Conan and the Mists of Doom Part 18

"Farad-"

"I told him where I was going, when he went out to the sentries. He blessed me."

"Not me?" Conan scoffed. "The ungrateful hound! I bring him from a flea-ridden hut to the embraces of-"

"Hssst!" Bethina said, in a very different manner. Conan put his arm around her but was silent.

Then they both heard it-a high, wailing cry that might have been an abandoned babe. But it was many times too loud and seemed to come from both the rock of the mountains and the stars in the sky at once.

Muhbaras heard the sound, too, and his first thought was that one of the raiders' sentries was blowing a whistle to give the alarm. Then it swelled until it was almost painful to hear, and he ceased to believe that it could be natural. What he wanted to believe was that the Lady of the Mists was calling on her powers to aid him. What he feared was that magic was on the march tonight, without the Lady's leave.

He did not know to what G.o.d he could lawfully pray, for the victory of one who had delved into matters forbidden by those same G.o.ds. He also wondered if he could pray for his own victory, seeing that he was bound by the most ancient of human ties to that same delver into the forbidden.

Since Muhbaras did not know how to pray, he did not do so. Instead he devoted all his attention to keeping on his feet as he led his men down across the scree-strewn slope. A stone turning under somebody's feet could do worse than give the alarm. It could tumble a man, so that he took others off their feet until the whole raiding party slid downhill like a living avalanche, to end up helpless amid the rubble while their enemies cut their throats.

Mountains were no place for moving fast at night, and here the bandits had the advantage over their lowlander comrades. They knew ground was supposed to be rubble-strewn and slanting, and their feet found safe paths without demanding direction from their wits or senses.

Muhbaras's eyes had long since accustomed themselves to the darkness, although his night-sight was not of the keenest. He saw that he himself was running almost straight at the dead chief's bier, and that some of the men on his flanks were well ahead of him.

He could almost be grateful to the terrible cry in the night. It had to be drawing all his enemies' attention, and completely drowning out the footfalls of his men. They would strike by surprise, and that alone might give them the edge.

Muhbaras put out of his mind the thought that the magic unloosed in the night might make meaningless the difference between victor and vanquished. It was disloyal to his Lady, it might unman him, and it might even be untrue.

Conan waited until the last moment of the attackers' approach. He had plenty of warning, not only from the sentries (who gave ground before the onrush without engaging) but from the "mourners" around him.

Among them was Bethina, who was keeping her courage and her wits about her for all that she was plainly fearful of what might befall Farad out on the sentry line. She moaned and wailed quite convincingly, and in between the moans gave Conan the numbers of the enemy. When the number reached fifty and grew no higher, Conan heaved a gusty sigh.

That was odds of no more than two to one, and ensured a battle rather than a ma.s.sacre. But he trusted his men; when the fight was over there should be little between them and the Valley of the Mists.

Little of human contriving, that is.

Conan moved enough to see the sentries pelting past the archers climbing on the piled stones, to give themselves clear shots over the heads of their friends into the ranks of their foes. The clatter of onrus.h.i.+ng feet on stones was now louder than the wailing in the sky.

Then the first of the enemy burst out of the night. A lean man in ragged robes, he leapt clean over Conan's bier, to meet Bethina's dagger full in his chest.

His death-cry made all other sounds seem like a hush. Conan rolled off the other side of the bier, drawing both dagger and broadsword in a single motion as he came to his feet. Both blades found living flesh as they were drawn, and two enemies crumpled before Conan had taken three steps from the bier.

A third man stared at the Cimmerian, gibbering like a bee-stung ape. "Your pardon for coming back from the dead, but I had work to do," Conan said.

His broadsword licked out and the man's head lolled on his shoulders. He fell backward into the path of a fourth man, who was agile enough to leap aside but not enough so to escape the downswing of Conan's sword.

It was only a flesh wound to the man's left arm, and he wielded the tulwar in his right hand with no loss of speed or skill. Conan feinted with his dagger to draw the man into a furious slash that put him briefly off balance and in reach of the broadsword. The broadsword ended the fight, opening the man's chest, across half his ribs and down to his heart and lungs.

