too, in horrified dismay. But they did not break and flee, as Mordec hoped they might. Had they done so, their destruction would have been certain. Other Aquilonian hosts, taken by surprise in the — seemingly—trackless forests of Cimmeria, had come to grief in just that way.

These men, though, however much Mordec despised them both as invaders and as willing subjects—willing slaves —to a king, were warriors, too. The Bossonians might have cried out in alarm, but they began shooting even before their cries had fully faded. And the Gundermen snatched up their pikes and hurried to form lines to protect their archers and companies to protect themselves. True, sweet bugle notes resounded from within the palisade.

Before the Bossonians and Gundermen outside the encampment were fully formed to face the Cimmerian tidal wave, it swept onto them. A blond Gunderman thrust at Mordec. He knocked the spearhead aside with his shield as his axe came down on the shaft and cut it in two. Cursing, the Gunderman grabbed for his shortsword. Too late, for Mordec's next stroke clove his skull to the teeth. Blood sprayed and spurted; several hot drops splashed Mordec in the face. Roaring in triumph, the blacksmith pressed on.

He might have been hewing firewood in the forest rather than men on the battlefield. One after another, Aquilonians fell before him. They wore chainmail, aye, but it did them little good; his axe, propelled by the power of his mighty arm, hewed through the links as if they were made of linen.

When Mordec paused for a moment to snatch a breath and look down at himself, he was surprised to discover a cut on his forearm and another on his left leg. He had no memory of receiving the wounds, nor had he felt them until he knew he had them. He shrugged. They would not impede him. Even if they had impeded him, he would have gone on anyway. Resistless momentum was the Cimmerians' friend; if ever they should falter, if ever the Aquilonians should rally, the superior discipline the men from the south knew could swing the fight their way.

Forward, then—ever forward. Mordec plunged back into the press. An arrow thudded into his shield and stood thrilling; had he not carried the target of wood and leather, the shaft might have found his heart.

He hewed a Bossonian's sword from his hand. "Mercy!" gasped the man, turning pale and falling to his knees. "Mercy, friend!"

"Mercy?" Mordec laughed. He knew some of the Aquilonian tongue, having learned it from traders who now and again dared venture north after amber or wax or furs. But that word had scant meaning in Cimmeria, regardless of the language in which it was spoken. The axe fell. With a groan, the Bossonian crumpled. Mordec kicked the corpse aside, saying, "I am no friend of yours, southern dog."

He hewed through the chaos toward one of the gateways in the palisade. If the Cimmerians could break in with their foes still in disorder, the day and the campaign were both theirs for the taking. They had no general, no single mind moving them hither and yon in accordance with his will, yet most of them sensed that same need. On they came, smiting and shouting.

The foemen in front of them gave ground. A few archers and pikemen ran for their lives, forgetting in their fear they would find no safety in flight. Most, though, put up the best fight they could. And, to take the place of the fled and fallen, more and more soldiers came forth from the camp.

In the red rage of battle, Mordec cared nothing for that. More enemies before him meant more men he could murder. He chopped down another Bossonian. Only a handful of stubborn blond pikemen from Gunderland stood between him and the gate. Countrymen at his side, he stormed against them.

Like any man who grew up among rough neighbors, Granth had done his share of brawling. He had also helped clear out a nest of bandits from hill country near his farmhouse. This mad encounter in southern Cimmeria, though, was his first taste of true battle. If he lived, he knew he would have its measure forevermore. Whether he lived, though, seemed very much up in the air.

One moment, the encampment and its surroundings were as quiet and calm as if they were back in Gunderland and not in the midst of enemy country. The next, after a horrible blast from a horn, a horde of bellowing barbarians burst from the trees and rushed toward the Aquilonians, brandishing every sort of weapon under the sun: swords, axes, spears, sickles, scythes, maces, morningstars, simple bludgeons, eating knives, even a pitchfork. Cimmerian archers sent shafts arcing over the heads of their onrushing comrades.

"Mitra!" exclaimed Granth, and snatched up his pike from where he had laid it on the ground.

"Mitra, watch over us," echoed Vulth, grabbing his own weapon. "And the god had better, for we're in trouble if he doesn't."

