Age of Conan: Songs of Victory: Legends of Kern, Volume IIl

by Loren Coleman

  Barely understanding, in fact, that the Cruaidhi chieftain had led his charge right into their strongest position. Hacking and slashing their way forward in an attempt to reach the second Ymirish warlord.

  Confusion reigned on the battlefield. The Vanir, for the moment, were divided among three masters and uncertain which they should rally to first. Some fell back from well-defended positions. Others charged forward, but without strong support. The Ymirish swordsman charging down on Ros-Crana’s side was suddenly leading forward not half a dozen men, while the rest fell back to prevent a rout along their entrenched positions.

  The sorcerer dug frantically at the earth, as if in search of more bodies, more demonic servants to fend off the advancing Cimmerians. The freezing sleet doubled its efforts to cloak him, falling in a hard crash and cutting visibility down to less than fifty paces.

  Too late. Carrak smashed aside the Vanir and stormed the upper bridge. Ros-Crana turned her small line into the advancing Vanir force, setting for their charge and jumping in two on their one.

  A pike-wielding raider leaped at Ros-Crana, but she knew the reach and speed of such a weapon better than he, obviously. Ducking beneath his wild slash, she took her war sword in both hands and slashed side to side, and back again. Laying open his thigh, his chest, then back once more to draw a dark, bloody gash right across his throat.

  He collapsed at her feet, spraying warm blood over her boots, the hem of her kilt, and bare legs.

  The Ymirish warrior thought to take the raider’s place, rushing forward. But as he did, Dahr came at him from one side and a Callaughnan woman from the other. He deflected one with his shield, the other with a sideswipe parry. Then another of her warriors jumped forward. And a fourth. And the Ymirish went down under a swarm of bodies.

  The sorcerer!

  Leaving Dahr to hold on his own, Ros-Crana bent to snatch up the pikeman’s fallen weapon and quickly sprinted forward for the funeral grounds. Two of the risen dead converged toward her, lurching along with their shuffling gait. She avoided both, letting them trail after her. Splashing through muddy puddles, feet digging at the soft earth as she climbed a short rise, she raced up as Carrak’s line spread out in a half circle, trapping the sorcerer against the ruined, boiling pits he’d made of the funeral grounds.

  The man had a shrunken, furtive manner. Like a whipped dog, quickly searching for a direction to bolt and, finding no retreat, coiling in on itself with hackles raised and a growl rolling deep in its throat. A cowardly animal, suddenly turned dangerous when trapped.

  Hunched over. Head bowed and hands splayed against the fouled earth. Seemingly in defeat.

  Except for the oily, dark cloud that roiled up behind him, spreading out in a demonic halo. Reaching for Carrak.

  “Carrak! Nay!”

  But her warning was drowned once again in a crash of hard thunder.

  Clan Corag had not been involved in the battle above Conarch. No one from Carrak’s village had seen the powers of a Ymirish sorcerer up close. But Ros-Crana had. And she’d seen what that oily cloud of soot and evil had done to men. Driving them into blind insanity, then death.

  Carrak took another step forward, intent on the trophy, not the threat.

  Never the pikeman Gard Foehammer had been, still Ros-Crana knew spears and the balance of a good weapon as well as any might. With a forward jump, she levered the point of her weapon up and over. Putting her body’s entire weight behind her arm as she hurled the pike forward in a short, flat arc that barely missed Carrack’s shoulder before it flashed down and speared the sorcerer through the throat. Pinning him to the ground.

  Just as the tendrils of oily smoke reached for Carrak, dissipating right before they wrapped about his face.

  No matter whether he’d seen the danger at the end, or was reacting to his near brush with Ros-Crana’s thrown pike, Carrak stumbled back quickly. Ros-Crana slowed to a walk, coming up beside him to look at the dead sorcerer.

  Standing there, the two of them, as mud-stained arms broke the surface of the boiling funeral grounds one last time. Clawed hands grasped at the sorcerer’s head, his chest, and his legs. Pulled him down into the earth as easily as if the boiling mud had been the thinnest of quicksand.

  Then the ground firmed, stilled. And it looked as solid as it had ever been.