Conan had now slain four men in hardly more time than it would have taken to draw that many breaths. His rising from the dead had not frightened as many enemies witless as he had hoped, but it had left him well inside their ranks.

A squarely built man with a grizzled beard now came at Conan. The man had nearly the Cimmerian's reach and much of his strength, but not his speed. Conan could not use all his swiftness of foot, eye, and hand on this rough ground with enemies lurking in every direction.

So he and the bearded man went at it for a good long while for such a fight, which is to say all of a minute or two. They also fought unhindered by either friends or foes, which might have been chivalry but was more likely that the two wove about them a web of flying steel such that no prudent man dared draw close.

The bearded man drew Conan's blood twice, and the Cimmerian considered that this quest was giving him more scars than usual. Then his opponent made a downward cut that was just a trifle too predictable, and Conan caught the man's blade with his dagger.

Pus.h.i.+ng back hard, the Cimmerian locked the other's blade between them, then brought his broadsword about in a sweeping stroke.

It struck flat-bladed; Conan wanted a prisoner. Too much that they had not expected was abroad tonight, and this man had to know more than Conan did!

Besides, the man was too good an opponent to kill without good cause.

The blow knocked the man's helmet awry and staggered him without stunning him.

He lurched back, clearing his blade and drawing a short hill knife from his belt. Conan brought a knee up into the man's groin and slammed the hilt of his broadsword into the other's jaw.

Those two blows were almost enough. The man still thrust his knife weakly at Conan, touching the Cimmerian's scarred chest. Then he reeled and fell, his steel falling from limp hands.

Conan stepped back from his fallen opponent and looked around. The archers from the stone pile were now at work, and arrows whistled by close enough to be heard over the cry of the night. The cries when they struck living flesh were even louder; Conan counted half a dozen writhing or still forms within spear-throw.

Now to see to his prisoner, and hope that no one tried to kill him or trample on the man while he was doing that.

Conan had just gripped the man's ankles when the cry in the night doubled, then redoubled, until all the world seemed to be one terrible wailing that seemed to signal the death of G.o.ds or even of the universe itself.

In the valley, the Lady of the Mists was running for the first time in some years. She was relieved to discover that her wind and limbs were still sound enough to let her make good speed.

Or perhaps she owed her speed to being sensibly clad, with stout shoes and a tunic and trousers borrowed from one of the servants. They were not the best fit, but she was conscious as never before how keeping the chill wind from her skin and the stones of the paths from her bare feet allowed her to make better time on her journey.

Of course, it would be well to doff all her garments as usual when it came time to wield her magic. Meanwhile, though, no one would take her for the Lady of the Mists or perhaps even for a woman, as the garments were large enough to alter her shape. Even in the uncanny light the Mist was pouring out into the Valley, her staff might also look like a shepherd's crook or a bearer's walking stick.

Besides, it would take sharp and untroubled wits to even think of the Lady's rus.h.i.+ng about so meanly clad, let alone be trying to pierce the disguise of everyone who pa.s.sed. She did not doubt that there were sharp wits among the folk in the valley, not all of whom were foolish either by nature or her creation.

But she doubted that they would be untroubled.

She herself was not untroubled, and as she strode along the path toward the Cave of the Mists, she recited old cantrips to soothe herself. The Mist had begun to feed of its own volition, and that terrible blue light spreading out into the valley was frightening both those who knew what it meant and those who did not.

The more fearful the valley dwellers, the more they would run about like headless fowl without taking thought for their own safety.

Not that they could easily procure it. Men and women were going to die tonight, and each death would feed a life essence into the Mist, making it stronger to seek out the next victim. (She would not use the word "sacrifice" tonight, and had begun to think that she never should have.) At least they could run toward the mouth of the valley. The Mist was bound to the magic in the rocks of the valley, the magic going back to the time of Acheron. It could not leave the valley unless it devoured many more life essences than it had found so far.

And unless she was no longer there to contend with it.

What her magic had wrought, it could undo. This might not earn her a kinder judgment from anyone except Muhbaras, who was-as he was, and she would not try to find words for it. She was no poet either. In time, when they had lived together in the outside world, she a soldier's lady, he a soldier of Khoraja, one of them might find such words.

