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

by Loren Coleman

  Two raiders launched themselves at Kern, but their swords tangled and Kern punched his short blade once, twice into the throat of one of them. Warm blood gushed, rushing down the length of his blade and spraying across the back of his hand before he fell back again. And again.

  Another mud-spattered warrior threw himself onto Reave’s greatsword in desperation, impaling himself with a good arm’s length of steel running out his back. Reave dropped his blade to catch the raider’s arms, the flame-haired berserker caring only to take a Cimmerian with him into death.

  The raider spit blood, wrestling with Reave back and forth across the muddy spit of land, taking a long time to die.

  Which was when the second group of Vanir swarmed out of the fog and frozen waters, drawn to the sound of combat. Within that second pack stormed a Ymirish warrior with rage and glee twisting his face into a horrible mask, wielding a large broadsword and a tall, full-body shield. A head taller than Kern, they still shared the same golden, lupine eyes and frost blond hair. And Kern remembered this one from Gaud. The man who had attacked Kern’s warriors among the empty shell of their former village. The one whose raiders had cost the Cimmerians dearly, mortally wounding Ashul and leaving her to die in the mud and filth and rain.

  This Ymirish wore a thin, patchy beard, though Kern recalled it as having been full and thick at Gaud. He still commanded a great red-tailed hawk, which circled overhead, diving behind him again and again, emitting great, piercing shrieks.

  Vengeance stirred within Kern, and for the first time since smothering the call of dark power at Murrogh’s lakeside, he felt the thrust and surge as the darkness nearly burst forth again. So easy. To tap into that power. He tasted it, sharp and metallic. Felt it pounding at his temples, lighting off violet sparks at the edge of his vision.

  But before any thirst for personal vengeance, there was the need to keep his warriors safe. To protect. Reave still wrestled with the dying berserker. Daol and Tergin fought side by side against a large man with a warhammer gripped in meaty hands. Brig had already cast aside his bow, broken after he smashed it across the face of one raider, and was trading desperate cuts against that one and another.

  They could not stand now. Not against such fierce recklessness and such odds.

  Which was when he gave the order to fall back. Retreat, and reset their lines.

  Not that it had helped, in the end. The Ymirish warrior had whipped his raiders into a frenzy, throwing away the well-ordered battle plans he had run at Gaud in favor of a swarming, all-out attack. Kern’s warriors managed a short retreat, losing Gard and Ehmish and Wallach somewhere along the way, picking up a dozen warriors as Nahud’r and Ossian led forward a mixed line of Galla tribesmen and more from their own pack.

  Valerus rushed up astride his horse, but without room to build up a charge, he quickly ground-hitched the beast and set himself in line with his cavalry saber. Hydallan and Aodh and Mogh drew blades and waited. Tergin’s men and a few women packed in tight. And the Vanir smashed into them like a mighty hand, breaking them into two lines and driving each side away from the other.

  “Again!” Kern called out. “Back again!”

  Kern held his ground to the last, turning blades aside with his shield and sword, once taking a light cut against his chain-mail vest, protected by the overlapping scale of rings. But as the Vanir pressed, he turned and fled after the others. Racing back along a new trail. Then splashing across a narrow, shallow stretch of frozen water, feet smashing large prints through the ice, busting the surface into a spiderweb of cracks and several brackish puddles. He gained dry land at the foot of a narrow hillock nearly as tall as he was. Clawed his way to the top. Set himself between Ossian and Reave, Tergin and Brig, as six Vanir warriors and their Ymirish master rushed after them.

  Finally, though, the frantic energy that had sustained the enemy rush, even through several wasted and unnecessary deaths, began to fade. The Vanir raiders counted the near-even numbers. Saw Kern’s group had the advantage up on the small hill. There were no more reinforcements. The battle had broken into two larger fights. From the sound of it, possibly more. Each piece was lost among the trees and the great curtains of frozen moss, the icy fog that distorted the shadows and the distant echoes of combat. Until no one could be certain of their direction.

  They hesitated, calling curses down upon the Cimmerians. Waiting for the Ymirish to command them.

