Because the great frost-giant god, Ymir, had once laid claim to this land. Had been driven off by the cursed Lord of the Mound, banished to the frozen wastes of the north, but had never forgotten. And, passing His cold fire through many First Born, the giants who raged among legend and the Vanir religion for centuries, and then to the Great Ones such as Grimnir himself, that hunger had soaked into the land through so many generations, until the Ymirish were ready to reclaim Cimmeria for all. So it had begun.
So it would now be.
“One of them is dead,” Lodur whispered. His voice was flat, and cold, like the Hardpan Flats he had crossed in the days coming from Venarium. It carried no farther than his own ears, and those of Grimnir, should the Mighty One deign to hear.
“Fallen here. Bloodied, and broken . . . she! She died in pain.” An exquisite taste, like the first run of autumn’s tree syrup. He smiled thinly. “A great deal of pain.”
So it had not been Kern. The one of corrupted blood. But he had been here as well, Lodur knew. Echoes of the false one’s presence hammered into the back of his mind like a thin, cold dagger. Kern had stood here, had knelt over his fallen warrior.
His woman as well? That would be pleasing to Grimnir. And to himself.
He reached into the impressions left behind, into the jumble of emotions and the echoes of words spoken and long since passed from the ears of lesser men. Anger and jealousy, hatred, those were the tastes Lodur easily recognized. The bitterness of sorrow and regret were less familiar, and all but indecipherable—except for one. One voice he was able to pull free from the tangled knot, like a silver thread plucked from rough woolen yarns.
... we move on . . .
Conviction. And a cold, calm center that could only be one of Ymir’s brood. Ymir’s blood. One that had not yet awakened to the Call and was still encased in northern ice.
Lodur stalked after that thin, silver thread, following the echo of Kern’s passing back among the village huts and homes. With a sharp glance he called forward the Vanir, who began moving into the village but would keep their distance. A tug of power, an afterthought, summoned Magni forward of them all, to Lodur’s side. He felt his brother cast his hawk into the air, to circle high overhead. So close, it seemed, that Lodur could almost share his thoughts.
We move on.
Kern’s thoughts. Kern’s speech. The Ymirish sorcerer snarled, trying to drive them away now. But it was a scent, a taste, that he could not wash out once sampled. And it merely grew stronger, the closer he went to the still-burning lodge hall. As if the stench of burning flesh and his sense of Kern were tied together.
It must have been a grand fire, he decided, looking over the glowing embers and charred timbers not yet wholly consumed. An entire lodge hall stacked with split wood and bodies and tinder brush. A magnificent funeral pyre, burning throughout the day as flames battled the early drizzle of rain, drying out timber and consuming them one lick at a time. Now, near the end of its life, the fire was hottest only where a portion of one wall had stood until recently, shoved hard to collapse over the last body added to the pyre. Over her body.
The heat of the glowing embers washed against him, raising a false sweat across his face. The flames would burn another few hours, he decided. The deep bed of glowing coals, half a day longer. But in the end there would be very little left but ash and a few sticks of charred bone.
He remembered seeing the thick, tall column of smoke early that morning, waving like some black standard across the valley sky, drawing him in. He had sensed then that one of his brethren moved closer. Magni, coming down from the north. He had laid out with his horn, hoping to draw the other away, to join forces, knowing better than to underestimate Kern. Having learned that the hard way.
“Magni was tricked. Lured into false confidence.” He spat into the fire. Watched his spittle sizzle against a pile of coals, hissing, turning the glowing embers dark in spots. He stepped closer. Right up to the edge of the fire. The intense heat shoved at Lodur with a physical presence. Baking him.
“We are difficult to kill. All of us. This Kern, he would be no exception. But his companions! They draw strength from him as well, in a way the Vanir do not.”
Flames wisped and guttered over the darkened coals. Ash flaked off, burned red, then yellow, and finally crusted over in dead layers of gray and white. The blackened area grew among those embers. Spreading down toward Lodur’s feet. Then out and away in a rough outline. Like a shadow, cast down into the embers. Pushing back against the heat and the light.
