Ossian had been there at the fore, in fact, cleaving his way toward the Ymirish who had escaped before the Taurin and Guadic warriors could fall on him together, dragging him down.
Kern left out his own contribution to that battle, of course. Conan rarely needed help.
But Ossian simply looked back with a measure of reluctant envy. “More like Conan’s battle at the Pass of Blood, where he beat the Vanir in a sled-bound charge at their icy palisade walls, then wrestled the demonic serpent summoned by a Ymirish sorcerer.”
Startled by the praise, Kern nearly slipped as he put his first foot on the stone arch. Before being outcast, his greatest adventure had been fending off young bucks from other villages and clans eager to make a name for themselves without inviting a long-standing feud. It seemed wrong for Ossian to twist events around in such a way, simplifying them to make it sound impressive. More impressive than it had actually been, when Kern had simply been part of the charge and had needed saving from the monstrous snow serpent. Daol and Hydallan and Brig Tall-Wood especially had been instrumental in that.
As he had determined earlier, Conan rarely needed help.
But Reave found the idea particularly amusing. “I like it,” he said, following Nahud’r and Kern and Ossian onto the stone arch. He laughed a gut-splitting roar that carried into the deep cut as a long, drawn-out echo. A few warriors up ahead glanced back with frowns darkening their craggy faces, but no one was going to make an issue of it with a large man carrying a Cimmerian greatsword.
Especially while they traversed a slippery ledge over a raging river.
Reave didn’t seem to notice. He stomped along with all the determination and confidence he brought to most situations. “Conan of Gaud,” he said. “Hey, Nahud’r. What can you do with that?”
The Shemite walked with his sword out and gripped in both hands, one on the hilt and the other pinching the end of the scimitar’s great, sweeping blade. He held it flat before him, using it as a kind of counterbalance to keep himself level. The trailing ends of the cloth he wrapped about his head and lower face fluttered in the breeze, pulled over his right shoulder.
“Conan and his adventure with snow serpent of Ymirish? When snow, it stuck so thick to Conan’s hair he look blond? A great sled he constructed, able to hold ten men. Ten of best men that Cruaidh provide. He pull it himself, straining against harness to deliver warriors to foot of palisade of ice.”
To hear Nahud’r retell the battle—a battle Kern had been in only two days before—it might as well have been a different land and a different time. The ice-rimed bulwark grew to twelve feet in height, formed by a sorcery similar to that which would be used to create the great snow demon. Most men, gazing into the palisade’s thick depth, lost their souls to the deep, blue ice.
Putting one foot in front of the other, almost careless of the hundred-foot drop into a river of crashing water and black, sharp rocks, Nahud’r spun the tale out as easily as any he had told of Conan as warrior or Conan as king. Kern shook his head, following the tale and the arch of stone, not realizing until he reached the far side that he had never once looked down. Never once worried for the drop.
He also noticed on the far side how a few of the other warriors, from Cruaidh and its surrounding farmsteads, looked at him, as if they suddenly believed the new tale of what had happened. The fantastic battle with the serpent lasted much longer, and involved a great deal more swordplay in its retelling. And there was no saving arrow to strike the first blow.
There was only Conan, testing his strength against the demon-summoned creature.
Reave stomped off the arch, followed by Daol and Ossian. All three smiled grimly, and nodded, as if playing the new tale through their minds and finding it worthy. Brig looked over at Kern, and offered a hesitant shrug.
“That’s not the way it happened,” Kern said to the young Tall-Wood.
Brig shrugged again. “That will hardly matter around the campfires tonight.”
No, it wouldn’t. And the story would change and grow with any retelling. And to be honest, none of that mattered very much to Kern. He sought answers, not the trappings of a legend. Especially the legends of Conan. Not for himself. Because there was one thing the stories and tall tales had in common that he wanted no part of.
That in the end, most everyone, including the great Cimmerian’s friends, often died.
