“Late comin’ across,” he said. “Gaud died o’er ten day ago. Paid t’eir ransom.” He squinted. Leaned forward suddenly. “Talked o’ you? The wolf-eyed ones?”
Wherever the talk could have gone, this was one direction Kern had not anticipated. Forgotten, for the moment, were his anger and his worry for the waste of time, as faces flashed through his memory. “Survivors? You are saying that survivors from Gaud passed over toward Murrogh and Lacheish? Who? What where their names?”
“Valleymen.” The chieftain brushed aside the need for their names with a shake of his head.
“Can you describe them?”
He could so easily remember Maev’s face, from before and after her capture. He recalled the haunted look in her eyes when she came to his bedside. The desperation, and determination, both. Could she still be alive? Could Cul Chieftain?
“Weak arms and shaved faces, the most o’ t’em.” The tribal leader looked hard into Kern’s face. “Did talk about the killing o’ Gaud. Said the Wolf-Eye did it. Woman, she argued t’at were two types o’ wolf-eye.”
Maev? Perhaps that was wishful thinking. There would have been others from the village who might have recalled him well. He couldn’t let himself hope.
“Mayhap there are,” Kern said. And he offered the chieftain a short explanation of the threat of the Ymirish; the brood of Grimnir who led the Vanir. Avoiding his own background with Cul, with Maev, he told him instead of Callaugh and Conarch, and quickly of the need for Cimmerians to answer the call of the bloody spear.
“Vanir,” the tribal leader said, tasting the word. “T’ey are known t’ Galla. Some cross t’rough the Noose. More come o’er the Hoat’ Plateau.” His eyes, a dark indigo blue, narrowed. “Nay anyone ask Galla t’ help.”
“I am asking.”
“West’rn chieftains. T’ey send spear?”
Something warned Kern away from lying, even though his anger was beginning to creep back. Always back to this. His lack of standing among Cimmerian clans. Once outside, always outside. It made for a difficult choice of traditions, both of which carried the weight of law among Cimmerian clans.
“I carry it for them,” he finally said, voice tight. “It is the right thing. You must answer the call.” Nothing. No reaction from the Galla. “There are Vanir war hosts running the length and breadth of Connall Valley. You say they have already swept into the lake country. Eventually, they will strike at the mountains, and the Snowy River country.”
A shrug. “We move high. Where snows still fall and the cold night can freeze a man solid in t’ree days. We fall on t’em, and t’ey shatter.” He held his fist out, smashed it down. The gesture seemed robbed by the fact there was no other hand to slam it into.
“More will come. I’ve seen it.”
“More already come, Wolf-Eye. Vanir. Half day above valley.” He spat into the fire’s embers. Listened to the dark sizzle. Nodded. His voice did seem more subdued. More thoughtful. “Big host. Twenty . . . t’irty campfires. Move slow, t’ey do. T’morrow eve, or next, t’ reach the Noose.”
Kern had been about to ask how the other man knew that, until he mentioned the fires. Galla clansmen must be as adept at reading such distant sign as the thready smoke of campfires as valleymen would have been tracking by crushed grass blades and broken twigs.
“You have to move,” Kern said at once, without preamble. “No matter what else, you do not want your people caught in the way of the Ymirish. They will sniff you out. They’ll do it for sport.”
“We can run,” the chieftain said, nodding, watching.
“Or you can fight. Come down the eastern slope with me. Clan Murrogh. The Lacheish. They will need your help.”
“They will nay want it. Busy, t’ey are. T’ey will nay ask for us.”
“Since when does Clan Galla ask permission!” Kern nearly shouted in the other man’s face, but held himself back. Barely. Even through his frustration and rising anger, he knew where to toe the line between insult and injury. He shrugged, his shoulders rising and falling once. Sharply.
“You will answer or you will not, chieftain of the spider’s teeth.” He wrenched the spear up out of the earth. “Do as you will. But you may be right about one thing. If this is the way Cimmerians choose to honor the traditions now, then I am nay Cimmerian.”
