As the horses completed their turn and readied for another charge, Brig nocked two arrows at once, held his war bow out horizontal, and let them both fly.
One glanced off the horned helm of a Vanir.
The other buried itself at the feet of the Ymirish leader.
The golden-eyed leader saw his own plans in ruins. His raiders broken into three separate battles, any one of which he might win or lose. He might inflict heavy losses against the Gaudic survivors, but at what cost to his own war host? At what danger to himself? Even at a distance, struggling against the hammerlike blows of a raider whose long, red-golden braids whipped about like living snakes, Kern saw the decision play out over the other man’s face.
The Ymirsh bent, picked up the arrow, and looked back over the struggling fight. His cheeks drained of color, back to a waxy, pale skin with a cold, flat expression, he surveyed the battlefield. He snapped the arrow in two, then crooked up an arm, as if waving his fist in some kind of signal to his men.
Not quite. But a signal, yea. The large, red-tailed hawk Kern had noticed earlier swooped back to its master, talons digging in against unprotected flesh as it grabbed a roost.
The Ymirish turned his back on the battle, and Gaud. Stalking back into the forest as if without a care for what else happened.
Their leader having retreated, the raiders who had protected him were first to break, turning and chasing after the frost-bearded Ymirish. Strom’s horsemen chased them right back to the forest edge, but the Aquilonians were smart enough not to pursue footmen into the narrow confines of the forest. They wheeled away, letting their momentum carry them in a long, swooping arc back toward the village proper.
By twos and threes, then, the raiders standing in a line against Kern’s beleaguered group jumped back out of reach, then swarmed off to the west, moving in close to where Gard and Ossian and Wallach Graybeard were forming a defensive triangle.
Kern and Nahud’r chased after them a few paces, but only long enough to see that the Vanir had no interest in working through the defenses of a few standing Cimmerians. All of them fell back toward the forest edge. Snarling and spitting curses still, dragging a few of the walking wounded along with them, and keeping good order. Brig, Aodh, and Hydallan swung around with their bows and spent their last few arrows to keep the raiders moving fast, but except for a shaft struck into one shoulder, one leg, the raiders gained the safety of the forest without further injury.
Dropping to one knee, Kern propped himself up with his short sword against the ground, breathing heavily. The scent of blood and ash clogged his nose and left an acrid taste at the back of his throat. He swiped an arm across his forehead, smearing blood away from his eyes. Every muscle ached, especially across his chest and back, which had borne the brunt of battle. But it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling. It was warming, in fact. A kind of thrilling heat that he rarely knew.
Then it was gone. As he banked his rage against later need.
Nahud’r stood over him, scimitar’s edge stained a bright, arterial red, his dark skin at odds with that of every other man or woman on the battlefield. Bending down, he pulled up a few handfuls of wet grass and began cleaning his blade. As simple as that. This was his life, now.
Kern’s, too. Wading through blood and muck, risking the lives of those he cared about, who refused to set aside their loyalty to him, even when they found a chance for a new life. They might have settled at Taur, Cruaidh, or even Callaugh. But each one of them had chosen this life instead.
Had any of them found an end to theirs, this day?
Reave and Desa were seeing to Daol between the nearby huts. Garret had one hand under Ehmish’s arm, helping the exhausted and battered youth toward an open door. His trio of archers scattered forward, searching for unbroken shafts they could reclaim. And ahead, Ossian bent over Mogh, who struggled to sit, and Old Finn hobbling out from behind the lean-to.
Strom had led his trio of lancers in a wide-sweeping circle, always moving, always ready, until the danger was certainly past. Now he trotted up, holding a broken lance overhead in casual salute. Valerus and Niuss rode to either side. Their faces were flushed and full of excitement. Niuss’s mount favored its right rear leg. An arrow shaft protruded from a bleeding wound in its haunch. Other than some scratches across Storm’s face, picked up charging through some brush no doubt, the Aquilonians appeared hearty enough.
“By Mitra’s heavenly grace, Kern Wolf-Eye.” The cavalry’s leader tossed aside the broken lance. Slapped his horse on the side of its sweating neck. “That gets the blood flowing!”
