“Get the horses saddled and packed,” Strom all but growled to Valerus, who saluted with a clenched fist.
Tahmat shrugged and posted his chief of guards over the salvaged gear that Kern’s warriors would not be taking. “Suit yourself. But you are mad, you are.”
As might be, Gard knew. But Kern and the others had already jumped to the same conclusion as the caravaner, and to them it meant a great deal more.
If Grimnir had come south, to the ruins of Venarium, and collected a second war host, then he was likely to be more dangerous than any of them had thought. And, poised in the southwest corner of Cimmeria, below Ben Morgh and the Teeth, and with very few clans in strong enough shape to challenge him on their own, the way was open for him to charge up into Conall Valley.
Kern was in a hurry now, certainly.
He was running for home.
9
KERN CROUCHED ON the side of a muddy slope, hunkered down with Nahud’r and Daol within a small patch of second-year pine and bitter-smelling sword fern. Grabbing a new-growth branch that waved in front of his face, he bent it back and stripped the slender arm right off the side of the tree, dropped it to the ground, then pointed out what was left of one of Conan’s earliest, true, tales.
“Venarium.”
Built by Gunderman invaders when Conan had been a boy, its hilltop ruins looked ancient and brittle. Two sides of the once-formidable palisade stood even now, nearly thirty summers later, but one end leaned over precariously as time undermined the hardy construction and the great posts—sun-bleached to a deadwood gray—twisted in the ground. Bellberry brush grew thick around the base of the tilting wall. And even from a long arrow shot away, he smelled the old, rotting wood.
Of the rest of the fortress town, only a few rock foundations crouched in the shadow of the palisade walls where there had once been homes and lodge-style halls and likely a watchtower. Little else was left to the old buildings. Some half-charred, termite-eaten timber, perhaps. If it hadn’t all been chipped up for campfires over the years.
Nahud’r nodded. “Something in its day.”
He suspected the Shemite was being . . . that civilized word . . . polite. Nahud’r’s own people were nomadic, living in tent villages that picked up and moved as necessary. But the black-skinned man with the large, white teeth had been educated in Aquilonia and Nemedia among other places. He’d seen the grand cities of stone with their tall spires and polished streets. He’d seen the capital of King Conan. Tarantia. Viewed from afar the palace and royal hall and the towers of turquoise and gold.
And he had chosen not to go back to that life, those comforts, after Kern rescued him from the Vanir slave line.
“It was,” Daol promised, though this was his first time to gaze upon the legendary ruins as well. “Before the uprising.”
Where—legend had it—Conan slew his first (or among his first) enemy. Barely fifteen summers and already with a man’s growth and a man’s skill with a sword. The legendary warrior had been a part of a large war host to resist Gunderman invasion, rising up against the settlers and warriors who occupied the strong fortress town. They came with fire and swords and brawn. They left only when the last Gunderman settler was dead or fled.
Conan himself killed five doughty foemen—No, ten! Fifteen!—and was said to have carried the torch that put the walls to the flame.
Kern almost thought he could hear the distant echoes of those screams. The calls of men at battle. Foolish, of course. No one heard the echoes of battle so many years past. Still, something stood the short hairs up on the back of his neck. And though he shook his head to clear it, there was that sound again, like the burning of the original fortress.
Whatever the source bothering him, one thing was clear. Venarium lived once again. As a Vanir camp. There weren’t more than two or three lean-to shelters and a dozen simple tents pitched on the hillside just now, but Daol had already pointed out another twenty . . . thirty areas of cleared brush and crushed-down grasses where Vanir raiders had camped not so long ago.
“Too many still,” Daol said. “At best, Kern, it’s even numbers.”
And the small band had survived so long without losing another life only because they worked together, and with larger clans, putting the enemy at a disadvantage.
“I said—”
“I heard you, Daol.”
Kern checked the sun, a bright patch hiding behind a cover of thin, white clouds today. Two hours until twilight. His warriors, camped over the other side of the hill, were tired and sore from a long run. He could not even expect the Aquilonian cavalry until dark. Hardly enough time to rest for a fight. And he was in too much a hurry to put it off for a day—perhaps two—while they regrouped and rested and planned.
