Blood of Wolves (35 page)

Sorcerers.

And these weren't Grimnir's only warriors. The sounds of a heavy battle could still be heard far behind, as a rear guard held more of Clan Conarch's warriors back from the bluff. There had to be scores more lurking within the snow and fog. Hundreds.

Grimnir had drawn together a war host capable of hammering the Cimmerians back over the mountains. And beyond.

GRIMNIR ROARED A throaty challenge. His frost-giant's voice carried like the rumble of an avalanche, or the crack and deep growl of a calving glacier. The mammoth pulled back its long snout and trumpeted a new blast, echoing its master.

Horns brayed, and the large canines barked and growled to be released.

Cimmerian warriors all along the ragged line shouted back in defiance. Some shook their own weapons overhead. Others hiked up their kilts to waggle at the raiders, insulting the northerners' manhood.

By the handful and by the dozen, voices took up the roar. Kern shouted his own throat raw.

Reave unslung his bedroll and tossed it behind as so many were doing along the line, dropping their packs and shedding weight for battle. He unhooked his giant greatsword, and raised it in front of him.

Daol stuck arrows point first into the snow-blanketed ground, and put another three between his teeth.

“Let them come at us,” Kern called to his warriors, and any ears that were close enough and open to his words.

There wouldn't be much chance for fancy plans or surprises this day. Once the fighting began, only strength would out. Kern unslung his shield and gripped it in his off-sword hand. Rather than worry about the short reach of his arming sword, he drew forth Burok's broadsword. The weight was unfamiliar in his hand but felt good regardless.

“Wait for them. Wait!”

But farther down a few of Ros-Crana's warriors had charged out in front, swords held overhead as they ran at the raider line. Not to be outdone, more than a handful of Sláine Longtooth's men also broke away for brave and heroic charges.

Brave and heroic deaths. Kern grabbed Ashul, who had jumped forward thinking a general attack was being sent. A scant few heartbeats later, a serpent rose up from the snow and slammed into the Callaughnan.

Two men, gripped in rolling coils. A third fell to the demonic serpent's icicle fangs.

Cruaidhi warriors fared no better. As if brought to life, a patch of the thinning fog suddenly lashed out with sharp, soot-stained tendrils, flailing at the fistful of men. Two of them reeled away, screaming in sudden agony, hands clawing at blistered faces. They stumbled and fell as if struck blind, then thrashed upon the snowy carpet, dying.

Three others made it through, and were swallowed up by a pack of mastiffs and Ymirish bearing war swords. The dogs tore at legs and gut. Blades rose and fell and slashed angrily at the remaining trio.

One Cimmerian managed to take two of the great-shouldered mastiffs and a Ymirish with him, splattering new blood over white snow.

The others fell without any enemy souls preceding them into death.

The insult was more than most could bear. As if released by Crom's own hand, the Cimmerians stormed forward in a sudden rage that their brave—if foolish—companions had been slaughtered so easily. Cruaidhi or Callaughnan or Conarch, did not matter. They bellowed their dismay and their challenge, and surged forward in the same kind of haphazard charge Kern had witnessed over the Pass of Blood. No order or thought. Anger and haste sufficed, and Crom's will to reach their enemy and throw them down just as easily.

The Vanir broke into a forward charge as well. Some Ymirish moved across the line, bolstering thin pockets. Others grouped around the war mammoth as their monstrous leader slid down to earth. Grimnir towered above all but the mammoth, which he sent stampeding forward.

No choice now. “Take them,” Kern ordered, breaking into a loping run that crossed the snow with ease.

He angled toward one side, thinking to help Frostpaw before the large wolf was brought down by a pair of cats, but the animal was more cagey than that. Throwing off one saber-tooth's attack, the large wolf savaged one cat's foreleg with a strong jawful of sharp canines, then bolted. Trapped between the two war hosts, however, it was all the wolf could do to dodge back and forth, snarling its fury and building bloodlust.

Kern let the animal alone.

Running. Feet pounding the earth in cold, dull thunder. Behind him, Kern heard the violent
thrum
of taut bowstrings released together. Long shafts whispered overhead through the fog and taint of woodsmoke. Then spiked down among the raider line to drop two men back to the ground.

