Blood of Wolves

by Loren Coleman

  A few of the swordsmen, blades naked in their hands, attempted to force their way over the icy wall. Some of them made it. Most were turned back with spears or walls of sharp steel thrust into their path. Those who managed to vault the wall were set upon by three or four raiders apiece. There couldn’t be more than fifty Vanir holding the wall and ten . . . twenty of the massive dogs, but it was likely enough to hold back five times their number.

  Or ten, counting the sorcerer.

  Kern didn’t see him right away, but he had to be there. There was a warning shouted by one Cimmerian, who quickly vanished in a flurry of snow that seemed to explode out of the ground and take him. Kern remembered Gard’s description of the snow serpent, and when the demonic creature stretched itself back out, he saw the thick coils and glassy fangs of which Foehammer had spoken.

  The body was thick as a man’s torso, and easily five times as long. Kern couldn’t make out its eyes, not at this distance, but the fangs were the length of his arming sword and apparently just as sharp. A second warrior, too slow drawing back, fell under the serpent’s jaws. It struck twice. A third time. Each blow left long, bloody gashes across the warrior’s body. The last one severed a leg.

  “There,” Nahud’r said, pointing.

  Three men, standing an arrow shot back from the center of the wall. All three had the same frosted hair and thick, unruly beards. Kern didn’t need to see their faces to know that each man looked upon the battlefield with yellow, wolflike eyes.

  Sláine Longtooth agreed when Kern and Reave were finally taken to the chieftain. He’d heard of Kern Wolf-Eye from a runner sent out of Cruaidh. One of the several he’d never sent back. He searched Kern’s face warily for deceit, but was glad for the report that Foehammer’s reinforcements were not too far behind. Glad enough to speak with Kern, at any rate.

  “Yea, one of ’em be the sorcerer. Or all three together.” It didn’t seem to matter much to him, one way or the other. “Haven’t seen them separate in two days’ time.”

  The chieftain spit blood. He’d taken part in the latest charge, and had come away with a spear shaft broken against his face. Two of his own had dragged him back to safety. His jaw was dark with a purple-black bruise. Now, reaching into his mouth, he grimaced and pulled, then tossed aside a tooth.

  Even with the swelling and the blood leaking at the corner of his mouth, Sláine Longtooth was still an impressive man. His woolen tunic and heavy winter kilt were the green and brown of Clan Cruaidh, and both were strapped with leather and iron studs. He wore his winter cloak thrown back, falling down his back like an afterthought. It bunched over the chieftain’s wide shoulders and hid neither the chieftain’s muscular arms nor his powerful legs. Sixty years if a day, with gray stubble thick on his cheeks and chin and a wispy white tuft growing under his bottom lip, he had salt-and-pepper hair, and blue eyes washed out to the color of a summer sky haze.

  He also had a fixation on going after the Vanir. Raiders, dogs, sorcerer, and all.

  “Only the one snow demon, but it has taken its share of souls. Took Alaric back at Cruaidh. Here . . . Cron and Hess, and three others I don’t know.”

  He paced between two of the large bonfires. Watching as work teams pulled heavily laden sleds out of the forest piled with short logs and split-rounds and plenty of branches to be bound into new brands. Angry red sparks swirled out as new wood was added to the nearest fire, but he brushed them away from his arms as if they hardly mattered.

  “That’s five of the twenty-seven . . . twenty-eight men dead since yesterday.”

  “Mebbe you should think about pulling back,” Reave said, the large warrior showing uncharacteristic caution. “That thing out there, it’s only the one problem. Even if you beat it, you’re not over the wall.”

  “I can beat it,” the chieftain said, folding his arms over a massive chest. “But first I have to beat that wall. I’ve pulled their defense apart one piece at a time. And I’ve almost got it.”

  “You do?” Kern asked. Not that he had noticed. Looking now, even through the thickening mountain mists, he should have been able to see any breach in the icy coating. There was simply the damp pile of brush and logs stacking up near the one section, and the bulwark appeared just as strong there as anywhere.

  “Of course it does,” Longtooth growled when Kern pointed that out. “In fact, the wall’s a bit thicker there than anywhere else. You think I’m trying to melt my way through?”

