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

by Loren Coleman

  “You haven’t before,” Brig Tall-Wood said. Seeming to agree.

  Cul’s man stood off to one side, right at a break in the group, as if caught between his own divide. On his left were the Taurin—Ossian, stroking his goat’s beard, standing in front of Danon and dour Mogh—and Valerus and Nahud’r and Gard Foehammer. The outsiders and rogues who had made themselves a part of the pack. On Brig’s right were the Gaudic. Kern’s friends and teachers, and the ones who had felt indebted to remain with him.

  Were his warriors breaking apart? Showing fracture lines that had been there all along?

  “Nay, you haven’t before,” Brig repeated. “But we’re asking it now. I’m asking, Kern.”

  There were many ways for Kern to answer. Including walking off and leaving the pack behind, letting them find their way with Cul Chieftain or Cailt, or with a new leader from among them. He could also cut Brig out from the others and turn all the questions and the doubts against this man who had run with them for so long, and all that time holding a knife at Kern’s back.

  But what would either accomplish? Whether he’d ever wanted it or not, the pack was his responsibility. And that included Brig, for as long as the man continued to step up among them. He had saved Kern’s life, more than once, and if Kern would throw that aside for what the man might have done, could have done, was thought to do . . . he’d have been no better than Cul. Judging the man before the action.

  “What would you know, Brig Tall-Wood?”

  “When you left us before the Frost Swamp. You did not think to come back. Yea?”

  That cut to the heart of it.

  “Nay. I did not. I was certain the Murrogh would kill me, no matter what was proven about Morag. And I’d have put it on Grimnir, as part of the northern invasion, and damned my own honor!” It had been that important. That crucial to turn the war host north.

  “But Maev kept them from it. And Cul, then, for his own reasons. Then everything happened so quickly. A truce with Cailt Chieftain. You, and Daol, and Aodh, showing up as you did. Nothing happened the way I’d expected.”

  At least this last mystery had been explained easily enough. It had been Brig’s idea to run after Kern, he knew, and not a moment after he’d ridden away on Valerus’s horse. He’d spoken none of his suspicions, though now it was clear he’d seen through Kern’s plans from the moment he laid them, and when he could not be turned from it, Daol and Aodh had run with him.

  Putting themselves in place just in time to see Torgvall ride north from Clan Lacheish. Aodh had called for arrows, seeing only an enemy within reach. It had been his shaft to bring down the horse and capture the golden-eyed warrior.

  A good thing Torgvall had fallen out of Cailt Stonefist’s favor by running. It was all that kept Kern’s men alive when the Lacheishi patrol surrounded them and took them prisoner.

  And having Torgvall to question, and prove Kern’s accusations against the Vanir, the Ymirish, and Grimnir, might have sealed the bargain between the clans. One decision leading to another and building on yet another. Like ripples, spreading out across the water. Or, how a single stone, dropped into a stream, can divert its path.

  But to flood, or to feed new lands? That remained the question.

  “Does it matter?” Ehmish asked. “How it happened?”

  The young man chewed on his lower lip. Shuffled around as if he wanted to step forward, but wasn’t going to be the first. “It happened, Kern. Look down there again.” He gestured toward the mesa’s edge. “That is your war host.”

  Nay! “It is Cailt Stonefist’s,” Kern said.

  Hydallan kicked at a large rock sitting on the ground. Sent it skipping and rolling toward the edge of the mesa, and over, crashing down the side. “Crom’s golden orbs, you would be saying that, stupid pup. Was nay Cailt Stonefist who came a-looking for the bloody spear. You shoved it down his throat. And was nay him who brought the clans together round Murrogh either.”

  “Or,” Daol said, “the one who apparently convinced Ros-Crana to finally come out of the western lands. Was quite a tongue-lashing you must have left her with.”

  Reave smiled thinly. “I did nay hear you’d been in the baths together that long,” he said, feigning admiration. Desagrena elbowed him in the gut, though it was like hitting a tree trunk for all the good it did.

  Kern shook his head. “That’s not it. Not at all.”