"Form a line!" shouted Sergeant Nopel from somewhere not far away. "Form a line, protect your comrades, and fight hard. If they break us, we're ruined. If we stand fast, though, we've got a chance." He strode up to take his place among the men he led, using his example to buoy their courage.

A captain was shouting, too: "You pikemen, ward the archers as you can. They aren't worth so much at handstrokes."

Bossonians were already pouring shafts into the onrushing mob of barbarians. Here and there, a dark-haired Cimmerian would clap his hands to his chest or his neck or his face and fall. Taking a handful of drops from the ocean, however, left plenty more than enough to drown a man. And now the barbarian storm crashed into—crashed over—the Aquilonians outside the palisade.

Any sensible man, Granth realized, would have been terrified. Maybe he was something less than sensible. More likely, he was so desperate, so busy fighting for his life, that he had no time for fear or any other distraction. Anything that took his attention away from simple survival would have meant him lying on the field, a hacked and gory corpse.

As things were, he might have died a dozen times in the first minute of collision. A barbarian swinging a two-handed sword almost as tall as he was thundered toward him, shouting something in Cimmerian that Granth could not understand. But even a two-handed sword had less reach than a Gunderman's pike. Granth spitted the foe before the Cimmerian could slash him.

To his horror, the barbarian, though bellowing in anguish, tried to run up the spear so he could strike with the sword, but slumped over dead before he could. Granth had to clear the pike in a hurry; had he not, some other Cimmerian would have cut him down. At his right hand, Vulth speared an axe-wielding barbarian. With the enemy still on the pike, Granth's cousin could not defend himself against another Cimmerian, this one swinging a wickedly spiked morningstar. Granth had no time to thrust, but used his pikestaff as if it were a cudgel, clouting the Cimmerian in the side of the head.

The enemy warrior wore a leather cap strengthened with iron strips. That kept the shaft from smashing his skull like a melon. But, though the blow did not slay, it stunned, leaving the barbarian dazed and staggering and easy meat for Vulth's newly freed pike.

As the Cimmerian fell, Vulth bowed to Granth as if to an Aquilonian noble. "My thanks, cousin," he said.

"My pleasure, cousin," replied Granth, as if he were such a noble. He looked over the field: a mad, irregular excuse for a battle if ever there was one. Everywhere he saw Cimmerians surging forward, Bossonians and Gundermen giving ground. Raising his voice above the din of the fight, he said, "Looks to me as if we're in trouble, cousin."

"Looks to me as if you're right," agreed Vulth. Granth and he had to fall back several paces or be left behind by their retreating countrymen, which would have left them cut off, assailed from all directions at once, and doomed to quick destruction. Vulth risked a glance back over his shoulder. "Having a fortified camp behind us doesn't seem so bad any more, docs it?"

"As a matter of fact, no," said Granth, doing his best to preserve the grand manner. "All those men inside the camp look pretty good, too—or the rogues would, if they'd only come out and fight."

There he was not being fair to his fellow soldiers. As fast as they could arm themselves, they were rushing forward into the fray. But to Granth, as to the other men who bore the brunt of the savage Cimmerian onslaught, their friends entered the fight at what seemed a glacial pace.

The barbarian who hurled himself at Granth had eyes that put the Gunderman in mind of flaming blue ice. He roared out a wordless bellow of hate and rage, his face contorted into a mask of fury that might have made any foe quail. His only weapon was a rusty scythe, but he swung it as if he had been reaping men for years. Granth jabbed with the pike to keep the warrior off him. The Cimmerian, who wore a wolfskin jacket over baggy woolen breeks, howled incomprehensible, oddly musical curses at him.

That the Gunderman did not mind. When the barbarian reached out with his left hand to seize the pikestaff and shove it aside so he could close, however, Granth quickly jerked it back and then thrust forward again. He felt the soft, heavy resistance of flesh as the pike's point pierced the man who sought to slay him. The Cimmerian howled. Granth twisted the pike to make sure the stroke was a killing one, then jerked it free. The barbarian fell, blood and bowels bursting from his belly.

