Had he in truth become one? Were the Jewels reaching out for others besides their wearers?
Those uneasy thoughts had barely left Conan's mind when Massouf stripped off his quiver and bow, tossing them to Conan. The Cimmerian caught mem as Massouf charged downhill toward the Transformed.
"Crom!"
The Transformed were giving way before Massouf's charge. They hissed and cringed and cried as if Massouf had been a whole army.
Massouf actually contrived to spit one of the Transformed like a chicken, before they regained their courage. A moment of clawing and trampling, and Massouf was gone.
From first to last, he had not made a sound.
Conan stormed up the slope, to where Illyana stood before the cave mouth. Raihna was already piling stones to narrow it
"Conan!" the hill boy cried. "There will be room inside for me to use my sling. If you will stand to either—"
"Did you kill Massouf?" Conan roared.
Illyana had been drawing off her boots. Now she flinched and stood barefoot, a boot in either hand.
"Did you? Answer me, woman!"
"Conan, I did not command him. I heard no command from the Jewels. I can only say that under the spell cast, the Transformed might be more easily frightened."
"Massouf couldn't have known that!"
"I may have told him without remembering it. Or—"
"Or the Jewels might have told him," Conan finished for her.
Illyana shook her head, as if beset by stinging insects. Suddenly she flung herself into Conan's arms.
"I beg you, Conan. Believe me, that I meant Massouf no harm. He came here seeking death and found it."
That at least was the truth, and for the moment Conan was ready to be content with it. Not that he had any choice, either. The Transformed were halfway up the hill, some still gnawing fragments of Massouf.
Illyana contemplated them, all her unease of a moment before gone. "Good. We have them closing swiftly. If we can hold until they have closed just a trifle more—"
"And how long will that be?" Conan asked.
Illyana stripped off her tunic and waved it like a flag. "Look, Eremius. Look and dream, but know that you will die before you touch!"
"Haw long?"
"I do not know," Illyana said. Then she ran toward the cave, with Conan at her heels.
Twenty-one
CONAN LOWERED A rock the size of a newborn calf onto the pile in the cave mouth. Then he stepped back, dusting off his hands and looking into the cave for any more loose stones.
He had all the light he could wish, pouring from Illyana's Jewel. Unclothed save for the Jewel, the sorceress stood forty paces inside the cave, chanting in an unknown tongue. The world beyond her duel with Eremius might have ceased to exist.
Conan saw no more stones worth adding to their barricade. He was about to tell Raihna when a stone went wheeet between them. Conan whirled, glaring at Bora.
The boy was reloading his sling and grinning. "As I said, there is room to send a stone between you."
"Warn us the next time, you young—"
"Captain, I might not be able to warn you. What if you and Raihna are close-grappled with the Transformed? Best you trust me to hit them and not you."
Conan couldn't help laughing. The boy was right, of course. And anyone who could grin like that, in what might indeed be his last minutes of life—
"Bora, perhaps you shouldn't join the army after all. In five years, you would be giving me orders!"
"They would never make a hillman—" Bora began soberly. Raihna's shout interrupted him.
"Here they come!"
Conan sprang to his post by the barricade. Eremius had taken longer than they expected to form up his creations for battle. What Illyana had done with that time, Conan did not know. He and Raihna had narrowed the cave mouth so that only two or three of the Transformed could attack at once. He had also placed a few throwing stones ready to hand.
The Transformed stormed up the hill in two ragged lines. At Raihna's signal Bora sent a stone hurtling low through the cave mouth. It struck a Transformed in the chest, without so much as knocking him down. Conan flung a fist-sized stone. He aimed for eyes and struck a forehead. Again the Transformed did not even fall. It howled in rage and pain and seemed to climb faster.
"I think we have the pick of the Transformed coming up," Conan said.
"The pick of Bossonia and Cimmeria stand here," Raihna replied. She tossed her head. The Jewel-light shimmered on her hair as it flowed about her shoulders. Then she tossed her sword and caught it by the hilt.
A Transformed flung a stone. It drove chips and dust from the barricade into Conan's face. As he blinked, Bora replied. The slingstone struck a Transformed in the knee, hard enough to leave it limping.
Then the spearhead of the attack reached the defenders. Conan and Raihna had practiced together since the return to Fort Zheman. Now Conan's training in the rude school of surviving and Raihna's training from Master Barathres merged as easily as their bodies did in love.
Conan feinted high to draw the attention of a Transformed upward. His sword crashed into a scaly arm. That upraised arm left an armpit exposed. Raihna's dagger leaped upward into the armpit, finding the expected weak spot where the scales were thin to allow free movement.
The Transformed reeled back, holding a crippled arm. A human would have been dead, and this one at least was out of the fight.
Another Transformed gripped the top of the barricade. Conan hewed at the nearest hand, three, four, five cuts, as if chopping firewood with his sword. At the fifth stroke, the hand flopped limply. At the sixth it fell off entirely, landing on Conan's side of the barricade. Reeking blood sprayed into Conan's face, neither looking nor smelling anything like human gore. The Transformed's howls echoed around the cave.
Conan's fight against the climbing Transformed left Raihna to hold the opening single-handed. Two Transformed who came at her jammed in the opening, letting her slash and thrust until they reeled away bloody and daunted. The next enemy was swifter.
Conan turned to find Raihna in the clutches of a Transformed, being drawn toward it. She had blinded it and thrust deep into its chest, without reaching its unnatural life. The talons were already gashing her flesh. The fangs would reach her throat before the creature died.
They had not done so, when Conan's sword came down across the bridge of the creature's nose. Under the scale armor, the bones there were still thin enough to be vulnerable. Shattering under the Cimmerian's sword, they drove splinters into the Transformed's brain. It convulsed, arching backward. Raihria leaped free, kicking out. The Transformed crashed into an approaching comrade. Both went down.
Raihna stripped off her tunic, used it to roughly wipe her oozing wounds, then tossed it aside. Bare to the waist, she raised her weapons again.
"You won't distract them that way," Conan said, laughing. "You might distract Bora, though."
Bora certainly seemed not to mind fighting in the presence of two splendid and nearly unclothed women. His eye for targets was still keener than his eye for the women. As the Transformed knocked down by the latest kill struggled to its feet, a stone caught it in the eye. The stone was sharp and reached the brain. The Transformed fell, kicked wildly, but did not rise. Other Transformed held back until the kicking ceased.
"That's five down or out against your scratches and tunic," Conan said. "How many left?"
"Oh, not more than forty or so."
"Then we should be finished by breakfast."
"Yes, but whose breakfast?"
With howls and scrabbling feet, the Transformed came on again.
Eremius suspected that his face was streaming sweat, as if he had been in a steam bath. He knew that pain racked his joints so that it needed real effort to stand.