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

by Loren Coleman

  Silence reigned. And suspicion. Kern ignored the others, keeping his place and his gaze leveled on Brig Tall-Wood. “What plan?” he asked.

  “The one Cul Chieftain warned me of the day we left. Morag would rally every man and woman he could, leaving a token force to defend Murrogh, and follow us north. We were never to go past the Frost Swamp, and not up into the mountains, and stand ready to turn back as vanguard to the army.”

  Kern could think of only one way Brig might have been able to ensure that. And then he knew—he knew—the secret Brig had carried with him since arriving that morning with Hydallan and Garret. Cul’s order. Of course, he’d had suspicions before. But nothing he could act upon.

  Yet here was Brig, offering up proof at last. Kern stared evenly at him. Cocked his head to one side in an unspoken question. Brig nodded.

  Kern could hardly imagine the private war Brig must have waged with himself every step along the way. How he could have held off for so long. How many times had Kern handed Brig a perfect chance . . . to kill him?

  How many times had the man instead saved Kern’s life?

  “By Crom and Cimmeria, Brig. Is there anything else?”

  The warrior hesitated, considered, then nodded once. “Nothing absolute,” he promised. And Kern believed him.

  “But I do not believe Morag has any intention of setting foot on the plateau.”

  Lacheish! Kern stood now, feeling the need to draw his sword and rail at the skies. Instead, he paced hard along the edge of the gathered warriors.

  Of course Morag would take the opportunity to strike at his strongest rival for dominance in the east. It was what Jaryyd had warned—and what Kern had feared—from the start. And no matter what he vowed among the other chieftains, or to the warriors under his command, it would take the slightest provocation only to turn their rage away from where it belonged.

  And why would Morag care?

  “Trail sign!” Nahud’r shifted. He turned to the others, and explained what Kern’s patrol had found on their eastern run. “Could be . . . word . . . flank! Flanking patrol for Lacheishi war host. If right, Morag wants Cailt Stonefist come after him.”

  Crom’s treacherous blade! Morag would not be the only one to want this. More and more, things made sense now. Ymirish advisors in the lodge hall of Clan Lacheish? What would serve Grimnir’s purpose better than to hold back one of the east’s strongest clans, then set them against their feuding cousins. Put both war hosts in the same area, at near the same time, and Cimmerian tempers would do half of Grimnir’s work for him.

  Which put Cailt Stonefist south of the swamp! Closer to Morag and the Murrogh war host than Kern!

  Moving quickly, Kern left the gathering and collected his bedroll, checking to be certain he had the bloody spear and only the most basic provisions. Flask of water. Some dried oat cakes and a few small twists of dried beef. The others stood, milled about, waiting for his order. But Kern saw only one chance. He had to race ahead as hard as possible, then run through the night. So many hours lost! The only way he saw through the other side, before Cailt and Morag came to blows, was to swallow his pride and take advantage of a particular resource.

  “Valerus!” Kern called over to the Aquilonian. The cavalryman elbowed his way forward, stood stiffly as he often had before Strom, the Aquilonian officer who had left Valerus in Kern’s keeping. “Valerus. I need your horse.”

  To his credit, the southern soldier hesitated only an instant. “You have it,” he said. And ran to saddle and fetch the beast. It took a moment, but he was done nearly as fast as Kern, who was handing out quick orders to Daol and Ossian and, yea, Brig as well.

  Kern did not remember the animal being quite so large. Or so busy. Stamping one foot, then another. Always shifting. Head shaking about and a tail whisking back and forth, back and forth. It smelled of leather and sweat and nervousness.

  Or mayhap that last was Kern.

  “You mount on the left,” Valerus said, dragging Kern to the proper side. He steadied the horse’s head while Kern climbed awkwardly into the saddle. The horse seemed to sense its rider’s trouble, Kern’s hesitant nature, and it stamped impatiently. Valerus soothed it with steady, strong pats.

  “Use the reins sparingly. She’ll take her head on long stretches, and you can guide her with your legs once you get moving. Hold yourself off the leather on a canter, or she’ll slam your backbone up through your skull in short order. Bend low over her neck if she starts to get out of control. Slap the reins aside her neck if you need to—”

  “Never mind all the talk.” Kern shook his head. “Give me your most basic lesson.”