IF KERN NEEDED a reminder of the potential cost of his pursuit of the Vanir raiders, it was made very apparent the next day as the war host traipsed farther out of the mountains and saw signs of a land under siege.
The day dawned with a bright, cold sun peering down between breaks in the cloud cover. Glimpses of blue sky carried the hint of a possible spring and raised a lot of spirits, including Kern’s own, for a time. Broken ground sliced by deep cuts gave way to wide, snow-covered bluffs overlooking deep glens and chattering rivers. The war host spread out in a long line as they stepped up their pace, eating up ground with long strides and frequent runs for leagues at a time. There were some scattered marching chants, and the warriors shared charcoal sticks as they rubbed eyeblack on their cheekbones to cut down on the snow glare.
The chants died away when, that morning, they passed two farmsteads burned down to their foundations and the dry pits plundered.
Nothing lived. In a custom more Cimmerian than Nordheim, the heads of the families had been left outside on poles. There were no cattle, and no chicks left scratching beneath the trees. Bones and ruined hides and feathers were all that was left to be scavenged.
“A plague of locusts,” Nahud’r whispered.
No idea what locusts were, Kern nodded nonetheless. The name sounded right. Harsh and mean.
Soon it became a common sight to see a slaughter post set up near trailside, with pieces of cattle carcass or sheep strung up for quick-and-dirty butchering. Midday, they ran through what remained of a small village. The Vanir raiders had laid it to waste, with huts and homes battered down or burned. The chieftain’s lodge still stood on a tall mound at the center of the destroyed village, which seemed unusual until Sláine Longtooth sent men to look inside. They came back stone-faced, with new fury burning in their eyes.
The Cruaidhi chieftain ordered every man and woman through the lodge then, and Kern led his people forward when it came time for their turn. The lodge smelled of death. It hit Kern before he ever set foot near the thick oak doors. The stink of rotted flesh and open bowels. It left a rancid taste at the back of his throat.
Breathing shallowly, Kern ducked in through the door with Desagrena and Ehmish. The young man turned and fled without much more than a glance, fighting for his pride not to lose what he had swallowed at his last meal. Desa stared a good long while, her pinched face blank to what she was feeling inside. When she left, she drew her dagger and sliced a shallow cut across her palm, then smeared it against the door of the lodge as a sign that someone, at least, mourned what had happened there.
Bodies had been decapitated, and stacked like cord-wood against the walls. Thrown there naked, or wearing only the tattered rags not worth taking as plunder. Several dozen. Their heads had been tied into the rafters by their hair or spiked there through an ear. Men and women. Youths. Children.
Everyone but the village chieftain, Kern guessed, if that was the brawny man pinned to the far wall with a spear through his gut and daggers driven through both shoulders and deep into the wood behind.
The condition of the bodies told Kern that this had happened some time ago. But though smaller than the Cruaidh, the destruction visited on this village was more severe. It spoke of more than punishment, even. It felt personal.
And Kern had no doubt that the Nordheim war leader, Grimnir, had been there to see it done.
23
THE WAR HOST found a few stray cattle as they traveled farther into the new territory and left behind the broken ground for tall stands of scale-barked pine and secluded glens. Enough to keep them well fed, and after the ruins they had visited th
ere was no talk of claiming the cattle and simply heading back to Conall Valley.
Kern had no desire to turn back now, regardless. He had vowed to see it through to the end, wherever that took him. And the others never once questioned him.
Sláine Longtooth split strong forces out from his main army, spreading them out in several directions while his main army moved north and west toward the old mines near Clan Conarch. It was a dangerous decision to make among the clansfolk, but a necessary one if they wanted to strike at Grimnir’s trail as soon as possible. Kern’s small band wasn’t told to go or to stay. Sláine seemed willing to let Kern lead them where he might. After a moment of thought, he pushed his people ahead of the main army as a vanguard force, wanting to see what was ahead of them, to plan as necessary for whatever that might be.
