The Greatest Works of Robert E. Howard: 300+ Titles in One Edition. Robert E. Howard

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СКАЧАТЬ asserted Strom. 'These barbarians live by their own particular code of honor, and Conan would never desert men of his own complexion to be slaughtered by people of another race. He'll help us against the Picts, even though he plans to murder us himself—hark!'

      A blood-freezing yell knifed the silence. It came from the woods to the west, and simultaneously an object arched out of the trees, struck the ground and rolled bouncingly towards the rocks—a severed human head, the hideously painted face frozen in a snarl of death.

      'Conan's signal!' roared Strom, and the desperate freebooters rose like a wave from the rocks and rushed headlong toward the woods.

      Arrows whirred out of the bushes, but their flight was hurried and erratic, only three men fell. Then the wild men of the sea plunged through the fringe of foliage and fell on the naked painted figures that rose out of the gloom before them. There was a murderous instant of panting, ferocious effort, hand-to-hand, cutlasses beating down war-axes, booted feet trampling naked bodies, and then bare feet were rattling through the bushes in headlong flight as the survivors of that brief carnage quit the fray, leaving seven still, painted figures stretched on the blood- stained leaves that littered the earth. Further back in the thickets sounded a thrashing and heaving, and then it ceased and Conan strode into view, his lacquered hat gone, his coat torn, his cutlass dripping in his hand.

      'What now?' panted Zarono. He knew the charge had succeeded only because Conan's unexpected attack on the rear of the Picts had demoralized the painted men, and prevented them from falling back before the rush. But he exploded into curses as Conan passed his cutlass through a buccaneer who writhed on the ground with a shattered hip.

      'We can't carry him with us,' grunted Conan. 'It wouldn't be any kindness to leave him to be taken alive by the Picts. Come on!'

      They crowded close at his heels as he trotted through the trees. Alone they would have sweated and blundered among the thickets for hours before they found the beach-trail—if they had ever found it. The Cimmerian led them as unerringly as if he had been following a blazed path, and the rovers shouted with hysterical relief as they burst suddenly upon the trail that ran westward.

      'Fool!' Conan clapped a hand on the shoulder of a pirate who started to break into a run, and hurled him back among his companions. 'You'll burst your heart and fall within a thousand yards. We're miles from the beach. Take an easy gait. We may have to sprint the last mile. Save some of your wind for it. Come on, now.'

      He set off down the trail at a steady jog-trot; the seamen followed him, suiting their pace to his.

      The sun was touching the waves of the western ocean. Tina stood at the window from which Belesa had watched the storm. 'The setting sun turns the ocean to blood,' she said. 'The carack's sail is a white fleck on the crimson waters. The woods are already darkened with clustering shadows.'

      'What of the seamen on the beach?' asked Belesa languidly. She reclined on a couch, her eyes closed, her hands clasped behind her head.

      'Both camps are preparing their supper,' said Tina. 'They gather driftwood and build fires. I can hear them shouting to one another—what is that?'

      The sudden tenseness in the girl's tone brought Belesa upright on the couch. Tina grasped the window-sill, her face white. 'Listen! A howling, far off, like many wolves!'

      'Wolves?' Belesa sprang up, fear clutching her heart. 'Wolves do not hunt in packs at this time of the year—'

      'Oh, look!' shrilled the girl, pointing. 'Men are running out of the forest!'

      In an instant Belesa was beside her, staring wide-eyed at the figures, small in the distance, streaming out of the woods. 'The sailors!' she gasped. 'Empty-handed! I see Zarono—Strom—'

      'Where is Conan?' whispered the girl.

      Belesa shook her head.

      'Listen! Oh, listen!' whimpered the child, clinging to her. 'The Picts!'

      All in the fort could hear it now—a vast ululation of mad exultation and blood-lust, from the depths of the dark forest. That sound spurred on the panting men reeling toward the palisade.

      'Hasten!' gasped Strom, his face a drawn mask of exhausted effort. 'They are almost at our heels. My ship—'

      'She is too far out for us to reach,' panted Zarono. 'Make for the stockade. See, the men camped on the beach have seen us!'

      He waved his arms in breathless pantomime, but the men on the strand understood, and they recognized the significance of that wild howling, rising to a triumphant crescendo. The sailors abandoned their fires and cooking-pots and fled for the stockade gate. They were pouring through it as the fugitives from the forest rounded the south angle and reeled into the gate, a heaving, frantic mob, half-dead from exhaustion. The gate was slammed with frenzied haste, and sailors began to climb the firing-ledge, to join the men-at-arms already there.

      Belesa confronted Zarono.

      'Where is Conan?'

      The buccaneer jerked a thumb toward the blackening woods; his chest heaved; sweat poured down his face. 'Their scouts were at our heels before we gained the beach. He paused to slay a few and give us time to get away.'

      He staggered away to take his place on the firing-ledge, whither Strom had already mounted. Valenso stood there, a somber, cloak-wrapped figure, strangely silent and aloof. He was like a man bewitched.

      'Look!' yelped a pirate, above the deafening howling of the yet unseen horde.

      A man emerged from the forest and raced fleetly across the open belt.

      'Conan!' Zarono grinned wolfishly.

      'We're safe in the stockade; we know where the treasure is. No reason why we shouldn't feather him with arrows now.'

      'Nay!' Strom caught his arm. 'We'll need his sword! Look!'

      Behind the fleet-footed Cimmerian a wild horde burst from the forest, howling as they ran—naked Picts, hundreds and hundreds of them. Their arrows rained about the Cimmerian. A few strides more and Conan reached the eastern wall of the stockade, bounded high, seized the points of the logs and heaved himself up and over, his cutlass in his teeth. Arrows thudded venomously into the logs where his body had just been. His resplendent coat was gone, his white silk shirt torn and bloodstained.

      'Stop them!' he roared as his feet hit the ground inside. 'If they get on the wall, we're done for!'

      Pirates, buccaneers and men-at-arms responded instantly, and a storm of arrows and quarrels tore into the oncoming horde. Conan saw Belesa, with Tina clinging to her hand, and his language was picturesque.

      'Get into the manor,' he commanded in conclusion. 'Their shafts will arch over the wall—what did I tell you?' As a black shaft cut into the earth at Belesa's feet and quivered like a serpent-head, Conan caught up a longbow and leaped to the firing-ledge. 'Some of you fellows prepare torches!' he roared, above the rising clamor of the battle. 'We can't fight them in the dark!'

      The sun had sunk in a welter of blood; out in the bay the men aboard the carack had cut the anchor chain and the Red Hand was rapidly receding on the crimson horizon.

      VIII. — MEN OF THE WOODS

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