"Count Stercus' head? Crom!" exclaimed the stranger, who was lean and strong and worn from much travel. He wore an iron cap on his head and carried a formidable pike. Gathering himself, he went on, "This is great news, if true. Bring it straightaway to Herth, for he has with him men from the south who will know if you lie."
Conan raised his sword. "If you say I lie, you will lie yourself—lie stark and dead," he growled. "Take me to Herth." By the way he spoke, he might have been a chief himself.
And the other Cimmerian nodded, accepting and even honoring his touchy pride. The fellow pointed to Stercus' charger and back-and-breast and helm. "Did those belong to the Aquilonian wretch?"
"They did," said Conan indifferently. "Take the horse and the corselet, if they suit you. They are of no use to me. Let me try the helmet first." When he found it fit, he laughed grimly. "It will do better on my head now than on Stercus'." He shook his ghastly trophy.
"You give with both hands, like the leader of a clan," said the other Cimmerian.
"I am not. I am only a blacksmith's son," said Conan. "Take me to Herth. If he has men from the south in his company, they will know I am no liar."
When they came upon the meadow where Conan had warded Nectan's flock, he found more strangers taking charge of the sheep. "We must eat," said the man with him. "We have come far and traveled hard."
Though Conan would have liked to protest, he found he could not. "Better you than the Aquilonians," he said.
"You speak truth. Ah, there." His new companion pointed. "There is Herth, coming out of the forest. He has the southern men with him. Do you know any of them?"
"The biggest is my father," answered Conan. He ran toward Herth and Mordec. Dread clogged his heart when he saw Balarg with then, but he kept going.
"Conan!" cried Mordec, who lumbered forward to greet him. "What have you got there?" An amazed smile of pure delight spread over his father's face. "That is Stercus' head, Stercus' and no one else's." He turned back to shout at Herth: "Here's the Aquilonian leader dead, slain by my son. What wonderful news!"
But Conan shook his head. "No. Everything else I have to say is bad. Let Balarg only come up to hear, and I will tell it all."
Balarg recognized the head as quickly as Mordec had. "This is bravely done," he said. "Most bravely done indeed. If you seek Tarla's hand, how can I say no now?"
"I cannot seek Tarla's hand, however much I might want to," said Conan, and he went on to tell how he and Tarla had gone back to Duthil, and what they had seen there, and how Tarla had met her end. He looked at his father. "Had I known that you and Balarg were away from the village, I would have taken her north, not south, and then she might yet breathe."
Mordec's face might have been a mask of suffering cut from stone. "So she might. Not all my choices have turned out well, however much I wish they would have. I fear for your mother, lad."
"So do I," said Conan. "I came away for the sake of revenge alone, for Tarla and for her. Without that to think of, I would gladly have died there."
"No. It is for the Aquilonians to die," said Balarg in a voice like iron. Conan had never heard the like from him. "If they will slaughter innocents, they have sealed their fate. Blood and death and ruin to them!" Tears ran down his cheeks, though Conan did not think he knew he shed them.
Herth stepped forward and nodded to Conan. The clan chief and the blacksmith's son were much of a height. Herth said, "Lead us to this Duthil place, boy, and you'll have your vengeance. I promise you that.
"With my father and Balarg and Nectan, I would go back to Duthil whether you and your men come or not," said Conan. "But come if you care to. The Aquilonians have a fortified camp beyond the village with enough archers and pikemen in it to glut you all on gore."
"Forward, then," said Herth, and forward they went.
Sickened by the sights and stinks of death all around him, Granth son of Biemur finally threw up his hands in disgust. "Enough!" he said. "Plundering a battlefield after a fight is one thing. Plundering a place like this — " He shook his head. "If only these folk had a little more, we might be robbing the houses we grew up in. It makes me want to retch."
"Then go away," said Benno the archer, who had no such qualms. "More for the rest of us."
Maybe he thought he would shame Granth into going after booty with the other soldiers from the garrison. If he did, he was wrong. Granth turned and strode back toward the palisaded camp just south of Duthil. Benno had been pulling the wool stuffing out of a mattress in the hopes the Cimmerians who had slept on it had also secreted some of their valuables inside it. So far, his hope looked likely to be disappointed.
Granth almost ran into Vulth, who came out of the blacksmith's house carrying a heavy hammer. "What good is that?" demanded Granth.
"Not much, probably," admitted his cousin. "You look sour enough to spit vinegar. What's your trouble?"
"This." Granth's wave encompassed it all. "Are we a pack of ghouls out of the desert, to batten on the dead?"
"The Cimmerians won't miss it any more," said Vulth. "None of them left alive except maybe the blacksmith's son."
"He shouldn't have got away, cither," said Granth gloomily. "He'll cause trouble for us."
"What can one boy do?" asked Vulth with a dismissive shrug.
Before Granth could even begin to answer, the soldiers at the northern edge of the village, the edge closest to the endless forest, cried out in surprise and alarm. And other cries mingled with those of the Bossonians and Gundermen: fierce shouts in a language Granth had never bothered to learn. They filled the pikeman's ears, and seemed to swell like approaching thunder.
"Cimmerians!" yelled someone, and then the storm fell on Captain Treviranus' men.
More barbarians than Granth had imagined there were in the world came loping out of the woods. As had the northern men in the fight at Fort Venarium, they wielded a wild variety of weapons. Here, though, they took the Aquilonians altogether by surprise —and here, too, no knights would come to the rescue of the pikemen and archers. One of the barbarians brandished Stercus' staring head.
"Form up, men! Form up!" shouted Treviranus desperately. "If we fight them all together, we still may win!"
But the Aquilonians never got the chance to follow their commander's good advice. The enemy was upon them too suddenly and in numbers too great, while they themselves were scattered all through Duthil and not looking for battle. But whether they sought it or not, it found them, and they had to do what they could. Many of them, beset from front and rear and sides all at the same time, simply fell. Others gathered in struggling knots, islands in a sea of Cimmerians, islands bloodily overwhelmed one by one.
Granth and Vulth, near the southern edge of the village, had a few moments longer to ready themselves for the onslaught than most of their comrades. "Side by side and back to back to the palisade," said Vulth. "It's the only hope we've got, and it's a long one."
Side by side and back to back it was: a savage business, but somehow less so than Granth had expected. In point of fact, he had never expected to reach the palisade at all. But after he and Vulth stretched a couple of Cimmerians lifeless on the grass of the meadow, most of the barbarians ran past them rather than attacking. Had they seemed cowards, they would have been quickly dragged down and killed. The appearance of courage meant they soon required less of the genuine article.
But by the time they reached the palisade, reaching it did them no good. Cimmerians were already boosting one another up to the top and dropping down into the fortress that had held down Duthil and the surrounding countryside for the past two years. With the whole garrison inside, the fortified encampment might have put up a stout defense. With only a few men within, it would not last long.