The Harp and the Blade

  The men who had been shoved over before me, not being prepared for the fall, had in general not fared so well. One was nursing an arm, and another was holding his head dazedly. The third, however, was seemingly uninjured, and he had preserved the presence of mind to mark my weapon. He had just stooped to pick it up when I landed on his back, my knife in my hand. I pulled my brand from under him and turned to look up at Conan. His sword was flashing to the ground, while he himself was on the outside of the palisade. One of the men that gripped him he pulled clean over, and the remaining arms could not hold the double weight.

  Catching up Conan’s blade I ran to meet the two bodies skidding groundward, ready to stab one of them if necessary. But my friend had ridden the other man like a stone boat, and he lay inert after rolling. I pulled Conan to his feet, noting that he was bleeding in a couple of places. Then I handed him his sword, and we sprinted.

  The men who were dropping down the wall after us were danger enough, but inside I could hear Gregory yelling for horses. It wouldn’t take them long to cut down our lead, and there was light enough for them to keep us spotted as long as we stayed near the fort. Escape would take us longer, and we wouldn’t find it easy to pierce the dragnet it would give them a chance to throw out; but our only hope was to try to reach darkness. I didn’t have to waste time or breath explaining this to Conan. Having got off in the lead, I dove downhill, and he followed a half a pace behind.

  “Down the hill north! Straight down from where I stand,” somebody on the wall was directing. Foot runners were pounding along right behind us, and, further away but more ominous I heard the rumble of a cavalcade. The sky-searing flames were roaring and crackling, there were shouts and squeals from all ages and sexes, and dogs yapped. But above all the din I could hear Gregory promising to hang everybody if we got away.

  I was beginning to feel the pace more with each stride. After all, the hot work of the past few minutes had been prefaced on my part by a long day of riding and walking. I felt generally used up, my wind was going, and my side ached where the sword had slashed it.

  Conan was running easily, seemingly in no great distress, and as I could still manage considerable speed we were giving them a good race. Two men, however, had the legs of us; and the horses had rounded the corner of the fort to thunder down the slope. I was no good to help, but Conan sidestepped to let the leading pursurer pitch over his leg, then jammed a foot on his back to wind him. The second man tried to stop without slowing. He found out his mistake when he landed hard on his knees and my friend booted him in the solar plexus.

  I watched that over my shoulder. Tiring as rapidly as I was, I couldn’t spare anything from my lead. We were well down hill and out of the light then, but though we were keeping ahead of the other runners they were near enough to keep us in sight and point us out to the oncoming horsemen. I peered ahead, and it was then that I saw at least one point in favor of that particular side. We were descending on a field full of cut and drying grain.

  I knew it must be that, albeit in the confusion of darkness the stacks could just as well be taken for swine or sheep—or men on their hands and knees. Gazing at such a mass by night, a man will see it change size and shape, yes, and move, too. I’ve seen a bush masquerade as a lurking man and brazen it out until I was all but near enough to touch it. “Taking cover,” I panted.

  Well into the field I cut my pace, dropped, as Conan passed me, rolled over swiftly into a group of several stacks, and simply crouched beside one. Our pursuers passed by ones and twos but halted a little beyond, where the tangent the riders had taken led to a meeting. I didn’t want to risk showing the white of my face for a look, but I gathered that they were in a satisfactory state of puzzlement.

  “I don’t know where they went,” I heard a man admitting. “I saw ‘em one minute, and then they were gone.”

  “Gone, Hell!” Gregory said angrily. “They couldn’t run that much faster than you. They’re hiding here somewhere. Now you men on foot hightail back to the fort and try to see that that damned fire doesn’t burn anything else.” He next harangued the horsemen. “On the off chance they’re still legging it, spread out and ride hard till I give the word. If we don’t locate ‘em by then we’ll turn and walk back slowly. It’ll be easier to spot ‘em going toward the fire. Look behind and under anything big enough to hide a runt flea. Now get going, all but Henri, Louis, and Charles. This is where we lost ‘em, so I want you men to stay here and ride ‘em down if they try to break cover.”

