The Hour of the Dragon - Robert E. Howard (great reads .TXT) 📗

wooded hills in the teeth of the arrows

and swords of the Bossonians. His camp lay directly behind him, in a

narrow, steep-walled valley which was indeed merely a continuation of

the Valley of Lions, pitching up at a higher level. He did not fear a

surprize from the rear, because the hills behind him were full of

refugees and broken men whose loyalty to him was beyond question.

 

But if his position was hard to shake, it was equally hard to escape

from. It was a trap as well as a fortress for the defenders, a

desperate last stand of men who did not expect to survive unless they

were victorious. The only line of retreat possible was through the

narrow valley at their rear.

 

Xaltotun mounted a hill on the left side of the valley, near the wide

mouth. This hill rose higher than the others, and was known as the

King’s Altar, for a reason long forgotten. Only Xaltotun knew, and his

memory dated back three thousand years.

 

He was not alone. His two familiars, silent, hairy, furtive and dark,

were with him, and they bore a young Aquilonian girl, bound hand and

foot. They laid her on an ancient stone, which was curiously like an

altar, and which crowned the summit of the hill. For long centuries it

had stood there, worn by the elements until many doubted that it was

anything but a curiously shapen natural rock. But what it was, and why

it stood there, Xaltotun remembered from of old. The familiars went

away, with their bent backs like silent gnomes, and Xaltotun stood

alone beside the stone altar, his dark beard blown in the wind,

overlooking the valley.

 

He could see clear back to the winding Shirki, and up into the hills

beyond the head of the valley. He could see the gleaming wedge of

steel drawn up at the head of the terraces, the burganets of the

archers glinting among the rocks and bushes, the silent knights

motionless on their steeds, their pennons flowing above their helmets,

their lances rising in a bristling thicket.

 

Looking in the other direction he could see the long serried lines of

the Nemedians moving in ranks of shining steel into the mouth of the

valley. Behind them the gay pavilions of the lords and knights and the

drab tents of the common soldiers stretched back almost to the river.

 

Like a river of a molten steel the Nemedian host flowed into the

valley, the great scarlet dragon rippling over it. First marched the

bowmen, in even ranks, arbalests half raised, bolts nocked, fingers on

triggers. After them came the pikemen, and behind them the real

strength of the army-the mounted knights, their banners unfurled to

the wind, their lances lifted, walking their great steeds forward as

if they rode to a banquet.

 

And higher up on the slopes the smaller Aquilonian host stood grimly

silent.

 

There were thirty thousand Nemedian knights, and, as in most Hyborian

nations, it was the chivalry which was the sword of the army. The

footmen were used only to clear the way for a charge of the armored

knights. There were twenty-one thousand of these, pikemen and archers.

 

The bowmen began loosing as they advanced, without breaking ranks,

launching their quarrels with a whir and tang. But the bolts fell

short or rattled harmlessly from the overlapping shields of the

Gundennen. And before the arbalesters could come within killing range,

the arching shafts of the Bossonians were wreaking havoc in their

ranks.

 

A little of this, a futile attempt at exchanging fire, and the

Nemedian bowmen began falling back in disorder. Their armor was light,

their weapons no match for the Bossonian longbows. The western archers

were sheltered by bushes and rocks. Moreover, the Nemedian footmen

lacked something of the morale of the horsemen, knowing as they did

that they were being used merely to clear the way for the knights.

 

The crossbowmen fell back, and between their opening lines the pikemen

advanced. These were largely mercenaries, and their masters had no

compunction about sacrificing them. They were intended to mask the

advance of the knights until the latter were within smiting distance.

So while the arbalesters plied they bolts from either flank at long

range, the pikemen marched into the teeth of the blast from above, and

behind them the knights came on.

 

When the pikemen began to falter beneath the savage hail of death that

whistled down the slopes among them, a trumpet blew, their companies

divided to right and left, and through them the mailed knights

thundered.

 

They ran full into a cloud of stinging death. The clothyard shafts

found every crevice in their armor and the housings of the steeds.

Horses scrambling up the grassy terraces reared and plunged backward,

bearing their riders with them. Steel-clad forms littered the slopes.

The charge wavered and ebbed back.

 

Back down in the valley Amalric reformed his ranks. Tarascus was

fighting with drawn sword under the scarlet dragon, but it was the

baron of Tor who commanded that day. Amalric swore as he glanced at

the forest of lance-tips visible above and beyond the headpieces of

the Gundennen. He had hoped his retirement would draw the knights out

in a charge down the slopes after him, to be raked from either flank

by his bowmen and swamped by the numbers of his horsemen. But they had

not moved. Camp-servants brought skins of water from the river.

Knights doffed their helmets and drenched their sweating heads. The

wounded on the slopes screamed vainly for water. In the upper valley,

springs supplied the defenders. They did not thirst that long, hot

spring day.