The valley. And Grimnir. Those had to be his priorities.
But to let the Vanir rest comfortably, establish a stronghold of their own to raid and pillage among Cimmerian villages? Could he allow that so easily? Even for a people who rejected him and his warriors at most turns, except when they were needed?
No.
“Tonight,” he said. Unsure of why he felt a desperate need to accomplish this and move on so quickly. A gut instinct. And Kern had learned to trust those. “It must be tonight.”
Nahud’r merely shrugged, as if expecting the call. “What will we do?” he asked.
“Only as much as we need to.” He shifted away from the view, looking first to the black-skinned man, then to Daol. “Hard and fast, and then we move for the valley. We’ll need the Aquilonians. And some of Ehmish’s spider-holes.” He continued to stare at Daol.
The younger man shifted his crouch from one foot to the other. “Anything else?” he asked.
Kern smiled without humor. “Yes.”
“I thought so.”
By THE DARK of night, Kern and Reave led the small knot of warriors to the base of the hill on which Venarium rested. He looked back, checking that Nahud’r and Ashul and Aodh had gone to ground, waiting behind brush or nested down in the long grasses. Reave thumped him on the shoulder.
“They know what to do,” his friend reminded him, barely any strength behind his breath. It carried no farther than Kern’s ears. “Nay worry for them. Worry for us if that Crom-cursed wolf of yours comes much closer and draws a look from up there.”
Kern nodded. He saw well enough by the half-cloaked moonlight, and had also spotted Frostpaw a good quarter turn earlier of the constellation Dragon. The dire wolf was little more than a dark shadow gliding across the grassy hillside off to their left just now. A large creature, certainly, twelve-stone weight and wide across the shoulders, but the night was its home. Which was both good and bad. The animal thought nothing of traipsing out into the open in the dark. Fortunately, it was fairly soft-footed.
“I will worry about the wolf,” Kern promised. “Just keep that bear’s growl soft.”
Reave did not worry for the Vanir raiders, he knew. One or two of the flame-haired warriors would be, at best, crouched near the dying embers of a cooking fire. No. The trouble was whether or not a Ymirish warrior or— worse!—a sorcerer was up there in the camp. Besides being extremely dangerous of themselves, if their gold-fire eyes were anything like Kern, they had exceptionally good night vision.
But Kern did not believe there was a sorcerer. Or any Ymirish close by. No good reason, again, to say why, except for the calmness that had stolen over him. They crept forward a few cautious lengths. The large man, for looking as bearish as he sometimes sounded, moved with the careful grace of a deer. Slow. Quiet. And always coiled for a great leap forward. His Cimmerian greatsword, nearly as long as Kern was tall, was strapped across his back with the cord-wound handle across his left shoulder.
Kern stretched out his full length, chest buried against the damp ground. Waiting. It did not take long. And he was grateful that the first he noticed of the others—which meant the Vanir raiders were just as likely to have remained oblivious—was when four arrows with flaming heads sliced a
cross the dark, leaving ghost scars across his eyes as they burned long and fiery through the night.
A cry of alarm sounded as a sentry alerted the rest of the raiders that they were under attack. A second and a third voice cried out almost at the same time. Three guards on the camp! Kern had not counted on his enemy being quite so prepared.
Not that he could have set Daol’s team any farther out. As it was, two of the arrows fell short of the Vanir camp.
The other pair—and Kern was willing to wager these had been shot by Brig Tall-Wood and Daol, who both preferred the stronger, reinforced war bows used by Vanir as well—found two of the lower tents. The flaming heads splashed across the tent fabric, lighting them afire as two warriors came staggering out of each with swords already naked in their large fists.
Shouts and curses shattered what had been a still night. Already there were answering thrums as Vanir bowmen shot their heavy broadhead shafts out into the darkness, searching for their attackers. Kern heard no cries of surprise or pain, and hoped that the archers were firing blind, with no real hope of hitting anything.
