"What betides yonder?" asked the younger man.
The other shaded his eyes. ” 'Tis too far to see, but something must have happened to hearten the rebel host. One of us had best report to General Procas. I go; you stay.”
The second speaker gulped his last bite, rose, untied his horse from a nearby tree, and mounted. The morning air echoed the fading drumbeat of hooves as he vanished up the road.
Quieting his men with a small motion of his upraised hand, Conan addressed the lines of archers. They were selected, he told them, from the entire army to inflict destruction on the retreating invaders. They were to move on silent hooves against pockets of the enemy and then dismount and nock their shafts. Shooting from cover in twos and threes, they could pick off scores of fleeing men; and when at last the enemy turned at bay, they, unencumbered by heavy armor, could quickly remount and soon outdistance the heavy-laden Aquilonian knights sent in pursuit.
Each squad would be commanded by an experienced cavalryman, who would make certain that the beasts were well handled and would hold the horses while the archers were dismounted. As for those who had seldom ridden—here Conan smiled a trifle grimly —they had but to grip the saddle or the horse’s mane; for such temporarily mounted infantry, fine horsemanship was unimportant.
Under the command of an Aquilonian soldier-of-fortune named Pallantides, who had once trained with Turanian horse-archers and who had lately deserted from the royalists, the newly mounted Bossonians swept out of the camp at a steady canter and headed north along the climbing road that led toward Aquilonia.
They caught up with the rear guard of the royalist army in the foothills of the Rabirians, short of Saxula Pass; for Procas’s retreat was slowed by his baggage train and his companies of plodding infantry. Spying the enemy, the Bossonians spread out, eased their horses through the brush to shooting range, and then went to work. A score of royalist spearmen fell, screaming or silent, or cursed less lethal wounds, before the clatter of armored horsemen told the rebel archers that Procas’s cavalry was coming to disperse the attack and to cover his withdrawal. Thereupon the Bossonians unstrung their bows and, dashing back to their tethered beasts, silently mounted and scattered through the forest. Their only casualty was an injury to one archer who, unused to horseback, fell off and broke his collar bone.
For the next three days, the Bossonians harried the retreating Aquilonians, like hounds snapping at the heels of fleeing criminals. They struck from the shadows; and when the royalists turned to challenge them, they were gone—hidden in a thousand hollows etched by wind and weather upon the wrinkled face of the terrain.
Amulius Procas and his officers cursed themselves hoarse, but little could they do. An arrow would whistle from behind a boulder. Sometimes it missed, merely causing the marching men to flinch and duck. Sometimes it buried itself in a horse’s flank, inciting the stricken animal to rear and plunge, unseating its rider. Sometimes a soldier screamed in pain as a shaft transfixed his body; or a horseman, with a clang of armor, toppled from his saddle to he where he fell. From the heights above, unseen in the gloaming, a sudden rain of arrows would slay or cripple thrice a dozen men.
Amulius Procas had few choices. He could not camp near Saxula Pass, because there little open ground and inadequate supplies of water could be found. Neither could he attack in close order, where his weight of numbers and armor would give him the advantage, because the enemy refused to close with him. If he threw his whole army against them, he could doubtless sweep away these pestilent rebels like chaff upon the wind; but such an action would carry him back to the Plain of Pallos and thus embroil him with the Argosseans.
So there was nothing for Amulius Procas to do but plod grimly on, sending out his light horse to drive away the enemy whenever they revealed their presence by a flight of arrows. Numerically his losses were trivial, only a fraction of the death toll of a joined battle. But the constant attrition depressed his men's morale; and the wind of chill foreboding, sweeping across his heart, whispered that King Numedides would not forget and still less forgive the failure of the expedition launched at the kings express command.
In the throat of Saxula Pass, an avalanche of boulders crashed down upon the hapless royalists. Procas glumly ordered the wreckage cleared, the smashed wagons abandoned, and the mortally wounded men and beasts mercifully put to the sword. On the far side of the pass, his troops moved faster, but the harassment continued unabated.
Procas realized that his Cinmierian opponent was a master of this irregular warfare; and he shook with shame that his enforced withdrawal had spurred the barbarian’s fecund inventiveness. This stain upon his honor, he swore, he would wash out in rebel blood.
On the third day of the retreat, as the gray skies turned to lead, the disheartened, exhausted royalists gathered on the southern bank of the Alimane at the ford of Nogara. There for a time Procas lingered, tormented by indecision. Even though the floods of spring had subsided, the river’s reach invited an attack when his fording men were least disposed to counter it. It would be a cruel jest of the capricious gods to ensnare the Aquilonian general in the very trap in which, not two months earlier, he had all but crushed the rebels. Moreover, to essay a crossing in the gloom of coming night would involve an almost certain loss of men and equipment.
Yet to pitch a camp on the Argossean side would doom sentries and sleeping men to death by flights of phantom arrows from the forest Procas gnawed his lip. Since his troops could not effectively defend themselves against such tactics, the sooner he led them across the Alimane, the safer they would sleep. Although the river was broad and swift, making the fords formidable, it would at least place his army beyond bowshots from the southern shore.
While these thoughts shambled through the mind of Amulius Procas, one of his officers approached the chariot in which he stood, atop a small rise along the river bank. The officer, a heavy-shouldered giant of a man—a Bossonian from his accent—with a surly expression on his coarse-featured face, saluted.
“Sir, we await your orders to begin the fording," he said. "The longer we stay, the more of our men will those damnable hidden archers wing.”
“I am aware of that, Gromel,” said the general stiffly. Then he heaved a sigh and made a curt gesture. “Very-well, get on with it! Naught’s to be gained by loitering here. But it goes against my grain to let these starveling rascals harry us home without repaying them in their own coin. Were it not for political considerations …"
Gromel raked the hills behind them with a contemptuous glance. “Curse these politics, which tie the soldier’s hands!” he growled. “The cowards will not stand and fight, knowing we should wipe them out. So there is nothing for it save to gather on the soil of Poitain, there to stand ready to crush them if they essay the fords again.”
"We shall be ready,” said Procas sternly. “Sound the trumpets.”
The retreat across the Alimane proceeded in good order, although night dimmed the twilight before the last company splashed into the river bed. As the men moved away from the southern bank, ten score archers, lurking in the undergrowth, stepped into view with bows strung and arrows nocked.
Procas had left his chariot to heave himself, grunting with pain from ancient wounds, into the saddle of his charger. Commanding a small rear guard of light horse, the dour old veteran was among the last to wade his steed into the darkling flood, while arrows from shore whistled past like angry insects.
In midstream the general suddenly exclaimed, clapping a hand to his leg. At his cry, the Bossonian officer who had addressed him earlier rode nigh and reined in. He opened thick lips to ask what was amiss, then spied the rebel arrow that had pierced the old man’s thigh above the knee. A gleam of satisfaction flickered in Gromel’s porcine eyes and quickly vanished; for he was a man implacably bent on pursuit of promotion, however he might attain it.