Blood of Wolves (18 page)

It wasn't the strongest vote of confidence, but Kern would take whatever well wishes he could get. By Crom, his people would need them by the time this was done.

If it were ever done.

 

SHE CAME TO him one last time that evening, after the Taurin returned to their lodge and the fires had died down to beds of dusky orange coals.

With so many empty huts in the village, most of Kern's band decided to carry a bit of fire inside. Kern chose an untouched lean-to where a last scattering of damp hay provided some cushion beneath his felt bedroll, and the slanted roof above kept away any chance of snow or showers. His breath came frosty with midnight's touch, and his skin puckered tight as if trying to conserve a warmth he had never felt. But he had spent worse nights, recently. And there were many such nights ahead.

Best to keep prepared for them.

Her footsteps, when he noticed them, came warily. As if she were still deciding. Or perhaps she simply searched for him, not knowing for certain where he'd gone. Kern sat up, woolen blanket scratching down his chest and pooling in his lap.

She stood just outside the lean-to, framed in a rare patch of moonlight, not much more than a silhouette. A blanket held in one hand. Still fully dressed in the new kilt and cloak traded from Clan Taur.

“You will really fight your way north?” Maev asked. She stepped under the roof, ducking beneath low crossbeams. “After the raiders?”

Kern watched her spread the blanket out next to him, folding it to overlap with his own. “After him,” he said. Meaning the frost-man. “There's more to these Ymirish that I have to know.”

“To the Broken Leg Lands.”

It was as good a place to die as any. Better than some, in fact. Conan had come down from the Broken Leg territory. It seemed the place of many odd tales and heroic legends. Why not one more? “It has to be someplace.”

Her touch was warm against his pale skin. Maev had also bathed earlier, and now she smelled only lightly of sweat and fire smoke.

Kern hungered for her. His body responded at the slightest touch. But he hesitated. “I thought we took care of this.” There would never be any knowing, now, if she whelped a child. That had been the whole point, hadn't it?

“I guess that's for me to decide.” She sounded only a touch sorrowful. And a bit angry as well. “Isn't it?”

Gathering Maev to him, his large hands encircling her waist, Kern nodded as she suddenly bruised her lips against his. It was her decision. He had honored it the other night, and he could honor it now. And because she had already decided.

Any well wishes . . .

KERN'S DIRE WOLF and a freezing rain saw the small band of warriors off the next morning. Daol pointed the animal out, his hunter's eyes missing nothing even in the gray, wet, postdawn gloom. The wolf's silver-gray fur lay matted against its body. The animal looked utterly miserable. Rather than seek shelter under brush or a half-fallen tree or some rocky outcropping, it stood on the same crest of hilltop that Kern's warriors had fought from the day before, silent and still, watching. As if daring anyone to come after it. Or perhaps daring itself to approach closer to the village.

Some among the Taurin muttered uneasily, seeing the strange behavior in an animal that tended to avoid humans. The Gaudic warriors shrugged it away, used to its appearances. They were more concerned with the weather, which was obliterating the snow cover but would soon make for a cold, wet slog into the northern foothills of Conall Valley. Already the smell of mud was turning rank in the air.

A few good-byes were made. Not many. Maev would not look at Kern, busying herself with the large group heading south within a few hours. Liam Chieftain did not plan to empty out his village, not yet, but he would travel south with Maev to open a discussion with Cul. That much, at least, had been decided.

There were no marching orders. No big send-off. Packs were stuffed with food and drink, dry blankets wrapped in oilskin, and the assortment of miscellaneous gear that always followed people on the move. As the last tunic was pulled on and any final braces tied down, warriors began drifting to the northwest edge of the village, silently packing together.

With Kern's arrival the majority slowly traipsed off by twos and threes, spreading out along the muddy trail. Daol and Hydallan led, their experienced eyes searching out the best trails. Nearer the front than the back, Kern trudged behind Ossian and Nahud'r. Reave and Wallach and Desa paced them not far behind.

Those who had lingered too long in the village rushed to follow, bringing up the rear.