 

On the King’s Altar, beside the ancient, carven stone, Xaltotun

watched the steel tide ebb and flow. On came the knights, with waving

plumes and dipping lances. Through a whistling cloud of arrows they

plowed to break like a thundering wave on the bristling wall of spears

and shields. Axes rose and fell above the plumed helmets, spears

thrust upward, bringing down horses and riders. The pride of the

Gundermen was no less fierce than that of the knights. They were not

spear-fodder, to be sacrificed for the glory of better men. They were

the finest infantry in the world, with a tradition that made their

morale unshakable. The kings of Aquilonia had long learned the worth

of unbreakable infantry. They held their formation unshaken; over

their gleaming ranks flowed the great lion banner, and at the tip of

the wedge a giant figure in black armor roared and smote like a

hurricane, with a dripping ax that split steel and bone alike.

 

The Nemedians fought as gallantly as their traditions of high courage

demanded. But they could not break the iron wedge, and from the wooded

knolls on either hand arrows raked their close-packed ranks

mercilessly. Their own bowmen were useless, their pikemen unable to

climb the heights and come to grips with the Bossonians. Slowly,

stubbornly, sullenly, the grim knights fell back, counting their empty

saddles. Above them the Gundermen made no outcry of triumph. They

closed their ranks, locking up the gaps made by the fallen. Sweat ran

into their eyes from under their steel caps. They gripped their spears

and waited, their fierce hearts swelling with pride that a king should

fight on foot with them. Behind them the Aquilonian knights had not

moved. They sat their steeds, grimly immobile.

 

A knight spurred a sweating horse up the hill called the King’s Altar,

and glared at Xaltotun with bitter eyes.

 

“Amalric bids me say that it is time to use your magic, wizard,” he

said. “We are dying like flies down there in the valley. We cannot

break their ranks.”

 

Xaltotun seemed to expand, to grow tall and awesome and terrible.

 

“Return to Amalric,” he said. “Tell him to reform his ranks for a

charge, but to await my signal. Before that signal is given he will

see a sight that he will remember until he lies dying!”

 

The knight saluted as if compelled against his will, and thundered

down the hill at breakneck pace.

 

Xaltotun stood beside the dark altarstone and stared across the

valley, at the dead and wounded men on the terraces, at the grim,

bloodstained band at the head of the slopes, at the dusty, steel-clad

ranks reforming in the vale below. He glanced up at the sky, and he

glanced down at the slim white figure on the dark stone. And lifting a

dagger inlaid with archaic hieroglyphs, he intoned an immemorial

invocation:

 

“Set, god of darkness, scaly lord of the shadows, by the blood of a

virgin and the sevenfold symbol I call to your sons below the black

earth! Children of the deeps, below the red earth, under the black

earth, awaken and shake your awful manes! Let the hills rock and the

stones topple upon my enemies! Let the sky grow dark above them, the

earth unstable beneath their feet! Let a wind from the deep black

earth curl up beneath their feet, and blacken and shrivel them—”

 

He halted short, dagger lifted. In the tense silence the roar of the

hosts rose beneath him, borne on the wind.

 

On the other side of the altar stood a man in a black hooded robe,

whose coif shadowed pale delicate features and dark eyes calm and

meditative.

 

“Dog of Asura!” whispered Xaltotun, his voice was like the hiss of an

angered serpent. “Are you mad, that you seek your doom? Ho, Baal!

Chiron!”

 

“Call again, dog of Acheron!” said the other, and laughed. “Summon

them loudly. They will not hear, unless your shouts reverberate in

hell.”

 

From a thicket on the edge of the crest came a somber old woman in a

peasant garb, her hair flowing over her shoulders, a great gray wolf

following at her heels.

 

“Witch, priest and wolf,” muttered Xaltotun grimly, and laughed.

“Fools, to pit your charlatan’s mummery against my arts! With a wave

of my hand I brush you from my path!”

 

“Your arts are straws in the wind, dog of Python,” answered the

Asurian. “Have you wondered why the Shirki did not come down in flood

and trap Conan on the other bank? When I saw the lightning in the

night I guessed your plan, and my spells dispersed the clouds you had

summoned before they could empty their torrents. You did not even know

that your rain-making wizardry had failed.”

 

“You lie!” cried Xaltotun, but the confidence in his voice was shaken.

“I have felt the impact of a powerful sorcery against mine—but no man

on earth could undo the rain-magic, once made, unless he possessed the

very heart of sorcery.”

 

“But the flood you plotted did not come to pass,” answered the priest.

“Look at your allies in the valley, Pythonian! You have led them to

the slaughter! They are caught in the fangs of the trap, and you

cannot aid them. Look!”

 

He pointed. Out of the narrow gorge of the upper valley, behind the

Poitanians, a horseman came flying, whirling something about his head

that flashed in the sun. Recklessly he hurled down the slopes, through

the ranks of the Gundermen, who sent up a deep-throated roar and

clashed their spears and shields like thunder in the hills. On the

terraces between the hosts the sweat-soaked horse reared and plunged,

and his wild rider yelled and brandished the thing in his hands like

one demented. It was the torn remnant of a scarlet banner, and the sun

struck dazzlingly on the golden scales of a serpent that writhed

thereon.

 

“Valerius is dead!” cried Hadrathus ringingly. “A fog and a drum lured

him to his doom! I gathered that fog, dog of Python, and