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

by Loren Coleman

  Not that it matter for the moment. Or would come up again for some time. A shout ahead warned them of something happening, and word passed quickly back for Kern to hurry forward. With Tergin one step behind, Kern splashed and slid down the muddied trail. The thinned forest pressed in close again, and Kern pushed aside several slender branches that slapped at his face. Passed several Galla and a few of his own warriors as he hurried up on the small gathering waiting at the bottom of the brushy knoll.

  Reave and Gard Foehammer held back the press, but let Kern and Tergin through to stand among a smaller gathering of Daol and Ehmish, Hydallan, Aodh, and Ossian. Daol didn’t say anything, but pointed ahead where the ground opened up between a pair of towering, thick cedar.

  The rain, filtered by overhead branches, fell in fat, steady drops instead of a normal shower.

  Kern saw several dark-charred fire pits. Smelled the latrine odor of a slit-trench that had not been filled back in afterward.

  And Frostpaw, circling a body stretched out over the muddy ground.

  The wolf behaved oddly, circling with its hackles up. Back end always pointed away and muzzle twisted into a dangerous snarl, as if the body presented some new danger. It stopped. Howled short and sharp, then skipped to one side and began circling in the other direction.

  The man was obviously dead. No one lay so still in the misery of the muck and rain, with a beast twelve-stone weight so close by, ready to kill. Vanir. Kern saw the red hair spread out into the mud. Missing any breastplate and helm, he still wore the heavy leather skirt of a northern raider.

  “Something new,” Kern said, stepping into the open area. Leading Daol and Tergin and the rest forward. Frostpaw jumped back. Held his ground a moment against the intrusion, then bolted for the nearby brush.

  The others spread through the camp, encircling the fallen Vanir. Hydallan pointed out areas of crushed grasses and disturbed ground. Even after the heavy rains, the signs were there for those who looked for them. “Thirty, forty men I’m a-guessing. Yestermorn.”

  “How can you tell that?” Ehmish asked. He sounded torn between sounding impressed and skeptical. He shivered as if cold.

  But Hydallan could be patient when teaching his craft. Tracking and hunting had been his life in Gaud. He’d taught Kern some of that, and Daol just about everything he’d ever known for either.

  “They had a fire, pup.” He pointed out the obvious first. “Means they found wood dry enough to burn. Can do that in the wettest weather, if’n you spend the work for it. But look there, and there.” He pointed out a couple of boot prints, filled with rain. “Them’s deep prints, made after the ground turned soft. A day of rain or better. Full of groundwater, so at least a half day. And the grasses are wet, but they should have started springing back if it’d been longer than two days. That sets it plumb in the middle of this Crom-cursed downpour.”

  “Yea.” Daol nodded. “And figure they broke camp in the morning. Which is just plain common sense.”

  It was, when explained by a couple of veterans. Ehmish exhaled noisily and set himself to studying the camp signs, putting them to memory.

  Kern, though, had caught a strange note in Daol’s voice. Something not quite normal. A dark edge. “What is it?” he asked, walking up carefully on the body.

  “I’m nay sure.” He wrinkled his nose. Shivered. “It’s like . . . like . . .”

  “Sp’der,” Tergin said. He stomped up to the half-naked raider, used the toe of his mud-caked boot to turn the man’s head from side to side. He leaned over to sniff deep, then hawked and spat to one side. “Scent nay washed away easy.”

  Kern noticed deep, sunken eyes and pale skin turned slack in death; the raider’s battle with sickness was still evident. Not sickness. Poison! He smelled it as well, lying under the latrine stench like a rancid oil. A vile scent he recalled from the Pass of Noose and the great spiders that had attacked Daol and Ehmish and himself.

  “Bit?” Kern looked about the forest. “Down here?”

  Tergin knelt in the soupy mud. Checked the man’s neck, his arms. He found it on the underside of one wrist. A blackened vein, twisting up the arm. Tinges with angry red welts. “Nay. A scratch. Put sp’der poison on t’e edge of a blade, or cake it under sharpened fingernails.”

  “And to know how to do this?” Kern asked.

  Tergin nodded. Stood. “Galla. Had to be.”