And his headache split wide open again as thunder crashed overhead. A violet flash of lightning peeked in from the slit in the door, in the wide cracks where the canvas sheet hung from the lean-to ceiling. The chieftain, his best warrior, the healer—all of them ducked back as if Kern himself had called the lightning down on them.
Let them be afraid, Kern decided. Let them hide their heads in the snow. He moved over toward where his possessions had been scattered over the felt mat of his bedroll. Still holding on to the spear, he began collecting his gear with his other hand, laying it out to be bundled up again. His anger fueled him. It drove him on, and he knew at that moment that if needs be he could tear his way from the tent, from the campsite, and go his own way. No one would stop him.
No one would be able to.
“Wolf-Eye.”
The chieftain stood beside him. Over him. With a nod toward the door slit, he led Kern over to the entrance to his grand tent. He pulled one of the flaps back himself, holding it with his good arm.
Outside, people rushed about, striking tents and gathering their possessions. Everything that could be carried on their backs or in small, two-man litters. A single, large fire had been set in a clearing, fueled with green-stick branches to create a billowing column of smoke. Using a large, damp blanket, two men smothered the fire, then rolled the cover off to release a huge pile of smoke. The soot-gray cloud rolled up between trees and into the overcast.
“We call ot’er nearby tribes of Clan Galla. T’ey will come, an’ we discuss what you say. We decide to move”—he grinned without humor—“or we decide to attack.”
“That would be a mistake.” The words were out of Kern’s mouth before he had the chance to think better of them. His head still pounded with the drumming of his own heartbeat. The afterglare of the lightning swam across his eyes, firing off painful sparks at the edge of his vision.
“Snowy River our land,” the chieftain said with a sudden snarl. “An’ nay anyone crosses the Noose wit’out paying ransom unless we decide.” He waved Kern forward. “You. You go. Talk wit’ the Murrogh. You nay like what you find. Two Galla hunters help take your friend wit’ you. Back to your warriors. T’ey will nay be far off.”
Two large men did wait just outside. One, with the thunderbird tattoo masking his face. The other had a large spider-shape covering his entire chest, dyed in dark blues and purples and black. With a nod from their chieftain, they ducked inside, with the same litter from before, to collect Daol.
“He will live. An’ I will nay take ransom from you.”
Small favor. At least the delay, which he’d worried about, would be minimal. “When did you decide that?” he asked, looking for some insight into the Galla clansman. Wondering if there was anything else he might say, or do, to change the man’s mind.
The chieftain nodded down at Kern’s hand, still filled with the broken haft. “When first t’ing you take back was bloody spear. Luck to you, Wolf-Eye. Tahg Chieftain wishes it for you.”
Then he was gone, back inside. A moment later, the warriors who had guarded Kern’s possessions brought him his bundled gear.
Kern accepted it and stepped away from the door while Daol was brought out on the litter. His friend did not look well, but he was alive. And without the Galla taking them prisoner, knowing how to bleed the poison out, that might not have happened otherwise.
Fortune, or fate, still seemed to follow them all.
“Luck to you, Tahg Chieftain.” Kern’s voice was hardly more than a whisper.
“I think you will need it more.”
21
ROS-CRANA LED A small contingent of six warriors forward, marching into the shadow of Corag’s palisade
walls. In her left hand she raised a standard-bearer spear, with Clan Callaugh’s mountain lion skull mounted against the crosspiece. Each footfall was matched in her ears by the thunderous beating of her heart. They came with swords sheathed but ready hands on their hilts. No peace-bonding. Not even a small leather cord looped around the guard, as a token of respect for the local chieftain.
She was here to see Wellem bend his neck to her, and Clan Callaugh, or see this village pulled down around his ears.
There was nay a third option. Not anymore.
Her mouth tasted dry, like sun-cured leather, and a cold sweat dampened the nape of her neck though the sun was still hours away from burning off the morning fog. A whistle pierced the desperate stillness and a black-shafted arrow embedded itself into the muddy ground right in the path of her next step. She halted. Her half dozen bodyguards did likewise. No one broke ranks or so much as spoke, though a few hands tightened on their weapons, knuckles white with strain. Not out of fear, she knew, but with a thin resolution to keep their blades in their sheaths. This was the third arrow to threaten them since breaking her small party—her em-bass-y, to use the Aquilonian word—away from the impressive war host assembled on the glen’s upper ridge. And threats, without action, were insult.