  “A good throw, that,” Carrak said. His voice was shaky. When he looked to her, his eyes had a haunted look in them. Certainly he had seen the danger there at the end. And he was thanking her for the saving.

  “Yea,” she said. Panting, she caught her breath. “It was.”

  Already the sleet had faded back to a steady, thinning rain. Warmer. A natural fall. It sizzled at the mud, washing muck and blood from the arms and faces of the warriors standing on the slight rise.

  Ros-Crana looked back down the hill and saw that it was over. Dahr had already put the Ymirish warrior’s head up on a spear, parading it forward as more of their men rallied to his side and the Vanir raiders chased after their one remaining master for the surrounding forests. Few men gave chase, too happy to see the invaders away.

  “Save me two Vanir for questioning,” she told Carrak, “if you can find any left alive among the fallen.” She started to head down, to regroup with Dahr, then approach Sláine Longtooth. “Gather our wounded. Get them behind the palisade walls.”

  “What if Longtooth bars the gate on us?” the man asked.

  A reasonable question, perhaps, given the terms under which the Cruaidhi last parted company from the northwest clans. But Ros-Crana wasn’t particularly worried.

  “He would nay dare it with me,” she promised. “And I will make certain he knows it, yea.” She surveyed the valley. Its litter of bodies. “After the price we paid this day, those walls are as much ours as his.”

  Still, Ros-Crana knew she would be able to enjoy them for only a short period of time. Enough to tend her wounded. Restock her provision sacks. Possibly convince a few of the Cruaidhi warriors to join her war host and ride for the eastern lands. Chasing after the retreating Vanir.

  She wondered how many of these survivors she’d see at the next battle. Or the next.

  How many would make it to Grimnir’s side, in fact, before she could ride them down and send them back to Ymir’s cold soul?

  11

  AFTER A PROMISING start, several days of heavy rainfall slowed Kern’s warriors and the Galla in their trek north. Visibility measured by a number of paces. Long detours where swollen streams flooded their banks, spilling out into dozens of small, short-lived lakes, which had to be waded, swum, or (better) hiked around.

  Even away from those many streams pouring off the Black Mountains, in several places still the ground had softened into mire; black loam and forest compost turned into a thick, clinging soup that smelled of earth and damp wood and rotting leaves. It sucked hard at the leather soles of their boots and clung to legs and arms and the trailing hems of waterlogged cloaks. This basically left Kern feeling as if the land itself had turned against him for spurning Morag Chieftain’s hospitality.

  “Regrets?” Tergin asked when he caught Kern staring southward again.

  They stood upon a rounded knoll, away from the thick forests but still fighting thickets and heavy brush. Ahead, Gard Foehammer disappeared around a bend in the trail. But they could each see a decent distance behind: the warriors struggling through a gray curtain of rain, fighting the marshy ground.

  No warming fires or dry bedrolls this night. There would be cold meat and stale flat cakes. And worry for those they had chosen to leave behind. Again. Regrets?

  “Many,” Kern finally allowed. Then a wolf’s howl turned him back around, searching the tall brush to the north and west. Close. Very close.

  He shook his head. Water dripped down into his eyes. “But nay for being here now.” He gestured back along the trail where the Galla tribesmen mixed among his own men and woman. “One more life saved, another strong arm added in Cimmeria’s defense, would have been wort
h it. We’ve found seven of your kin. And there may be many more wandering the valleys. We’ll find them.”

  Tergin had followed Kern’s gesture. Certainly counting over and again the survivors from his tribe. With the weak and injured and the very young left behind in Murrogh, their fate resting on the generosity of Morag Chieftain, the Galla had put six strong warriors on the trail heading north. Hair shaved up into topknots. Tattoos coloring their faces, and chests, and arms. They moved fast and quiet, and kept to themselves more often than not.

  “Four more added to t’e trail,” the Galla warrior said. “T’ree sent back to Murrogh.” He nodded once. “Better t’an we knew before.” His hands clenched into fists. “And you rescued anot’er dozen Hoat’i.”

  Not much of a rescue. A dozen struggling men and women and children being chased down by half again their number in Vanir raiders. It had been butchery, not bravery, laying a trap alongside the trail, falling on the northerners with bow and blade. If one of the Hoathi had nay been so eager to charge forward, breaking the line, the small, mixed host of Cimmerians would have come out the other side without the loss of even that single life.

