The battle had spread itself out over a wide expanse, broken into tight knots and a few larger clusters and many single fights. The raiders wore the banded skirts and leather cuirasses so common among the northerners. Horned helmets. Bronze-faced greaves and silver bracers. They swung great blades and called out in the flat, nasal tongue of Nordheim.
The Hyperborians looked a mixture of tall, lean Aquilonians and perhaps a few of the tawny-haired Gundermen who sometimes raided up into Conall Valley. Difficult to tell by the glowing firelight. Men in robes and men in mail. Some wore the conical helms of Aquilonia. The Gundermen (if they were) battled bareheaded with either a pike or poleax. They fought back to back, or sometimes in a triangle around a fallen horse.
A handful of merchants and soldiers struggled northward with a half dozen packhorses. And just as many Vanir in pursuit.
There were twice as many raiders as there were southern men. Merchants, Kern guessed, seeing the loaded packhorses. The professional warriors used tall shields and broadswords to protect themselves from two-on-one odds as Vanir set after them like dogs on fresh meat. The men in finer clothing often were lucky to carry an arming sword. Good enough to turn the first blow. Not usually a strong blade to fend off repeated, hacking attacks.
More arrows sliced in behind that first. A spark flared in Kern’s mind, like a warning flash, and he brought his shield up quickly. A hunting shaft pierced the metal facing, sticking into the wood back.
Short sword already naked in his hand, Kern scraped the blade across the facing by reflex, stripping away the shaft. Then he leaped, out and to one side, clearing the exposed ridge as more of his warriors ran up behind him. It was a short fall to a new ledge, and his foot struck hard, grinding across some scattered gravel.
Three skipping steps brought him down off the low ridge, and a controlled fall dropped Kern in behind two Vanir, who were using battle-axes to chop at the heavy shield thrust into their faces by a thick-chested Gunderman. For little more than pride the besieged warrior protected a fallen packhorse, the animal shrieking with the pain of an obvious pair of broken legs.
Stumbling, catching himself against the blistered rock with one hand against the rough ground, Kern stabbed up and out. Punching with the tip of his short sword, stabbing as he’d been taught to add extra reach. The tip of the blade sliced in through boiled leather, nicking between the thin, steel bands protecting the Vanir’s side. Stabbing deep.
The raider howled in pain and fury, dropping his guard long enough for the Gunderman to lash out and stab a wound through an exposed throat. Blood fountained, spraying in a jetting stream across the ground and Kern’s hands, and spattering his face with warm, red flecks.
The second Vanir reacted out of reflex as well, rounding on the new threat with a sidelong chop. The great axe blade narrowly missed Kern’s stomach, clipping the edge of his shield and nearly tearing it out of his hand.
The raw strength spun Kern aside, opening up his defenses. The raider turned his swing into an overhead blow, coming back up and around as Kern ducked and dived, rolling aside as the blade cracked down into the brittle, black rock flow not a hand breadth from his neck. Lying on his back, he lashed out with a foot to kick the battle-axe’s haft, trying to dislodge it from the raider’s grip.
Not that it mattered. With a yell much like the low rumble of a building avalanche, Reave fell down the side of the ridge with his Cimmerian greatsword raised high overhead. Airborne, a wild look buried in his eyes, the large man slashed down with all of his great strength. The sword clipped away a bull’s horn from the side of the Vanir’s helm, then bit deep, deep into the shoulder. Cleaving through flesh and bone, severing the arm and angling down into the chest as well through at least three ribs.
The Vanir died without a scream, his heart cleaved in two and a shocked look twisting his face. Kern allowed himself a brief moment of satisfaction to see it.
Then, half-jumping, half-falling down the same desperate footholds Kern had used, his warriors scrambled into the battle. Daol and Brig Tall-Wood hunkered behind shields raised by Hydallan, by Old Finn, leaning out with bows to slam arrows at the two Vanir archers who had finally knocked aside one man with a broadhead shaft into his hip. Mogh. Ossian’s dour-faced kinsman.
