Then there was no more time for whispered conversation or worrying about the nearness of the dire wolf, as the coughing chirrups of a hunting owl warned them that the last of Kern’s warriors were in position.
The Vanir sentries did not even glance at the forest sound, though Kern thought he noticed one of the prisoners huddled in the camp’s center suddenly stir.
So much the better if one of them had recognized the false call. They would be prepared.
Not a dozen heartbeats later, the first arrows struck at the camp. They hammered in from east and west, slashing, not at the sentries, but deeper into the camp. Picking off a few of the raiders who sat near their bedrolls or diced for sport among their companions. A barrel-chested man rose off the ground with a violent roar, one shaft embedded deep in his chest, not that it seemed to matter. Two others on the western edge rolled away yelling, one with an arrow lodged in his rump, the other dying with a shaft buried in the side of her neck.
“Now!” Kern yelled, and he and Reave and Nahud’r broke cover from the clearing’s north edge just as the sentries all turned away from them.
They crashed through the trees and a waist-high stand of bellberry brush, making no secret of their approach. In fact, trying to advertise greater than their own number. When they burst out from the tree line, just behind the nearest sentry, the flame-haired northerner had perhaps a handful of heartbeats to think on his situation before Reave’s greatsword fell across his shoulder, cleaving away one arm with one mighty blow.
Reave kicked the dead man aside as Kern stepped up in full view on his left, and Nahud’r—wrapped nearly head to knees in woolen garments—on the right. One of the other sentries caught Kern’s features and ran up quickly, sword sheathed and waving his hands overhead, shouting in Nordheimir for Kern not to attack.
A mistake, he shouted.
The flat, nasal language of the northern raiders was not well suited to fear, but this one came close.
Then an arrow took him in the back from the eastern side of camp, and he stumbled the last few paces to end up impaled on Kern’s short sword. Recognition flared in his eyes, followed by a sudden shift to loathing and anger. Then he died.
As his anger rose, and stole over him with comforting warmth, Kern watched the light die in Vanir eyes with great satisfaction.
“Ymir-egh,” a few of them shouted. Warriors rolled out of bedrolls or abandoned their gaming circles, snatching up blades and warhammers, axes, and even a few long pikes.
As Kern had hoped, most of the other sentries were at a hard run, circling around his small trio. Inside the camp, a few moved to guard the prisoners, keep them in place, but most surged forward in a ragged line.
Then Mogh slammed out from the tree line to Kern’s right, and Desagrena on the left. Mogh was set upon immediately by one of the sentries, holding his shield up to ward off the frantic, overhead blows. Mogh slipped his broadsword underneath to open up the man’s belly like an overripe fruit. Desa had her shield ready as well, which was a good thing, as an arrow smashed itself into splinters against its facing just a heartbeat later.
“Behind, Reave!”
Reave ducked back, crouching low. The large man could not fight with a shield, not with a Cimmerian greatsword in his hands. Kern’s shield was slung behind his shoulder, protecting his back just now, but he held up the limp body of the Vanir sentry with the sword through his gut and a handful of his oily, red hair.
Nahud’r joined him, adding a bronze-faced shield, and between them they waited out a short volley of arrows that smashed and glanced away from Nahud’r or simply pinned themselves into the dead man’s back.
More arrows slashed out of the dark from east and west as four of Kern’s best archers continued to rake over the camp with silent death. Brig and Ehmish from one side. Hydallan and Aodh the other. Daol, still recovering, had been forbidden to join, and guarded the small team’s gear. He could hardly lift a sword still, much less draw back on a northern-made war bow.
Even without him, the others made their presence felt. A man carrying a mighty battle-axe spun away from his run at Kern, stuck through his left ear. Another raider took an arrow in the lung, then a third and a fourth, staggering back until he collapsed over the fire, dragging the spit and the fawn’s small carcass with him into the flames.
Half a dozen dead. Maybe one or two more. Kern counted them up as best he could, hunkered down behind the corpse, and considered it as good as he was likely to get in those first chaotic moments of the ambush.
