What did that Aquilonian grandee call it? Conan thought an hour later. An embarrassment of riches?
He wiped his hand across his brows; dust smeared in sweat to a consistency like thin drippy mud, but the stinging in his eyes was better… for a little while.
At the time he’d thought the Aquilonian an irritating fop. For a youth from Cimmeria there was no such thing as enough, especially when he saw the riches of the southlands and compared them to the iron austerity in which he’d grown up, where the wolf that tried to eat you provided meat that was a treat to boast of, after you’d boiled some of the rankness out of it.
What was ahead of him, though…
“Even in this country, that’s more game than I’ve ever seen,” he muttered under his breath. “More than we can use!”
Meat didn’t keep more than two or three days here, unless they paused to dry or smoke it. Worse, wasting the fruits of the hunt repelled him on a visceral level. They couldn’t even salt it down in barrels, since that worked best in cool weather—one of the reasons late fall was slaughtering-time in the northern countries.
A great herd of the striped wild horses grazed right in front of him. Nearby more of those bouncing-ball antelope things leapt three times their own height and more. Weird bearded creatures with forequarters higher than their rumps boasted upturned horns amid tufts of hair that made them look as if they were wearing odd hats, and this time there was a group of giraffes, like living siege ladders.
All of them were just trudging along ahead of the sickle-shape of mounted skirmishers, vanishing into a haze of dust and dimly glimpsed thorn-trees and grass. As Gelete had predicted, the wind was in their faces. That meant the dust the beasts kicked up was, too, tasting vaguely salty and mealy, and the smell of the massed animals and their waste was rank.
“Ishtar of the Huntsmen!” Zarkabaal said. “It’s a dull hunt. I didn’t think that was possible, except when there’s no game.”
“Better dull than—” Conan began.
His horse screamed in bulge-eyed panic.
The lion came up out of the dust as if it had been tricked into existence by a magician, but the way the animals scattered ahead of it argued for an all-too-physical reality. It was in full charge, twenty-foot bounds with its tail held stiff and its eyes locked on Conan. A big male with a huge mane that ranged from black to a tawny yellow and matched its coat or Valeria’s hair. Easily twice, perhaps three times his own weight, full-grown but young, growling like a water-powered saw cutting through stone.
Throwing himself off the horse was easy, since his mount had time for one frantic leaping twist before the lion struck. Plummeting to the ground, Conan heard the thud of impact before he landed, loosely curled and hoping his sword-hilt wouldn’t hit him anywhere essential.
It didn’t, and he whirled to his feet, using the impact of his rolling fall to land in a crouch. The sword flashed into his hands; he carried what they called a bastard longsword and drew with the double-handed grip. It had a long hilt, a blade suitable for use single-handed if you were strong enough, yet still long enough to take advantage of a double-handed cut.
The lion—amazingly—didn’t bother with the horse it had knocked down. It pivoted in a smooth doubling motion. Some of the Free Companions shouted. Arrows and crossbow bolts flew past the beast.
One more jump and it was in the air again, heading straight for him, plate-sized forepaws spread wide to knock down and pin, huge red-and-white mouth gaping for the killing bite. He couldn’t out-quick a lion, any more than he could any other variety of cat, and running away from one was certain death.
Once a big cat had committed itself, however, its weight made sure the leap would continue. So Conan leapt, as well, toward the lion, sword held low with the point down and toward the left. The beast saw him come, hunched in midair, and one huge paw edged with curved knife-sized claws came slamming toward his face, ready to tear it off his skull, and half the bone beneath.
Conan had gambled on that. Before the lion could launch its strike he turned his rush into a stepping cut, pivoting to his right, bringing the heavy blade around in a sweeping stroke from low left to high right, pushing shoulders and torso and gut-muscle into it as his feet landed. He could almost feel power flowing up from the earth and through his hands.
The sweep of the lion’s limb, combined with his own huge effort, made it seem as if he’d rammed into a falling wall. The impact sent him tumbling again. The wind went out of him as he slammed down on his back, and he whooped air back into his lungs with a savage effort of will. His right hand went numb, so he drew his dagger left-handed.
The lion went tumbling too, the liquid grace of its leap wrecked by the impact of the keen blade. For a moment it squalled and writhed, biting at its own half-severed forelimb with a blind savagery aimed at whatever had hurt it. In that instant the cursing Shemites controlled their horses and managed a second volley. Four shafts missed, but the rest struck; in eye, throat, belly, and five more in parts of the chest.
