Then Daol’s eyes rolled back and he pitched forward, sprawling full length across the frozen ground.
Suspecting a decoy, the Galla warriors immediately drew their ropes taut to either side, hauling Daol to a half-sitting position and nearly choking Kern back into unconsciousness. But Daol didn’t respond at all, and their captors loosened their grip, concerned. Kern stumbled forward, all but dragging one of the brawny nomads with him, and fell to his knees beside his friend.
The younger man’s breath came in hitches and gasps. Too shallow. His skin had a waxy paleness to it that Kern had known most of his life, but was not a healthy sheen on most Cimmerians.
Kern tried to talk through the leather bit, and his concern came out in a muffled, frustrated shout. He felt a flush building on the back of his neck as his anger worked its way close to the surface.
Two of the Galla warriors dropped down next to him, and began to check Daol over, their rough hands moving remarkably fast as they searched his neck, arms, and legs. Inspecting his skin for any cuts, it seemed. Of course he had the arrow wound from Gaud, still dressed beneath a poultice.
They hiked up his kilt for a glance.
Rolled him over.
The wound slashed across his back, raw, and tinged with a dark purple bruise. It looked like nothing worse than a wide scratch, or a gouge, if an infected one.
Daol wore his buckskin cloak dropped back from his shoulders. One of the Galla smoothed the velvety buckskin out flat and pointed to the jagged tear. And that was when Kern remembered the spider, bowling Daol over, crouching over him as its poisoned mandibles slashed at his quiver, ripping it from his back and, as he saw now, slashing one tip through his cloak and skin.
Kern began shouting through his gag, leaning into the faces of the other men and snarling for their attention. Shaking his head violently when one of them pulled the knife from his belt.
He shouldered the man back, and would have struck out with his hands or feet had he not been kneeling, and bound.
Then another man elbowed Kern hard in the chest, knocking him back and away from the fallen Gaudic warrior. Kern fell hard, head slamming back into hard, unyielding earth. Sparks of pain lit off inside his head. He rocked back to one shoulder, and his gaze of cold, golden fury actually set the Galla warrior back a pace.
It took a third man planting his boot in the middle of Kern’s chest, pinning him to the ground, before the others would turn their backs on him again. Kern struggled, but was in no position to work any kind of leverage. The wind whipped up fresh, howling, and a desperate peal of thunder rolled across the mountains.
No rain. But a violet sheet of lightning flashed in the sky.
A few of the Galla warriors checked the horizon for a storm while Kern struggled beneath the boot. Found none. Then, despite Kern’s muffled protests, the knife-wielder reached down to slice a pair of shallow cuts crosswise over the poisoned wound.
Someone handed him a small, leather flask, which he unstoppered and swigged from, swishing the liquid around in his mouth before spitting it onto Daol’s back. It smelled of soured alcohol, like wine that had gone bad. Bending down to Daol’s back, that man bit into the shallow cuts and sucked hard against the wounds. Drawing blood and drink out of Daol, then spitting it to the side. Again, he did this. And again. When he needed it, he poured another swig straight onto the wound, and continued.
Leaching out the poison. Kern hadn’t thought that possible. Not for such a large creature. He saw it now, though, in the systematic way the Galla attacked the wound. Trying to draw as much venom as he could before it killed Daol. Kern waited, so intent on what was happening, he didn’t notice for a moment that all attention was on his friend, and even the man who had stepped on him to keep him out of the way had let him be, watching silently as his clansman worked on the prisoner. As two other men began to rig a travois, building the litter out of the same ropes they had used to leash Daol and a pair of long, stout poles.
No one paying Kern any mind.
He’d already loosened his bindings. Now, able to concentrate a moment, without the hectic march to distract him, Kern felt out the slack. Not enough. He strained and twisted, but couldn’t break the strong spider silk and had not the room to slip a loop over his large hands. With a knife, or any kind of burning ember, he might have a chance. He strained again, feeling the cord cut into his wrists, and let his anger fuel his muscle as if all the rage in the world could give him enough strength to—
The rope slackened.