Kern nodded. It did at that. “But it won’t be so easy next time,” he said. “That one”—he nodded after the departed Ymirish—“he knows our number now. Knows about the horses. Knows too much, by Crom, and will be back.”
The far-off call of a Vanir horn, still a good distance to the west, drifted through the dead village.
“And he’ll have greater numbers, bringing together two war hosts.”
At least two. The Vanir seemed to control the entirety of Conall Valley. Moving to the call of their horns, no longer afraid for the defense of any town or village. Grimnir, loose among the clans Kern had hoped to rally to the defense of Cimmeria.
“And so?” Strom asked. “What would you do about it?”
Whatever Kern might have thought, and done, the reply died on his lips, stolen by a cold, empty feeling of dread.
“Kern!” Desa shouted for him. From back near the huts. “Kern, come quick!”
16
FOR A HANDFUL of long, painful heartbeats, Kern hesitated. It was as if Desagrena’s shout had rolled over Gaud and the surrounding forest and stolen all sound from the world. No breeze shifted through the trees. Even the crackle of flame from the burning lodge hall fled from Kern’s ears. He saw a wisp of steaming breath blow out roughly from the flared nostrils of one horse, but that was all.
No one moved. No one spoke.
Even Strom and Valerus and Niuss, who a moment before had appeared so elated, flush with victory, sobered. Recognizing that the tremble of fear in Desagrena’s voice was far from normal. The viperish woman feared very little, including any risk to her own life as she’d proven time and again.
“Kern! Aodh!” Again she shouted, one name tumbling in on the heels of the other. “Ossian!” And was answered first by a short, fierce howl that called back from somewhere within the dead village.
Then Kern was on his feet, leaving his sword stuck into the earth, arms and legs pumping as he sprinted back for the nearby huts. He had heard such concern out of Desa only once before, when Ehmish had been hurt and everyone had worried that the boy lay dying in the muck and snow.
Who was it? That was the only question haunting his thoughts.
Daol lay up back against the stone foundation of one hut, struggling to rise. He had three stripes scratched down his face, and another run of bloody gashes over his left eye. Kern remembered the arrow, stuck through the muscle on Daol’s upper arm, and his fall from atop one hut, and dismissed both at once. Reave had already broken away the head and pulled the shaft free. Daol bled, but not badly. For all of their years of friendship, he was not the one Kern worried for just now.
He knew who it was.
No need to run through his count again. The name surfaced in his mind, along with that last memory, as two raiders rounded hard one of the hovels his small line had anchored themselves between. Two burly men, one with reddish-orange strands tangled into thick locks, brandishing a war sword. Another with braids weighted on the end by wooden beads. He’d had a warhammer. A thick-handled maul made for breaking open skulls.
He remembered them.
And remembered that Ashul had jumped forward, alone, to head them off.
She lay in the sopping filth behind one hut. On her back. Dark hair splayed out around her head in a ragged, mud-soaked fan. She breathed in fits and painful gasps, and a trickle of rich, red blood seeped out from the corner of her mouth. Fathomless blue eyes
stared up into the gray overcast. Vacant. Unseeing.
Desagrena knelt by Ashul’s left shoulder, hands balled into impotent fists as she hammered at her own legs. Kern slid down beside her, leaning in close. Saw the dark stain spread across Ashul’s side, soaking the leather kirtle she favored. Her right hand reached out to rake up fistfuls of cloying earth. As if digging. Searching. The other, broken and useless, lay at her side, splinters of bone sticking out through skin, and the long sleeve on her cotton shift.
“W-ull ...” Her breath came ragged and shallow. “W-wwu ...”
“Hot iron!” he yelled over at Reave.
The large man rested against the mud wall of a nearby hut, face clenched in pain and staring up into the gray, swollen skies. Garret hunkered down next to him. It would have been a moment’s task, running to the burning lodge hall, digging the blade of a knife down into some hot coals. Pulling it out with a wrap of leather around the hilt. They could slap it into the wound. Painful, but fast.
Neither man moved. And a cold hand fisted inside Kern’s guts.