Again, though, he and Vulth had to retreat to keep from being surrounded and cut off.. "How many damned Cimmerians are there?" he shouted.

"By Mitra, they're all dammed," answered his cousin. "But there are too many of them on the field here."

That there were. They forced the Gundermen and Bossonians back and back, until the men from the south were fighting desperately to hold the barbarians out of the fortified encampment. If the Cimmerians forced themselves into the camp, Count Stercus' army was probably doomed. That seemed all too plain to Granth — and to the howling savages who forced their way ever forward despite the reinforcements issuing from the camp.

A Gunderman to Granth's left slumped to his knees, bleeding from a dozen wounds that would long since have slain a less vital man. "What are we going to do?" cried Granth. "What can we do?"

"Fight," said Vulth. "This is where we'll win or lose, so we'd better win."

Granth fought, and fought hard. If the battle were to have a turning point, he and his comrades would have to make it here. If not— He shook his head. He would not think about that. It might befall him, but he would not think of it before it did.

Fight hard!" bellowed Mordec. "By Crom, wee can break them here. We can, and we must! Fight hard!"

Although he and his fellows had battled to the very gates of the Aquilonians' camp, they could not force their way inside. For one thing, the pikemen and archers at the gates battled back with the careless fervor of men staring disaster in the face. For another, more men kept coming forth from the encampment to add their weight to the fray. And, for a third, archers galled the Cimmerians from behind the ditch and palisade surrounding the camp.

Mordec smashed at the tip of a pike seeking to drink his blood. The iron head flew off. He roared in triumph. But the Gunderman he faced defended himself so fiercely, first with the pikestaff and then with his shortsword, that Mordec could not slay him. At last, balked of his intended prey, the blacksmith sought and soon found an easier victim.

Inside the encampment, a bugler blew a long, complex call. The Aquilonians outside the gate that Mordec faced fell back into the camp. The foot soldiers who had been hurrying out to help defend the place parted to the left and to the right. A great shout of victory rose from the Cimmerians, who loped forward, ready to taste at last the sweet fruit for which they had struggled so long and hard.

But they rejoiced too soon. The archers and pikemen had not given way from despair, but because they were clearing the path for their comrades. That sweet-voiced Aquilonian bugle cried out once more —and the armored knights who up until then had not joined the battle thundered forth against the Cimmerians.

The horsemen had used the whole width of the encampment to go from walk to trot to gallop, and when they struck, they struck like an avalanche. Here in the hilly, heavily forested north, cavalry was not much used. Not only was there little room for horsemen to deploy, but most of the few horses in Cimmeria were mere ponies, ill-suited to carrying heavy men and their armor of iron.

Shouting out the name of King Numedides as if it were a thing to conjure with and not that of a slavemaster, the Aquilonian knights slammed into the oncoming Cimmerians. Lances and slashing swords and cleverly aimed iron-shod hooves and the surging power of armored men and horses took their toll. The Cimmerians fought back as best they could, but their swords and spears would not bite on the knights' thick plate, or on the iron scales the horses wore to protect their heads and breasts.

Mordec's axe was a different story. When he brought it down between a horse's eyes, the beast foundered as if it had run headlong into a stone wall. Agile even in his well-articulated armor, the rider tried to scramble free. The blacksmith's countrymen swarmed over him. Their blades probed for every chink and joint in his suit of iron. He screamed, but not for long.

Yet even as he died, his comrades spurred ahead, spearing and hacking, their great mounts whinnying fiercely and rising on command to their hind legs so they could lash out with their front hooves. Along with Numedides' name, the knights cried out that of Count Stercus, and, whenever they did, one of the foremost riders gaily waved. His visor was down, so Mordec could not see his face, but he fought like a man who had no regard for his own life. Again and again, he urged his charger into the thickest part of the press. Again and again, the other Aquilonians followed to save him from his own folly—if folly it was, for even as he risked himself he routed the Cimmerians.

Had they been used to facing armored horsemen, they surely would have acquitted themselves better. But the Aquilonian knights had, along with the advantages of armor and momentum, that of striking from above and, greatest of all, that of surprise. Never had any of their foes here, no matter how ferocious, tried to stand against such an onslaught.