The knot had slipped open, or perhaps the thin cords were not quite as strong as Kern had feared. Either way, he felt the bindings fall loose. Working his hands free, he kept them hidden behind his back. When he felt certain no one would notice, he reached up and slipped the first noose from around his neck. Then the second.
It would have been the work of an instant to roll back to his feet, turn, and flee. He might make it. He would make it. Avoid the first few spears and gain the scrub forest of stunted pine he could see back along the way they’d come. There, turn upslope. Keep running, saving nothing back, and lose his pursuers in the higher elevations, in the cold of the snow and ice, where he knew he could outlast them. Winter in his bones. Anger to keep him warm.
Higher up, he could turn predator to their prey, and when he had the opening, then escape and rush to find the others. Bring them back after Daol. Ransom or not, he’d have his freedom, and he’d have his friend back.
It was a chance. Mayhap their best chance.
No one had seen Kern slip his bonds. Or no one cared. He thought about making them care. Careful and quiet, steal a weapon, then put down the nearest few before making a good start down the slope.
If he could have left Daol behind.
As two men picked up his friend, laid him carefully on the makeshift litter, Kern rolled up easily onto all fours, leveraging himself on fingertips and the balls of his feet. Strength rushed back to his arms, now that he could stretch and move them again. Which was good. He was likely to need every last ounce as he stepped up and one of the Galla noticed that their second prisoner had freed himself.
But Kern simply stepped between two poles at one end of the litter, reached down, and grabbed them in strong, rawboned hands. He didn’t look about, didn’t worry for what the Galla might do. They would try to put him back in restraints, or not. Someone would help him carry the weight of his friend, or not. He stood ready to bear his share of the load, or turn and grapple with them until dead. Their choice.
No one moved, and Kern simply waited. Not wanting to provoke them, guarding the rage he felt certain was kindled in his golden eyes, he stared off to one side. Kept an eye on that scraggly forest of alpine evergreen, the snow that nestled beneath their branches, and the sudden glimpse of silver-gray fur that flashed between two of the trees.
Another man stepped up to the litter’s side and helped him lift Daol.
Kern lifted easily. Between their shouldering the man’s weight, he figured they’d be good for another two leagues before dark. The rest arranged themselves around in a loose circle, but Kern ignored their caution. He wasn’t making his break for it. Not yet.
He didn’t even look back save the once, just as they worked themselves up another slope and started into a thin stand of silver-barked alder. He did it as he swung the end of Daol’s litter above a large rock, angling his body so the glance would not seem too suspicious. And he worked to keep himself from a satisfied nod.
He hadn’t left Daol behind. Wouldn’t have left any of his warriors. His wolves.
And he knew now that at least one of his wolves hadn’t abandoned him. Not yet.
Frostpaw stood back on the ridgeline from which he’d come down. The dire wolf’s golden eyes followed Kern. Just as he hoped the rest of his pack might be following the animal’s tracks.
As the forest swallowed him up, the wolf howled. Its troubled call was lost inside a long peal of thunder, and even if it hadn’t been, Kern would not have recognized
its fear. Its pain at a worrisome scent.
And not one of Kern’s guards had noticed, either, that the simple length of strong rope that had been bound about his hands ever so tightly lay on the back side of the ridge.
Burned into two separate pieces and still smoldering.
20
THE GALLA CAMPSITE wasn’t more than a league farther on, nestled right up against the mountain’s hard snow line, set within a stand of tall ponderosa pine. Canvas tents were pitched by throwing a tarp over a strong rope tied between two trees. A few hastily erected lean-tos were likewise built, thatching a sloped roof with a thick pile of evergreen branches. Deep fire pits were carefully dug away from any trees, and lined with rocks. A few cooking fires bled wisps of gray smoke into the mountain air.
Kern smelled the woodsmoke from several hundred paces.
Stomping into their campsite, he surrendered Daol to people with suspicious frowns but ready hands. It was difficult this time, putting his anger aside. All he could think about was the rough treatment of being hauled up the cliff face, the bruises and burns around his neck, and the delay in reaching the far side of the pass.
