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

by Loren Coleman

  They’d caught Kern’s pack in the wide lowlands that ran between the plain’s few rises. Pinned them in place with staggered flights of arrows.

  “Nay good.” Wallach Graybeard slammed up against Kern’s side, taking some protection from Kern’s shield. Shouting above the winds. “Seeing them ahead of Grimnir’s main host.”

  Kern nodded. The pressure in his head felt as if it might split his skull at any moment, but he could still reason. Just. And he saw as well that if Grimnir had already lost control of such large throngs, his war host had to be greater than anything seen above Conarch.

  Desagrena piled in next to the two, then Garret and Mogh and Gard Foehammer. All of them carried shields, Garret’s with two arrows already hammered into the facing, and added them against Kern’s to form a temporary bulwark. A dangerous tactic, as it also gave the archers a larger target at which to aim.

  Gard grunted as a shaft slipped past the outside edge of his shield and scored a thick, bloody stripe across his forearm.

  “To me!” Kern yelled, taking the chance. “Shields in!”

  There weren’t many more. Ossian, Danon, Old Finn, and Nahud’r. Ehmish’s buckler was not a great help, though he added it as well. Reave made up for it, carrying the full-body shield he’d salvaged from the doppelgänger in the Frost Swamp. Dragging his greatsword behind him for the moment.

  It was enough to shield themselves and their own archers, who each crowded up right close behind another warrior. Hydallan and Daol, Brig and Aodh.

  “Move,” Kern yelled, pacing his warriors forward. He used a crack between the overlapping shields as a window by which to see. “Forward. Forward. Loose!”

  The pack staggered to a halt, waiting as the paired archers leaped to either side. Bowstrings sang. Kern saw two Vanir bowmen tumble to the ground, and a third staggered with an arrow caught in the meat of his upper thigh.

  Then they were moving forward again, Kern guiding them. “Loose!”

  Only one Vanir this time. A swordsman.

  Three, again, the next. Then two.

  Daol crowded up close. His ear bleeding where another Vanir shaft had come close. Too close. “Kern! I keep looking behind. We may be too far forward. I can only see—”

  “Nay bother me with that now, Daol!”

  Kern didn’t want to hear. Never turned to look himself, in fact. Let Grimnir believe what the Great Terror would believe. That was part of the last service his wolves might perform for Cimmeria.

  “But if we don’t—”

  “Loose,” Kern yelled, though it was early. Daol and Hydallan were late getting off the mark, though Brig and Aodh each found a victim among the charging raiders.

  Cutting the raiders’ numbers by nearly half. Thinning out their charge, so a few heartbeats later, when Kern called them to “Break!” the Vanir were hammered back with overwhelming strength, unable to match the ferocity of Kern’s warriors.

  Shields separated and warriors charged forward, bowling into the Vanir line. Daol and Hydallan managed to put their last arrows into the chest of one onrushing berserker, spinning him to the ground. Kern took an overhead blow against his target, feeling the shock deep down in his bones. Then sidestepped and stabbed once . . . and again. He punched the tip of his short blade into a man’s side, just behind the raider’s cuirass.

  A golden-haired raider with curls very unlike many Vanir. This one had Aesir blood. Not a common sight, but not unknown either. And he bled just as red as a warrior of Vanaheim. His face twisted in pain. He staggered and fell just as hard to the ground, where Kern could step in and stick his blade through the man’s neck, just to be certain.

  All around, the Men of the Wolves were handing out much the same punishment. Gard Foehammer thrust forward with his pike, skewered a flame-haired raider with long horns thrusting from his metal helm as wide as his shoulders. Nahud’r and Wallach rushed another, knocking him over, pinning him to the ground beneath Nahud’r’s shield while Wallach used his pike-hand to slash out the invader’s throat. Ossian and Finn, another. Desa, one of her own.

  As hard and ferocious as that, the Vanir’s front line was slaughtered. Four more raiders rushed up behind them, and were set upon three to their one.

  Two men at the back turned and fled.

  Reave charged after them, still dragging his greatsword one-handed. And Danon and Desa as well. Kern waved up Valerus, who had ridden at a safe distance behind, and followed with the rest of the wolves.

