Blood of Wolves

by Loren Coleman

  Grimnir smashed around with his battle-axe, the heavy head catching the saber against the flat, cleaving through the thin blade and embedding itself halfway through the horseman’s conical helm and skull.

  Using his foot to shove the man free, Grimnir roared in triumph and turned in search of his next victim. In time to see Kern strike down a Ymirish from behind with two short, stabbing thrusts into the back. Kern’s third thrust ran the man through, blade exiting through his gut as Kern held him on his feet a few heartbeats longer with fingers gripping at a heavy shank of bone blond hair.

  Blood poured back over Kern’s hand, warm and slick. He let the man drop, now standing in the shadow of the northern war leader.

  Grimnir towered over Kern by a good arm’s length and ten stones’ weight. The giant-kin’s hide was thick and gnarled with dense, heavy muscles shifting under pebblelike skin. He smelled of old, rotten ice. His hair was coarse and ropy, like the mammoth’s, and a dull, dark red the color of clotting blood. It swept back in a tangle, with strips of leather cord and short lengths of silver chain braided into it.

  His eyes were fury-bright and the same cold amber of the Ymirish. The same that Kern shared with Frostpaw.

  He bared a mouth full of sharp, canine teeth at Kern, growling in a savage, animal way.

  Then Grimnir struck.

  Kern nearly missed the attack, not believing something so large could move so fast. The battle-axe ripped through the air, sidelong, and Kern barely managed to set his shield in the way before the smashing blow crashed off it, hammering Kern back several steps.

  He jumped back farther when the warhammer came thundering overhead, letting it smash the ground instead. Feeling the strength of the blow through his feet.

  His return slash had barely the reach of his old arming sword, and was too slow. The giant leader batted it aside with casual strength, spinning Kern around. The

  Cimmerian ducked beneath another wild slash and took the warhammer against his shield the next time, feeling it all the way into his chest as the heavy maul drove him back, leaving his shield arm numb and nearly useless.

  Kern shuffled back, searching for strong footing beneath the snow and slush.

  Grimnir followed, his savage face split into a toothy grin now that he had Kern’s measure.

  It was as if the two of them stood in an isolated pocket. Kern’s pack struggled alongside Callaughnan and Cruaidhi. Taking the best the northern army could throw at them, then shoving the invaders back on their heels, they held off the tide of northerners sweeping to this side of the battlefield. Clansmen fell, wounded, dying, or dead, but in every place they did so they took two or even three enemy to their one.

  But Kern had not been fighting to best the monstrous northerner. Only to survive. Waiting for his pack to gather for the chance to pull down the frost-giant with their combined strength. Reave came at the frost-giant from the left, greatsword lunging forward with strong muscles driving it. Ossian and Nahud’r from behind.

  It was their best and possibly only moment. Kern leaped forward now, into the monster’s embrace. His broadsword sweeping up in a hard, overhead arc and hammering down at Grimnir’s guard. Once. Twice.

  Battering the terrible war leader in a fury of strength.

  Buying time for Reave and the others.

  Not enough. Grimnir nearly knocked Kern’s blade from his hand with a hard, glancing blow from his warhammer, then he kicked back like a mule, catching Ossian in the gut and folding the man over like a green-stick branch. Nahud’r sliced his scimitar at the side of Grimnir’s leg and twice across his wide back, so fast that his arm was a blur of motion. Cutting deeply each time. But the giant-kin hardly seemed to notice.

  A half turn and another sidelong blow with the giant maul. Nahud’r tumbled sideways, rolling into the feet of two Vanir who had rushed forward to the aid of their legendary war leader.

  Which left two of the pack. A tangle of arms, legs, and blades. Men against monster, but an intelligent one. A vicious, thinking creature with two years of legend riding at his shoulder.

  But they would not give up. Reave bashed greatsword against battle-axe, steel ringing out in violent tones. His second lunge nearly took Grimnir in the throat, but the giant warrior ducked low and forward.

  Into Kern’s broadsword, which struck him through the breastbone.

  Driving deep into the giant’s chest.

  Grimnir bellowed in pain. His battle-axe dropped to the ground as the frost-giant stiffened, rising up, and for an instant Kern hung from the end of his blade. Then the northern leader planted the head of his warhammer into Kern’s chest and shoved. Throwing him sideways into Reave and a small drift of snow.

