Nahud’r did not laugh. “Story of Conan and pirate queen talk of her ebony beauty, and heard I have of tale where she follow this custom.”
“What would that be like?” Brig asked no one in particular.
“Men I know to have tried say it like nothing they ever know before. Good for them. Good for both. Better,” the Shemite said, leaning away as if it meant nothing, “when man pierced as well.”
Not even Kern was immune to such a thought. He winced. Reave did more, flinching hard and nearly cupping himself in sympathy for the stupid men who would try such a thing, and then all four of Nahud’r’s audience were groaning with pained laughter and immediately wrote the entire tale off as one of the Shemite’s most extravagant and blatant lies to date. All except Kern, who caught the dark man’s enigmatic and private smile, which set him to wondering all over again. An engrossing image, which, for a few moments, drove away the pain and the echoes of rage that had plagued Kern for so many days.
It would be the last time in quite a while when Kern would remember feeling normal again. If only for a moment.
23
THE HIGH MOUNTAIN storm had nearly reached its peak. Strong winds swept over the Snowy River country, drawn down from the storm building high above the pass. Thunder crashed and rolled, nearly overpowering the shouts and the clashes of ringing steel that shattered the early-morning darkness as Lodur stalked forward, scenting blood. Nearly tasting it on the back of his tongue.
The violent sensations of battle. Calling to him. Wrapping about him in a new and delightful warmth he never could have known before answering Ymir’s Call. Not even the heat of bloodlust and rage had ever comforted him so well.
It would not be long now, which was fortunate. A shadowed presence loomed at the back of his mind, pressing, held off by his will and his will alone. The Ymirish sorcerer felt its hunger, the raw and painful need that so neatly matched his own.
“Soon,” he promised it.
Promised them both.
He was come late to the battle. Intentionally. Drawing out the suffering being visited on the mountain clansmen who had already led two of Magni’s scouting parties to such painful deaths. Now he let the war host take its fill from their own bloodlust. Let Magni quench his thirst for vengeance.
The piercing shrieks of a hawk, stooping over its prey—clawing and slashing at the backs of necks, pecking at eyes—echoed alongside brutal shouts for blood as Magni, his Ymirish brother, laid about with the heavy broadsword he favored.
Good for the warrior leader to enjoy his life so.
Forgotten was the axe Lodur had once favored in battle. Even the war sword he carried now was left sheathed at his side. As much as he recalled the visceral pleasure of hacking his enemy to pieces, it was nothing compared to what was possible to him. To the lure of Ymir’s magic. The power of the north.
With a dozen strong Vanir arms chasing alongside him, part of his own escort, the sorcerer crested a sharp-edged ridge overlooking the fringe of a dwarf pine forest. Even in the predawn gloom his golden eyes gathered enough light to them to see the shadows running, struggling among the small trees. Like prey driven before a storm, the Galla ran and scattered in every direction. Shouts of pain and curses in the sharp, guttural Cimmerian tongue, men and women, were music to him. He also heard more than a few calls and cries from younger children. Their terror fed him like toothsome meat. Warm and bloody in his mouth.
Of course it had been Lodur who ordered out both scouting bands, knowing they would be attacked and using them to find the mountain people. To lure their warriors into false confidence. A handful of Vanir lives meant nothing in the larger scheme of things. Especially when he knew that Kern had walked among them, talked to them, and had all but certainly encouraged their attacks. Snares and poisoned spikes in small drop holes. Arrows flashing out from darkened woods. Mountain spiders!—tricked from holes, and treetop warrens, lured into their path.
A slow day of travel and death.
But when they later tried such simple tricks on Magni’s larger force, it was the work of a moment to turn the ambush into a trap for the Galla, cutting off their retreat with a second and a third small band, which struck in from both sides, starting a chase across highland ridgelines and icy arroyos. Once, the trail had even led a small group into a spider’s cavern. Tangling them in its webs. Leaving them for food.
But, having taken a scent, the northerners did not leave off easily. Not this battle. Raiders continued to flank and harass the Galla, herding them, driving them right back at their camp where families had waited—they thought—for news of a great victory.