That time would not come tonight.

She needed to be closer to the Eye of the Mist to wield the needful spells with appropriate power, so she hastened her pace. As she moved, she called to the minds of everyone she pa.s.sed, and hoped that the call reached beyond the range of her eyes.

Flee the valley. Flee the valley. Flee to the valley, and beyond it. The valley is death. Outside lies hope.

She repeated this, and one or two folk on the path turned and stared about them, as if seeking the source of the message that seemed to be touching their minds without touching their ears. She almost laughed. That was another way of remaining disguised-a call to the mind did not mean using one's all-too-recognizable voice.

Conan was now backed against the pile of stones. This left him all the fighting room he needed to front and flanks. Not all of the archers atop the pile still lived, but both living and dead had wrought havoc in the enemy's ranks. They were coming at Conan and the remaining defenders on the ground with barely half their strength remaining fighting-fit. Bethina crouched behind Farad and Conan, her hand gripping her dagger but her eyes seeing nothing. She had not uttered any of Omyela's messages since battle was joined, but her consciousness was clearly elsewhere.

Conan hoped that no one saw Bethina as the defender's weak point and hurled themselves on her. That would end in red ruin for the attackers, but perhaps also in Bethina's doom.

The Cimmerian had met a good many women he'd mourn less than Bethina, altogether apart from the bond with Omyela. What was loose in the valley looked very apt to doom all in its path, without Omyela's help.

Most of the folk of the Valley of the Mists who yet lived were fleeing even before the Lady bade them do so. One man trotted industriously in the same direction as the Lady.

It was Ermik, and he could not have moved as swiftly as he did had he still carried the gold entrusted to him by Muhbaras. He had left it in a safe place, hidden even from the Maidens, who in any case were likely to soon be fleeing as swiftly as the rest, too swiftly to search odd caves.

There was some danger in following the Lady as he was, even had she not been also hurrying toward the unleashed magic. But that way must lie the Lady's treasure, dwarfing the petty sums from the pay chest. Also, that way lay learning more about the Lady's magic than Muhbaras had, for all the time he'd spent swiving her.

With gold, Ermik could buy his way free of Khoraja. With knowledge, he could buy a higher place in Khorajan service. It would be his tales of the Valley of the Mists that would be believed, not the captain's. Swiftly he would rise, and high enough that he would never again need to obey hirelings like Muhbaras.

Still, he patted the hilt of his dagger as he moved. It held a chaos stone, or one that had been sold to him as such, for a price that would make him seek blood if it did not in truth confuse any spell into whose radius it was thrown.

If he was alive after such a mischance. Ermik had a good spy's self-command, and animal courage. But he could not keep that ugly thought from his mind, or keep from feeling the night wind blow chill on his spine.

The attack that Conan had feared came. It began with a flight of arrows, striking with the power of Tu-ranian bows but mercifully ill aimed. One went through Bethina's hair, another gouged Farad's shoulder. The Afghuli slapped at the wound as if it were an insect bite, and brandished his tulwar.

"Come along, dead men who think they yet live. Come along and meet Farad and Conan and their comrades. We will cure you of your silly notion!"

He added a few singularly foul obscenities in Iranistani. Those who did not understand his words understood his tone, and it seemed that madmen came howling out of the night at Bethina's defenders.

In the heart of the Mist, something that might be called a will began to grow.

It was a will to seek paths through the rock, following the traces of old magic that it could touch by itself. It did not need more life essences to strengthen itself, if it could do that.

The Mist ceased to be a creature of the air and became a creature of the depths of the earth. But in the heart of the incandescent blue where the Eye of the Mist had been, a crimson core began to glow.

The attack on Bethina and her defenders began as a collision and continued as a brawl. Too many men were jammed into too small a s.p.a.ce to let anyone use art or even craftsmans.h.i.+p in the fighting.