  Prisoners. Taken for slaves, or a few women for entertainment. Now they knew that more of the mountain tribesmen had made it down into the lower valleys. Now Kern had a stronger goal to seize on.

  “But which direction did they take them?” he asked out loud.

  Back over the mountain pass? North, to the Hoath Plateau? With rumors of Ymirish welcome in the lodge hall of Clan Lacheish, they could not discount the idea of an eastward push.

  “North.”

  Ehmish. He stood at the north side of camp, rubbing at his nose. Moved back from the nearest paths with paled cheeks, breathing very shallow and fast.

  “Eager pup. You canna tell that by looking at the nearest trail,” Hydallan scolded. “Paths twist and turn about. Could be they needed to hike around one of them flood-lakes.”

  But the young man shook his head. “North,” he said again. He held his cupped palm over his mouth and nose both now. Looking seriously as if he were trying not to retch. “And I’m not reading the Vanir’s trail sign, Hydallan. I’m reading what was left for us by the Galla.”

  Everyone looked at the body. “Him?” Kern asked.

  “T’e scent,” Tergin said, showing an excited and dangerous gleam in his eyes. He stepped over the dead Vanir and walked bent over toward the trail Ehmish had found.

  “Whoever killed that raider knew they’d likely strip and leave the body. Best sign they could leave us.” Ehmish watched as Tergin found a branch, broke it off, and carried it carefully back. “The underside of that switch is caked with the foul-smelling scent. They knew which direction they were going and left us a sign.”

  Tergin nodded, rejoining the group. “North,” he said, backing up Ehmish’s judgment.

  Hydallan did not apologize for his earlier scolding. But he gave the young man a clap on the shoulder. High praise. “North,” he said.

  Kern nodded. He stared up through the cedar’s overhanging branches and into the swollen, gray skies, letting fat drops splash into his face a moment. Drawing one last deep breath during this moment of rest. They would move hard now. Running long into the night and likely through to the next day. His eyes would find whatever thin trails there were. They’d track the Vanir and wouldn’t rest until they had back the lives they’d thought to steal. Or they’d die trying, he knew.

  Not too far away, directly north, Frostpaw howled again. This time the long, low call of hunger. And Kern smiled, recognizing the sound of it. Wanting to echo it himself.

  His wolves were on the hunt.

  12

  LODUR’S FUR-LINED BOOTS hammered at the Lacheishi pier. Each forceful step gave back a hollow drumming as it echoed in the dark space between smooth-worn planks and the lake’s frigid waters. Like half a hundred fists beating against breastplates.

  A stiff breeze tugged at the weighted hem of his bearskin cloak. It whistled coldly against one ear, and whipped his long strands of frost blond hair to the other side.

  Overhead, dark clouds rolling by on the easterly winds lowered themselves in a respectful salute to his strength. His power.

  The waiting, the patience he’d been required to harbor against so many dark glances and hostile talk, it had worn on Lodur. Worn him to the point that all he’d wanted to do for days now was set this village to the blade. His blade. Torgvall’s blade. So long as every one of them died, and he was allowed to feast on the taste of their deaths, it would not have mattered.

  But Grimnir’s touch had counseled him to patience. The Great Terror himself, reaching across the Hoath Plateau, whispered into the back of the Ymirish sorcerer’s mind. All in good time, he’d b
een promised. And now that time was rapidly approaching.

  At last. After too many days delayed along this path, the time had come to act. To move mountains and reshape the northern lands.

  The lodge hall of Clan Lacheish rested on several large pilings driven deep into the lake bed. Narrow but long. Connected to the main pier by a well-anchored ramp. It had walls of carefully sawn planks painted with the same boiled tree sap used to stain and preserve their rafts, their docks. The hall’s high rooftop had been laid out on a very shallow angle, almost flat, Lodur had discovered already. The better for clan bowmen to set up atop the lodge where they would have a commanding view of any attacking force trying to storm the piers.

  He’d also seen how the different piers would be so easily hacked free, to drop their long boardwalks into the freezing waters and quickly isolate any portion of the over-lake village from the rest. To prevent the spread of fire, perhaps, or also in case of attack, as unlikely as either might seem.

  Of course, when you guested the enemy within your walls, such was a greater threat than one supposed.

