Blood of Wolves

by Loren Coleman

  Daol shrugged again, though less easy than before. Perhaps Kern’s ideas would have been better received if spoken through Daol or Hydallan. The young hunter wondered so at the time. But that might have put his father on Cul’s chopping block. He’d felt relieved, truth be told, when Kern stared him back into his seat. Kern had been so completely certain he was already chosen to be cast out and obviously feeling he had nothing to lose.

  Instead, he would be heading east, accompanying Burok to the burial grounds of Cimmeria’s greatest chieftains while others paid the price in Gaud.

  Hydallan shrugged, producing a pinch of hoarded sage and crumbling it over the spitted bird. “Seen it several times, meself. Usually just one or two needs go. This year?” He shrugged again.

  “What else can we do?” Daol asked, turning the plump chucker. He did not mean for his question to be answered.

  Kern considered it, though. “We fight.”

  “Against the clan chieftain?” Daol asked, stunned Kern would say it aloud. He glanced toward the door, half-expecting the Tall-Woods or Cul himself to kick it down.

  “Nay,” Kern said at once. It was obviously an automatic response, and rightly so. You did not raise your sword, or even your hand, against the chieftain. “But we don’t lie down and die, either.”

  “Can’t fight the weather,” Hydallan said. An old Cimmerian adage. The elder man did not necessarily mean the lingering winter. Nodding slowly, he rested against his straw mattress, easing his back. His hands were not so strong anymore, and he had lost weight in the last year, but strength still pooled in the gray eyes he shared with his son.

  Daol blew out a breath of exasperation. “Saw Cul posting guards on the dry pits and the lodge door.” If they were going to talk about it, he was going to add in his own frustrations. “No food from the stores tonight. Worried that some might try to take it. When’s the last time Burok posted guards?”

  Kern remembered. “That spring when Reave kept hiding river catch in Bear-slayer’s bedding. Shook us all awake every night for three nights running with his cursing.” He couldn’t help the smile. “Posted a guard at the lodge for a week after that.”

  The three men shared a short laugh. Daol pulled the roasted bird off the spit and tore it into pieces with strong fingers. He handed his father fully half, and split what was left with Kern. The meat sizzled, dripping fat onto the floor.

  Kern held his other hand beneath it, catching the juices, not caring if they scalded him. “Take a few days just to reach the Snowy River country,” he said, thinking about the coming journey.

  Hydallan grunted. “Imagine Daol will lead ’em over, or meself. I can still find the trails even under four foot a snow.”

  It was hardly a boast. Daol might have the keener bowshot, but he’d learned everything he knew about tracking and trailblazing from his father. Kern, too, had learned a lot at the side of the elder hunter, before being handed an axe, though the closest Kern now came to hunting was checking the clan traplines, looking for fish or small game caught in any of the snares set out every month.

  “Three . . . four days north along the Snowy River. Then we’ll pass close by the flats leading east to the Lake Lands.” Kern balanced his portion of food in his hand, as if studying it. “Maybe their winter isn’t as bad. We can trade for supplies, bring them back down.”

  “Mebbe their winter is even worse, and they’ll be asking for ransom to let you pass by.” Hydallan shook his head, crunched through some of the small, hollow bones. “Don’t be borrowing from what ain’t there, pup.”

  Kern nodded, accepting good advice when he heard it. Still, “A little luck, now and then, never hurts.”

  “Especially when you’re rolling bones and looking for sixes.” Daol licked his fingers and fished out a small bag with his gaming dice in it. Popular over drink, it also made winter nights pass a bit faster. “Up for a challenge?”

  “Was earlier,” Kern said. He laughed harshly, without a measure of humor in it. “Cul nearly tossed me out of the game. You two play. I don’t much feel like it tonight.” He rose, still cradling the uneaten chucker.

  “You not gonna eat that, Kern?” Daol nodded at the cooling meat.

  “Eat it on the way back,” he promised, tripping the door latch and giving them both a nod against the night.

  Daol watched his friend go, trading a glance with his father. Both had a good feel for Kern. Both called him friend.

  And quite obviously to Daol, both were wondering why, of all times, did it feel that Kern had just lied.

