Cimmerian Rage

by Loren Coleman

  Which left Gard standing over Ehmish, who struggled to his feet. He bent down and got a hand beneath Ehmish’s arm, and hauled him up. The lad nearly shook him away—Gard felt the tension—but falling down would have been a poor show of strength. And Ehmish was so obviously struggling.

  “How do you feel?” Gard asked, turning him along the path, grabbing up his own bedroll as well as Ehmish’s pack.

  “Foolish,” was the dark, bitter response.

  The Cruaidhi warrior wrinkled his nose. “The poison in that creature’s scent was strong. Desagrena vomited. I saw.”

  “She’s a woman,” Ehmish said, as if that explained it all.

  “Do not let her hear you say that.”

  The boy chewed that over a moment and couldn’t help the snort that escaped him. “Nay. I won’t.” Then he sobered. “I don’t know what happened to them, Gard. And I should. One moment they were there, and the next . . .” He shook his head. “No calls for help. No alarm. No blood.”

  “Mayhap Kern saw something. Something happening to Daol, and ran off without thinking to call.”

  “Kern left his sword stuck into that creature’s side. When was the last time you forgot your blade, Gard Foehammer?”

  Never. A Cimmerian did not lose his weapon. Not if he wished to remain among the living.

  But one also could not dwell overlong in pity, or self-doubt. That way lay the path to a shortened life. And Gard did not want to see Ehmish end up as he had seen the death of Alaric Chieftain’s-Son. That was something he could do without.

  Stopping him with a light tug, he turned to face him squarely. “What curdles your blood more, Ehmish? That you sickened on that spider’s scent? Or that you could not save yourself and keep an eye on Kern?”

  “Neither! It sickens me that I could have stopped it all from happening and did not.” And in a short rush of words, he explained to Gard how he had scented out the trap before it had been sprung. How it might have all turned out differently.

  “Heartbeats, Ehmish. The decision of an instant.” He waved it aside rudely. “By your reason, I should nay deserve to live for being so foolish as to be blinded by the sorcerer’s wrath above Conarch. I had seen it happen to others. I should have prevented that!” It surprised Gard how hot and how quick the molten words poured out of him. Wasn’t that the very reason Sláine Longtooth had abandoned him after all?

  “That’s nay the same thing,” Ehmish said, shuffling from one foot to the other. The image of a boy being scolded.

  “Nay! It’s not. I was Cruaidh’s protector. Twelve summers I fought under the fox’s tail. You became a man just this winter. And if I can go on after what I have lost, you can stop whining like a spoiled pup who just got his ears nipped.” He saw Ehmish bridle at that, hackles up and ready to bounce back at him. Gard’s hands tightened into sledgehammer fists. “Nay another word, boy, or I’ll lay you back out across this trail.”

  For a moment, Gard thought the young man might do it. He saw Ehmish’s fists tighten up, and read the muscles bunching in his arms, his shoulders. And that cold, blue-steel gaze that could have cut stone. He nearly clapped the lad on the shoulder, impressed. But he let Ehmish square off and hold on to his anger instead. Knowing it would serve him better for the moment.

  “I’ll nay bother you with my whining, Gard Foehammer.” And he stalked aside, fuming, casting back dark looks that nearly had the other man grinning again.

  Nearly.

  “Good fer you.”

  Hydallan stood nearby, kicking over some loose rocks that had fallen down the cliff face and ended up on the trail and wringing his peaked, rabbit fur hat in gnarled, bony hands. He’d pitched his voice quiet enough to carry no farther than Gard’s ears. But the old man did not bother to hide his nod of approval. “That boy needs you,” he said in the same low voice.

  Gard stepped in closer. Only Brig Tall-Wood and Nahud’r stood nearby, the two of them talking quietly and gesturing up the trail, lost in their own discussion, but still Gard wanted no one else to overhear.

  “That boy needs Kern Wolf-Eye,” he said. That much should have been obvious to anyone who had seen the way Ehmish usually hung on Kern’s every word.

  “And you, Gard? What do you need?”

