“Where is the count, Tina?” she asked.
“In the great hall, my lady. He sits alone at the table, wrapped in his cloak and drinking wine, with a face as gray as death.”
“Go and tell him what we have seen. I will keep watch from this window, lest the Picts steal over the unguarded wall.”
Tina scampered away. Suddenly remembering reading in the count’s letter about staying out of the main hall, Belesa rose, hearing slippered feet pattering along the corridor, receding down the stair.
Then abruptly, terribly, there rang out a scream of such poignant fear that Belesa’s heart almost stopped with the shock of it. She was out of the chamber and flying down the corridor before she was aware that her limbs were in motion. She ran down the stairs—and halted as if tamed to stone.
She did nor scream as Tina had screamed. She was incapable of sound or motion. She saw Tina, was aware of the reality of the small girl’s arms frantically grasping her. But these were the only sane realities in a scene of nightmare and lunacy and death, dominated by the monstrous, anthropomorphic shadow that spread awful arms against a lurid, hell-fire glare.
Out in the stockade, Strombanni shook his head at Conan’s question. “I heard nothing.”
“I did!” Conan’s wild instincts were roused; he was tensed, his eyes blazing. “It came from the south wall, behind those huts!”
Drawing his cutlass, he strode toward the palisade. From the compound, the wall on the south and the sentry posted there were not visible, being hidden behind the huts. Strombanni followed, impressed by the Cimmerian’s manner.
At the mouth of the open space between the huts and the wall, Conan halted warily. The space was dimly lighted by torches flaring at either corner of the stockade. And, about midway of that corridor, a crumpled shape sprawled on the ground.
“Bracus!” swore Strombanni, running forward and dropping on one knee beside the figure. “By Mitra, his throat’s been cut from ear to ear!”
Conan swept the space with a quick glance, finding it empty save for himself, Strombanni, and the dead man. He peered through a loophole. No living man moved within the ring of torchlight outside the fort.
“Who could have done this?” he wondered.
“Zarono!” Strombanni sprang up spitting fury like a wildcat, his hair bristling, his face convulsed. “He has set his thieves to stabbing my men in the back! He plans to wipe me out by treachery! Devils! am leagued within and without!”
“Wait!” Conan reached a restraining hand. “I don’t believe Zarono—”
But the maddened pirate jerked away and rushed around the end of the hut row, breathing blasphemies. Conan ran after him, swearing. Strombanni made straight toward the fire by which Zarono’s tall, lean form was visible as the buccaneer chief quaffed a jack of ale.
His amazement was supreme when the jack was dashed violently from his hand, spattering his breastplate with foam, and he was jerked around to confront the passion-distorted face of the pirate captain.
“You murdering dog!” roared Strombanni. “Will you slay my men behind my back while they fight for your filthy hide as well as for mine?”
Conan was hurrying toward them, and on all sides men ceased eating and drinking to stare in amazement.
“What do you mean?” sputtered Zarono.
“You’ve set your men to stabbing mine at their posts!” screamed the maddened Barachan.
“You lie!” Smoldering hate burst into sudden flame.
With an incoherent howl, Strombanni heaved up his cutlass and cut at the buccaneer’s head. Zarono caught the blow on his armored left arm, and sparks flew as he staggered back, ripping out his own sword. In an instant, the captains were fighting like madmen, their blades flaming and flashing in the firelight. Their crews reacted instantly and blindly. A deep roar went up as pirates and buccaneers drew their swords and fell upon one another. The men left on the walls abandoned their posts and leaped down into the stockade, blades in hand. In an instant the compound was a battleground, where knotting, writhing groups of men smote and slew in a blind frenzy. Some of the men-at-arms and serfs were drawn into the melee, and the soldiers at the gate turned and stared down in amazement, forgetting the enemy that linked outside.
It all happened so quickly—smoldering passions exploding into sudden kittle—that men were fighting all over the compound before Conan could reach the maddened chiefs. Ignoring their swords, he tore them apart with such violence that they staggered backward, and Zarono tripped and fell flat.
“You cursed fools, will you throw away all our lives?”
Strombanni was frothing mad and Zarono was bawling for assistance. A buccaneer ran at Conan from behind and cut at his head. The Cimmerian half turned and caught his arm, checking the stroke in midair.
“Look, you fools!” he roared, pointing with his sword.
Something in his tone caught the attention of the battle-crazed mob. Men froze in their places and twisted their heads to stare. Conan was pointing to a soldier on the footwalk. The man was reeling, clawing the air, and choking as he tried to shout. He pitched headlong to the ground, and all saw the black arrow standing out from between his shoulders.
A cry of alarm arose from the compound. On the heels of the shout came a clamor of blood-freezing screams and the shattering impact of axes on the gate. Flaming arrows arched over the wall and stuck in logs, and thin wisps of blue smoke curled upward. Then, from behind the huts that ranged the south wall, came swift and furtive figures racing across the compound.
“The Picts are in!” roared Conan.
Bedlam followed his shout. The freebooters ceased their feud. Some turned to meet the savages; some sprang to the wall. Savages were pouring from behind the huts and streaming over the compound; their axes clashed against the cutlasses of the sailors.
Zarono was still struggling to his feet when a painted savage rushed upon him from behind and brained him with a war-axe. Conan, with a clump of sailors behind him, was battling with the Picts inside the stockade; Strombanni, with most of his men, was climbing up on the stockade, slashing at the dark figures already swarming over the wall. The Picts, who had crept up unobserved and surrounded the fort while the defenders were fighting among themselves, were attacking from all sides, Valenso’s soldiers were clustered at the gate, trying to hold it against a howling swarm of exultant demons who thundered against it from the outside with a tree trunk.
More and more savages streamed from behind the huts, having scaled the undefended south wall. Strombanni and his pirates were beaten back from the other sides of the palisade, and in an instant the compound was swarming with naked warriors. They dragged down the defenders like wolves; the battle resolved into swirling whülpools of painted figures surging about small groups of desperate white men. Picts, sailors, and men-at-arms littered the earth, stamped underfoot by the heedless feet.
Blood-smeared braves dived howling into huts, and shrieks rose above the din of battle as women and children died beneath the red axes. When they heard those pitiful cries, the men-at-arms abandoned the gate, and in an instant the Picts had burst it and were pouring into the palisade at that point also. Huts began to go up in flames.
“Make for the manor!” roared Conan, and a dozen men surged in behind him as he hewed an inexorable way through the snarling pack.
Strombanni was at his side, wielding his red cutlass like a flail. “We can’t hold the manor,” grunted the pirate.