Battle cries varied up and down the line. Calls of
Callaugh!
and
Cruaidh!
dominated, but there were a few voices close to Kern screaming out
Gaud!
and
Taur!
as well. Unable to think of any village as home anymore, his lips parted and he bellowed “Crom!” for himself, and for Cimmeria.

The Vanir had archers as well, and most of them with the stronger war bows that allowed for faster, flatter shots. Kern saw a group bear down in the direction of his small pack.

“Shields!” he warned, and barely in time. He thrust his own up as they released, and two hammerlike blows slammed into its metal facing.

Ossian turned another shaft. Reave took a glancing shot, and the blood flowed freely as it cut deeply where his bull neck met his shoulder, but the shaft passed by to stick in the wood facing of Nahud'r's small buckler.

Without breaking stride, the dark-skinned Shemite simply sliced his scimitar over the face of his shield, snapping off the shaft before it fouled him in close combat.

Closer. Fur-lined boots kicking up snow and arrows whispering quiet death between the two lines. The horsemen of Aquilonia charged past Kern's warriors, just in time to put themselves between the Cimmerians and a close fist of flame-haired Vanir. Their lances scythed through the tight knot, and, when they rode on, there weren't more than two left standing.

Reave took one head. Ossian and Nahud'r the other.

That bought Kern's people time to close on their enemy and to still be in one solid knot as the two lines crashed together with all the force of a hammer striking an anvil. At that moment, Cimmerian war cries matched the Vanir horns and curses.

Then bodies slammed into each other, and swords fell against edge, shield, and flesh.

A riot of shouts, strikes, and screams.

The sheer momentum of the charging armies drove deep wedges into both sides. Warriors ducked and dodged. They ran over lightly defended patches and flowed around knots of stronger defense like white water breaking over sharp rocks. Kern's pack was a certain breakwater, smashing aside the Vanir line as the entire group hammered forward. Reave led, his greatsword swinging in deadly arcs, with Ossian nearly at his side. Kern and Nahud'r and Desa charged after. The others ran at their backs and sluiced the northern raiders away to either side as the pack staggered forward, slowing but never stopping. Not until two flame-haired warriors challenged Reave with tall shields and pikes.

Suddenly, Kern's pack was surrounded by Vanir. From all four sides the northerners came at them, jabbing and slashing with reckless courage. Their nasal language called down the curses of Ymir, god of the north, and Grimnir, whose terrible name was invoked about as often.

A large man rushed at Kern with a wild yell of “Oathbreaker!” There was no mistaking his sense of betrayal, finding a man colored as a Ymirish fighting on the side of Cimmeria. Kern thrust his broadsword ahead rather than slashing with it, adding reach to the blade. Sliding it past a Vanir shield and between two ribs.

The other man screamed in fury and agony, and tried to hammer Kern away with the war sword he swung overhead like an axe.

Kern raised his shield, letting the awkward blow hammer at him rather than pulling away. He took a firm grasp on the cord-wound hilt and
twisted
, spreading the blade between ribs and coring out a mortal wound.

Blood burst from the raider's mouth in a froth that covered a gargling howl, spitting warm flecks into Kern's face. Kern jumped back, bringing his sword out. Bumped into Reave's side and wedging himself back to back against Reave and Nahud'r as the three men formed a smaller island of safety and sanity amidst the growing chaos.

Wallach Graybeard formed another, hauling in Old Finn and Doon and Mogh, fighting to link up with Kern. Ashul, Aodh, and Desa fought not too far away, using their combined strength to protect each other and pull down larger enemies.

Behind them all, Daol and the other archers fired the last of their arrows, and were finally taking to sword. They seemed far, far away.

There was no longer any order to the battle. Grimnir reaved through the enemy line with powerful strokes that sent men tumbling aside broken or bleeding. The snow-cats had returned to their master's side as well, and struck out with claws and teeth where men charged at the giant-kin's back.

The mammoth pounded forward, now guided by a small knot of frost-haired Ymirish warriors and one of the sorcerers, who cast before them that same wall of dark slashing mists that had blinded and blistered the Cruaidhi. The mammoth was the other strong point in the raider line. The creature shrugged aside arrows and swords, and few lances had the thrust to penetrate its thick hide.