  Valerus pursed his lips. His green eyes were alarmed. But he simply pointed at the horse’s head. “Point that end the direction you wish to ride.”

  “Good.” Kern looked down. It seemed a long way to the ground. Quite the fall. “How hard can it be pushed?” he asked.

  Valerus grimaced. “Hard as you need, as long as she’ll last. But you’ll kill her if you push too hard for too long.”

  Kern reached down, clapped the man on the shoulder. “I’ll nay kill her. I’ll push as hard as I can for the night, and when she tires, I’m off at a run. We can hope she makes it back here.” He saw the flicker of doubt. “If one man dies between Murrogh and Lacheish, it will be too late. If I had an extra day, I’d make better time afoot.”

  It was no brag. Time and again the Cimmerians had proven that, over distance, they were as fast or faster than a horse, which needed rest far more often. A running man rested by slowing to a jog. Kern could keep up such a pace for several days, and had.

  More of his warriors crowded around, nervous to see Kern on horseback. Or perhaps it was seeing him ride off alone.

  Brig stepped forward. “You really think you can do this alone, Wolf-Eye?”

  “I can do what I can,” Kern said, avoiding the question. “Enough to stop a fight.

  “And, hopefully, start a war.”

  16

  BY THE TIME Kern and Frostpaw skirted Cailt Stonefist’s war host and were finally located by a pair of Morag’s scouts, he recalled little of the hard, bone-jarring ride that had started this race and was already a full day and an extra night behind him.

  Sweat. He remembered that part.

  Bruised muscles and blisters inside his thighs. Those were hard to forget.

  And the warm, musty smell of horse, which stuck with him long after he’d slapped the beast’s rump to send it galloping back the way they’d come. The following day he even threw himself down while crossing a creek in hopes of washing away the stench.

  He’d ended up smelling of wet horse the rest of that day and the next night as well.

  At some point (and he could no longer say for certain when, though it was after he’d abandoned that four-legged demon Valerus called a horse), he’d found Frostpaw. Or, more to the point, the dire wolf found him, tracking Kern across the hard, frost-dusted land below the plateau. He must have sensed the wolf much earlier. Caught a glimpse out of the corner of one eye, or heard one of its low, mournful howls, then forgotten. Or his mind had, for a time, simply retreated. Slept, while his body worked and pushed and ran.

  Because one moment, he was running down a forest trail, alone.

  The next, a silver-gray shadow with powerful shoulders and a mouth that had torn the throats out of other men ran next to him.

  So close, Kern felt the light fall of its padded feet on the trail. Heard the panting and all but smelled the carrion reek of Frostpaw’s warm breath.

  And it neither surprised nor alarmed him.

  So they ran. Man and wolf. Two evenings without sleep. A day without rest, or much in the way of food or water. Kern’s muscles burned down to the bone, and his chest felt as if he’d swallowed live coals. His skin had flushed an almost natural pink, though he still shivered with cold. Always, always the cold. And he stank something fierce.

  Amazing, it was, that Cailt’s camp dogs did not sniff him out. Or the pic
ket riders they avoided by laying into some nettle. Or Cailt himself.

  They didn’t. Kern and the wolf slipped past them all in the dark, listening to their songs of prowess and preparation. Some warriors sang while they sharpened their blades. Others, while matching up in tests of strength—arm wrestling or lifting—or simply sitting around one of the many beds of orange coals, which Kern took great care in counting before stumbling onward, taking a blind stab at where he would find the Murrogh war host.

  Not so difficult, actually. He simply drew a straight line along the last half day of Cailt Stonefist’s march, starting at the turn they’d made to swing away from the lower plains and toward the Black Mountains. The Lacheishi scouts, at least, had earned their keep. When Kern cleared a forest grove and dogged over one last rise, saw the dark spread of tents and bedrolls staining a moonlit meadow, he reminded himself to thank them later.

  He looked back. Frostpaw hunched down low to the ground, just this side of the crest. Great, golden eyes aglow in the sliver of moonlight. Making no move to pace Kern, or follow him down toward so many men and women with their blades and arrows and fire.