Then he rose, kicking the Vanir off his blade and swinging his shield around quickly, getting it set as the first serious threat slammed into them.
Three men, all with heavy blades.
Nahud’r dropped back a pace, creating room for Reave, who stepped into the gap. From the sides, Mogh and Desagrena dodged in their direction. It was a carefully choreographed maneuver, designed to pull the raiders right at their center. And as swords rose and fell and stabbed out in deadly attacks, Kern found himself put on the defensive, keeping his shield and his sword between himself and death as more Vanir rushed up on the line.
Which was just what he had wanted them to do.
They came at him, each Vanir ready to put a blade through his heart. And Kern stepped to the fore, drawing them on, keeping them from putting together a decent line against his flanking positions. He traded sword strokes with two flame-haired men, holding them away, while beside him Reave laid about in great, sweeping arcs to discourage a third.
The tip of one raider’s broadsword snaked in and drew a bloody line along the shoulder of Kern’s sword arm.
The second man battered against Kern’s shield, cutting through the thin metal facing and working at the wood beneath.
And all the while he felt his rage surging, the pressure building, and was all but ready to give it its head at last.
But the remainder of Kern’s careful plan fell apart as Valerus’s mount broke through the tree line at the far, southern edge of camp. Too early. Too early by a good measure. With his sturdy mount carrying himself as well as Ossian and Garret, the Aquilonian spurred forward in an attempt to get at the prisoners, still being held by only a small guard.
A few of the late-charging raiders turned around, heading back.
Then three more of Kern’s warriors each broke cover behind Desa and Mogh, running in to flank the raider charge, to contain the northerners and force them into a ragged, unsteady line.
Cursing fickle luck, Kern ducked a wild slash, turned a second jab aimed for his heart against his shield, and came overhead in a scorpion-stinging thrust to skewer a raider through the throat.
Almost! Almost perfect. If it had worked, the raiders would have been boxed on three sides, with their backside open as Valerus charged up from behind to rescue the prisoners, arm them, and set them as an anvil against which Kern might have smashed the entire raiding host. As it was now, his warriors were slightly overmatched in a series of small engagements, sure to claim lives on both sides. Even working together, Kern knew that several of his pack—his friends—were unlikely to walk away from the encounter.
He set his teeth in a grimace, battered away the shield of the next raider, and hacked down once . . . twice . . . three times . . . wood-chopping blows that bit deep into the Vanir’s arm and struck at the bone, every one. The man screamed in pain, backed away quickly, only to be replaced by a fresh warrior three hands taller than Kern and swinging a large maul.
The first blow nearly smashed through Kern’s shield and certainly left his arm feeling numb and possibly broken.
Kern’s archers had finally quit their nests for swordplay. Brig and Ehmish, Hydallan and Aodh, barreled in against the raider flanks, swords naked and gleaming in the dying firelight.
Several northerners rushed to meet them, and steel rang against steel.
There were no more easy kills. No tricks to pull from behind his back. Kern worked back-to-back with Reave, with Nahud’r. Once, as the tide of battle
swept them apart, he laid about on two sides with sword and shield until Desa slammed up against him and together the two of them pushed the hammer-wielding giant of a man back a few precious steps. Together, they hamstrung a second raider and left him for dead, bleeding from his neck, his gut.
Still, Kern felt the battle slipping away from him. And his warriors were paying for it. Kern saw Mogh stumble back, his face laid open to the bone with a bloody gash. Nahud’r’s scimitar flashed out in a deadly blur, holding back the approaching avalanche, but then he collapsed under a rush of three Vanir warriors.
Aodh and Ossian leaped to his defense, trying to offer some protection to the downed Shemite. But Aodh reeled away with a knife stuck in his shoulder and his sword lost in the struggle.
Sparks of fresh rage fired painfully behind Kern’s eyes, and blood pulsed loudly in his ears. A thrill of warmth washed through his body, and a taste for vengeance as well as for victory dried his mouth. Driving the Vanir back two more steps with vicious stabs slashing in at the large man’s face, his chest, he finally let slip his rage. Let it fuel his muscles and aim the tip of his blade.
