Blood of Wolves (24 page)

Both men froze.

Kern looked into the sharpened end of the pike, its tip less than a fist's width from his right eye. Somewhere along the way, Gard had reversed the polearm. What might have been a blackened eye had the other man slipped by so much as a heartbeat in his timing came very close instead to blinding Kern. But Gard appeared satisfied. A victorious gleam in his own eye.

Until Kern nudged him with the edge of his arming sword, and the Cruaidhi's dark blue eyes widened with surprise.

Kern's blade had sliced in between Gard's legs, hiking up the heavy kilt and laying an edge of cold steel up against his manhood. If Kern had not stopped in time, the Cruaidhi would have bled out quite painfully.

“We can call this one a draw,” the protector said, his voice pitched low for Kern's ears only. Barely more than a whisper, in fact, as silence reigned around the circle of spectators. Everyone stunned by the final volley of blows and the sudden halt.

“No, we can't,” Kern said.

He'd seen the dark looks gathering like a new storm around him and his warriors. Now, grudging respect for the skirmish was turning once again toward resentment and even fear. These men didn't need to be worrying about what lay ahead any more than they already were. Kern knew that.

So did Gard, though he waited for Kern to make the first move.

He did, skipping back and drawing his sword up for another thrust. Pulling it back a touch too far, giving Gard the opening.

Gard swatted aside the blade. Reversed the polearm in a sweeping motion that smashed the pike down across Kern's shoulder, sending a shock down his arm, knocking the sword from numbed fingers. He jabbed the spear's butt end into Kern's midsection after that, folding him over, and then brought the other end around to bash him across the back of the neck.

Kern dropped, and Gard buried the tip of the pike into the earth right next to Kern's neck.

Cheers and shouts broke out among the warriors not among Kern's small band. A few jostled the Gaudic and the Taurin, and Reave nearly hauled off at a nearby clansman. At the last second he caught Kern's eye, though, and the yellow-eyed man gave his friend a brief shake of his head. Then hinted at a smile before rolling back to hide his face against the ground, picking himself up slowly.

Gard stepped forward to help Kern back up. His pike still stuck in the earth, he got both hands under Kern's arms. “Two hours,” he said. “I'll have them on the march in two hours.”

Kern shook his head, clearing the sparks still going off in his brain. “We'll break and be gone in one, then.”

“You will not march with the others?”

“I think it's more that they won't march with us. We'll scout forward.”

“Run hard and fast then. And let Sláine Longtooth know that we come.” Louder, shouting for the assembled warriors, Gard said, “We come to force the pass and carry this battle into the northwest lands. And just let Grimnir Stormbringer stand against us during the light of day!”

It was a challenge Kern would just have well preferred Gard not make. Standing amongst the ruins of once-strong Cruaidh, boasting of their eventual victory against the Vanir, it seemed a challenge almost worthy of the attention of the higher powers. Not that he worried about Crom. The Cimmerian's maker remained above such mortal concerns.

But Kern was beginning to wonder if the Vanir's gods played by those same rules.

THE HIGHER KERN'S small band marched up into the western Teeth, the deeper the blanket of snow. From the few inches dropped on Cruaidh by the freakish blizzard, it thickened to a good handbreadth, and then two.

Ehmish considered himself lucky that it didn't get so bad to reach above his fur-lined boots.

As luck went, there were worse ways to spend it.

The young man kept his cloak wrapped tight about him as the world slowly turned a stark white and gray. Swirling mists guarded the upper slopes, bringing line of sight down to half a league and casting the trees and brush into shadow. Boulders wore caps of frosted snow. The red clay from which the Pass of Blood took its name remained bandaged under a frozen blanket except where several hundred feet had traipsed the cover into a muddy, reddish slush. Sláine Longtooth couldn't have had much trouble tracking the Vanir war host back up the pass. And they had little trouble tracking Sláine Longtooth.

They merely had to follow the trail of bodies.

There weren't too many. Just enough to prove that the Vanir hadn't left their rear flank unguarded. One clansman left under a cairn of unearthed stones. Two more sewn into their blankets, and covered with a skin of bark shaved off some nearby trees. Ehmish left a whispered word of comfort with each of them, knowing how close he also had come to such an end.