At least, not until the second volley rose up from around the base of the hill.
Arcing out from a small copse that sat a good stone’s throw around the curve of the hillside. Licks of fire trailing off the flaming shafts like sparkbugs. The four arrows slammed down among the swarming raiders. Three buried themselves in the damp ground and grasses. One—by fortune rather than intent—struck into the right breast of a broad-shouldered raider.
The Vanir yelled in pain, a shout that quickly turned into fright as the flaming head continued to burn against his skin, his leather cuirass, dripping like wax down the front of his chest to mingle fire and flesh and blood.
Now the Vanir archers had something to reach for. And firing from off the hillside, their reach would be greater. Their bows spoke again, and this time a dozen arrows or better slashed at the small copse. Kern tried to imagine it. The shafts slamming in among slender trunks and branches, and (hopefully) into the breastwork of shields and barkskin layers stripped off nearby trees, all tied together with thin leather stays and a few propping sticks.
Enough to give Daol and Brig and the others a chance.
There were shouts in Nordheimir and in broken Cimmerian. Curses thrown out at the ambush. Calls for help, and calls for heads! He watched, but saw none of his Ymirish brothers rallying the Vanir. None of Grimnir’s faithful.
A good thing, or the counterattack might have been put together with greater speed and organization. As it was, too large a party than he was comfortable with speared down the hillside. Large men, brandishing war axes and broadswords, one with a horned helm that reached points outside the entire spread of his thick shoulders and a war bow he fired with incredible speed—nock, pull, aim, loose!—sending shaft after shaft down the hill and into the protected copse where Kern’s friends could do little but hunker down and ride out the storm.
“Now,” he whispered, seeing how close the raiders ran to the small copse.
An archer leaned out from one side, fired low to the ground, then curled back behind trees and breastwork before his arrow had even struck a target.
It bit into the meaty thigh of one of the charging warriors, knocking him over with a wounded howl.
Now. Now. Kern rose into a crouch, ready to throw his plan to the mountain winds and race to his friends’ help. “Now.”
One raider falling back of the seven . . . eight . . . nine . . . He stopped counting as the drum of horses’ hooves finally rolled up in an artificial thunder. The flaming arrows had been more than a means of getting the Vanir’s attention. It had also been the first of several signals. In this case, to tell Strom and his two cavalry officers to spur their mounts forward and race up from far behind (where the horses would never have been spotted or heard). By the time they thundered onto the battlefield, the first large group of Vanir had nearly reached Kern’s archers.
“Nearly” was short by a good twenty paces.
Trusting their horses to keep solid footing, Strom and Valerus and Niuss had closed the distance and raced forward with lances tilted forward and a full charge behind them. The Vanir archer with the incredible horned helm managed a single shot, and loosed it with just a touch too much haste. Instead of taking the horse in its broad chest or very large neck, the shaft smashed and splintered across the face of Valerus’s teardrop shield.
Then the horsemen slammed into the disorganized pack of Vanir, running at least two down beneath the spear-tipped lances and a third beneath the iron-shod hooves of Strom’s coal-black gelding. The horses barely paused, and the horsemen sawed on their reins to quickly haul their mounts into a turn that would race along the far side of the hill, away from Kern and his small group.
Not quite fast enough. A swordsman lashed out, drawing a bloody gash down one of the gelding’s barrel-like sides and across Niuss’s leg. Kern also hadn’t realized how open their backs would be once they wheeled into their turn, and he waited for the archer to knock any one of them from their saddle.
Which was when he noticed that the warrior ridden down under Strom’s hooves had been the great-horned archer. The veteran had likely recognized the threat and shifted his path exactly in order to prevent taking a shaft in the back.
The entire side of the hill was in pandemonium. A few Vanir raced foolishly after the horsemen, and only one or two stumbled forward on their own toward the small copse, which came alive as the Cimmerian archers bolted for a thicker stand of forest.
