Conan of Venarium

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."