Age of Conan: Songs of Victory: Legends of Kern, Volume IIl

by Loren Coleman

  One of them, certainly, would be.

  The beast’s eyes no longer saw, Lodur knew. One swollen shut of infection, the other had the same dull, glazed overcast he had seen on so many dying men. The Ymirish knew death very well, in fact, though it did not take an expert to judge the horse on its final legs. Its brown hide was dry and waxy, caked in dirt and dried sweat. A hard week’s ride had split all four hooves high up into the bone, and when Lodur reined in the beast leaned to one side, favoring its right foreleg, which bled from bone splinters poking out through its leathery skin.

  At this point if he walked the animal over the edge of a cliff it would hardly shy away. Which was why Lodur picked out his trail with greater care, so close to his destination.

  His breath frosted in the air, and not even the heavy cloak of white, northern bear or a jerkin backed by the thick, shaggy hide of a mountain ram were enough to keep gooseflesh from puckering the skin on his arms, the back of his neck. The Lacheish Taiga, he decided, were good lands. Wide and open. Still caught in winter’s weakening grip this high, this far north, though infernal spring had finally settled over most of the rest of Cimmeria. A thin blanket of old snow crusted over with ice spread in a perfect white carpet down the side of this hill. It rolled right to the edge of a high country lake, with its still, blue waters so close to freezing Lodur could all but taste the ice in the air.

  There were a few obvious paths around the lake’s edge, churned into mud and gray slush. These all led to a wide yard which had been swept clear of snow and laid over with carefully sawn planks. Here several men, women, and youths worked: tending rafts; packing in firewood from the thin forests that surrounded the lake; dealing with the daily chores of survival.

  Here, also, the first long pier had been anchored—a wide, wooden walk, stretching out far past the shallows before it branched in several directions. One in a large network of piers, it created elevated paths and platforms among several dozen stilt homes and more than a few floating huts as well. And Clan Lacheish’s lodge home, of course. A two-story structure, lifted on several dozen sturdy pilings, crouched out over the deep, near-freezing waters without any need of walls or palisade.

  A good, defensible position.

  Not that it would help the Lacheishi. He wheeled his mount down a snowcapped trail, kicking it into a final canter as he rode hard for the village. Not that anything could help them now.

  He hadn’t come all this way to fail.

  Two weeks! He looked upon the time as lost, if not completely wasted. Two weeks since he’d come over the Pass of Noose from Conall Valley. Since he’d hammered several tribes of Clan Galla into small splinters—that night of fire and ice and dark, leathery wings. Two weeks since he’d set his war host to hunting the mountain people through the Snowy River country. Not much less since he’d brought the core of his own war host down out of the Black Mountains. Still on his trail. Still after him.

  Kern. The false one.

  Cursed of Ymir.

  So close. Lodur had been so close that where he crossed Kern’s path the other man’s footsteps echoed painfully from the ground, and the Ymirish tasted the blood they’d shared.

  And that which they did not.

  It was always there, that foreign taste, under the cold, pure ice that all Ymirish shared with their frost-giant god. A warm, leathery scent, not unlike that of the horse on which he rode. His grin was savage. Just another beast, Kern’s mother. A Cimmerian animal who whelped Lodur’s corrupted brother here, in these lands once protected by Crom. Lands once belonging to the Vanir and now, under command of the northern “frost-men,” would be theirs again.

  That was the promise. The power of Ymir’s Call.

  The snow-crusted ridge gave way to gentle slopes, then gray, sloppy trails. The horse’s hooves beat against frozen ground, mixing its own blood into the slush. Riding down at the pier where two Lacheishi skinned a large stag strung up within a tripod of heavy poles and several more worked to build a large, flat-bottomed raft. Riding at them as if he’d draw free his broadsword and take their heads.

  One man looked up. Then a woman. Blue-gray eyes, and dark hair shaved back from their temples, which was a Lacheishi custom. Animals, still. Cimmerian animals.

  Two youths, repairing a large net they’d spread out over the ground, jumped back as he rode right across their work and reined in to a hard stop near the slaughtered elk.