Then Aodh was there. Grief in his eyes. His mouth pulled into a fierce line beneath his salt-and-pepper moustache. Kern remembered seeing his kinsman spend time with the Taurian woman. Friendly moments. Obviously Desa knew it had been more than that. She slid aside, making room for him as he crouched over Ashul’s head, cradling it with two large hands.
“We’ll seal the bleeding,” he promised her, whispering softly. Though still no one had run for a fired blade. He wiped at a blood spot on her cheek, and merely smeared it over with mud from his own hands. “You’ll be fine. You’ll be fine.”
And do what for her arm? It was smashed into pulp and splinters. Mayhap the Callaughnan shaman would have had an answer, but nothing Kern or the others might do with Vanir war hosts chasing down on them.
It was wishful thinking. Reave and Desa had already known the wound in her side was beyond fire and steel. Beyond any kind of fancy stitching. Kern smelled it now as well. A latrine stench. Sharp and acrid. The Vanir blade had stabbed too deep. Into her bowels. The wound was already fouled, and certainly her insides were filling up with blood. Every heartbeat. Every breath.
Kern set his face in a tight mask, shook his head as Ossian trotted up, and Valerus and Nahud’r, and Brig Tall-Wood behind them. Hydallan, helping Daol. Danon and Mogh.
“Woool-p-ph . . .”
Whatever she was trying to say, she didn’t have the strength left. Her back arched violently, her body wracked with pain. Her good arm spasmed out to her side. Ossian crouched and tried to grasp at her free hand, but she yanked it aside and flailed again at the ground. Straining to reach, digging at the soft, sour muck, wanting to take up . . .
“Sword,” Kern said in a hushed breath. “Bring her her sword.”
He glanced around. Found it an arm’s length behind on his side, not Ossian’s. Crabbed over to snatch it from the clinging ground.
Saw the severed hand still holding a northern war sword, lying just beyond it amid a pool of fresh, dark blood.
He edged back as Wallach helped Ehmish join the growing circle. And Old Finn hobbled up.
“Took his hand,” he said, leaning over Ashul again. Bringing the blade up hilt first and laying it down the length of her body.
Ossian helped her bring her hand up to find it. She grasped it. Held it hard against her chest.
Kern nodded. “Took his hand even after he’d killed you.”
And then the raider with the warhammer had bashed in her side. Left her for dead.
But hearing his voice. Hearing him speak about that last, terrible moment, perhaps, Ashul blinked back the vacant film for a moment. She offered Aodh a pain-filled grimace. Then her gaze shifted, finding Kern.
“Wolf-f,” she spat out, blood flecking her lips.
Wolf-Eye. Yea, he was there. He saw. His golden eyes held hers for a moment. Watched as Ashul rallied what little strength she had left to her. She tipped her head up, out of the mud, and muck. Her face was a carved mask of pain and determination both.
“Whu . . . One ...”
Her breathing hitched and she coughed, spitting out tiny droplets of blood. Aodh wiped at these too, smearing them with grime. But she fought his urges to lay back. Rest.
“One of . . .” she managed. Gritted her teeth together. “One . . .”
One of them.
Kern’s muscles tightened. All his life, he had been the outsider. The different one. He remembered Maev, Burok’s daughter, accusing him only the day before the old chieftain passed. Before the nightmare of the last few months began. It should have been you. Lying on a sickbed. Dying.
And it should have been him, now, stretched out in the filth. Was that what Ashul wanted to say to Kern Wolf-Eye? One of the Ymirish. One of them?
But she said nothing more. Her reserves spent, she eased back, eyes clenched against the pain. Her breath came faster, shallow, and smelling of fresh blood. Aodh pressed his hands to either side of her face, arms quivering. A gut wound, she could linger for moments, or hours. Hours they didn’t have, and that she would know only the worst kind of suffering. Everyone waited. And finally the veteran nodded.
Kern reached for Ashul’s knife, belted at her side still, tied down with a strap of leather. But Ossian’s hand shot out, grabbing him by the wrist. Stopping him.
“She’s my kin,” the Taurian said.
It wasn’t a denouncement. Or a challenge. Kern couldn’t even be sure how he would have handled either at the moment. Hard enough to think of it as a request—an offer from a good man with a strong heart—as a hot rage warred within him against a bloodless, chilling calm. For a moment, he thought the anger might win. Sparks fired off behind his eyes and, overhead, thunder crashed through the heavens, shaking him. Lightning sheeted across the sky, and for an instant, Kern thought he might drown in the violet, violent light.