One of the shafts brushed Conan’s leg as it sank a double handspan into the hard earth, whereupon Zarkabaal began beating that archer over the shoulders with his bowstave. It was mostly symbolic through a mail shirt, but sincere enough, judging from the sound of the blows and the sputtering guttural Shemite curses.
The lion gave a long low moaning grunt and rolled onto its side. Then it came back upright, fixed Conan with that disturbing yellow stare and began to drag itself toward him. Halfway across the short distance between them it gouted up blood from its mouth and nose, swayed, collapsed, bit savagely at the ground and died.
Conan sheathed his dagger, rolled to his feet and worked his right arm, swinging it and flexing the fingers until the numbness left. Then he picked up his sword, and cursed mildly. There was a nick in the cutting edge where it had hit the dense bones of the lion’s forelimb.
“I’ll have to file that out,” he said, before wiping and sheathing the blade. Then to Zarkabaal, “Thanks… but you and your men ruined the pelt.” Looking for his horse, he found it writhing on the ground with two broken legs. Damn.
Leaning down in the saddle, Valeria looked over the lion. “You nearly cut its paw off!” she said flatly, shocked into matter-of-fact amazement. “And a foot of the forelimb! That’s the first time I’ve seen a man strike swifter than a cat.”
Conan paused in the messy business of cutting his horse’s throat. It was the last favor he could do the beast.
“I didn’t,” he said. “I out-thought it.”
At her raised brows, he went on. “Beasts are more predictable than men. If you do one thing, they have one reply—and they use it. When you know what they’re going to do, you’re one step ahead of them, and it makes up for their speed. Big cats use that paw-strike if you come at them, so you can start your cut before they do.”
The tawny, sun-faded brows went higher against her smooth tanned skin.
“You have lions in Cimmeria?”
Conan’s mouth crooked in a smile. “No, but we have panthers in plenty, and cats are cats.” He bent to work the saddle and tack off the dead horse. “Someone bring my remount,” he added. “We have a herd to drive, or Gelete will be very disappointed in us.”
* * *
“Stop shooting!” Zarkabaal shouted as Conan and the rest of the skirmishers came riding up. “Don’t waste arrows!”
The Shemite peered out into the dusty plain below the hill; the sun was low in the western sky behind them, casting long shadows. Gelete and a few of his men came trotting up, grinning, their long bows pumping in their left hands as they ran with a springy, tireless gait despite the day’s ending in sultry heat. The herd was dispersing now that they weren’t being driven, the scent of blood sending them on their way.
“Never see such targets!” he exulted in his bad Stygian. “You drive them good, Conan.”
“It too easy,” the Cimmerian replied. “Now we drag the best carcasses up to the zariba, and—”
Shouts rose. Something different was happening out there in the dust-cloud. What it was became clear all of a sudden.
Valeria appeared, her horse doing its bulge-eyed best to fly, with the rider bent over its neck and urging it on. Right behind…
Rhino! Conan thought.
He hadn’t noticed the big dim-witted pugnacious beast—it must have been in the center of the herd, hidden by dust and hundreds of other bodies. He’d never hunted them—not worth the effort and risk, for the most part—but he knew enough about them to see that this was a big one, with a club-shaped, scalloped head and square mouth. It was huge even for its type, four tons at least, with a nose-horn the size and shape of a scimitar. The horn was lowered to gore and toss, and it could probably toss a horse twice head high, much less a human.
The beast was gaining on Valeria’s mount, its thick stubby legs a blur.
“Out of the way!” she cried, waving her arms. “Out of the sheep-buggering way!”
One look at the oncoming horn produced instant obedience. Conan’s new horse was ready to mount, but it reared. He leapt, grabbed the bridle, slugged it back to all fours and swung into the saddle. Zarkabaal’s Shemites had scattered, allowing the rhino to pass, and now they were following along behind, shooting enthusiastically.
Normally it was the right reflex, that instinctive desire to join the action and do the enemy any harm you could, the mark of a real fighting-man. This time it was catastrophically bad. Zarkabaal bellowed for them to stop, but it was too late.
The rhino had already been as fast as a galloping horse, but the beasts were as densely stupid as they were belligerent. Normally it might have just stopped when it didn’t hit its target, and mooched off to eat grass.
