Ossian gazed at the simple device as if it were a minor miracle. His head was fresh-shaven and his cheeks scraped bare, leaving only a simple goat’s beard that matted with the rain. He resembled Liam Chieftain very closely. He dropped back a few paces, whispered to Kern, “Now why we never thinks of that?”
Kern wondered much the same thing. There were drawbacks, of course. Having to hold your arm up. Getting in the way of a sword or shield use. But for traveling, it still was not a bad idea.
“That a desert trick?” he called ahead, turning Nahud’r around. The Shemite walked backward with graceful, smaller steps. It let Kern and Ossian catch up.
“This a Nemedian tool. I learn my first springtime in Hanumar. But works well in desert, too, I think. Keep sun out of eyes, and off head. Like small tent you carry along.”
Kern had never thought of the sun being a problem like the rain or the winds. Cimmeria did not suffer often from drought, and certainly never from excessive heat. It made the desert of Shem seem even more an alien place than told of in stories and lodge fire tales.
“Nemedia,” Kern repeated. It was a Hyborian nation southeast of Cimmeria and the borderland kingdoms. “This is where you learned to read?”
“I learn to read, and to write, in Aquilonia.” He saw Kern’s obvious doubt and stopped by the trailside, kneeling down next to a pine tree under which a soft carpet of wet needles lay undisturbed. Kern and Ossian both paused as well, looking down at what the other man was about.
“A miracle occurred this day,” the black-skinned man wrote, using his fingers to dig small diagrams in the bed of needles. He drew another line of characters beneath the first. “The sun has risen.”
Ossian laughed. “The sun rises every day.”
Nahud’r smiled, and glanced up at the rain-swollen sky. “Prove it,” he challenged the clansman.
“Not have to proves it. Sun travels south in the fall, north in the spring. But it always rises. It always will rise.”
It was sound reasoning, to Kern. Because it had always happened, it always would. But Nahud’r merely shook his head. “That a tenet of faith,” he said. “And beginning of enlightenment. No matter what else happen, every day there is divine providence to follow.”
Kern continued to stare at the characters. These weren’t pictures as he knew them. Far as he could see, there was no way they corresponded with the story they told except by memorization. What each character spoke, and what they made as a whole. He waited while Reave and the others trudged by, glancing over but continuing on with one foot placed after another.
“Is that what you are doing here?” he asked finally. “Following divine prov . . . dance?” He stumbled over the last word, not sure what it meant, except that it sounded important.
“I was servant for nobleman’s house. Took care of son as bodyguard and sometimes sent as message carrier.” Nahud’r’s gaze looked wide from Kern’s, and he smoothed the bed of needles back over, erasing his work. “Was sent to Gunderland with boy, Pheros. He decides to inspect what left of Aquilonian garrisons in Cimmeria. I came.”
“What happened?” Ossian asked, not noticing the man’s blank stare.
Kern nodded. “The Vanir happened.” He waited until Nahud’r looked back up from the ground. “Pheros?” Kern asked
“Is dead. Why there is nothing left for me in south. Why I go north.”
As good a reason as any, Kern decided. He listened as a few others slogged past, their footsteps squelching in the softened trail. Icy fingers of water trickled past the neck of his tattered poncho, trailing down his spine. “Are you sure that is the only reason?”
“Why else would I be here?” Nahud’r asked.
Kern knelt next to the other man. His brow wrinkled as he thought hard to remember what he’d seen. With a less careful hand than Nahud’r, he reached down to the smoothed bed of pine needles and drew shaky characters in the soft spread. “A miracle occurred this day . . .” he said.
He only remembered the first line.
The dark man stared at Kern from between the folds wrapping about his face. His eyes gave nothing away as to what he was thinking. Then slowly he bowed, touching his forehead to the ground.
Rising in one smooth motion, Nahud’r and his tent cover fell back onto the trail and continued their pace.
Kern and Ossian followed.
NORTH AND WEST.
Always north and west.
