“He speaks truth,” said Zarono helplessly. “What shall we do?”
“Make a truce with him,” muttered Strombanni. “If any man can get us out of this jam, he can. Time enough to cut his throat later.” Lifting his voice, he called:
“Conan, let’s forget our feud for the time being. You’re in this fix as much as we are. Come down and help us out of it.”
“How do you figure that?” retorted the Cimmerian. “I have but to wait until dark, climb down the other side of this crag, and melt into the forest. I can crawl through the line the Picts have thrown around this hill, return to the fort, and report you all slain by the savages …which will shortly be the truth!”
Zarono and Strombanni stared at each other in pallid silence.
“But not do that!” Conan roared. “Not because I have any love for you dogs, but because I don’t leave white men, even my enemies, to be butchered by Picts.”
The Cimmerian’s tousled black head appeared over the crest of the crag. “Now listen closely: That’s only a small band down there. I saw them sneaking through the brush when I laughed, a while ago. Anyway, if there had been many of them, every man at the foot of the crag would be dead already. I think that’s a band of fleet-footed young bucks sent ahead of the main war party to cut us off from the beach. I’m certain a big war band is heading in our direction from somewhere. They’ve thrown a cordon around the west side of the crag, but I don’t think there are any on the east side. I’m going down on that side, to get into the forest and work around behind them. Meanwhile, you crawl down the path and join your men among the rocks. Tell them to unstring their bows and draw their swords. When you hear me yell, rush the trees on the west side of the clearing.”
“What of the treasure?”
“To Hell with the treasure! We shall be lucky if we get out of here with our heads on our shoulders.”
The black-rnaned head vanished. They listened for sounds to indicate that Conan had crawled to the almost sheer eastern wall and was working his way down, but they heard nothing. Nor was there any sound in the est. No more arrows broke against the rocks where the sailors were hidden. But all knew that fierce, black eyes were watching with murderous patience.
Gingerly, Strombanni, Zarono, and the boatswain started down the winding path.
They were halfway down when black shafts began to whisper around them. The boatswain groaned and toppled limply down the slope, shot through the heart.
Arrows shivered on the helmets and breastplates of the chiefs as they tumbled in frantic haste down the steep trail. They reached the foot in a scrambling rush and lay panting among the boulders, swearing breathlessly.
“Is this more of Conan’s trickery?” wondered Zarono profanely.
“We can trust him in this matter,” asserted Strombanni. “These barbarians live by their own particular code of honor, and Conan would never desert men of his own complexion to be slaughtered by people of another race. He’ll help us against the Picts, even though he plans to murder us himself …hark!”
A blood-freezing yell knifed the silence. It came from the woods to the west, and simultaneously an object arched out of the trees, struck the ground, and rolled bouncingly toward the rocks …a severed human head, the hideously painted face frozen in a snarl of death.
“Conan’s signal ” roared Strombanni, and the desperate freebooters rose like a wave from the rocks and rushed headlong toward the woods.
Arrows whirred out of the bushes, but their flight was hurried and erratic; only three men fell. Then the wild men of the sea plunged through the fringe of foliage and fell on the naked painted figures that rose out of the gloom before them. There was a murderous instant of panting, ferocious, hand-to-hand effort.
Cutlasses beat down war-axes, booted feet trampled naked bodies, and then bare feet were rattling through the bushes in headlong flight as the survivors of that brief carnage quit the fray, leaving seven still, painted figures stretched on the bloodstained leaves that littered the earth. Farther back in the thickets sounded a thrashing and heaving; then it ceased, and Conan strode into view, his lacquered hat gone, his coat torn, his cutlass dripping in his hand.
“What now?” panted Zarono. He knew the charge had succeeded only because Conan’s unexpected attack on the rear of the Picts had demoralized the painted men and prevented them from falling back before the rush. But he exploded into curses as Conan passed his cutlass through a buccaneer who writhed on the ground with a shattered hip.
“We cannot carry him with us,” grunted Conan. “It wouldn’t be any kindness to leave him to be taken alive by the Picts. Come on!”
They crowded close at his heels as he trotted through the trees. Alone, they would have sweated and blundered among the thickets for hours before they found the beach trail …if they had ever found it. The Cimmerian led them unerringly as if he had been following a blazed path, and the rovers shouted with hysterical relief as they burst suddenly upon the trail that ran westward.
“Fool!” Conan clapped a hand on the shoulder of a pirate who started to break into a run and hurled him back among his companions. “You’ll bunt your heart and fall within a thousand yards. We’re miles from the beach. Take an easy gait. We may have to sprint the last mile; save some of your wind for it. Come on, now!”
He set off down the trail at a steady jog-trot. The seamen followed him, suiting their pace to his.
The sun was touching the waves of the western ocean. Tina stood at the window from which Belesa had watched the storm.
“The setting sun turns the ocean to blood,” she said. “The carack’s sail is a white fleck on the crimson waters. The woods are already darkened with clustering shadows.”
“What of the seamen on the beach?” asked Belesa languidly. She reclined on a couch, her eyes closed, her hands clasped behind her head.
“Both camps are preparing their supper,” said Tina. “They gather driftwood and build fires. I can hear them shouting to one another …what is that?”
The sudden tenseness in the girl’s tone brought Belesa upright on the couch.
Tina grasped the windowsill, her face white.
“Listen! A howling, far off, like many wolves!”
“Wolves?” Belesa sprang up, fear clutching her heart. “Wolves do not hunt in packs at this time of year …”
“Oh, look!” shrilled the girl, pointing. “Men are running out of the forest!”
In an instant, Belesa was beside her, staring wide-eyed at the figures small in the distance, streaming out of the woods.
“The sailors!” she gasped. “Empty-handed! I see Zarono …Strombanni …”
“Where is Conan?” whispered the child. Belesa shook her head.
“Listen! Oh, listen!” whimpered Tina, clinging to her. “ThePicts!”
All in the fort could hear it now …a vast ululation of mad exultation and blood lust, from the depths of the dark forest. The sound spurred on the panting men, reeling toward the palisade.
“Hasten!” gasped Strombanni, his face a drawn mask of exhausted effort. “They are almost at our heels. My ship …”
“She is too far for us to reach,” panted Zarono. “Make for the stockade. See, the men camped on the beach have seen us!”
He waved his arms in breathless pantomime, but the men on the strand understood and recognized the significance of that wild howling, rising to a triumphant crescendo. The sailors abandoned their fires and cooking pots and fled for the stockade gate. They were pouring through it as the fugitives from the forest rounded the south angle and reeled into the gate, a heaving, frantic mob, half dead from exhaustion. The gate was slammed with frenzied haste, and sailors began to climb to the footwalk to join the men-at-arms already there.