Conan the Barbarian: The Complete Collection

“Then you refuse to move?” cried Thespides, his face dark with passion.

“Be reasonable,” expostulated Conan. “We have the advantage of position —”

With a furious oath Thespides wheeled and galloped back down the valley where his knights waited impatiently.

Amalric shook his head. “You should not have let him return, Conan. I — look there!”

Conan sprang up with a curse. Thespides had swept in beside his men. They could hear his impassioned voice faintly, but his gesture toward the approaching horde was significant enough. In another instant five hundred lances dipped and the steel-clad company was thundering down the valley.

A young page came running from Yasmela’s pavilion, crying to Conan in a shrill, eager voice. “My Lord, the princess asks why you do not follow and support Count Thespides?”

“Because I am not so great a fool as he,” grunted Conan, reseating himself on the boulder and beginning to gnaw a huge beef-bone.

“You grow sober with authority,” quoth Amalric. “Such madness as that was always your particular joy.”

“Aye, when I had only my own life to consider,” answered Conan. “Now — what in hell —”

The horde had halted. From the extreme wing rushed a chariot, the naked charioteer lashing the steeds like a madman; the other occupant was a tall figure whose robe floated spectrally on the wind. He held in his arms a great vessel of gold and from it poured a thin stream that sparkled in the sunlight. Across the whole front of the desert horde the chariot swept, and behind its thundering wheels was left, like the wake behind a ship, a long thin powdery line that glittered in the sands like the phosphorescent track of a serpent.

“That’s Natohk!” swore Amalric. “What hellish seed is he sowing?”

The charging knights had not checked their headlong pace. Another fifty paces and they would crash into the uneven Kushite ranks, which stood motionless, spears lifted. Now the foremost knights had reached the thin line that glittered across the sands. They did not heed that crawling menace. But as the steel-shod hoofs of the horses struck it, it was as when steel strikes flint — but with more terrible result. A terrific explosion rocked the desert, which seemed to split apart along the strewn line with an awful burst of white flame.

In that instant the whole foremost line of the knights was seen enveloped in that flame, horses and steel-clad riders withering in the glare like insects in an open blaze. The next instant the rear ranks were piling up on their charred bodies. Unable to check their headlong velocity, rank after rank crashed into the ruins. With appalling suddenness the charge had turned into a shambles where armored figures died amid screaming, mangled horses.

Now the illusion of confusion vanished as the horde settled into orderly lines. The wild Kushites rushed into the shambles, spearing the wounded, bursting the helmets of the knights with stones and iron hammers. It was all over so quickly that the watchers on the slopes stood dazed; and again the horde moved forward, splitting to avoid the charred waste of corpses. From the hills went up a cry: “We fight not men but devils!”

On either ridge the hillmen wavered. One rushed toward the plateau, froth dripping from his beard.

“Flee, flee!” he slobbered. “Who can fight Natohk’s magic?”

With a snarl Conan bounded from his boulder and smote him with the beef-bone; he dropped, blood starting from nose and mouth. Conan drew his sword, his eyes slits of blue bale-fire.

“Back to your posts!” he yelled. “Let another take a backward step and I’ll shear off his head! Fight, damn you!”

The rout halted as quickly as it had begun. Conan’s fierce personality was like a dash of ice-water in their whirling blaze of terror.

“Take your places,” he directed quickly. “And stand to it! Neither man nor devil comes up Shamla Pass this day!”

Where the plateau rim broke to the valley slope the mercenaries braced their belts and gripped their spears. Behind them the lancers sat their steeds, and to one side were stationed the Khoraja spearmen as reserves. To Yasmela, standing white and speechless at the door of her tent, the host seemed a pitiful handful in comparison to the thronging desert horde.

Conan stood among the spearmen. He knew the invaders would not try to drive a chariot charge up the Pass in the teeth of the archers, but he grunted with surprise to see the riders dismounting. These wild men had no supply trains. Canteens and pouches hung at their saddle-peaks. Now they drank the last of their water and threw the canteens away.

“This is the death-grip,” he muttered as the lines formed on foot. “I’d rather have had a cavalry charge; wounded horses bolt and ruin formations.”

The horde had formed into a huge wedge, of which the tip was the Stygians and the body, the mailed asshuri, flanked by the nomads. In close formation, shields lifted, they rolled onward, while behind them a tall figure in a motionless chariot lifted wide-robed arms in grisly invocation.