They never had a chance.
And that was precisely what Kern hoped to bring the Vanir who raided and raped Cimmeria. Death. And no chance. He heard the call of bloodlust pounding in his ears. His thirst to avenge this slaughter. A thrill of rage replaced the usual cold, cold touch of winter that often festered inside him. He’d been given a chance to run and refused it. He preferred the hunt. The endless path he’d chosen that would only lead to more bloodshed and pain. So how was he so different from the northerners?
Mayhap he no longer belonged to Cimmeria. Mayhap he never had. But he refused kinship with the northerners, he did, with every scrap of being. Blood of Ymir or nay.
There were worse disgraces than being outcast.
“Kern?” Reave asked, as a silence drew out long and thin, like a dagger’s blade.
He nodded. “Tear that animal apart and pack up the meat. Cut out the larger bones. Strip and sand the hide and roll it for now.”
He stepped over to the dead woman Ehmish had stood over, and prodded her legs together with his boot. Reave moved to help, taking one arm and Kern the other. Together, they easily lifted her ruined body and carried it toward one of the empty and intact huts.
“Get them into the huts and lay them out. Break a wall down to cover the entry. Let the scavengers work for their meals. We will be on top of the next mesa before dark,” he promised.
He stared north and east. Something pulled at him. Drew him onward faster and harder. Warning him that it was already too late.
“We do not stay here.”
11
A BITTER-COLD WIND lashed at the ground, bending over tall grasses and shaking the trees that surrounded Venarium. Lodur stalked about the base of the hillside, beneath the ruined fort town. Chewing through his own anger. Feeling twelve pairs of eyes on him—filled with hate, and fear, every one. His lessers, who waited on the hillside amid the ruined camp with its burned-out tents and supply sheds. Rooted in place by his command.
Night came on fast, but his golden eyes held enough northern light in them that he searched among the brambles and bellberry brush. He found a barkskin shield discarded inside the small copse of shattered pine; a pair of broadhead arrows stuck into its facing. Inside a nearby wood, behind a thick-boled cedar, he sniffed out a rough wool blanket: forgotten, or lost; the coarse fabric stuck through with twigs and a few slender branches; pasted with a coating of dried mud and leaves.
Beneath the blanket, a pair of sticks and enough scrape marks in the dry mixture of dirt and cedar sheddings to help him understand what had happened.
How the outpost guard had been tricked.
By him.
The large warrior shouted in naked rage, letting the growl build into a long, savage yell that echoed against the hillside.
The show of temper warmed him, as it always did. It filled the cold void deep within, smothering all but that one frozen spark all Ymirish knew. The shivers that took them on the best and hottest of summer days. The breath of winter that always blew across the napes of their necks.
He threw off his great bearskin cloak of polar white, leaned back, and yelled again. And this time the sky answered back with a peal of cracking thunder.
Lodur tasted the storm’s building charge. Acrid and bitter. Felt it in his tightening skin. He had cut his mane of frost blond hair very close to the sides of his head. A few strands were long enough to whisper across his gaze. The rest bristled up like a saber-tooth with its hackles raised. It felt like a thousand tiny needle pricks racing across his scalp, his face.
He wanted to scrub at his skin, using his blood-caked nails to scrape away the sensation. Wanted to take great fistfuls of his unruly, hoarfrost beard and pull it out in great clumps.
Wanted to rend.
To kill.
He would. The bloodlust of Ymir’s Call demanded it.
With the filthy blanket in his one hand and the sleeve of thick bark in his other, Lodur stomped his way out from the thin wood and back up the hillside. Venarium wasn’t much more than a handful of shadows. The sun had already slipped across the horizon, lost to the Pictish wilderness. Barely enough light—in pale, dying sheets of salmon and spun gold—streamed out from the western skies to outline the dark bank of storm clouds gathered overhead. Like Ymir’s own target drawn over Venarium, the clouds, which had been streaked with dark greens and purples in the failing sunlight, now massed dark and black and heavy.