  The warriors quickly rolled back up to hands and knees, thinking the fight over.

  In fact, the entire battle seemed to hang on an edge, holding its breath. There were a few premature Cimmerian cheers, and shouts of dismay among the Vanir horde. Nearby struggles broke apart as warriors turned toward the legendary leader. Drawn by a kind of terrible magnetism. Waiting.

  Only to watch him reach up for Kern’s broadsword, take a firm grip, and pull it from his chest with slow deliberation and a savage, toothy smile.

  Kern’s hopes sank low into the pit of his stomach as Grimnir the Undefeatable, the Immortal, threw back his head for a strong, commanding roar of challenge.

  A single word, drawn out in Cimmeria’s own tongue.

  “KILL!”

  29

  “KILL!”

  Then, also in the flat Nordheimir tongue, “To me! TO ME!”

  Brig Tall-Wood winced as the challenging shouts roared out, the frost-giant’s dark, commanding voice driving daggers into the back of his skull. And again when horns rose from the far end of the battlefield, echoing the call. Glancing back, he saw Grimnir’s forces rallying near Kern’s position, the legendary leader standing over several fallen warriors with a large hammer in one hand and a Cimmerian broadsword in the other.

  No sign of Kern. Or Nahud’r, whose dark skin was also obvious at a distance.

  Daol was nothing more than another warrior nearly lost among the tangle of men, mastiffs, and the chaos of battle. Brig picked him out of the tangles only because he was one of very few Cimmerians charging to Kern’s side.

  No help for them now, Brig saw. The best he could still do was prevent the mammoth and the second sorcerer from leading a new charge to the giant’s aid. Stop them. Slow them down. Somehow.

  Dodging around several struggles where Vanir and Cimmerian matched themselves in sword strokes and shields, Brig pumped his legs harder. His breathing turned ragged and raw in his throat.

  He nearly raced past a struggling knot of Vanir who bashed repeatedly at a trio of Cimmerians, leaving them in his wake as well, until he noticed the tall man at their center with a large pike that flashed around in sharp, violent arcs. The javelin’s head jabbed through one throat, then reversed to skewer a raider rushing up from behind. The other two Cimmerians fell to the raiders, though each took a man with them into death. Leaving three more against the pike-bearer’s one.

  Gard Foehammer was good. No denying that. But still stood to be overwhelmed.

  No time to decide. Brig simply acted. Whether out of that measure of respect he himself had felt back in Cruaidh, or because Kern would have stopped to help. Or both. He damned Kern again for invading his thoughts.

  But even as he did, it was his own voice echoing back inside his head chieftain . . . chieftain . . .

  Too far away to challenge one of the northerners directly, Brig shouted a long, angry cry as he sprinted forward, raising his broadsword overhead. Holding the length of blade downward, directly in line with his spine. One of the raiders turned his way, looking for the new challenge, and Brig ducked forward, whipping his blade overhead and giving it a good end-over-end throw.

  Not at the warrior who faced him, though. The broadsword tumbled past the Vanir, cutting heavily at the air, and struck hard into the back of one of th
e men advancing on Gard. The strength of the blow knocked the man off his feet, tumbling the Vanir to the ground with life already ebbing from his body.

  Gard lost no time. He battered aside the sword of his remaining opponent with stafflike blows against the arm and shoulder, then punched the blue-iron head of his pike into the raider’s chest. Yanking it free again, he turned and threw the pike javelin-style.

  It caught the raider charging forward at an unarmed Brig square in the small of the back. Losing his broadsword from nerveless fingers, the man tumbled forward and flopped facedown into the snow and bloody muck. His cry of pain was cut short as Brig raced up to drop a knee hard against the back of the raider’s neck, breaking it easily with a loud crunch.

  “With Crom’s own eye,” Foehammer thanked Brig, returning the thrown sword and paying high respect for the savage attack that had brought down the first man.

  “We’re not done,” Brig gasped, with barely time to draw new breath. The taste of blood sat on his tongue and filled his nose with a warm, copperish scent. Seeing an arrow stuck in the ground nearby, he sheathed the broadsword and took the hunting bow from around his shoulder. “The mammoth.”

