Blood of Wolves

by Loren Coleman

  There were two biscuits sitting on the boulder next to Cul’s foot.

  Kern refused to be called to the chieftain’s side like a dog. He turned toward Cul, though. Gaze steady and muscles tense, feeling the scourge of the other man’s eyes rake over him.

  “This stream is far enough,” he said.

  “’Bout time,” Reave muttered beneath his breath, but Kern knew right away that Cul did not mean to end his nearly continuous hauling of the sled. At least, not in the way his friend thought. A coldness hollowed out his guts.

  “Six . . . seven,” he said, remembering Old Finn. “Seven not enough for you?”

  “Not about what is enough,” Cul said. “About what makes the clan stronger. Your blood’s no good. I said that last night.”

  “You said . . .” Kern began in a heated reply, then remembered.

  Cul had said, hadn’t he? Heading out tomorrow . . . but not necessarily coming back. Kern might make it, all right. Outside the clan.

  A chill shook him that had nothing to do with the gusting wind. He glanced south, wondering how far he’d have to trek, how fast he’d have to run and for how long, to make the southern lands before winter claimed him forever.

  Maev looked torn between what she wanted to say, duty to her father and to her chieftain. “We are burying Burok, Cul. Does this have to be now?”

  “I want some distance on him before nightfall. This stream makes a good guide, and a boundary. Cross back over it at the risk of death, Wolf-Eye.”

  Maev hesitated, then shook her head and turned away from the men, back toward the stream. She obviously hadn’t known.

  Since the hands of three warriors were already on their sword hilts, Cul had warned a few of them this was coming. And he had sent Morne ahead to prevent Daol’s appearance, leaving Reave—

  “Nay!” Kern shouted, bracing one of his thick arms across Reave’s chest before the larger man launched himself at the Gaudic chieftain. Reave hadn’t thought to reach for the Cimmerian greatsword strapped across his back, fortunately. Though he looked ready to tear Cul apart with his bare hands.

  “Don’t do it,” Kern whispered, having to lean in to keep Reave from brushing him aside. “Not for me, Reave. He wants this. Wants you to try for him. Then you are banished as well.”

  Reave ran his tongue over chapped lips. His pale blue eyes raged with anger. “Never make it, Kern.” His voice was rough, thick with emotion. “Nay food or fire. Three days to Clan Maran, if they’ll have you . . . and they won’t.”

  It was hard, listening to it come from a friend, but Reave was right. No one north of the thaw would want Kern near. His unsettling looks notwithstanding, there simply would not be food enough for an orphan.

  “I might,” Kern promised him. “I might. But you need to stay. For Daol and Hydallan. And Ros and her family.”

  Mention of his sister calmed Reave, cooling his warrior’s blood. The giant man settled, but remained barely on the knife’s edge of control. He seemed perfectly ready to leap in at Kern’s side at a moment’s notice, and fight for him. Cul had three solid backers, and at least one more of the small party who might fall in on his side. Many of the others actually looked torn over the decision. Aodh would not even meet Kern’s lupine gaze, and neither would one of the younger warriors.

  If Daol had been there, with his aim . . .

  Any fantasy of actually standing against the odds, though, ended as Maev returned from the stream with a stoppered flask of water. She brushed by Cul, grabbing the biscuits off the smooth edge of the boulder and deftly tying both into the oilcloth she had cleared out earlier. Cul looked about to say something, but her quick glare silenced the new chieftain, who obviously wanted to keep peace with Burok’s daughter and an important voice within the village.

  Maev finished, then strode over and thrust the package into Kern’s hands.

  “Take it. Take it and go.”

  Water and food. He couldn’t ask for much more. Kern tied the improvised sack onto his kilt’s wide belt, then stepped over next to the sled. He considered trying to take one of the small hatchets, but he had no flint for a fire anyway. So he pulled on his poncho and clipped his winter cloak around his thick neck, letting the gray wolf’s fur fall back off his shoulders. His knife he cinched below the wide kilt belt and his bedroll, tied with rope, went over his left shoulder.

  The entire time he rarely took his eye off the southerly meandering stream, wondering how far he could run its distance.

