With an oath, the captain sent his booted toe thudding against the shirker’s ribs. When this failed to arouse the sleeper, the officer squatted to examine the man. A feeling of dampness on his fingers caused him to snatch away his hand; and he stared incredulously at the stain that darkened it and at the welling gash that bridged the fellow’s throat. Then he straightened bis back and filled his lungs to bellow an alarm, just in time to take an arrow through the heart.
Fog drifted across the rippling waters of the Alimane, to twist and coil around the boles of trees and the tents of sleeping men. Fog also swirled about the edges of the camp, where dark and somber forests stood knee deep in purple gloom. The ghostly tendrils wreathed the trunks of immemorial oaks, and through the coils there drifted a wraithlike host of crouching figures in drab clothing, with knives in their hands and strung bows draped across their shoulders. These shadowy figures breasted the curtaining fog, going from tent to tent, entering softly, and emerging moments later with blood upon the blades of their silent knives.
As these intruders stole among the sleeping men, other dark figures struggled through the clutching waters of the Alimane. These, too, were armed.
Ascalante, Count of Thune, was roused from heavy slumber by a shapeless cry as of a man in agony. The cry was followed by a score of shouts, and then the horns of chaos blared across the camp. For a moment, the Aquilonian adventurer thought himself immersed in bloody dreams. Then there sounded through the dripping night the screams of men in mortal combat, the shrieks of the injured, the gurgle of the dying, the tramp of many feet, the hiss of arrows, and the clangor of steel.
Cursing, the count sprang half-naked from his cot, flung wide the tent flap, and stared out upon a scene of roaring carnage. Burning tents cast a lurid light across a phantasmagoria of indescribable confusion. Corpses lay tossed about and trampled in the slimy mud, like toys discarded by the careless hands of children. Half-clothed Aquilonian soldiers fought with the frenzy of despair against mail-suited men armed with spear, sword, and axe, and others who plied longbows at such close range that every arrow thudded home. Royalist captains and sergeants strove heroically to force their pikemen into formation and to arm those who had issued unprepared from their shelters.
Then a terrible figure loomed up before the tent wherein the Count of Thune stood frozen with astonishment and horror. It was Gromel, the burly Bossonian, from whose thick lips poured a steady stream of curses. Ascalante blinked at him in amazement. The officer was clad in nothing but a loin cloth and a knee-length coat of mail. That mail was rent and hacked in at least a dozen places, baring Gromel’s mightily muscled torso, which seemed to the fastidious count to be incarnadined with gore.
"Are we betrayed?” gasped Ascalante, clutching at Gromel's blood-encrusted sword arm.
Gromel shook off the grasping hand and spat blood. “Betrayed or surprised, or both—by the slimy guts of Nergal!” growled the Bossonian. "The province has risen. Our sentries are slain; our horses chased into the woods. The road north is blocked. The rebels have snaked across the river, unseen in these accursed fogs. Most of the sentries have had their throats cut by the countryfolk. We've caught between the two forces and helpless to fight back.”
“What’s to be done, then?” whispered Ascalante.
“Flee for your life, man,” spat Gromel. “Or surrender, as I intend to do. Here, help me to bind up these wounds, ere I bleed to death.”
First, hidden by the fog, Conan had led his pike-men across the ford of Nogara. Once the fight had started, Trocero, Prospero, and Pallantides followed with the archers and mounted troops. Before a wan moon broke through the deep-piled clouds, the Count of Poitain found himself engaged in a pitched battle; for enough of the Legionnaires had gathered to make a wall of shields, behind which their long spears bristled like a giant thorn bush. Trocero led his armored knights against this barrier of interlocking shields and, after several unsuccessful tries, broke through. Then the slaughter began.
The Numedidean camp was a makeshift affair, strung out along the northern bank of the Alimane and backed against the forest. Its elongated shape made it difficult to defend. As a rule, Aquilonian soldiers built square encampments, walled with earthworks or palisades of logs. Neither of these defenses was practicable in the present case, and thus the camp of the Border Legion was vulnerable. The conformation of the land, together with the complete surprise effected by the Army of Liberation (as it came to be called) tipped the balance in favor of the rebels, even though the Legionnaires still outnumbered the combined forces of Conan and the revolting Poitanians.
Besides, the morale of the Legion had declined, so that Aquilonia’s finest soldiers for once failed to deserve their reputation. Ascalante had reported to his officers that their former chief, Amulius Procas, died by his own hand, despondent over his sorry showing in the Argossean incursion. The soldiers of the Legion could scarcely credit this canard. They knew and loved their old general, for all his strict discipline and crusty ways.
To the officers and men, Ascalante seemed a fop and a poseur. True, the Count of Thune had some experience with the military, but in garrison duty only and on quiet frontiers. And also true, any general stepping up to greatness over battle-hardened senior officers needs time to cool the hot breath of rancor in those whom he commands. But the languid ways and courtly airs of the new arrival did little to conciliate his staff; and their discontent was wordlessly transmitted to the soldiers of the line.
The attack was well planned. When the Poitanian peasants had spilled the blood of the sentries, fired the tents, and driven off the horses from their makeshift corral, the sleeping troops, roused at last to their peril, formed ranks to challenge their attackers along the northern boundary of the camp. But when they were simultaneously battered from the south by Conan's unexpected forces, their lines of defense crumbled, and the song of swords became a deathly clamor.
General Ascalante was nowhere to be found. Descrying a horse, the courtier had flung himself astride the unsaddled beast and, lacking spurs, had lashed the animal into motion with a length of branch torn from a nearby tree. He eluded the Poitanian foresters by a hair’s breadth and galloped off into the night.
A cunning opportunist like Gromel might curry favor with the victors by surrendering himself and his contingent; but for Ascalante it was quite another matter. He had a noble’s pride. Besides, the count divined what Thulandra Thuu would do when he learned of the debacle. The sorcerer had expected his appointee to hold the rebels south of the Alimane—a task not too difficult under ordinary circumstances for a commander with a modicum of military training. But the magician's arts had somehow failed to warn him of the uprising of the Poitanians—an event that would have daunted an officer more seasoned than the Coimt of Thune. And now his camp was charred and cindered, and defeat was imminent. Ascalante, thus, could only quit the lieu and put as much distance as he could between himself and both the crafty rebel leader and the dark, lean necromancer in Tarantia.
Throughout the moonless night, the Count of Thune thundered through a tunnel of tall trees, and dawn found him nine leagues east of the site of the disaster. Spurred by the thought of Thulandra’s incalculable wrath, he pushed ahead as fast as he dared go on his exhausted mount. There were places in the eastern deserts where, he hoped, even the vengeful sorcerer would never find him.
But as the hours passed, Ascalante conceived a fierce and abiding hatred of Conan the Cimmerian, on whom he laid the blame for his defeat and flight. In his heart the Count of Thune vowed someday in like manner to repay the Liberator.