“A filthy blanket,” Lodur stormed. He brandished his find overhead as he came up on the ruined outpost. Icy winds caught at the tail end, flapped it back like a dark pennant.
There were new tents, and a small pile of gear and foodstuffs scavenged from the ruined shelters. A single fire quickly falling into embers and ashes. And twelve men left of the sixteen who had been there during the raid. Two men killed. A third dead of a septic wound. And a fourth run away like a frightened Nemedian! Run away!
For that alone he had not allowed any more raiders on the hillside. From this vantage, he could—if he wanted—find three or four more campfires burning on nearby hills or down in the narrow dales. And there they would stay.
Waiting for him to deal with these useless curs.
“A blanket and a skin of thick bark,” he railed, tossing the filthy cover at one of the nearby Vanir. “With this, they beat you? Cost us warriors? Weapons?”
No one responded. Eleven men and one woman, staring silent and furious but holding their peace in the face of his anger. Though two or three were so red in the face as to match their hair, and looked ready to grab for blades to come at him.
Lodur turned his back on them, muscles quivering with pent-up rage and the taste of blood at the back of his throat. Let them try. Let any or all of them draw a blade against one of Grimnir’s faithful, the sons of Ymir, if they dared.
None did. Puling weaklings.
They waited. Watched him storm through the shattered campsite, waving the bark skin about like a club while his bastard sword remained sheathed, slapping against the side of his leg. His bronze-faced cuirass gleamed dully in the fire’s orange glow, as if it had soaked in some of the sun’s faded light. His eyes, he knew, would be bright and firelit as well, filled with the hatred he knew for only one other.
“He was here! The corrupted blood of our blood.” Lodur could smell him. Sense the other’s presence the same way he knew when his brethren among the Ymirish were nearby or had walked the same ground ahead of him.
Or when Grimnir summoned his faithful, or cast them aside in disgrace. As Lodur had been called back after his failure at Taur. After his first run-in with the dark-blooded one. It was a moment he could never forget. On the crest of that glorious winter—what Grimnir had promised would be a never-ending winter of blood and ice—he had felt something that morning as his warrior band laid siege to the Taurian village. A corrupted presence he had not understood at the time, and had written off to the warming blanket of bloodlust and death that had all but smothered his usual senses.
Then the arrows fell, and a few of his men yelled in pain. Two Cimmerian archers, foolishly standing out on a hillside above the village. Then four. Then others. Enough to call down his rage. Just enough, as it turned out. Just.
A handful of his warriors rushed the hillside, and were struggling halfway up when a second band of Cimmerians crested the rise with a log held across their chests. Hurling it down into the face of his raiders. Then a second log was grabbed up. And the Cimmerians—by then better than twelve strong—rushed down the hill with their battering ram to smash his line and fall on the back of his small war host like savage, starving wolves. Lodur remembered swinging away from the lodge hall defenders, coming at the fresh challenge with his sword in hand and shouting to his warriors for blood, and heads. And that was when he had seen the dark-blood for the first time. Recognized him at once with his golden eyes and dead-frost hair, the mark of Ymirish blood. Heard his name shouted for the first time by one of the Cimmerian warriors with a greatsword in hand and
a wild, savage spark in his eyes.
Kern.
Young. Not even thirty summers. Small for their blood, their brood. Tainted by Cimmerian flesh—his mother’s blood—which Lodur had tasted in a leathery flavor beneath the purer, cold ice they shared. It caused him to hesitate, just for that moment, and the battle was lost. The Ymirish and his war host suddenly found themselves trapped, battling between the rescuers and a rallying drive from the lodge hall.
He used the Vanir hunting horn to sound a retreat, a command he had never expected to give. Ever. Lodur claimed one final head and threw it back at his dark-blood brother before finally quitting the field. But quit it they did. To save the strength of Nordheim for Grimnir and to return and report what he had seen.
And Grimnir nearly killed him for it.
Instead, the giant-kin war leader sent Lodur away. He was not there for the final, pitched battle above Conarch. Did not see Grimnir fall. He had gone south again, rallying the flame-haired raiders around Venarium to form a second war host, over which Grimnir had come to take control. And then, after gutting the lower half of Connall Valley, Grimnir had sent him back to bring in more raiders, more warriors.