  There were shouts and grumbling, a few dark glares, but no real challenge. As he expected. There would be no confusing him for anyone other than what he was. Not with his dead-frost hair and fierce, golden eyes. Unlike anyone of this land. Unlike their northern neighbors, as well, with the flame-haired Vanir and golden locks of Aesir blood.

  Ymirish! Blessed son of Ymir, frost-giant god of the north. One of Grimnir’s faithful, who had marched for years as a great warrior, and was now a sorcerer filled with power and purpose.

  They knew him. They knew his look, regardless. And if they did not yet fear him, they would. They would.

  Lodur swung off the animal’s back, landing heavily and leaving the reins to dangle at the side of the horse’s neck. The animal sweated fiercely, its flanks heaving with exertion to pull what it could of the crisp air into damaged lungs.

  “Take care of horse,” he growled at the nearest Lacheishi youth, using the guttural tongue of Cimmeria.

  “Take care of how?” the boy asked, staring in dismay at the wretched creature. “Looks sick.”

  Worse than that, Lodur knew. Dead on its feet. He withdrew his touch—the strength he had fed the beast over the last several days, convincing it to move just a little bit faster, a little bit harder than it otherwise would have. Took back everything he had given it in a false promise, and, always, just a little bit more.

  The horse gave a last, shrill nicker. Then collapsed as if suddenly poleaxed.

  Lodur glanced at the half-skinned stag. “Slaughter it,” he said. Then was past the small crowd to meet his brother at the edge of the pier.

  Water lapped softly against the shoreline, stirred by a stiff breeze that raised sharp, choppy waves out over the center of the wide lake. The scents of damp wood and old fish were strong. Nearly overpowering. He jumped up onto the pier, caught himself as his boot slipped on the polished worn wood, then traded long, cold stares with the man who had come out to meet him.

  Torgvall was young. Twenty-one summers. Years away from hearing Ymir’s Call sing in his blood, if he ever did. Like all Ymirish, he had the same hair, the same great, golden eyes. He also had a glassy burn scar against the side of his head—struck by a flaming brand some clansman had snatched from a fire, Lodur knew. That man had died badly.

  Standing half a hand taller than Lodur, and at least two stone heavier, with the war axe he carried slung across his back, Torgvall could easily have cut a man in two. Even Lodur, if he’d dared raise a weapon to one of Grimnir’s sorcerers.

  Torgvall reached out, hesitant, tugged on the heavy, white bear cloak Lodur wore. “Thin blood, brother?”

  Himself, he had pulled on thick boots and a bronzed cuirass common among northern warriors, and a heavy leather skirt. Nothing else against the late-year freeze, or the bone-deep chill radiating off the high country lake.

  Fire danced in Lodur’s eyes. He felt it spark, but reined it in. “Thick enough,” he said. Stepping to one side of the wide, wooden walk he felt the water’s chill reaching up at him, and fought against an urge to pull his cloak closed at his throat.

  This last winter, and the return of spring, had seen many changes in Lodur’s life. His Ymirish blood, once steeped so heavily in winter’s ice he could walk unclothed through the worst blizzard and survive, was no longer so accommodating. Thinned, yea. Just as the power he’d come into at Venarium had eaten away at his once-brawny muscle, as well. Sapping his warrior’s strength. Trading physical strength for a greater, more terrible purpose and the actual touch of true warmth.

  A bargain he would not give up for anything.
And one Torgvall would kill for. When his time also came.

  “Tell me,” Torgvall said, falling in beside him, walking half a step back out of caution, or deference. “You came over the Hoath Plateau?”

  “Partly. Along the Black Mountains’ eastern slopes and across one corner of the plateau. We found wounded, ran down several families in flight, all heading south. But saw more sign in the way of summoned war hosts. Warriors rallying. Villages laying in extra wood, food, and water, preparing for a hard summer.”

  After such a long and difficult winter, dealing with deprivation as well as frequent Vanir raids, the Cimmerian clans should not have had such a fight left in them. Certainly the valley had fallen easily enough beneath Grimnir’s mighty blade.

  “Enough to see the Hoathi are strong, still. Clan Lacheish must nay be allowed to join their strength with them. Yet.”