Now a half-dozen arrows decorated its massive haunches, and it reacted as if stung to utter fury. Worse yet, the zariba was coming up fast. Stygian soldiers and their camp-followers were coming down to skin and butcher. They scattered screaming out of the way.
The long curved horn was almost touching the rump of Valeria’s horse when—using hand, thigh, and voice—she gathered the mount for a leap. It responded nobly, soaring higher than a tall man’s height and clearing the stretch of thornbrush. Conan drew a breath to relax… and then used it to curse as the massive rhino simply lowered its head and tore through the barrier as if it were made out of cleaning-rags and straw.
A half-grown thorn-tree went pinwheeling into the sky as the huffing engine of destruction carried on into the camp, leaving more screaming in its wake. Valeria’s horse had gained about three lengths, but that wasn’t going to help much.
Conan’s spurred his horse into motion and took what was left of the zariba with a skipping leap and two bounds, and then settled into a pounding gallop, swerving occasionally to dodge a cart or a cowering human as Valeria and her bellows-panting pursuit tore up through the center of the half-made camp.
The cliff! he thought. It’s too late for her to dodge!
The rhino slowed for an instant as half a tent wrapped around its head and blinded it. Tossing it free the animal churned its stumpy, powerful legs once more. Conan was close enough behind it that he was tempted to draw his sword, but decided not to. Chances were, all he could do was anger it.
The end came swiftly.
A final toss of the rhino’s horn gored into the left haunch of Valeria’s horse. In the same moment she pulled her feet out of the stirrups and leapt to the right. The push of her long legs and the convulsive bound of the horse tossed her to one side, and she vanished from Conan’s sight. The horse shrieked like a hundred women in childbed as it went over the edge and saw what awaited it.
The bigger an animal was, the worse the results if it fell. A mouse falling over that cliff would walk away, a cat might get a bruise, a human would break bones… and a horse would go splat as it turned into a bag of bones, viscera, and blood.
Something that weighed four tons had a worse fate in store.
The rhino’s slow brain kept it going until a frantic last-instant attempt to slow down, but the edge of the precipice broke under its weight and it went over in a hoarse grunting bellow of amazing volume. That cut off an instant later with an earthshaking crunch of impact.
Conan swung out of the saddle with his mouth in a grim line as he walked to the new edge of the cliff. It would have been a quick death for Valeria, at least. With trepidation he looked down. The rhino had landed on top of the horse, and both were giving their last twitches, lying in a spreading swath of blood fifty feet away and a little below the spring-fed pool of water. He couldn’t see much of the horse, and the rhino had burst on impact.
If she was under that, she would have, too.
“How about a hand?” a contralto voice called.
A yard down and several to the side, just beyond the edge of the fresh break, Valeria hung by both hands from a dwarfed tree growing out of a crack in the rock. With a laugh, Conan knelt and extended a hand. She swung one-handed and grabbed his wrist. He clamped his hand on hers and stood, heaving; it wasn’t much of an effort for him, but she wasn’t exactly a sylph of a girl.
Valeria was covered in sweat, dirt, and blood from free-flowing scratches, and showed a fresh red bruise on her face from when she’d tumbled free. She also looked magnificent, in his opinion.
“Thanks,” she said when she stood on the solid rock, looking down. Two of Gelete’s archers had already reached the dead beasts. They were using their belt axes to hack at the base of the rhino’s horn.
“Mitra of the Sun damn all rhinos to eternal midnight,” Valeria spat. “That was a good horse!”
“Lucky it didn’t land in our water,” Conan said. “I wonder what rhino liver tastes like?”
“We’ll find out,” she said, brushing back strands of hair, then she shot him a look. “Remind me not to hunt with you again. My odds are better in a melee on a bloody deck!”
“Speaking of luck, don’t throw the dice anytime soon,” Conan said. “Not with your pay riding on it. You’ve just used up a year’s supply.”
“Luck?” she snorted. She was visibly controlling her breathing, and one cheek twitched, which showed admirable self-command.
“Not luck!” she went on. “Nothing but skill—and all the agility of a cat!”
“Four or five of its lives, too,” he said, twisting a Stygian saying.
Valeria reached for her canteen and found it missing. Conan handed over his, and she poured a handful into her cupped palm, scrubbed it over her face, then drank deeply.
“Ahhh! Though if someone was casting hunt-charms for us, they worked too damned well.”