To Longtooth's credit, there were more Vanir corpses littering the upper slopes and even one of the Ymirish as well. Those were not treated with much respect, propped up against a nearby rock or tree, left out for animals to gnaw on. Coming around one bend in the path, Ehmish saw the wolf, Frostpaw, digging entrails from a raider's belly.

Everyone paused almost with a common thought, giving the wolf a moment before they moved forward and chased it on ahead. None of them looked at Kern except Old Finn, who glanced around the entire party for a moment.

“Sure and I've seen stranger things,” he said. His voice was dry as old leaves, but strong. “Things worse than sharing blood with a wolf.”

Or with a raider.

Ehmish followed behind Kern, walking over his footsteps, staring at the odd-colored man's back. He could not see Kern's white-blond hair, currently covered by the woolen scarf knotted over the other man's head. Kern's wolflike eyes he didn't need to see—they stared at Ehmish from out of the darker corners of his mind. Glowing and savage. And strong. Like they could pull Ehmish apart, rending him so that Kern knew his every fear and shortcoming.

Was that why Ehmish followed Kern? Because the youth feared him? He wanted to believe it was something else. The same something that had caused him to step forward and volunteer to go after Maev and Daol and the others. To avenge Oscur.
That
had been a decision.

But there hadn't been many chances for decisions since then. Not really. Only a cold and blood-slick trail that chased into the northwest lands of Cimmeria. Closer to their own deaths, it seemed at times. And Ehmish had yet to make a kill, to prove his manhood in the eyes of his clan and kin. Most of what he'd done so far was run away. No doubt, though, that was about to change. He'd be seeing a lot of battle up close very, very soon.

So be it.

Ehmish shrugged away his fears and concerns, and concentrated instead on putting one foot after the other. Trudging upward. Careful and alert through the bottlenecks of the lower pass, tense, then stretching his muscles out in a loping run whenever the warriors gained a level or short downhill slope. It felt good. His breathing raw in his throat, tasting of fresh snow and smoke. Heartbeat strong in his own ears. Muscles barely aching with exertion.

Smoke?

“Listen!” Ehmish whispered hard and urgent, before he could think to say anything else. “I mean smell. Taste!”

He fetched up to a quick stop, causing those behind him to stagger out of line before they simply plowed him over. Ahead, Kern and Desagrena slowed, glancing back quizzically. But they stopped. Desa whistled for Daol, farther on.

Everyone stared at the younger man.

“Smoke. On the back of my tongue.” He breathed in through an open mouth, pulling the cold air up into his sinuses. It was there. And it had a kind of acrid bite to it, like greenwood or pitch.

Most of the others shook their heads, but Brig Tall-Wood paused, nodded. “The boy's right. I can smell it, too.”

Ehmish didn't care for being called “boy,” especially when not more than a handful of years separated him from Tall-Wood. Lacking his first kill or not. He bristled, nearly bit back at the other man, but Kern's hand on his shoulder stilled him at once. He shot Brig a quiet glare instead.

If Kern could take being called “pup” by Hydallan, “boy” wasn't so bad. Was it?

Daol trotted back, moving with the long, flowing strides that ate up the ground with practiced ease. He had unlimbered his war bow, gripping it in his left hand. “You scent it, too?” he asked Kern.

“The boy,” Kern said. “Ehmish.”

Ehmish fumed. “It's green,” he said, more for the sake of saying something than thinking it had any real bearing.

“There's been a few echoes, too,” Daol said, confirming that they must be close to the trouble. “Dull ones. Distant. I'd say an hour.”

An hour. Caught in between two armies, Ehmish wondered if Kern would wait for the reinforcements to catch up, or press on ahead. No runners had come back from the pass, he recalled. Maybe they were needed up ahead.

Maybe they were being slaughtered.

“Forward,” Kern said, not taking much time. “At a run. If you have to fall off, catch up as soon as you can.”

For some reason, Ehmish thought this last comment might be directed at him specifically. There were older men in the small group, true. Hard-bitten warriors, mostly, who had proven they could keep up a stiff pace for nearly two days. The women, Desa and Ashul. Desa, at least, wouldn't give the men the satisfaction of dropping behind.