  Three days, he guessed. Maybe four. He’d have to keep running into the nights, if it turned wet. Better than sitting under the weather.

  “Give him a weapon.” Maev looked back at Cul.

  Cul laughed, looked around the small clearing. Even the men who weren’t solidly behind him reached a cautious hand toward their own swords. Cul shrugged. “Give him your own,” he suggested.

  Woman or not, no Cimmerian went unarmed by choice. Maev hesitated, and Kern shrugged off her concern. He would have felt more comfortable with an axe handle in his hand than the pommel of a sword anyway.

  Maev shoved past him, to the side of her father’s body. Drawing a small utility knife strapped to her leg, she bent over and sliced through the skin wrapping Burok Bear-slayer. Reaching inside, she grabbed and pulled free the chieftain’s broadsword, the long, wide blade rasping free of its sheath. She threw it to Kern, who caught it awkwardly by the hilt.

  With a wary eye on Cul, who glowered darkly at the gift, Kern tucked the blade carefully through his knife belt. He let it catch on the cross guard, holding it at his side without cutting through the thin strap.

  He nodded his thanks to Maev, who glared him on his way, and traded arm clasps with Reave. His friend’s strength was impressive, certainly bruising Kern’s arm. Which was when it truly struck at him: this would be their last moment. Once cast out from the clan, always cast out of the clan.

  Not even Conan had tried returning to Clan Conarch. That would have been a tale.

  “I can make it,” Kern promised again.

  “See that you do.” His glacial blue eyes were heavy, holding his anger and his sorrow both. “Don’t want your ghost haunting these woods. You’re strange enough as is.”

  Kern smiled, pulling up one side of his mouth with effort. A longer delay robbed him of precious daylight, and would accomplish little more than a test of Cul’s patience. With a final nod to his friend, he turned and jogged from the clearing, keeping a stone’s throw from the stream as he headed south.

  He let his anger fuel him for a hundred paces, then realizing how quickly it would burn him out, he settled back into an easy pace. If he hadn’t, he might have missed the boy.

  One of the youths Cul had sent foraging along the stream banks, hoping to find a basket-trap with fish in it. He had. His bony hands gripped the body of a silver trout, its head bloody and smashed in by a rock most likely. Kern nearly overlooked him, passing on the far side of a willow clump, then jogged back to halt the lad, who handed over the fish without thinking first what Kern might be doing jogging south with his bedroll and kit.

  Tempting. Truly tempting. He’d had every intention of supplementing his meager provisions with the fish. He was outside the clan now. He had every right.

  But then Maev hadn’t had to send him away armed, either. Or with food Cul had already withheld.

  Damn.

  “I want you to listen carefully to me, boy.” He crouched over until his wolflike eyes were scant inches away from the lad’s. The youth swallowed hard, and nodded. “You give this directly to Maev. You hear? To no one else. You tell her I said so.” He handed back the fish.

  Frowning, the Gaudic youth took it and set off on his own jog back upstream. Kern watched him go, sparing the few seconds to make certain the boy knew what he was doing, then worked himself into an easy pace alongside the stream again. One foot in front of the other. One stride at a time eating away the distance between Gaudic lands and a new life, or not.

  He didn’t l
ook back.

  There was nothing for him behind.

  5

  HE DRANK HIS fill of fresh, sweet water that night, leaning over the ice-rimed stream bank to refill his skin again and again.

  Saving the hard biscuits for morning in an effort to boost his strength for the long day ahead.

  A gray mist, sparkling with hoarfrost, had rolled in during the night. It cloaked the countryside in a dismal veil, hiding the sun and drawing gooseflesh across his arms and his chest, leaving only the stream to guide him southward for as long as that lasted. The air smelled of new snow, but Kern refused to borrow trouble by worrying about it before the first flake had even made itself known.

  Fall down seven times. Get up eight. That was the Cimmerian way.

  No time for delay, Kern rubbed life into his arms and legs, breathed on the numb ends of his fingers and checked each one for frostbite. Rolling his winter cloak and woolen blankets around the broadsword, he kept out his tattered poncho, improvising a sling around the rest using his knife belt and a short length of rope. The shorter blade and sheath he simply tucked into the wide leather strap buckled around his heavy kilt.

