“The king of the rats once set his seal
Pompously under this decree:
Whereas cats use rats for a meal
And whereas rats don’t like it, we
Order our subjects mercilessly
To hunt down cats, vile each by each,
Leaving none to prolong the breed;
When the last one yowls its final screech
Rats can—but will no more be—feed.
Chilbert, Rex, his cross. All heed!”
Some of the foe were trying to shout me down, but Oliver made them shut up. Not that he enjoyed my song, but he wanted all the quiet he could get while he thought things out. The fact that we now had shields as well as a wall to protect us was diconcerting him. I therefore directed the next strophe at him.
“A rat whose hide was a dirty red
Squeaked that the king had ordered well.
‘A cat’s most winsome when most dead,
Nine times dead and deep in Hell!
Come on,’ he bragged, ‘my wrath is fell!’
But when they’d tracked down two of the pests
He and his army stopped, perplexed.
‘The king’s decree,’ he coughed, ‘suggests
That we corner cats, but now what next?
There were no directions in the text.’ ”
Conan furnished my only applause. Oliver had turned his back and was beginning to give orders, so I raised my voice above his while I rubbed things in.
“There were forty rats and only a brace
Of cats, but these with great disdain
Yawned in the flea-scarred red rat’s face
And entered a cave to dodge the rain;
While all the rats endured the pain
Of being washed, which is not their way
And they were foodless—the cats both ate,
Then snugly slept till a drier day
Making the bold avengers wait
Shivering under a sky in spate.”
I didn’t blame them—there wasn’t anything else they could have done—but I knew that none of the survivors would ever think of that night of drenched discomfort without painful twinges of shame.
Oliver had found that more than four at our wall crowded each other. He was telling them off into groups of that number, and I gave them all a final boastful warning.
“I will not say that the rats went mad
(One needs a mind for a brain attack),
But they lost what minor sense they had
And rushed the cats, who cuffed them back—
But kept a few for the morning snack.
And so it went till the day was past,
When one they couldn’t stomach—that’s
The rank red rat—limped home at last.
‘Where are the rest?’ asked the king of the rats.
‘All traitors, sire. They’ve changed to cats!’ ”
I had no more than time to put my harp down when they were on us, but we were not worried yet. We hunched behind our shields and took things as easily as possible, wounding two whose excitement allowed us good openings. After ten minutes Oliver called them back, and four others immediately faced us.
Defensive fighting is not so tiring, but by the time we had engaged all of the squads we were working hard. We’d been nicked in several more places, too, and sweat made the cuts sting. “We won’t last another full round,” Conan muttered. “Let’s get rough.”
They had become so used to having us conserve our strength that we took them grandly by surprise. “Over!” Conan yelled; and we cleared the wall before they were set and hacked at their legs. The two we slashed went down, and we turned on the others before help could race to them. Comfortably hedged but a second before by an additional comrade on each side, they were not steeled to meet us on even terms. They were more anxious to leave than to fight, and so did neither. We were doomed men for whom there was no such thing as risk, and they had no chance against our smashing charge as they tried to edge away. One we killed when his shield was riven by Conan’s blow; the other we slew as he turned to bolt.
Then they were around us in numbers and all but cut us off from the wall. It was several desperate minutes before we saw an opportunity to jump back into our haven, and by that time we were bleeding from more places. It had been fine, swift work, but we were thoroughly tired for the first time. I thought longingly of the sweet spring in the rear of the vault, and I could hear Conan’s breath coming heavily.
Still we stood them off, and eventually—I was losing even approximate track of time—Oliver ordered them to make way for replacements. He had taken no part in the fighting since the night before, but he included himself in this new squad. Doubtless he calculated that the kill was at hand, and he didn’t want to miss it.
“Take this,” Conan whispered, thrusting the hilt of his sword toward me. Then he tore a block from the barricade, brought it over his head, and heaved it. Oliver threw up his shield; but it was beaten in, and he went down. For the moment then his men were more interested in their leader than in us. They crowded to bend over him, and we had our first respite in perhaps two hours.
I sat down, glancing at my wounds with detached curiosity. It seemed not worth while to do anything about them. “You never can tell what you’re liable to find under a stone these days,” I panted.
Conan snickered. “He certainly crawled under it in a hurry. Shy, probably.” He lifted his voice to address the foe. “Don’t take any stones off that carrion; pile more on!”
But Oliver apparently wasn’t carrion yet. In a few minutes they picked him up and carried him to the shade of a tree, where he lay motionless. We couldn’t judge how badly he was hurt, but we hoped for the worst. He would at any rate be in no mood to enjoy our downfall.
Seeing them all so interested in their injured chief, Conan took a dead man’s steel cap, leaving me on guard while he went back to the spring. The water he brought me tasted as only water can at such times. It revived me to a degree and helped to quiet my breathing. As I looked up from drinking I saw that his eyes were on me intently.
“Finnian,” he said after a moment, “it may seem foolish to say this now when we have no more time belonging to us; but you’ve played a friend’s part even though you didn’t know me, and—”
“I wasn’t keen for it,” I interrupted to confess.
