Conan The Freebooter Part 23

Snuggling in his arms, Roxana had slipped a dagger from her sash and thrust it through his thick throat. One of the Sogdian's hands clutched at his beard while the other fumbled for the hilt in his girdle. He reeled and fell heavily. Roxana s.n.a.t.c.hed a bunch of keys from his girdle and ran to the door. She swung it open and gave a low cry of joy at the sight of Artaban and his Turanians on the ledge across the chasm.

A heavy plank, used as a bridge, lay inside the gate, but it was far too heavy for her to handle. Chance had enabled her to use it for her previous escape, when rare carelessness had left it in place across the chasm and unguarded for a few minutes. Artaban tossed her the end of a rope, which she made fast to the hinges of the door. The other end was gripped by half a dozen strong men, and three Turanians crossed the crevice, swinging hand over hand. They spanned the chasm with the plank for the rest to cross.

"Twenty men guard the bridge," snapped Artaban. "The rest follow me."

The sea wolves drew their steel and followed their chief. Artaban led them swiftly after the light-footed girl. As they entered the castle, a servitor sprang up and gaped at them. Before he could cry out, Dayuki's razor-edged yataghan sliced through his throat, and the band rushed into the chamber where the ten mutes sprang up, gripping scimitars.

There was a flurry of fierce, silent fighting, noiseless except for the hiss and rasp of steel and the gasps of the wounded. Three Turanians died, and the rest strode into the inner chamber over the mangled bodies of the blacks.

Teyaspa rose, his quiet eyes gleaming with old fire, as Artaban dramatically knelt before him and lifted the hilt of his b.l.o.o.d.y scimitar.

"These are the warriors who shall set you on your throne!" cried Roxana.

"Let us go quickly, before the Zaporoskan dogs are aware of us," said Artaban.

He drew up his men in a clump around Teyaspa.

Swiftly they traversed the chambers, crossed the court, and approached the gate. But the clang of steel had been heard. Even as the raiders were crossing the bridge, savage yells rose behind them. Across the courtyard rushed a stocky, powerful figure in silk and steely followed by fifty helmeted archers and swordsmen.

"Gleg!" screamed Roxana.

"Cast down the plank!" roared Artaban, springing to the bridgehead.

On each side of the chasm bows tw.a.n.ged until the air over the plank was clouded with shafts whistling in both directions. Several Zaporoskans fell, but so did the two Turanians who stooped to lift the plank, and across the bridge rushed Gleg, his cold gray eyes blazing under his spired helmet. Artaban met him breast to breast. In a glittering whirl of steel the Turanian's scimitar grated around Gleg's blade, and the keen edge cut through the camail and the thick muscles of the Zaporoskan's neck. Gleg staggered and, with a wild cry, pitched off into the chasm.

In an instant the Turanians had cast the bridge after him. On the far side, the Zaporoskans halted with furious yells and began shooting their thick horn bows as fast as they could draw and nock. Before the Turanians, running down the ledge, could get out of range, three more had been brought down and a couple of others had received minor wounds from the vicious arrow storm. Artaban cursed at his losses.

"All but six of you go forward to see that the way is clear," he ordered. "I follow with the prince. My lord, I could not bring a horse up this defile, but I will have the dogs make you a litter of spears-"

"The G.o.ds forbid that I ride on my deliverers' shoulders!" cried Teyaspa. "Again I am a man! I shall never forget this day!"

"The G.o.ds be praised!" whispered Roxana.

They came within sight of the waterfall. All but the small group in the rear had crossed the stream and were straggling down the left bank, when there came a multiple snap of bowstrings, as though a hand had swept across the strings of a muted harp. A sheet of arrows hissed across the stream into their ranks, and then another and another. The foremost Turanians went down like wheat under the scythe and the rest gave back, shouting alarm.

"Dog!" shouted Artaban, turning on Dayuki. "This is your work."

"Do I order my men to shoot at me?" squalled the Hyrkanian, his dark face pale. "This is some new enemy!"

Artaban ran down the gorge toward his demoralized men, cursing. He knew that the Zaporoskans would rig up some sort of bridge across the chasm and pursue him, catching him between two forces. Who his a.s.sailants were he had no idea. From the castle he heard the shouts of battle, and then a great rumble of hooves and shouting and clang of steel seemed to come from the outer valley. But, pent in that narrow gorge, which m.u.f.fled sound, he could not be sure.

The Turanians continued to fall before the storm of arrows from their invisible opponents. Some loosed blindly into the bushes. Artaban knocked their bows aside, shouting:

"Fools!" Why waste arrows on shadows? Draw steel and follow me!"

With a fury of desperation, the remaining Turanians charged the ambush, cloaks flowing and eyes blazing. Arrows brought down some, but the rest leaped into the water and splashed across. From the bushes on the farther bank rose wild figures, mail-clad or half-naked, swords in hands. "Up and at them!" bellowed a great voice. "Cut and thrust!"

