Nay. He did not need to ask. And he left Frostpaw to trail along or leave as the wolf desired, turning his own step once more toward Callaugh.
Daol and Reave for friendship. Aodh and Garret out of old loyalties. Ossian, for his father, and his kin, and, ultimately, to make his own mark on the world worth leaving behind. Everyone felt responsible for something.
And Kern?
He felt responsible for them all.
THE SULFUROUS SCENT bled off the mammoth cliff overhang in a misting vapor. Steam. Rising from the runoff of several hot springs that trickled down the cliff face, leaving streaks of rust and yellows on the wet, black rocks. A warm rain dripped from the overhang into pools and a wide, calm stream that fell down into Callaugh Glen and slowly meandered its way through the fortified village before running down into the lowland hills.
The scent had surprised Kern with his return to Clan Callaugh, though he would get used to it again soon enough. The villagers did not even notice anymore. Or, if they did, traded the stench for mineral-laden waters and a warm, moist mist, which allowed them to keep some crops year-round and start other plantings weeks ahead of other clans.
More rebuilding had been accomplished in the last few weeks, Kern saw. There were fewer burned-out homes, and a long, low wattle-and-daub construction that filled up what used to be an empty stretch between two outside neighborhoods. Murder ground, where raiders trying to move from one area of the village to another could be attacked and killed.
Behind the new structure still rose Callaugh’s impressive palisade, built from thick timbers banded in metal and spiked together as well. The base of each thick trunk was set into one of the strongest foundations Kern (or anyone) had ever seen attempted. As high as a man and three arm lengths thick, cemented with mud and mill-crushed stone. The palisade protected over half of the village inside its walls, and could squeeze in the other half as well as the herds in times of desperation.
The last few years had been desperate times.
The small knot of warriors walked through the mists, passing near the low structure. “Looks like a fast-built lodge hall,” Aodh said, brushing droplets of moisture from his salt-and-pepper moustache.
Kern thought much the same. “Callaugh has taken the head in contacting other clans,” he pointed out. “The area will be a lot busier, as well, with the raiders lying low. At least until Grimnir surfaces.”
In fact, the general level of activity around the village said a great deal about the relaxed safeguards. Many Callaugh clansfolk worked on homes. And on a fortified watchtower, being erected on top of the bluff. Others tended to early crops and herded cattle outside of the palisade walls.
A few cows were allowed to stray out farther than Kern would have thought prudent, to graze where they wished. Their contented lowing was a sound that reminded him of better days.
There were no alarms when Kern’s men approached. Not this time. But a few still looked twice, and glared when they recognized his frosted mane and golden wolf eyes.
He didn’t blame them for their suspicions or their anger. There had been too much violence too recently, and not all troubles with the raiders were over. If one knew what to look for, some of the early crops looked as if they’d been torn up. And the nearby long building showed signs of damage as well, with the door near split in two by axe strokes and a scorched corner where someone had tried to set it afire.
He pointed out the damage to the others. That was when he saw it.
A bloody spear, stuck point first into the door’s lintel.
Half a spear, actually, with only a good arm’s length of pole behind the iron tip. The wooden haft was stained black along most of its length—by the blood of Vanir or Cimmerian, there had never been any telling. It was the spear Kern had picked up on the battlefield near Broken Leg Glen, after the combined war host of valleymen and western clans had met and defeated Grimnir’s army. The one he had vowed to carry among the clans of Cimmeria, to warn them of the increased northern threat. Because he had known, the moment he learned that both he and Grimnir had survived that final plunge, that the frost-giant warrior would be back. And his vengeance would be terrible.
The door to the lowered hall opened, and two clansmen stepped outside, a man and a woman. She carried an arm-load of blood-ruined cloths, and he emptied a large chamber pot, splashing the offal off toward one corner of the building, where a shallow slit trench had been dug.
“Hah!” Reave gave a yell as he recognized them both. Jogging forward, he shucked the large packs he carried. His Cimmerian greatsword remained tied over his back, slapping at his legs.