  Gard looked, saw how the beast was making a shambles of the Cimmerian force as it pounded back toward its master, and nodded. Helping Brig up with a hand beneath his arm, the valleymen raced back into the fray. Gard the faster of the two. Brig grabbed at the arrow along the way, wrenching it up from the ground. Still good, with no cracks and a broadhead tip with sharp edges.

  Overall, it seemed, the mixed band of Cimmerian warriors were holding their own where Ymirish swordsmen and the braying pack of mastiffs loosed among them did not interfere. Fighting for their land, striking back for several years of violent raids, they had nothing left to lose. But the greater numbers of the northerners began to tell as they pushed the battle into scattered clumps all across the bluff’s small plateau. The heaviest fighting was centered around Grimnir, where the legendary warrior drew more forces to him like metal shavings to a lodestone. As the frost-giant drove forward with weapons striking to either side, he pushed men ahead of him, toward the edge of the bluff.

  Closer, though, the mammoth tore into a small band of Callaughnan, scattering them with great, swinging blows from its head, trampling them underfoot. Where a man raced up too close, a dark swirl of mist and smoke lashed out like barbed whips. Blinded men screamed and reeled away, and became easy meat for a raider’s sword if they did not simply die of the dark, hateful magic.

  “Ros-Crana!” Gard Foehammer shouted.

  He had pulled several lengths ahead of Brig. Now he thrust his pike at an angle to one side, pointing out the Callaughnan war leader where she rallied her spear-carrying guard in the face of a strong Vanir position. They were right in the path of the war mammoth, falling back on Kern’s position, but slowly. If they saw the danger, they did not react to it.

  “No,” Brig called out, as Gard veered away, not seeing the need to involve the Callaughnan. He slowed, and it cost him another dozen strides as Gard redoubled his own efforts.

  The Callaugnan war leader might not notice the approaching mammoth, but she somehow heard Gard’s shout and glanced over. She waved her spear overhead.

  Brig watched as Gard sprinted forward, pike laid along his arm as he reached back, then skipped forward on one foot a moment, building his momentum into the throw. His body tightened, then snapped forward. He released the pike, which hurtled up into the air on a long, graceful arc that never wavered. Not once. It slowed, then turned back toward the earth building speed again. Brig had thought the throw too far forward of the mammoth, but Gard had taken into account the beast’s trundling speed, and when the pike’s hard iron point bit down, it was right into the side of the great beast.

  The mammoth trumpeted shrilly in fresh pain, warning Ros-Crana how close it was to her position. She spun around a trio of her own men, leaving the rest to drive against the Vanir as she led the smaller group toward the mammoth.

  Gard joined them, still several dozen strides ahead of Brig, who watched with growing awe the reckless charge.

  By accident or design, the clansfolk ended up on the far side of the beast from most of the Ymirish, including the sorcerer. It bought them time—heartbeats only—before the dark mist could be sent at them. One man was beaten aside and trampled, but Gard had his sword out, slicing deep wounds, and the rest of Ros-Crana’s spear-carriers thrust deep into the mammoth’s side, turning the creature away from its stampede toward Grimnir and Kern.

  Right into the path of Brig Tall-Wood!

  The beast had hardly suffered a mortal wound, but perhaps Gard and Ros-Crana had bought Kern’s wolves time. They would pay for that, though. And so would Brig, who nocked his arrow and drew back to his cheek. For the first time, he wished he had picked up one of the northerner’s war bows, with their heavier draw and flatter arc. It was a fleeting desire. One he dismissed along with the likelihood of ever seeing the other side to this battle.

  Calm breath. Eyes both open and unblinking. Brig tracked the point of his arrow across the struggle, and there he froze. Unable to move. Caught between heartbeats. He saw it all laid out before him as he stared past the mammoth’s thundering pace. The ground shook. He saw Ymirish set upon by a pack of Cruaidhi in their dark red kilts. Saw the dark, oily mist seeped through the last of the fog, lashing out at Foehammer, who ducked away, shouting in pain, hands guarding his eyes.

  Followed the trail of dark, sooty fog back to the sorcerer, who hunched just beyond the mammoth’s flank, gaze intent on the spear-carrying Callaughnan, Ros-Crana, and Foehammer.

