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

by Loren Coleman

  To be answered after the next long heartbeat by several voices calling out of the north. Howling in response.

  “Gut me if I’m nay a-hearing the boy in there,” Hydallan said. Still not looking back.

  “And Desa!” Reave yelled. Grabbed up his sword and held it at the ready.

  And if they were indeed part of that mob chasing down the Vanir, they’d found at least half a hundred friends besides. “Let’s go see,” Kern said, mostly to himself. Not quite ready to lie down and die yet. Nay. Not quite.

  There were only thirty or so Vanir between him and an answer. Hardly worth the thought. Behind him, Frostpaw howled again.

  Kern could nay have said it better himself.

  CHASING THE STORM eastward, pushing her warhost to the limit of their endurance, Ros-Crana hadn’t been certain she could catch up in time.

  When she saw the lightning, stabbing down from the swollen storm clouds in repeated strikes, as if the skies had suddenly gone to war with the land itself, she knew it for a fact. They were still several leagues shy of the advancing front.

  “It’s begun,” she said to Longtooth. To Carrack and Dahr who also stood near.

  “Yea. And we’ve only a guess as to where they might need us.” He panted, the last day’s run having taken a lot out on his years. “And when.”

  But Ros-Crana had read the trail sign as well as anyone. They had some idea of the size of Grimnir’s massive war host, having spotted the different tracks all converging on one huge, easterly push. She set her hand on the hilt of her new sword. For such a light and well-balanced weapon, it had felt awfully heavy the last several leagues. But for now she drew fresh strength from its touch. Licked the burning sweat from her lips.

  “Where is the place we arrive at. The when is as we arrive. They need us. That’s enough.”

  Still, the old warrior’s expertise was not to be brushed aside so easily. “I run for the northern edge of that lightning. Carrak, with me. Dahr, pull thirty men and follow with Sláine Longtooth. Circle ’round to their southern side. Or, if you think best, come at them from right behind.”

  “Meet somewhere in the middle?” Longtooth asked

  As plans went, it had seemed good enough. And Ros-Crana had gathered her warriors, and run.

  Now they ran again. Sword out and freshly blooded on the life of the luckless Vanir who had come over a hillock at the wrong time. The balance of her northwestern war host, arrived late but here. With Longtooth and Dahr not far behind. From what Gard Foehammer promised, this Cailt Stonefist needed their help. Needed every able warrior that could be thrown into battle, if they had hope of running Grimnir to earth and driving a blade through his heart of black ice.

  Pausing just long enough for Gard to twist Ehmish’s broken arm into line, then bind it tight with leather straps and a broken spear shaft, they set off at a good measure. The boy managed to keep up, though it obviously cost him dearly. And when Kern’s companion wolf dashed ahead of them, racing a swerving path across the field, it was also Ehmish who first howled the wolf’s call.

  Nay. Not a wolf’s call. Kern’s call. Better than any shout, the high, long howl would reach across the plains and find the Wolf-Eye if he still lived.

  Like avenging wraiths, her people swept across some of the heaviest fighting on this northern edge of the battlefield. If there were more than two . . . three dozen clansmen left alive—out of nearly a hundred, according to Ossian—she’d have been surprised. It was the bloody work of moments to set the Vanir fleeing and to be after them despite the infernal lightning that smashed down around them, or the death that occasionally fell out of the skies on leathery wings and with a violent, raging shriek.

  The second time the wyvern stooped over her company, it came away with two warriors snatched up, one in each powerful claw.

  Two Callaughnan, she saw. Two of her own who would never again see the mists of Callaugh Glen.

  Anger seized her. Blossoming into a full-on rage when she saw the creature wheel about in the sky and simply drop the struggling bodies. Letting them flail, briefly, before they smashed into the plains.

  The wyvern glided up, spreading its wings to cup the air and hover as a flash of lightning suddenly snaked across it path, nearly taking the monster down. Then it screamed and dived again, coming in at an angle to her host.