  Good for moving fast, and drawing fast if he spotted small game. But sign was scarce, with only the wide-spaced tracks of a large, running wolf showing that morning.

  For several hours he jogged along, finally leaving the stream when it hooked back to the north. He had no choice now but to trust his own sense of direction. One pace after another hammering at the frozen ground; every step carrying him closer to new life, or to death.

  He tried not to think of Reave. Or Daol, when the clan huntsman discovered what had happened at the fording.

  He tried not to think of Maev. Or Cul.

  Nothing worked. His thoughts and memories distracted him throughout the early morning.

  One more reason he missed the wolf until it was upon him.

  The beast came out of the frosted mist without warning, downwind and hidden by a dead bramble of gray, thorny stalks. A large animal. Eight hands across the shoulders and ten-stone weight at least. Slamming into his back, the dire wolf bore Kern to the ground with strong forepaws scrabbling at his tattered poncho and teeth snapping for the backs of his legs, looking to hobble him. Its prey.

  Luckily, it seized upon the cloth-wrapped broadsword instead. Caught in the beast’s powerful jaws, the thin belt strap Kern had used for a sling parted as if cut with a fine edge.

  The dire wolf bounded back, dragging the gear with it, then realized what it had was not food and abandoned it, coming back at Kern low and fast. When it attacked, the wolf rose up partly on its hind legs, snarling savagely as it tried for an arm, a shoulder, the throat.

  Kern barely had time to reach for his knife, still tucked into the broad leather strap fastened above his kilt. Instinctively, he kicked out hard, stomping the large wolf against its breastbone, hurling it back from him even as he fell farther away from his lost sword.

  Rolling back into the snow, and over, Kern came to hands and feet quickly. Facing the wolf more on its own level.

  The beast growled and snapped as it paced around Kern, taking better measure of its prey this time. It hunched low, shoulder muscles bunching under a bristling silver pelt. It was Kern’s first good look at the animal. Before it had been a blur of silver fur and ivory teeth. He marked it now with the dark band of fur around its eyes, like a mask, and the snow-white left paw. A younger male. A rogue with no pack, obviously.

  And a starving animal, he recognized. The bones of its shoulders and rib cage stood out as knobby bumps beneath the silver fur. Scrawnier than he would have expected, especially for how hard it had hit him, the wolf was certainly missing several stones from its autumn weight.

  It would have to be driven by hunger to come at a man like this. Even in packs, wolves tended to shy away from people, and their readiness with swords and bows and fire. A knife, though, was poor defense against one of the forest’s best hunters. The wolf seemed to recognize this, or was too hungry to care. Its yellow eyes did not hold anger or malice in them. Simply a strong will to survive.

  It rushed Kern, low and furious. Kern made a stab for its throat. Missed, and scored a bloody wound off its shoulder instead. The wolf’s head turned and bit at his arm, catching his elbow in its powerful jaws and shredding further the sleeve of his leather poncho. Gripping Kern solidly, it dragged him back, off-balance, and bit down.

  Kern lost the knife as his arm spasmed, but not his senses. He balled up his left hand in a great fist and smashed it down on the bridge of the wolf’s nose once . . . twice . . . The animal yelped, tried to shift its bite, and Kern yanked his arm free.

  A few of its sharper canines scored bloody gashes down his forearm.

  Red droplets spattered against the snow.

  And when the wolf drove at him again, Kern grabbed two handfuls of fur and heaved.

  Helping the wolf along the path of its own charge, Kern threw the animal a good seven or eight paces. Far enough for a rough landing. But the animal also lived by the Cimmerian way, apparently—fall down seven times, get up eight—as it scrambled right back to its feet and began to stalk Kern again.

  In that brief respite, though, Kern had stripped his poncho overhead. As the wolf angled after him he retreated toward where his sword lay, wrapping the tattered leather in a thick sheath around his left arm. If he turned for the sword, the wolf would have him in an instant. Even to glance back, locating the precious bundle, was risky enough. He managed it in a kind of awkward shuffle, always keeping his body facing the large wolf, trying to locate his gear from the corner of his eye.