Fortunately, it wasn’t all death and desolation. The raider presence was known to be much stronger in the northwest because this was the path they took to infest the rest of Cimmeria with their marauding bands. But many villages of the Broken Leg Lands continued to survive and even thrive in the shadow of Grimnir’s looming presence. Which surprised Kern, in a way. He had begun to expect they would find nothing but ruins and a few rumors of survivors eking out an existence as high up into the snow line as they could hide.
Before the end of that day, though, they came upon a second village, one protected by a tall timber palisade and a number of thinly disguised pitfalls. There were men and women moving behind the walls, Kern felt certain. He sensed the eyes upon him and his warriors. But no one called out to them with a greeting or challenge, and Reave’s bellowed hails went unanswered.
Hydallan and Old Finn, Kern saw, kept an uneasy eye on a nearby bluff that overlooked the shaded glen and the fortified village. “What?” he asked the elder warriors.
Both men looked to each other, then to Kern. “Can’t say for certain,” Finn said for the both of them. “If’n it were me, though, I’d have archers or spearmen up on that ridge. Best way to know someone’s coming.”
Kern scrounged a piece of overcooked meat from a sack tied at his belt and chewed it thoughtfully for a moment. The flavor was dark and smoky, and the flesh tough between his teeth. That would make it last. He nodded at the wall.
“Daol and Ehmish. See if they’ll let you approach.”
Ehmish frowned. “Why us?” he asked.
Desa did not let Kern answer. “Because Daol is too quick to be shot with an arrow,” she said, “and you’re too skinny to waste an arrow on. Now go!”
A few of the men laughed at Ehmish’s bruised expression, but Kern let it ride. The young had no luxury anymore for childish arguments. He’d have to come to understand that.
Whether he did or did not, there was no misunderstanding the arrow that came sailing out from behind the palisade. It landed about ten paces short of the two before they had closed half the distance to the palisade walls. Daol said something Kern could not quite catch, and both he and Ehmish beat a hasty retreat.
There was no laughing at the younger man this time.
Daol walked right up to Kern, shrugged. “Nay,” was all he said.
Still no one had shown themselves. Not even when sighting the arrow shot. This village was clear in its intention to stay isolated. Kern shrugged his frustration aside.
“Then we leave them for Sláine Chieftain, though I doubt he’ll spend much time here either. Let’s hope that the next village isn’t jumping at shadows as well.”
But they wouldn’t find another village that day, and camp that night was very quiet. Aodh, given first watch, jumped at several noises that turned out to be little more than the wind rubbing some nearby branches together, or dropping a late cone out of a pine tree. After some grumbling and a few good-natured threats, everyone settled down into their bedrolls or crouched at the small fire pit with its dying embers.
Brig drew his blanket over his shoulders, like a second cloak, and crowded in between Desa and Ossian. He kept glancing across the pit at Kern, who stared back with a calm patience while he threw tiny twigs onto the coals. After a moment, one of the twigs would burst into fire and cast a flickering light around the small gathering. The guttering flame glinted off the rings in Ossian’s beard and also shone in the bright whites of Nahud’r’s eyes.
There was no story that night and very little talk. Ossian dug some mint leaves out of his pack and crushed them into water heated over the embers, drinking a pale tea. Kern chewed on the crust of some journeybread, hoarded from the supplies they had taken on at Cruaidh.
“Something,” Brig began, then lapsed into silence again. Thinking through what he wanted to say. “You asked Ossian yestermorn, about what he wanted.”
Kern nodded. “I did.” He paused. “And you want to know now what I want from all this, Brig Tall-Wood? My path hasn’t changed since Taur. I am looking for answers.”
Answers as to who he was, and where he was likely to find a life now that Gaud had turned him away.
“Do you think you will find any?”
“Nay. Not really. I think I have decided that my father was a northerner, no matter how much I might wish otherwise. But I didn’t need to force the Pass of Blood to discover that.” Another twig. Another bright flare. “I knew it in the shadow of the Snowy River country.”
“Then why?”
