The horsemen wore chain mail and leather, with their metal hoods draped back to bare their heads to the misting steam that filtered across the glen. They slung tall shields across their back and carried lances twice as long as a man’s height. Kern had seen them in action up close, spearing the northern warriors into the ground, riding them down. The iron tips of every lance had been coated in blood and gore then.
Now the horsemen held their lances up proudly, a flame-red pennant stirring in the breeze of their passage. The man in front was not the one he had helped rescue in battle, but with hunter’s eyes and the confident set of his shoulders, Kern picked him out for a leader right away.
The man he would have tried to kill first if he had recognized such traits in a fight.
“Wolf-Eye,” the horseman said, his greeting curtailed. Either he understood Cimmerian customs, or simply did not have a good grasp of the language, because he moved right to the point of his business. “You know who we are?”
“You are the em-bass-y from Aquilonia.” He stumbled over the awkward word. Ros-Crana’s brother, Narach Chieftain, had explained it to him once. “Means you talk for King Conan.” And he had had enough of talk.
But Gard Foehammer caught him from turning away, stepping forward and grounding his pike in front of Kern. “That is part of what it means, Kern. They also act for Conan. You saw them fight.”
He had. And for that, he gave them another moment.
“The story last night.” The horseman looked down with inscrutable brown eyes. He continued to speak in careful, simple Cimmerian. “The one told at fireside as you arrived. Was it true?”
A shrug. “It was a tale of Conan,” he said, as if that explained it all.
But the Aquilonian was having none of that. “Was it true?”
Accurate to every detail? Not a chance. But he didn’t think that was what the cavalryman meant. Not for the intense stare with which he awaited an answer.
“True enough,” Kern said, biting off his reply as if it had been forced from him.
That sat well enough with the soldiers, who glanced at each other in a moment of silence. The third man back, the one Kern had helped save in the fight, offered a nod of support.
“You are heading south.” The cavalry officer finally continued. “We would go with you, at least so far as Gunderland.”
That was his plan. Circle south around the Teeth, and the massive peak of Ben Morgh, and come up into Conall Valley from Venarium. It left behind the Pass of Blood, avoiding the spring runoff that would make mountain travel treacherous, and any chance the Vanir had retaken and fortified their positions. He no longer had someone else’s army at his back.
“Bad ground,” Hydallan spoke up, “running into Venarium. Not much good for horses, I’m a-telling ya.”
The other soldier shrugged. Patted his beast on the side of its thick neck. “They came through it north. They can make it back.”
Kern was more inclined to think along the same lines as the old tracker. Few Cimmerians had any respect for horses, except as food. And these southern beasts were much leaner and looked less hardy even than the shaggy drays a few clans did keep for labor.
And traveling? His warriors could outrun most four-legged creatures over distance, climbing terrain that a horse could never think to traverse. They were fragile beasts, always breaking legs or simply falling over dead if pushed too hard, too fast. And when they took fright and bolted, they were as likely to run off with your supplies still strapped in packs to their backs and sides.
“And you?” Kern asked the blinded man, a sinking feeling warning him of the Cruaidhi’s intentions.
“Coming with,” the man said at once.
“We move hard and fast, Gard Foehammer. No time to lead you by the hand.”
A harsh assessment, but fair. Kern could not imagine the darkness Gard had been thrown into by the Ymirish’s unnatural sorceries. So many clansmen would have chosen to be “released” from such a fate rather than become a burden on their clan and kin. Sláine Longtooth should have seen to that, rather than abandoning his former champion to the charity of the Callaughnan.
“Even if you rode one of the horses, you would slow us down.”
But Gard was not quite as helpless as he appeared. And the blindfold not nearly as thick as it looked. The burly Cruaidhi stepped forward, pike swinging up and around in a blur. The blue-iron tip sliced in near Kern’s ear, where Gard pulled it to a sudden stop with muscle strength conditioned through years of training. Then, with a tiny flourish, he drew the tip in a slow slash barely a finger’s breadth away from Kern’s throat.