  The frost-haired warrior grinned, feral and humorless. He stalked the muddy trail on the other side of the iced-over channel, stalking that turned into frustrated pacing. The large man frowned, as if uncertain of just what to do.

  Then a piercing cry ripped through the swamp as the Ymirish’s hawk dived at its master again. This time, however, it came away with a talon filled with stringy, blond hair. Claw wounds along his temple bled freely, dripping along the side of his face. More bled at his neck, Kern saw, angry and red.

  Anger blazed in the warrior’s eyes. He swiped at the bird with his sword, but too late, then blotted the bloody wounds with his fingers. Stared at his red-tipped fingers.

  Then, reaching up again, he scratched at his scalp as if it worried him, and came away with long strands of his own hair stuck to bloody fingertips.

  “What do you wait for?” the Ymirish finally asked, staring back at his warriors. He spoke Nordheimir, of which Kern knew a few words. Enough to follow. The Ymirish man’s voice had a hollow echo to it, slightly apart from the language’s usual nasal flatness. “Finish them!” he yelled.

  More afraid of their master than worried for his health or his sanity, the Vanir waited for no other command. They threw themselves forward, swords waving overhead, shields ready.

  “Hold,” Kern commanded. He waited as the raiders smashed into the ice and splashed up more of the stagnant, brackish water. Counted each step as they came across. “Hold . . .”

  Reave had picked up a Vanir broadsword somewhere along the way, having lost his great Cimmerian blade in the first struggle. He looked ready to leap forward. As did Tergin. Brig and Ossian. Kern waited another desperate heartbeat. And another.

  “Now!”

  He rushed forward, picking up speed coming down the hill with short blade held down by his side and shield levered forward to absorb the coming blow.

  Tergin got off late. But Kern and the other three came off the hillock and smashed into the raiders while they were still wading out of the ice and muck and foul-smelling waters. Reave smashed in high against one man, Ossian low. That raider went down as if running into a wall. A wall studded with sharp, cold steel.

  Brig ducked a wild swing and raced forward, second-guessing what Kern was about. Kern smashed his shield into the face of another raider; the target’s spiked boss rammed right through the northerner’s throat.

  The man went over backward, and Kern stumbled atop him before catching his footing and chasing on after Brig.

  The Ymirish let them come, ready behind his tall shield, heavy broadsword waving to one side. His feral grin intact, he seemed to welcome the battle. Then, at the last possible second, his eyes flared a bright, mossy green and his features clouded over, as if drawn back into shadow. Brig startled, nearly lost his blade as he stumbled to one side, his face twisted in pain and loathing.

  But Kern felt something within him repel, refusing the image that tried to force its way into his mind. The darkness boiled up, tearing that image apart, shredding it. Until the creature standing before him showed no face at all. Nothing but a seamless blank without mouth, or nose, or wrinkles.

  Nothing but a pair of wide, green glowing eyes.

  Kern knew then that the Ymirish he’d seen at Gaud, the man he’d thought this thing to be, was dead. And this . . . this copy had taken the Ymirish’s place. He nearly recoiled for the strangeness of it. The horror of such a thing—whatever it was—that had taken on human form. And not just any human, but one Kern recognized. One he might have thrown away everything to get at.

  But now, the glamour
ruined, all that was left was shield and blade and muscle. Kern ducked its wild slash, came body to body against the swamp creature and stabbed it in the leg as he shoved himself to one side.

  It came at him again. He feinted, and it bit hard on the lure, sliding its shield to one side. Kern stabbed it in the chest. In the arm. Ducked another wild slash and let his shield absorb the next blow.

  Lunged forward and dug another hole into the creature’s gut.

  There was a good reason Wallach Graybeard had taught Kern the short sword, even if it was twice as light and several hands shy the length of a good Cimmerian blade. The same reason such a sword was often used with village youths. Kern’s muscles, more used to a wood axe than the feel of a blade, had needed time to develop. And, at a thrust, short blades often equaled and at times exceeded the reach of heavier blades which favored wide, sweeping slashes. Even in the hands of a novice, the short sword was still lethal.

