Blood of Wolves (10 page)

Ehmish called for the others before they had swallowed more than a few bites. Accustomed to wait for his elders, the youth had scouted a quick circle around the slaughter site. Silently, he pointed out the two separate trails leading away from the camp. One southeast, and the other suddenly turning hard into the north.

“Which one?” Aodh asked for the rest of them. He didn't speak aloud the common fear. If they chose wrong, and the prisoners had been taken a different direction, there would be no hope of rescue.

Reave frowned. “We follow them both?”

Kern shook his head. “We split up, and we might as well have not come this far together.”

He ran alongside the southeast trail for a hundred paces, then did the same heading north. The crows watched him from the trees, commenting—or simply complaining—loudly. He wished for Daol's expertise in reading trail sign. Or Hydallan's. It looked to him as if the larger party, and the remaining horses, went north. Maybe a half dozen to ten had turned southeast.

Wallach nodded when he said as much. “Larger group went a-north, yea. Following a line along the Snowy River country.” The man didn't know as much hunting lore as Daol or even Kern, but as a seasoned warrior he knew how to gauge the signs of men on the move. “Southern group traveling smaller and faster.”

Someone had to choose. Everyone looked at everyone else. Eventually, they all looked at Kern.

“North,” he said, sounding decisive. He didn't need them squabbling about it after. Handing a small cut of meat to Ehmish, swallowing another shard of uncooked horseflesh himself, he choked it down and swallowed against the taste of blood. “We go north. You don't move light or fast with prisoners.” You especially didn't race for a difficult pass with such baggage in tow. It made sense to him.

Reave hesitated. “If you're wrong . . .”

“I'm not wrong.”

He couldn't be. Too many lives depended on his decision.

He also did not point out his second line of reason. That the smaller force was likely setting up a second ambush, thinking to take another bite at Cul's host. Smaller this time; meant to hit, grab, and run rather than stand and fight. You didn't haul prisoners on such a task as that, either. Not even for sport.

They headed north. And by midday, caught their first sign of the Vanir raiders by daylight.

Kern had jogged ahead, with Ehmish not far behind. Farther back, Reave led the others. Kern's breath came ragged, and his throat tasted raw from exertion. His mind was beginning to narrow down, concentrating only on a point farther up the trail as fatigue finally claimed its due. The war axe in his hand weighed heavily, as did the broadsword across his back. He should have dropped the sword, but could not. It had been Burok Bear-slayer's. Nor could he part with the war axe, thinking he would show better skill with the chopping weapon than he had with the long blade.

Concentrating on such thoughts, however, he nearly missed the movement ahead, and might have given away the pursuit if he had.

Kern dropped down into the snow, rolling to one side to get behind the skeletal shrub of a red bellberry bush. He stared through brown branches and a few blackened leaves that clung stubbornly from the previous fall, and counted twelve . . . fifteen . . . eighteen shadows exposed on a ridgeline not a league distant.

Eighteen!
Had the southern band circled back to meet them?

Then he realized that at least four of them had to be the prisoners. In fact, trying to gauge them at a distance, he picked out a line of six figures. One was shorter than the others (Daol?), and one looked a mite leaner (Maev?). They followed in single file, very close together. Roped or chained in a line.

“How many?” Ehmish whispered at Kern's side, causing him to jump. He had seen Kern roll away from the trail and approached so stealthily the man had not even felt him there until he spoke.

“Twelve,” Kern decided, heart pounding. He pointed out the slave line to the youth. “Our kin,” he said.

“Now what do we do?”

That was the question. One to which Kern had only the beginnings of a plan. He sent Ehmish back to warn Reave to slow up, letting the raiders move farther ahead of them, then waiting longer in case a rear guard had been left on the ridge to watch for pursuers. They took the time to eat what little food they had left, harboring their strength, then set after the Vanir more carefully this time, not wanting to draw attention to themselves until they were ready.

Reave was all for an all-out attack just after nightfall. “Ox,” Desagrena muttered under her breath.

Aodh had a hunting bow and a handful of arrows. Kern carried the war axe. Every man and woman also carried a sword of some type. But it was the wood hatchet that Kern put to work first, cutting a long straight sapling and shedding its branches. Another hour's work, waiting for twilight to pass, let him cut a half dozen short handles. Without any rope, they used strips of cloth cut from Kern's blanket to fasten the handles to the sapling at intervals of one arm's length.

Desa cut small, tough strips from the horsehide they had picked up. With these they tied bundles of twigs, dead brush, and tinder, and more woolen cloth around the end of each short pole. Crude torches that might burn for a handful of minutes if they were lucky.