“My eyes heal, Kern Wolf-Eye. You are a shadow today. By month’s end, I’ll know you again on sight. Sláine Longtooth would not wait, but I will no longer exist on the generosity of Clan Callaugh. Outcast.”
Kern did not need to take a poll of his warriors. There weren’t any he knew of who had not formed at least a base of respect for Gard Foehammer when he’d been the protector and champion of Clan Cruaidh. And all of them, as well, had known the burn of being cast out or casting themselves out away from their clan and homes.
And for that, he would give Gard the same chance as any.
“You keep up. Or you will be left behind.”
He started to turn away, but Gard stepped forward, trailing one hand along the horse’s flank and laying the other on Kern’s arm. “And the Aquilonians?” the warrior asked, reminding Kern of their request.
If the horsemen had asked out of convenience or out of carelessness, he would have refused them. But it had meant something to them, to know that Kern and his warriors had stood for their kin against Vanir raiders. More, apparently, than the fact that Kern had come against Grimnir and lived.
He nodded. A curt dip of his head.
“But if the horses fall lame, we’ll butcher them for meat and move on without trouble,” he said, speaking to Gard rather than the cavalry officer. As if he were putting the wounded clansman in charge. Which he was. “Make sure they understand that.”
It was the Aquilonian who answered. “I understand, Wolf-Eye.”
Kern ignored him. Found Daol and Hydallan then, and with a glance sent them to scout the southern trails out of Callaugh Glen. Ehmish adjusted his pack and set out after. Then Ashul and Aodh and Wallach Graybeard. Old Finn after them, in a hobbling trot.
The others staggered off at their own pace.
“Make sure they understand, we march from sun’s rise to set.”
“I can hear you, Kern.”
Of course they did. But they were also outsiders. Not of any clan. And Kern trusted them not at all.
Which was what he wanted Gard Foehammer to understand.
“I will tell them,” Gard said. Then slapped the side of the tall beast and set off after the others with his pike as a walking staff and his head constantly turning from one side to another, picking substance from shadows.
Kern did not wait to see if the horsemen followed or not. Short sword belted at his side and his bedroll wrapped up into a traveling sling, tied with a length of short rope, he moved off as well. And a tight knot formed around him as Nahud’r and Reave and Desagrena packed up around him.
He didn’t look back once, in fact, until reaching the crest of the hillside trail leading up and out of the bowl-shaped glen. And then it wasn’t to see if the horsemen followed or not, though they did. He saw them picking their way slowly up the trail, letting the horses meander at their own pace. And back behind them, he saw a few people still waiting. Still watching. Daol’s woman. A couple of others.
But no final glimpse of Ros-Crana.
Just as well. He was quit with the northwest territories. And the chances of his ever seeing her again were slim. His days of clan and kin were behind him now. So he turned his attention southward, to the trail and what they would find ahead.
And his wolves slipped away from Callaugh Glen.
7
THE HOWLS BEGAN near false twilight, as rain-swo
llen clouds turned greenish black, and the easterly winds picked up, piling the hard cloud cover against the western edge of the Teeth, and Ben Morgh.
Five days.
Five days slogging through mud with only a rare sight of the dire wolf. Tracks in the rain-softened earth. A blur of silver-gray against spring’s fresh green and occasional blood spoor where the animal had made a fresh kill. Though at night, for those who looked, Frostpaw could be found skulking at the far edge of the campsite, bright, golden eyes reflecting back the cooking fire. Drawn by the light, and the green smoke, and the scent of cooking meat.
Kern always looked.
By then even the horses had grown less skittish with having a predator so near, the horsemen soothing their animals with practiced ease. Only Valerus, the Aquilonian Kern had helped save, bothered to remark on it one night.
“It has never attacked you?” he asked. Glancing back over his shoulder, searching for the firelit eyes as if worried the dire wolf would be creeping up at his back. “Or your—” He stopped, remembering the Cimmerians were no horsemen. “Any of you?”
Kern slowly chewed on a sliver of rabbit meat, drawing out the taste to trick his stomach into believing he had eaten more than his small ration of meat. Moving hard and fast, Daol did not have much time to track and to hunt. The group would stretch their supplies to last as long as possible.
