Free Conan the Marauder by John Maddox Roberts Page A

until we commence siege
    operations, so they shall not move with the regular army. Instead, they shall be sent forth first, under a small herding force. A few days later, the cavalry squadrons under their leaders shall move out. They shall pass the slaves before the borders of Sogarian territory are reached."
    The others nodded, understanding the thrust of his tactics.
    "The first stage of operations," Bartatua went on, "shall be much like our accustomed raiding into the territory of the city people. A large number of detached forces shall hit several targets at once. These shall be outlying forts, villages and the like. Our purpose shall be to harry and terrify. It is important at this stage that we do little killing, no more than necessary."
    "Why is that?" asked the older chief. It was ancient Hyrkanian custom to massacre all the defeated who were deemed of no value once their goods had been taken.
    "Because the people are more useful to us alive at this stage. Once they realize that their homes and garrisons are no longer safe, they will flee, and they will all go in a single direction."
    "Straight into Sogaria!" said the younger chief.
    "Exactly, my friend," Bartatua said with hearty approval. "We shall herd them like sheep. They will pour into Sogaria until the city bulges like a wineskin, eating up its stores, fighting for space to live, stirring up hatred among the regular inhabitants. Each batch of fleeing peasants shall make our task easier for us."
    "Soon even the city folk must see the foolishness of taking in so many useless mouths," said the older chief. "They will close the gates against them."
    Bartatua waved his hand in an airy gesture. "Such as
    huddle without the walls we can dispose of handily. Some we may press into siege works. By the time we herded the whole countryside into the city, our entire horde will be reunited and we shall have the place surrounded. By then, the marching slaves shall have arrived and we may commence siege operations."
    "This is a most sagacious plan," said the older ', "and you may count on my horde for this one." The younger roan vigorously assented as well.
    He was deeply satisfied. His plans went much further than the taking of a single city, but he did not wish to burden these simple warrior-chiefs with anything too complex. In any case, he needed a season as sole leader of the united tribes so as to cement his position as over-chief of all the hordes, Ushi-Kagan. Let the tribesmen get a taste of the loot to be had and they would demand that he lead them to further conquests. In the meantime, he would accomplish much more with weapons than he would with talk.
    His ambitions spanned a far greater compass than these chiefs, and the others who sat in the tent, could ever comprehend. As a boy, he had listened to the tales of travellers describing distant lands and their great cities. He had gone on raids that probed the borders of those lands, and he had seen how soft, slow and poorly organized the civilized powers were. He wanted nothing less than to conquer them all, and to take all they had as his personal property. He would take great Khitai first, then voluptuous Vendhya, and after that, perhaps Turan and the gleaming kingdoms of the west, then sorcerous Stygia, and the lands south of Stygia, of which he had heard that the people were black and that there were elephants greater than those of Vendhya.
    He was confident that nothing could stop his hordes of horse-archers once they were united under a single rule. He had accomplished much by force of personality and native intelligence. Now he had as well the aid and advice of his beautiful, utterly ruthless concubine Lakhme. A great deal of his tactical planning in the taking of Sogaria had been her idea, as had the concept of gaining a stranglehold on the caravan routes between east and west. He meant to have the world eventually but he had grasped instantly the importance of control ling all the goods and virtually all the