  The slope of the hill was very easy, hardly more than a knoll, actually, but at least it was something. One benefit to Cailt’s decision, pressing hard from their previous day’s camp, was to get out of the flat sward and into a region with a little more character. It wasn’t what Kern and his warriors were used to, with forests and thickets and ravines and ridgelines. It was better than nothing at all.

  But the cloud cover was very nearly overhead, and it worried Kern. Already the late afternoon had taken on a twilight gray, with the shadow of those thick stormrunners falling over them in a chilling shroud. The thunder was no longer distant footfalls, but rolling, harsh peals, which echoed across the plains forever. Lightning flared—two strikes . . . nay three!—and they left an afterglow against Kern’s eyes that nearly matched the violet flames leaping at the edge of his vision.

  And every one of his warriors had halted at the crest, he noticed. Reave first. The others soon behind. No one hurried to be first down the far slope.

  Kern himself was nearly at the top when Valerus reined up hard next to him, horse snorting and pawing hard at the earth.

  “We’ve a strong line moving up on our left,” the horse-man called down. “Not as many as I’d like to see, though. I’ve been watching, and if—”

  “Nay bother me with details,” Kern shouted him down. Knowing there were some men moving up hard after them was something, though. Cailt had not left them hanging out as nothing more than wolfbait. Or so he wanted to believe.

  Then he reached the top of the hill, shouldering up between Reave and Daol, and knew that it wasn’t likely to matter.

  Grimnir’s army had arrived.

  Half a thousand strong. More! They swarmed across the plains in large gatherings, any one of which was strong enough to overwhelm a small village. At least one troop Kern could see might have been able to challenge strong-holds such as Murrogh, or Callaugh. Many, many warriors had scattered out in smaller packs, though, or ran crooked paths between the different mobs as if unable to decide which to join.

  Men on horseback. Men riding larger beasts, which Kern knew from facing Grimnir before would be mammoths. Most afoot, with war dogs chasing between. There would be Ymirish among them. Warriors. And sorcerers.

  There were also several creatures that could have been Grimnir. Large, hulking brutes, shambling forward with clubs or large axes or warhammers. One of these threw back its head and howled, a long mournful cry more at home on the side of tall, snowcapped mountains than the local plains. Yeti. Dragooned from the Black Mountains, or the Eiglophians.

  And riding the savage winds high above, the creature Kern had already seen through Lodur’s eyes in the skies above Lacheish. The wyvern. It shrieked and wheeled about and struggled as if fighting a leash.

  Lightning beat down against the earth, stabbing into the invading army. As if the clouds walked on those jagged, bright legs, marching alongside them.

  Kern swallowed hard, his throat dry and tight and tasting like old wool. His muscles trembled with pent-up energy. His blood sang with a call to power. Tempting him, with his enemy now so very, very close. Pushing so hard that Kern raised a hand to the side of his head and pressed back, to keep his skull from splitting.

  Stormrunners chased overhead, and the winds whipped long hair out to one side, then the other. It tugged at the hem of Kern’s cloak. He slipped the knot and let it fall to the ground behind him. Retrieved the bloody spear he still carried in his bedroll, wrapped in its own small blanket. He tucked the broken shaft into his wide
leather belt at the small of his back, then tossed his bedroll atop the fallen cloak. Kept only an oilskin pouch of flatbread and dried meat, his leather flask, and his weapons. Stood there beneath the bruised and blackened sky in his chain-mail vest and kilt and leggings, stripped to fighting weight, as anyone who had not already done so did the same.

  Off a ways, a large troop turned toward the hill on which Kern’s men and women waited. No easy vanguard, this time. Fourscore Vanir warriors, at the least.

  “This is it,” Kern said. Loud enough for the others to hear, though barely.

  He took one step forward. Then another. Reave paced alongside him on the left. Daol on the right. Matching Kern stride for stride. He picked up his knees a little farther. Put them down harder. Thrust his shield forward and kept his sword safely pointed out to his side and down as he pushed for the Vanir line, desperate to sell his life for as high a price as he could get.

  Spread to either side, his pack ran with him.