  THE SNOWS HAD stopped sometime after sundown. A small break in the valley’s cloud cover let a half-moon smile down on the village of Gaud. It turned the snow a silvery white, and sparkled off the frost Kern breathed out as he moved away from the home of Hydallan and Daol.

  He hated lying, but had not wanted them to feel he took their generosity lightly. It wasn’t easy, what he’d decided. Kern’s mouth watered for a taste of the chucker’s browned skin. He resisted with only the greatest effort.

  The small bird steamed, but not with as much enthusiasm as before. It cooled fast. Still warm, though, when Kern found the right hut on the east side of the small village. A strong light danced within, jumping shadows at the lower edge of the door and inside the hide-covered window slit.

  “Burning up all his wood.” Kern nodded. Might as well be comfortable for the night.

  Old Finn answered Kern’s soft knock. Slight and shriveled, the elderly man stared at Kern as if waiting to be mocked again.

  Kern simply handed him the small portion of roasted bird, ignoring the complaints of his own stomach as he did it. Bad enough losing clan and kin. It was cruel of Cul to leave the village worrying over it through the night.

  It was a long, cold walk back to his own hut. Kern spent it sucking every last drop of fat from his fingers and thinking on what their new chieftain might visit on the village the next morning.

  4

  KERN PACED HIS way slowly through the village, his fur-lined boots kicking through the light snow cover, stopping when he saw crusted handprints or a more recent, crimson smear.

  On the door to the hut belonging to Gar and Fionna, a bloody swipe.

  Two smears on the larger, ramshackle home, under which roof lived Reave’s sister and brother-in-law, who had been caring for the husband’s sickly parents.

  Another, three huts farther along.

  Daol and Hydallan passed him by, making their own rounds and their own count. Their gazes flat and empty.

  Six, all told, by the time Kern threaded his way through Gaud and ended up near the lodge. By then he thought he could taste the blood, its metallic bite stinging at the back of his throat. Cul’s words came back to him, echoing in his mind.

  Weigh your own worth . . .

  Many had, apparently. Six brave souls had decided to end their own suffering and ease their burden on clan and kin.

  Kern rubbed a hand over his face, rough calluses burning against his freshly scraped cheeks, thinking he might still wake up from a terrible dream.

  The lodge was a hive of activity, with people coming and going and several clansfolk looking excited to be off despite the solemn night. Others moved mechanically, wrapped up in their own silent mourning. Cul seemed extraordinarily pleased with himself. He oversaw preparations for a midmorning departure. Setting others to packing sacks and travel casks, and ordering the slaughter of one of the village oxen. A skinny cow that had stopped giving milk. Half her meat would be wrapped and taken along on the trek.

  Maev was there as well, an arming sword belted at her narrow waist. She left provisioning to the others. On her order, Burok’s body had been brought up from the dry pits and the door he was stretched upon fashioned as a litter with long poles strapped beneath it as handles. It could be dragged or carried as was convenient. For the moment it rested on the hauling sled Kern often used for wood gathering. A good idea for as long as the snow cover lasted.

  Likely the entire way, gi
ven the look of the eastern mountains.

  “Wolf-Eye,” Cul called out, as Kern walked up. “You’ll help pull the sled today.”

  Kern shrugged, accepting the order in turn. There had been no cruel glee in assigning him the work. Neither was there any vote of confidence in the clansman’s strength, or honor, in being assigned the task of helping convey Bear-slayer’s body to its final rest. It was simply handed out, almost beneath the new chieftain’s notice. As if he had already forgotten Kern and the stand the other man had made the previous night. That it no longer mattered.

  One clansman had not forgotten the previous evening, though.

  Old Finn limped up to the lodge wearing his best winter gear, a bundle tied into his woolen blankets and hung over one shoulder, and a fresh-cut walking staff in one hand. The broadsword he once wielded alongside Burok Bear-slayer strapped proudly across his back. Except for his age, and favoring his right leg, he looked like a clansman ready for battle.