  “Far enough?” he asked, his voice weak. Kern felt numb. Beyond any need to gasp for breath. His body had stopped demanding sense of him the day before. “All right.”

  But he did dig into his oilskin pouch for the last slivers of beef he’d brought with him. Stuck one between his teeth and lower lip, sucking the juices out to clear the dry, pasty taste out of his mouth. Swallowing carefully at first, letting his stomach loosen, get used to the thought of food again.

  He tossed the other piece to the wolf, which jumped as if startled and bared teeth at Kern. Growling, it crept forward slowly and snapped up the small treat. And Kern had no doubt the animal, for all its strange companionship, was ready to bite the hand that fed it.

  “I get that a lot these days,” he said, feeling light-headed enough that talking to a wolf seemed a perfectly reasonable idea.

  Then he left the animal there, climbing down off the ridge. Waving overhead as a pair of guards with bows and ready arrows stepped out of the lower brush line, ready to shoot. He had seen them easily from the crest of the ridge, with his eyes drawing in the moonlight and bathing the predawn countryside in a soft twilight glow. But there was still no safe way to approach nervous men in the night.

  “Gaud,” he called down at them, knowing that few outside of Murrogh would know much about the resettled valleymen. “Is Cul Chieftain about?”

  He was. About six hours into sleep, rolled into a blanket and camped under a lean-to he’d pitched with a felt mat and two good stakes. Other Gaudic men and women slept nearby, stirred when the guards escorted Kern down and called for Cul to rouse. Kohlitt, Reave’s sister’s man. Several of Ossian’s kin that he recognized.

  If Kern had his preferences, he’d nay be rousing the man who’d wanted him dead. But with battle only a half day away, at best, no one but a trusted kinsman or one of the war leaders would be able to get Kern access to Morag Chieftain. And he needed that. The sooner, the better.

  “Wolf-Eye.”

  Cul’s voice was sharp, for being roused from a deep sleep. There was no disguising the antagonism. Or the resignation. Crawling from his half tent, he was a shadowy outline against the lightening eastern sky.

  Kern recalled one of Brig’s favorite greetings, and threw it back at his former chieftain now. Nodding. “Still alive, Cul Chieftain.”

  “So it would seem. Your pack with you? Come back for the fight after all?” He folded arms across a large, bare chest. “Cailt Stonefist comes at us with his best warriors. Grimnir, and the Hoathi, will have to wait. Morag has a feud to settle.”

  “I’ve come alone, with a hope to end this feud before our fighting serves Grimnir’s ends. You’ve been manipulated, Cul. You do not even see it.”

  “I’ve been manipulated? You think old Stonefist has a thumb on me, yea?”

  Kern stepped forward, pitching his voice for Cul alone. There were too many ears awake, now. Listening to them argue. “Why would two leaders want such a war when Vanir are ripping the guts out of Cimmeria?” He asked it as if the answer should be obvious. “Unless someone whispered poison in their ears, what stops them from joining forces, at least now?”

  Cul laughed. “I think Morag has forgotten to send Cailt the bloody spear.”

  Kern did not. “That is my plan. I’ve brought it back to do just that.”

  “You’ll not!”

  “After first light, with Morag’s blessing. What harm to try? That is tradition, yea? That feuds are set aside. Why would he not allow it?”

  Cul stepped closer. His hands opened and clenched, and opened and clenched. He looked ready to throttle the life out of someone. Kern, likely. “He’ll not allow it for many reasons. Nay the least of which is that Cailt’s war host is here, and we’ve the strength to crush him. Stonefist has come at his own peril. Morag’d not offer him a reprieve.”

  “And what kind of leader does that make him? Hardly better than Grimnir.”

  “You’ll not want to say that in his presence,” Cul warned.

  But Kern had come quite some distance to do just that. And more. “Get me in to see him, Cul Chieftain. And see.”

  He’d counted on Cul’s desire to see him disgraced. See him dead. Morag was prideful and paranoid. Kern handed Cul the opportunity to have away with him without any further loss of honor.

  Honor that had always meant so much to Cul.

  “Give up your blade,” Cul ordered.