Everyone seemed to be avoiding him, treating him with a wary glance if at all, so he spent a few moments simply standing among them, face set in a dark glower. He counted a dozen women and two or three clan elders who had been waiting for the hunting parties to return. Few children or older youths—three or four that he saw. So only a small measure of the strength of their clan, then.
Spread throughout the mountains in numerous roving tribes, the Galla had never been counted and not even they likely knew their total strength. They kept to themselves, fought among themselves, and never stayed in one place very long. The nomadic clan had little patience for crops and preferred to roam after the larger herds of mountain animals. Shag-backed elk and ram. This tribe had trapped and hobbled three large gray geese, which saluted Kern’s arrival with braying honks, and kept a pack of four or five goats as well. Eggs and milk, he guessed. The goats had tangled themselves up in the trees, bleating, pulling at the end of long spider silk ropes which, miraculously, they did not try to chew.
Within a short time of roaming the campsite, he knew the reason why.
“Sp’der scent,” a young girl told him, when she saw him inspecting the line. She had trailed behind Kern for some time, always staying three wary paces away. Close enough to study the strange man, but not so close that she couldn’t run if threatened. “You A’sir?”
It took him a moment to realize she meant Aesir. One of the golden-haired icemen from the northeast land of Asgard. Above the Eiglophians, sharing a border with Vanaheim but, for several decades since, friendly to Cimmeria.
Frowning, he shook his head. His hair was lighter than most Cimmerians ever saw, except those living north of the lake country, who mingled blood with the warriors of Asgard. It was a measure of their remote life that they had not come into contact with the Ymirish. Kern hoped it would stay that way.
He doubted it.
They had allowed him free run of their camp, while Daol was seen to by the tribe’s healer. Kern had been barred from the leader’s tent, though he never strayed too far from it. The large dwelling had been made by hanging canvas sheets between a square growth of trees, with a lean-to ceiling to keep the rain and snows off. Their standard, different for every tribe of the far-flung Clan Galla, hung on a post outside of a large slit cut into one canvas wall. Not unsurprising, perhaps, it consisted of a half dozen ebony mandibles, pulled from the giant mountain spiders.
Now that he was here, Kern was just as eager to learn what ransom his captors would demand, and to get Daol back to the others and off these Crom-cursed mountains. But waiting was all they had given him to do. So he stomped among the trees, glared at the children, and wrestled with the idea of simply making his break for it, to come back with swords bared and a bloodlust to quench.
Except that he wasn’t going to do it. Could not leave Daol alone. Had no stomach for the kind of mindless slaughter already visited on Cimmeria by Grimnir’s brood and their Vanir allies.
But Crom curse him if he would stand around meek as one of their roped goats as well! He had waited as long as he was willing.
Perfectly ready to barge in on their leader and force the issue, Kern dropped back a pace when, as he approached the split opening to the large, makeshift tent, a well-thewed warrior met him by casting back one side of the sheet and holding it open for him. It was harder to make a forceful entry once invited, but Kern thought he managed it. He brushed inside without a word or a glance. He did not bother to check his back, insulting the guard, all but declaring that Kern considered him no threat at all.
The interior of the grand tent was drafty and dimly lit, though Kern had no trouble seeing as his eyes gathered in what little light there was. The canvas walls were painted with scenes of clansmen hunting, and feasting around large bonfires. These scenes seemed to come alive as the walls shook and rippled under a gust of wind. Daol lay near one corner, bundled under several blankets, still pale and sweating. Kern did not count heads, but simply felt there were no more than half a dozen people inside the large tent structure. Instead, his gaze locked on to the one man who sat at the center of the room.
A single fire, hardly more than a pile of yellow-orange embers, baked at the chieftain’s feet. He was using a small, flat-topped boulder for a chair. Curly, coal-black hair was pulled up into the customary topknot and drooping moustaches fell a good thumb’s length below his jaw. Tall, easily a handbreadth taller than Kern, he appeared thin but of wiry strength. No strapping warrior, not anymore, the man had at least forty summers beneath his belt. The only way he bulked up now was with two heavy fur cloaks wrapped around his shoulders, arms pulled inside to hold the furs closed at his neck. It made the man seem frail, not a leader, until Kern considered that, traveling the snow line as they did, living without the benefit of walls or even dry floors, warmth must equal wealth among the Galla.