The freezing rains continued, off and on. By nightfall of the second evening, most everyone had adopted some version of Nahud’r’s method for keeping warmer if not completely dry. Oilcloths were scavenged from food wrappings. Most of the men simply tied the cloths over their heads, knotting them at the backs of their crowns. Desagrena rolled a large square of leather into a fat, shallow cone. Using a knife to pin the edges together, she set it carefully atop her head. All that showed beneath the brim was the lower half of her face and her long, oily locks of dark hair, but she obviously stayed much dryer.
Very few braved it out, and they looked more and more miserable as the day wore on.
The next day dawned under a cold, blue sky and a distant, uncaring sun that barely warmed the skin. Early in the morning they ran into their first sign of others on the path: a trio of clansmen who leaped for their swords when Daol and Wallach stumbled into their campsite. The two men were lucky to escape with their lives, falling back on safety in numbers.
The Cimmerians were from Clan Galla, near the top of the Snowy River country. Their hair, shaved into topknots, and the tattooed sworls spreading over their chests made it obvious. Finding themselves facing a larger band than they had thought to expect, they quickly dropped the points of their weapons.
Primitive, but hardly stupid.
They had thought Daol and Wallach to be northerners. Not an easy mistake to make, but then the Gallan often attacked first and thought about it after. They were heading toward the Broken Leg Lands themselves. Supposedly, Clan Cruaidh challenged the Vanir for the Pass of Blood, and would accept any warriors who could handle a sword.
Kern let them retreat to their camp. His only other choice was to put all three men to the sword. That served no one but the Vanir.
These weren’t the only Cimmerians on the move, either. Daol and Hydallan tracked other warriors to camps. Farmers and families as well, burned out of their homes by raiders or starved out by the long winter, running for the south and the hope of spring. All had heard or carried similar rumors coming down out of the northwest.
Few of them would do more than trade a bit of news. Some asked for food, and Kern rationed out what they could spare with a careful eye toward their own needs. No one asked to follow along with Kern’s pack. Fewer wanted to do much in the way of talking once they saw Kern. With his pale hair and yellow, lupine eyes, Kern would look out of place among any Cimmerian clan. But most of these men did not look surprised at his countenance, but rather fearful or angered. One grizzled farmer, carrying his best tools on his back and a naked arming sword in hand, spit at Kern’s feet.
“Ymirish!”
Frost-man.
The farther north Kern chased after the raiders, the more Ymirish appeared to be known. Known, and feared and hated. More than one sword was drawn at Kern. Several times he shouted his own warriors back, not about to watch a clansman killed over a mistake. But it wore on him, hardening Kern against his own people, in fact, as they glanced more and more his way when they thought he wasn’t looking. Wasn’t aware.
Fortunately for everyone’s building tempers, the roving pack surprised more than Cimmerians on the run or spoiling for their own fight. They found Vanir as well. Not many, but enough that by twilight of their fourth day they’d left half a dozen raiders stretched out over blood-soaked ground or propped against trees. Their horned helms always hung on branches stuck into the earth as a way to identify them to any who passed.
Four days.
Always heading north and west.
That was when the blizzard st
ruck.
After a day of clear sky and a cloudless night, black stormrunners built up thick and fast during the morning trek. Massing higher, until they seemed like a huge anvil ready to drop on Cimmeria.
Watching them pile up over the Valley’s western Teeth, blocking out the massive summit of Ben Morgh, Kern thought at first they had a chance of outrunning the storm to Clan Cruaidh and pushed his team harder. He didn’t care for the ground they moved through, knife-cut ravines so thick with trees and thorny brush that it was best to run the high ridges of broken, crumbling rock. But there they fought narrow trails over sheer cliffs, often slicked with ice or waterfall runoff. Bad ground. He didn’t want his people trapped there under dark and snowfall.
They pushed forward at a healthy pace, jogging for hours at a stretch, slowing only when Daol or Hydallan or one of the others spotted sign, and they grew careful of an ambush. The winds picked up, gusting down from the heights with an icy touch that cut through furs and wool and leather. A frosted ground fog rolled down in patches biting with frozen teeth at their exposed legs and arms just as the first snow fell.