Kern thought he saw Gard Foehammer working his way toward beast and northern brothers, and wished the man Crom's own strength.

Closer, the battle fared well. The smell of blood and bowels rose over the battlefield, and the snow had been stained red in many places. And though they bled, none of Kern's people were down yet.

Beating off another attacker's charge, Kern turned him into Reave and the greatsword's deadly reach. Then a horse screamed nearby as a lance punched through its chest. Its rider was thrown back, a jumble of tangled chain mail and leather straps and broken lance. The Aquilonian hit the ground hard, and the dying beast fell across his legs, pinning him to the ground.

Stupid, useless animals.

Kern did it without thinking, leaping for the fallen man's side as he would protect one of his own. He saw a raider staggering around the flailing beast's other side, intent on finishing off the downed soldier, who was slow to crawl back to his feet. Kern would not see any ally cut down so easily as that. Conan's man or not, that argument mattered little to Kern.

What surprised him was when a bare-chested Ymirish also ran forward, and slipped in at Kern's side!

Kern's vision dimmed and his eyes stung to tears, as if he'd been brushed across the face with the smoke of a greenwood fire. The smell was of hoarfrost, though, and it thickened at the back of his throat, closing off his breathing. Time slowed as he and the frost-haired follower of Grimnir pushed forward together. It wasn't the first time another warrior had glanced at Kern's coloring, and looked past his Cimmerian garb to see a threat from the north. It was one of the few times that a Ymirish had made such a mistake though, too intent on a victim to see the danger until far too late.

Black spots swam before Kern's eyes, and his lungs pounded, as if he'd forgotten how to breathe. Nothing wrong with his arm, however. He circled around in a spinning slash, chopping the broadsword right into the back of the large northerner's neck.

A set of yellow eyes glanced over for the space of a heartbeat, confusion reigning. He died without realizing the mistake he had made, staring into Kern's pitiless gaze.

Shouts of triumph and a bellowing roar of angry displeasure assaulted the battlefield. Chants of “The serpent! The serpent is destroyed!”

The Cimmerian calls drew Kern's attention to a spot on the bluff edge not far away where three men slowly dug their way out of a small mound of snow. Two of them had blood leaking from their noses, their ears. The third dropped a heartbeat later from long gashes torn into his chest and neck.

Kern staggered forward as if suddenly released from a dark grip, coming astride of the fallen Aquilonian, who was barely back to his hands and knees with the thick chain mail slowing him down so. The fire-headed Vanir paused, shocked into a moment's hesitation. Kern thrust the broadsword through the other man's neck. Blood fountained down the length of the blade and splashed warmly over Kern's fingers. He pulled it free, then nearly whipped it around at Desa's neck as she elbowed him in the side.

“That's two of those bastards!” she said, and her normally waspish face was bright with bloodthirsty delight.

She helped the struggling Aquilonian back to his feet. His companions were wheeling their own mounts around, coming back to his aid.

Two. The events were so closely tied—Ymirish and serpent—that Kern could not fail to make the connection. He shook the last of the haze from his mind, and glanced around. Saw the patchy fog around him—stained dark and sooty—dissipate on a final breeze.

Almost he caught a glimpse of bright, springtime blue overhead.

Kern glanced at his feet. The frost-man had fallen on his side, and he toed the body over with a sharp kick. Two golden, blazing eyes stared back from the man's bared chest. A sorcerer! Kern had taken the head of another of Grimnir's cruel cadre.

And the northern leader knew it. Had felt it somehow. Roared still his anger and displeasure. Desa grabbed Kern by the shoulder and spun him around, pointing him at the danger.

Grimnir, hacking and beating his way through the Cimmerian war host.

Driving straight for Kern!

“Sure and you had to get that one's attention,” Reave called back, slinging gore from his blade over the ruined snow.

Nahud'r and Aodh pulled in at Reave's side, but left room for Kern as well. Aodh's left arm hung useless at his side, blood sheeting down from a deep shoulder wound. He carried Ehmish's silver-chased blade in his good hand, having borrowed it for the day's battle.