Conan of Venarium

He proved a good prophet. No sooner had the Cimmerian fallen than more stones began flying at the Aquilonians from Duthil. At least two archers also began shooting from the village. A Bossonian cried out and sat down hard with an arrow through his thigh.

Vulth reached up and settled his conical helm more firmly on his head. "We're going to have to clean the place out now," he said, "and the barbarians in there are going to try to clean us out, too." Granth nodded. His cousin struck him as a good prophet, too.

Along with his comrades, Granth pressed on into Duthil. He saw no one on the street—but, down at the far end of it, two bodies sprawled in ugly death. The Cimmerian had not lied. Granth had not really thought he had.

A door flew open. A barbarian charged out swinging an axe. He chopped down one Bossonian and left another bowman pouring blood from a great gash in his leg. The pikemen turned on the barbarian then and stretched him lifeless in the mud, but not before he had taken more from the Aquilonians than they could ever take from him.

An arrow from the house next to the blacksmith's caught a pikeman three soldiers down from Granth in the throat. The other Gunderman clawed at the shaft that drank his life. He fell to his knees and then over on to his side. "Dever!" cried Granth, but Dever would never hear him again.

"Now we have to crush them," Captain Treviranus said. "One house at a time, if we must, but crush them we will!"

Even after the battle in front of Fort Venarium, Granth had never imagined work like this. Men fought to the death with whatever weapons they had. Women snatched up kitchen knives and flung themselves at pikemen and archers. More often than not, they would plunge the blades into their own breasts rather than risk capture. The Aquilonians spared children —until a boy who could not have been eight years old stabbed a Bossonian in the back. He had to reach up to get the knife between the bowman's ribs, but it found his heart. After that, the soldiers behaved as if they were destroying a nest of serpents.

Serpents, though, never stung back so savagely. Granth was one of the Gundermen who used a log to batter down the door to the smithy. The only person they found inside was a skeletally skinny woman whose gray eyes blazed in a face ghost-pale. She came at them not with a kitchen knife but with a long, heavy sword. She wounded two men, one of them badly, and fought with such ferocity that she made the Gundermen slay her.

"Mitra!" said Granth. "These aren't barbarians — they're demons, demons straight from hell!"

"Mitra carry Count Stercus straight down to hell," panted Vulth. "If not for him, everything would be quiet here. Now-"

Now the Cimmerians of Duthil, making their final stand, thought of nothing but taking as many of their foes with them as they could. Wounded barbarians feigned death, lying quiet until they could spring up and strike one last telling blow. The shrieks of the sorely hurt and the dying on both sides rose up into the uncaring sky.

At last, all the Cimmerians in Duthil above the age of five or so lay unmoving. Granth's pikestaff was scarlet along half its length. Gore splashed his mailshirt. He no longer hesitated about spearing Cimmerians on the ground to make sure they would not rise again —he had seen too many of them do just that. Vulth had a bandage on his right arm. Benno had taken an arrow through his left hand. Daverio was dead, his head smashed in by a Cimmerian despite his helm.

Captain Treviranus limped with a leg wound. "You're bleeding," he told Granth.

"Am I?" said Granth foolishly. He found he was, and that a chunk was missing from his left earlobe. He had no memory of getting hurt. Waving at the carnage all around, he asked, "What now, Captain?"

"Now I'd like to roast Stercus over a slow fire," answered Treviranus. "The whole countryside will rise up against us on account of this —and for nothing! Nothing!"

Vulth prowled the wreckage of the village. The carrion birds that had already begun to settle flew up again, croaking in annoyance, when he walked past. They came fluttering down again after he went by. When he came back to Granth and Treviranus, his face bore a worried expression. "What's wrong?" asked Granth.

"I've been looking for the blacksmith's body," said his cousin. "He's big as a bear—he shouldn't be hard to spot. But he's not here."

"Are you sure?" asked Treviranus. Vulth nodded. Granth could not remember seeing the smith in the brief, bloody, uneven battle. By Captain Treviranus' frown, neither could he. The garrison commander said, "Where is he, then?" In Duthil, the Aquilonians found no answers.

Mordec and Balarg and Nectan the shepherd tramped north — farther north than they were used to going. Nectan laughed and grinned at Mordec. "For one so grim, you've got a rare sneaky streak in you. Setting your son to guard the sheep is the best way I know to keep him from coming with us."