“Who would be? Nevertheless, you did it, and because you did it there are good things between us. Moreover, we are men that would have taken to each other anyhow.”
I merely nodded at these accepted facts. It was too bad we’d never had a chance to put our legs under a table with wine on it. Oh, well.
“Finnian,” he used my name again, “if you don’t want it, say so, but I should like to swear blood-brotherhood with you.” He smiled. “We don’t have to go to any bother about opening veins.”
I was more than willing to seal our hectically brief intimacy. That act of ritual seemed eminently suited to the moment, at once exalted and desperate. Besides, as the imp that is seldom absent from man’s mind on even the most solemn occasions whispered, any obligations that the bond ordinarily entailed would soon be liquidated. “You’re a good man to stand with,” I said, with something of the formality the situation called for, “and I’ll take pride in mixing your blood with mine.”
So we did that and took oath. “I see they’re through fussing with Oliver, brother,” Conan said. “If you’ve got any last prayers to make, now’s the time.”
I thought about it but shook my head. For any retributions or rewards to follow, my rate of pay was already assessed; and it didn’t seem likely that a prayer squeezed in at the last minute could change things much. I crossed myself and let it go at that.
Conan, however, made some sort of prayer. That interested me, because it seemed so appropriately in character. For such a definite mind Christianity supplied adequate answers with no vague nonsense about them. It not only explained life here but told all about the
next world, complete with instructions as to the procedure on arrival. A final prayer was the requisite introduction to that new life, so a prayer he would give. I had an instant’s quiet mirth at the vision of the capable aplomb with which Conan would take up flying and other angelic properties.
“We’re for it now,” I said, seeing a group making toward us. “Good luck in whatever happens.”
“Good-by, brother.”
We knew how near done we were, but they weren’t sure and approached warily. They were not happy about being leader-less, but they knew that if they went away without finishing us they would never forget it. Oliver would have been enraged at the way they crowded each other, but we could no longer take advantage of it. Loss of blood was abetting my general weariness. After a few minutes I felt dizzy and could not see too well.
How long we held them I don’t know. I only remember that a song I’d once made started running through my head, and I sang it over and over again as best I could with the little breath I had. After a while I was down with Conan standing over me. Then as I tried to rise he fell to squash me down painfully, and when I pushed out from under him everybody was gone.
It was puzzling, and I was annoyed at being puzzled. With some dim notion of finding out what had happened I tried to climb over the wall, but when I’d got as far as straddling it I bogged down from weakness. I was bleeding badly high up on my chest, and I sat in a sullen stupor watching the gore well and spread.
Somewhat later, however, men were standing around, staring at me. I spat at them, making the only attacking gesture of which I was capable. “Well, come on and get it over with!”
“Who are you? ” one wanted to know.
This infuriated me. “Does a man have to have a formal introduction to get killed around here?”
“He’s got a leg on each side of the wall, but I’m damned if I know which side he belongs on,” another said. “Any of you fellows ever see him before?”
“Of course not!” I raged. “You never saw me before, and I didn’t kill any of you and carve up a lot more. Next thing you’ll be saying you never heard of Conan, and it was all a mistake. Get it over with, I say!”
“Somebody helped Conan,” a voice said, “and as he’s the only one alive we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt—for the time being. Better look to that wound.”
A young fellow started fussing with my chest. I was too feeble to push him away, but I glowered. “What are you doing that for?”
“To save your life.”
“You mean to say you’re not going to kill me?”
“No,” he said patiently, “I’m trying to help you.”
I had been keyed for mortal enmity, and now that I was on the way to delirium I wasn’t going to be placated by anybody on any account. “You bastardly busybody!” I cursed him. “Go to hell and drink toad sweat! Here I’ve been killed all day, and now you say I can’t die. I’ll show you whether I can die or not, because I wouldn’t stay alive for any of you snake fangs!”
After pronouncing that dictum I don’t recall any ensuing events until I was being lifted off a horse. My head cleared enough to let me know I was in great pain and that I was being carried into a small house. “We’re leaving you here,” a man said. “It’d be bad for you to go any farther with that wound.”
“What did you bring me this far for?” I asked testily. “It was bad for me to go anywhere with this wound.”
“Conan shouldn’t travel any more today either,” a voice remarked.
“Yes, but there’ll be hell raised if he isn’t brought home,” another said.
“What for?” I butted in. “Conan’s dead.”
“Oh, no. He’s still alive.”
“I suppose some Conan is still alive,” I conceded, “but the one I know is dead.” I looked up sourly at the one who seemed to be in charge. “Are you ever going away so I can sleep?”
“I don’t know who you are,” he said thoughtfully, “or how you got mixed up in that business, but Fulke says he heard you—or somebody—singing when he located Conan.”
“Damned good singing,” I said complacently, less annoyed with him then.
“Well, anyhow,” he concluded, “you won’t be in a state to make a getaway for a while to come, so I’ll let Conan decide what to do with you when he gets around to knowing what’s what again.”
He left, and I slept.