  Ossian glowered, tugging at the rings braided into his goat’s beard. “Puts your hackles up, they don’t fall all over themselves the way we do to listen? Running with us isn’t quite the same, yea?” He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Without you, there would be nay Grand War Host. It’s yours as much as it’s anyone’s.”

  “And I don’t want it!” Kern yelled.

  That silenced everyone for a spell, and he breathed deep, tasting the dirt and the static charge on the strengthening breeze. Windstorm this night. And Grimnir . . .

  “Grimnir’s host has been gathering strength as well,” Kern reminded them. “Even if Ros-Crana were to find us, and we don’t know her host isn’t already dead, strewn across the plateau, I think we are overwhelmed.”

  Old Finn spat to one side. “Know soon enough.”

  “We’ll know on the morrow!” Kern told them.

  The dark rage was there, ready to sweep him away, but not now, not now. He could nay bury it again, he knew. It was all he could do to keep it in check even during the most calm of moments. And this was not one of them.

  “Taste the air,” he said. “Check the sky.” Many craned their heads up, licked their lips. Read the weather in the way any Cimmerian learns from an early age if he does not want to get caught in a spring flood, a winter blizzard, or unprepared for a coming drought.

  Hydallan did not bother. The elder tracker kept his thumb on such things by matter of habit.

  “Dry winds from the north and west. Been blowing stronger all day. Can taste the lightning. Be a windstorm this night, but good weather, I’m a-guessing.”

  “Then explain to me how there have been black clouds piled up on the western horizon since the morn, and they’ve not swept over us. Or how the winds bear no hint of the rain they must be carrying.” Heads swiveled. Hydallan frowned into the distance, caught unawares. Kern tasted their fear, metallic and warm, at the back of his throat. “Tell me how that can be explained by any reason other than the arrival of Grimnir and his sorcerers.”

  Now he had them. Now he let them see a part of what had driven him so far away.

  Hydallan grabbed the peaked, rabbit fur hat from his head and wrung it between a pair of gnarled, leathery hands. “Can’t,” he finally admitted. “Must be there, sure enough. And you’re right, pup. The morrow it is.”

  The others were quiet, studying the dark wall of clouds.

  “We know Grimnir escaped Broken Leg Glen with a solid host left to him,” Kern said softly, also staring off to the west. “He had raiders by the score rallying at Venarium, and that was after he’d already passed through and scooped up a good number. We’ve an idea what Lodur brought across the Pass of Noose. How many more Ymirish are there with that kind of strength? We’ve heard reports of large troops such as these hitting all across the Hoathi lands. Now, you can be sure, by Crom, they’ve flocked to Grimnir’s banner.”

  “What if they have?” Gard asked. “Where did you ever think this was heading, Kern Wolf-Eye?”

  That was just it. He wasn’t certain anymore. Not after Cul’s admission in the Murrogh camp. It had raised doubts. All of the doubts that Kern had kept buried for many months. Where things were heading now. What Kern could have done better, different, at Callaugh, at Conarch. Even as far back as Gaud, when Cul had claimed Burok Bear-slayer’s legacy. Could he have stopped it then?

  Could he have lived another life? Never to be tempted by his Ymirish heritage?

  “It all might have happened so much differently.”

  “What?” Daol asked. “Kern, by Crom’s long spear. Finally. What is it?”
/>   Daol had caught a hint of Kern’s uncertainty. Had been on top of it since that night in the woods, when the dark power had first sung through his blood. But that wasn’t all there was, and at the moment was hardly even the most of it. So Kern fed him the easier of two very difficult truths.

  He told them all about Cul’s admission. And Maev’s words.

  “I do not believe it would have happened that way,” he admitted. “I think Gaud was nay ready for me as anything but an outcast who walked among them. Winter-born. The blood of wolves. But now I wonder, and I question all that has come before. What if . . .” He scrubbed hands over his face. “Mayhap we might have saved so much spilled blood. And Wallach’s hand.” He swallowed hard. Looked to Ossian on one side, Aodh on the other. “Ashul’s life,” he said. Apologizing to both men: her kinsman and her lover.

  Ossian snorted. “Ashul? She knew the risk. We all did. We chose.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Ashul be dead at Taur, Kern, you nay comes along when you did! My father, he never goes to Gaud with Maev, with the others. And you would be less prepared when Grimnir slaughters his way through the valley? And he would have—this year, next year. You know this now.”