  Strength surged in her arm as she raised her sword overhead in a two-handed grip. The blue-iron weapon gleamed darkly in the fading light beneath the storm shroud.

  “You want a fresh victim?” she yelled at the sky, veered away from the safety of the host. “More blood? Another life?”

  The wyvern shrieked, adjusted its course, and came right at her as if answering her challenge. Ros-Crana ran along the edge of a low-lying hill. A perfect target.

  “Take me!” she yelled. Leaping high into the air. Bringing her war sword around with every bit of strength she possessed, or could summon.

  The blade sang, slashing through the air with a dark gleam. Using her momentum, hacking down in an overhead strike, she cleaved the blade through one of the claw’s heavily muscled talons, and the bone within, in the instant before the wyvern could snag her right out of the air. Blood sprayed and the creature jerked its claws back by reflex.

  Ros-Crana had never known a moment of doubt, and had timed the wild attack near-perfect.

  Near-perfect.

  The bloody stump did brush against her as the great creature winged by overhead, and with the speed of its dive it was enough to knock her aside head over heels. The world spun sickeningly around her. Ground, then dark sky, then ground again.

  She took a guess, and reached out at the last possible second. Her feet struck the earth, too hard and fast to catch her, but enough to let her curl down into a rolling somersault and absorb the worst of the fall. She felt pain blossom against her left side, where the creature’s claw had clipped her.

  What she did not do was lose her blade.

  Several warriors among her host had fallen off their run, dismayed at her sudden action and disbelieving that she survived. Ehmish stood there, slack-jawed and staring. Many waved their swords overhead, simply accepting. Though they, too, had slowed.

  The wyvern raced away into the distance, then pulled up for the dark cover of the clouds. Shrieking in pain, now.

  “What are we waiting for?” she asked. Limping forward, willing her bruises and any broken bones to quiet, for now. She raced up the length of her running line, moving for the front. “After the Vanir, the Ymirish, and Grimnir!”

  “Grimnir!” her warriors shouted back. And there were more howls. Not all of them from Kern’s warriors.

  Then ahead came a real wolf’s call. A long, challenging howl that could only have come from the throat of Kern’s companion animal. It was answered by Ehmish, and by Desa, who shouted and pointed.

  At half a dozen men who suddenly charged off a nearby hillside, running right down into the teeth of the fleeing Vanir.

  And, of course, leading the way would be Kern Wolf-Eye. A handful against five times their number, Kern attacked!

  “Stupid, selfish, beast of a man!” Ros-Crana hardly bothered to compare her recent walk with insanity to Kern’s reckless charge. Hers had worked, after all. His was about to get him killed, and with help just arriving.

  But then the first of the Vanir crashed into Kern’s short line, and Crom’s gift!—were actually thrown back.

  If she hadn’t seen it . . . Well, there would certainly be many such acts of strength and bravery this day.

  Like a river flood crashing against a boulder, the Vanir shattered against Kern’s position. Several went down, never to get back up. Two, she swore, were lifted bodily off their feet and thrown back into the onrushing horde, which stumbled and staggered forward, and was brought to a standstill yet again as the rest of the small force piled up behind or started to force their way around that short, sturdy line.

  Blades were working their damage now, ringing against other swords,
smashing against shields and, occasionally, into flesh. At least one among Kern’s small group went down under the press of bodies. Then a second.

  The remaining four formed a square, backs pressed against each other as the Vanir swarmed past them. Then Ros-Crana’s warriors were buying them some relief as they finally struck into the back of the mobbed-up throng.

  Blades rose and fell, and Ros-Crana’s strong war sword sang through the air as it smashed one raider’s blade in the side, breaking it, then took his head right after.

  Waging forward, fighting between Gard Foehammer and Desagrena, Ros-Crana cut one more down from behind. And saw her companions do the same.

  The Vanir broke in every direction then, with nay thought to holding together. One moment they were all fighting for their lives, and the next her war host stood nearby, planting and exhausted, covered in blood, with a few of them giving chase to some of the scattered raiders.

