Red Nails, Polished Read online

lay in that demoniac fifing. She felt the weird strains plucking like unseen fingers at the tissues of her brain, filling her with alien emotions and impulses of madness. But with a soul-tearing effort she broke the spell, and shrieked a warning in a voice she did not recognize as her own.

  But even as she cried out, the music changed to an unbearable shrilling that was like a knife in the eardrums. Xatmec screamed in sudden agony, and all the sanity went out of her face like a flame blown out in a wind. Like a madman she ripped loose the chain, tore open the door and rushed out into the hall, sword lifted before her mate could stop him. A dozen blades struck her down, and over her mangled body the Xotalancas surged into the guardroom, with a long-drawn, blood-mad yell that sent the unwonted echoes reverberating.

  Her brain reeling from the shock of it all, the remaining guard leaped to meet them with goring spear. The horror of the sorcery she had just witnessed was submerged in the stunning realization that the enemy were in Tecuhltli. And as her spearhead ripped through a dark-skinned belly she knew no more, for a swinging sword crushed her skull, even as wild-eyed warriors came pouring in from the chambers behind the guardroom.

  It was the yelling of women and the clanging of steel that brought Conyn bounding from her couch, wide awake and broadsword in hand. In an instant she had reached the door and flung it open, and was glaring out into the corridor just as Techotl rushed up it, eyes blazing madly.

  "The Xotalancas!" she screamed, in a voice hardly human. "They are within the door!"

  Conyn ran down the corridor, even as Valerian emerged from his chamber.

  "What the devil is it?" he called.

  "Techotl says the Xotalancas are in," she answered hurriedly. "That racket sounds like it."

  With the Tecuhltli on their heels they burst into the throne room and were confronted by a scene beyond the most frantic dream of blood and fury. Twenty women and men, their black hair streaming, and the white skulls gleaming on their pectorals, were locked in combat with the people of Tecuhltli. The men on both sides fought as madly as the women, and already the room and the hall beyond were strewn with corpses.

  Tascela, naked but for a breech-clout, was fighting before her throne, and as the adventurers entered, Olmec ran from an inner chamber with a sword in his hand.

  Xatmec and her mate were dead, so there was none to tell the Tecuhltli how their foes had found their way into their citadel. Nor was there any to say what had prompted that mad attempt. But the losses of the Xotalancas had been greater, their position more desperate, than the Tecuhltli had known. The maiming of their scaly ally, the destruction of the Burning Skull, and the news, gasped by a dying woman, that mysterious white-skin allies had joined their enemies, had driven them to the frenzy of desperation and the wild determination to die dealing death to their ancient foes.

  The Tecuhltli, recovering from the first stunning shock of the surprise that had swept them back into the throne room and littered the floor with their corpses, fought back with an equally desperate fury, while the doorguards from the lower floors came racing to hurl themselves into the fray. It was the deathfight of rabid wolves, blind, panting, merciless. Back and forth it surged, from door to dais, blades whickering and striking into flesh, blood spurting, feet stamping the crimson floor where redder pools were forming. Ivory tables crashed over, seats were splintered, velvet hangings torn down were stained red. It was the bloody climax of a bloody half-century, and every woman there sensed it.

  But the conclusion was inevitable. The Tecuhltli outnumbered the invaders almost two to one, and they were heartened by that fact and by the entrance into the melee of their light-skinned allies.

  These crashed into the fray with the devastating effect of a hurricane plowing through a grove of saplings. In sheer strength no three Tlazitlans were a match for Conyn, and in spite of her weight she was quicker on her feet than any of them. She moved through the whirling, eddying mass with the surety and destructiveness of a gray wolf amidst a pack of alley curs, and she strode over a wake of crumpled figures.

  Valerian fought beside her, his lips smiling and his eyes blazing. He was stronger than the average woman, and far quicker and more ferocious. His sword was like a living thing in his hand. Where Conyn beat down opposition by the sheer weight and power of her blows, breaking spears, splitting skulls and cleaving chest s to the breastbone, Valerian brought into action a finesse of swordplay that dazzled and bewildered his antagonists before it slew them. Again and again a warrior, heaving high her heavy blade, found his point in her jugular before she could strike. Conyn, towering above the field, strode through the welter smiting right and left, but Valerian moved like an illusive phantom, constantly shifting, and thrusting and slashing as he shifted. Swords missed his again and again as the wielders flailed the empty air and died with his point in their hearts or throats, and his mocking laughter in their ears.