  In the dark shadows of Kern’s mind, roaring in his ears, the fires of his Ymirish blood stirred all the harder as if recognizing his desperation and determination both. Kern stole from the energy. Let it fuel his muscles as he channeled his focus into the run, his grip on his sword, the sight of the enemy moving toward him in large numbers. Refusing to release the darkness, nay matter what happened.

  Let it sing through his blood, his mind. He’d not answer its call.

  Let the curse die with him.

  Two hundred paces. A hundred.

  The distance shrank, and already arrows were beginning to fall around them. Reave let one slip by his shield, taking it through his upper arm, and kept running. Another slapped into Mogh’s upper leg, knocking his stride out from beneath him. He went down in a tangle of shield, sword, and limbs, and was left behind.

  Two hammered into Kern’s shield. One quick swipe of his blade across the facing, though, stripped them away.

  Having left the hill’s slope behind them, Kern sprinted forward at the head of his pack, Valerus pacing them at the far side with his horse reined in at a canter. Ahead, the forward host among Grimnir’s army stormed for them, blades waving and screams of hatred on their lips.

  One or two stumbled, then fell, as Daol’s arrows, or Brig’s, found victims among the tightly packed throng. Another pair fell right on their heels. Then four . . . five!

  And from around a rise on the far, far left, a dozen Cimmerian chargers raced across the plains. Bareback riders, they clamped muscular legs tight against their horses’ barrels, holding themselves tall above their mount as they loosed flight after flight of swift death. Behind them a challenging roar sounded as a thick swarm of warriors ran down onto the battleground. Not much more than three-score, perhaps four counting the chargers.

  The warriors Valerus had mentioned to Kern, coming on hard. Turning the attention of the Vanir host away from such a small threat as Kern’s wolves, striking deep into the Vanir flank. Swords hacking and slashing. Men killing and bleeding and dying.

  The invaders turned. Arrows slashing in at the chargers now, knocking two men . . . three . . . from their mounts. Taking the horse right out from under a fourth. The chargers wheeled back and forth along the enemy line, wounded and harried, but keeping up their own volleys.

  “Kern?” Valerus yelled, raising his lance in the air.

  Kern waved him forward. “Go!”

  Valerus kicked, and the Aquilonian warhorse reached into its strong reserves to leave the charging pack behind as it raced ahead for the dying cavalry stand. Like a thunder-bolt of their own Valerus swept up behind the Cimmerian chargers, his iron-tipped lance raised in challenge, calling them to follow, to charge!

  He was by them in a heartbeat, crashing through the Vanir line and followed not three lengths back by the remaining chargers. Valerus skewered one warrior, then another, and finally broke his lance on a third. Then it was out with his heavy war sword, slashing along one side, then the other, as he pushed deeper into their middle. The Cimmerians had likewise given up their bows for blades. And they hacked their way through the center of the host, riding down at least a dozen men before they broke out another side with half the men they’d started with.

  Four left. Valerus among them.

  But what they had done was smash a once-strong enemy line into chaotic frenzy, with warriors uncertain which way to turn. Toward the sixty-or-so swordsmen, chewing through on the flank, at the remaining cavalry, or for the small pack of misfits who had rushed up during the confusion and now fell into the Vanir with blades crashing down against steel and skulls.

  “Crom!” Kern shouted. He kicked a dead man off the end of his sword. Turned the desperate backhand slash of another against his shield. “Crom!”

  He called on the Cimmerian god. Not for strength, or for skill. Crom had long ago done all he could—all he would—for the Cimmerians: strength and cunning, and the will to meet any challenge in life. But with the dark power coursing through him, drawing him closer and closer to an edge he would not be able to hold against, Kern could think of no better truth to cling to.

  He would champion the Cimmerian maker, and defy Ymir, right up to the very end.

  By Crom and the blood of his mother, he swore it!

  LODUR BENT THE winds around him. Letting the strong gusts fill his cloak, pulling the white bearskin out behind him like a set of his own wings. Laughing into the sky.

