Conan now turned his head the other way, and this time the curses escaped his lips. Another band of loosefeet had drifted into sight as silently as a moving sand dune. They were marching straight for the mouth of the draw. No barring that to the horsemen now, not even by a Cimmerian's sword.
A very longheaded captain, the one who led the enemy tonight. Conan would gladly enroll him among the chiefs he had slain and sing a death song for him. He would still more gladly ask him what he did in this land, and who else aided him.
With his hands, Conan signaled to the six Afghulis at his post. The plan had been for all three outposts to strike the enemy in the rear. But the men in posts closer to the cliff now could not move that fast without being seen or heard and caught on open ground by bandit archers. In that situation, they were to rally on the camp itself and swell the ranks of its defenders—or face the wrath of both Khezal and Conan together.
The attack from the rear would now rest on broad Cimmerian shoulders—although six Afghulis accustomed to bladework in the dark were no despicable foe either. Together, Conan expected that he and the Afghulis might even be able to keep Bethina alive, although the harder she tried to "take her man," the harder that task would be.
Conan's chivalry toward women never let him keep one out of a fight she entered of her own free will. But the Ekinari would not be grateful if he led Bethina into battle and did not lead her out again safely. Ungrateful Ekinari could be a menace to the quest or the peace of Turan, and either way a menace to Khezal's future.
A man did not need to deal with moneylenders, Conan thought, to learn that he could owe too much to too many different people!
The Afghulis slipped along behind Conan as silently as the Cimmerian, more so than their enemies. Bethina not only kept up, she made hardly more noise than her companions.
So it was not any of those with Conan who alerted the prowling loosefeet to their danger.
"Eeeeenaaaa—ha!"
The war cry split the night. Conan saw shadows swirl and dance as some bandits faced about, to repel attack from their rear. Others dashed forward, hoping to reach the camp in time to find the sleepy or the drunken struggling out of their blankets.
With battle joined, speed was now more important than silence. Conan broke into a run, slowing his pace only enough to not outdistance his companions too much. Being a match for any three warriors was no reason to go into battle alone when there was no need.
So Conan struck the bandits only a few paces ahead of Farad, and Farad only a few paces ahead of the other Afghulis. Bethina brought up the rear, but just before Conan drew his sword he heard her shriek.
"Leave one for me, Conan!"
Conan cursed and laughed in the same breath. He needed no advice, and Bethina had revealed her presence to the enemy. He would be glad to leave her a live foe or two, but he wondered if her enthusiasm for blooding her steel would survive her first battle. Knowing that you held men's lives on the edge of your sword sobered most warriors, and those it did not sober were as mad dogs, and the faster they were killed, the better for honorable men.
The ground dropped from under Conan's feet. He turned a stumble into a somersault and came up with gravel in his hair, sand in his mouth, and his sword still in his hand. He also came up so close to his first opponent that he barely had time to parry the first stroke of the man's tulwar.
Conan's riposte disarmed the man, and as he drew back to make way for better-armed comrades, the Cimmerian let him go. He was fighting against four or five, as far as he could tell. He would not borrow trouble unless his foes knew no more of swordsmanship than children. The children, that is, of other lands than Cimmeria.
Conan cut down two men without ever seeing them clearly, or so he judged from the way his slashes jarred his arm and the men he slashed screamed. A third proved that he was no child by getting in under the Cimmerian's guard with a long dagger. Conan buffeted the man with his fist, and as he reeled, brought his knee up under the man's jaw. Jaw and neck both sundered by the blow, the man fell lifeless.
By now the ground about the Cimmerian was slippery with blood and cluttered with the dead or the dying. Fortunately he could give way, because now the Afghulis were up on either flank, and he could hear their steel meeting the bandits' even as he kept his eyes firmly on his own part of the battle.
So he did not see Bethina running up until she had run past him, into the midst of the enemy. How she escaped being skewered by mistake was a mystery that only the gods of battlefields knew, and Conan doubted that they ever bothered to share their knowledge with honest warriors.
He could not doubt that Bethina was in mortal danger, or would be the moment the enemy realized she was among them.
Cimmerian speed and strength saved Bethina, along with the slow wits of her enemies and her own well-wielded blade. She was admirably free of quaint notions about fair play in a desperate fight; she took her first man by stabbing him in the back. His scream warned comrades, but his life was already fleeing as Bethina snatched her dagger free and faced new foes.
One of these seemed so unmanned by facing a woman that Conan hardly needed steel to end his fighting. A swift kick sent the man down with a shattered knee, and Conan's other foot stamping on his arm sent his tulwar flying.
Bethina's next opponent was made of sterner stuff. He had only a dagger, but was supple and swift as a cat. He locked blades with the Ekinari girl, then gripped her by the hair. She gasped at the pain and tried to bring her knee up. This threw her off balance, and both opponents fell, the bandit on top.
Still Bethina fought without crying out or giving up, if not with great skill. Slowly the bandit's greater strength and weight threatened to prevail, as he forced her knife back against her breast and the point of his own closer to her flesh.
The bandit had at most a heartbeat to savor his coming triumph before death took him. Conan's fingers gripped his hair and yanked him upright, and the Cimmerian's sword slashed in a deadly arc, severing his spine and nearly cutting through his rib cage from the rear.
Bethina sprang to her feet, pale where she was not covered with her late foe's blood. "Your kill," she said, nodding to Conan. Her eyes were unnaturally wide and her lips parted, although her voice was remarkably steady for so newly fledged a warrior. To the Cimmerian, they seemed fuller than before, and even more inviting, not that he had found fault with them earlier—
"Look out!" Bethina screamed.
Conan moved, as it seemed to the man approaching him from behind, in three directions at once. Then his sword came out of nowhere and caught the attacker across the throat. The man's head lolled, nearly severed from his neck, but he remained on his feet long enough to block the passage of a comrade.
That gave Bethina time to prepare herself. As Conan's victim fell and his comrade worked around the Cimmerian's flank, Bethina struck. She sprang forward from a low crouch, driving her knife up under the man's throat. He was wearing a boiled-leather neck-guard, but instead of warding off or catching Bethina's blade, it deflected it upward.
The dagger's point ripped into the man's throat. It did not quite reach his brain, the blade not being long enough nor Bethina's arm strong enough to thrust it that far. But it killed the man quite as effectively as ever Conan's own blade could have done.
"That one is yours," Conan said. "I will stand witness, before gods and men."
For a moment he thought she was going to kiss or even embrace him, either course a sad folly on a battlefield that would have lowered his opinion of her wits. She held herself back, however, and then the swirl of battle was around them again. They had to stand back to back and defend themselves for a good while, a bad position for kissing even if one had no other work at hand.