She stepped over the arrow and continued on.
The walls loomed above them, timber poles strapped together with leather bracing and coated with a special tar mixture to resist burning. Four times the height of her largest man, at least. But the defenses of Corag were nothing to her. Nothing to the woman who had studied Callaugh’s defenses her entire life and had thoughts even on how to defeat those.
Here, she doubted it would take more than half a day. With archers on the ridge, she could rain arrows down on the palisade rampart. There were two low hillocks to offer cover for a party of brave men and women, and hooks on the poorly built tower would soon have it pulled down, ripped away from the wall and likely breaching the palisade with a few timbers uprooted out of the muddy, spring-softened earth. Even if not, bring in a hefty tree felled from the ridgeline, and the gates would shatter. Lose ten . . . fifteen men. But Corag would be hers, and Wellem’s head would be pegged up on a pole before nightfall.
If it came to that.
With other leaders, and the warriors of four different clans watching her, always measuring her strength versus theirs, she knew that it might.
In the week since storming out of T’hule Chieftain’s lodge hall, in fact, she had known little else but such measuring stares. A few warriors had looked ready to challenge her as she turned her back on T’hule, and Clan Conarch, beneath his own roof. But Conarch and Callaugh had existed for far too long in their uneasy peace for anyone to break it without a direct command from the chieftain. And Conarch had been weakened, in two years of battle and bloodshed. The Vanir had burned and pillaged, murdered and raped their way across the northwest lands, and not even Grimnir himself had ever summoned up enough strength to raze the birthplace of Conan to the ground, true. But weakened, yea, that they were. Kern had seen that. Ros-Crana recognized it now.
And T’hule, he’d had to swallow it with every raid, every burned crop, and in every minor insult as the southernmost villages sent fewer and fewer warriors to his aid.
Ros-Crana had split the ranks wide open that night, refusing to bend her neck to him when he all but dismissed the heroic efforts of Kern Wolf-Eye. Outcast he might be, but when a blood debt was owed, one at least acknowledged it. And she hadn’t. She had counseled Kern with restraint and offered him little support, when deep down she had known he’d the right of it. Cimmeria did not belong to the Vanir, by Crom. Had they truly grown so contemptuous of his gifts as to be willing to lie down in front of such injury?
Not anymore. That was her pledge to herself. And a chieftain honored all pledges. Especially those.
Her brother had taught her that.
Yea, he might have. But how Ros-Crana approached Clan Corag’s dismissal of her summons was pure Kern. A lesson that Wolf-Eye had taught her during the bleak winter days. To lead by example and, when challenged, to never hesitate.
Which was how seven Callaughnan warriors came to be assaulting a gated village. With no weapons drawn.
A fourth arrow whistled in, and dug into the soft mud not a finger’s width from her foot. Ros-Crana growled deep in her throat, turned an angry glare up to the top of the palisade, but the archer was not about to show himself. You never wanted an enemy to know whence death might come.
But this one, he had come too close. One nick, one drop of bright scarlet blood, and she would be unable to control her small cadre of warriors. They would certainly draw blades and charge forward the last two dozen paces. Hammering at the gate ahead. Their six against the fourscore of Clan Corag, calling to the warriors on the ridgeline for support. Maybe half of those would charge to her side, and it would be a one-sided slaughter until she was able to reassert control and set a proper assault.
Too close by half.
With a sharp thrust, she planted her hunting spear in the soft ground, leaving her clan’s standard standing by itself. Bending down, she snatched up the arrow and held it overhead. With a quick snap, she broke the arrow in two and threw it aside. There were more than a few cheers from the sevenscore warriors who spread around half the sheltered glen, waiting her signal, or her success.
She never doubted which it would be. Wellem didn’t have the stones to start a feud with Clan Callaugh. A smart chieftain would have realized that before and fallen in line. A strong chieftain might have let it be decided by a Challenge Circle. He was neither.