Daol, a lithe shadow in the night, dropped the first Vanir with an arrow through the throat. Brig—Kern was certain—got the second.
Hydallan or Ossian missed theirs.
The cries of alarm and the sudden renewed pursuit of the archers played directly into Kern’s plans, though for the moment it left him with a tight stomach and a cold, cold flush across the back of his neck. There were moments in any plan where the danger mounted for one person or another. Right now the bowmen were as exposed as they would likely be, with swordsmen racing up behind them and a double handful of archers on the hillside, firing, racing forward, firing again, dropping lethal shafts around them.
But Kern counted four men. And when they reached the forest edge a moment later, still four.
He elbowed Reave in the side. “Go.” And he grabbed for the two unlit brands that had been lying near him.
Like a pair of attacking wolves bounding out of ambush, he and Reave sprang forward and raced up the side of the hill at an angle to those coming down. Their focus divided between horsemen and fleeing bowmen, no one thought to check for a third or even a fourth group.
Hunched over low to the ground, each of them carrying a pair of unlit torches on long, long handles, they cut around a wide patch of thorny scrub and flowering berry bushes, then jumped in among the tents of the Vanir camp. Of course the raiders had not stopped to put out the twin fires lit by the flaming arrows. What were two tents when there was blood to be shed? But Kern was able to put those piles of flaming wood and cloth to good use as he thrust the ends of both torches into the flame and caught them afire. Reave did the same. Little more than bales of twigs and dried grasses, tied with strong leather stays and slathered with a bit of rancid fat, the torches caught quickly and burned hearty.
Kern and Reave ran from tent to tent, thrusting their torches into the small shelters, putting blankets and felt mats to the flame. Where he could, he stepped between two close shelters and used both torches at once. Six more tents aflame. . . . Seven. The acrid stench of scorched wool was strong.
Eight.
Then Nahud’r was there, grabbing Kern by his cloak, hauling him toward one of the lean-to structures where the Vanir had piled most of their common supplies. “This way!” he said, more insistent than Kern ever remembered.
He resisted, though only for a moment. Allowing his dark-skinned friend to pull him along past perfectly good tents. “You were supposed to wait down the hillside to cover our esc
ape!”
“Aodh and Ashul take care of that. The supplies!”
Heartbeats were slipping away from them. Any moment the Vanir would see their camp being put to the torch behind them.
The archers had dodged into a spiderhole, a specially prepared blanket covered with leaves and branches and long grasses, propped up by some tall willow sticks so that when they rolled beneath their own personal cover, they would be instantly hidden away from sight. Then the warriors and archers would notice that the horsemen had not returned. Looking around.
“It will take too much to set them ablaze.”
Kern waved his flaming brands into a nearby tent. The felt cover caught up at once, licking flames along the slender support pole. Two days before, everything would have been too wet to set afire. A day’s good weather and the Vanir’s organized camp was making the job easier.
But the Shemite pulled Kern over to the wooden structure regardless. Reaching into the large pouch at his waist, he pulled out a fist-sized bag. Unrolled the opening and dipped in two fingers, coming out with a healthy scoop of fine-grained powder.
“Shaman give. Understand?”
Kern remembered. The powder Callaugh’s shaman used to burn the torches brighter and longer. Hotter. Nahud’r had collected a small supply, apparently, with the shaman’s blessing. The lean-tos were not thatched, but the wood wasn’t too thick. With a bit of help, they could be made to ignite and burn well.
He made his decision at once, trusting Nahud’r knew what he was about. To him, it felt almost too much like the foul sorceries used by Grimnir’s Ymirish. But if the Shemite was certain . . .
“Reave! The supplies. Burn them!”
His friend did not even question the change of plans, but turned at once to the nearest lean-to shed and thrust his torches in among the branches, even finding a small heap of canvas to work into a blaze. Kern, meanwhile, had kindled some flames down low on the overhang. Nahud’r added a pinch of the shaman’s powder, and the flames danced up stronger at once. But not enough.
Age of Conan: Cimmerian Rage: Legends of Kern, Volume 2 Page 10