He sensed the raider’s next attack, and crossed his sword in front of Desa to save her a crushed skull. His arm moved with lightning speed, and he pinked the tip of his short sword three times into the large man’s arm, his side, his thigh.
Never had he felt so strong. So sure. He knew, now, that this man was the host’s leader. He knew as well that there was an even greater reservoir of strength opening just behind him, should Kern merely accept it.
And despite the clear, cloudless sky, he heard the rolling call of ceaseless thunder. A pounding that went on and on, like a stampede running through his head, egged on by fresh shouts and yelling and a cheer raised from parched throats.
It was the cheers, he decided later, that truly drew him back from the very edge. When he noticed that it was a stampede.
A charge of Cimmerian warriors on horseback, holding on for their lives to their horses’ long manes with one hand, while they thrashed about with battle clubs. They crashed in from the glade’s southeast edge, leading a ragged line of warriors afoot as well. Large men, dark and burly, with heavy blades and a fury in their throats that echoed the rage flooding Kern’s thoughts.
They slammed into the raiders as if demon-possessed, throwing the entire battle into chaos. Relieving some of the pressure building against Kern’s warriors, letting them gasp for breath or quickly drop back to bind a companion’s wounds.
The Vanir knew better than to push a losing position. Or, at least, their leader did. Shouting at the top of his voice, the great man with the warhammer fell back away from Kern’s line with bloodlust twisting his face into a dark mask, and the beginnings of fear and doubt in his eyes. Kern followed without thought, not yet ready to give up the fight, to let the Vanir go to murder and maim some other day.
But he was brought up short by a second raider, this one also a large, strapping man with an advantage of height and reach over Kern. And an arrow buried deep in his chest.
The same raider who had sounded an early alarm of the attack.
At first, Kern thought him of Ymirish blood. Pale skin, light-colored hair and beard. Then he realized it was a pale golden color, washed out by the leaping flames that now cooked fawn and Vanir both. A man of some Aesir blood, though not a lot of it left inside him. The arrow had done its work, though the man refused to die. Weakened, maddened into a Berserker’s rage that left no room for surrender, for retreat, he came at Kern with a battle-axe and a murderous gleam still fired in his eye.
Kern parried his first attack easily enough. He yelled in fury, and his voice was the thunder, his eyes twin coals of golden flame that burned, and burned, and burned.
The battle around him seemed to slow, as if the men and women who fought for their lives suddenly walked through the motions. A violet wash swept out from him, staggering in its intensity, in the strength it drew from him, and then gave it back in a dark burst. Again. And Again. Timed to his own heartbeat as it slowed all else. Froze the dying Vanir, who hesitated with battle-axe held high overhead.
Stepping inside the second swing, Kern rammed his sword once . . . twice . . . through the raider’s chest before he stopped to think about what was happening around him.
And a dark voice, steeped in anger and surprise, whispered in the back of his mind.
“Welcome, brother.”
He understood the Nordheimir language perfectly. Odd enough to distract him in most moments. But the guttural words came accompanied with images. Fragments of vision, some of which Kern recognized. Jumbled together and slamming through his mind in a series of thrusts that left him reeling, and angry, and afraid.
A mighty Ymirish warrior hacking his way across the bloody field at Taur.
Venarium, bathed in a sheet of violet, harsh light.
Gaud. Burning.
A haggard face, drawn and thin, yet still powerful in the way the golden eyes flared with sudden power. A sorcerer’s face.
His face.
Nay!
Kern staggered forward as if suddenly broken free from an amber prison. Pulling back from the edge again, if barely, he thrust aside the powerful call of his blood, which had so nearly consumed him. Everything he had known and trusted, everything he thought he was, refused to accept the power. Shied away from it, as a wolf dodging back from a burning brand. Leaving him shaken.
Angry, and confused.