With the mercurial nature that marked the barbarian, the horde of Cimmerians who had been rampaging forward now suddenly turned to panic-stricken flight. Turning their backs to the knights who pressed them, they dashed for the safety of the woods.

"Stand! Hold fast, you fools!" shouted Mordec. "You but give yourselves into the enemy's hands if you run from him!" His was not the only voice raised trying to stem the rout, but all resounded in vain. Faster by far than they had advanced on the Aquilonians' camp, the Cimmerians fled from it.

And they paid the inevitable price for their folly. Laughing at the sport, the Aquilonian knights speared them down from behind, as if they were so many plump partridges. Bossonian archers sped the Cimmerians on their way with cleverly aimed shafts. More than a few bold warriors from those gloomy woodlands suffered the humiliation of taking their death wounds in the back.

Mordec had to run away with the rest. Had he stood at bay, alone, he would only have thrown his own life away— and for what? For nothing, not when his countrymen thought only of escape. And so, cursing fate and his fellow Cimmerians in equal measure, he ran. He was among the last to leave the field: a small" sop for his spirit, but the only one he could take from the sudden rout and disaster.

He had almost reached the safety of the trees when an arrow pierced his left calf. He snarled one last curse at the Cimmerians who had given up the fight too soon, and limped on. Once hidden from the now rampaging foe, he paused and tried to pull out the arrow. The barbs on the point would not let him free it from his flesh. Setting his teeth, Mordec pushed it forward instead. Out came the point. He broke off the fletching and pulled the shaft through the track it had made. Then he bandaged the bleeding wounds with cloth cut from his breeks. That done, he limped on toward Duthil.

When Mordec came upon a dead man who had fallen still holding on to his spear, he pried the other Cimmerian's hand, now pale from loss of blood, off the spearshaft and used the weapon as a makeshift stick to keep some of his weight off the injured leg. He would have gone on without the stick; he was determined enough to have gone on with only one leg. But having it made his progress easier.

"Home," he said, as if someone had claimed he might not go there. And so the Aquilonians had. They had done their best to stretch him out stiff and stark like the warrior from whom he had taken the spear. They had done their best, and they had failed: he still lived, while more than a few of them lay dead at his hands.

In the larger sense, his countrymen had lost their battle. Mordec, though, stubbornly reckoned his own fight a triumph of sorts.

A wounded Cimmerian, too proud and fierce to beg for his own life, glared up at Granth. The Gunderman hesitated before thrusting home with his pike. "Seems a shame to slaughter all these barbarians," he remarked. "The healers could keep a lot of them alive, and they'd fetch us a good price in the slave markets, eh?"

Vulth and Sergeant Nopel both guffawed. His cousin said, "You try to sell a slave dealer Cimmerians, and he'll laugh in your face and spit in your eye. But he won't give you a counterfeit copper for 'em, let alone the silver lunas you're dreaming about."

"Why not?" Granth still did not slay the barbarian at his feet. "They're big and bold and strong. Mitra! We found out everything we wanted to know about how strong they are."

"And you should have noticed none of them surrendered," said Vulth. "They aren't known for yielding to another man's will"—he rolled his eyes at the understatement—"and what good is a slave who won't?"

Before Granth could answer, the Cimmerian on the ground hooked an arm around his ankle and tried to drag him off his feet. Only a hasty backward leap saved him from a grapple. His cousin speared the Cimmerian, who groaned, spat blood, and at last, long after a civilized man would have, died.

"You see?" said Vulth.

"Well, maybe I do at that," admitted Granth. "They're like serpents, aren't they? You're never sure they're dead until the sun goes down."

"When the sun goes down, more of them come out," said Nopel. "Now get on about your business."

Granth obeyed, sending the Cimmerians he found still breathing on the field out of this world with such speed and mercy as he could give them: had they won the fight, as they had come so close to doing, he would have wanted a last gift of that sort from them. Vulth and Nopel and most of the Gundermen and Bossonians acted the same way. No one who had stood up against the barbarians rushing out of the woods could have reckoned them anything but worthy foes.