The Shemite, Kern saw, had wrapped a long woolen scarf around his head, laying it around his neck and over part of his face, then tying it into a kind of loose knot over his dark, curly hair. Only his eyes showed.

Good for blocking out the cold winds, Kern decided. And capping in the body's heat. Not so smart in a downpour of freezing rain, though, where you would spend most of the day with a wet cloth soaking your head. Maybe the man wasn't quite so educated as he claimed to be.

Civilization, it seemed, prepared one to live, but not to survive.

He reevaluated his opinion before ever losing sight of the village, however, when the black-skinned man cut a spreading branch from a winter-stunted maple. Producing a small oilskin cloth from inside his tunic, he draped it over the smaller branches in blanket fashion. This he held overhead, to the short-lived amusement of the others. Icy water beaded and ran down the cloth, dripped over the trailing edges. Some of it dampened his arms, and it did not protect the legs of his southern-style trousers at all, which were soon heavy and dark with rainwater. But it did keep his head mostly dry. And therefore warm.

Ossian gazed at the simple device as if it were a minor miracle. His head was fresh-shaven and his cheeks scraped bare, leaving only a simple goat's beard that matted with the rain. He resembled Liam Chieftain very closely. He dropped back a few paces, whispered to Kern, “Now why we never thinks of that?”

Kern wondered much the same thing. There were drawbacks, of course. Having to hold your arm up. Getting in the way of a sword or shield use. But for traveling, it still was not a bad idea.

“That a desert trick?” he called ahead, turning Nahud'r around. The Shemite walked backward with graceful, smaller steps. It let Kern and Ossian catch up.

“This a Nemedian tool. I learn my first springtime in Hanumar. But works well in desert, too, I think. Keep sun out of eyes, and off head. Like small tent you carry along.”

Kern had never thought of the sun being a problem like the rain or the winds. Cimmeria did not suffer often from drought, and certainly never from excessive heat. It made the desert of Shem seem even more an alien place than told of in stories and lodge fire tales.

“Nemedia,” Kern repeated. It was a Hyborian nation southeast of Cimmeria and the borderland kingdoms. “This is where you learned to read?”

“I learn to read, and to write, in Aquilonia.” He saw Kern's obvious doubt and stopped by the trailside, kneeling down next to a pine tree under which a soft carpet of wet needles lay undisturbed. Kern and Ossian both paused as well, looking down at what the other man was about.

“A miracle occurred this day,” the black-skinned man wrote, using his fingers to dig small diagrams in the bed of needles. He drew another line of characters beneath the first. “The sun has risen.”

Ossian laughed. “The sun rises every day.”

Nahud'r smiled, and glanced up at the rain-swollen sky. “Prove it,” he challenged the clansman.

“Not have to proves it. Sun travels south in the fall, north in the spring. But it always rises. It always will rise.”

It was sound reasoning, to Kern. Because it had always happened, it always would. But Nahud'r merely shook his head. “That a tenet of faith,” he said. “And beginning of enlightenment. No matter what else happen, every day there is divine providence to follow.”

Kern continued to stare at the characters. These weren't pictures as he knew them. Far as he could see, there was no way they corresponded with the story they told except by memorization. What each character spoke, and what they made as a whole. He waited while Reave and the others trudged by, glancing over but continuing on with one foot placed after another.

“Is that what you are doing here?” he asked finally. “Following divine
prov . . . dance
?” He stumbled over the last word, not sure what it meant, except that it sounded important.

“I was servant for nobleman's house. Took care of son as bodyguard and sometimes sent as message carrier.” Nahud'r's gaze looked wide from Kern's, and he smoothed the bed of needles back over, erasing his work. “Was sent to Gunderland with boy, Pheros. He decides to inspect what left of Aquilonian garrisons in Cimmeria. I came.”

“What happened?” Ossian asked, not noticing the man's blank stare.

Kern nodded. “The Vanir happened.” He waited until Nahud'r looked back up from the ground. “Pheros?” Kern asked

“Is dead. Why there is nothing left for me in south. Why I go north.”