Kern felt the eyes on him. Ehmish hovering at the edge of the fire. Ossian and Desa across from him. Nahud’r on his right. This was important to more than just Brig, apparently. But with the young Tall-Wood, there seemed to be something personal driving his question. Something dark, which Kern had suspected from the strange looks he caught on Brig’s face from time to time.
Was he still Cul’s man? Could Kern ever really trust him?
“I look at what we have accomplished together,” he said, “and it amazes me. Tomorrow is another day we will spend outside of the clan. Without a home. We can spend it squatting in a cave and waiting out the winter, or running south for the lands beyond Crom’s favor. Or we can spend it doing something. I prefer to do, rather than hiding or running.” He thought about that a moment, and nodded to himself.
It was as good an answer as any.
“And if you find what you are looking for?” Brig asked. “What then? Try to go back? Challenge Cul’s decision . . . challenge him as chieftain now that you have proven your own worth?”
Desa shifted as if readying herself to launch at Tall-Wood. Something in his tone, both dangerous and challenging. Kern heard it as well. Heard it, and knew Brig touched a deep, sore spot.
“What about you?” he asked. “Would you go home?” He saw the younger man’s hesitation and the guarded look that shielded his eyes all of a sudden. “If there was the one thing you could look at and say, There. That is it for me. Would you then go back to Gaud?”
Brig stood abruptly. The younger man was not small, as wide across the shoulders as his brother or any man in the small band of warriors save perhaps Reave. Kern readied himself for an attack or a challenge. Whatever ate away at Brig Tall-Wood was very close to the surface. Kern couldn’t say why he felt it was so, but his instincts warned him to be wary.
“That is the question, isn’t it?” And surprising Kern, he stepped back from the fire and the small group, pulling away once again. Brig found a piece of cleared ground and rolled himself into his blanket and cloak for the night.
Another twig flared brightly for a moment, and Kern stared at the others in turn as each one drifted away for their bedrolls and what sleep they could grab before morning. Only Aodh remained up, on watch, circling at the edge of camp and decidedly not looking at Kern until the outcast leader rose for his own roll of felt and the blankets of his bedroll.
Then Aodh stopped and waved Kern over.
He thought that Aodh might want to make some comment on Brig. Instead, the other man tugged at his long moustache, and whispered, “Listen.”
“More branches?” Kern asked, in no mood for another wild chase into the night.
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But he closed his eyes anyway and reached out for the night with his other senses. The smell of the campfire was down to a weak telltale of ash and smoke. The night air tasted of snow, but the scattered clouds made a fresh fall unlikely. But other than a few hissing pops from the embers and some loud snores as Reave sucked at the cold, crisp air, Kern heard nothing.
Until it moved again. A shuffling, careful step, then a pause.
And then another hesitant step.
Aodh nodded out into the dark. “There,” he said, pointing with his chin.
It took Kern’s eyes a moment to find the shadow as it moved carefully among the nearby trees. A glint of moonlight fell through the broken clouds, and he caught an amber glare from two small yellow coals.
“Not possible,” Kern breathed out softly. Except that it was. Frostpaw. “He chased us over that stone arch?”
He had, or found another way, and had struck Kern’s trail again on this side of the valley Teeth. That spoke of more than a desire for food. More than a need for basic survival. It bordered on loyalty, or at least a need for kinship.
“We all have our reasons,” Aodh said, answering the unasked question. “And Brig can’t be any more dangerous than reining in a starving dire wolf.”
Kern was not so certain of that. The wolf had attacked him out of hunger and need. The desperations eating away at Brig Tall-Wood, Kern felt certain, were not so easy to define. And they bore careful watch. Because one should never turn their back on a wild animal.
Another good reason that Kern had watches through the night, and none of them would be Brig Tall-Wood.
Regardless, the night passed without further incident. Kern rolled out of his felt blanket at first light, greeting the overcast day with a few stretches to work the kinks and the deep cold out of his muscles. Others joined him, Ossian and Wallach, and while they began to sweat freely so fast, the chill of winter’s touch faded slowly with him.
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