Valley of the Worm by Robert E. Howard Read Free Book Online Page B

ranks!”
    At that, as the warriors scrambled into their lines, hastily donning headpieces and thrusting arms through shield-straps, the mist rolled away, as something no longer useful. It did not slowly lift and fade like a natural fog; it simply vanished, like a blown-out flame. One moment the whole desert was hidden with the rolling fleecy billows, piled mountainously, stratum above stratum; the next, the sun shone from a cloudless sky on a naked desert—no longer empty, but thronged with the living pageantry of war. A great shout shook the hills.
    At first glance the amazed watchers seemed to be looking down upon a glittering sparkling sea of bronze and gold, where steel points twinkled like a myriad of stars. With the lifting of the fog the invaders had halted as if frozen, in long serried lines, flaming in the sun.
    First was a long line of chariots, drawn by the great fierce horses of Stygia, with plumes on their heads—snorting and rearing as each naked driver leaned back, bracing his powerful legs, his dusky arms knotted with muscles. The fighting-men in the chariots were tall figures, their hawk-like faces set off by bronze helmets crested with a crescent supporting a golden ball. Heavy bows were in their hands. No common archers, these, but nobles of the South, bred to war and the hunt, who were accustomed to bringing down lions with their arrows.
    Behind these came a motley array of wild men on half-wild horses—the warriors of Kush, the first of the great black kingdoms of the grasslands south of Stygia. They were shining ebony, supple and lithe, riding stark naked and without saddle or bridle.
    After these rolled a horde that seemed to encompass all the desert. Thousands on thousands of the war-like Sons of Shem: ranks of horsemen in scale-mail corselets and cylindrical helmets— the asshuri of Nippr, Shumir, and Eruk and their sister cities; wild white-robed hordes—the nomad clans.
    Now the ranks began to mill and eddy. The chariots drew off to one side while the main host came uncertainly onward. Down in the valley the knights had mounted, and now Count Thespides galloped up the slope to where Conan stood. He did not deign to dismount but spoke abruptly from the saddle.
    “The lifting of the mist has confused them! Now is the time to charge! The Kushites have no bows and they mask the whole advance. A charge of my knights will crush them back into the ranks of the Shemites, disrupting their formation. Follow me! We will win this battle with one stroke!”
    Conan shook his head. “Were we fighting a natural foe, I would agree. But this confusion is more feigned than real, as if to draw us into a charge. I fear a trap.”
    “Then you refuse to move?” cried Thespides, his face dark with passion.
    “Be reasonable,” expostulated Conan. “We have the advantage of position—”
    With a furious oath Thespides wheeled and galloped back down the valley where his knights waited impatiently.
    Amalric shook his head. “You should not have let him return, Conan. I—look there!”
    Conan sprang up with a curse. Thespides had swept in beside his men. They could hear his impassioned voice faintly, but his gesture toward the approaching horde was significant enough. In another instant five hundred lances dipped and the steel-clad company was thundering down the valley.
    A young page came running from Yasmela’s pavilion, crying to Conan in a shrill, eager voice, “My lord, the princess asks why you do not follow and support Count Thespides?”
    “Because I am not so great a fool as he,” grunted Conan, reseating himself on the boulder and beginning to gnaw a huge beef-bone.
    “You grow sober with authority,” quoth Amalric. “Such madness as that was always your particular joy.”
    “Aye, when I had only my own life to consider,” answered Conan. “Now—what in hell——”
    The horde had halted. From the extreme wing rushed a chariot, the naked charioteer lashing the steeds like a madman; the other