  In these last two, Brig saw something he desired. A selflessness, and single-minded pursuit of what was best for clan and for chieftain. But what had finally decided him was not any question on their part for their chieftain’s orders. Instead, it was more the idea that they would never have to question them, as he had questioned Cul ever since being set after Kern Wolf-Eye.

  Cul had seen Kern’s actions as an affront to the Gaudic leader’s honor. But rather than meet it himself, he had sent another. An assassin! He had sent Brig Tall-Wood, who would sacrifice his own honor no matter which way he favored.

  For Cul, his rightful chieftain who should never have asked this of him, or for Kern, outcast, who never would have.

  For Kern, then, who had earned the respect Cul took for granted!

  Large legs like sturdy trunks hammered at the ground as the mammoth bore down on Brig, trumpeting in pain and anger, but the archer never flinched. Arrow drawn back until the feather tickled his cheek, he drew in one final, calm breath. Loosed his shaft with smooth release.

  Watched it slip easily past the woolly mammoth’s hairy shoulder.

  Sinking into the sorcerer’s chest, right through one of the yellow, tattooed eyes. Spinning the Ymirish to the ground. Dead.

  Brig Tall-Wood barely noticed Grimnir’s outraged roar as the giant felt his sorcerer’s death. It registered in the back of his mind, just as did the last of Foehammer’s cries and the oily mist, which dissipated as if swept away on a strong breeze.

  Brief glimpses of the battle, as the mammoth ran Brig Tall-Wood down.

  KERN HELD OUT little hope for himself, now that Grimnir had focused his giant strength against him.

  No tricks would save him.

  There were few left to come to his aid.

  He read raw fury in Grimnir’s eyes as the legendary warrior set Burok’s sword against the ground and shattered it with one strong blow of the warhammer. Searching for his dropped battle-axe, he’d batted Reave aside as if the large man had been a child’s plaything. The sidehand blow with the hammer had picked Reave up and thrown Kern’s friend into a cluster of Vanir and Cimmerians raining blows against each other.

  Kern didn’t think to see him again.

  The ragged cheer of Nordheim voices when their leader pulled the broadsword from his heart had nearly sapped the last of the Cimmerians’ flagging strength. Several m
en fell during the next few moments, unable to rally against the fresh arms streaming to Grimnir’s side. Garret was one of those, dragged beneath the claws of Grimnir’s second snow-cat.

  Many of Kern’s warriors were down, in fact, though he counted most still alive as comrades fought to protect them. Aodh and Wallach looked over Nahud’r, the Shemite dazed and bloodied but still moving. Ossian had been picked up and dragged to one side by Old Finn and Ashul, and dour Mogh continued to fight at Desa’s back. Even Daol had returned, putting his last arrow into the eye of a nearby Ymirish. But too many warriors stood in the way. Too many.

  The ripe smell of blood and opened bowels swam over the battlefield, and Kern’s feet slipped in gore as often as they found good purchase beneath the snow-laden ground. He’d yanked his arming sword free, managing to stab Grimnir once in the arm and again in the chest, but it hardly mattered. Not when blood continued to pump from the deep wound in the giant-kin’s chest, yet he seemed barely to notice.

  Sword slashing for his head, battering across Kern’s shield, driving him ahead. Hammer smashing down, forcing Kern to jump back.

  He gave ground slowly, backing up along the edge of the bluff as some Callaughnan and Cruaidhi rushed to his aid. Sensing, perhaps, that Grimnir had to fall before the Vanir could ever be defeated. But too little, too late.

  Grimnir turned and dealt them savage blows, driving them back until his Ymirish or Vanir raiders fell at them as well. He also rolled to one side and grabbed up his battle-axe again. And hacked it down through a Cimmerian’s chest.

  Giving Kern a look at his broad, muscular back. The Gaudic warrior ran forward, thinking he had another chance, and nearly lost an arm to one of the snow-white saber-tooths, which charged in at his side with a snarl and snapping jaws.

  It cost Kern several long heartbeats, backing away from its savage attack. Reeling as claws shredded through the shoulder of his tattered poncho, ripping long bloody furrows down his arm.