  He was no longer a novice. Kern had grown into the weapon, and its fast, strike-and-fade style of battle. His muscles were tuned for the weight, the balance. And he had grown accustomed to his shield as well, able to work with its balance. Knowing how to dodge behind it for protection.

  This copy of a Ymirish warrior had the size and strength, yea. But it had no feel for the blade. No head for battle. It was nothing more than an illusion.

  Not much more than an illusion, anyway.

  Kern jumped back as the creature drew upon its desperation and, tossing the tall body shield aside, nearly skewered him on the point of the broadsword. He slipped to one side barely in time. The blade cut hard against his ribs, but not strong enough to get through the chain-mail vest. It managed to slice a few chains apart, but that was as close as it was going to get.

  Kern turned, clipped the side of the broadsword with his shield hard enough to send it flying out into the broken ice, then continued his spin to come all the way back around with the short blade, digging it through the creature’s throat.

  Blood sprayed out in a froth, hot and steaming as it gushed across his hands and spattered the side of his face. It spilled the way a man’s might, and for a moment Kern wondered if he’d been mistaken. That the rush of power through his mind had dreamed up such a terrible creature.

  But nay. The red blood turned black, and foul, as it continued to flow. And the thing screamed a high-pitched, warbling cry that no human man would ever have been able to make. Especially with a cut throat.

  It staggered, fell over, kicked and thrashed through its death throes.

  Kern stood over it, and watched it die.

  He never thought of the Vanir left behind him. That of the four who had been left, one might follow behind Brig and him as they rushed what the raiders still thought of as their Ymirish master. Grimnir’s brethren. He didn’t think anything of it until Brig, crouched to one side and staring, as if frozen in place, suddenly leaped forward and slashed his sword up from an underhand arc to guard Kern’s back and knock away the blade that struck at him from behind.

  The Vanir had no more fight left in him other than that coward’s strike. He turned and fled, running away from Brig, and Kern, and the thing he had followed in a final, futile charge.

  Brig nearly gave chase, but Kern put a hand out to stop him. The raider fled deeper into the swamp, and within a few dozen steps was lost in the thick, roiling fog. A glance over at the others found Tergin standing over another body. And two more shadows disappearing in different directions while Reave and Ossian paired up to chase after as well. Kern shook his head, discouraging pursuit of the Vanir.

  The swamp would take care of them.

  FINDING THE OTHERS and working their way south out of the swamp took the balance of the day. Wounds were tied off quickly and slathered with lard, to be cared for later. One unconscious man to pack out between Reave and Gard. One dead body carried by his kinsmen. And four Galla prisoners rescued when Gard and Ehmish followed some desperate shouts and found them tied by stout cord and slave collars to a drowning cypress.

  Two men, one woman, and a young girl.

  No one worried overmuch about salvaging the dead. Lucky they were to come out with near everyone they had walked in with, plus the four more. Recovering Reave’s sword and most of their abandoned gear. Losing only the one Galla swordsman, and several provision sacks to scavengers and the gathering gloom.

  Even being so fortunate, Kern doubted they would have escaped before middle night, if at all, had Frostpaw not kept at his occasional warning howls. The dire wolf provided a beacon of sorts, drawing them back from the Frost Swamp’s grasp. Keeping at it until Kern and the others broke out of a thicket of bellberry brush and stunted basket cedar to find the animal pacing among the leavings of their noontime camp.

  It stopped pacing. Stood there a moment, golden eyes aglow with twilight’s last shred, staring at the returned pack. Then the wolf turned and stalked its way south, out of the clearing.

  “Never come close to setting one paw inside the Frost Swamp,” Kern said.

  Reave nodded. “Sure, and the dumb animal had the right of it.”

  Something screamed in the distance. North. Back toward the swamp. Something that might have been human.

  Might not.

  “Dumb animal, yea?” Mogh asked. He stared back toward the swamp. “So what’s our excuse, Ox-heart?” The dour Taurin threw his bedroll down and collapsed atop it, never minding the mud and muck-soaked clothes he wore.

  Kern shook his head. “Nay, Mogh. We’ll not bed here.”