  Of course, the fallen man’s kinsmen had not seen it quite the same way. They had seen too much death and destruction at the hands of Ymirish lately to trust Kern, and only a forest of sharpened steel at his back kept several of the men from attacking him outright.

  And the stories they gave grudgingly, full of broken pieces and secondhand knowledge, could have been horror tales as much as anything.

  Grimnir, the fire-eyed demon, the Great Terror himself, was indeed on the plateau. He and his Ymirish brethren rampaged unchecked over the western and northern edges, putting to the torch every farmstead and village they came across. Newly budding crops were torn up. The ground salted so nothing would grow again. People slaughtered like sheep.

  There were also signs of a massing army unlike anything Cimmeria had ever seen rallied against it. Clan Hoath would fall soon, pulled in too many directions at once. Then nothing stood in Grimnir’s way of a full invasion of the eastern lands.

  Kern feared that every bit of those stories was true.

  Afterward, carrying the body of their fallen man with them, the Hoathi headed south. Dark glances were still sent in Kern’s direction as if he had not done enough.

  And mayhap he hadn’t. If he’d moved from Murrogh sooner. If he hadn’t been drawn so heavily to the Gaudic community, thinking he might actually resume his life among them.

  Welcome among Cimmerians . . . a wolf. A Ymirish!

  One of them.

  “Counts for somet’ing, Kern Wolf-Eye.” Tergin nodded, as if sensing the other man’s dark thoughts.

  “Could have counted for more,” Kern said.

  “Mayhap.” The Galla warrior walked in silence a moment, slogging through the ankle-deep muck. He tried walking to one side of the path, but it did not help. “Still and all, t’e Sp’der’s Teeth tribe is in your debt.”

  Kern accepted the heavy words with a nod of respect. Though nay anyone had as yet named Tergin their chieftain, not within Kern’s hearing or that of any of his warriors, the Galla warrior acted as one and so obviously spoke for his people as to make little difference.

  Brig Tall-Wood slogged by without a glance, keeping his gaze fastened to the trail ahead, looking like a drowned lynx with his dark hair plastered flat, hanging half into his face. Then Nahud’r, his head wrapped in thick, warm wool. And staying drier than most by wrapping a piece of oilskin over a spread branch, holding it overhead in a kind of water shield. A trick he’d learned in Nemedia, he’d once told Kern.

  Next followed a trio of Galla tribesmen, who traded cold, determined looks with Tergin. Then Wallach Graybeard and Desagrena. Desa wore a conical hat she’d fashioned from a wrap of thick leather, holding it closed with a small, thin dagger pinning the ends together. It covered her oily locks and half of her face when she bent forward. Still, Kern could see she looked worried. And Wallach looked pale and feverish. High splotches of color on his cheeks, peeking out from the wiry curls of his iron-gray beard. Dark smudges beneath his eyes and a thin, drawn set to his mouth. He stumbled along the trail, as if measuring the last of his reserves. And the journey was barely a week along.

  “Holding up?” Kern asked his weapons master.

  “Well enough, Kern. Well enough.” He put a bit more strength into his step and Desa matched him, glancing back only once to give Kern a warning glare.

  At Wallach’s age, most warriors were dead or living off the charity of their clans. Kern was fortunate to have such a veteran. And he respected the other man enough to give him space. The last several months had been hard on Wallach, pushing forward before his injuries had time to fully heal. Always at the fore of any heavy fighting. Not one to back down. Ever.

  Kern and Tergin fell into step behind the two warriors, following the mud-slick path down a slope, twisting around some tall bellberry brush. Ahead, another howl had Galla clansmen reaching for their blades out of reflex, had Kern’s people searching the rain-drenched brush for sight of Frostpaw.

  It had taken the wolf three days to discover Kern had left Murrogh and to track the small band north along the edge of the Black Mountains. The night of their last campfire, a light rain just beginning to fall, the scent of cooking meat had certainly helped lead in the animal. Tergin had shown little surprise when a pair of great, golden eyes stared back from the dark. Barely any more when Daol scavenged the guts from a rabbit he’d killed that day and slung them out into the darkness.

