And a dark presence loomed in the back of his mind, but he turned his back on it. Moved away.
Toward the lodge hall’s front. And his duty to his clan.
The closer he came to it, the stronger the scent of terrible death. Open bowels. Congealed blood. It choked him, reaching down into his lungs with a foulness that would not soon release him. The remaining door continued to bump back against the wall. From inside came creaks and dry groans, as if restless spirits haunted the darkness, but there was no easy glance to discover what awaited them. Shadows filled the entry, with the gloomy daylight barely falling inside by more than a good, long stride.
Nothing his warriors had seen recently was going to compare, he knew. He felt a warm sweat break out over the back of his neck, and from beneath his arms.
And with a final, hitching breath, stepped inside.
NO ONE STEPPED forward right away to follow Kern Wolf-Eye into the lodge hall.
Brig Tall-Wood stood near the front of the pack. Blinking rainwater from his eyes. Shifting from one foot to the other, churning fresh mud beneath his feet as he watched the frost-haired leader get swallowed up by the darkness within. His sword remained naked in his hand, nearly forgotten after the outcasts had found no Vanir to challenge. It hung toward the ground with the flat of the blade slapping against his deerskin boot. Marking time. Counting off heartbeats.
Inside, he heard Wolf-Eye moving about slowly. Feet dragging against the hard-beaten earth. There was no trap. Obviously. No one had expected one after finding Gaud deserted by all but the dead. Still and all, no one else moved in to see the final horror waiting for them in the onetime lodge of Burok Bear-slayer, then Cul Chieftain. No one wanted to know for certain what had happened to their kin. The ones not found murdered in their huts and homes.
Brig’s brother. His father. Raven-haired Maev, who had been meant for Cul Chieftain after her father’s death. He wanted to know what had happened to them. Needed to know. Yet his feet stayed as firmly rooted to the ground as if nailed there by cold, iron spikes.
Then he heard the first snick of a short blade. And a heavy scrape as something shifted inside, or possibly fell over slowly.
No one moved.
Kern still had not called.
Chieftain’s privilege. The same tradition that gave a clan’s leader first bite from a roasting spit of meat, or first words at a ceremonial fire or festival. Were they all showing Kern that honor? Even Brig, the man once set to kill Kern Wolf-Eye?
He choked back a startled laugh as he realized that, yes, by unspoken consent they all waited for permission. Kern’s hold on the small pack of outcasts—on him—seemed complete.
Never by Crom’s long sword would Brig Tall-Wood have thought such could come to pass. Kern had grown up within Gaud as an outsider. The man with a touch of winter in his bones. The blood of wolves. And in the dregs of winter, when the village teetered on the brink of starvation and ruin, when Cul Chieftain ascended after Burok Bear-slayer, Brig had not been surprised when Cul confided in the Tall-Woods his intent to rid the clan of the pariah.
It happened during the funeral march, taking Burok’s body to the Field of the Chiefs. Cul cut Kern loose, banishing him from clan and kin. Then news had come back, first by Morne, then Cul himself, returned early. Not only had Vanir raiders thwarted Cul’s plan to show respect for Burok Bear-slayer, but Kern had returned to aid his former clan, then had run off after Maev and the other captives. That was when Cul ordered Brig to track after Kern, to bring Maev back to him safely, if she were rescued.
And, above all else, to kill Kern Wolf-Eye.
“See him dead,” Cul had ordered. “Bring me the blade or arrow stained with his blood.”
None of them—Cul, Talbot, Morne, or Brig—had ever trusted the strange, feral-eyed man. Casting him away was only in the clan’s best interest, and to send Brig to finish the job properly, to end the disgrace and plague of Kern’s life for all time, had seemed a reasonable command. Then.
Now anger welled up inside Brig, unfocused, making him wonder if the death of Gaud was some kind of punishment for failing his chieftain. For leaving Kern Wolf-Eye alive when he’d had chances—so many chances—to put an arrow into the outcast leader. And once, in fact, he’d even saved Kern’s life, when the frost-haired man had been seized by a snow serpent over the Pass of Blood. He’d stayed his hand time and again, seeing in Kern a measure worth respecting. A leader. Reluctant, certainly. Doing his best to survive, but also putting his life behind the welfare of the pack.