“Each has sacrificed. And through that trial, has grown mighty.” We move on. “Each one fights with our strength. Our will.” The darkened outline grew wider, as large as a shadow Lodur might have cast with the sun blazing behind him.
“Where they go, others renew their own strength to stand against us.”
Grew beyond his frame. Large and hulking. Man-shaped. Giant-kin.
Twin coals popped back to life, glowing with reddish-gold brightness, looking back out of the shadowed area.
“They must be stopped, Great One. We can do this. We will.”
Then, like a rush of fire sweeping through tinder, the dead ash suddenly burned away across the darkened outline, and blackened coals swept back to full life. The wash of heat staggered Lodur away from the fire. Backed him up several paces, to where Magni waited.
A rumble of thunder shook throughout Conall Valley.
Above, a hawk’s piercing cry.
“They travel east,” Magni said. Lodur glanced up sharply. “I can sense the ice,” he reminded his brother. “Blood of our blood. The scent of a northern wind.”
Lodur nodded. In the back of his mind, the cold, blue spark was distant, and growing faint. But there. Still there.
“What do we do, Lodur?” Broader across the chest, seeming to stand taller than the sorcerer, still Magni deferred to the other man. As it was meant to be. “What shall the Great One have us do?”
“We follow,” he said, nodding at the darkened, eastern sky. That was what Grimnir wished. What he had set these two after. They would chase down Kern and his band of rogues, hunt them, and kill them. And they would rally other war hosts, creating an army to deal with anyone else who stood in their way.
“We—”
—move on.
17
THEIR THIRD FULL day out of Gaud, Kern woke to a morning as thin and crisp as any he recalled since the break of winter’s long stranglehold on Cimmeria. His breath frosted above him in a small cloud. His right arm, which had slipped out from beneath the coarse, woolen blanket and his heavy fur cloak spread atop, puckered with goose-flesh. It did not want to be moved.
Stretching it out against its will, flexing some feeling back into his hand, he reached up to rub across the numbed tip of his nose. The familiar touch of winter.
Not that Kern worried overmuch about a return of that hard, unending season. His thoughts clearing, he accepted that this was just part of their overland trek of the Black Mountains. Already into the Pass of Noose, his band couldn’t be more than a half day’s run below the Snowy River country, where the snow line never disappeared, not even in high summer. It swept down off the high peaks, crossing several of the high plateaus and diving deep into narrow canyons. It was traversable only by the Pass of Noose, which cut from Conall Valley over into eastern Cimmeria. The only other passages were far south, circling beneath the Black Mountains by way of Ymir’s Pass, or north, where the Hoath Plateau stretched between the Eiglophian Mountains and the Blacks.
Two days up and over, and they would come down into the eastern lands. Murrogh Forest. The lake-country clans of the Lacheish Plains.
Until then he expected hard, rocky terrain. Cold and unyielding. Even through the felt mat he’d doubled beneath him the night before, he felt the ground leaching away his body’s heat, working a painful stiffness into every muscle, every joint. Kern rolled his shoulders, hearing creaks and groans, feeling the knots deep down in his back muscles that h
ad not been there the summer before. He stretched hard, arching his back, shoving his booted feet down as far as they could reach. Then, with a violent thrust, he kicked the covers back and sat up, assaulting the morning with a hard grimace as the mountain air tightened the skin across his bared chest.
Hydallan crouched not far away, warming his hands over a bed of coals as he fed a few dry twigs into a small, guttering flame. The old man pulled his bearskin cloak tight about him, gripping it closed at his throat, but other than that looked impervious to the cold touch of the mountains. He merely nodded at Kern’s explosive rise.
“Wakes you up in the morning, doesn’t it, pup?”
Kern scrubbed hands over his face. Two days’ growth of beard rasped against his callused palms. “Not all of us have winter sap for blood,” he shot back. And Hydallan scowled.
Only the larger trees ran heavy with sap in the winter. The oldest ones.
“Better sap in the blood than rocks in the head,” the elder man groused. He snatched up a nearby stone and chucked it Kern’s direction. Hard.