  For a man who had just lost his son to the unknown, Hydallan was too damn interested in others. Then again, with forty summers on him at least, no doubt he had learned to deal with hardship and endure, for the good of the clan.

  “Something of interest in those rocks?” Gard asked, changing the conversation. “You’ve been kicking them over for some time I’ve seen.”

  “Edges are too sharp,” he said. “At least, that’s what I’ve been a-saying. Think I’ve got Brig and Nahud’r convinced. The only way it makes sense.”

  “Only way what makes sense?”

  Hydallan kicked the rock fragments hard, scattering them along the trail. His leathery face peeked up at Gard, gray eyes a hard, hawk’s brightness. Wispy gray hair stuck out at odd directions, giving him a slightly wild appearance.

  “Daol was nay a fool, even if running into that web the way he did makes me think twice at times. But one o’ them spiders does not come up and take him from behind without a yell or a struggle. An’ Kern? If Crom blessed anyone with a special gift for survival, it’s him.”

  Gard couldn’t gainsay the old man on that one. But still he didn’t see. “So, what does that make you wonder about those rocks? About Kern and Daol?”

  Hydallan looked up the near-vertical facing. Five times the height of a man.

  “I’m a-wondering how Clan Galla managed to haul them up that there face.”

  19

  RUNNING ACROSS BROKEN ground with hands tied behind one’s back took a lot out of a man, Kern discovered. His sense of balance constantly thrown off. His legs burning with fatigue as they strained to compensate, holding down in a deeper crouch, lengthening his strides and stretching every jump a little farther.

  He’d lost count of the many times he or Daol stumbled. Fell. Bruised and bloodied legs did not stop their captors from prodding the two Gaudic clansmen up with spears, or more often simply hauling them back to their feet by the ropes tied around their necks. Two loops each, rubbing painfully at the raw wounds already burned across their skins, the other ends held by one of the heavily muscled men who ran to either side. Four to keep Kern and Daol under control. Another running ahead. The last one behind.

  No chance for escape. These men had known exactly what they were about from the very first moment.

  Hauled them right around the bend and up the side of the steep, ledge facing, their captors did. Two men below, four higher up. Daol had not been scrabbling back, but was dragged away by a noose similar to the loop that had come down around Kern’s head, drawn tight, choking off his breathing as well as his voice. He’d clawed at his neck, then behind him for a grip on the thin, strong cord. His grasping fingers discovered what felt like a hard stick with the loop of rope splitting right out of its end. Which made little sense to Kern until he twisted about far enough to see Daol being handled near the cliff’s base by a man with blue sworls tattooed across his bared shoulders and his dark, ravenlike hair pulled up into a topknot.

  Galla!

  Nomadic clansmen who hunted the Snowy River territory and high plateaus of the Black Mountains. In the middle of a fight for their lives, Kern’s pack was being raided!

  And the weapons they used were unfamiliar to Kern. Poles were as long as a good spear, and hollow. A loop of thin, white rope fed through from the base, where one end was tied off beneath the wrapping of a good leather grip and the other fastened round the middle of a wooden toggle. The rope looped out the far end in a simple snare. Set the loop, yank hard on the toggle to tighten it up, the pole cracked right into the back of the skull and kept the warrior far enough away to avoid hands, kicks . . . even swords, though a man’s first instinct would likely be to drop any blade and claw for breath.

  As Kern watched, and l
abored to breathe, a second noose lowered down the face and was dropped over Daol’s head. Used to haul him up into the air.

  Daol flopped himself toward the rock face and dug in with his hands and the toes of his boots, and climbed.

  Which made no sense to Kern until it was his turn. Right behind Daol. The second noose was made of thicker rope, but it still nearly strangled him as it lifted him off his feet. So much deadweight, he’d have thought the warriors above would have difficulty. Then he caught on to Daol’s idea and simply kicked himself around toward the rock face. Struggling up the cliff, helping his captors by climbing fast wherever he could, beat being strangled to death.