Was it wrong to respect an enemy? Even admire one?
It was Brig’s acknowledgment of this near-complete reversal that finally moved him. Blade out and ready to meet whatever he might find inside the lodge, including Kern, he strode through the open door and into the darkness.
It was darker inside than the lodge hall had any right to be. Not with the door standing half-open, and gray light peeking around the edges of shuttered windows or filtering down through the shattered thatch roof. His eyes were slow to adjust.
Or mayhap he just did not want to see.
Snick. And then another heavy, sliding sound.
The scent of death assailed him. Much stronger than the bare hints of blood and offal that had filtered outside. A stench of raw sewage and drying blood and that greasy, spoiled-meat odor that only came from a dead body. Shadows jumped out at Brig: piling up in the corners, swinging from the overhead rafters. A dry groan scraped across his mind, raising the small hairs on the back of his neck.
He kicked into something soft and wet. It stopped him.
Fortunately, just in time. Before he ran headlong into the blood-encrusted body suspended before him, hung from the overhead beams by a short length of rope tying the feet together.
Stunned, Brig stared into an open chest cavity, brutally hacked apart to let entrails and heart and lungs spill down in a rotted tangle. Arms dangled toward the ground. No hands at the end of them. No way to recognize the face, which was covered in the spill of gore.
Then Brig looked down, and saw his foot stepping into the bloody offal spilled over the beaten-earth floor.
He stepped back and away, his shoulder brushing hard against another body hanging nearby. The rope tying its feet together scraped and groaned against the beams as the body swayed. Brig spun around, sword coming up and ready before him as he jumped back, farther into the lodge. Stepping back onto a small, loose object, he saw that he had stepped on someone’s severed hand and, with a sharp gasp of rotten air, shifted aside, between two more bodies, glancing about wildly as he checked one way, then another—bodies all around him—looking for the threat, the enemy, the twist of ghastly shadows leaping and dancing at the edges of his vision.
SNICK!
An arm’s length away, one of the hanging bodies slumped toward the ground. Wrestled down by a large shadow standing to one side of it. Having already cut through the bit of rope tied between the ankles, Kern let the body fall as carefully as he could, scraping against the floor.
“Knife’s easier,” was all the other man said.
Brig fought his short, hitching breaths back under control. Realized he stood in a fighting crouch, broadsword raised between himself and Kern. Never a better moment. The wolf-eyed leader with nothing more than his belt knife in hand. Hardly looking his direction. A quick thrust, and a twist to core open the wound and let the cold one’s blood spill out among those who had suffered here. And Brig would make good on his chieftain’s final command to him. Didn’t matter that it had finally rubbed raw against Brig’s personal sense of honor. Or that the command hardly mattered now.
Gaud was dead.
The clan was dead.
Someone had to pay for that!
Kern gave Brig a sidelong glance as he shuffled past, within easy reach of the naked blade. The man’s golden eyes caught a shaft of gray light just right, sparked in the gloom as if backlit by an unnatural fire. Brig remembered how strong Wolf-Eye’s night vision was. Wondered ho
w much better he was able to see the eviscerated and tortured bodies of his one-time kin and clansfolk.
Kern stood before the next body. A man who had been taller than Kern in life. A big man. Broad-shouldered and heavily muscled. The outcast leader used his foot to hook over a heavy stool, then stepped on it to better reach the rope bound between both ankles.
“Help me.”
Brig stood his ground, sword held at the ready. “Why?” he asked. Teeth clenched so tight that his jaw ached. Why help Kern? That was what he asked, but not what he meant. His real question, was why he should not end the pain he had lived with for several months now and fulfill his chieftain’s last command?
But Kern answered simply, and directly, as usual.
“Because,” he said, knife held up near the binding rope, his other arm wrapped about the legs of the hanging corpse, “this was your brother.”
13
ROS-CRANA PROWLED THE mighty lodge hall of T’hule Chieftain, feeling an invisible blade at her back. Always glancing over one shoulder and with an eye on any shadow as if expecting the dark terror of Grimnir to come charging out if she relaxed her guard. Even for a moment.