And now, drawing her belt knife, Ros-Crana charged forward the last half dozen steps. With a violent yell, letting her voice be filled with the contempt and rage she had felt over his insults, she slammed the blade into the palisade’s wooden gate.
Stepped back. Leaving it stuck there in a challenge Wellem would have no choice but to answer.
Seven warriors marking Corag’s gate? In full view of a war host made up from a half dozen local villages?
“I am Ros-Crana of Callaugh. My army surrounds Glen Corag. Wellem Chieftain will treat with me, or I will rip his village apart and leave it for the nearest Vanir host. If he is too timid, let him send a woman to do his job properly.”
A public scathing. And more than any man of Cimmeria should be willing to bear.
Curses and unfriendly shouts gave way to an order to move aside, then came the long, scrape of a wooden timber being draw out of its irons. The main brace. For all its shoddy construction, the single-door gate swung out effortlessly on a hinge forged from blue iron and greased with boiled fat.
Wellem Chieftain stood just inside, flanked by two solid-muscled warriors and backed by another two dozen men and women who waited, blades naked in their hands. It was an invitation for war, to show this kind of force. And she’d have none of it. She drew her own blade, handling the heavy war sword as if it weighed nothing more than a knife.
Her escorts all rasped weapons free from sheaths.
“Insults and threats, Ros-Crana? This what Narach’s people expect of you?”
He sounded tired. Especially for a man of only thirty summers. A good age for a chieftain, except the last few years for any of them had been long, long. Strapped with brawny muscles, and an arrogant stance she had once admired, but there was something fragile behind his eyes. Something she’d noticed last autumn, after his daughter had been captured by Vanir raiders. Ros-Crana hadn’t witnessed it herself, but the talk had worked its way to Callaugh. Her screams had echoed through Glen Corag, tempting the man to battle until he had pounded his fists bloody against the gates. But two Ymirish sorcerers and a small Vanir war host camped on the ridge had convinced the chieftain that duty to his clan—always, clan before kin!—was to remain shut up and safe. Dawn, the raiders moved on for easier prey.
Ellai, Wellem’s daughter, lived for half a day after they found her.
No one had challenged him since, b
ecause he had given so much for Corag, and he enjoyed T’hule Chieftain’s favor as well. Trade with Conarch was always favorable.
But he dared stand there and lecture her on the needs and wants of Clan Callaugh?
“Your archers shot four arrows at me,” she said in outright contempt. “One warning is generous. For kin’s sake.” They were distant cousins, after all. “If you had marched on my walls, as I did just now, you would have been put down like a foaming cur.”
His face tightened. Folding thick arms across his chest, he challenged her with a scowl. “Time with that wolf-eyed Ymirish did more than taint your vision, Ros-Crana. Poisoned your tongue as well.” He took a stab at a smile. Failed. “Now you demand lives to throw after him? Let the valleyman go chasing after Grimnir to his death and good riddance.”
“I don’t go to chase after him, Wellem. I go to join him against our enemy. And when Callaugh calls on Corag for assistance, it answers!”
A sneer. “T’hule Chieftain spoke truth when he turned Wolf-Eye away. He is outcast! Outside the clans.” A grumble of agreement rolled up from his people, but it wasn’t as strong as it could have been. “No place for him here.”
“Yea? And would there have been more room behind your walls if Wolf-Eye had come last harvest? And Ellai lived?”
Wellem paled. His craggy features smoothed with shock, as if he’d been slapped. He stepped right up to the gate’s threshold, but—one wary glance at her palisade, the line of ready warriors who ringed half his village glen—did not cross that invisible line drawn between them. That way invited bloodshed and death for his clan, his kin.
Chieftains lived for more than their personal honor at times. But only to a certain pass.
“You go too far, woman.”
She had. Twice now. Bitter insults she made him swallow for the sake of his people. Holding the blade of Clan Callaugh’s strength at his back. “And I say you do not go far enough. None of us did before he came.”
“We do not follow that mongrel.” There were nods, but fewer shouts of agreement. A few eyes shifted from one side to another. “Bloody spear or nay.”
Cimmerian Rage Page 23