Such a surprise then, when they discovered themselves surrounded, attacked.
Maneuvering forces. Patient battle plans. Lodur let Magni handle that part. His warrior brother knew more about organized battle than he had ever bothered to learn. It would be Lodur, however, who sealed their fate.
Ordering his entire escort down among the dwarf trees, he stood on the ridgeline, watching. Gathering power from the storm’s building energy as it crested within him, over him. Sweeping his rage along with it. The electrical charge of fresh lightning stood up the short, wiry hairs on his arms and the back of his neck.
Heavy winds hammered through the Pass of Noose, howling in pain as he twisted them, bent them to his will, and threw them into the faces of his enemies. His heavy fur cloak of white bear rolled out to his side like a personal banner, pulled horizontal by the small hurricane of forces surrounding him, whipping his hair about. He felt the clouds above lower themselves in his honor.
Then he unleashed Ymir’s terror on the hapless Galla, Crom’s pathetic children.
Lightning crashed down in four places throughout the dwarf forest, crawling like a beast alive through the snowcapped evergreens. Blasting open trunks and scarring the ground, it lashed out at his victims with claws of argent fire. A few fires burst among the branches, crackling as they ate up the tinder-light pine needles. Torches, by which the Vanir hunted.
The savage winds burst upon the forest, fanning up the fires until columns of flame and cinder sparks rose up in tall, twisting cyclones. The winds knocked people over and picked up dust and dirt and the sharp, sharp pine needles to cut at their eyes. It made them easy meat for a Vanir blade.
But it wasn’t enough. Lodur’s thirst was far from quenched. It was barely whetted. And the Galla, for all their confusion and fear, held stronger than he had predicted. Inside the alpine forest, they huddled in knots and clusters, with blades ready to challenge any Vanir who came at them in low numbers.
They moved beneath the branches like wraiths. Avoided the tall, dancing columns of fire, and sought darker paths.
More paths than he could guard, or than Magni could block in time.
It let them regroup, pushing youths and children to one side while the men and women of strong arm rallied, bursting from concealment near one edge of the stunted tree cover. A handful of them fell against a trio of Vanir raiders, pushing them back against a boulder-strewn field, where the flame-haired northerners went down in a flurry of sword strokes.
Most rushed the winter-carpeted slope, over which Lodur waited. No guards. No defense against the several dozen warriors who rushed at him.
A hawk screamed overhead, and Magni could be heard deep inside the forest ordering his warriors forward, to wheel about and guard the ridge from which Lodur watched, and aided them. He seemed to think Lodur needed protecting, as if Ymir’s sorcerers could not stand on their own.
“Stand aside and learn, my brother.” Lodur’s whisper, carried on a small zephyr of wind, sped from his lips to Magni’s ear without need of sight and without care for distance. Then he called down the hunger.
Mountain spiders were fearsome creatures, to be certain. But every predator, somewhere, was also another’s prey.
Leathery wings beat at the air, riding the uncertain winds with skill and determination. A flash of charcoal skin, and scales. Burning, red eyes that hunted. An ear-piercing shriek t
hat scraped sharp talons down the spine of every man in the pass, Vanir or Cimmerian.
A great weight slammed into the line of Galla warriors, knocking aside full-grown men as if they were merely a fragile collection of twigs.
A whip-strong tail lashed about. Nothing more than a blur, lost in the darkness, as it stung first one man with its deadly poisoned stinger, then a woman who had nearly rolled clear of the nightmare’s assault.
Wings scooped up dust and debris, slashing about in a sudden maelstrom of confusion.
Then, with a second shrieking call and two more struggling victims—one grasped in each taloned claw—the wyvern leaped back into the air.
Many among the Galla were struck numb, so sudden and savage the attack had come. Several lost interest in any thought but to flee. Less than half remained in a strong center, still set to rush the snow-frosted ridge on which Lodur waited.
And now it was his turn to feed.