Not that Clan Conarch had left many shadows to explore on this festive eve. Bright cooking fires blazed on no less than six hearths inside the impressive lodge. And along the walls, dozens of torches snapped and danced merrily in sconces backed by shields of polished silver. A display of the clan’s wealth, yea, but a practical one as well. Besides protecting the lodge’s timber walls from searing heat, the silver face of each shield glowed golden orange, like a dusk sun, reflecting more of a torch’s light and heat back into the open room where warriors of no less than five northwest clans gathered to welcome the arrival of spring’s first merchant.
As chieftain of Clan Callaugh, protector of all paths south, custom had demanded that she escort Tahmat’s caravan to Conarch. And she had. Expecting T’hule to shelter and feast her small band. And he was. In fine form.
In fact, Clan Conarch had rarely hosted a larger conclave that Ros-Crana could remember, and then only in a time of war. The lodge hall was warm to the point of smothering. Men and women toasted each other over large mugs of sour mead—all that was left from Conarch’s winter stores. If the drink left something to be desired, though, T’hule Chieftain had made up for it with a fine table. The green smoke of cooking fires mixed deliciously with the scents of charred venison basted in a mixture of oil and wine, and flat cakes spiced with hoarded nutmeg.
Bones rattled inside tin cups as a thick circle of warriors diced for honor, or trinkets, or—for two men both feeling incredibly rich—a finely honed blade against a fist-sized chunk of polished amber.
Along another wall rose a roar of drunken cheers as one of the caravan’s Gunderman guards managed to bounce a small pebble into a metal cup of mead, forcing his opponent to quaff it. A favorite Cimmerian drinking game.
All seemed to be in order. Relaxed.
Then why did her hands grasp at the empty air, as if wishing to be filled with the weight of her shield and spear?
“Ros-Crana!”
T’hule Chieftain waved her over to his table, set against the back of the room on a stage of well-fitted flagstones. A small cooking fire burned before the stage and table, serving the chieftain’s company only. The stone was smooth and hard beneath her soft-soled boots. The eyes that gazed at her, dark beneath craggy brows, were not a bit less yielding.
T’hule sat on a heavy stool at the middle of the long table, hosting the Nemedian merchants as well as three other chieftains from nearby clan villages. T’hule was a brawny, well-muscled man, with large, plate-sized hands well callused from years of sword use. He had dark hair tied back in ropelike braids and eyes of piercing, sky blue that never seemed to blink enough. Older than Ros-Crana by a double handful of summers, at least, but still not a touch of gray in his hair or the stubble at his chin.
A strong man. A strong chieftain.
He used the tip of his eating knife to point out an open spot at the table. “Woman, you have not stopped to rest since the fires were set. Like a nervous wolf with your pacing.” He glanced aside then, and covered the awkward silence by spearing a hunk of venison from a nearby platter.
As if either of them needed reminding of Kern Wolf-Eye.
The tale told by Tahmat—of his rescue and sudden abandonment—had been enough for most.
Then there was also the raider her men had taken alive two nights before, on their way to Conarch, the man crashing through the woods on his way north as if the Furies themselves chased after him. Ranting. Raving about the night-born Ymir-egh who attacked at Venarium, and the golden master whom they all had failed. Vengeance came on swift winds, he promised, a madness in his eyes as he jumped at every gust of wind, every light breeze.
Ros-Crana would have tried questioning him once more, then put him to justice the next morning, and have done with it. But the man’s screams and a maddened banshee howl had woke her that night and sent everyone scrambling for weapons and looking for the attack.
The Callaughnan chieftain was one of the few close enough to the prisoner who thought she might have seen the shadow that attacked him. The piece of night, breaking off into a swirl of wind and foulness and black, folding shadow, stretching wings around his head while a formless head stabbed at him as a raven pecking at his eyes. The Vanir screamed himself to death in a moment more. Not a mark on him. Only wide, staring eyes, frozen in fear.
T’hule Chieftain had waved aside her story as one of a night’s sudden fear. But Tahmat’s tale, retold for the Conarch lodge, made her wonder again what had happened in Venarium. And where Kern might be now.
