Hoofbeats thundered despite the muffling snow. Conan ducked and dodged to avoid being trampled beneath steelshod hooves. He spun to the ground, escaping the last of them, ending on his knees, facing away from the village. He struggled to his feet and started to turn, but the centermost Aquilonian ranks parted as if they were a curtain, and a lone warrior came riding through.
It would have been easy to mistake him for one of the cavalry, for his horse had been similarly armored and his sheathed sword bore a resemblance to the scimitars the others carried. But something about him, about the way he sat tall in the saddle and studied the battlefield with a hawk’s serene gaze, marked him as different. He, too, bore a shield with the tentacled mask on it, but less as a tool of war than as a proud emblem.
Conan didn’t know who he was, but he knew he was dangerous. He spun and sprinted for the village, certain that if that man reached it, no one would be left alive.
The young Cimmerian warrior plunged headlong into the furious battle, hyperaware of everything going on around him. Sounds sorted themselves into the harsh din of metal-on-metal impact, or the wet crack of sword cleaving bone. The hiss of air from punctured lungs differed from the wet gush of entrails flowing from a slashed belly. Men shouted. Some gave orders, others begged for mercy. Words came in hard, guttural tongues and in the more familiar Cimmerian. Light flashed from blades, blood splashed red and filled the air with a tang that erased the scent of smoke.
Conan caught the first glimmer of the knowledge that would keep him alive: combat appeared to be chaotic, but, in fact, had an order and flow. Currents ran through it, strength channeled against weakness, and weakness ebbed until it could attack greater weakness. Lines surged and collapsed, voids opened and were filled. To move with the energies was to survive. To hesitate or defy them was to be drowned in a river of blood.
More arrows sped through the air, launched by female warriors. Conan grabbed the arm of an Aquilonian warrior and spun him around, using him as a shield. Three arrows thudded into his chest, but Conan slipped from beneath his falling body, then slashed another Aquilonian across the hamstrings, crippling him.
Hulking warriors whose skin was so dark it almost appeared purple, with round shields and long spears, rushed through the village, impaling victims. Before Conan could finish the Aquilonian, one of the Kushites knocked him to the ground. Conan leaned away from the thrust that should have pinned him to the earth, then stabbed up. His blade opened the man’s belly and he ripped the sword free. Blood sprayed and the warrior fell, but Conan was already up and away.
He ran toward where he’d last seen his father, but the Cimmerian lines had been shattered. Arrow-stuck bodies lay everywhere. The black shafts had spared no one. Ardel lay curled up around one in his middle; his head connected to his body by a slender ribbon of flesh. His father, Ronan, lay not far away, impaled on a Kushite spear. A half dozen of the enemy lay at his feet. Elsewhere other Cimmerians lay, similarly surrounded by the enemy dead, but where the Cimmerians were only a village, the enemy seemed composed of nations.
The massacre would spare no one.
Look where he might, Conan could not find his father. He cut through the village, slashing and stabbing, too quick to be hit, too small to be followed, and too easily lost in the smoke to be hunted. A bloody-handed raider staggered from one hut, a red hand held high to display a necklace of copper beads. Conan slashed her knee, then took her head with the return stroke before he’d even noticed she was female. It mattered not to him. She was an enemy, he was a Cimmerian warrior, so no greater consideration of circumstances need be given.
He gained the smithy and felt relief, for the fires consuming the southern half of the village had not yet reached it. He slipped past the open doorway, seeing a number of figures inside, and made his way into the woodshed. He closed that door behind him and crossed to the smaller inside door by the forge. The crack between door and jamb gave him a perfect view of the interior.
What he saw made his gorge rise, but he kept the vomit down.
Corin stood within a circle of the enemy, his shoulders slumped with weariness. His father’s clothes were soaked in blood. A black-shaft arrow had pierced the right shoulder. One of the archers, regal in her leather armor, smiled grimly, leading Conan to believe that her bow had sped that arrow. For that I will kill you.
The others gathered there likewise appeared to be leaders of the various contingents that still swarmed over the village. A corpulent Aquilonian general with unkempt hair and armor remarkably clean of blood watched Corin with piggish eyes. Another man, even larger and clearly sharing bloodlines with the heavy cavalry, had supplemented his armor with a sheaf of chains. The Kushite chieftain carried a massive war club festooned with metal shards and sharpened bones. The last man bore facial tattoos that Conan could not recognize, yet would never forget, and studied Corin the way a cat studies a dying mouse.
And there, standing tall among them, was the man who had ridden through the Aquilonian ranks. Corin evinced no fear of him, but the others did. Conan smiled with pride for his father, but his blue eyes glittered with cold contempt for the others.
The leader, hand resting on the hilt of what appeared to be a double-bladed scimitar, paraded before Conan’s father with the air of prince. “There is no shame in kneeling before Khalar Zym. All these fighters have surrendered, left their lands, and sworn their allegiance to me.” The man inspected his fingernails, then picked up the Cimmerian great sword. “They’ve done so because they know I will one day be a god.”
Corin’s eyes narrowed. “God or not, one day you will fall.”
The leader rolled his eyes, then with a wave of his hand summoned forth a robed figure from the shadows. The acolyte bore a mask that looked exactly like the crest on the invaders’ shields, save that it was missing a piece. The brown-gold of aged bone, covered in a scaly flesh, the mask appeared unspeakably ancient and evil. Conan stared at it, entranced and revolted at the same time.
The bandit leader glanced at the mask, then smiled at its reflection on the sword’s blade. “You know, of course, what this is. The Mask of Acheron. One piece is yet missing. You have it here.”
Corin’s face betrayed nothing to the outsiders, but Conan could read his expression well enough to know that the bandit spoke the truth. This sent a jolt through him, for he knew of no mask, knew of no secret. Perhaps it was something known only to warriors, and so his father had not yet told him. That had to be it; there could be no other explanation. It is the responsibility of which he spoke.
The bandit chuckled. “I do have an appreciation for bravery, Cimmerian, but I have a great need for the last piece. You can give it to me now . . . or die, and I shall find it myself.”
Corin smiled, his expression coming as much with ease as it did with defiance. “I prefer death.”
The bandit leader nodded. “I thought you might. Lucius, to you goes this honor.”
The Aquilonian general drew his short sword and approached, raising it to behead the smiling Cimmerian.
CHAPTER 8
CONAN BURST FROM the woodshed. The short sword came up in a sharp, vicious arc. It lopped Lucius’s nose off. The Aquilonian stumbled back, hand rising to stem the bleeding.
Before the nose could hit the ground, Conan twisted and drove straight at Khalar Zym. The bandit leader whirled. The great sword came up, deflecting Conan’s strike. Khalar Zym kicked the boy in the chest, sending him back into the arms of the bandit’s Kushite confederate. Corin took a step toward Zym, but the large man in chains smashed him to his knees with a forearm shiver across the shoulder blades.