Read Online The Harp and the Blade by John Myers Myers - Free Book Online

might care would never hear where and in what manner I ended.
    I rose to see my last day, looking through the rain at the dim figures of water-logged enemies. “Did you have a nice night, Oliver?” I called solicitously.
    “A pretty seedy bunch, if you ask me,” Conan said, clicking his tongue. “What do you figure they’re doing out there, anyhow?”
    “They claim as how they’re going to fight us.”
    “What? With just those few, scroungy, little warts?” Conan raised his voice in protest. “Look here, Oliver; you’d better get Chilbert to send you some help.”
    “They’d probably do better,” I opined, “if they kept out of it altogether and let the dogs do the fighting.”
    Conan seemed astonished. “Why, hell, I thought they were dogs! All their parents were.”
    Some of them started for us at that, but Oliver snarled at them. “Wait till the light’s better!” he ordered.
    We ostentatiously ate our breakfast before those hungry men, then we stretched and flexed to work the kinks out of us. Shortly the rain slacked off, stopped soon after; and the sky began clearing. “The sun won’t bother us till late,” Conan remarked, “but then it’ll shine right in our eyes and be the death of us—if we last that long.”
    Oliver had the patience of a good leader. He waited until his sodden men had some of the stiffness and dankness worked out of them, while we watched blue spread over a shiny green corner of the earth. “They’re going to rush us this time,” I said, watching them line up three deep.
    In a minute they charged at us, four abreast. “Up on the wall!” Conan roared, and we leaped on it to strike down.
    The men in front promptly became more interested in warding off our blows than in going forward, but the rear ranks had no such deterrent. They knocked the slowing leaders off balance, and we swooped on the confusion. My blade bit almost through a man’s neck, and I heard another death cry as Conan struck.
    The falling men in turn compounded the troubles of our attackers by tumbling back against the on-surging men behind. The force of the rush was broken, and while they jostled each other in an effort to close ranks we hewed at them to wreak havoc. I was wounded in the calf, but once they were no longer charging there were too many of them for their own good, a condition aggravated by the anxiety of all of them to do their share. I drew blood three times in return, and as the last of my victims stumbled I sliced him to his death.
    Oliver, who had taken no part in the charge, was quick to see the futility of their broken attack. “Back out of there!” he howled. And then a moment later: “The shields, you fools, the shields!”
    It was too late. They had drawn off without the corpses, not risking to stoop for them, and Conan was over the wall. Before they could do anything about it he had chopped the shield arms from two and tossed them into the vault. I have never seen a readier man.
    Oliver was shrieking enraged commands, but I had worked the grips from the stiffening fingers by the time he had achieved any reorganization. It was certainly good to have a shield snuggling at my shoulder. I’d felt pretty naked before.
    “This is more like it,” Conan grinned. “Now we’ll let them know they’re in a fight.”
    “I don’t think they’ll rush us again anyhow,” I said cheerfully.
    As a matter of fact they left us entirely alone for a short time while Oliver took stock of the new situation. I tied up my wound, while my friend looked after a gash in his thigh. “Oliver’s a sub-louse, but not an especially stupid sub-louse,” he said in a low voice. “It won’t take him long to see that the way to finish us is to keep hammering at us, never give us a chance to rest. Do you think you could give them a song while he’s making up his mind?”
    Pleased at the idea, I took up my harp. It would perhaps be the last time a song of mine was ever heard, for who can know that his