  Kern limped forward, his leggings turning dark with soaked blood and a gash opened up over his left eye. He looked beat on and abused, but had that same challenging gleam in his eyes she recalled from Callaugh.

  “What kept you?” was all he asked.

  “It’s a long run from Callaugh.”

  “It is at that. But good to have you here with us.”

  She watched as he turned to his fallen men. Saw that, yea, he did still carry the bloody spear. Of course he did. He’d tucked it into his belt at the small of his back, and seemed to have all but forgotten it. Sword on one hand, shield in the other, as he checked on his two fallen men.

  Hydallan had a bad slash across his ribs. But he’d live through it. Aodh’s sword arm looked as if it might be cut to down near the bone. Reave looped a strong leather cord in a tourniquet around that arm. Tightened it down.

  Kern knelt by each one of them a moment. Spoke a few words. They nodded, then he rose to face her again.

  “Sword blooded?” he asked.

  But it was Ehmish who answered for her, shaking his head. “You would not believe it, Kern.”

  He shrugged. The man’s voice was cold, but his golden eyes were furious with their own inner fire. “We’ve still Grimnir to deal with. I’m telling you now, we won’t stop. No matter who falls by the way, or what the Terror finally throws against us. Your warriors will need to carry that weight.”

  Ros-Crana smiled thinly. She’d come too far now to be left behind at the end. And it was nothing less than she’d have expected from him. “We’ll guard your back,” she promised. “If nothing else, it will make for a good end.”

  “Worth a fireside tale,” Nahud’r promised, slinging gore from the edge of his scimitar.

  “Or a song,” Kern said. “A song of victory or a song of death. Time to discover which.

  “Now let’s end this. Once and for all.”

  24

  “SO WRONG,” LODUR whispered.

  The winds whipped about him, screaming a banshee’s wail, snatching his words away and losing them in the covering storm before they barely reached his own ears. Long before they reached the Vanir, who rushed by in directions as Grimnir sent them. Warriors being used to shore up a line. Or to force an advance through which the Great One might push his remaining yeti, or his final troop of pike-men, or the last mammoth.

  Near the end of everything, now.

  “So very, very wrong,” he said again.

  Mayhap the Vanir could not hear him, but Grimnir did. Through the link he held with his Ymirish, if no other way. Pacing, holding the center of his own army and moving it forward step by step as if by his indomitable will alone, the Great One now turned and growled a warning. “Mind your tongue, or lose it.”

  And the Great Beast went back to stalking the Cimmerians’ Grand War Host, still trying to break its spine. Still finding it a harder task than anyone had ever expected.

  Lodur did not fear for his life. Not when Grimnir needed his two remaining sorcerers, now more than ever. He did not bother to make a point of it, however, just as he could not entirely shake the doubts that had chased him all the way back from the northern line where victory should have been assured and the corrupted one already dead. He could recall how close it had all felt. The ringing clash of steel against steel. The screams and shouts of men and women, warriors all, in agony and fury. Betrayal. Rage. Such sweet, sweet tastes that had sat on the back of his tongue as he relished the moment.

  All snatched away in an instant, when Lodur had not been minding the larger battle but was busy searching for Kern.

  It happened so quickly, he had barely escaped with his own life. And there hadn’t been enough strength left on the field for him to draw upon, rallying against the turn of fate, as everything had already been turned back to strike hard at Cailt Stonefist and the bulk of the Cimmerians’ Grand War Host.

  Pulling back along the western retreat to join Grimnir’s thrust, he’d thrown a host of warriors into the Cimmerian advance. When that failed, he’d struck at them from the skies with lightning and death on leathery wings. Doing what he could.

  He’d finally returned and reported the failure, no matter how much it shamed him and put all of Grimnir’s plans at risk.

  Did Grimnir see that? How thin the line now stretched between failure and success?

  Mayhap not. Walking among the killing grounds and stepping over the bodies of so many fallen clansmen, everything would seem to be moving in Grimnir’s favor. The stench of death was ripe in the air. The odor of bodies releasing themselves. Charred flesh and the acrid tang of lightning. Blood mixed with earth; clinging to his boots and the hem of his white cloak. All good signs.