“Just me,” he admitted. “Just once.”
Half-starved and alone, in the depths of the long, harsh winter that had just barely ended, Kern had been running for the southern border of Cimmeria, cast out of Gaud for no other reason than the new chieftain’s dislike and distrust of the strange-looking clansman. His frost-dead hair and golden, wolf eyes.
“Wild and savage beasts,” Strom said. Leader of the three horsemen.
Valerus nodded. “And now it follows you?”
“It comes and goes as it pleases,” Kern said, turning back to the fire, hunching down until he felt a touch of heat on his face. “Like anyone.”
Not quite like anyone. The dire wolf wasn’t stalking them, not on the hunt, but it always remained at the edge of their path, a dark whisper among the shadows. Its quiet presence, in fact, was likely what made the wolf so easy to accept as a member of their outcast clan. Their pack. It made no demands, and had proven of use from time to time. Warning them when strangers—or enemies—approached. Flushing game that even Daol or Hydallan might not have spotted.
And now, with evening rolling up on the struggling group, the wolf howled. Hoarse and savage. First ahead. Then to one side or the other. As if pacing among the stunted, scraggly pine that grew out of the old, broken rock flow.
It was their first day off the muddy paths, out from under the forested slopes and moving over an old lava flow, which spread north and eastward off the slopes of Ben Morgh. The dark rock pooled in unnatural depressions or mounded up like lumps of half-melted wax. It was another side to the wide-based mountain that anchored the Teeth. An angry, violent side, that Kern had never seen before.
From Conall Valley, where most of the pack had spent their entire lives, Ben Morgh dominated the western skyline with its massive, snowcapped peak. A calm, pleasant face staring down at them. On many days the peak wore a beard of frost-edged clouds, especially during winter and spring. But on calm, clear summer days the high slopes inspired many lodge hall tales. It was said that it was on Ben Morgh that Crom, the Cimmerians’ distant god, left his final footprint on Hyperboria; and because of that, the mountain was a place of power. Chieftains and great warriors had once been taken to the mountain, this House of Crom, for burial, rather than to the Field of the Chiefs. The desperate still traveled there, to seek Crom’s blessing.
What anyone found on the mountainside remained the stuff of legend. For every wondrous tale, there was another of madness. There was even a tale of Conan—of course there was!—where the legendary warrior discovered ancient crypts guarded by undead warriors.
Kern had never understood how such a magnificent face could inspire both beauty and horror, until now. The eastern face of Ben Morgh hardly resembled its western side. Dark. Craggy. Snowcapped, high up, but crusted in fresh scabs down a great deal of the lower slopes. Along one stretch, a bright ribbon of red drew a long scar down the mountain’s face where the earth bled fresh.
They would keep their distance. Footing was difficult enough as was, over the broken rock flow and gravel rolling beneath their booted feet. The handholds were rough, even against the hardened calluses of the Cimmerians. The horsemen were often forced to take long, swinging routes out away from the main group, searching for careful paths over the coarse slag. Even Gard Foehammer made better time, relying on the butt end of his pike and a determined stride that always assumed the next footfall would find purchase.
The band of warriors and horsemen had straggled out into a long, broken line as they crossed the scarred plains. But now Kern caught up with Daol and Ehmish as the two crouched atop a large, rounded mound of broken slabs and debris. The old, blistered rock had trapped the day’s warmth, and as the first fat drops of rain began to fall, the air suddenly grew warm and moist. The false warmth of summer. Ehmish tested the air with his nose, as if trying to scent the wolf. Daol had his hands splayed against the ground.
“Doesn’t like the footing,” was Daol’s guess. He scraped at the coarse stone flow, held up his hand to study the scrapes that had gouged into his skin and nails. “Is it trying to turn us back?”
Ehmish said nothing, and Ossian joined the small group as they crouched together, searching the twilight for some sign of the animal. In the distance, a light mist trailed over the rocky flow like an autumn ground fog. Or steam.