  If he wanted to argue, the warrior showed no sign of it. He merely set himself to tying the bundle back up. Reave and Gard had laid aside the Galla tribesman they’d carried out. Old Finn checked him and shook his head. With the bruise darkening alongside his head, he might be out for a while to come. If he ever woke at all.

  Daol shrugged. He had his bow ready now, his sword sheathed once again, but he looked as ready as ever to strike a trail wherever Kern might point. “Want to be farther away?” he asked.

  “Far as we can reach before we collapse. We move back to our morning camp and watch the swamp for a day.” Another scream. Could have been an animal. “See what, if anything, comes out.”

  No one dissented. Ehmish glanced between Gard Foehammer and Wallach, as if wanting to ask a question. Or several. Gard shook his head, and Wallach, drenched in blood and looking far more pale than he should, merely stared right through the younger man.

  None of them looked to Kern. If anything, they seemed to avoid him.

  Kern let them be. What they had reported, told in hushed voices to prevent the others from hearing, would have unsettled him as well. The similar creature that he had seen had been bad enough. Worse, that another had worn his face.

  How close had it been, to make a strong enough connection? To mimic his voice so well?

  Could he have been replaced? His warriors never to know the difference?

  Questions for the morrow. He nodded Daol and Hydallan onto the trail. Set Ossian and Nahud’r and Valerus on his horse to follow at the back of the line. Guard their rear and ware for stragglers. No one said another word that night, but fell to with a purpose.

  No one save Reave.

  “Never saw anything like that,” he said. He shouldered his half of the heavy man again, lugging the body past Kern. “Whatever it was. Nay, not a thing like that at all.”

  And Kern, unable to help think about what he’d seen, comparing it to Ehmish’s story and considering how much it reminded him of something else, stared out into the dark, dark woods.

  “I have,” he said.

  Then he followed his large friend, sticking close on the trail with Desagrena and Tergin following right behind. And a sinking feeling worked its way down through his stomach, nesting deep in his gut.

  As worried as he was to admit it, he believed that most all of them had seen something just like that. At least once before.

  15

  KERN WOKE LONG before dawn with the scent of fro
st numbing his nose, and the skin on his arms, his chest, prickled with gooseflesh. He’d slept in his kilt and fur-lined boots, wrapped loosely in a coarse woolen blanket, his felt mat doubled beneath him for insulation. Still, the ground’s chill reached through to settle a winter’s ache deep, deep in his joints.

  Or maybe that was just his northern blood, reminding him of his difference from the others.

  He sat up once, checked that two guards remained on watch at either side of the crowded encampment, and saw Nahud’r crouched at the fire pit, quietly shaving wood over a bed of dry moss, getting ready to kindle a morning fire. Then he lay back for a time, staring up into the sky as first the grayness lightened, then deepened toward a dark, sapphire blue.

  Only a few clouds passed overhead, pulled into thin, wispy threads by the building winds that swept off the Black Mountains. But despite the clear day or prevailing winds, still the same frozen mists rolled down out of the distant Frost Swamp. His breath frosted in the air above him.

  There had been no more distant screams or screeches in the night, or they were too far away to hear them.

  Finally, as men and women stirred around him, he kicked away his blanket and rose for the day, joining the ragged flow of warriors as they each made a short trip into the forest to relieve themselves of a morning bladder. Coming back, Kern slipped bracers around each wrist, and his armlets of beaten silver. Donned his chain-mail vest. Buckled on his wide leather belt and short sword. Then he stomped his way around the campsite, hammering the blood through his feet. Not to warm himself—never that—but at least he could take the edge off the cold, creeping numbness.

  Noon, he predicted as the sun rose fully above the horizon. Light sparkled among the thin layers of fog. It would burn off by noontime.

  He would be wrong, of course.

  Breakfast was a quiet, isolated meal, and the morning spent tending any wounds from the night before that had gone untouched. Kern stood over Ehmish as the boy’s arm was unwrapped and the wound cleaned out again. The hole went through clean, missing bone and major veins. At Ehmish’s nod, Reave brought over a heated blade to slap hot metal against the open wound first on one side, then the other. He managed to hold his yell in until the second time, and even then it came out angry and strong. A good sign, always.