Count Stercus rode up as the foot soldiers continued their grisly work. Excitement reddened the commander's usually pale cheeks and made his eyes sparkle. "Well done, you men," he said. "Every barbarian you slay now is a barbarian who will not try to slay you later."

Granth and Vulth and Sergeant Nopel all nodded. "Aye, my lord," murmured Nopel. The sight of Stercus cheerful startled them all. The nobleman had despised his soldiers. Vic-ton', though, seemed to have changed his mind.

He said, "We shall seize this country, such as it is, and hold it for our own. Farmers will come north from Aquilonia and take their places here, to prosper for generation upon generation. Fort Venarium will be their center, and one day will grow into a city that can stand beside Tarantia and the other great centers of the realm."

That sounded good to Granth. Only one question still troubled his mind. He was bold, or rash, enough to ask it: "What about the Cimmerians, my lord?"

Nopel hissed in alarm between his teeth, while Vulth made a horrible face and then tried to pretend he had done no such thing. But Count Stercus' good cheer was proof even against impertinent questions. "What about the Cimmerians, my good fellow?" he echoed. "We have smashed their barbarous horde." His wave encompassed the corpse-strewn field; that many of the corpses were those of his countrymen seemed not to have come to his notice. Grandly, he continued, "Now we subdue their haunts in these parts, and compel them to obedience. Surely every Cimmerian man and woman, every boy and every little girl" —his voice lingered lovingly over the last few words—"shall bend the knee before the might of King Numedides."

From all that Granth had heard and seen, the fierce folk of the north bent the knee to no man. He started to say what he thought; he was as forthright as any other Gunderman. But the thought of what Vulth and Nopel had done a moment before gave him pause, and Count Stercus rode off before he could speak. He did not care enough about the argument to call the commander back.

"By Mitra, slaughter goes to his head like strong wine from Poitain," said Vulth in a low voice. "You'd hardly know he was the sour son of a whore who led us here."

"He didn't bite this fool's head off," agreed the sergeant, jerking a thumb toward Granth son of Biemur. "If that doesn't prove he's a happy man, curse me if I know what would."

"Do you suppose holding the Cimmerians down will be as easy as he says?" asked Granth.

Before answering, Nopel spat on the blood-soaked soil. "That for the Cimmerians," he said. "I'll tell you this much: we have a better chance now that we've smashed the manhood of three or four clans. What can they do but submit?"

Vulth stopped to search a dead man. He rose, muttering to himself and shaking his head. "I've not found any plunder worth keeping. The poorest, most hardscrabble Bossonian carries more in the way of loot than these dogs."

"What do we want with them, then?" wondered Granth. He had also searched corpses. He had found nothing worth holding on to but a curiously wrought copper amulet on a leather thong around the neck of a fallen enemy swordsman, and even that could not have been worth more than a couple of lunas at the outside. He had taken it more as a souvenir of the battle than in the hope of selling it later.

"They're here. They're on our doorstep. If we don't beat them, they'll come down into the Bossonian Marches, into Gunderland, maybe even into Aquilonia proper," said Nopel. "Better we should fight them, better we should whip them, in their own miserable country."

"Well, so it is," said Granth. The sergeant's words made good sense to him. He strode across the field, looking for more Cimmerians to finish. Carrion birds had already begun to settle on bodies indisputably dead.

Conan's bruises healed quickly, thanks to his youth and the iron constitution of the barbarian. He was not only up and about but busy in the smithy only a couple of days after his father beat him. But, though he might have been strong enough to go after Mordec, he chose to remain in Duthil instead. Belatedly, he had come to realize his father was right. If he went to fight the Aquilonians with his father and they both fell, who would tend to his mother? She had no other kin left alive in the village; she would have to rely on the kindness of those not tied to her by blood, and such kindness was always in short supply in Cimmeria.

As well as he could, Conan tended to the forge and the rest of the smithy. No large jobs came his way while his father was gone, for most of the other men of Duthil had gone with Mordec into battle. But Reuda, who was married to Dolfnal the tanner, came to Conan asking for a cooking fork. "Must I wait until Mordec comes home?" she said.