Kern’s warriors had faced greater odds and given better than they received. Here, with an advantage, they were ferocious. Fighting together rather than as individuals, they watched each other’s backs and pressed the Vanir raiders with the same uneven odds they had so recently used to begin slaughter of the southern merchants. Swords slashed and stabbed. Near the long finger of molten rock, Nahud’r and Garret Blackpatch slammed bodily into another raider, knocking him away from a bleeding man in dark robes.
The Vanir stumbled back, and fell, half-rolling into the molten stream.
His screams joined the shrill braying of the wounded horse. Worse when the fire leaped up and caught his cloak afire, then his beard and oily tangle of long hair. Throwing himself to one side, he escaped the live rock flow. The fiery stream had eaten half his chest away, and one hand was down to a charred stub of blackened bone.
The scent of crisped flesh rose sharp and rank against the already sulfurous air.
Nahud’r ended the suffering with a scimitar’s edge drawn across the raider’s throat.
Garret and several others spread off the flat, scrambling after one of the many small fights taking place, always staying with at least one ally in order to protect each other and bring the raiders down with overwhelming force. For his part, Kern vaulted over the thrashing animal being guarded by the Gunderman, skirting the fiery stream, and setting off on a lower path after the escaping caravan and their pursuers. Reave and Desagrena moved after him. Then, somehow, Gard Foehammer; who had caught up, having ripped away his bandages, squinting into the fire-cast shadows.
Ahead, between the caravan and Kern, three raiders finished off a struggling Aquilonian, one taking him through the chest with a war sword and the other striking head from shoulders with a pair of brutal, hacking chops. The Vanir seized his trophy by the hair and, slinging it up and around, threw it into the onrushing Cimmerians.
Reave swatted it aside with one meaty fist as if it were nothing more than a pebble flicked in his direction.
The raiders knew their war craft and set a quick line, shoulder to shoulder. Shields formed a defensive wall and swords held overhead or out to one side struck like the stinging tails of a rock scorpion.
Even with four maddened warriors charging down on them, it might have held and inflicted terrible pain on one of Kern’s people.
But with a hitching step he’d seen once before, Kern saw Gard step out ahead of the pack to hurl his pike with incredible force, in a nearly flat arc that flashed through the gloom and the hesitant rain. Spearing through the neck of the middle raider, the pike drove him back and over, leaving him gasping suddenly for breath and hands slapping at the wound, the pike’s shaft, and the ground around him.
Already dead, just not knowing it yet.
Which left the other two Vanir split apart and uncertain. Both of them clasped bloodied war swords in large, rawboned hands. One of the raiders had braided his flame-red beard into long, cordlike tails weighted by silver beads. His shield was crudely painted with the outline of a hulking giant brandishing both hammer and battle-axe. Forked lightning danced between the weapons. Powerful. Terrifying.
Grimnir.
The other raider obviously had Aesir blood flowing through his veins. Golden-blond hair fell in a thick curtain around his shoulders, a thick, drooping moustache made up for a lack of beard. He was a larger man, nearly of a size with Reave. He wore ornate bronze greaves and, on his right arm, a leather vambrace studded with large, bronze or gold buttons.
Kern left the brute blond to Reave and Desa. Batting the other man’s sword point aside with a slashing block, he kicked a foot up and stomped forward right square into the center of the painted shield. The blow staggered the raider back sever
al paces, separating him farther from his comrade. Kern and—quickly—Gard were on him in an instant.
Kern’s short sword rose and fell, thrust and jabbed, raining blows against shield facing and war sword edge, trying to force an opening. He’d thrown caution to the winds, letting a furious, warming rage take him and feeling the heat lend strength to his muscles, his every blow.
His sword actually cut through the shield facing, peeling aside the thin skin of metal to expose the wooden back. He carved away chips and splinters. And one of the backing boards cracked under the onslaught. But the Vanir managed to keep his shield between himself and a violent death.
For another moment, at least.
Having hurled his pike, Gard had only a long dagger ready. But it nicked in and out, stealing the raider’s lifeblood one deep scratch at a time.