More pleased to see one rather than the other, certainly. Kern watched as wiry Desagrena thrust her load of bandages into Brig Tall-Wood’s arms and stepped forward into her man’s embrace. Reave scooped her up with one large hand on her waist and the other grabbing her ass in a hard and satisfying clench.
She yelled and bit his ear hard enough that he dropped her at once. Rubbing her backside, she eyed him through oily twists of long, dark hair that fell across her face.
“Sure you didn’t treat the northerners so rough,” the viperish woman said.
The air was ripe with the recently discarded offal. Brig passed his burdens off to another woman, who had stepped outside to see what the commotion was about. No one Kern knew, so he assumed there were more than his people inside. Leading up the others, shouldering one of the extra packs Reave had dropped, he traded nods with Desagrena and a long, measuring stare with the other clansman.
“Still alive, Kern Wolf-Eye.”
At least the younger man no longer sounded surprised. In fact, he said it as if sharing a private joke with Kern, who always returned the comment.
“Still alive, Brig Tall-Wood.”
Of the fifteen men and women who followed him, Brig was still the biggest mystery. A favored man when Cul Chieftain assumed leadership of Gaud, Brig had surprised everyone by showing up at the outcast camp one day, then again by remaining with the small band as it chased Vanir raiders over the western Teeth. Kern had his own ideas about that. But so far he was content to let Brig make the first move to talk about it. Or to act.
“You seem to have healed up fine,” Kern said. Brig was one of the men he had left behind to recover. Deep bruising across most of his body, in fact, as he was nearly trampled to death by a mammoth. He went bare-chested today, with a simple cloak tied across his shoulders. Only a few yellow spots shaded his skin.
“I was lucky.”
Kern nodded. They had all been lucky. But how long would that hold? He nodded at the open doorway. “Let’s go see the others,” he said, assuming that the long building housed most if not all of the remaining injured.
It did. And the structure looked just as hastily built on the inside as it did without. Some of the wattle weaving showed where the clay had caked away or was simply applied too thin the first time. And the roof was low enough Kern nearly bumped his head on the crossbeams. Reave had to stoop.
Too few narrow windows, opened up under wooden shutters, let in just enough light by which to see. There were two fire pits, for warmth and cooking both, and narrow smoke holes poked through the overhead thatch. The entire room smelled of green smoke, piss, and blood.
Too much blood.
They passed men and women with infected gashes down their arms and legs, or ripping across their bodies. Wounds that had to be reopened almost daily to bleed out the sickness. He also caught the latrine stench of an open gut, somewhere, and the dank, rotting smell of wet gangrene, which he could never forget. Had first scented in Burok Bear-slayer’s lodge—was it really only a few short months ago?
He felt worse for these people, having seen the lingering death that crept up on those with gangrenous wounds. Corrupted flesh would be sliced off. Cleansed. Packed under astringent poultices. A few of them might rally their strength and bear up as pieces of their bodies were hacked away. But most of these men and women would die. Callaugh’s shaman had worke
d a few small miracles, some of which Kern had already seen, but not for everyone. Sometimes a wound just rotted.
And there was no praying to Crom. The Cimmerian creator had no interest in the affairs of mortal men and women. Supposedly he had already done his part, granting all clansmen strength enough to survive their harsh lands and the will to meet whatever life threw into their path. Some moments, like now, it seemed a poor enough offering.
Especially when Grimnir, and the Nordheimer god Ymir, seemed to obey different rules.
“Kern?” Distracted, he had nearly walked by two of his warriors. Desa cuffed him against the back of his head. “Kern!”
It was Ehmish and Old Finn. The youngest and oldest of his pack. His men of the wolves. The youth had only fifteen summers on him. Hardly any of his final size or strength. Yet Ehmish had been among the first to step forward. Seeking revenge for a friend’s death, at first, then later desperately in search of proving his own manhood.
