Kiernan pointed toward the fortress. “See there, Conan, how the fort’s gate faces south, but the main gate faces east?”
The youth nodded.
“That’s so when we breach the main gate, we have to fight our way along and around to the south. The gutters will run with Cimmerian blood.”
“And Aquilonian.”
“True enough.” The smaller warrior ran a hand over his chin. “The Elders will be wanting the Aquilonians to come out and fight like men, but they won’t. So we’ll prove how brave we are by beating on their doors while they shoot us full of arrows or boil us in oil.”
“Connacht has told of siege machines.”
“Oh, aye, there are such.” Kiernan smiled. “Like as not, we’ll soon be chopping wood and lashing things together to form a few, but getting them close enough to work is the trick. On the walls there, on top of the towers, they have their own catapults and onagers. Behind the walls they have trebuchets. All of them will range on what we have.”
Conan nodded grimly.
“Now, if the Elders had destroyed Venarium when putting it to the torch was all that was required, we’d not be facing the problem we now are. But the Aquilonians figured to use greed to soften our resolve. Now that stone walls are up, it’s a steeper price we’re to pay.”
“Better to pay in fire than blood.” Conan looked at his scarred palms. “This is a huge blood debt.”
Kiernan smiled. “There’s other coin for reckoning the debt, lad. You always have to assume your enemy is smart. But you get to remember he’s a man. And he has men under his command, some of whom won’t be so smart. You can use that against them. In this case, if we don’t, even the smartest men among us will be dead . . . and Cimmeria will die with them.”
The Cimmerian youth frowned. “We cannot do nothing.”
“Agreed. But what we’ll have to do, in the minds of some, isn’t work for warriors, and isn’t work for Cimmerians.” The older warrior shrugged. “Though I suspect, when recounting tales of victory, some details will go unmentioned, become forgotten, and few will think to complain.”
KIERNAN AND CONAN returned to the Cimmerian camp and spoke with the other Outlanders. While no one doubted the courage of any Cimmerian warrior, the Outlanders had all engaged in battles and sieges, whereas their average companion’s greatest victory had been a cattle raid. The Outlanders, choosing Kiernan and Connacht as their spokesmen, offered a plan to the Elders. Conan attended his grandfather as the plan was presented, and the Elders accepted it less because it was the wisest plan than because it absolved them of responsibility if it failed.
The Cimmerian host advanced in two wings. One was composed of northerners and invested itself in the valley directly opposite Venarium’s main gate. The southern contingent came in from the north and placed itself beside the northern force, with a gap of three hundred yards between them. The Cimmerians made no attempt to surround the city. They posted a few pickets well outside the range of Aquilonian archers and siege machines. The camps showed little organization and less discipline, with fights regularly breaking out in the gap between forces.
A contingent of Elders from the northern force approached the city and met with an Aquilonian envoy. Among the many things they demanded, including the dismantling of the walls were rental fees and three hundred cats. Not to be outdone, a southern party of leaders demanded four hundred rats and five hundred bats. The Aquilonians, who sent messengers south to summon reinforcements, agreed to meet these requests and within a week delivered the tribute to the Cimmerians.
Many of the Cimmerians viewed all of the talking as nonsense, but Conan benefited from his association with Connacht and Kiernan. The Aquilonian commander could look out from his tower and see two Cimmerian forces split down the middle. If the southern troops wished to go home, they would have to go through the northerners. The battles in the gap proved there was little love lost between the two groups. While the Cimmerians were creating some siege machines, they were too small to effectively batter the city into submission before reinforcements could arrive from the south. As far as the Aquilonian commander was concerned, all he had to do was keep a watchful eye on the barbarians and wait for others to rid him of his problem.
Then came the night of no moon.
Venarium depended upon wells to draw water in, and sewers to drain waste away. The sewers flowed together toward the south, into a series of irrigation canals that used water from the river to flood the fields with night soil as fertilizer. The Aquilonians had barred and gated the sewers, but only to keep men out. Their preparations could not stop cats or rats or bats, especially when those creatures were released with burning embers lashed to their tails and legs in woven, green-grass baskets.
The animals fled to safety in Venarium, pouring into the city through the sewers or winging their way above the walls and into towers and attics. As the first fires ignited, after the animals had chewed their way free of their fiery cargo, alarums sounded. Troops tasked with guarding the sewers—a duty never given to the most elite of troops—fled to other posts to fight the fires. It took very little for the Outlanders to crash through the sewer gates and pour into the city, all but unnoticed in the chaos.
And once they reached the main gates and opened them, Cimmerian rage consumed the town more swiftly than the flames.
The Aquilonian leader was not a stupid man, nor did he lack courage. Whether from his tower he saw the Cimmerian Outlanders advancing on the gate, or he assumed that the gate would be a target, he donned his armor and led his personal cohort through Venarium’s smoky streets. His force hidden behind tall shields, bristling with spears, slammed into the Outlanders’ flank and drove them back against the gates they so desperately wished to open.
Many of the Outlanders drew together and back, hoping to buy time for the others to come to their rescue, but Conan was not among them. Clad in a blackened mail surcoat, he burst from the Outlanders’ midst and, with one, doublehanded blow, split a shield and took the arm of the Aquilonian holding it. As that man looked down, terror on his face, his lifeblood pumping in black jets from his severed limb, Conan struck off his head.
Conan waded into the Aquilonians’ midst, perhaps for a heartbeat transported back to his village, imagining himself there, destroying those who had killed his people and slain his father. Good Cimmerian steel clove Aquilonian bone, spraying blood and brains. Aborted screams and cries for mercy filled the night, rising and falling within the din of metal clashing with metal. Conan moved with the battle and through it, Connacht’s training allowing him to understand it and master it. Spear points caught on mail, short swords split rings and tore flesh, but never enough to slow the Cimmerian youth. Every cut he returned a hundredfold, every drop of blood he reaped in gallons.
And then the other Cimmerians boiled through the gates and over the walls.
Venarium fell screaming beneath a cold, unfeeling sky and stars that glittered as ice.
THAT NEXT MORNING Conan stood beside Kiernan and Connacht at the vantage point from which he’d first seen Venarium. What had once been grand and imposing was now nothing more than a smoking ruin—home to ravens and other consumers of carrion. Cimmerians still occupied the plains, filling carts with loot, chaining slaves into long strings, making mounds of skulls toward the south to chasten and taunt the Aquilonians.