  It had certainly appeared that way to Kern. And likely to the Vanir as well! No matter how futile the attempt, Kern had stopped analyzing the assault when he had seen the burning debris failing to do much more than sputter out in the snow and red clay muck.

  “You’re building a ramp,” he said, looking at the piled logs and brush.

  It wasn’t pretty, but it would work. Even the chieftain’s choice of throwing burning brands onto the pile made sense. They would cushion and bind up between the heavier logs, preventing them from slipping so much when his warriors began to climb over.

  “Nay other way,” Sláine Chieftain agreed. “We tried some simple ladders before, and that got a few men over. But that damned snow demon rushed by and smashed them like kindling. Trapped my men to be slaughtered.”

  “Why not mass them up now?” Reave asked. “You have enough of a ramp laid out. Each man with a log and some bramble, you can finish it up and pile them over the top before the Vanir can do much about it.”

  Kern saw the answer, though. “Archers. The Vanir have more of them and a better reach. They’d fill a massed assault full of arrows.”

  “Between the bowmen and that snow monster, it would be a terrible slaughter. I’d face any one of them down, but both at once is tricky. Which is why I plan to build the beginnings of three ramps, though it’ll take me most of the night and another few dozen lives to do it.” He kicked one of his warriors in the backside, hurrying the man toward a waiting sled. “Get that fire built up and ready some logs for another charge. We go before twilight. Move, you dogs. The Vanir are laughing at us, but not for much longer.”

  As plans went, it was workable. But at a very high cost. How many of the dozens dead—and several score wounded—would be among Kern’s men? Two men? Three? And that was before the real battle was joined. If he had to choose from among his people, whom could Kern afford to lose?

  Whom could he stand to lose?

  “There has to be another way, Sláine Chieftain. You’ll need every man you have on the other side of the mountains.”

  The older man glared. “There are plenty of other ways, but each one still requires I feed lives into the Vanir maw until I choke them on it. So unless you can get me a few dozen archers onto that wall without being slaughtered or you know another route through these Teeth that I don’t, Wolf-Eye, we do things my way.”

  A not-unreasonable bargain. And one which Kern was willing to take the chieftain up on. He stood quietly alongside Reave a moment, studying the Cimmerian preparations and the Vanir defenses, working the problem through. Like Sláine Longtooth had said: one piece at a time.

  “Sláine,” Kern yelled out, counting up the teams that worked to feed the bonfires and stack new logs to the side, estimating how many remained in the forest. He gauged the slope down toward the wall. Was it steep enough? He thought it might be. “Sláine Chieftain,” he called, getting the older man’s attention again.

  “How many archers?” he asked.

  20

  TWILIGHT CAME EARLY as the gray sky and mountain shadows piled up on the battlefield. More fires were set. Small ones, easy to kick out when the time came. A few warriors thrust their swords into beds of coals, warming the blades just enough that they could feel the heat spreading into the hilt. To keep fingers from numbing around cold metal.

  It seemed like a good idea to Daol, who dug his broadsword into a fire pit, then promptly forgot it as he worked to string his war bow with a new cord.

  Bending the curved bow against the ground, he marveled again
at how the horn reinforcement made for such a pliable but strong weapon. He had to apply real weight to be able to slip the cord’s loop over the top draw, then let up easy to make sure it did not jump out of the groove. That accomplished, he plucked at the cord a few times, checking it for a nice, taut sound, and inspected it by eye. No frays. No thinning. He dried the cord carefully with a strip of woolen cloth. Nothing could afford to go wrong. Though something would. It always did.

  At least it wouldn’t be his part.

  “How do I let you talk me into these things?” he asked Kern, as his friend carefully set another thick skin of bark nearby.

  Kern frowned. “I asked for volunteers,” he reminded the younger man. Lowering his voice, he said, “I’d rather you and Hydallan weren’t along, actually.”

  “But Brig Tall-Wood is fine by you?” Daol asked softly. His eyes searched over to another small campfire, where Brig was testing his hunting bow, preferring a familiar draw to the stronger Vanir war bow. “Oh, no.” Daol shook his head. “When this goes bad, you’re going to need someone to pull your ass from the fire.”

