Conan: Road of Kings by Karl Edward Wagner

Author:Karl Edward Wagner [Wagner, Karl Edward]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2001-10-14T07:00:00+00:00

Ten

White Heat

Eel Street—again the pun was typical of Zingaran humor—was as close an approximation to a main thoroughfare as the Pit could boast. In the days of old Kordava, the avenue had borne another name—now forgotten—and had been a wide, straight passage between proud buildings. This day—when most streets within the Pit would scarcely pass two carts abreast—Eel Street offered Korst his best point of assault, and, as his advance faltered elsewhere, the king’s general concentrated his attack here.

“Conan!” A familiar voice hailed him from a group of wounded. “You’re a welcome sight! Santiddio said you’d gone fishing.”

Carico was trying a dirty bandage about one massive thigh. “Bastard just got a nip out of me below my hauberk,” he half apologized, as Conan dismounted. “But then, he’s not complaining about where I scattered his brains.”

“Where is Santiddio?” Conan asked the smith.

“Lit out the back door,” Carico said, trying his weight on his wounded leg. “Going to try to rally the new city to our fight. Been better if I’d gone to talk to them, but this sort of work here takes more meat than Santiddio has on his bones.”

“Mordermi wanted me to take over the defense here,” Conan told him. “Where’s Sifino?” Down the smoke-filled street, the sounds of combat sounded like rolling thunder.

“Dead, most likely,” Carico said. “He was at the first barricade, and that’s fallen. Korst is throwing all he’s got at us. You’ll need some mail. Take mine. My forge is close by, and I’ll send a boy for my other coat of mail, while I staunch this damned scratch. Not many men of our build you can pick from.” He nodded toward a row of the slain.

Conan muttered a hasty thanks and dragged Carico’s padded gambeson and hauberk over his torso. The stocky blacksmith was shorter than Conan, but his shoulders and girth gave away nothing to the hulking Cimmerican. Carico’s gift was no casual gesture: without mail no warrior could long survive this close infighting, and Conan would have had little chance of finding mail large enough to fit his huge frame.

Daylight poured through from the mouth of Eel Street, to some extent obscured by a collapsed pile of masonry and smouldering rubble, where one of the topside buildings had crumpled in flame. This afforded the defenders a moment’s respite, while Korst’s soldiers were driven back by the heat. Close to the burning rubble, men dragged bodies away from a barricade—overrun, to judge from the burgundy and gold clad bodies that lay between it and a second barricade farther within the Pit. Conan paused here briefly, watched the frantic efforts to strengthen the makeshift fortifications: carts, doors, timbers and large pieces of furniture formed a bulwark from wall to wall, pavement to ceiling. Unlike any ordinary barricade, there was no climbing over one such as this; the invaders would have to smash through it. A gap in the second barricade let men pass through to the fallen one.

“Carry some of this forward,” Conan ordered. “We can man the first barricade while Korst regroups, then fall back here if we’re driven back.

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