That at once gave the advantage to the defenders. Conan could use the weapons nature gave him as fiercely and effectively as the man-made ones whose ways he had learned. He had never studied the barehanded (and -footed) fighting arts of Khitai, so perhaps one of the great masters of those arts might have been a match for the Cimmerian. But the Khitan would have needed luck as well as skill, and only the greatest of masters would have stood any chance of walking away from a bout with Conan.

Conan slammed his sword-weighted hand into the side of one man's neck. He punched another in the ribs so hard that he felt ribs crack under the blow, even through boiled-leather armor. He b.u.t.ted a third man under the chin, snapping his head back so savagely that the neck snapped like a dry branch.

Meanwhile Farad was doing much the same, with a little a.s.sistance from weapons that he had more room to wield. At the outermost fringes of his senses, Conan could hear still other comrades, but they might have been in another world for all that he could tell of what they were doing.

They had to have done well, because suddenly it was too much for the attackers.

Darkness and emptiness gaped before Conan, although not silence-the ground was littered with the crippled and dying, some already crying out as the pain-blunting shock of their wounds wore away.

Conan watched the attackers retreating uphill, far scantier in numbers than when they came, and losing more men to the archers before they vanished. Then he looked around for Bethina. He saw her a moment later, sprawled atop the prostrate form of the prisoner Conan had taken earlier. He sprang toward her, then heard a welcome, healthy oath as he accidentally trod on her outstretched foot.

"Your pardon, lady."

"I should think so. I stabbed one fellow with my dagger, but he had so much muscle, the blade stayed in him. So when the bearded one started waking up, all I could do was jump on top of him."

That seemed to have done well enough; the man's nose was a b.l.o.o.d.y mess from being slammed into the rocky ground. But he was still breathing, and indeed started to groan as Conan lifted Bethina off him.

"I can take a few of the men up and keep those fellows on the move," Farad said.

Conan shook his head. "We don't divide our strength on unknown ground. Those fellows could rally and cut you to pieces. Besides, we need to protect Bethina.

When was the last time you heard from Omyela?"

Bethina looked blank, then slowed her breathing to open her mind to the other woman's message.

Conan stared at the sky. Was it his fancy, or was a crimson tint beginning to mingle with the blue glow in the sky?

The Lady of the Mists had come as close as she dared to the Eye. Any closer and she might find the ground under her feet crumbling as the Mist fed on the traces of the spells of long-dead Acheronian sorcerers, like worms feeding on the bones of long-dead animals.

It was Acheron's magic that had brought the Mist to terrible Me. Now it would be the same magic that drove it back into the nighted gulfs from which she had drawn it, so that the Valley of the Mists might be a sane and safe abode for common men and women.

She was leaving it, and she prayed she would leave it with Muhbaras. But she would not fail to leave it cleaner than she had made it.

She could not bring back the dead. She would not even ask their forgiveness, for what she had done was beyond that. She hoped for happiness in this life, before she faced the anger of her victims in another. Meanwhile, she would do what she could to keep the number of the dead from growing any further.

It would have to be a death-elemental. She had conjured one before, a being from the very darkest heart of Acheron's sinister magic. But that had been a small one, fit only to take a single human life. It had been weak and easy to control.

Now she needed one so powerful that it held enough of the essence of death to slay the Mist. That which had fed on life essences would now consume pure death, and from that consuming, die.

The Lady of the Mists remqved her garments and stood wind-clad as was best for such potent magic. This close to the Mist, it was hard to imagine anyone being able to strike at her even if they saw and recognized her.

The syllables in the Secret Tongue of Acheron ran through her mind, and as she raised her staff over her head, they began to roll off her tongue.

Muhbaras had just rallied the half or less of his men who remained when a wild-eyed figure stumbled into their rear.

It was one of the Maidens, clad only in her sword and rags of garments. She was bleeding from a dozen scratches and three greater wounds, and reeling with exhaustion, pain, loss of blood, and stark terror that made her eyes seem windows into h.e.l.l. "They are mad in there," she gasped. "Mad. The Mist marches, and they have all run mad. They are trying to get out. They say the Lady told them. We do not know where she is."

"Have you no way to reach her?"

"No. I-yes, that is true. We do not." Muhbaras wanted to shake sense or at least coherence into the woman. Instead he lowered his voice.