  The activity quieted, then ground to a halt as the village’s eldest warrior approached. Most had likely assumed him “released” in the night. Kern had noted the clean door on Finn’s hut that morning, hoping it meant more than there was no one to mourn for him. Kern hadn’t the heart to check for himself just then, faced with the other losses.

  Now he wished he had.

  Finn paused near Kern, just long enough to whisper, “Welcome at my fire anytime,” then limped on.

  Cul said nothing, watching the man’s slow approach with something akin to amusement. No one doubted that Finn was quitting the village. He was certainly fitted for travel minus any decent provisioning of foodstuffs. None would be forthcoming. Cast out or quit of the clan, once outside, outside for good. His few personal items would be bundled up in the coarse gray blankets.

  Finn did not bother stopping in front of the chieftain. He hobbled up to the remaining lodge door, taking an exaggerated interest in the lopsided entrance. He nodded at the open side, no doubt making his own farewell to Burok Bear-slayer.

  Then he looked directly at Cul, back at the remaining door, and spat.

  Swords rasped free of their sheaths as a few of Cul’s supporters took the insult to their chieftain personally. Reave leaped in front of Morne, laying hold of his shoulder and straining against the man’s anger with his own thick arms. Those farther away from the incident simply waited for Cul’s order, or Reave’s failing to hold Morne off.

  “Let him go,” Cul said, and Kern tensed to jump in at Reave’s side.

  But Cul had not said it to Reave, but to the others. He no longer appeared amused, but at least he did not seem murderously angry. Swords were homed. Those who would not drop their anger cut at Finn with nothing but glares.

  Finn was no longer part of the clan. He was a traveler, moving on to another place.

  South, Kern wanted to suggest. South as fast as Finn’s legs could carry him, and hope he found a new clan to take him in or better weather and spring shoots. Cimmerians always went south, ever since the time of Conan, toward opportunities in the so-called civilized lands.

  Which was likely why the pugnacious old man deliberately turned north, into the teeth of winter and the Nordheim realms.

  And why Kern silently said his good-bye right then, as he had to six others that day. He did not expect to see Old Finn, alive, ever again.

  THERE WERE MANY things Kern did not expect, in fact. Though when faced with them, there was little he could do but accept. It was a Cimmerian’s way, after all. Fall down seven times, get up eight.

  Strength. That was Crom’s single blessing.

  Hauling the sled with Burok’s body on it tested Kern’s physical strength, certainly. There was room for only two clansmen in the leather harnesses, able to pull without getting in each other’s way, and Burok, for all his wasting away toward the end, still was not a small man. Daol worked the trail forward, so only Reave spelled Kern on the one side of the sled though never for too long. Kern knew the feel of the wide leather straps. Was comfortable in them. He took the harness again as soon as he worked out the strain that knotted in his meaty calves or pulled at his back.

  The first day remained shrouded in gray clouds, threatening more snow. A few hardy birds flitted about, chirping mournfully for the lack of forage. The funeral party felt much the same, content with stale flat cakes and dried tubers. They sustained a man, but did not help him keep warm. Especially in the face of a southern wind that blew down out of the distant Eighlophian Mountains, carrying the frigid touch of the Nordheim realms, Vanaheim and Asgard.

  Grimnir’s Breath, a traveling tinker had once called such winds. For Kern, that had been the first time he’d heard of the war chieftain’s legendary—and certainly exaggerated—powers, able to call upon the most severe weather to aid his Vanir raiders.

  The forest thickened up the farther they traveled from the village, closing in during the second day at places that would never be visited by Kern’s axe. There was an old feel to the land, where magnificent oaks spread their limbs so wide they might have sheltered all of Gaud beneath the mighty branches of a single tree, and an occasional sequoia—the rare “watchtower” trees—towered overhead like Crom’s own plantings. Kern couldn’t help staring at these, with their bases easily five times as thick as he was tall, ice caked inside the deep folds of their bark, and wonder how anyone could think to take an ax to such awe-inspiring titans.

  Evidence of small game showed more clearly as well. Kern spotted rabbit tracks and hunting fox, and the shuffling spread of snow that warned of a black bear early out of hibernation. Kern wondered if the long winter confused it, and might drive it toward clan villages.