Chapter
Six
IT was a few days before I knew anything much, but when clarity and recollection returned I was in bed in a tiny wooden shack. I hurt in quite a few places, I was weak, and the wound in my chest stabbed me as I pulled myself up to look outside. There was nothing in sight except trees and nobody came when I yelled, so I lay back, trying to reconstruct what had happened and calculate what was liable to happen to me.
In an hour or so and after I had dozed off once or twice a man, a woodsman by the look of him, came in. He was a compact, quick fellow, quiet but pleasant.
“Are you my host?” I demanded when we’d exchanged greetings.
He scratched his head and chuckled as if I’d said something funny. “Well, I guess I am at that. I live here.”
“Could you get me some food please? I’m hungry as a bitch werewolf with pups. What’s more I’ve got the money to pay you with—or I did have.”
“They left you everything they found in the vault,” he assured me, “but you won’t need any money. They’re figuring you may be the fellow that stood by Conan, and anyways food don’t cost me nothing.”
I watched him catch a spark on tinder and nurse it to a blaze. “When they brought me here I couldn’t get it out of my head that Conan was dead, but now I remember that they claimed he was all right.”
A shadow took his face. “He’s not all right, but he’s alive. He got a bad cut on the head and still sleeps.”
It was bad news, but we were both fortunate to be alive at all; and there was no use in mourning yet. “How did they happen to rescue us?” I inquired.
“Oh, we had every man and boy out looking for signs of Conan when he didn’t show up after the wolf hunt. Fulke the minstrel was sent to scout around the Old Farms. He saw that armed men had somebody treed and guessed that Conan was there, too, though all he could hear was somebody singing about cats and rats.” My host grinned at me. “Maybe you were the one, though nobody will be sure until Conan comes to.”
The head of the rescue party, I recalled, had said almost the same thing. “And if Conan doesn’t come out of it?” I asked.
The woodsman’s face sobered. “I don’t know what will happen,” he said quietly, giving me something to think over with great care.
“Well, anyhow,” I said by way of shelving unpleasant subjects until my meal was ready, “Fulke wandered into the neighborhood. Oliver’s men were too entranced with my song to spot him, and he rallied Conan’s men?”
“Leaving out a couple of words I ain’t so sure of, why, I guess the answer’s yes. Our men were scattered, and it was a while before we could get word to a reasonable number; but Rainault led twenty horses there. They’d had enough fighting by then and were glad to reach their mounts in time to get clear.”
“What about Oliver?”
“Oh, they all got away except the corpses. Rainault was too anxious about Conan to waste time following them. Besides, counting two we sort of put out of their misery, they lost nine men, and some of the others looked well chewed. Oliver and his crew won’t forget that fight in a hurry, and Fulke has seen to it that the song is sweeping the countryside. He’s a real Minstrel, that boy; he memorized your whole song. Everybody’s laughing at it, and Chilbert will hear about it.
“Of course,” he added solemnly. “He’ll have the last laugh if Conan dies, though we’ve given out word that his wounds don’t amount to much.”
The stew he heated for me was tasty and contained plenty of good venison such as I needed to replenish my drained blood supply. By the following morning I was able to hobble o
utdoors to lie with comatose gratitude in the warm summer shade. It did not seem possible to me that I had ever been or would ever again be capable of violence or swift movement. Not that I wanted to be, then. It was the ultimate luxury to lie still so that my wounds wouldn’t hurt and sense the richness July has to offer in blossom-flecked grass under a tree. Every time I thought of anything, which wasn’t often, I fell asleep.
It is strange what things can satisfy a man when his cosmos is thus reduced, with emotion and action all but deducted from life. The small dramas of birds and insects could suffice to absorb and amuse me while I soaked up strength from earth, sun, and air, waiting for the rents in me to mend. At night the woodsman was adequate for my curtailed conversational needs. He seldom offered anything, but he could answer intelligently if I asked him a question.
His name was Thomas, he had lived thereabouts always, and, unlike many another, he knew his country. From him I learned that I had strayed west and south again toward the Loire after having got lost, that Thomas’ house stood not a hundred yards from a stream that ran into the Loire, and that it was possible to follow the creek all the way down to the river in a small boat. I heard that possibly useful information without comment.
Thomas may have had arduous duties at other times of the year, but just then his labors consisted of hunting and fishing, and I seldom saw him during the day. When I was capable of a little more exercise, however, he took the trouble to show me an old stone bridge where I had the choice of lounging or spearing fish. In view of my condition I was not quick enough to stab anything, but clear, shadowed water is soothing to watch.
The old bridge had in fact been nothing but a couple of stone pillars for a long time, maybe since Rome. There was a ford near it where a horse could wade across, though, and a small barge which could be yanked to either shore by leather ropes for the convenience of walkers or horsemen who didn’t want to be splashed. Sometimes I’d sit in the barge and try to spear the fish that would pause to mark time in its shade.
I was so engaged in the afternoon of the second day’s fishing when I heard horses chop-chopping along toward the opposite bank. As there was still a truce between me and Conan’s men I was not alarmed. Nevertheless, they might want to use the barge, so I got out and sat on the bank to wait till they’d passed.