  There were bodies of the Hoathi. The square-jawed Murroghan. Lacheish with their shaved temples, and the topknots of Galla tribesmen.

  But then Lodur kicked over one woman, and saw the craggy features of a Callaughnan. Even here! On the southern edge of battle!

  At every turn, in fact, Grimnir’s desires had been thwarted. The arrival of western clans at not one point on the battlefield, but two. That Clan Lacheish and Murrogh had not beaten each other half to death before moving to the plateau. And the Galla! Who could have foreseen they would come out of the mountains in such numbers to support the Hoathi, with whom they had always feuded.

  With the mighty war host Grimnir raised, two of these three certainly would have been overcome. They’d have smashed so many of the larger clans no further resistance would have been possible. That would leave all of Cimmeria open to the Ymirish plans.

  But all three . . .

  Lodur skulked behind the battle lines, watched by Grimnir’s remaining saber-tooth as the great snow cat might have watched for prey on the northern wastelands. He listened to the sky’s pain as thunder ripped through the heavens. He summoned men from a rear guard and threw them forward himself, taking action against the doubts and fears that threatened to distract him here, now, on the eve of their ultimate victory.

  Grimnir still held the center, pushing Cailt Stonefist back toward one of the plateau mesas step by merciless step. Lodur must never forget that. And the great chieftain was already half-blinded by one of his brethren’s sorceries, mad with pain and making mistakes, costing lives. It would be enough. Together, the descendant of Ymir’s First Born and his greatest, most reliable of sorcerers would shove Stonefist back against the mesa’s sandstone cliffs, and there smash him beyond recovery. Not the arrival of fresh warriors or the paltry victory Kern Wolf-Eye had gained to the north could be enough to turn this side of the battle.

  It would happen as foretold by the Great One.

  It must!

  He railed at the skies, giving voice to his own frustrations as he shouted down the thunder and worked to expel his doubts, once and finally.

  Though there were certainly more Vanir bodies littering the plains than Cimmerian. But with such an advantage to begin with, not even the arrival of the westerners could make the difference.

  Though the fire of another Ymirish sorcerer had also been quenched in bloo
d; overrun by Cailt Stonefist and this Sláine Longtooth in a desperate bid to halt Grimnir’s advance.

  That had turned the situation desperate for the remaining two, yes. Keeping the storm under their control, holding that reserve of power should they still need it, required they expend greater personal strength or sacrifice more lives from the Vanir numbers. They would manage. They would.

  Though even now, the wyvern Lodur had thought to have completely under his control was barely just. Screeching its madness as it circled among the clouds, refusing to hunt. It had eaten, and beyond that had little more desire to kill for the sake of killing. Lodur had forced it, for a time, but that Callaughnan woman and her cursed singing blade had hurt the creature enough for it to refuse another such push. Yet.

  Mayhap he should release the wyvern. Send it winging back to its mountain lair, where he could find it again as needs be. With the pressing need to keep the storm surging, to preserve their final advantage and ensure victory, he likely should have done so before. But to release so grand a prize for a single wound . . . it galled.

  “No!”

  Refusing to be beaten by such circumstance, Lodur drew down the lightning. Three violet-clad strikes walked over the earth, taking two lives at random from the Vanir hordes and sacrificing one of Lodur’s warrior-brothers as well. Pressing the surge of power into his mind, he channeled it to Grimnir and back into the storm and let the flow of true power burn away a bit of his own strength as well.

  Whatever he needed to keep control. Just a bit longer.

  The Ymirish’s death had brought Grimnir around in a raging fury. Golden eyes aflame and a snarl twisting his already-ruined face. Then the rush of strength coursed from the Ymirish to his master, and Grimnir had staggered to one side, eyes wide with fiendish delight, his mottled hide flushing dark with power. Holding his heavy weapons high overhead, he bellowed a great roar at the heavens that cracked the sky like Ymir’s true voice. Reveling in the strength and his newfound plan.