It came thicker and sharper after that. Dry snow, stinging the eyes as the wind whipped it horizontally. The storm clouds collapsed overhead, running out across the valley with incredible speed, pushed by the sudden, northwest zephyr. More snow and a thickening fog created a white haze that lowered visibility to a hundred paces. Then fifty.
It caught Kern’s people in some desperate territory, halfway along a steep bluffside trail. Sparse brush and stunted trees in all directions. No protection from the winds unless they wanted to hunker down together with blankets wrapped over their heads. A plan that was on the bottom end of Kern’s thoughts.
“What do you think?” Daol asked, moving back along the line of struggling warriors, calling out to Kern. “Go to ground?”
Kern squinted into the horizontal blow. He saw another of the trickling streams they’d seen cutting at the dark clay all along this trailside. Again, noticed the lack of heavy vegetation. Nothing put down roots there. Not for long. “Bad area. If the storm turns to rain or sleet, we might see flooding or slides. Not safe.”
“Up or down?”
Up meant trying to get above the water runs, but they’d be more at the mercy of the winds. Worse chance of frostbite. Down would find them looking for a sheltered cleft or a windbreak of heavy trees, but put them in greater danger if the snow gave way to sleet or rain. It also meant giving up on Cruaidh for at least another day.
“Down,” Kern decided, cursing the weather. No storm like this had been seen so late in the year in his lifetime. Maybe not even in Hydallan’s lifetime. But they had to deal with it. “I think this is going to pile up on us. We have to get out from under the wind first.”
“Wind first,” Daol agreed. “Da saw some lighter slopes ahead. We’ll need to turn right at the next fork, then bear off toward a shallow vale you might be able to see from the scarp.”
“I’ll see it,” Kern said. To his eyes, the gloom was really not so bad as a clear moonlit night. He needed only a few breaks in the snow flurries. “Right, and then bear for the vale.”
Nodding, Daol grabbed Wallach as he stumbled by, turned the old man around, and sent him back along the rear line to hurry the rest, passing the same instructions. Kern and Daol hurried ahead, racing past Ossian and Nahud’r. Coming up behind Ashul, the Taurin who had trained with the village healer. She held her own, using a walking staff in each hand to help steady her footing.
But she stopped, right in front of Kern, tilting her head one way then another. Kern listened as well. The winds hammered at the thin line of warriors, howling its building strength. Bringing snatches of shouting, of cries.
Of sharp, clashing steel.
“Vanir!” Kern yelled, springing forward, ripping his arming sword free of its sheath and tossing his winter cloak back from his sword-arm shoulder. Ashul tossed her staves aside and came up with long daggers in each hand as Kern passed her.
With Daol and Ashul laboring to keep up, Kern sprinted forward, catching Brig Tall-Wood at the fork Daol had mentioned. Shoving the younger man ahead of him, they half ran and half staggered through the rushing storm. Brig glanced back repeatedly, as if making sure Kern was right behind him. A dangerous expression crossed his face, but Kern had no time to ask after it.
The snow swiped at Kern’s face, stinging his eyes as he ran. Fifty paces. A hundred. Too far to be spread out. Had they missed a turn?
Then he heard shouting again—much closer this time. He led the others off the path, angling on a sharper downhill turn. Scraping through dwarf pine and basket cedar, they stumbled into a small depression that must have looked like a good campsite when Hydallan and Ehmish found it.
Except the Vanir had found it first.
There were three raiders, each armed with a broadsword of some fashion. One blade had a curved edge to it that flared out near the end to give it some good weight for slashing—not native to Cimmeria, though certainly the raider was putting it to good use.
Hydallan reached somewhere deep within his flagging strength, flailing about with his own broadsword as he battled back two of the raiders. Never going on the attack, but parrying strongly as they struck at him again and again. Ehmish, too, was struggling for his life, and giving a good measure with his arming sword.
But there wasn’t a great deal of time left in either clansman, old or young.
Yelling a Gaudic war cry at the top of his lungs, Kern crashed into the battle with Daol, Ashul, and Brig not far behind. He shouldered one of Hydallan’s attackers aside, sending the man sprawling.
His companion slashed a wicked backhand at Kern’s throat, but it met his arming sword instead of soft flesh.