As good a reason as any, Kern decided. He listened as a few others slogged past, their footsteps squelching in the softened trail. Icy fingers of water trickled past the neck of his tattered poncho, trailing down his spine. “Are you sure that is the only reason?”

“Why else would I be here?” Nahud'r asked.

Kern knelt next to the other man. His brow wrinkled as he thought hard to remember what he'd seen. With a less careful hand than Nahud'r, he reached down to the smoothed bed of pine needles and drew shaky characters in the soft spread. “A miracle occurred this day . . .” he said.

He only remembered the first line.

The dark man stared at Kern from between the folds wrapping about his face. His eyes gave nothing away as to what he was thinking. Then slowly he bowed, touching his forehead to the ground.

Rising in one smooth motion, Nahud'r and his tent cover fell back onto the trail and continued their pace.

Kern and Ossian followed.

 

NORTH AND WEST.

Always north and west.

The freezing rains continued, off and on. By nightfall of the second evening, most everyone had adopted some version of Nahud'r's method for keeping warmer if not completely dry. Oilcloths were scavenged from food wrappings. Most of the men simply tied the cloths over their heads, knotting them at the backs of their crowns. Desagrena rolled a large square of leather into a fat, shallow cone. Using a knife to pin the edges together, she set it carefully atop her head. All that showed beneath the brim was the lower half of her face and her long, oily locks of dark hair, but she obviously stayed much dryer.

Very few braved it out, and they looked more and more miserable as the day wore on.

The next day dawned under a cold, blue sky and a distant, uncaring sun that barely warmed the skin. Early in the morning they ran into their first sign of others on the path: a trio of clansmen who leaped for their swords when Daol and Wallach stumbled into their campsite. The two men were lucky to escape with their lives, falling back on safety in numbers.

The Cimmerians were from Clan Galla, near the top of the Snowy River country. Their hair, shaved into topknots, and the tattooed sworls spreading over their chests made it obvious. Finding themselves facing a larger band than they had thought to expect, they quickly dropped the points of their weapons.

Primitive, but hardly stupid.

They had thought Daol and Wallach to be northerners. Not an easy mistake to make, but then the Gallan often attacked first and thought about it after. They were heading toward the Broken Leg Lands themselves. Supposedly, Clan Cruaidh challenged the Vanir for the Pass of Blood, and would accept any warriors who could handle a sword.

Kern let them retreat to their camp. His only other choice was to put all three men to the sword. That served no one but the Vanir.

These weren't the only Cimmerians on the move, either. Daol and Hydallan tracked other warriors to camps. Farmers and families as well, burned out of their homes by raiders or starved out by the long winter, running for the south and the hope of spring. All had heard or carried similar rumors coming down out of the northwest.

Few of them would do more than trade a bit of news. Some asked for food, and Kern rationed out what they could spare with a careful eye toward their own needs. No one asked to follow along with Kern's pack. Fewer wanted to do much in the way of talking once they saw Kern. With his pale hair and yellow, lupine eyes, Kern would look out of place among any Cimmerian clan. But most of these men did not look surprised at his countenance, but rather fearful or angered. One grizzled farmer, carrying his best tools on his back and a naked arming sword in hand, spit at Kern's feet.

“Ymirish!”

Frost-man.

The farther north Kern chased after the raiders, the more Ymirish appeared to be known. Known, and feared and hated. More than one sword was drawn at Kern. Several times he shouted his own warriors back, not about to watch a clansman killed over a mistake. But it wore on him, hardening Kern against his own people, in fact, as they glanced more and more his way when they thought he wasn't looking. Wasn't aware.

Fortunately for everyone's building tempers, the roving pack surprised more than Cimmerians on the run or spoiling for their own fight. They found Vanir as well. Not many, but enough that by twilight of their fourth day they'd left half a dozen raiders stretched out over blood-soaked ground or propped against trees. Their horned helms always hung on branches stuck into the earth as a way to identify them to any who passed.