  “Will nay be any problem,” Torgvall promised. “Cailt Stonefist still aches for his daughter, even after five years. And with so many men dead, on either side, the Lacheishi and Murroghan will never give up this feud.”

  Especially with Torgvall here. Delivering warriors. Delivering supplies. Promising, if nothing else, that the Great Terror, Grimnir, had nay intention of attacking their clan. Keeping the lake-dwelling clan stirred up, with their anger focused south. Never west.

  But still Grimnir had his doubts. Which was why Lodur had been summoned away from his chase of Kern Wolf-Eye, to move his war host north, onto the edge of the Hoath Plateau, then he alone had been sent riding hard for Clan Lacheish. Into the camp of their enemy.

  “There will be nay problem,” Torgvall promised again, bristling when Lodur said nothing.

  Still Lodur ignored the other man, paying more attention to their surroundings. Drinking in every detail. Their feet thumped heavily on the rough-hewn planks. An occasional loose board rattled in place, but for the most part the Lacheishi had built solid, and well. The first stilt homes sat just off the side of the pier, attached to the massive walk by short, solid ramps. Doors had been carved with easily recognized symbols—a crescent moon, a sword, twin trees—to tell them apart at a glance.

  Then came a covered platform layered over with gray flagstone, atop which was built a stone oven and several enclosed fire pits for drying and smoking catch from the lake. Two women worked at one of the smoke pits—hanging two racks of lake perch from an overhead beam, chucking handfuls of wood chips onto glowing embers, and wrapping a woolen blanket around to make a cloth chimney to contain the heat and smoke. They ladled up water from the lake and dribbled it over the blanket, carefully soaking the material to prevent it from catching fire.

  Small floating docks. Fishing rafts.

  Another covered platform, under which rested shelves of coiled rope, sheets of heavy canvas, leather buckets, blades, and stacked lumber. Tools and community supplies of all kinds. Lodur paid especially close attention to such caches.

  And to the people, of course. The clansfolk who tolerated—barely, it seemed at times—two Ymirish inside their village. Many pulled back into doorways, into shadows, as the pair passed along. Braver men and women, or simply the more foolish, stood their ground, often forcing one or the other of the golden-eyed men to brush past uncomfortably close, hands on weapon hilts. The clansfolk’s gray-blue eyes were cold, and cautious, and always watching—always ready!—no matter what their chieftain, this Cailt Stonefist, might have ordered.

  Nay any problem? The Lacheishi were trouble waiting to happen at the wrong time.

  Lodur stopped alongside the pier’s edge, where he could look out over the gray waters. “I am here,” he finally said, “to be certain of this.”

  “He nay trusts me?” Torgvall asked, speaking of Grimnir, the Great Terror himself. His hands clenched and unclenched, as if wishing for the haft of his battle-axe or a throat to wrap about. “Or you do not?”

  “There is very little difference in that, isn’t there?” Lodur gazed down past his feet, at his dull, distorted reflection wavering over the lake’s surface. A swirl of water pulled his features apart, stretching them, flattening out his face until he was a grotesque parody of himself. A darkness stirred at the back of his mind, interested now. Clawing its way up from the depths where such power dwelled. Violet sparks fired painfully in his peripheral vision, and the reflection stretched, and ran, then slowly coalesced into a new image that was not his own but a face he knew nearly as well.

  Grimnir!

  Skin the color of rotten snow and tangled braids crusted with old, dried blood. Deep, dark eye sockets from within which golden orbs flared with the same fire he shared with the Ymirish. A snarl of cunning, of pain, and of anger—Lodur’s memories: the before and after of the battle at Clan Conarch, then the rage he had shown in Conall Valley this spring.

  Lodur felt that same, savage strength stretching out over his face, and when he looked back to Torgvall, the younger, larger man started. But his hands stayed far, far away from any weapon, Lodur saw.

  “Very little difference,” he reminded the warrior. “Grimnir knows you. Senses us all. But here, I have his voice.” He started walking again, drawing his brother after him like a dog to its master.

  “And he has new orders.”

  4

  IT SHOULD HAVE been an easy march, returning to Clan Murrogh from Gorram Village. West from the hillside community, follow the second stream for two leagues, then bear south by west for two days . . . two and a half. Keep an eye on the sun for direction. Check the mossy side of any tree if a dark overcast hid the sky.