  “We can’t know anything about what might have happened.”

  “We know enough,” Aodh said. He brushed down his moustache. “We’ve each of had our own reasons for being here. And Ossian’s right. Ashul knew. Even at the end, she knew the truth. That we stood by you, nay matter what else. Because you are one of—”

  . . . them . . .

  “—us.”

  Kern blinked. Every thought erased out of his mind, as if a hand had wiped them away, but one. Ashul, lying in the muck, her hair spread out in a dark fan and blood pooling in the gut wound. Trying so hard to say one last thing before she died.

  Whu—One! One of . . .

  “What did you say?”

  Ossian spread his hands, as if the answer was so apparent he was surprised it needed repeating. Mogh and Danon also nodded. Mogh, dour-faced as ever, spoke for the Taurin. “One of us, Kern Wolf-Eye.”

  Daol and Reave nodded. And Ehmish. Wallach and Nahud’r and even Valerus. Soon it was nearly all of them. Only Gard hesitated, just the moment, but then he as well.

  Kern noticed also they had all closed ranks, moving in toward each other. Taurin and Gaudic and Cruaidhi and Aquilonian. No fracture lines, except the ones Kern might have opened by remaining so distant, letting emotions and their questions fester. He was still held just outside of arm’s reach, a gulf that no one had crossed, but then, he had always known that little bit of distance, hadn’t he? As outcast, then as leader.

  His wolves. They deserved so much better.

  What they had was him.

  “In desert,” Nahud’r said, breaking the sudden silence, “one can be caught by storms so fierce, raging unchecked for so many, many leagues, the winds pick up all sand and move it from one place to other. And when great sands blow, they scour land and everything that fall into their path. Everything.”

  There were only a few nods, Kern saw, as the warriors all tried to picture one of the great sandstorms from Nahud’r’s many tales. Hard to imagine. He checked the western horizon. Then again, mayhap not.

  Nahud’r shrugged. “Like riding through sword grasses of your plains, only grasses cut also at hands and faces and eyes.”

  Another reason the dark-skinned Shemite wore a scarf wrapped about his face?

  “How do you survive these storms?” Kern asked. The Shemite was a natural storyteller. Drawing one in, often despite oneself.

  “Of three ways,” the dark-skinned man promised. “Many ride as hard as can away from blowing sands. Racing ahead. Praying to Anu”—he raised both hands to touch his brow—“they find shelter, or that winds lose strength. Others, we dig hole in the sands. Cover selves with cloak, and again, pray to Anu”—again, the gesture of respect—“to let the sands blow by and not bury us alive.”

  He had them all now, Kern saw. The exotic place. The looming danger. Everyone waited. Everyone looked at each other.

  Finally, it was Ossian who asked. “And the third way?”

  The Shemite grinned. And it was nay pleasant. “They say if you cover eyes, and hands, and ride as hard as can into the storm, you ride out other side before death comes.”

  “That works?” Kern asked, doubtful.

  A shrug. “No one I hear ever pray hard enough to later say.”

  A grim outlook. And one most Cimmerians could appreciate. “Tomorrow,” Kern said, “we ride into the storm.”

  Nahud’r raised his hands, touching them to chest, to chin, and to his brow before saluting Kern. “And tomorrow I pray,” he said. Grinned. “Very hard.”

  Most of the pack grinned with him. Ready to challenge the gods. Kern nodded his thanks. “We should head down, then. Give Cailt Stonefist an idea of what lies ahead.”

  A great deal of blood and death. And nay any way to cheat it this time that Kern could see. Like Nahud’r’s storms, there would be no simple tricks the morrow. No battlefield foolery would cloud the golden eyes of Grimnir. Especially if they believed Torgvall, and what Kern now felt was true as well. That he was a spy in the Cimmerian camp. An unwilling one, but a spy nonetheless.

  Well, Kern had thwarted Grimnir’s carefully laid plans before, by putting himself in front of the sword to stop the war between Clans Murrogh and Lacheish. If he could do so again, he would. The Great Beast was not infallible, nay matter what he might know . . .

