Harry Turtledove - Conan of Venarium

Even with all that cold-weather gear, he still shivered as he left the smithy. The icy weather outside seemed to bite all the harder after the heat that poured from Mordec's forge. Now, instead of the fire in that forge. Conan's breath smoked.

"Out hunting, Conan?" That was Tarla, the daughter of Balarg the weaver, scooping clean, fresh snow into buckets to bring it indoors to melt for drinking and cooking water.

He nodded. "Aye," he said, and even the one word seemed a great speech to him.

The girl's smile was like a moment of sunshine from some warmer country. "Good fortune go with you, then," she said.

Awkwardly, Conan dipped his head. "Thanks," he said, and hurried away toward the woods.

Not far from Duthil stood the encampment full of Bossonians and Gundermen. By now, it seemed as much a fixture on the landscape as the village itself. Sentries stood guard beyond the palisade around the cabins that had replaced the soldiers' tents. One of them waved to Conan as he went off toward the forest. He pretended not to see. Waving back would have been confessing friendship for the invaders.

He had not been in the woods for long before he heard Aquilonian voices cursing. He slipped silently through the trees toward the sound. A supply wagon on the way up from Fort Venarium to the smaller camp outside of Duthil had bogged down in deep snow.

"Don't do that!" said a guard as the driver raised his whip to try to lash the horses forward. "Can't you see we need to clear a path for them?"

"Mitra! Let them work. Why should I?" said the driver. "This weather's not fit for beasts and barbarians, let alone for honest men to be out and about in."

Conan did not follow all of that—his grasp of the invaders' tongue was far from what it might have been, though nonetheless surprising for one with but a few months of informal and sketchily acquired knowledge behind him. The gist, though, seemed plain enough. Snarling deep in his throat, he reached over his shoulder for an arrow. He could not have said whether he wished to shoot the driver more on account of his scorn for Cimmerians or his callousness toward the team.

In the end, he did not loose the shaft that would have drunk the soldier's life. Driver and guard never knew their lives stood for a long moment on the razor's edge. They never knew one of the barbarians they despised had stood close enough to kill them, but had mastered his murderous rage and moved on. Silent as snowfall, Conan glided deeper into the forest. He had come forth to hunt game, not men.

Snow buntings chirped in the trees. They were some of the few birds that did not flee to warmer climes when winter came. Conan was fond of them because of that. Even as woodswise as he was, he had a hard time spying them. They were white and buff, almost invisible in the snow. Only when they flew did their black wingtips give them away. Those wingtips reminded him of an ermine's nose and tail tip, which stayed dark even after the rest of the creature went white to match the winter background.

If he got hungry enough, he supposed a stew of snow buntings would keep him from starving. But he would have wanted to frighten them into nets, not try to shoot them on the wing. They were swift and agile flyers, and no one bird had much in the way of meat. The arrows he lost were unlikely to repay the catch he made.

He did keep his eyes open not for ermine but for other creatures that went white when winter came: plump hares and the ptarmigan that feasted on pine and spruce needles through the cold weather. The hares' black eyes and noses and the black outer tail feathers of the ptarmigan sometimes betrayed them to the alert hunter. Because of what they ate at this season, ptarmigan were less tasty in winter than in summer, but they were meat, tasty or not, and a hungry man could not be choosy.

No one and nothing hungry could be choosy in wintertime. Only little by little did Conan realize he had gone from hunter to hunted. He had heard wolves howl several times that day, but not so near as to be alarming. Hearing those howls in the distance lulled him for longer than it should have when he heard them closer. Thus it was with a start of horror that he realized a pack had found his trail.

His first impulse, like that of any hunted wild creature, was to run like the wind in a desperate search for escape. He mastered it, as he had mastered the urge to murder. Both would have given momentary satisfaction, and both would have brought disaster in their wake. Wolves could outrun men. Any man who reckoned otherwise but doomed himself.

Instead of running wild and exhausting himself, Conan moved with grim purpose, seeking a spot where he might make a stand against the beasts to which he was but so much meat. And, before long, he found one. Had he fled blindly, he might well have dashed past without realizing it was there.

Two boulders, each of them taller than a man, came together to leave a space between them shaped like a sword point, protecting him from either side. At the very tip, where there would have been an opening, stood the trunk of a tall spruce, against which he set his back. He had his bow, his arrows, and on his belt a long knife his father had forged. The wolves had their teeth and claws. They also had the innate ferocity of the wild. They had it, and so did he.

Their voices rose to high, excited howls when they realized they had brought him to bay. The first wolf loped toward him, snow flying up from under its feet, red tongue lolling out of its red mouth, slaver dripping from yellowish fangs, amber eyes gleaming with hate and hunger.

The pack leader leaped. Conan let fly. He shot it full in the chest with the one envenomed arrow he carried. He had to be sure, certain sure, of this kill. So potent was the poison that the wolf had time for but the bare beginning of a startled yip before it slammed down dead on the snow. Its blood steamed scarlet beneath it.

Conan's next shaft, driven by all the power in his smithy-trained arms, was in the air less than half a heartbeat later. It sank almost to the fletching in the eye of the wolf closest behind the leader. That beast, too, died in the instant of its wounding. The third arrow, also quickly shot, sank deep into the flank of the next nearest wolf. That was not a mortal shot, but the wolf belled in pain and ran from the man-thing who had inflicted such torment on it.

Three more shafts saw another wolf dead, one wounded, and one arrow flying far but futilely. Some of the yet unhurt wolves began tearing at the carcasses of a fallen comrade. In this desperate time of year, meat was meat, come whence it might. Gore stained the snow. Conan shot another wolf, and yet another, even as they fed.

But more of them kept him in their bestial minds. One sprang over the corpse of the first wolf he had shot while he reached for a fresh arrow. A civilized man would have gone on with the motion, knowing he would complete it too late, or else would have hesitated before throwing down the bow and snatching knife from scabbard —and, hesitating, would have been undone.

No hesitation lived in Conan. With the quicksilver instincts of the barbarian, he abandoned bow for knife, stabbing deep into the wolfs side even as it overbore him. Its rank breath stank in his nostrils as it snapped, trying to tear out his throat. He held its horrible head away from him as he drove the knife home again and again, until his right arm was red with blood to the elbow.

All at once, the wolf decided it wanted no part of him, and tried to break away rather than to slay. Too late, for its legs no longer cared to bear its weight. It sank down lifeless on top of Conan.

The blacksmith's son flung its weight aside and sprang to his feet ere others could assail him. He seized his bow again and nocked an arrow, ready — as he had been ready in the fight with Mordec —to go on even to the death. He might die, but if he did he would die striving.