  Keeping my hand out of sight, I used my sleeve to brush my hair over my eyes and twisted my head to glimpse the men walking back to the fort. As tired men will, they straggled along separately, most of them silent while waiting to get their wind back. The last one, however, was humming a certain song between reaches for breath. That man was Conan, and I rose to fall in behind him.

  “Hey! Who’s that?” one of the watching riders called.

  The entire band of us halted, men without faces in the dark. I didn’t dare speak because of my accent, but my friend gasped out an oath. “My name’s Conan,” he said sarcastically. Several laughed, the mounted man cursed the night, and we all plodded on again. Luckily there was too much general tiredness as we progressed uphill into more and more light for anyone to pay attention to anyone else. Moreover, the excitement over the manhunt was nicely balanced by the excitement over the fire. Men approaching it, inevitably looked at it and little besides.

  Nevertheless, we had to continue straight toward the fort or draw suspicion. Fatigue seconding my anxiety to escape attention, I walked with my head bowed, reckoning the odds. With the riders decoyed to the north side we might be able to make a successful break for it. Or there were even grounds for hoping, what with everyone concentrating on the fire, that we could slip past unnoticed.

  Suddenly I groaned as well as I could with what breath I had. A rider was coming down hill. That he would discover our identity seemed sure, although on the long chance he wouldn’t I continued to eye the earth. In another second he was right on us, and I hardened my muscles for action.

  “I never thought I’d see a good horse thief like you out for a stroll,” the fellow said conversationally.

  As my head snapped up I saw Conan’s doing the same. Father Clovis was grinning down at us. “I was just going to see how the hunt was prospering and maybe offer my ecclesiastical services to Finnian here when they hanged him—if they waited to. But it looks as if the Devil’s at his old tricks, mothering his own.” His face sobered. “I wish I could give you this horse, but Gregory would hang me instead, and I wouldn’t like that. Anything else I can do?”

  “You might ride around to the southwest woods fringe and whoop for Fulke to come running,” Conan said. “Thanks Father.”

  “Welcome as wine.” He grinned again. “Nice fire you started, Finnian. Hated to leave it.”

  He changed his course, riding briskly now, and we dawdled upward. Opposing the urge to hurry was the necessity of regaining a little wind before we should be called upon for more violence. That would probably come when we reached the gates.

  No doubt we were observed by men on the wall, but we weren’t recognized purely because our presence was so improbable. Those ahead of us, who had stretched the distance between us while we were talking to Clovis, had already entered the fort by the time we were in the shadow of its walls.

  Our luck had been good, and we couldn’t expect it to hold.

  A man glancing down was impressed by our bloody and battered condition. “Looks like you boys made the mistake of catching up with Conan,” he gibed.

  “Aw, go to hell!” Conan growled.

  Only then apparently did it strike the fellow that he couldn’t identify us as colleagues. “Say, who are you?” he demanded. We quickened our pace, but before we could goad our tired legs into running again he had discovered the truth. “It’s them!” he yelled. “It’s Conan and the bard! Hey! You in the court, out and get ‘em! It’s Conan and the bard! Right
here, I tell you!”

  I couldn’t be sure how much of a spurt was left in me, but I didn’t try to hoard my strength. The one man who succeeded in clearing the gate before we reached it had seen too much of us to want to tackle us unsupported. Taking one look at us bearing down on him, he sprang back so hastily he fell. As we sped past I saw at least three on whom we wouldn’t have much of a lead, and others were swarming after them. Still I knew some of them had also taken more exercise then they wanted, and as followup for a hard day in the fields, to boot; and there was no longer the imminent threat of horse pursuit.

  They were trying to arrange for that, however, for men and women were ballooning the news to Gregory. He and his dragnet might be out of hearing, but the men he’d stationed by the grain stacks were assuredly not. And they would be all that was needed.