  Or believed he knew.

  “Kern?” Daol asked. He frowned at Kern’s slack expression. “Aren’t we heading down?”

  Crom’s swinging sword! Kern did have a final trick, mayhap. One Grimnir had handed to him. But it might come at a terrible cost. One Kern wasn’t certain he was willing to pay.

  “What would you give?” he asked Daol. Stepped back and brought them all in with a glance. Asked them all. “What would be worth bringing down the Beast?”

  Silence. And it was Reave who answered for them all. “Nay cost would be too large,” he said. There were answering nods all around.

  It would have to do. He could not explain any more to them than that. And he had to guess that whatever Grimnir’s powers, they all had limits. Including any ability to see through Kern’s eyes. Hear through his ears. Those had been Torgvall’s words. Not knows what I know.

  “Daol,” Kern said. “Ossian. Brig. You three run ahead of us. Find Cailt Chieftain and let him know what we’ve seen. His own outriders will know the same by darkfall, but let’s give him as much time as possible. Tell him—” Careful. “Grimnir must have his eye on us by now. He comes straight for us.”

  “He’ll wants to hear it from you,” Ossian said.

  “Tell him,” Kern said. “Tell him exactly that. And then tell him that we still volunteer to vanguard the war host.”

  “We does?” asked Ossian.

  “Yea. Running out in front of the first line, on the northern approach, as his plans called for. I’ll be right behind you. And he can give me the final orders then.”

  Brig frowned. “But why—”

  “Just trust me,” he said. Having a good idea what it would cost them all in the end. “Tell him exactly, and let the dice fall how they will, Brig Tall-Wood. Even you should understand that.”

  That Kern was gambling. Rolling the bones, and with nothing less than their lives wagered on it. The warrior seemed to pick up on it. He also, very obviously, did not understand. But he nodded. “Going to make it hard on us, taking the first line.”

  “Then it’s hard,” Kern said. “Anyone want to argue?” No one did, and Kern laughed. The first time in days. It felt good. “Never seen so many warriors eager to follow a man into death.” He tried on a grim smile. It didn’t feel completely out of place, either. “But at least I’ll be in good company.”

  There were a few nods. Dark smiles from Ossian and Gard. Old Finn shrugged, and laughed. “Died this last winter, the lot of us. Just
refuse to lie down yet.”

  Kern nodded, though not easily. The words were likely true for too many of the warriors here. But he wouldn’t shame them again by not valuing their loyalty, their sacrifice. Hard enough it was, that he took for granted their trust and devotion yet still failed to give the same back.

  “Well, we’re not quite ready yet. So let’s move.”

  He watched the three race off, following his commands. Gathered the rest of his wolves around him, and proceeded at a slower pace, giving them time. Drawing from his friends the strength he’d need to see this through, even while knowing he’d likely betrayed them all.

  He had shared with them so much.

  And still, he had not shared everything.

  22

  THE CLOUD COVER slowly rolled forward over the plains like Aquilonian soldiers marching in a perfect line of battle. Kern kept a nervous eye on them. Their unnatural behavior. The way they drew a blanket over the plateau from the nearer Black Mountains north to the Eiglophians. There would be blue sky, deepening toward sapphire as the sun fell toward the Pictish wilderness far, far to the west, then, suddenly, there were piles of storm clouds: purplish-black, like swollen bruises, crashing through the heavens with terrible thunder and hammering the ground with strikes of brilliant, violet-clad lightning.

  The building storm drove the winds before it, whipping them across the plains without reason. Gusts drove in from the north, then south. There might be a lull, then Kern and his warriors ducked forward as they ran directly into a powerful blow, the sharp winds hurling dust and grit and bits of grasses into their faces.

  A wolf’s howl rose somewhere behind them. Calling them back. Encouraging them forward. No way for Kern to tell. Still his warriors held hands up to shield their eyes, blinked away the lightning’s afterglare, and continued to press on.

  Surging toward the first of the Vanir horde.

  The raiders ran slightly in advance of the storm. Better than twenty men and women, some with war bows strung and arrows nocked, most with heavy blades waving overhead or beating them against their shields and breastplates as they called out berserker cries and charged crosswise along a low hill.