  The lower lodge hall doors stood open, and Lodur passed through them without a worry for who might wait with a naked blade in the dark shadows to either side of the door. There were guards there, he knew. Guards he’d spotted at times before, his golden eyes pulling in the light to turn the shadows into a hazy twilight gloom. Every time he approached Cailt Chieftain there was the chance they’d take it upon themselves or at their chieftain’s word to attack him. He’d not spent so many months, as had Torgvall, to ingratiate himself with the Lacheishi. And his great power, wrapped about him in a dark shroud, frightened so many of them. The simple creatures. He might have dampened the fires that now burned within him to more easily pass for a warrior, but why should he?

  Certainly not for so mundane a reason as to spare the chieftain’s pride.

  Lodur wanted the man to sit uneasily. Needed Cailt Stonefist to war within himself between the benefits and liabilities of any alliance with the north.

  Such was Grimnir’s plan.

  To reach the second level, Lodur had to walk down the entire lower length. Near the far end two wooden ramps rose from the floor on either side of the lodge, lifting halfway up the wall, then turning inward onto a small landing from which a final ramp led into the middle of the upper floor. He strode past two guards posted at the head of the ramp, nodded to Torgvall, who waited just ahead, then the two of them together approached the open wall in which the chieftain of Clan Lacheish and the strongest leader of all the northeast clans sat in silhouette on a heavy, carved bench that resembled a throne so much more than a simple chair.

  The open wall was so much more than a simple window. Like gates to a strong palisade, the entire wall opened outward by two massive doors that swung on simple turning poles resting inside of metal-forged hinges. With a sweeping view out over the lake’s gray waters, enough daylight poured in to brighten the entire second floor. Also, to put that light into the eyes of anyone approaching Cailt Stonefist, leaving the chieftain’s face cloaked by thin shadows while he and his closest advisors were magnificently backlit.

  Cailt’s bench-throne was draped in heavy furs. White wolf and golden fox, mostly. Stonefist himself wore eastern-style leggings trimmed in rabbit, a heavy, red kilt with gold stitching, and a mantle of snowy-gray ermine the furs of which were highly prized among merchants and other clans.

  Nearly as large as Torgvall, Cailt Stonefist was every stone’s weight a Cimmerian chieftain. Thirty-five summers at the least. His arms were bare and thick with muscle. His hands large and scarred and clenched into hammerlike fists. He had gray eyes, much like the Hoathi, and shaved his dark hair so far back from his temples that very little grew down far enough to reach his ears.

  It was the chieftain’s honor to speak first in any formal setting, so Lodur stood quietly, fuming, while the Cimmerian dog of a leader looked the difference between both Ymirish, then to his most respected aides. Few of them were young men. One, with a thick fall of silver-white hair and pale skin, might have passed for a Ymirish save for his size and the dark blue eyes. Cailt’s shaman.

  “Torgvall promises me this is important,” the chieftain said finally.

  Holding on to his role, here, Lodur nodded with a partial bow. “Clan Murrogh’s war host has left the lakeside stronghold. Moving north.” Now he truly had their attention. Several of Cailt’s advisors whispered quickly to each other. Lodur had let a trace of his power seep into his voice, coloring it with dark overtones. Making the threat sound even more dangerous than Cailt would imagine it.

  It worked. Stonefist was not so easily tempted into a reaction as some of his aides, but his eyes widened ever so slightly. With the shadows falling across his face, one might not have seen it without the golden eyes of a Ymirish.

  “North is the Frost Swamp and its demon creatures. And the Hoath Plateau. Neither worries me overmuch, Lodur Frostbeard.”

  But Lodur heard the slight tremble in the other man’s voice. The pent-up rage, the shame that had festered in this proud man for five long years and had been so easy for Torgvall to exploit.

  “It is Morag Chieftain, who robbed you of your honor as well as your daughter. Does Deirdre mean less to you now that she has whelped his seed?” He pretended not to see the violent start Cailt gave at mention of his daughter’s name and the reminder of the child she had quickly borne Morag. It was an open sore that could still hurt if jabbed. Could kill, in fact.

  “Morag is loose with a host of better than a hundred men. Does this worry you overmuch?

