Harry Turtledove - Conan of Venarium

The trees gave archers excellent cover. Melcer's byrnie turned another Cimmerian arrow. He wondered whether the sergeant who had not wanted to give him a coat of mail still lived. He also wondered whether that sergeant had got into the fighting himself, or whether he had fled south and let others try to hold the barbarians out of Aquilonia.

"Let's go!" shouted Melcer. "We can drive them back!" He rushed at a Cimmerian. The man carried only a shortsword and wore no armor, not even a helmet. He had no chance against a mailed pikeman, and he knew it. He gave ground to save his gore.

Seeing him draw back encouraged the Bossonians and Gundermen with Melcer. They followed the farmer, where they might not have if the Cimmerian had stood his ground. Here in this little brawl, the civilized soldiers outnumbered their barbarous foes.

Once the fighting got in amongst the apple and pear trees, it was every man for himself. "Numedides!" cried Melcer, and his men took up the cry. The Cimmerians yelled back, some using war cries in their own language, others calling down curses on Numedides' head in broken Aquilonian.

A Cimmerian threw a stone at Melcer. The chainmail kept it from breaking ribs, but he knew he would wear a bruise despite the padding under the links of iron. He saw another Cimmerian with an axe hotly engaged against a Gunderman, and rushed over to help his countryman finish the enemy warrior.

Before he got there, the Cimmerian cut down the other pikeman. The fellow brought up his axe, ready to chop at Melcer, who set himself for a lunge at the barbarian. They both checked themselves in the same instant, exclaiming, "You!"

In that frozen moment, Melcer made his choice. He drew back and lowered his spear, saying, "Go your way, Conan. You spared me and mine when you might have slain. I can do no less for you. Is your father here as well?"

"No." The young barbarian shook his head. "He fell at Venarium. Stay safe, Melcer. Maybe some other Cimmerian will bring you down."

"We were invaders in your land," said Melcer. "You fought hard to drive us out. You are the invaders here. Do you think we will act differently?"

Conan shrugged broad shoulders: a man's shoulders, though he was not yet a man. "I care not. Find a new foe. I will do the same."

Melcer drew back another pace before looking for a different Cimmerian to fight, in case Conan meant trickery. He and his countrymen won the skirmish. They were happy enough to plunder the corpses of those who had stood against them. Melcer prowled the orchard to see if one of those corpses were Conan's.

He did not find the blacksmith's son's body. He never saw the Cimmerian again. But he had reason to remember him the rest of his days.

We can't turn back," said a lean, gloomy young Cimmerian named Talorc as he and his comrades sprawled around a fire in the hills of Gunderland. "Too many of those accursed Aquilonian dogs between us and the border."

One of his comrades was Conan. "If we can't go back, we go on," he said, and swigged from a skin of wine taken from a tavern.

Most of their fellows had not penetrated so deeply into Numedides' kingdom. They were no longer part of an army. They were a bandit band, out for loot and out to stay alive in a land roused against them.

A howl came from off in the distance. In Cimmeria, it would have been a wolfs cry in the night. Here, Conan cursed. He had come to know too well the belling of hunting hounds —and this hound sought his scent, and his companions'. "We made a mistake," he said. "We should have left someone behind to deal with the dog. An arrow out of the night, and we wouldn't have had to worry about it any more."

"They would only have brought up another one." Talorc spoke with a certain grim fatalism.

"We would kill that one, too," said Conan. Some of the others seemed to think their chances poor. That calculation had never entered Conan's mind. He was still alive. He still had weapons ready to hand. As long as he could, he would go on struggling to survive.

Another howl resounded, this one closer and louder and more excited: the dog had found the Cimmerians' trail. The calls of men floated on the breeze, too. They also sounded excited. They hoped they were going to run this band of barbarians to earth and be rid of it for good.

Conan had a different idea. "They think they will come on us unawares and scatter us," he said; he had already seen the Aquilonians do that once, and had barely come out of the trap alive. "Let's give them a surprise. How will they like it if they find an ambush waiting for them?"

He had to browbeat the rest of the Cimmerians into moving. Some of them would not, and sprawled by the side of the fire, careless of what might happen to them. Conan let them stay where they were. If anything, catching sight of them would help spur on the enemy, help make him careless.

And that was exactly what happened. Spying the Cimmerians slumped there, the Aquilonians stormed forward, certain they would have easy pickings. The barrage of spears and arrows that greeted them from both flanks sent them running away even faster than they had advanced. Now they cried out in terror, not triumph. Conan made sure the dog did not live.

Afterwards, he found only a couple of his countrymen hurt, while half a dozen Aquilonians sprawled in death along the track. Now Conan plundered the corpses. He did not know what he would do with the lunas he took from a dead man's belt pouch. The man's sword, though, was another story. He knew just what to do with that, and hung it on his belt in case something happened to his father's axe.

The Cimmerians pressed ever deeper into Aquilonia. Part of that was Conan's urge to drive the knife home as best he could, the rest a half-formed hope that the Aquilonians would not trouble them so much once they moved farther from the border. That hope proved forlorn. The Aquilonians cared no more for banditry than Conan's folk would have with a gang of Gundermen loose in their land.

One by one, the other raiders fell. The band fissured: now one man, now two or three, would give up, break off, and try to go back to Cimmeria. Conan never learned what happened to those warriors. He would not have bet it was anything good. As for himself, he had no thought of tomorrow past stealing a sheep or a pig and keeping his belly full. The brigand's life, the thief's life, turned out to suit him better than any he had known in Duthil.

After a while, only eight or ten Cimmerians were left with him. He did not think they were in Gunderland any more by then. They had penetrated into Aquilonia proper. The folk who dwelt here looked different and spoke differently from the Gundermen Conan had come to know so well. Many of them did not seem to recognize the raiders for what they were, either.

Conan gulped wine in a farmhouse the men from the north had just plundered. The farmer lay dead on the floor at his feet. "It's been a long time since Cimmerians pushed this deep into Aquilonia," he exulted.

Talorc had drunk more than Conan had —had drunk himself sad, in fact. He began to weep now, saying, "We'll never go home again, either."

"Well, so what?" said Conan. "I've got nothing to go home to, anyhow. Numedides' men made damned sure of that. Best thing I can do now is pay them back in their own coin."

Talorc wept harder. "They'll kill us." He was hardly older than Conan.

"They haven't done it yet," said Conan. "They can keep on trying." He stirred the dead Aquilonian farmer with his boot. "Until they manage, I'm not going to worry about it." Some of the other Cimmerians laughed. The rest, more inclined to Talorc's mood than to Conan's, drank until the farmhouse held nothing more to drink.

They left the place before sunup the next morning. As day brightened, Conan could see a few clouds of smoke rising well to the north: the sign other Cimmerian bands still roamed their enemies' land. His companions did not fire the farmhouse. That would have brought Aquilonian notice to them, and they had already had more notice from King Numedides' soldiers than they wanted.