  We were plunging down the south slope, and that fact alone allowed me to maintain any speed. Suddenly I knew that I would be finished when we reached the bottom. “Fulke!” I cried desperately, but my voice had no strength.

  Glancing back, Conan saw my plight, for the leading pursuers were almost on me. “Fulke!” he boomed. “Here!”

  My ears were ringing, and I couldn’t be sure whether there was an answer or not. But even if he was on his way the minstrel would have to come fast to do us any good.

  A second later, indeed, I stumbled for weariness and fell. “Fulke!” Conan bellowed again as he turned to pull me to my feet. Then we stood back to back while they swept around us, trying to beat us down by their weight of numbers so that Conan could be taken alive. In the heat of action none of us heard the running horses.

  My legs played me false as I swung at a man, and I was on the ground again when Fulke larruped into them with the two lead mounts. Those of them who were not knocked down scattered to get their bearings. Conan himself had been tripped in the course of their rush for safety, but he rose promptly, hauling me to my feet once more as he did so. “Fulke!” he cried for the last time.

  Locating us, Fulke wheeled to gallop back through them. Conan heaved me into a saddle and scrambled up on a horse himself just as they closed in on us again. We rode down one or two of them, and I realized with what little perception remained to me that we were free.

  Chapter

  Sixteen

  ALL my mental and physical faculties were being used to keep me in the saddle, but Fulke, who was leading the way, was riding with his head over his shoulder. “Three horsemen by the gates,” he announced, “but they’re just sitting there.”

  “I guess you were something of a surprise to them, Fulke.” Conan, beside me, was apparently also watching. “So-ho. There goes one back to break the news to Gregory. Well, we’ve got a handy lead.”

  “We’ll need every inch of it,” the youngster commented. “Their horses haven’t been all over France today, the way ours have.”

  Nevertheless, we weren’t crowded, though our horses would never have guessed it from the way he hustled them. A modicum of strength had returned to me, and I was breathing normally by the time we reached the trail. Fulke had left some branches across the road to mark the turning. He scooped them up, and, single file and on foot, we entered the forest.

  Our mounts had no breath to lavish on whinnying, but we took them quite a ways in lest their stamping around betray our whereabouts. Naturally they knew about the trail, but without a marker it would take a lucky man to find it without careful search; and we could use all the time procurable for rest.

  They overshot, possibly working on the theory that they might overtake us while we were searching for the path. At any rate we heard the whole gang clattering by at a good clip just as we were tethering our steeds. That done, we felt our way back toward the road so as to be in a position to keep track of developments.

  Worn though Conan and I were, the sickness of exhaustion was over, and we could now begin to savor our triumph. It had been a whirlpool of a night, and the fact that we had won through to more life was heady knowing. It was as if we were both a little drunk, and we giggled like schoolboys on a nocturnal pilfering raid while we whispered questions and discussed lively moments.

  “That was smart work, using ogham,” Conan complimented me. “Lord! I hadn’t thought of that for years.”

  “What gets me,” I said, “is how the devil you managed to be one of the parade when Gregory ordered all the runners back to the fort.”

  He chuckled. “Oh, that was easy. I took a dive just after you did, but I jumped up to run right behind them. They’d just met the horsemen, so they didn’t notice. I figured they hadn’t bothered to count themselves when they slithered down / the wall, and naturally nobody could see to identify anybody else. They were looking for someone who was hiding, not a man in plain sight.”

  “Good old Clovis certainly played his hand well,” I observed. “I hope he gets to be pope.”

  “He’d make a good one,” Conan agreed. “That grace of his was a masterpiece.”

  “He told me where to look for you,” Fulke put in, “so I was half way to you when I heard you call.”

  “He’s all right,” Conan reaffirmed the general opinion. Then he thought of something. “By the way, Finnian, where the devil did you come from? Not that I wasn’t glad to see you.” He reached out to grip my arm, and I felt good.