“What’s your wolf not liking, Kern? Afraid of some rocky ground?”
“Listen,” Ehmish said.
Kern shook his head. His mane of frosted hair swept at his shoulders. “That’s not fear.” And it wasn’t a hunting call either. That he would have recognized after so many months of the wolf’s company. “That’s anger. Someone is driving Frostpaw to rage.”
“Listen!” Ehmish said again, more forcefully.
He held his chin up and head tipped back, as if sampling the moist breeze. But he wasn’t tasting the air. He had his eyes closed as he strained for some distant sound.
But Kern heard nothing but the scuffling and grinding shuffles of footfall on debris and grunts of exertion as more of his warriors clambered over the treacherous footing. The tapping of swollen raindrops against rock. The slap of leather against flesh. Ringing steel.
Steel!
His eyes snapping open, Kern saw a similar look of recognition on the faces of Daol and Ossian. It was there. Right at the edge of their hearing, carried on the air as a kind of distant echo over the hard rock flow. Steel clashing against steel. And—he thought—the shouts of men and the screaming of a wounded animal. Something that would upset a predator like the dire wolf.
The sounds of battle, and prey. Which usually meant Vanir raiders and clansmen fighting for their lives. Somewhere ahead on the wide lava flow.
No time for plans and not much idea of what they would find regardless, Kern stood and waved at his warriors who were yet struggling forward over the uneasy trail. No sign of the Aquilonians, and no time to go searching for them. He slashed his arm wildly overhead, getting the attention of those he could. They stopped, stood, and watched. He raised a fist overhead, held it a moment, then stabbed his hand forward in the direction of the danger. There were no answering calls or cries. But everyone suddenly picked up the pace, scrabbling forward at their best speed. Staying low and fast as they raced after the leaders. Hands slapping at sword hilts and shields coming off shoulders.
The hunt was on.
IT DIDN’T LAST long. Another league, perhaps. Sound had a strange way of echoing over the rock flow. Distant one moment. Up close the next. Kern knew before they ever saw the battle that there were no Cimmerians up ahead. South men. Aquilonians, perhaps, by the shouts and curses h
e recognized.
Then he stumbled over a steam vent, the scalding jet burning him right behind his left-leg greave. He jumped aside, getting his shield between his leg and the terrible heat.
The lava flow wasn’t as old, or as dead, as they had believed. The ground fog he had spotted in the distance was steam as it turned out. Drifting out of cracks and, at times, seeping from porous rock faces as if the land itself threatened to catch fire. He recognized the touch of sulfur from time spent in Callaugh. But there were no hot springs nearby. Only a scarred, half-formed landscape that had lost even the small touch of growth of only a short way back.
Rain continued to plop down around and against them in fat, irregular drops. But it brought little in the way of relief. The severe heat radiating from the ground had less to do with soaking in the day’s warmth and more, Kern suspected, with underground activity. He had never seen any of the fire mountains in the Teeth pour lava onto the ground, though he had heard stories and tales from western travelers, in which such a sight was more common. Of liquid rock, glowing orange and bright as it pushed out from deep, deep below where—many said—some gods still wrestled for power. He had never paid much heed to the stories, though, as such struggles were beneath Crom and, therefore, unimportant to Cimmeria.
Or so he had believed then.
But the reddish glow ahead, the shrill brays of a wounded horse and curses of men’s pain, made him wonder again about such easy declarations. Often, he was finding, things mattered more to the Cimmerian clans than most bothered to think, or admit. And it was easy to feel betrayed by that loss of certainty. Of safety.
Then he led his pack of rogues over a sharp-edged crest, and there was no time to worry about such things anymore. A wave of heat slammed over the exposed ridge with a baking intensity, robbing breath and stinging the eyes with a touch of sulfur. There was barely time to drink in the sight of the nightmare spread around them before the Vanir began shouting for their deaths.
“Crom’s blood,” Ehmish whispered, piling into the back of a tight knot forming around Kern.
Age of Conan: Cimmerian Rage: Legends of Kern, Volume 2 Page 7