Kern slapped the missile aside. Rising to his knees, he knelt on the felt pad while he fished from a small pile of gear next to his bedding. He had worn his fur-lined boots to sleep, of course. But nothing else. Choosing the thicker of his two kilts, a brown wrap of heavy wool trimmed with a thick roll of sable, he wrapped it about himself and used a wide leather strap to belt it in place. A thinner strap held his small knife, and he fastened this loosely below the larger belt.
Metal greaves, backed by fine mountain goat wool, he strapped over his boots and snugged their caps against his knees. He pulled on the shirt-vest of chain links, and his leather jerkin over that, then pushed a silver armlet up each arm—more spoils from battle. He then shook the dust from his thick cloak and fastened it around his neck, letting it fall back from his shoulders.
His sheathed short sword lay nearby, ready to grab up in the middle of the night if needs be. He would strap it on as well.
What he had left for possessions—not much, truly—he bundled with his blanket. Second kilt. A tattered leather poncho. An extra knife and a good sharpening stone, flint and a raw iron bar good for striking heavy sparks.
And the broken, bloody spear he still carried, of course.
He’d stuck that into the ground at the head of his bedroll the night before. Now he wrenched it free. Looked at it. There was no telling if the stain of dried blood came from a Cimmerian or Vanir. Not that it mattered so much. Every one of them had bled enough since starting this trek. It was Roat’s blood, who had died in the battle for Taur. Ehmish’s blood, where the raider had cut so deep down the side of his ribs. Desa’s and Reave’s and Daol’s.
It was Ashul’s blood. Staining her kirtle and the ground beneath her. Slicking his hands as he helped carry the Taurian woman back to the lodge hall, to sew her into her own cloak, then use poles to lower her into a burning corner of the massive funeral pyre.
Such a waste.
Laying the spear across his blanket and bundle, Kern rolled the entire collection up in the felt pad. A good piece of rope tied at each end of the roll made for a sling. That, plus his sack of foodstuff and a leather flask filled with spring runoff, and he was ready to travel.
The entire camp shuffled about the morning routine. A few early risers stole quick moments for personal needs. Wallach Graybeard discarded his bloody bandages and rewrapped the bleeding stump on his left arm with new batting before belting the leather cap back over it. Daol used a bit of animal fat smeared over his cheeks to stand up his whiskers, shaving them down with the edge of his knife. Nahud’r walked to the edge of the camp and offered private prayers to the lightening sky to the east.
The others set themselves to the bare minimum. Breaking camp. Breaking their fast by gnawing on strips of dried beef or choking down crumbs of stale flat cake. No cooking fire that morning. They would gird up, and run the snow line as hard and as fast as possible, quickly clearing their way to the other side.
Only two men moved slower than most. Aodh, who had volunteered for a middle watch again. Not sleeping. And Valerus, still not used to the hard pace set by the Cimmerians. Even with his horse to carry him most of the day. He stumbled past, chain-mail shirt rustling. Rubbed the sleep from his eye as he walked half a dozen steps past the nearest man to relieve himself behind a large boulder. Returning, he squatted next to Kern for a moment, staring also at the efficient activity going on around them.
“You regret your decision yet?” Kern asked, drawing on his slow grasp of the Aquilonian tongue. Curious.
“Every waking hour.” Valerus yawned. “Which have been too damn many for any civil . . .”
Kern turned his golden eyes onto the other man. “You can say it. A ‘civilized man.’” His laugh was not forced, but neither was it humorous. “Why you southlanders take pride in your weakness is something I do not understand.”
The cavalryman ran fingers back through the ringlet curls of his light brown hair. His green eyes reflected back a reluctant agreement.
“It’s something I’m finding hard to understand as well. That’s part of what made me stay. In the times when the regret comes hardest, like now, I also see how much I’m learning.”
That had been his argument the day before, too, when Strom told Kern at the base of the Black Mountains that he and Niuss were leaving. Turning south, to follow the Snowy River line toward Aquilonia. Two days out of Gaud—one small skirmish near where they crossed a raging stream, but otherwise an uneventful run to the valley’s eastern teeth.