  “Well, that’s something of a story, too,” I said, proceeding to give the gist of my recent experiences. We had shifted to reminiscence of our first meeting when we heard the enemy returning. They were moving slowly, looking for the trail, and we rose in case flight should be necessary.

  “Here it is!” one of them exclaimed excitedly.

  “What do you expect me to do about it?” Gregory asked sourly, “cut it up and eat it? Now look. If they’ve found it already we’re licked, but they may not have. We may have chased them past it, or they may have ducked into the woods to keep from being chased past it. But this is the way they’ve got to come if they’re going to do any more traveling tonight. Ten of you will stay here in ambush with me, and the rest will go back to the fort. If there’s anything left of it to go back to, that is.”

  Gregory had had a bad evening. His prize had escaped and bid fair to get away entirely, a good deal of his property had been destroyed, and several of his people had been killed, not to mention all that were wounded or badly knocked about. Chilbert, moreover, might not be at all nice about Conan’s loss. My shoulders shook. The more bile traitors had to drink the better I liked it.

  The only thing that detracted from an otherwise thorough triumph was the knowledge that Chilbert, in spite of all we had done, was preordained to profit. He would be disappointed at finding that Conan had given him the slip for yet a second time, but Gregory had attempted his last political horse trading as an independent agent. He, his troops, and his strategically situated land would be ruled by the count from now on. The alternative was facing Conan’s wrath unaided.

  Our pursuers crashed into the woods on the other side of the road, murmuring sullenly. Then at Gregory’s word they were silent. We, too, refrained from further speech and movement. It got cold there as the night wore on, but we who had been so near the colder realm of death, had no complaints. Nor was the day far off, as Gregory had pointed out. In an hour or so we felt the breeze that often ushers in the dawn, and the rustling of the leaves it stirred blotted the slight noises of our retreat.

  It was while we were still only part way to our mounts that we heard horses from southwards on the road. “Chilbert!” Conan whispered. “It’s too bad we can’t wait to see them meet and hear what they have to say.”

  But instead we stole along the path more rapidly still and reached our animals just as the fading of night was perceptible in tiny patches through the trees above us. Behind we could hear Gregory’s men talking again as they got ready to greet the newcomers. Under cover of that we got under way, afoot until the trail could be followed with the eye. Then we mounted and increased our pace in proportion to the visibility u
ntil we were riding as fast as conditions would permit.

  The horses were in somewhat the same condition as ourselves, sufficiently recuperated to go on albeit stiff and sore. Conan and I had bruises and cuts to boot, which were painfully lashed now and again by branches, but we were too delighted with ourselves to let such things worry us much. We talked, joked and sang until the midday warmth worked on our sleeplessness. Mine soon became the source of a dull agony, and the rest of the day was a succession of wakings barely in time to save myself from falling out of the saddle.

  As a matter of fact, I was all for resting during the afternoon, but Conan, aside from his natural longing to get home, took the sensible position that an hour’s respite would only serve as a teaser. So on we went somehow, the others in not much better shape than I myself and caught sight of the fortress just after sundown.

  People rushed out to meet us as soon as we were near enough to be identified, but I don’t know much what was said except that everybody was glad. I just grinned at them vaguely. “Don’t ask them any questions now,” Ann squelched the insistently curious. “We’ve got the answer to the only important one, and now they’re going to rest.”

  Jean was there to steady me as I slid from my horse, finally at home, and right behind him I saw Marie. Maybe I’d spoken to her before, but I thought she looked as if she expected me to say something. I blinked at her. “Hello, Marie! I’m thirsty.”

  It was a simple statement of fact, but they suddenly howled with laughter. “Glory be to God! He’s ready for a drink again!” Jean shouted. “Get the man wine before he kills somebody!”

  But I wasn’t ready for a drunk—what I had really had in mind was water—and I couldn’t have killed a butterfly.