More death.
“He was here,” he said again. “And you let him escape!”
More thunder cracked and rolled over the hills surrounding Venarium. A sheet of violet lightning bathed the land in a sharp flash.
Lodur tasted the storm’s electrical charge. Welcomed it. Accepted it within him as his anger built, and the fury burned in his golden eyes.
And one warrior was first to step into his path. Hand on the hilt of his sheathed war sword, the flame-haired Vanir shook long braids back over both shoulders. “Three dead,” he said. It sounded as if he reported nothing so severe as some rusted blades found among the armory. “We kill easily as many. Could be we kill the blighted one.”
Easily as many. Easily? “Then where are the bodies?” he yelled, in the face of more dry thunder. And he stiff-armed the barkskin shield directly into the raider’s face.
Which would have meant nothing more than a bloodied nose and an insult, except that he had held it from the back side by the shaft of one of the arrows still stuck into and partway through the bark’s skin. The broadhead tip raked a deep furrow down the side of the Vanir’s face. Cutting him from the outside edge of his left eye down toward the jaw, laying his cheek open until catching against his teeth.
Then Lodur shoved.
The arrow broke through the bark, broadhead tip slicing through cheek and tongue and into the soft flesh at the back of the Vanir’s throat. He rammed it deeper, twisted and shoved again. Thrust the arrow through the other man’s neck.
The Vanir gurgled, suddenly drowning in his own blood. Clawing at the Ymirish’s arm, at the swatch of bark nailed to his face, at the arrow shaft. Falling back into the fire, still trying to scream, and sending a burst of angry sparks into the ice-scourged winds, which quickly whipped them around and away.
“Where are the bodies?” Lodur shouted again, as the scent of scorched hair and burning leather reeked out of the shattered fire pit.
The flames caught hold in the dying man’s hair, and into the ram-pelt cloak he had worn over his shoulders.
A trio among the Vanir reacted faster than most, including the one female, clawing for their blades. But Lodur had given himself over to the warming rage before ever ramming the arrow through the raider’s throat and so had already drawn his own bastard sword before another blade cleared its sheath. A head taller than most of the raiders, seven hands across the chest and strapped with brawny muscle, there were few who could stand against him. His wide-flanged blade struck out once, twice, and a head rolled from the shoulders of the next-nearest warrior.
His rage lent him strength, and a preternatural sense of where the next threat would be. The woman, thrusting out with an arming sword at his neck. He batted her blow aside, then sliced her open like a gutted calf to spill her entrails across her feet and over the ground.
Thunder crashed, and the ground shook. He spun. Blade flashing in the rising firelight. The weighted end tore through the wrist of the third warrior, taking the man’s hand and his sword and leaving him collapsed on the ground holding a stump jetting dark blood.
Behind him!
Lodur had no time to spin about bodily. Barely enough to glance back over one shoulder, his eyes filled with the fury and fire of the Ymirish. Another violet flash of lightning lit up the hillside, and the ruins of Venarium, freezing the panicked gaze that twisted a fourth man’s face as he leaped forward with a dagger for Lodur’s back. The Ymirish’s heartbeat pounded in his ears. His yell was primal and hoarse, like the thunder itself. His face twisted with a feral snarl.
And somewhere deep inside, where the touch of winter never left him, that small, frozen spark suddenly flared to brilliant life.
Ymir’s Call.
His muscles spasmed, and Lodur nearly dropped his sword. All time hung suspended for a moment, with the wind caught between gasps of life and the sky alive with lightning. A gout of unnatural fire rose from the pit where the first body had fallen, consuming and crackling with power.
A violet-tinged arc of lightning flashed down from the purple sky, slamming into the Vanir’s chest, bursting through leather cuirass, flesh, and bone.
Blasting the raider back into a broken pile.
Violet sheets of lightning crashed over Venarium in a cascade of unnatural energies, washing over the hillside and the tableau of warriors. Freezing the Vanir, who stared forward in a mixture of fear and awe. The biting winds whipped with renewed frenzy, tugging at braids and long, twisted locks, whipping longer hair across faces.