  “Thank you for the vote of confidence.”

  Nahud’r dumped an armful of arrows over a spread blanket. “A good plan,” he said. The bright whites of his eyes and his strong teeth shone in the firelight. “Worthy of Conan.”

  Not in the fireside tales Daol had ever heard. Conan would have stalked the Vanir army by himself. Climbed one of the iced-over cliffs in the dark of night, carrying nothing more than his sword and his bow across his back. Come up from behind the raiders unaware, taking out the sorcerer first, then dealing out death with arrows that never missed.

  Actually, that didn’t sound half-bad. He asked Kern about it.

  “Sláine Longtooth sent some warriors up the cliffs,” Kern said.

  Well, of course he had. Cimmerians had never seen a mountain they couldn’t climb. Daol eyed the dark bluffs, nothing more than a looming presence in the building twilight. He could do it. “And?”

  “The Vanir sent men up the back side slope, which is a much easier climb. They threw rocks down on their heads.”

  Ah. Daol hadn’t considered that. He glanced at the tall climb again. It was a long way to fall. “Well, then, this just has to work. Doesn’t it?”

  Kern was busy cutting careful holes in the long skin of bark, trying not to break the fragile sheet in half. The sheet was half as tall as the yellow-eyed leader, and easily as wide. “It will work,” he promised.

  So far, Kern had made good on all his promises. And Daol would never forget who had come for him when he was bound to a Vanir slave line. The same friend he had let run south on his own. He’d felt his father’s disappointment very keenly just then, even though Hydallan could have had no way of knowing what had happened. Didn’t matter that Kern convinced Reave to stay. A man lived with his own decisions, not the decisions of others.

  Daol and Reave had promised each other—secretly, while resting up at Taur—they would never make that mistake again.

  And so, “Tell me again,” he said, stepping over next to where Kern worked. He kicked at the flat-bottomed sled lying nearby. “How can you steer these things?”

  THERE WASN’T A great need to steer the sleds, Kern guessed. There were only nine of them, and it was a wide-open slope. No tree stumps or large boulders in the way (or to provide cover for the warriors who would charge after them). It seemed simple enough. Point the haulers downhill. Give them a good hard shove. Let the pull of the land do the rest.

  But just in case, he had experimented within the woods to see how heavily each one could be loaded, and how to guide them in the right direction. It was a fairly crude process of dragging a foot on one side or the other, but it worked.

  Mostly.

  Now the small fires nearby had been banked down to orange, glowing coals. Enough for warmth. Not enough light to give away to the Vanir what they were doing. While Daol held his metal-scalded hand in a deep snowdrift, Kern explained it again to the assembled group. Sláine Longtooth watched with an uncertain eye as Kern showed the gathered archers and a few swordsmen how he wanted them to lie down on the flat-bottomed sleds.

  The first man positioned himself with head toward the front, chest down and legs splayed such that they hung near either side. Two more clansmen, being careful, crouched down on hands and knees behind and over the top of the first man, gripping the first clansman by his kilt. Bows, quivers, and swords wrapped loosely in a blanket were laid on the first man’s back and also held by the other two.

  Then came the improvement Kern had borrowed from Nahud’r’s Nemedian rain shield. Using the sheets of bark, two per sled, he improvised an overhead cover. The first tree skin was fastened to the nose of the sled and laid over the shoulders of the kneeling warriors. The second was spiked into place overlapping the first, and resting over the warriors’ backs, like the shell of an armor-backed lizard.

  “Our arrows,” Sláine said, knocking hard against the makeshift shield, “would pierce right through this thin bark.”

  “Some would,” Kern agreed, smearing fat over his cheeks and retying the woolen scarf over his head. The bark had sounded fairly thin under the chieftain’s raw-boned knuckles. “But we use hunting arrows. Vanir like broadleaf shafts. They can’t sink in as far.”

  “You know what it is that you’re doing.”

  Kern shrugged. “I’ll be the first to know if I don’t.” Because he’d be first man on the first sled.