Which he’d done, making his first kill over the Pass of Blood. But his journey had nearly been cut short when a Vanir sword sliced him open from chest to hip. It was pure luck the sword’s tip hadn’t slid between the ribs, though its bright edge had scored deep lines into the bone. A painful, bloody mess.
“One nasty, great scar,” Desa said. “But he’ll live.”
Ehmish sat up from his pallet of old straw. He had dark, hooded eyes sunk back even farther after several weeks of little sunlight and less exercise. He clasped hands with Kern, trading a man’s grip even if he did not yet have a man’s strength.
“Get me out of here, Kern. Desa is the most difficult warden a man can have.” His voice was still changing, and broke on the word “man,” of all things. He grunted, angry with himself.
Kern laughed. It was hard and brittle, but a laugh nonetheless. Ehmish, at least, would be fine. “And you, Finn? How’s the leg?”
“Still mine,” the old man bit back.
A grizzled veteran with leathery skin and milky blue eyes, he sat with his back against the wall, right leg propped up on a pile of old blankets. Between his gout and a nasty blow across the knee he’d taken in the fight, there had been some question whether or not he’d even walk again.
“Resting when I can. I’ll still walk half the others into the ground.”
He might at that. Finn had proven himself a survivor time and again.
“Most men are dead at half your age,” Kern said, paying him a high compliment.
Though not the only injuries, these two were the only ones among Kern’s men being pressed to rest. The only ones, it turned out, Desa could force or cajole into resting, at any rate. The small group herded themselves back outside.
“Nahud’r? Wallach?” Kern asked.
“Busied hisself with studying the fortifications and helping on the labor parties soon as his ribs were bound,” Desagrena let him know, starting with the black-skinned Shemite Kern had rescued from a Vanir slave line. “Wallach . . .” She trailed off with a shrug.
Wallach Graybeard had lost his hand near Clan Conarch, getting it neatly severed at the wrist. Kern had helped hold the veteran warrior in place as the stump was cauterized with a hot knife and a flap of skin stitched over the end. The worst injury of the group. But even before Kern left to hunt raiders along Cimmeria’s northwest border, Wallach had promised to be on his feet before week’s end.
Brig folded arms over his bared chest. “No infection. Not yet. But he pushes himself too hard, Kern.”
Of course he did. Wallach wouldn’t be the small band’s master-at-arms if he hadn’t. One arm or two, the man was as dangerous as he was stubborn.
“We’ll all be pushing ourselves now,” he said. “I’m through with waiting and through trying to defend the border with a bare handful of men. The Vanir slip past us by night and day. They spread into Cimmeria. Too many, too fast. We need to act, and act now.”
No one gainsaid him. So Kern nodded at the broken, bloody spear. “When did it come back?” he asked.
He’d let Ros-Crana, the new chieftain of Clan Callaugh, take it. To see what she could do among the war-battered villages and strongholds of the western clans. Not much, apparently. That spark of anger was back. The one he had felt even when accepting Ros-Crana’s argument that he give her time.
Desagrena flicked oily locks out of her face. “Four days ago. From the south. She brought it here and spiked it into the wall.” Desa had thought well of Ros-Crana when she’d been war leader of the Callaughnan clansmen. But Narach Chieftain, her brother, was dead, and Ros-Crana the new head of the clan. And Desa’s opinions had apparently shifted. “A place where everyone could see it.”
And none found use for it. Kern had expected little else after seeing the bloody token. His hands opened and clenched. He felt a familiar crawling sensation along the back of his neck as his muscles tightened up. “Does Ros-Crana call a lodge council?”
Brig nodded. “Every night, these days. She tries, Kern. T’hule Chieftain and Clan Conarch make it difficult.” Frowns all around. Very few of Kern’s people thought well of T’hule Chieftain, who had been less than . . . thankful . . . for his clan’s rescue.
“She does make a point to visit the wounded as well,” Desa admitted, reluctantly. “She brings the shaman here after midday.”