But sixteen pairs of eyes burned cold against his skin. People who relied on him. Lives for which he had made himself responsible.
And whether Ashul would still claim him or not, he still claimed her as one of the pack. He quashed the rage, no matter how much he craved the warming heat it might bring, and raised his eyes to find Ossian.
“Mine, too,” he promised. And the other man pulled back, leaving Kern to draw forth Ashul’s knife.
Everyone held their breath. Watched the fallen woman measure her strength against the pain. Not one of them shamed her by looking away. Kern laid the edge of the short blade alongside her neck, where her life pulsed hard but thready. One quick movement, and he would ease her pain in a few last heartbeats.
Then he glanced up. His gaze drawn away by movement, or the silver-gray splash of color against the dark forest. Looking between Desa and Aodh to find Frostpaw. The dire wolf stood rigid and calm at the very edge of the village proper. Golden eyes on fire. Also respectful. Also waiting.
The pack took care of its own, always.
Then it moved on.
Kern dropped his gaze back to Ashul’s pale, bloodless face. Memorized every last detail, from her sharp-lined nose to the widow’s peak that tilted down toward her brow. Then he said his own quiet farewell.
“We move on,” he promised.
And released her.
LODUR SMELLED THE fresh blood. Metallic, and not a little acrid, like the scent of a blade new-sharpened against a whetstone. It left a dry taste on the back of his tongue. Not even the fresh mud or the heavy mixture of woodsmoke and scorched flesh lying over Gaud could hide that familiar taste from him.
Not anymore.
Behind the sorcerer, who hunched down in his great cloak of white bear, half a hundred raiders stood at the forest’s edge, surrounding a good portion of the village. They watched. They waited. While an arrow-shot away, small buildings huddled together in shadow and the early evening’s gloom. No sign of life. Or threat, either. Just the glow of the burning lodge and the echoes of a lost battle in Lodur’s ears.
Shouts and curses. The r
inging clashes of steel against steel. The wet slap of blade into flesh. At first, he had thought them the strains of a nearby battle, brought to him on the valley’s cold, springtime winds. But then he had pulled the one voice out from among all the others. Magni. One of his brethren. Who had been outmatched and run off like a cur licking his wounds, to be laughed at around an evening’s campfire, no doubt.
By him.
Kern.
Striding forward, he left behind the cold echoes of Magni’s presence. One of Grimnir’s faithful, yea, but not yet having reached his own ascension. Not yet answered Ymir’s Call. Magni, who waited still in the woods with his hawk and his shame. Waited for judgment. His. Lodur’s.
“They came down through that break in the trees,” Lodur said, his voice barely raised above that of a cold, alpine breeze. He could feel the energy of the Vanir’s charge, tasting like red meat crisping over a flame. The northern warriors bled their emotions like sizzling juices. Days from now, he still would have been able to sense what had gone before.
“They came through, pushing right into the heart of the village, between these two hovels.”
Barely more than holes dug out of some riverbank, in his mind. He stood between them. Drank up the scent of blood and anger. Let it course through his veins in a warmth he had never known before answering the Call, and still reveled in feeling.
“Came through here, and fought, and died, and fell back.”
But not all in vain. Lodur knew, stepping back behind the huts, that all of the lifeblood spilled had not been Magni’s raiders. There. A dark patch that crawled among the ground muck, where a body had lain, and died. Slicked with the blood of their enemy. Warm and leathery of taste. Blood of the Cimmerian herds they had come to cull, to slaughter, and take as spoils.
Because the great frost-giant god, Ymir, had once laid claim to this land. Had been driven off by the cursed Lord of the Mound, banished to the frozen wastes of the north, but had never forgotten. And, passing His cold fire through many First Born, the giants who raged among legend and the Vanir religion for centuries, and then to the Great Ones such as Grimnir himself, that hunger had soaked into the land through so many generations, until the Ymirish were ready to reclaim Cimmeria for all. So it had begun.
Cimmerian Rage Page 18