A yell of amazement rose from the Turanians at the sight of the Vilayet pirates. Then they closed with a roar. The rasp and clangor of steel echoed from the cliffs. The first Turanians to spring up the higher bank fell back into the stream with heads split Then the pirates leaped down the bank to meet their foes hand-to-hand, thigh-deep in water that soon swirled crimson. Pirate and Turanian slashed and slew in a blind frenzy, sweat and blood running into their eyes.

Dayuki ran into the melee, glaring. His double-curved blade split a pirate's head. Then Vinashko leaped upon him barehanded and screaming.

The Hyrkanian recoiled from the mad ferocity in the Yuetshi's features, but Vinashko caught Dayuki around the neck and sank his teeth in the man's throat He hung on, chewing deeper and deeper, heedless of the dagger that Dayuki drove again and again into his side. Blood spurted around his jaws until both lost their footing and fell into the stream.

Still tearing and rending, they were washed down with the current, now one face showing above water, now another, until both vanished forever.

The Turanians were driven back up the left bank, where they made a brief, b.l.o.o.d.y stand. Then they broke and fled toward the place where Prince Teyaspa stared entranced in the shadow of the cliff, with the small knot of warriors whom Artaban had detailed to guard him.

Thrice he moved as though to draw his sword and cast himself into the fray, but Roxana, clinging to his knees, stopped him.

Artaban, breaking away from the battle, hastened to Teyaspa. The admiral's sword was red to the hilt, his mail was hacked, and blood dripped from beneath his helmet After him through the melee came Conan, brandishing his great sword in his sledgelike fist. He beat down his foes with strokes that shattered bucklers, caved in helmets, and clove through mail, flesh, and bone.

"Ho, you rascals!" he roared in his barbarous Hyrkanian. "I want your head, Artaban, and the fellow beside you there-Teyaspa. Fear not, my pretty prince; I'll not hurt you."

Artaban, looking about for an avenue of escape, saw the groove leading up the cliff and divined its purpose.

"Quick, my lord!" he whispered. "Up the cliff! I'll hold off the barbarian while you climb!"

"Aye, hasten!" urged Roxana. "I'll follow!"

But the fatalistic mask had descended again on Prince Teyaspa. He shrugged. "Nay, the G.o.ds do not will that I should press the throne.

Who can escape his destiny?"

Roxana clutched her hair with a look of horror. Artaban sheathed his sword, sprang for the groove, and started up with the agility of a sailor. But Conan, coming up behind him at a run, reached up, caught his ankle, and plucked him out of his cranny like a fowler catching a bird by the leg. Artaban struck the ground with a clang. As he tried to roll over to wrench loose, the Cimmerian drove his sword into the Turanian's body, crunching through mail links, and into the ground beneath.

Pirates approached with dripping blades. Teyaspa spread his hands, saying: "Take me if you will. I am Teyaspa."

Roxana swayed, her hands over her eyes. Then like a flash she thrust her dagger through Teyaspa's heart, and he died on his feet As he fell, she drove the point into her own breast and sank down beside her lover.

Moaning, she cradled his head in her arms, while the pirates stood about, awed and incomprehending.

A sound up the gorge made them lift their heads. They were but a handful, weary and dazed with battle, their garments soaked with blood and water.

Conan said: "Men are coming down the gorge. Get back into the tunnel."

They obeyed, but slowly, as if they only half understood him. Before the last of them had ducked under the waterfall, a stream of men poured down the path from the castle. Conan, cursing and beating his rearmost men to make them hurry, looked around to see the gorge thronged with armed figures. He recognized the fur caps of the Zaporoskans and with them the white turbans of the Imperial Guards from Aghrapur. One of these wore a spray of bird-of-paradise feathers in his turban, and Conan stared to recognize, from these and other indications, the general of the Imperial Guards, the third man of the Turanian Empire.

The general saw Conan and the tail of his procession too and shouted an order. As Conan, the last in line, plunged through the waterfall, a body of Turanians detached themselves from the rest and ran to the pool.

Conan yelled to his men to run, then turned and faced the sheet of water from the inner side, holding up a buckler from a dead Turanian and his great sword.

Presently a guardsman came through the sheet of water. He started to yell, but the sound was cut off by a meaty chunk as Conan's sword sheared through his neck. His head and body tumbled separately off the ledge into the pool. The second guard had time to strike at the dim figure that towered over him, but his sword rebounded from the Cimmerian's buckler. The next instant he in turn fell back into the pool with a cloven skull.

There were shouts, partly m.u.f.fled by the sound of the water. Conan flattened himself against the side of the tunnel, and a storm of arrows whipped through the sheet of water, bringing little splashes of droplets with them and rebounding with a clatter from the walls and floor of the tunnel.

A glance back showed Conan that his men had vanished into the gloom of the tunnel. He ran after them, so that when, a few moments later, the guardsmen again burst through the waterfall, they found n.o.body in front of them.

Meanwhile in the gorge, voices filled with horror rose as the newcomers halted among the corpses. The general knelt beside the dead prince and the dying girl.

"It is Prince Teyaspa!" he cried.

"He is beyond your power," murmured Roxana. "I would have made him king, but you robbed him of his manhood... so I killed him..."