Then a stub of arm poked up from between two folds of bearskin. Pointed to a small felt mat. “Sit t’ere.”
Kern crouched over the mat, but refused to relax in this man’s presence. Though he did rethink his opinion of the chieftain. No matter his appearance now, he must have been a strong man to have survived such a loss. And to hold his position, after. This was no simple man seated across from Kern.
He found himself wondering how he had lost his arm, but could guess. The chieftain had a puckered scar on the side of his face, much like the scars Kern had seen before on some of the hands and arms of some of the other Galla. This one, however, had been decorated with red dye, turning the burn into the body of a mountain spider. Drips of venom fell from the spider’s mouth, running in a line of small tattooed drops that fell along the man’s neck and disappeared into a fold of cloak.
There were others, too. A woman, tattooed with lightning on the backs of her hands, whom Kern took to be the tribe’s healer. She sat between her chieftain and Daol. Also a warrior, seated cross-legged on the floor, a naked blade laid across his lap. His Galla-style tattoos were simple tribal patters circling each arm. Laid out before him were the bedrolls taken off Daol and Kern, their ropes untied and the contents spread out over the raw dirt floor.
Clothing and leather straps. A total of three knives, including the blue-steel blade Daol had received as a gift in Callaugh, and his broadsword as well. A cap of boiled leather. Blankets. An extra short sword for Kern.
And the blood-soaked head of a spear.
With hardly a thought, Kern leaned over and took possession of the broken shaft. The nearby warrior caught Kern’s wrist in a strong grip, and behind him he heard the shuffling of at least two more warriors. Maybe more. He wasn’t about to show weakness by looking. Wasn’t about to do anything but reclaim that one symbol of everything that Kern’s warriors had paid for so far.
The Galla warrior would not let go.
Crom and Cimmeria in flames! Kern’s head was still
splitting with pain, and there were few places on his body not raw and tender at the moment. He might have other men wounded, or dying, out there. Daol might be dying here. His village was gone. His clan was dead. And now some thickheaded primitive from the Snowy River land was going to play lodge hall games with him? Kern felt like ripping the shaft away and driving it back through the other man’s heart.
A pained expression slashed across his adversary’s face. But his grip remained resolute.
Sparks lit off behind Kern’s eyes as he set his feet solid against the ground and used nothing but upper body strength to pull the spear toward him. He felt the other warrior’s heavy grip. Knew they were evenly matched in strength. But still, slowly, he was pulling the other man over. It felt like the bones in his wrist might crack at any time, but he kept pulling. And it was the Galla clansman who looked pained. Desperate.
“Eno’gh,” the chieftain finally said.
The other man let go, and Kern reclaimed the spear. With a quick flourish, he drove it point down into the earth in front of him. If these Galla wanted to make the spear a possible argument, he would put it right out in front.
The chieftain had sat forward, tense. Now he relaxed again. His good hand stole out from beneath his cloak and stroked his moustaches as he studied the spear. Studied Kern. He nodded off to one side, and a warrior passed through the slit-door in the canvas side. Then the tribal leader looked askance at Kern.
“You are nay Cimmerian,” he finally said.
Kern only shrugged. That was always the argument, wasn’t it? And not even he could say exactly what he was. Not anymore. Not in a way to make the chieftain quickly understand. But if the Galla did not know of the Ymirish, they would at least know about the Vanir threat.
“I was born to Gaud,” he finally said. “Now I fight the raiders.”
The man grunted, as if to say that such did not impress him. He still had not offered his name. None of them had. Galla clansmen gave their names to those who were equals. Mostly, others who could claim to have tamed the Snowy River country.
Age of Conan: Cimmerian Rage: Legends of Kern, Volume 2 Page 22