Reaching deep within, Lodur fanned to life that dead spark of cold, blue flame all Ymirish knew. From this icy fire had once come the overwhelming cold he’d lived with his entire life, until Ymir’s Call came to him at Venarium. Only a blinding rage had been enough to overpower it and warm his flesh. Now, awakened to true warmth at last, he found in that tiny spark a reserve of power so long denied him.
The kind of gem that drew black spirits up from the cold, dark depths to which they rested, or were banished.
A tool through which he worked his greatest, and most fearsome, sorceries.
The winds continued to howl around him, picking up his cloak, swirling a wall of horizontal sleet before him as the small hurricane picked up snow from the back side of the ridge and flung those small ice crystals about like blinding daggers. Through the zephyr’s icy touch he had tested the depths, over which the Galla now ran, and found it adequate. Drawing a darkened soul through that small flicker of cold flame, like a poisoned needle threaded through flesh, he bound that spirit into the ice and snow, fusing it together, molding a new life around the abomination.
And felt it pulse with his own insatiable hunger.
A coil of the newly crafted snow serpent burst from the icy blanket as the first pair of Galla set foot at the base of Lodur’s overlook. Striking hard and fast, it tied one man up in thick coils, crushing the life out of him, while the nightmarish head dipped and swung about to grab up a leg of the second man. Two teeth, like long, daggerlike icicles, tore through his thigh. It lifted him high above, shaking back and forth like a true serpent trying to snap the spine of a small vermin, while cold, diamond-bright eyes glowed like twin, burning stars.
Too late to turn their charge around, a tight knot of Galla clansmen charged up to rescue their kin. Or to fight their way around the demonic serpent, in hopes of reaching the sorcerer. It did not matter. Where their swords rose and fell, rose and fell, the serpent’s body gave way in a quick burst of snowy powder. They hacked away great chunks. Then the serpent rolled through the snow, and its wounds were healed.
The same was not true for bruised and bloodied flesh.
The snow serpent bowled men over. Wrapped another tight around the head, twisted, then shuddered with seeming delight as it snapped the clansman’s neck.
A sword-bearing woman rushed forward and thrust her blade into one demonic eye, causing the serpent to loose its hold on the man it shook in its powerful jaws. He dropped away, rolled twice down the slope, and tried to limp aside. A kinsman raced up and helped him hobble back toward the burning wood. Before he could get there, Magni burst from one thick clump of pine and took both their heads with great, arcing swings of his blade. They died quick.
The woman was less fortunate. Deprived of one victim, the serpent threw a fresh coil around her, dragging her away from the grasping hands of other clansmen. Rolling and sliding, tying its thick body around her twice, then three times, the serpent came over her shoulder to bury its long fangs through her chest.
She screamed, and blood gushed out of her mouth.
Lodur tasted the hot, metallic bite of it.
The Galla scattered like vermin. Running in every direction with no more thoughts of attack as they hurried to escape, to live. The snow serpent would catch no more of them as they ran off the snow-packed slope, which was the limits of its existence. But it did not mind, and neither did Lodur, who drank in this victory as a savored moment.
Only the winds, twisting around him, tormented, railed out with banshee screams to freeze the blood and the spirit, wanting a new victim.
“Kern!” he shouted, letting the name roll off his lips like poison. Tying it into a black zephyr, he blew it on its way with a foul breath. Then laughed, and reveled when the hard, hammering gusts, echoed him, rolling through the pass, howling the cold laughter of the northern god, and of Lodur.
Ymir walked the lands of Cimmeria once more.
And Lodur was merely one of his many voices.
THE BATTLEFIELD KERN’S warriors stumbled across was several days old. He guessed that by the smell.
Ehmish actually saw the first signs, with the sharp eyes of youth. He pointed out the circle of crows and carrion hawks from half a league back, spotting them through a break in the forest wall. A glimpse between tall pines and birch, and a hesitant, “I think there may be something ahead.”
Not too long after, Hydallan and Brig agreed with the young man that the birds were flocking strangely. Ossian wondered aloud if that was just the way things might be here. Nahud’r snorted a short laugh, and Daol was well enough and awake enough to point out that even if it was the far side of the Black Mountains, a crow should still be a crow.