Lodur turned slowly in place, Grimnir’s newest sorcerer staring them back in the eye. Sweating freely as his inner core burned hot and bright as the leaping bonfire that had sprung out of the smoldering remains of not long before. The acrid scents of burned flesh and hair filled his nose, and the crash of thunder—or perhaps his own heart—echoed in his ears.
Warmth . . . This was it. Not the blind heat of rage or the false sweat raised beside a blazing fire, but an all-consuming heat that settled into his muscles and bones.
Lodur felt sorry for his lesser brethren who had not yet felt Ymir’s Call.
He felt nothing for those who had failed Grimnir, and himself.
Revulsion twisted his face into a dark glower. Several of the nearby Vanir regained presence of mind enough to take a step back, but none of them took to flight. Where would they go that he could not find them?
Gathering his darkest thoughts, his pain and hatreds, he gave them form. Lodur felt the power swell, knew without looking the dark, oily mist, which congealed behind him, like smoke come alive. Then tendrils of dark power whipped out, slashing across the faces of nearby warriors. Several clawed at their eyes, dropping to the ground in convulsions. More backed away in horror, eyes wide and frightened.
All but forgetting his sword, he cast out that dark mist again, and again. He saw past what his eyes noticed. That it was more than a simple scourge that bled over their eyes. He felt the blackness well from within, reaching through their eyes, their ears, and noses, to take their brain in a venomous drip. Poisoning the Vanir for their failures. Driving them to insanity, then into death.
They ran, but it was too late. The power Lodur had come into was fresh and raw, like a young man feeling his first rutting instinct, or a warrior the first call of the bloodlust. At that moment, he was the storm. The winds obeyed him. Lightning played in his eyes. The clouds themselves lowered in submission to his power. It might never run so strong in him again, he knew, as it did in the birthing of new power. But for the moment it was enough.
He slashed at the eyes and minds of two more men. Against a third he called down a violent-clad fork of lightning, which ripped through him from head to toe, seeking the ground, splitting skin and bursting flesh from bone along the entire course.
The last tried to bolt past him, sp
ooked to flight but without the presence of mind to turn and run away.
Finally, he remembered his sword. His warrior’s reflexes. They seemed a bit dulled, but adequate. The blade flashed up, around, and through. Taking the last man in the neck, bobbling his head free of his shoulders and letting it roll off the wide blade to one side even as the body ran along for two more long paces before collapsing.
Which left one man only who had escaped Lodur’s fury. His vengeance. The Vanir who had run away after the battle, (wisely) for fear of his own life. No distance was so far that he could not reach the coward. No price too small to pay to punish such behavior.
Or so he believed at that moment as he bound the winds to him.
Then reached out for a bit of the oily, black smoke that roiled off the scorched body lying in the fire pit.
Whispering his dark message into a cradle of air to give birth to final, dark purpose.
The dark zephyr spun before his eyes, pulsing with an unnatural heartbeat as if fully alive, and aware. A tortured soul, which could be given a single, terrible purpose. A bit of Lodur’s life, his hatred and strength. Sent after the fleeing raider, wherever he had run to, with a final, thready breath.
The zephyr spun away into the storm, keening in pain and purpose.
And Lodur sagged forward, using his bastard sword for a crutch.
The weapon felt heavier. His body responding slower than he was used to. He was hungry, and tired, and altogether too light-headed. Though it wasn’t until a line of frightened Vanir walked up on him that he saw the confusion and terror reflected in their eyes and knew, then, how he looked.
Bedraggled and burned. Covered in soot from the raging fire. Splashed with blood and gore.
And thinner than he had been. Still tall and well muscled, nonetheless Lodur felt the loss in the way his body responded and how his cuirass fit. The looseness in his belt, and even in his boots. As if his body had cannibalized itself in that brief but tumultuous display of power.
“So be it,” he whispered. “A small price to pay.”
Cimmerian Rage Page 12