Then Gard planted it into the shoulder of the raider’s shield arm, and ducked away as a sideswipe blow nearly took him in the side of the head.
A blood-chilling howl of pain and rage pushed Kern back, setting him back on his guard for a moment. It was the third raider, whom Reave and Desa had pinned between them. Reave’s greatsword was embedded in the side of the Aesir’s shield, fouling the target. Ripping it away. Desagrena’s arming sword had then laid open the man’s belly, spilling a tangle of ropy entrails across his front. Her blade sliced across his again, spilling blood and gore and a latrine scent over the coarse, black rock. A third time, fast as a viper, across his throat.
His cry died off in a wet, choking gurgle. The dead man slumped to his knees, then sprawled forward into his own blood and offal.
Which was enough for the remaining raider. One arm useless, hanging near dead at his side. His two companions dead. He lashed out with his war sword, forcing Kern back another few steps, then turned and fled after his companions, who were still chasing down the caravan’s fleeing remnants.
Kern gave immediate chase, but the other man’s panic lent him impressive speed. The raider leaped from one flat expanse on the rock flow to another, avoiding the cracks and steam vents and a new thin fissure of molten rock.
The raider dropped his shield while scrabbling up a short rise. All but threw himself down the other side.
Anything to escape.
Kern gained the top of the same mound, hands clawing for purchase among sharp edges and gravel. From there, he looked out over a new expanse of soft, overlapping mounds of black rock. Flatter, easier ground, but pocked with many overlapping cracks filled with glowing rock flow that oozed out in several places, as if pressed by a giant hand from below. The heat pushed Kern back with a physical presence. Rain spattered and hissed against the ground as a thing alive. Wisps of the steam caught the reddish-orange glow, drifted over the entire area in a bloody mist.
Caught out among the vents and glowing fissures, the wounded Vanir stumbled to a halt.
At first, Kern thought it was because the Vanir had seen the mounted Aquilonian cavalry cutting across his escape: Strom and Valerus and Lucian, having ridden around the broken ground Kern’s warriors had scrambled over to chase up on the battle, rode astride their surefooted mounts in a hazardous dash, with lances lowered and pointed right at the backs of the Vanir raiders trapped on the steaming, black expanse.
The merchant guard had set a line in front of the raiders, protecting what packhorses they had left. The horsemen rode up too fast from behind, like vengeful demons out of the red-stained gloom. There was no escape.
Kern paused, panting heavily as he drew the hot air down into his lungs, where it burned like live coals. The moment’s hesitation likely saved his life. He watched as the cavalry charge leaped over open fissures, and the horses caught desperate footholds. As three lance points bore down on a separate target. As three men were flung back, run through by an iron tip, then flung aside on the sheer momentum delivered by the blow.
Finally, horsemen and merchant guard fell on the remaining raiders, lances cast aside and swords out, blades rising and falling, rising and falling.
A brief and bloody slaughter.
The Vanir scrambled back toward Kern. Away from the carnage and screams of dying men. Falling down, then jumping back up with a fearful yelp. Leaving behind him widening fissures with savage-bright rock flow spilling across the broken, black expanse.
The ground trembled with the deep crack of shattered rock. Kern crouched low, seeking a strong center close to the ground. A terrible grinding scraped into his ears, and a backwash of new heat slammed over him. Scalding hot, as with the rage of battle, so strong he wondered for a moment if it hadn’t driven every last trace of winter from his bones.
Reave and Desa joined him then as the raider fell once again to hands and knees, losing his sword, as the rock shelf completely broke free and settled into a pool of molten rock. The edges widened on three sides, where the flow was so hot the rain hardly struck anymore, blasted into a mist of steam before ever reaching the ground. Gard Foehammer crawled up from the back side of the mound, shielded his eyes from the yellow-orange glare as the Vanir struggled on a tilting table of black rock, the slab breaking up and slipping into the pool in chunks. Sinking beneath him into the raging heat until the only way out of the inferno was to climb back up the ledge where Kern crouched, surrounded by three of his warrior pack.