  At least, that had been the plan.

  The sled’s stacking surface was pitted and gouged, and full of splinters that scraped Kern’s arms and jabbed at him through the rents in his tattered leather poncho. The planks felt cold against the bare skin on his arms, his legs, like ice. There wasn’t much of an edge to grab on to, so Kern splayed his hands flat on the forward area, gripping as best he could.

  Daol and Brig crouched over him, balancing their bows and the weight of three swords on the small of Kern’s back, then Kern’s shield on top of those. Hydallan would ride on a separate sled, with one of Sláine’s best archers and the man with the silver-chased sword whom the chieftain trusted to deal with the snow serpent.

  The bark skins were laid over them, leaving just enough room under the forward edge that Kern could make out the distant shadow that was the ice wall.

  Reave crouched down at the front of the sled. “You can see okay?”

  Kern’s mouth was dry and his tongue felt twice as thick as normal. But he could nod.

  “We’ll be right behind you. Don’t go getting in too much of a hurry, yea?”

  “Just try not to trip over that great blade of yours,” Kern said, finding his voice again. His muscles quivered in anticipation.

  Reave snorted. “No need to be jealous. It’s not the length of the blade that matters, but how you use it.”

  Kern laughed, shortly but warmly. “Go howl! Thick-headed ox. Desa! Get this man where he belongs.”

  Reave didn’t wait for the viperish woman to drag him away (likely by his braided locks). With a slap against the side of the bark skin, he thrust himself back to his feet and moved to the back of the sled, ready to push.

  There was no gauging the other sleds from his position, so Kern waited with muscles trembling for action and the bitter taste of adrenaline drying the back of his throat. It wasn’t until Sláine Longtooth called out “Ready,” that Kern even had an idea that they were about to shove away. Within minutes, he guessed.

  Much sooner, as it happened. The chieftain must have simply glanced over his line, made a few last checks, then given the nod. “Go,” he ordered. “Send them!”

  Kern braced for the shove, thinking that Reave and Nahud’r would simply brace themselves against the back of the sled and get it started with a mighty push. He heard the grunts of exertion coming from either side of him first, felt more than saw the other sleds begin to move.

  There was a clap and a rubbing sound behind him. In his mind, Kern pictured Reave rubbi
ng his hands together, bending down patiently with Nahud’r to get their hands fastened on the back of the sled, bracing themselves, and then—finally!—pushing forward with slow, strong steps.

  The sled began to move, rasping over snow crust that bore the weight of the three men fairly easily.

  Faster. Stronger. Gliding forward with greater and greater ease. To either side, Kern saw the nearby sleds about even with his, a few arm’s lengths between each. It didn’t seem like so much room anymore.

  Smooth and slippery, the sled charged forward.

  Kern heard the footfalls behind him, felt their hammering thuds through the sled’s planks, and knew that Reave and Nahud’r were running for all they were worth, keeping the sled at speed. There were stumbling falls all around them as the running warriors finally lost balance or were outraced by the sled’s natural tendency to pick up speed.

  Reave, Kern felt certain, lost it first, staggering into a lopsided run, then crashing down onto the snow-covered slope. Nahud’r lasted another few steps, and managed a slight shove at the end that jumped Kern forward, almost catching them up fully with the racing sleds to either side.

  The wind cut at his ears.

  A spray of snow sliced up from the forward edge of each side. It smelled of fresh ice and dull, damp clay.

  Kern ran a tongue across his chapped lips, squinting into the wind and gloom to try and see how they fared. His sled hit a rough patch of snow, and it shook hard. Then another. It sounded like stones scraping along the underside of the sled, loud and dangerous in Kern’s ears.

  “By Crom,” Brig Tall-Wood said, packing into that all the same recriminations Daol had voiced earlier.

  The next patch nearly shook Brig loose as the sled bucked and slewed sideways for a few long heartbeats. Kern leaned in the other direction and dug his left foot into the snow, feeling a hard, icy rough scraping against his toes. He knew then what it was. Knew without having to see it. Snow and mud, churned into frozen slush by Sláine’s repeated attacks against the Vanir wall.