  “Yea,” Cailt growled. “It might. But if he has chosen to aid the Hoathi, why should I allow our feud to interfere? It did not sit well with me to refuse them, however much you counseled patience.”

  A light breeze whipped through the room, coming off the lake. It tasted of fish and of ice. Torgvall faced into it without so much as a shiver. Lodur saw many of the Lacheishi huddle back in their cloaks and refrained from the same only out of sheer determination. The flame that now burned at his core was all the warmth he truly needed. Ymir’s own cold fire.

  “Torgvall counseled you, Stonefist. I warned you. Do not come against us on the Hoath Plateau, or we will next turn the north’s entire might at Lacheish.”

  Cailt Chieftain pounded one large hand against his thigh. “Come and be damned, winter-born! By Crom’s swinging pike, we’ll send you back to the wastelands whence you came!”

  Anger. Scalding and meaty and rich, like sizzling venison fresh from a skewer. Lodur hardened his gaze, letting none of his pleasure show. Anger would only work against Cailt Stonefist and toward Grimnir’s ultimate plans.

  With the outburst freeing up many tongues, it was Cailt’s advisors who rushed now to make Lodur’s arguments for him. The clan’s champion, Loht, wanting vengeance for the men lost in Murrogh earlier in the spring. Two of the village elders worried about what Murrogh might do if the Lacheishi war host turned to the east.

  “Also, Cailt Chieftain, think about the advantage to come after.” This from a gray-haired man with a thick, unruly beard and a wily look in his eyes, like a hunting fox. “Grimnir punishes the Hoathi just as he punished Conall Valley, but he will eventually return to his homelands. Yea? Let him weaken our enemies. Let him smash Morag first. Who, then, could ever stand up to our strength?”

  Next to him, Torgvall stiffened. Lodur knew then that this gray-haired fox was the man his brother of the ice spent most of his time with. Sound advice, if one ignored the supposition that Grimnir would ever return to the northern wastelands.

  Nay. Cimmeria was too full of warm-blooded game to leave off now. And after Grimnir’s defeat of this last winter, when the false one nearly killed the Great Devil himself, Lodur knew Grimnir would never leave off. Not again.

  Not ever.

  Only the silver-haired shaman stood mute. Studying. Holding his counsel.

  Torgvall had warned him that the old man was a danger. Truth-sensing, he’d cla
imed. He’d supposedly betrayed several false witnesses to Cailt over his many years of service, and to Cailt’s father before him.

  Though Lodur sensed no real strength in the feeble Cimmerian, he remained determined to tell no falsehoods and would be just as satisfied for the man to remain mute, and forgotten. The pretender to true power offended him. With his master’s leave, the Ymirish would have unleashed his dark purpose in an instant and left the old man dying in agony.

  But not before he finished his purpose.

  “I am nay here to coddle you, Stonefist. To tell you what you wish to hear.” Truth, Lodur knew. “I merely pass along what I know, as Torgvall swore to you we would always do. Now I leave. Whether you wish to take this opportunity to strike at your enemy is of nay importance to me. Or to the Great One. But I will do so. My host awaits me on the edge of the plateau, and whether the Murroghan turn for your gates or nay, I will strike with all the strength at my command.”

  The shaman leaned forward, as if trying to hear the words Lodur did not say. The whispered undertones. The secrets he carried in his voice. But nay. The elderly man frowned and settled back again.

  Cailt Chieftain had calmed himself. And now he smiled. “Success be yours, then, Frostbeard. That I can truly wish you, for Morag is indeed my enemy. His insult will nay be forgotten, or forgiven. But I see nay any reason to aid you or oppose you, either one.”

  “As you see fit, Stonefist. If I thought to change your mind, if I cared for your bloodline, I’d make a greater effort. But I weary of my time here, and I see nay any reason to delay. Strength to your people. I believe they shall need it.”

  Lodur had never intended to leave it at that. Though he backed away, as if finished with his interview, and turned for the back of the lodge on the very edge of what Cailt might determine an insult.

  About to pause for one departing blow, when the shaman interrupted.

  “Bloodline,” the man whispered. His voice was thready, as if lacking the strength to speak much more than a few simple words. “Something more . . .”