Kern recalled his surprise. But then, he hadn’t understood what made the cavalrymen stay as long as they had.
Strom had set some of that clear.
“We almost turned south after Venarium. It would have been faster, yea. But you accepted our company when you had no reason to want us along. Some of your men bled in place of mine on the rock flow. I’d hoped to see you safely back to the valley in payment.”
“And now?” Kern had asked.
“Now I can’t say there is safety anywhere in Cimmeria. And it’s time I passed that word along.”
“To King Conan?”
Kern wasn’t certain how his warriors would feel about that. Conan’s name was still spat upon in many places, among many clans. Outcast by choice, but his heroics the stuff of legend still. A man whose actions you might admire, but still could not completely trust. He could send troops against the Vanir, establish more em-bassies, and some would simply call it another type of occupation. His judgment, and deeds, would always be suspect.
Kern knew that as well as anyone.
Strom merely shrugged. “We don’t march up to our own leaders so easily as you visit a rival chieftain, Kern Wolf-Eye. I’ve never laid eyes on King Conan, and I doubt I will before I die. But he may hear.” Another shrug. “What he will do, I can’t say. Aquilonia has its own problems.”
“You will backtrack toward the Hardpans.”
“Nay. Niuss and I will risk the Guralian Hills. After travel through Cimmeria, the bandits of Atzel will seem hardly a nuisance.”
“Niuss and you?”
Which was when Strom broached the subject of Valerus. That he had asked to remain as the band traveled over the Snowy River passes and into eastern Cimmeria. “He can learn a great deal more that would be good for us to know. If you’ll accept him.”
He had. Though it still amazed him that men like Valerus, like Nahud’r, could live so comfortably outside their own lands. Kern no longer had a home. Hadn’t since the day Cul cast him from the Gaud. But to exile oneself by choice?
“Part of what made you stay,” Kern said now, as Valerus picked himself up and set himself toward where his horse was kept tethered.
The Aquilonian looked back. His eyes were a muddy green, like the brackish water of a still pond, but were still sharp and alive. “Part of . . . ?” he asked.
“Learning.” Kern chose his words carefully, struggling around the fluid Aquilonian languag
e. “You said that is only part of what made you stay.” He waited for Valerus to nod. “What was the rest?”
For a moment, he thought that Valerus would not answer. A man’s choice, to keep his decisions to himself. The soldier, who had tucked his gloves into his belt, pulled them out, and brushed them against each other, shaking the tight mesh of metal ringlets and wire free of any dust or debris. These he pulled on with short, quick tugs. He shrugged one shoulder.
“Ashul,” he said, then trudged on to collect his mount.
It was an answer Kern respected.
He made a point, in fact, of including Valerus in the forced banter of the morning, whenever the Cimmerians rested by slowing down to an easy jog, or, at their slowest, a quick-paced walk. Nahud’r warmed easiest to the young cavalryman. They shared some experiences, after all, with the Shemite’s years spent in Nemedian and Aquilonian employ. And Ehmish was young enough to be enthralled by the man’s stories. So often they sounded like tall tales to be spun around a campfire. The creatures of elemental earth that had marched off Mount Golamira to batter down the walls of Galparan. And even if one did believe the descriptions of large buildings crowded together in huge southland cities, it seemed a far stretch to think that such a city could be “lost,” even in the dark forest jungles of the Black Kingdoms.
The talking brought Valerus into the pack.
It also helped pass the day.
But by midday conversation had given way to ragged breathing and desperate swigs of leathery water. The cold mountain air tasted thinner with each passing league, rasping the throat raw and dry. Sweat stood out on faces, on chests.
Kern’s warriors wandered their gazes along the trail ahead, the slopes, the trees, as if searching for the hidden eyes that watched them. They passed from a cliffside trail, over a ridge, then down into a long, shallow canyon with a sheer face at one side and a steep, wooded slope the other. Everyone alert for danger. Reaching into their strength to keep one foot moving ahead of the other, eating up the Black Mountains one long stride at a time.
Age of Conan: Cimmerian Rage: Legends of Kern, Volume 2 Page 19