  There were also wolf tracks, but never enough to worry about a hunting pack. Stragglers and rogues, mostly. Outcasts. The party heard only one deep, challenging howl as a dire wolf marked his territory, but never saw sign of the beast. Kern did notice blood flecks trailing along one large set of tracks, guessed that the hunter had found a rabbit or marmot, and wished the animal luck.

  Maev saw the tracks and blood spoor as well. Hand resting on the hilt of her sword, her measuring gaze left Kern feeling cold inside. Colder.

  The trail meandered east, entering hilly country and taking long turns around the steeper slopes. With no strong sun to guide them, the procession might easily have been lost if not for Daol’s unerring sense of direction. For his part, Kern concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, breathing in deeply when the harness relaxed, exhaling sharply as he leaned into the strain, calf muscles thrumming.

  Downhill was no easier than uphill. He knew better than to let the flat-bottomed sled have its head, running ahead of them to smash itself against a tree or lightly dusted stone. Downhill was when the other hauler relaxed and Kern steered the sled by hauling against the harness leads.

  Kern had already removed his winter cloak, folding it away and tucking it with his knife belt and blanket roll under one end of Burok’s burial shroud. Head or feet, made no difference to the old chieftain anymore. Exertion flushed Kern’s face a healthy pink, rare for him, and soon he shed his tattered poncho as well. While others bundled themselves up, a few pulling on hats or a rare set of gloves against the bite of the gusting wind, Kern struggled forward bare-chested and sweating. Never warm—the chill never left his bones—but his muscles had settled into that almost-pleasant dull ache that came with honest work.

  It was almost with a shrug of reluctance, in fact, that he dropped the harness as Cul called for a second stop in the late afternoon.

  The procession had just forded a wide creek, most keeping their feet dry by jumping stones. Kern and an older stalwart named Aodh shed their boots and waded over, carrying the sled and its burden between them. Aodh’s salt-and-pepper moustache showed a hint of frost in the upper hairs, just below his nose. He huffed out great clouds of frostbitten vapor, more used to running the traplines than such demanding hauling; but he held up his end, never letting Burok come close to slipping off his fune
ral board.

  The icy water numbed their feet, but dried and briskly rubbed, and back into their boots, they could have set off immediately.

  Instead, Cul ordered a rest, sent lanky youths up-and downstream looking for Gaudic fishtraps, hoping to bolster their supplies. Morne, one of Cul’s faster warriors, was sent running ahead to slow Daol, let him know of the unscheduled break. Then Cul went around the party, checking to see that most everyone was holding up well.

  Kern rubbed his chest and arms down with a rough blanket, brushing them dry before the sweat iced up. He stomped around in a small circle, hammering life back into his feet, and glanced toward Reave. “Drink?”

  Reave threw Kern a flask of mint-flavored water. The warm-leather taste of the skin was stronger than the crushed leaves, but Kern was in no mind to complain. Better than the raw metallic taste scratching at the back of his throat from gulping down the cold, dry air too fast.

  “Think we’ll reach Snowy River country by night?” Reave asked. He rarely had cause to travel out this far during the snows. Lacking Daol’s natural sense of direction and distance, and Kern’s experience in winter treks, it would be hard for him to judge how the party fared.

  “Nay. We’re actually slow-going with the sled and the pups along.” The village youths held their own in stamina, but they just didn’t have a man’s stride yet. “Lucky to make it on the morrow.”

  “Saw pheasant feathers under branches a ways back. Got to be huddled up in the trees.” Reave frowned at the height of the branches in some nearby elm. “Maybe Daol will catch a shot at some.”

  Kern remembered the scent of roasting chucker and the meaty taste of the grease from his fingers. His stomach growled an answer.

  “Me, too,” Reave said, as if Kern had spoken aloud. The large man’s dry chuckle was good to hear.

  Cul’s call was not.

  “Wolf-Eye. Kern!” He stood near the stream, one foot up on a boulder as he tightened down a boot strap, his war sword slung over his shoulder. Maev paused nearby, picking crumbs out of an oilcloth that had held dry biscuits. She had handed out food to everyone but Reave and Kern.