  It should have been.

  Murrogh Forest, Kern had discovered in their first week over the Black Mountains, was no simple woods. An immense tangle of trees and heavy undergrowth, cut apart by wide streams, a few rivers, and many, many sheltered ponds, a man might be days running from one side to the other. Not as wide as Conall Valley, certainly, but with its own secrets and its own charms.

  At times it put on a gentle face, with hidden, quiet glades full of wildflowers and open fields that ran beside cheerful, burbling brooks for as far as a league.

  Often a sudden ridge would poke above the forest floor, and one might follow the lazy, winding valley as it stretched northward, toward higher plateaus and, eventually, the distant Eiglophian Mountains.

  But there was a dark heart to the Murrogh as well. Places where briar thickets suddenly choked off a path, and sunken marshland gripped at anyone attempting to pass. Where dead birch and rotted pine tilted from bogs at desperate angles, and old, diseased willows spread their shroud of slender branches over quicksand graves. A large clan might be swallowed up by the Murrogh, and one would never know.

  Which was why Kern now waited in the company of Brig Tall-Wood and Gard Foehammer, the three men watching as young Ehmish rapidly climbed a tall pine to gauge their progress. Daol stood off to one side, maintaining his distance, as if insulted. Though it had been his idea to send Ehmish into the forest canopy this morning. Just to be safe. Kern had been willing to give his friend the benefit of the doubt. Only once since their arrival over the Black Mountains had Daol gotten turned around on a march, and in the hunter’s defense he’d still been recovering from the spider’s poison. Still a touch feverish.

  That was the only explanation for his getting them lost. It just didn’t happen. Usually.

  Of course, Reave and Wallach Graybeard had ribbed him for days after that.

  The pine was nowhere near so large as a valley watch-tower tree, but high enough to give an eagle’s view over the nearby forest. Ehmish hung in among the thin branches way up top, the slender trunk bending around under his weight, swaying back and forth in the breeze shaking the forest treetops, stirring along the forest floor. Branches rubbed together in a rustle of leaves and dry, creaking wood. The wind smelled of pine and cedar, soft earth, and—somewhere close—a large body of water.

  And of horse.

  A leather-and-sweat scent. And a kind of mustiness Kern associated with cattle as well. Valerus wal
ked his mount over and ground-hitched the beast. Giving it a hard pat on the side of its muscular neck, he stepped over to join the trio.

  His sandy-brown hair fell in tight, ringlet curls. He had strange eyes of a muddy-green color. An Aquilonian soldier—a civilized man—other than dark-skinned Nahud’r he was the oddest addition to Kern’s warrior pack. Kern had saved the man’s life on the bluffs overlooking Clan Conarch this last winter. Later, Valerus and his two cavalry companions joined Kern on the journey south, around Mount Crom and back up into the Valley.

  Most Cimmerians west of the Black Mountains had little to do with horses, except for meat. Finicky beasts, hardly worth the effort to keep alive, any healthy youth could outrun them over time and often while traveling through land that would snap a horse’s leg within a single morning. Or so Kern had once thought.

  Spending time with the southern cavalrymen had changed his attitude. Slightly. The southerners had fought well. He could say that about them.

  There had been plenty of opportunities to prove it.

  And when the others finally chose to turn south, for home, Valerus opted to stay with the pack. To see more of Cimmeria and learn more of this nation where King Conan had been birthed and raised. And to keep fighting the Vanir, whom he had come to see as a true threat to all peoples south of the Eiglophian Mountains.

  Everyone had their own reasons. Their own story.

  “How far off?” Valerus asked. His Cimmerian was improving, but still had the sharp, guttural accent of Aquilonian speech. “Do you think?”

  On the other side of Kern, Brig Tall-Wood shrugged. “I say we’ve drifted south, and are closer to the lake’s eastern side than the north shore.”

  “North,” Gard argued. “Half a day, at least.”

  “For a spot of two throws?” Cimmerians enjoyed wa gering. For honor, or for trophies. Brig was among the best—or luckiest—of men when it came to the dicing game so often played around evening campfire. Already seeking an advantage for his next game.