Age of Conan: Songs of Victory: Legends of Kern, Volume IIl
Page 30
He felt her nod. “It’s the way of the clans, Kern Wolf-Eye. I should nay have to tell you that.”
Nay. She should not. He’d lived it his life, outsider or outcast. And it had been the rock he clung to when the power swept over him, nearly washing away everything he had made of himself. “So close,” he whispered. “The difference of a knife’s edge.”
“Will you tell me about it?” she asked.
“I am nay storyteller. Ask Nahud’r, if you want a fireside tale.”
“I’m asking if you’ll be coming back with us to Murrogh? Mayhap to Gaud?”
The sun struck the horizon, slipping fast now. Kern watched it go, eaten away a slice at a time. “That is for the morrow, Maev, Burok’s daughter.” And who knew what that might bring. A return of the feud between Lacheish and Murrogh, Galla and Hoath?
Cul Chieftain and Kern?
“You believe tomorrow will change anything? Truly?”
“I believe . . .” Kern hesitated. Then, “I believe many things I mayhap doubted before. I believe a miracle may occur, and the sun will rise in the east.”
She laughed, brittle and sharp. “The sun rises in the east every day.”
“And each one is a new start,” Kern said, as if agreeing. “Many things will be the same. There will be Vanir to hunt. Ymirish to worry after. Chieftains feuding. But one thing . . . Mayhap one thing will change.”
Maev shook her head. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” She rocked back, pulling Kern with her. Resting him into her lap. Adjusting the blanket to better spread across his shoulders, she brushed her touch against his bared arm.
And recoiled.
“You . . . You are . . .” She reached down with both hands, spread them across his shoulders.
“You are . . . warm.”
He nodded, once, as the sun slipped below the horizon. Kern relished to its dying gasp that last shred of warming light. “One thing that can change,” he said. “At times, that is all we can expect. Or need.”
And somewhere back on the plateau, in the gathering dusk, a wolf howled.