  With three other sorcerers who marched elsewhere on the great battlefield, all of them along the rearward lines, he helped hold the great storm in check. Matching his strength against it. Stumbling under the backlash as thunder beat down in protest, shaking the ground and throwing lesser men to their hands and knees.

  He chose one of these weak Vanir who knew the insult of falling right before him, and violet-clad lightning struck down once more.

  The energy struck the hapless man in the side of the head, coursed through his body until it bled into the ground. It ripped a low, charred furrow through his skin the entire way, cooking his brain and stopping his heartbeat.

  He stepped over the corpse with barely a glance down at its ruined face. The scent of charred flesh was strong, burning at the back of Lodur’s throat. But just as strong was the rush of fresh strength that warmed him, and bled back into the storm, which growled in contentment. A deep reserve of raging power that the sorcerers fed, warped, and drew from as they needed.

  Lodur more than others, as it turned out. He had no choice, as the great beast in the sky pulled against his control, wanting its freedom to kill and to feed. Wanting—more than anything—to strike at the Ymirish who had enslaved it.

  The wyvern. A hunter of the skies. Such a powerful creature to have under his control. Let Grimnir increase his hold over the beasts of the north and the mountain slopes. Mammoths and saber-tooths, and the yeti, which might be considered distant kin to the Ymirish, in fact, but to Lodur were still nothing more than simple, savage beasts.

  Leave for him the greater challenges. And the greater glory once victory was theirs and the entirety of Cimmeria lay open for the northern hordes to sweep down and feed off of for years to come. As befitted sheep.

  Sheep with teeth, however. Never any forgetting that. Especially when the forward vanguard of Cailt Stonefist struck from the north, just as Grimnir had foretold. This was why Lodur marched on the left wing. Why Grimnir was even now turning the magnificent hordes into an enveloping line which would surround, collapse against, and strangle the life from this “Grand War Host.”

  “A Great Hunt it shall be.” Grimnir’s laugh, when it came, was nothing pleasant to most ears. It promised pain and suffering and blood. Lodur had enjoyed it, certainly. “Cailt Stonefist will live to regret. Though not for long.”

  And leave for Grimnir this Cailt Chieftain as well. The Lacheishi’s insult, while fresh in Lodur’s mind, was far from troublesome now that his true enemy had arrived. No sorcerer, and few Ymirish, could miss it. That taste of Ymir’s deep, pure ice, corrupted
as it was by the leathery flavor of Cimmerian blood. Grimnir had marked the foul one as certainly as the descendant of Ymir himself had been marked after his long plunge down the side of the bluffs over Clan Conarch. Not physically, perhaps, as Grimnir’s scars were seen, but their false brethren was known to the others now.

  Kern was here.

  And Lodur hunted him.

  Ahead, he knew. Ahead, where the calls of battle and first blood had drawn the attention of every last Vanir like dogs after table scraps. From the sounds of it now, the confusion and cries of pain, this first skirmish was nothing to be remarked upon as a great victory. Not yet.

  Grimnir’s plan was taking time, though not too much longer. Some men had broken for the fighting without pause, of course, and the Ymirish let them go. There was no controlling them all, these raiders with their bloodlust and greed. Hard enough it was to rein in most of them, turn the hordes on Grimnir’s command, and prepare to set them against the Cimmerians without mercy. But it was being done. A little while more, a shift of perhaps half a league to get everyone in place, and it would be accomplished.

  Which was why, in the next moment, Lodur staggered, and nearly fell, when one of his sorcerer brethren screamed within his mind. Lodur felt his brother’s pain and the betrayal of it when one of the four sparks hovering at the back of his mind suddenly flared in bright, white agony—and then was gone.

  Grimnir’s savage roar did not require Ymirish blood to hear. It carried over the plains. Rage, mixed with pain.

  Then came the commands, amplified by the strength of the storm, like Ymir’s own thunderous voice. “Turn! They come at our backs! Turn, and KILL!”

  From the south? Lodur was not so far away from Grimnir, who held the center of their line, that he could not see the Great One as he stalked forward with a massive warhammer in one hand and a battle-axe in the other. Half again as tall as a large man, he raised weapons overhead and called the storm’s fury down against Cailt Stonefist and the Cimmerian dogs.