Perhaps they were, Kern decided, as they broke from the thick tree line. But looking down a shallow, sun-brightened valley where a small stream cut through in a lazy meandering curl, and there were fields rife with more wildflowers and tall grass than he had ever seen, he began to believe that things might be different here. Certainly the ground was dryer than he expected for spring months, and the sun felt warmer than any Cimmerian had a right to expect.
What was the valleyman’s adage? What poor weather Crom had not gifted to the western clans, he had given unselfishly to the valley?
Murrogh felt as if it were enjoying an early summer.
But any jealousy over the eastern clansmen’s soft life disappeared as they drew closer to the downstream fields, and they counted the hundreds of birds that rose and fell among dark, still shapes. A hollow sensation sank down through Kern’s guts as soon as Hydallan reported it, and soon Ehmish claimed he could see a glint of sun from the polished side of a sword or shield, and counted at least thirty bodies. No one accused the lad of a boast. Everyone had already known, and he simply confirmed it.
Vanir. Kern knew it. And realized that he’d been waiting for such news since the Pass of Noose, and the waterfall, and especially since the disruption to their camp the night before.
It hadn’t been anything severe. A dream of battle, and violet-clad skies raining lightning down among frightened clansmen. His? He never was certain. Kern did not remember seeing himself in his dream, or anyone he recognized . . . save perhaps one child who walked up and held out her arms, both ending in bloody stumps and missing hands.
“Sp’der scent,” she said as if reminding him. Like he could ever forget that foul, stomach-wrenching stench.
There were shouts of pain and anger, and a blood-chilling howl of tortured winds. Reminding him of the Pass of Blood? The winter winds that oversaw their fight at the Vanir ice wall? It would explain his dreamt memory of a demonic serpent made of snow and ice. But not the image of it feeding on a woman, head curled up to swallow her shoulder, fangs skewered through her chest. In the Pass of Blood, it had been him in the serpent’s coils. And he had survived. He had fought and lived, and gone on to track Grimnir himself with that pale, bruised corpseflesh and the bestial face filled with golden eyes and savage mouth. Raising his fearsome gaze toward the sky to shout the name of his enemy.
“KER
N!”
He’d sat bolt upright, kicking away wool blanket and cloak, clawing for his short sword where it rested at the side of his bedroll. He heard Frostpaw’s disturbed howl, winding down into that long, mournful note the dire wolf could hold for an impossibly long time. Shouted for archers up front, Reave and Ossian to hold—hold the middle line!—and Ashul to . . . to . . .
Ashul was dead. Aodh’s black glare, staring across the dying embers of the watch’s fire, recalled it to him.
And to the others, as well, who stood about in various states of dress and readiness for battle. Danon seemed to be in a fight with his own bedroll, trying to extract himself from its clutches. Reave and Wallach Graybeard stood at the eastern side of camp, from where the wolf’s howl had sounded and the direction by which they would have expected a new threat to come at them. Only Gard Foehammer stood on the western side, staring back up into the mountains.
The same direction in which Kern had first thought to look.
Kern remembered stepping up next to the giant of a man, staring into the mountains, their upper slopes touched as early dawn showed from the east. “Anything?” he’d asked.
Gard held his sword ready, and his other hand rubbing at some of the scars that pockmarked his face around his eyes. “Thought I heard . . . nay. Nothing.”
It should have been easy for one of them to make a joke about bad dreams. Laugh it away. Even if no one felt like laughing after being startled from their sleep so rudely. Someone should have done so. Even Kern. Except . . . all evidence aside, he did not believe it.
And neither, obviously, had anyone else.
Now the raucous cries of crows and challenging banter of the buzzard hawks fought across the open fields. Wading the deep stream, Kern stomped up the opposite bank and found a perch atop a small hillock to survey every direction. No movement except for the great dire wolf, who trailed after them at hardly an arrow’s flight. Very close for Frostpaw, appearing in the open in broad daylight. But then the scent of death would be stronger to his keen nose, and would have drawn him with the promise of possible food.
Age of Conan: Cimmerian Rage: Legends of Kern, Volume 2 Page 25