  At the top, fresh hands took up the mancatcher poles and tightened down once again, keeping the Gaudic warriors pinned against the ground though neither one had much fight left in him. No one spoke. Hand gestures and tiny whistles only, and breathy chuffs that sounded like the barking cough of a small animal. Hardly a sound was made that would have been heard below over the desperate, terrible screeching of the spiders, or the clash of weapons rising from the fight alongside the mountain trail.

  Kern wanted to ask their help for his warriors, his friends. The capture would be about ransom. They’d pay it. But the clansmen showed no interest in his struggles to speak.

  Then a second man knelt against Kern’s neck, pressing down hard just beneath the ear until his vision swam and a dark cloud crept in from the edges. He struggled violently again, trying to throw the clansman away, but to no avail.

  The darkness collapsed over him with a heavy weight. And he knew nothing more.

  Not until waking up after a time with his head splitting and the taste of old leather drying out his mouth. And a drip . . . drip . . . drip . . . of icy water splashing against his face.

  Kern struggled his eyes open, and the tattooed face of a Clan Galla hunter stared down at him, hair pulled up into a thick topknot, the outline of a thunderbird inked into his face, its outstretched wings covering his eyes like a mask. He poured a splash of water into his hand from a flask, then held it over Kern to drip . . . drip . . . tiny droplets over his brow.

  Seeing him stir, the warrior flicked what was left of the water into Kern’s face and hauled him up.

  The winds had picked up—sharp and biting—and his neck felt as if it had been branded with a hot knife. A roll of leather had been shoved into his mouth, wedged in hard to prevent any shouts, any effort to call a warning to his friends. Not that it seemed as if they were still close to the main trail. Hands were already fastened behind his back, the ropes already in the hands of his keepers.

  As easy as that. Ready to be run back to the Galla camp.

  Kern had dropped the provisions sack he’d carried, but not his bedroll. One of the Galla clansmen had recovered it. And Daol’s. Then they set off, the Gaudic clansmen being dragged between two of the burly men at first, until understanding that resistance would not to do much more than get them throttled, mayhap killed.

  Their keepers set a hard pace, often steering around softer, easier ground and drifts of old snow for rocky paths and hardscrabble. The reason was clear at once to Kern. Making it hard to track them, even should the others discover signs atop the cliff. He tried to steer his way through a snowdrift, once, and was yanked off his feet for the attempt. After that, he let himself be guided, conserving what strength he could. Making plans, and usually discarding them just as quickly. Keeping an eye on Daol, who had a pale, sickly look to him. Worried about putting one foot in front of the other without falling as they ran.

  Two leagues? Nay more than three, certainly, before the hunters slowed to a simple trot. Eyes searching the nearby peaks, and tree line. Listening to the far-off screeching of the wind tearing through the mountains.

  The screeching . . . ?

  Spiders! Somewhere close.

  He and Daol eyed each other warily, in no hurry to be staked out as bait for the loathsome creatures, or whatever the Galla had in mind. Something, obviously, as the small band turned away from their original run to chase after the sounds. Kern began to work the rope around his wrists again. Pulling them taut and working some slack into the simple binding. The rusty screeches grew louder, fast, until the horrible sound felt as if it were driving a hot blade through Kern’s ears and into his brain. Terrible, desperate calls that sounded as if a spider was dying just the other side of a short ridge.

  And the smell! Kern began to breathe shallow and short. Vomiting while chomping on a leather bit would not be pleasant. He could easily drown in his own bile if the Galla did not remove the gag.

  But then they were on top of the ridge, looking down, and Kern forgot the smell or his worries for being sacrificed in some primitive fashion to the mountain beasts.

  Daol sank to his knees, seemingly grateful for the rest. Kern could only stand and watch.

  Below, another half dozen men and women with top-knots pulling their hair up had one of the mottled gray creatures on its back. Four of them had mancatcher weapons, only now Kern saw their real use with each loop having snagged one of the spider’s limbs, used to haul back on the leg to prevent much if any movement. The creature’s four other legs had already been restrained, tied with the thin white cord and staked back with sharp poles.

  The Galla had not been raiding along the pass. Not originally. They had been hunting the spiders! Had likely been in position, moving up on the creature that had nested on the rock face, as Daol, then Ehmish charged right into the trapping web.

