“Run!” Conan shouted to the smugglers, and for once they obeyed with alacrity, two of them dragging Ghurran between them. A rhythmic pounding came to him as he drew his sword, and he stifled a curse to shout to the archers. “Ware horsemen!”
The archers had only time to raise their bows before half a score of mounted men in turbaned helmets and brigantine hauberks galloped out of the dunes with lowered lances. Bowstrings slapped against leather bracers, and five saddles were emptied. The others, one swaying, jerked at their reins and let the charge carry them back into the dark. There were bowmen among the Vendhyans as well, but their target was not men. Flaming arrows arched into the night to fall around the ship. Some hissed into the sea, but others struck wood.
Then Conan had time to worry neither about the ship nor about anyone else. Two horsemen pounded out of the night, bent low in their saddles, seeming to race shoulder to shoulder to see which would lance him first. Snarling, he leaped to the side, away from the long-bladed lances. The two riders tried to wheel on him together, but he closed with them, thrusting at the closer of them. His blade struck a metal plate in quilted brigantine, then slid off and between the plates. The movements of his attack were continuous. Even as his steel pierced ribs and heart, he was scrambling onto the dying man’s horse, throwing both the corpse and himself against the second enemy.
The second Vendhyan’s eyes bulged with disbelief behind the nasal of his turbaned helmet; he dropped the lance and struggled to reach his tulwar. Conan grappled the live man with one hand while trying to pull his broadsword from the dead one with the other, and the two horses, joined by three linked bodies, danced wildly on the sand. In the same instant, Conan’s blade and the Vendhyan’s came free. The dark-eyed man desperately raised his weapon to slash. Conan twisted and all three men fell. As they slammed into the ground, the Cimmerian sliced his sword across a dark neck as though he were wielding a dagger and rose from two corpses.
The horses’ pavane had carried him well down the beach, and what he saw as he looked back did not appear good. Bodies dotted the sand, though he could not make out how many were smugglers, and neither a standing man nor a mounted one was to be seen. Worse, the stern of the ship was a bonfire. As he watched, a man with a bucket silhouetted himself against the flames. Almost as soon as he appeared, the man dropped the bucket, tried to claw at his back with both hands and toppled into the fire. Not Hordo, Conan thought. The one-eyed man was too smart to do something like that with bowmen about.
The fire had lessened the darkness on the beach considerably, Conan realized. He was not so well lit as the man on the boat but neither could he consider himself shielded by the night from the Vendhyan archers. It was always better to be the hunter than the hunted, and the Easterners were not to be found by staying where he was.
Bent almost double, he ran for the dunes…and threw himself flat against a slope of sand as nearly a score of riders appeared above him. This, he thought sourly, was a few more than he had hoped to find at once. He was considering whether or not he could slip away unnoticed when the Vendhyans began talking.
“Are the chests on the pack animals?” a harsh, rasping voice demanded.
“They are.”
“And where is Sabah?”
“Dead. He wanted to take the one-eyed man alive to see what he said about the seals under hot irons. The smuggler drowned him in the surf and escaped.”
Conan smiled at that, at both parts of it.
“Good riddance,” the harsh voice snapped. “I said from the start that we should come down on them as soon as the chests were in sight. Sabah always had to complicate matters. I think he was beginning to believe he really was a lord, with his secrets and his plottings.”
“No matter. Sabah is dead, and we will soon hunt down the rest of the vermin.”
“You propose to wait that long?” the harsh voice said. “How long do you think the caravan will wait?”
“But Sabah said we must kill all of them. And there is the gold.”
“You think of a dead man’s orders and a hundred gold pieces?” the harsh voice sneered. “Think instead of our reception if those chests fail to reach Ayodhya safely. Better we all join Sabah now than that.”
The silence was palpable. Conan could almost feel agreement radiating from the listeners. As if no further words were necessary, the Vendhyans reined their mounts around and galloped into the dark. Moments later Conan heard other hooves joining these, and all receded to the south.
There was much in what the Cimmerian had heard for him to consider. For one thing, the accursed chests seemed to take on greater importance every time someone spoke of them. For the moment, though, there were more immediate matters to be concerned with.
Half of the boat was burning by the time he reached it. In the light of the fire, Hordo and three others, waist-deep in the surf with buckets, were picked out clearly as they desperately threw water on the flames and watched the shore with equal desperation.
“The Vendhyans are gone!” Conan shouted. Grabbing the strake, he vaulted to the deck. Rivulets of fire ran forward along the sail. “It is too late for that, Hordo!”
“Erlik blast you!” the one-eyed man howled. “This is my ship!”
One of the goats was dead, an arrow through its throat. Food might be in short supply, Conan thought, and tossed the carcass toward the beach. The live goat followed, almost dropping on Hordo’s head.
“My ship!” the one-eyed man growled. “Karela!”
“There will be another.” Conan lowered the cage of fluttering pigeons and met Hordo’s glare over it. “There will be another, my friend, but this one is done.”
With a groan, Hordo took the wicker cage. “Get off, Cimmerian, before you burn, too.”
Instead, Conan began seizing everything he found loose and not burning—coils of rope, water bags, bundles of personal possessions—and hurled them shoreward. They were stranded in a strange land, which meant it was best to assume a hostile land, and all they would have by way of supplies was what was saved from the flames. The heat became blistering hot as the fire crept closer. Pitch caulking bubbled and fed the conflagration, giving off foul black smoke. Only when there was nothing left unburning within his grasp, however, did Conan leap from the fiery craft.
Splashing to shore, he sank coughing to his knees. After a time he became aware of Ghurran standing over him. The herbalist’s parchment-skinned hands clutched a leather bag with a long strap.
“I regret,” Ghurran said quietly, “that none of the Vendhyans had the antidote you seek. Though as they apparently planned to slay us, it may be they lied. I will search their dead in any case. You may be assured, however, that I have what is needed to keep you alive until we reach Vendhya.”
Conan ran his eyes over the beach. Dead and wounded dotted the sand. A handful of smugglers were tottering hesitantly out of the dark. Behind him the boat was a pyre. “Until we reach Vendhya,” he said bleakly.