Thirteen days! Nearly a fortnight. Still, Ros-Crana could not make herself forget the small band of outcasts. To say that she had grown accustomed to the wolf-eyed one was putting it too lightly. Not with her memory of the bathing pools paining her like a raw and open wound. But there was something more to it as well. A satisfaction she had felt, knowing that Kern fought against the northern raiders. A trust she had given that welcomed his blade at her side . . . and a void now that he had gone.
By Crom! Why should such a man bother her so?
“I don’t feel like resting, T’hule Chieftain. Mayhap none of us should be, resting or feasting, with the Vanir and their Ymirish masters still raping our land.”
Well, there it was. Out in the open, as any problem between clans or kin should be, to be slain, then cast aside.
“Vanir!” A warrior farther along T’hule’s table said it as a foul curse. “They raid us before.” He said it as if that was the final answer to three years of raiding.
Another agreed. “Yea. We always beat them in the end,” she said. “Drive them back into their icy prison.” There were growls and nods all around.
But not everyone was of so easy a mind.
“When was the last time Vanir raiders struck so hard?” another of the minor chieftains asked. “Villages destroyed? Clans sent fleeing?”
“The valleymen. They said it was just as bad across the mountains. Mebbe worse.”
“Worse?” T’hule set a massive fist against his table, half rose. He did not beat on the heavy wood for attention. It was simply given to him. Commanded by him. “Soft-handed valleymen can’t defend their own villages, it is no skin off our back. We faced Grimnir, himself, these three years. And we held. We always hold.” He looked down the table, avoiding Ros-Crana’s direct gaze. “Nay enemy challenges Clan Conarch!”
It was back again. The invisible knife, pricking at the back of her neck with its cold, steel tip, prodding her into line. The legacy from her brother, Narach Chieftain. Clan Callaugh had always lived under the subtle—and at times, not so subtle—threat from their northern neighbor. Conarch was strong. It relied on the Callaughnan, as one ally does another, but only so long as it benefited.
Only so long as it suited.
“Twenty-two kinsmen I sent you, T’hule Chieftain.” Ros-Crana dropped
a casual hand to the war sword belted at her left hip. The blade had been peace-bonded, with a leather stay tying it into the sheath. The thinnest veneer of civility. It would be the work of a heartbeat to snap the leather tie and draw blade. “Twenty-two who never came home. Do you insult that sacrifice?”
A trio of pike-bearing guards stood behind T’hule Chieftain. One raised his weapon and held it across his front, gripped in both hands. Ready. Ros-Crana walked a dangerous line, as close as one could come to challenging the region’s most powerful chieftain, and in his own home! Everyone at the table knew it, save perhaps Tahmat, who used his teeth to tear a sliver of meat off a skewer. The soft-bellied merchant had no clear grasp of the moment.
T’hule’s eyes glinted dangerously. He spread his large hands against the table and pushed himself up to stand across from her. Picking up his eating knife, he took the last mouthful of meat from it, scraping the blade clean with white, even teeth. He chewed slowly while pretending to consider her words. All the while waving the knife in her direction.
It could have been simple carelessness.
Ros-Crana did not believe that for a single heartbeat.
“Nay,” T’hule Chieftain, finally said. “I have not forgotten the aid of the Callaughnan. Nor that of any clan.”
It was not an apology. But it was careful. At times one had to be, in Cimmeria, where the line between insult and injury was thin, thin.
And it was enough for Ros-Crana. For this moment. She hooked a stool out from an empty spot at T’hule’s table and crouched over it, sitting with careful attention being paid to the chieftain’s hands and to the closest of the Conarch warriors.
He relaxed. Slowly, and with a deliberate effort, retaking his seat to preside over the feast. A moment later he was laughing again, but with a forced cheer now, as he kept a watchful eye on Ros-Crana and those few others who had unsettled the table. She was careful not to stare too openly, and simply measured T’hule Chieftain’s darkening mood with quick glances and by the press of the silent knife.
Age of Conan: Cimmerian Rage: Legends of Kern, Volume 2 Page 14