  The large animal had skulked in carefully, obviously aware of the several new scents and the Galla’s aggressive body posture—every one of them leaning forward with hands on their blades. Edged forward just far enough to snap up the bloody intestines in its powerful jaws, then retreated for the night and the thick forest underbrush.

  After a moment, Tergin brushed aside the incident very simply.

  “We tame t’e sp’ders,” he reminded his people. Referring to their method of capturing the giant mountain spiders, milking them for their poison and their strong, spun webbing.

  After that, no one bothered much if Frostpaw made an appearance or called out while on a hunt.

  “Half t’e year,” Tergin said now. “T’ey talk about it in t’e lodge at Murrogh. Morag Chieftain and Cul and Hogann.” Kern glanced over at mention of the Hoathi who had challenged him in the presence of the others. “Told many tales of you and your Men of the Wolves. And t’e great animal that tracks you.”

  “Did they?” Kern asked.

  He wanted to know more about what might have been said in his absence. At the same time, he did not want to attach too much importance to it. Tales were just that. Tales. They rarely told the entire truth. Often exaggerated for the sake of entertainment, Kern had also heard a few of his own moments disparaged as the work of a coward, a weak leader. An enemy.

  One of them.

  “Cul. He nearly shoots t’e animal, when you find each ot’er?”

  “Nearly,” Kern admitted.

  He could not keep the edge from his tone. It was not a moment he enjoyed remembering. The night when his Ymirish heritage had bloomed into full force, the dark power singing through his veins as it tempted him toward the abyss. Knowing he could reach out and snuff the life from any Vanir, or all of them. Hearing the whispers at the back of his mind, another voice in his head urging him onward, to accept, to draw down the power and take on the mantle of a sorcerer of Ymir!

  Except he hadn’t been able to. Not even for the lives of his people, any one of whom could have been struck down at any moment by an enemy’s blade.

  But to satisfy Tergin, and distract himself, he gave a sketchy retelling of that battle. The Vanir pressing forward. The timely arrival of Cul Chieftain, leading forward several Murrogh warriors to join in the attack.

  “The entire fight might have turned, yea, had Cul Chieftain not been there. At the time, I thought it strangely fortunate that ano
ther clan had been on the same path. But there were the prisoners to account for. Two were from Gaud, the others from Murrogh. Cul had come for them more than for the Vanir.”

  Kern wiped a large hand across his face, scrubbing the water away. Long, frost blond strands lay plastered against his forehead, down against his cheeks. He raked fingers back and through his hair, scraping them away.

  “I did not know who it was, then. Even when Cul and I all but ran over each other, both chasing after the Vanir war leader. The large northerner crashed through some underbrush in his flight to escape, tripping over Frostpaw.” The animal was skulking about the clearing as Kern’s pack fought and bled. “I remember breaking through in time to see him raise his warhammer, ready to smash it down on the wolf’s skull.”

  And he recalled time slipping away from him again. Slowing, as the power inside him built. But rather than loose its fury, Kern had hurled his blade forward, burying a good measure of steel into the northerner’s side. Saving the wolf’s life.

  “Frostpaw leaped in and tore the man’s throat out, ripping the life from him. Cul saw all of it, of course. My thrown blade. The wolf’s savage attack.”

  And when Frostpaw rounded on Cul, teeth bared and a dangerous growl rolling out from that muscular chest, he’d raised his war bow to put an arrow into the beast. The power had risen and shot out from Kern before he could think about it, slicing through the bow’s taut string to snap it in two before Cul could get off the shot.

  It had been the first and last time Kern had consciously released the dark energies storming within him.

  Even with the memory of it now, he felt the power stir in the dark shadows of his mind, begin to sing in his veins. He stifled it, as he had at the lakeside, clamping down with all the distrust and abhorrence he could summon. Pushing it from him.

  “Fortunately, his bowstring snapped.” It sounded like a weak ending, even in his own ears. “Must have been frayed.”

  “Must ha’e,” Tergin agreed, deadpan.

  Of course, the man spoke in such a flat voice most times, Kern could not tell if he believed it or nay.