Conan of Venarium

"Well, so what?" said Conan. "I've got nothing to go home to, anyhow. Numedides' men made damned sure of that. Best thing I can do now is pay them back in their own coin."

Talorc wept harder. "They'll kill us." He was hardly older than Conan.

"They haven't done it yet," said Conan. "They can keep on trying." He stirred the dead Aquilonian farmer with his boot. "Until they manage, I'm not going to worry about it." Some of the other Cimmerians laughed. The rest, more inclined to Talorc's mood than to Conan's, drank until the farmhouse held nothing more to drink.

They left the place before sunup the next morning. As day brightened, Conan could see a few clouds of smoke rising well to the north: the sign other Cimmerian bands still roamed their enemies' land. His companions did not fire the farmhouse. That would have brought Aquilonian notice to them, and they had already had more notice from King Numedides' soldiers than they wanted.

Later that day, a squadron of Aquilonian knights rode north past them without slowing down, without recognizing them for what they were. Conan laughed at that, but not for long. The knights might not trouble him, but they would help harry his countrymen out of Aquilonia. He wished he could do them a bad turn. The worst turn he could think of was simply surviving.

Somewhere to the south and east lay Tarantia, Numedides' glittering capital. Had any Cimmerian ever reached it? The blacksmith's son had no idea. He did want to see it before the Aquilonians hunted him down, though. That would be a triumph of sorts.

Two days later, he discovered that not all the Aquilonians failed to see Cimmerians for what they were. A raucous cry rang out: "There they are, the murdering bastards!" About a dozen men from the south, farmers and townsfolk kitted out with the same odd mix of weapons and armor as the brigands bore, came loping toward them across a field. One of the Aquilonians shouted something else: "Kill them! Kill them all!"

Another field, even broader, lay on the far side of the road. Conan did not think flight would serve the Cimmerians. A savage grin on his face, he turned to the others who had come so far from their northern homes. "If we kill a few of them, the rest will flee," he said. "We can do it!"

There, however, he miscalculated. Talorc was a good bowman despite his tears, and knocked down two Aquilonians before the rest could close. But that did not discourage the ones who still lived. On they came, shouting King Numedides' name. The battle that followed would be forever nameless, but it was as fierce as many bigger fights of which the chroniclers sang for centuries.

Talorc fell almost at once, fulfilling his own dark prophecy. He wounded one of the two Aquilonians who had assailed him. Another Cimmerian soon slew the man. The fight went on without them. Neither side showed even the slightest interest in flight. It soon became clear things would end only when either Cimmerians or Aquilonians had no one left who could stand on his feet or wield a weapon.

Up until then, Conan had dealt out wounds in plenty, but had received hardly more than scratches. In that fight he learned edged steel could bite his flesh, too, and that it was no more pleasant when it did than he would have guessed. But not a cry of pain escaped him when he was hurt; he would not yield to wounds any more than he had yielded to his father's hard hands. And, since none of the gashes he received was enough to cripple him, he went on fighting, too.

One of the Aquilonians was a great bear of a man: not quite so tall as Conan, perhaps, but even wider through the shoulders, with enormous arms, a thick chest, and an even thicker belly that hung down over the top of his breeches. He was a farmer, not a soldier; his only weapon was a spade. But he swung it with a wild man's lunatic savagery. It split flesh, broke bones, shattered skulls. One Cimmerian after another went down before him.

Conan, likewise, was the champion for the men of the north. After half an hour, those two were the only fighters not weltering in their gore. Conan hefted his father's axe. The hulking Aquilonian advanced on him, still clutching that blood-dripping spade. A half-crazed grin stretched across his face. "One of us dies," he said.

"Aye." Conan nodded. Here was a foe he could respect. "One of us does." He threw the axe, a trick he had taught himself between bouts of brigandage. Its head should have torn out the Aquilonian's heart.

Clang! Fast as a striking serpent, the big man knocked the flying axe aside with the spade. His grin got wider. "Looks like that one's going to be you."

Conan made no reply. He did the last thing the Aquilonian could have expected: he rushed straight for him. The foe hesitated for a fatal heartbeat, wondering which blow to use to strike down the apparent madman he faced. But Conan's madness had method to it; the Aquilonian had just started to swing back the spade when Conan seized the handle just below the blade.