  No time. The wolf wasn’t waiting for Kern to even up the fight. Gathering itself, it snarled and leaped, jaws snapping once again for Kern’s throat.

  Kern stuffed his padded arm into the beast’s open jaws, got his other hand into the scruff on its neck, and threw the animal back down at the frozen ground with his entire weight coming down atop it.

  The beast yelped in confusion and pain and immediately wrestled to right itself, claws ripping at Kern’s arms and chest. Dirty nails dug painful trenches into his skin, but pain would be the least of Kern’s concerns if the animal freed itself and came at him again. That kind of contest could only end one way. So he rolled forward, pinning the wolf with more weight, shoving his arm harder into its jaws. He felt teeth work through the leather in places, digging into his flesh again.

  And he pressed harder.

  No sword. No knife. Not enough purchase to snap the beast’s neck. Kern barely held the animal down. The wolf’s fetid breath rank in his face, and the taste of blood at the back of his throat as his own breathing labored in the struggle.

  He had only the same natural weapons as the wolf, and no choice but to use them. Shifting his weight across the wolf’s shoulders, Kern thrust his face beneath that toothy muzzle and struggled to bite out the animal’s throat. His teeth and jaw were not fashioned for such savage tearing. He chewed on coarse, rank fur and ropy muscle, searching for an artery or windpipe. The gamy, sweaty scent of the beast clogged his nose and throat.

  The large wolf struggled desperately, howling and yelping, back feet kicking up a spray of snow and dirt as they fought for purchase. Front paws raked their nails again and again over Kern’s chest. Yelling his own hoarse cry, Kern pressed forward with renewed strength, and bit down until he tasted blood.

  And the wolf went completely still.

  There was no thought that he’d killed the animal. Its flanks still rose and fell with labored breathing. Its breath misted in the cold, winter air. A shallow whine squeaked its way up from its chest.

  A warm, rank stench rose around them as the wolf pissed on itself and Kern in one final attempt to humiliate itself in abject surrender.

  Kern couldn’t breathe. He raised his head from the blood-matted fur, trying to clear the taste from his mouth without setting the animal back to its struggles. His face so very close to those powerful jaws, and its head, he st
ared into the yellow eye that so closely matched his own. The animal looked confused and frightened, its gaze turning vacant as Burok Bear-slayer’s had been toward the end of his illness.

  “If I let you up,” Kern whispered, more to hear his own voice, to realize he was still alive, “you’re going to come at me again.”

  The animal whined again. Yea or nay, there was no understanding it.

  But Kern wasn’t sure if he had the stamina or the strength left to fight the dire wolf on its own terms, holding it down and trying to rip out its throat with his own teeth. If he could manage it, he’d have meat enough to carry him through to the southern lands. If he failed, he knew the wolf wouldn’t think twice before leaving him bloody and dying in the snow.

  A battle of survivors. Of outcasts.

  “By Crom, we aren’t so different,” he told the wolf, still spitting out the taste of blood and hair. “Let’s see how much fight is left in either of us.”

  And Kern thrust himself away from the animal, rolling for his nearby blanket roll with his cloak and his sword tied up inside. Seizing one corner of the blanket, he tugged it violently to spin out his gear over the ground.

  Grabbing for the broadsword’s hilt.

  Twisting around, preparing for the attack.

  The wolf was gone.

  Running back into the trees, favoring its right foreleg and not looking back until it cleared the trunk of a fallen young elm. There it hunkered down with little more than its ears and eyes above the snow-dusted bole. Staring with an unblinking lupine gaze, alert for Kern’s next move.

  Bloodied and bruised, and utterly exhausted, Kern fell back on his own haunches and saluted the beast with a wave of his sword.

  “Call it a draw,” he said. And set about collecting his gear.

  6

  LACKING CLEAN CLOTH and any knowledge of forest herbs, Kern flushed the shallow cuts across his chest and arms with fresh water and left the wounds to cleanse and clot on their own. They bled freely at first, until his blood started to thicken. He hoped they might crust over quickly. But his rough trek overland reawakened the wounds every time his skin pulled tight across his chest or when his arms brushed against his body.