Nothing confusing about the Vanir, though, who broke and ran like quicksilver slipping through fingers. A dozen men or more hit the edge of the forest while a slower, final few bought time, tangling themselves in last-ditch efforts against Kern’s warriors or the awkward horsemen.
Kern saw the tall, flame-haired Vanir among those gaining the safety of the trees. Southwest edge. The large man disappeared into a patch of thorny brush, crashing into the dark. Kern chased after. Unnerved at the forces gripping him, raging at what was being done to him, within him, he let his anger swell and sweep him away again, Ignoring the voices calling out to him, his mind focused on only one thing.
To kill this enemy. To destroy.
To refuse!
He charged around the near side of the thicket, sword held high and the bloodlust running hot in his veins. Ahead, there came a loud snarl and a howl of desperate pain. Cursing, fighting against the savage growl Kern knew all too well. A moment earlier and he might have seen the desperate, blind attack, as Frostpaw struck at the man crashing through the thicket in which the dire wolf had taken refuge. An instant later, and the wolf’s brains would have been splashed against the forest floor.
Kern rounded the thicket, golden eyes aflame as they searched the darkness.
Saw the large Vanir limping forward, hobbled by a savage tear down the back of his right calf muscle.
Saw the warhammer raised overhead. Ready to come crashing down against the dire wolf, who hunched low to the ground in preparation for a maddened leap.
Time slowed, again catching Kern between breaths. He felt the furious spark of the Vanir’s life, burning bright and hot before him. A second flare, angry as well as frightened, shooting off from the animal. Others raced up behind—he knew that—but nothing mattered just then except for what was in front of him, and the knowledge that in his rage he could reach and snuff the life from either, or both of them. Ending their existence.
And he knew it would be warm.
The knowing. The certainty that thrilled him. It shook Kern to his very core. Nothing in his life had ever been so certain, that he could not trust this now. Could not trust anything that could not be set in front of him, to be looked upon and measured and decided with a Cimmerian’s calculating eye. He hesitated to answer the call of his rage, and finally flinched away from the powerful swell as time reasserted itself. And all he had was the last, small echo of a single heartbeat in which to act.
Whipping his sword forward, he put every last measure of strength behind it as the bl
ade spun end over end one time before burying itself in the Vanir’s armpit.
The large man lost his hammer, weapon tumbling forward. Skipping to one side quite nimbly, the dire wolf dodged, crouched, and sprang back on the attack in the blink of an eye. With a furious snarl, its twelve-stone weight slammed into the raider’s chest, scrabbling against him as its teeth found and ripped out the man’s throat in one fast, violent bite.
Riding its kill to the ground, Frostpaw then sprang back into a new crouch, turning on Kern and growling with maddened fury.
Ready to leap at him, or the new figure who rushed up with bow in hand, arrow pulled back against the animal.
“No!”
Too far to stop it, Kern reached out nonetheless as if he could intercept the shaft. His voice thundered, echoing in his own ears. It struck the other man with physical force, staggering him back. And no matter what he had turned away from not a moment before, Kern saw—swore by Crom he saw—a spark of violet fire streak from his outstretched fingers to the bow, slicing through the taut string, snapping it in two.
One end of the cord lashed the man across the face, and he dropped the ruined bow.
Kern stood there, panting, his mind trying to explain what he had seen. What he had experienced in those last few moments, and what he had done. He realized as well that he had given his back to the wolf, which still threatened him with a low, growling snarl. But still he did not move. He waited to see what this new warrior would do. How he would react. Ready to be attacked. Certainly denounced.
No thought in Kern’s head predicted that the other man would laugh. Rueful. Almost unbelieving. One large hand clasped over half his face, he shook his head.
“Wolf-Eye. It had to be you.”
Frostpaw jumped, landing beside Kern, then hitching forward in short, violent jumps until it crouched between them with Kern at its back. It snarled and snapped, and backed the other man up a good step.
Carefully, cautiously, the warrior held his hands out to his side. Nonthreatening.
Age of Conan: Cimmerian Rage: Legends of Kern, Volume 2 Page 27