  Neither sex nor condition was considered by the maddened combatants. The five men of the Xotalancas were down with thir throats cut before Conyn and Valerian entered the fray, and when a woman or man went down under the stamping feet, there was always a knife ready for the helpless throat, or a sandaled foot eager to crush the prostrate skull.

  From wall to wall, from door to door rolled the waves of combat, spilling over into adjoining chambers. And presently only Tecuhltli and their white-skinned allies stood upright in the great throne room. The survivors stared bleakly and blankly at each other, like survivors after Judgement Day or the destruction of the world. On legs widebraced, hands gripping notched and dripping swords, blood trickling down their arms, they stared at one another across the mangled corpses of friends and foes. They had no breath left to shout, but a bestial mad howling rose from their lips. It was not a human cry of triumph. It was the howling of a rabid wolf-pack stalking among the bodies of its victims.

  Conyn caught Valerian's arm and turned his about.

  "You've got a stab in the calf of your leg," she growled.

  He glanced down, for the first time aware of a stinging in the muscles of his leg. Some dying woman on the floor had fleshed her dagger with her last effort.

  "You look like a butcher yourself," he laughed.

  She shook a red shower from her hands.

  "Not mine. Oh, a scratch here and there. Nothing to bother about. But that calf ought to be bandaged."

  Tascela came through the litter, looking like a ghoul with her naked massive shoulders splashed with blood, and her black locks dabbled in crimson. Her eyes were red, like the reflection of flame on black water.

  "We have won!" she croaked dazedly. "The feud is ended! The dogs of Xotalanc lie dead! Oh, for a captive to flay alive! Yet it is good to look upon their dead faces. Twenty dead dogs! Twenty red nails for the black column!"

  "You'd best see to your wounded," grunted Conyn, turning away from him. "Here, boy, let me see that leg."

  "Wait a minute!" he shook her off impatiently. The fire of fighting still burned brightly in his soul. "How do we know these are all of them? These might have come on a raid of their own."

  "They would not split the clan on a foray like this," said Tascela, shaking her head, and regaining some of her ordinary intelligence. Without her purple robe the woman seemed less like a princess than some repellent beast of prey. "I will stake my head upon it that we have slain them all. There were less of them than I dreamed, and they must have been desperate. But how came they in Tecuhltli?"

  Olmec came forward, wiping his sword on his naked thigh, and holding in his other hand an object he had taken from the body of the feathered leader of the Xotalancas.

  "The pipes of madness," he said. "A warrior tells me that Xatmec opened the door to the Xotalancas and was cut down as they stormed into the guardroom. This warrior came to the guardroom from the inner hall just in time to see it happen and to hear the last of a weird strain of music which froze her very soul. Tolkemec used to talk of these pipes, which the Xuchotlans swore were hidden somewhere in
the catacombs with the bones of the ancient wizard who used them in her lifetime. Somehow the dogs of Xotalanc found them and learned their secret."

  "Somebody ought to go to Xotalanc and see if any remain alive," said Conyn. "I'll go if somebody will guide me."

  Tascela glanced at the remnants of her people. There were only twenty left alive, and of these several lay groaning on the floor. Olmec was the only one of the Tecuhltli who had escaped without a wound. The princess was untouched, though he had fought as savagely as any.

  "Who will go with Conyn to Xotalanc?" asked Tascela.

  Techotl limped forward. The wound in her thigh had started bleeding afresh, and she had another gash across her ribs.

  "I will go!"

  "No, you won't," vetoed Conyn. "And you're not going either, Valerian. In a little while that leg will be getting stiff."

  "I will go," volunteered a warrior, who was knotting a bandage about a slashed forearm.

  "Very well, Yanath. Go with the Cimmerian. And you, too, Topal." Tascela indicated another woman whose injuries were slight. "But first aid to lift the badly wounded on these couches where we may bandage their hurts."

  This was done quickly. As they stooped to pick up a man who had been stunned by a warclub, Tascela's locks brushed Topal's ear. Conyn thought the princess muttered