The pirates were quick as cats, always shifting their position, and they were protected by their light armor. Their constant raking archery was a continual menace to the men in the stockade. Still, it was evident that as long as the battle remained an exchange of archery, the advantage must remain with the sheltered Zingarans.
Down at the boathouse on the beach, however, men were at work with axes. The count cursed sulfurously when he saw the havoc they were making among his boats, which had been built laboriously of planks sawn out of solid logs.
“They’re making a mantlet, curse them!” he raged. “A sally now, before they complete it—while they are scattered—”
Galbro shook his head, glancing at the unarmored workers with their awkward pikes. “Their arrows would riddle us, and we should be no match for them in hand-to-hand fighting. We must keep behind our walls and trust to our archery.”
“Well enough,” growled Valenso, “if we can keep them outside our walls.”
Time passed while the inconclusive archery duel continued. Then a group of thirty men advanced, pushing before them a great shield made of planks from the boats and the timbers of the boathouse itself. They had found an oxcart and mounted the mantlet on the wheels, which were great solid disks of oak. As they rolled it ponderously before them, it hid them from the sight of the defenders except for glimpses of their moving feet.
It rolled toward the gate, and the straggling line of archers converged toward it, shooting as they ran.
“Shoot!” yelled Valenso, going livid. “Stop them ere they reach the gate!”
A storm of arrows whistled across the palisade and feathered themselves harmlessly in the thick wood. A derisive yell answered the volley. Shafts were Ending loopholes now as the rest of the pirates drew nearer; a soldier reeled and fell from the ledge, gasping and choking, with an arrow through his throat.
“Shoot at their feet!” screamed Valenso. “And forty men at the gate with pikes and axes! The rest hold the wall!”
Bolts ripped into the sand before the moving shield. A bloodthirsty howl announced that one had found its target beneath the edge. A man staggered into view, cursing and hopping as he strove to withdraw the quarrel that skewered his foot In an instant he was feathered by a dozen arrows.
But, with a deep-throated shout, the pirates pushed the mantlet against the gate. Through an aperture in the center of the shield they thrust a heavy, iron-tipped boom, which they had made from the ridgepole of the boathouse. Driven by arms knotted with brawny muscles and backed with bloodthirsty fury, the boom began to thunder against the gate. The massive gate groaned and staggered, while from the stockade bolts poured in a steady stream; seme struck home, but the wild men of the sea were afire with fighting lust.
With deep shouts they swung the ram, while from all sides the others closed in, braving the weakened anow-storm from the walls and shooting back fash and hard. Cursing like a madman, the count sprang from the wall and ran to the gate, drawing his sword. A clump of desperate men-at-arms closed in behind him, gripping their spears. In another moment the gate would cave in, and they must stop the gap with their bodies.
Then a new note entered the clamor: a trumpet, blaring stridently from the ship.
On the crosstree, a figure waved and gesticulated wildly. The thunder of the ram ceased, and Strombanni’s bellow rose above the racket:
“Waitl Wait, damn you, listen!”
In the silence that followed that bull’s bellow, the blare of the trumpet was plainly heard, and a voice that shouted something that was unintelligible to the people inside the stockade. But Strombanni understood, for his voice was lifted again in profane command. The ram was released, and the mantlet began to recede from the gate as swiftly as it had advanced. Pirates who had been trading shafts with the defenders began picking up their wounded fellows and helping them hastily back to the beach.
“Look!” cried Tina at her window, jumping up and down in wild excitement, “They flee! All of them! They are running to the beach! Look! They have abandoned the shield! They leap into the longboat and pull for the ship! Oh, my lady, have we won?”
“I think not.” Belesa was staring seaward. “Look!”
She threw the curtains aside and leaned from the window. Her clear young voice rose above the amazed shouts of the defenders, who turned their heads in the direction she pointed. They sent up a deep yell as they saw another ship swinging majestically around the southern point. Even as they watched, she broke out the royal flag of Zingara.
Strombanni’s pirates were swarming up the sides of their carack and heaving up the anchor. Before the stranger had progressed halfway across the bay, the Red Hand was vanishing around the northern horn.
III. The Dark Stranger
The blue mist had condensed into a monstrous black figure, dimly seen and not quite definite, which filled the hither end of the cave, blotting out the still, seated figures behind. There was an impression of shagging pointed ears, and close-set horns.
Even as the great arms shot out like tentacles toward his throat, the Cimmerian, quick as a flash, struck at them with his Pictish ax. It was like chopping at a trunk of the ebony tree. The force of the blow broke the handle of the tomahawk and sent the copper head flying with a clank against the side of the runnel; but, so far as the Cimmerian could tell, the blade had not bitten into the flesh of his foe at all. It took more than an ordinary edge to pierce a demon’s hide. And then the great fingers closed upon his throat, to break his neck as if it were a reed. Not since he had fought Baal-Pteor hand to hand in the temple of Hanuman in Zamboula had Conan felt such a grip upon him.
As the hairy fingers touched his skin, the barbarian tensed the thickly-corded muscles of his massive neck, drawing his head down between his shoulders to give his unnatural foe the least possible purchase. He dropped the knife and the broken hatchet handle, seized the huge black wrists, swung his legs upward and forward, and drove both bare heels with all his might against the chest of the thing, straightening out his long body.
The tremendous impulse of the Cimmerian’s mighty back and legs tore his neck loose from that lethal grip and sent him shooting like an arrow back up the tunnel down which he had come. He landed on the stone floor on his back and flipped over in a back somersault on to his feet, ignoring the bruises and ready to flee or fight as occasion required.
As he stood there, however, glaring with bared teeth at the door to the inner cave, no black, monstrous form shambled out after him. Almost as soon as Conan had wrenched himself loose, the form had begun to dissolve into the blue mist from which it had condensed. Now it was all gone.
The man stood poised, ready to whirl and bound up the tunnel. The superstitious fears of the barbarian whirled through his mind. Although he was fearless to the point of rashness toward men and beasts, the supernatural could still throw him into terror-stricken panic.
So this was why the Picts had gone! He should have suspected some such danger. He remembered such demonological lore as he had picked up in his youth in cloudy Cimmeria and later in his wanderings over most of the civilized world. Fire and silver were said to be deadly to devils, but he had neither at the moment.
Still, if such spirits took gross material form, they were in some measure subject to the limitations of that form. This lumbering monster, for instance, could run no faster than a beast of its general size and shape, and the Cimmerian thought that he could outdistance it if need be.
Plucking up his wavering courage, the man shouted with boyish braggadocio: “Ho there, ugly-face, aren’t you coming out?”