He shook his head, pausing for a moment to brush his thick mane of black hair back from his forehead with a swipe of the hand. "Nay, no need," he told her. "Come back tomorrow, just before the sun goes down. I'll have it for you then."

"And if I am not satisfied with your work?" asked Reuda. "If I see I would sooner have your father's?"

"Then save the fork and show it to him," replied Conan. "If you are sorry with what I give you, he will make me sorrier that I did not suit you."

Reuda rubbed her chin. After a moment's thought, she nodded. "Aye, let it be as you say. If you'll not work your best for fear of Mordec's heavy hand, nothing less will squeeze that best from you."

"I am not afraid of him," said Conan fiercely, but an ingrained regard for the truth compelled him to add, "Still, I would not feel his fist without good cause." Reuda laughed and nodded and went back to her husband's tannery, taking the stink of hides and sour tanbark with her.

Conan went to work straightaway, choosing an iron bar about as thick as his finger. He heated one end of it white-hot, then brought it back to the anvil and, with quick, cunning strokes of the hammer, shaped that end into a loop about two inches long. That done, he used a cold chisel to cut through the extremity of the loop, giving him the two tines he would need for the work. Some forks had three tines, but that was as yet beyond his skill. He did not think Reuda would complain if hers proved to be of the ordinary sort.

Heating the iron again, he bent the tines on the heel of the anvil until something close to a right angle separated them. That way, he could work on each of them in turn more conveniently. Careful hammerstrokes flattened the tines. Conan heated the metal once more and brought the tines back to their proper position. He set the fork aside and let it cool.

When he could safely handle it without tongs, he used brass rivets to bind a wood handle to the iron shank. He looked the work over to see if Reuda could find any way to fault it. Seeing none, he took the fork to the tanner's wife fully a day earlier than he had promised.

She examined it, too, plainly with the same thing in mind. Seeing nothing about which she could complain, she gave the young smith a grudging nod, saying, "I think it may serve. When your father comes home, we'll settle on a price."

"All right." Conan nodded. Almost all business in Duthil was done that way. The Cimmerians minted no coins; the few that circulated here came up from the south. Barter and haggling took the place of money and set costs.

When Conan left Reuda's kitchen, he saw Glemmis, who had taken word of the Aquilonian invasion from Duthil to the nearby village of Uist and then, no doubt, gone on to fight the men from the south. Glemmis limped up the street toward him; a filthy, blood-soaked rag covered most of a wound on the man's left arm.

Conan's heart leaped into his mouth. "The battle—!" he blurted.

Glemmis spoke a word Conan had never imagined he would hear: "Lost." He went on, "We hit the Aquilonians a hard blow, but they held us, and then —Crom! —their cursed horsemen cut us down like ripe rye at harvest time." He shuddered at the memory.

"What of my father?" asked Conan. "What of the other warriors who left our village?"

"Of Mordec I know naught. He may well be hale," answered Glemmis with a certain rough kindness. "But I can tell you truly that many fell. Eogannan, for instance, I saw go down, a Bossonian's arrow through his throat. We've not known such a black day for many long years."

Had he got away safe by running first and fastest? Even so young, Conan saw the possibility and scorned him for it. But before long other men started coming home to Duthil, many of them wounded, all hollow-eyed and shocked with defeat. Even Balarg the weaver, who prided himself on never seeming at a loss, looked as if he had grappled with demons and come off second best. Women began to wail as some men did not come home again, and as survivors began bringing word of those who never would.

Several returning warriors had seen Conan's father where the fighting was hottest, but none could say whether Mordec lived or had fallen. "I will wait, then, and learn," said Conan, "and if need be avenge myself on the Aquilonians." When he told Verina what he had learned, his mother started keening, as for one dead.

But Mordec did come back to Duthil, limping in with a spearshaft clamped in his left fist to help bear his weight. His right arm briefly slipped around Conan in a rough embrace. "We'll fight them again," said Conan. "We'll fight them again, and we'll beat them."

"Not soon." Mordec wearily shook his head. "Not tomorrow, or next week, or next month. Not next year, all too likely. We lost too much in this round."

"What then?" asked Conan, aghast.

"What then?" echoed his father. "Why, the bitter beer of the beaten, for beaten we are."