  The why of it, Kern observed below. One man with a large, swollen, leather flask crouched near the spider’s head. An arm’s length away from its clacking, ebony mandibles. It wasn’t clear, exactly, but he seemed to be leaning in to let the spider strike at the flask, chewing on it the way the one spider had savaged Daol’s quiver. Pumping the harmless skin full of poison.

  One of the women had an equally unpleasant duty, standing at the other end and using a short pole or club to tickle at the creature’s underside. She placed a booted foot up on the bloated abdomen, leaned in, and scratched the end of the wood among the coarse hairs and flaking, mottled skin.

  Suddenly, with a shout, she straightened up, drawing a line of viscous webbing from the spider’s spinnerets. Pulling a small flask from her belt, she dribbled something over the long strand, let it sit a moment, then rolled the webbing around the end of the pole like woolen yarn.

  When the pole had been tightened down near the underbelly again, she pulled a new, long thread of webbing out as the spider’s abdomen pulsed. More dribbles. Another moment winding the webbing around the end of her catch.

  He was finished well before she, and moved around to trade off and help wind greater and greater lengths of webbing from the producing spinnerets. As they did, the strands thickened, looked to be less viscous, and the spider actually quieted as it was robbed of its precious cargo.

  When they were done, Kern expected a finishing blow directly through the underside of its head. But the Galla clansmen simple unhooked the tie-down ropes, relying on their catching poles for the moment, and, with a coordinated move, they all released the far end of the catch ropes so that the thin, strong cord pulled through the hollow pole and slipped from the spider’s legs.

  They backed away quickly, carefully, but the giant nightmare had had enough for one day. Curling and rolling back to its feet, it stood up on its hind legs and waved four limbs in the air in a kind of empty challenge. Then, with a final, ear-curling shriek, it scrambled down a dry wash, toward a darkened hole, where it tucked itself in and disappeared.

  Kern could only bite down hard on the leather roll, forcing his breathing back to normal, and look his question at the nearest of his captors. The same one who had wakened him with a few flicks of water. The red and blue dye painting a thunderbird across his face. Tribal sworls marching in a line down either side of his neck. The man’s forearms were thick with muscle, a good strength for handling the ropes, though his skin showed several of what looked like pucke
red burn scars.

  He glanced between Kern and Daol, as if marking the difference in the two men. His feral grin showed large, wide teeth. “Nay edible.”

  It was the first thing one of them had spoken to their prisoners.

  And mayhap the spider wasn’t good for food. But the Galla warriors had found a use for the giant vermin regardless. Now Kern recognized how they had made rope so thin, so strong. Spider silk! And milking its poison to coat arrowheads, or the tips of spears, he guessed. He saw nothing good in the vile stench the spiders gave off when threatened, but he was willing to bet the Galla had found a use for that as well. A matter of survival, when the clan lived in the high mountains, always on winter’s doorstep, scavenging and raiding, and finding a way to use every last resource Crom had left for them.

  Despite the pain and the rough treatment, Kern could not help but be impressed. Though let him find that one of his pack had been hurt at the deadfall, one he could have helped rescue, and he swore to see each one of these warriors dead, their heads up on pikes.

  Until that time, he had to get these clansmen to talk to him. So he nodded down the dry wash, where the spider had crawled into its lair.

  The same warrior shook his head, guessing the question. “Ne’er head down a hole a’ter one a’tem.” His clipped speech was hard to follow. Harsh and unyielding. “Tear y’up good.”

  He didn’t doubt it. Not after seeing those sharp mandibles tear through Daol’s arrow case, smashing the set of shafts like they were twigs.

  As if remembering that incident, Daol groaned. Enough pain was laced through it that Kern looked over, worried anew. Even after the hard run they had been forced to make, his friend should not have looked so winded. So pale. Kern felt the burn in his legs, certainly, and each deep breath helped ease the hot coals burning down in his lungs, but there was no reason Daol should not be ready for another half day’s go.

  Then Daol’s eyes rolled back and he pitched forward, sprawling full length across the frozen ground.