Slash. Guard. Thrust! Kern rammed six inches of bright steel into the Vanir’s gut just as Brig Tall-Wood struck the edge of his broadsword deep into the raider’s shoulder.
The northerner’s cry died quickly, choked off in his throat. He collapsed in an unstrung pile.
The raider who had pressed at Ehmish now faced both Daol’s and Ashul’s more experienced swords as well. With a feral snarl, he feinted a quick chop at Ashul, then dived for some brush on the downhill side of the shallow depression. Ashul ran after him, daggers ready.
Kern spun about, back to back with Brig Tall-Wood, looking for the third attacker as they heard what they thought were the shouts of battle. But it was only Hydallan, cursing himself with a real gift.
“Walked right into it! Stupid old man. Of all the Crom-cursed, northern-frogging . . . Garret! Kern, Crom take you, where is Garret?”
“Never saw him,” Brig answered for the both of them. “Just you two and the three raiders.”
“Four. There were four!” Never one to waste time on regrets over action, Hydallan dropped his pack near a pile of Vanir supplies and launched himself at the edge of the brush. He swung his broadsword in great cleaving arcs, cutting an easier path.
Daol ran after his da without word or wonder. Ehmish looked ready to follow, but Kern grabbed him by the scruff and pointed him uptrail. “Find the others. Bring them after us.” He gave the youth a shove.
Ashul was too far gone by then to chase after. Kern hoped she could hold her own. Doffing his own pack, he laid it over Brig’s and unslung his shield. Both men plunged into a break in the scrub, looking for Garret in another direction than the two hunters. Within a moment they were stumbling blind through the growing blizzard.
The makeshift trail turned between two patches of dead, brown thornberry brush. Thorn tips snagged at Kern’s cloak and his heavy kilt. Kern pulled himself free and stumbled forward a few more paces to where the path turned again. Brig fetched up against Kern on the corner, swiping at his eyes, which teared in the wind.
“This was a good idea,” he shouted in Kern’s ear.
Then he looked around, noticing that they were isolated by the storm and had no clear path back. He looked back at Kern, at the arming sword the other ma
n wielded.
“What?” Kern asked. He glanced desperately to either side. “We can’t stop now. Move!”
Brig hesitated, then nodded curtly. He moved on, blade naked in his hand, held at a half-guard position.
And a good thing it was, as a raider charged into him not a dozen steps later. The man wasn’t as large as some of the others, but he was fast. And he swung the curved, slashing sword. Brig barely slid his sword in the way, catching the wide blade against his cross guard.
The Vanir stiff-armed Brig in the face, throwing him back. Would have had him too, if Kern hadn’t leaped forward with his arming sword already slashing for the raider’s throat.
The raider ducked back, but he needn’t have bothered. Kern’s sword sliced nothing but air, coming up short because he had slashed instead of stabbed! Again!
But when he tried to follow up with a short jab at the Vanir’s ribs, the raider spun inside his reach and circled a heavily muscled arm around Kern’s, trapping it.
Caught in an awkward dance, the Vanir brought his sword hilt straight down against Kern’s forehead, bruising the Gaudic outcast right between the eyes. The only thing that worked out in Kern’s favor, in fact, was the unwieldy sword the other man carried. It was no good as a close-in weapon. Kern ditched his shield and managed to get a hand on the Vanir’s wrist, and the two shuffled around in lockstep, staggering several paces off to one side, then farther downhill, then . . .
Then the ground gave way beneath Kern’s feet as the two struggling men hit a steep drop-off.
The raider lost his hold on Kern’s arm. Kern kept his own death grip on the other man’s wrist, though, pulling him along as they both half tumbled, half slid through more thornberry brush, then into one of the muddy creeks that bounced and ran down the bluff. Kern’s feet shot out from under him, sitting him down roughly in the muddied, freezing water. The raider sprawled forward.
No time for niceties, Kern chopped at the other man, hacking several pounding strikes at his head, his shoulders. Nothing certain to be fatal, but he thought he hit bone at least once. A few heartbeats later, though, Kern hit another drop-off, and he lost his grip and his sword both.
Blood of Wolves Page 14