Good enough. Kern stepped over toward the building, careful of the offal Brig had splashed out earlier, and seized the wooden haft. With a twisting wrench he tore it free of the door’s lintel. “Then she will notice this gone,” he said.
Desa started to smile, but it faltered. “What do we tell her?” she asked. “When Ros-Crana notices it missing?”
He was already walking away from the building, with its stench of disease and lingering death. “Get Ehmish and Finn out of that cellar. Set a tent if needs be. Find the others, Reave. Tell them to gear up and pack heavy. Everyone meets at the lodge tonight. Everyone is on the march tomorrow.”
Then he stopped and half turned back toward the others. His golden eyes searched every face, looking for any hesitation. Any question. He found none.
“You tell her I have it,” he said.
3
ROS-CRANA SUSPECTED KERN’S return before she ever visited the infirmary lodge. Even in a village of decent size, as Callaugh was, it didn’t take long for different rumors of the wolf-eyed man—a Ymirish!—to find its chieftain.
And when she saw Reave talking with Desagrena, she knew for certain.
Reave sat on a three-legged camp stool next to a pair of recently pitched tents, stripped naked to his waist. An old, waxy sword scar crossed his right shoulder and trailed down into a thick tangle of chest hair. He gnawed on a strip of dried beef while Desa stood behind him and used a sharp dagger to hack away rough handfuls of his long, curly hair, tidying it up at shoulder length. His face was flushed pink and healthy, where it showed above his brushy beard, and his hair was still damp.
Desagrena had tied her own hair back into a ponytail, except for a wisp or two that stuck to her forehead. The two spoke in low tones, careful of others who walked past, following them with suspicious eyes.
Always strangers, even when surrounded by friends—those were Kern’s warriors. His wolves.
Her approach was direct. Two warrior bodyguards of Reave’s large size followed behind her, swords always naked in their hands as they watched their chieftain’s back. She waved them away, however, as she walked up to speak with the two valleymen. These two were allies, if not friends.
And distant kin, at least in Reave’s case, if not allies. She had spotted long ago a resemblance in the deep lines of his face, his craggy brow, that told of shared blood. She had not been surprised to learn that his mother had been taken in a raid against Clan Conarch. And there was something in his glacial, pale blue eyes, the way he focused so intently on one thing at a time, that reminded her of Narach, her brother.
It counted for little, all things considered, but better than nothing.
Ros-Crana carried a wa
r sword tied across her back and a spear in hand as she walked up. Just as she had as war leader. Before her brother’s death. She saw Reave had already truce-bonded his own greatsword, a courtesy Kern insisted upon from his people. It leaned up against the entrance to one of the tents, a thin cord of leather tying it into the sheath.
She was not required to reciprocate. But she did reverse her spear and ground the head out of respect, and some small pleasure, at seeing the large man again alive. It was a pleasure that came very rarely in the last year.
“You made it back?” she asked, when neither of them offered her greeting. “All?”
Reave lowered the beef strip. Swallowed. “We did. And there are Vanir who wish they could say the same about many of their number.”
She had already counted an extra earring on his left ear, which fit with reports that Kern and his small crew had run into more raiders. A few dozen, total, some said. Dozens at a time, said others. Kern Wolf-Eye had become a favorite for fireside tales and village scuttlebutt. His every move was watched by many and often exaggerated to the point of not-believing.
Except she had already seen Kern do amazing things and was often ready to err on the side of the fantastic.
“Where is he?” she asked.
But the large man merely shrugged. Desagrena’s mouth was a thin, hard line. “He’ll be found when he wants to be found.”
Most other times, their cautious loyalty to the outcast leader would be admirable. But now Ros-Crana wanted answers. She reversed her spear, raising the blue-iron tip overhead. She had come to them at no casual expense of her time. She would not be treated rudely. One swipe. One thrust. Her bodyguards would be down on them before Reave could loose his greatsword. Probably.
All friends, she reminded herself. Allies. At least.
Age of Conan: Cimmerian Rage: Legends of Kern, Volume 2 Page 3