Golden eyes glowing in the reflected fire. Hair bleeding from frost white to a dark red as it soaked in the rock flow’s unnatural light. He waited. Watched. Then leaned down as the Vanir struggled up the side of the small rise. Sweat poured from the raider’s brow and soaked through his clothes. His hair was singed black on his arms. His face was flushed, or maybe scalded, a dark scarlet.
Kern grabbed the other man by the braided beard, hauling him halfway up the rock face as the rock cracked and fell into the pool right beneath his feet. Hauled him into a half-standing crouch, hanging back over the infernal heat that singed the hairs on Kern’s bared arm. Baked his face. Warmed him.
Then Kern shoved the other man back and away. Throwing him back onto the disappearing ledge, where he landed on a coarse, smoking patch with a screaming howl.
The Vanir’s clothes smoldered as he scrambled to his feet, a wild, desperate look in his eyes. Baring his teeth against the pain, the raider took a sprinting run at the next-closest edge where the rock flow had widened out the length of a man, perhaps more, and jumped—
—foot sinking down into yellow-orange rock flow up to the knee, then the hip, as the greedy fire ate the raider alive.
Fire jumped up the leather skirt and cuirass, turning the Vanir into a human torch in barely a whisper of time. He screamed. High-pitched and full of pain, as the horse had screamed. But there would be no mercy blade to end the Vanir’s suffering. Four sets of eyes watched him burn, struggling against the rock flow’s fiery grip. Eaten one handbreadth at a time to the overpowering scent of charred meat.
Kern never moved. He let the screams wash over and through him, his breath coming short as violet sparks flared and died in the darker corners of his mind.
Reave hawked and spat out over the blistering pool. Kern doubted the spittle ever touched the molten stone. “Not quite the hand up he was looking for, I’m thinking,” the large man said. He turned from the blistering heat, pulling Desagrena with him.
Gard Foehammer followed. Leaving Kern crouched alone above the fallen ledge of rock. His eyes pained him as they stared out over the bright, savage flow. Skin flushed and sweating. Muscles loose, except where his hand still wrapped tightly around the hilt of his short sword. And deep inside, where he had thought it banished, he found it, untouched by the savage heat or even his warming rage.
A sliver of ice.
8
NIGHT CAME DOWN in a dark curtain; held back only by the reddish glow of the open rock flow and a few acrid-smelling torches, Ehmish watched the Nemedian merchants pull out of oilskin wraps. Catching them afire was no hard feat, and they burned with near-smokeless fire even against the rain that continued to fall in ever-increas
ing strength.
Cold droplets stung the back of Ehmish’s head and soon plastered down his dark, unruly hair against his skull. He was soaked through. His coarse, woolen cloak a heavy, waterlogged shroud that pulled at his shoulders. The kilt he wore—dark brown with red sworls, some simple Cimmerian designs—stuck to his legs. His leather belt and leather boots were water-stained nearly black.
The young man wiped long strands from in front of his eyes and squeezed the water from his long, thick lashes with a grimy knuckle.
Then, with his other hand, he grabbed a fistful of damp hair and dragged a Vanir corpse into a half-sitting position. His silver-chased broadsword—taken several weeks earlier as spoils of battle—the weapon he’d been so proud to earn—dripped clotted blood and fresh gore as he brought it up and hacked once. Twice. Three times.
He wrenched away the severed head and carried it by the hair to a small pile set up on a nearby slab of the coarse, cooled rock flow. This one crowned the top of the grisly monument.
The final head of the twenty or so raiders slaughtered after the arrival of Kern’s “wolves.”
“Finished,” he called over to Desagrena, who had first pointed him at the job, which needed doing.
She was busy sorting through a large pile of weapons with Wallach Graybeard and the Nemedian merchants who had survived the attack on their caravan. The warriors would take one or two of the best weapons. All of the food carried by the raiders. And any other small pieces of plunder they cared for.
Ehmish had his eye on a thick, felt blanket, to replace the threadbare woolen spread he’d brought from Callaugh Glen.
Cimmerian Rage Page 8