No, it was “the boy” they were worried about. Making exceptions for. And that raised Ehmish's ire more than the casual disregard usually shown him. He'd have to work that much harder to earn their respect, then. From all of them.

When Daol lit off, taking point as he normally did, Ehmish was next off the mark pacing the hunter with long, easy strides. Daol glanced back once, but did not say anything. He possibly ran a touch faster. And so did Ehmish.

He'd drop in his tracks before he fell behind.

For him, there could be no other decision.

 

A REAR GUARD challenged them before they were in sight of the battlefield, although by then they all heard it. The braying howl of large dogs and a hammering of axes into wood were the sounds that carried farthest.

The screams of wounded men were still distant echoes.

Two men showed themselves from behind a large boulder, both with well-beaten broadswords. A third stood and lay over the top of the rock with a Vanir war bow very much like the one Daol now carried, an arrow nocked and drawn back to his cheek. A child, no better than fourteen Kern guessed, sprinted away about fifty paces and waited inside a clump of snow-covered basket cedar.

To see if the new arrivals were friendly, or if the child had to run up and warn Sláine Longtooth to look to his back.

Kern approved of the way the guard took few chances with his people, dark hair or no. He averted his eyes and was glad for the scarf, which hid his frost blond hair. Better to give the small band a chance to explain. “Cruaidh!” he shouted out. Then, “Foehammer! Sent by Foehammer.”

That name did the trick. The guard relaxed, slightly, and waved a few of them forward. Kern sent Daol and Reave, Ossian, Aodh, and Desa. He waited in a tight knot with the rest until Daol waved up the entire group.

“Kit will run us up toward Longtooth,” he said, nodding at the young boy who had crawled out from behind the cedar clump. “It's ugly,” he promised.

And it was. A killing field with the Vanir clearly in control. Kern's small band broke from the trees and saw the slaughter taking place as the Cimmerian force threw itself forward yet again.

The Vanir held a slope that dropped down into a shallow, wooded valley, framed on both sides by steep mountain cliffs covered in their winter white ice pack. The slope wasn't so good as to give the Cimmerians any edge, and right where the grade leveled out for a few hundred paces, the raiders had dug down through snow, ice, and earth to create a shallow trench. The trench was backed by what appeared to be a bulwark of glistening, dark icicles. It took Kern a moment to understand what he was seeing. When he did, his spirits fell.

“Branches,” he said, finally recognizing how the structure had been built. He pointed it out to Ossian and Reave. “They stacked a wall of branches against a small hillock of stones and clay, then poured water over it. Snowmelt, most likely.”

The water had frozen, filling up gaps between the thin wooden limbs and eventually spread out into an icy sheet. Creating a hard, unyielding wall with no good footing for climbing over. It gave the raiders and their mastiffs a good refuge.

The trench had been started days, weeks perhaps, before the assault on Cruaidh. It spoke of organization and planning.

Two things the attacking Cimmerians currently lacked.

As the small band of warriors watched, several dozen men streamed away from large bonfires set near the tree line, carrying burning logs and brands of bound evergreen boughs. Knots of swordsmen hurried behind them, with them, shields raised. War cries thundered within the valley and echoed back from the frozen cliffs. The mastiffs brayed and snarled, roving in a few loose packs on the other side of the wall, daring any Cimmerian to cross into their territory.

Bowmen protected the flanks of the assault with a few hasty shots directed at the raiders, but the Vanir had their archers as well and much greater reach with their curved war bows. Broadhead arrows scythed out in scattered volleys, searching for unprotected flesh, and finding it.

Four . . . five men dropped, letting their fiery bundles hiss into the snow as they clutched at pierced legs or stuck shoulders.

Most made it within a stone's throw of the bulwark, where they heaved their logs forward, trying to stack up enough burning material against the wall of iced-over branches to supposedly melt the barricade. The flames were already dying long before they arrived, though, and bouncing off the frozen earth usually doused whatever fire had stubbornly clung to the burning brands. They piled up over earlier, futile attempts.