  Kern did so, releasing it sheath and all and tossing it to Cul. Then he untied his flask, after one more drink for strength. He pulled the wrapped spear from the center of his bedroll and dropped the last of his gear to the ground at his feet. He cradled the spear in the crook of his arm. Nodded Cul forward.

  “All right. Follow, then.”

  It was a short march from Cul’s chosen spot to the center of the camp where the tent of Morag Chieftain had been set up. A large framework of tied sticks, draped with a heavy, canvas covering, it was large enough for a dozen men to sleep in. A pair of torches set up on tall stands guttered in the soft, nighttime breeze, casting a flickering orange light over the open yard in front.

  Cul had Kern wait, stepped in, and spoke with the inside guard. There were words and a low argument. Then Cul returned, and soon an armed sentry was dispatched on the run to wake more of Morag’s advisors.

  Cul shook his head. “Your life will answer for this, Wolf-Eye. I’ll take it myself.”

  “You be challenging me openly, then? Or set someone else’s hand to it again?”

  He had the decency to look abashed at the open secret between them. Exhaled noisily. “Tall-Wood,” he said. “You killed him?” Kern stood mute. “Nay. He made his choice, then. I wouldn’t have thought him one to turn on me.”

  “Why?” Kern asked. He stood patiently, arms loose, no threat to Cul. In truth, he was on the last of his strength after the hard, fast run. He had only enough left for his duty, and the conversation. “What reason did you ever have to put a knife at my back?”

  “Because a new chieftain can nay brook a challenge to his authority,” Cul said in a savage whisper. “You were a knife at my back every moment you lived, winter-born. But to act in the open would have undermined me as badly. You weakened me with Reave and Daol and Hydallan—all important men of Gaud. And with Burok Bear-slayer. And with Maev.”

  The anger poured out of Cul in a hot rush. No guard on his tongue. And why not? Kern was already dead, wasn’t he? But, “Maev? She had nay use for me, Cul. Except for her contempt.”

  “Her fear, you mean. She did nay understand you. But she valued what you did for her father. What nay other man could have done, packing him back through that blizzard, nay matter he was already a dead man when you did it.”

  “She wished me dead. She even said . . . that it should have been me—”

  “—challenging for chieftain instead of that ox-headed lout,
Reave, who you and Daol encouraged to stand against me.”

  Kern’s mind reeled at the idea that Maev had thought him a successor to her father. Or, at least, that she had thought him a real challenge to Cul. Nay matter that entering the Challenge Circle would have turned most every man in the village against him . . . unless they’d also been too afraid of his strangeness.

  “I did nay want it. I would have stood for you, after your victory.”

  “Too late,” Cul said. “It’s always been too late for you, Wolf-Eye.”

  Mayhap that was so. Especially when the runner returned with Hogann and two Murroghan veterans whom Kern had often seen in Morag’s lodge hall. And then Kohlitt also hurried up, with Maev.

  Kern had expected a larger audience, actually. Though Maev was a surprise that nearly unraveled his nerve. Wrapped in a thick, shaggy fur of mountain ram combed full and dyed a snow-white, her long, raven-slick hair pulled back in a severe tail. The slight bulge showed at her midriff.

  Halfway along her pregnancy, and she traveled with the Murrogh host?

  “What are you about?” she asked at once. “Kohlitt overheard something about—”

  Kern held up a hand to forestall her. Knowing that if he entered any argument with her, now, after what Cul had said of her, after the tiring run he’d come through to make it here on time, he’d lose.

  “Nay now, Maev. If you ever trusted me once to do the right thing, give me peace for the moment.”

  The simple request was enough to stop her cold. Her eyes cast back a dim glow from the torchlight. She raised a hand as if to reach out to him, hesitated. Let it fall back to her side. But she remained quiet. She was willing to go that far for him, at least.

  Then the guard reappeared and gestured. Kohlitt was not allowed inside, though he tried to follow. No one tried to stop Maev, who crowded between Kern and Cul at the back of the tent and held herself as tall and sturdy as anyone else. Oil lamps burned in two corners, throwing steady light throughout the small space, washing a buttery light over Morag, who shifted from one foot to the other, standing between his two men. And Hogann, glowering darkly off to one side. As far from Kern as he could likely get in the small space available.