Cimmerians did not count on luck.

Darkness was not absolute, not with the broken cloud cover. A waxing moon shed silver light over the white-blanketed land. After a day of welcoming back the sun, Kern cursed the poor conditions for a midnight raid. Against the silver-white pale of the snow, five fast-moving shadows were sure to be seen.

“Timing will be important,” he told his small band of warriors. They crouched down over a piece of ground cleared of snow. Kern used the tip of his knife to dig his plan into the earth. He drew a rough circle for the Vanir campsite, then put a row of six small x's on the eastern side, between camp and the mountains.

Young Ehmish listened, wide-eyed, as his part in the action was explained.

“They will come for you quickly, and quietly as they can. Stay alert! We can't spare anyone just to guard your back. You have to decide on your own when to run, and you have to run fast and far.” Kern caught the youth's gaze, held it. “Don't make me have to come back for you.”

Ehmish nodded.

“That leaves the rest of us to take the Vanir campsite.” He drew a small arrow on the southern side of the Vanir, and four circles on the western approach. “Nay telling how many will be left behind. Enough to guard the prisoners and defend the camp.”

“Four, mebbe six, was me,” Wallach Graybeard said, chewing on the long hairs of his moustache.

“So we might have an advantage.” Kern nodded. He pointed at the arrow with the tip of his blade. “Aodh, you get a head start on the rest of us. Work your way within bowshot. Be ready to cause trouble and make sure you're not shooting Daol or one of the others full of arrows. You will also be closest to Ehmish, and it's your call if you need to go help him or come down after us.” He waited until the other man caught his gaze, and the meaningful glance toward Ehmish, and nodded.

It was one thing to impress the boy with the seriousness of his part. It was quite another to abandon him out there.

Kern unstoppered his skin and drank a long pull from the leather-tasting snowmelt, swishing it around in his mouth as Hydallan had taught him long ago. Best way to take the edge off a thirst. Swallowed.

“We give Ehmish a few minutes to pull the raiders apart, Aodh the chance to stir up the camp, then we hit them hard as we can.” He drew a line from the four small circles into the Vanir camp. “If you spot the slave line, and its rope, cut the line and throw someone your knife. Keep them with you! Remember, none of them know our plans or how we'll match up afterward.”

Desagrena brushed locks of oily hair from her face, and nodded. “We grab what we can of their food stores and supplies, and we break away before the rest of the Vanir return. They will expect us to head back south.” She lifted her gaze into the heavens, and found the Pole Star peeking out at the edge of a cloud. “We can do this, Kern Wolf-Eye.”

“For our friends,” Kern said gravely, “we don't have a choice.”

 

EHMISH CERTAINLY DIDN'T have a choice. He'd given up that right when he'd stood up for Kern Wolf-Eye, against his chieftain, and volunteered to run north with the rest of them. After their kin.

After Maev.

A stupid fish. That's what it came back to. Kern giving him back the trout, which Ehmish had snagged from the basket-trap set in the stream's freezing waters. Telling the young man to give it directly to Maev. Ehmish knew there was something wrong then, with Kern heading south, but the strong gaze of Kern's wolflike eyes had held him, pressed in on him, and (to be honest) had basically frightened him into it.

Maev accepted the fish with sad eyes and a wry smile. If it was a joke, Ehmish hadn't seen it. What he had seen was that it was important to Burok Bear-slayer's daughter. Her approval of the gesture had certainly outweighed Cul's dark glower, and settled around Ehmish's shoulders like a mantle of armor.

Where was that armor now?

As the moon slipped behind a thick pile of clouds, the moment Kern had told him to wait for, Ehmish struck the flint he'd been given with the haft of his knife, chipping sparks into a small pile of tinder. When it caught, he quickly dipped one end of a small blanket strip into the brief flame.

Using the burning cloth to light all six torches, he touched off the tinder and twigs Desa had tied to the poles. Shouldering the sapling, feeling its weight press down into his shoulder, Ehmish balanced the long pole carefully to keep it from dipping down and snagging the ground. The bark was smooth except where the hatchet had skinned off a branch. Pitch, smelling of winter's slow-moving tar and fresh-cut wood, stained his hands. The torches crackled with lusty strength. He hadn't thought they would provide so much light. It suddenly felt as if every raider in the northern valley could see him. Ehmish's instincts told him to run. Far and fast, as Kern had told him. But that would come later.

Right now, his job was to draw the raiders out of their campsite, pretending to be the entire rescue party moving by torchlight.

He didn't feel like part of the rescue. He felt like a large target. “Imagine what it will look like from the raider camp,” Kern had told him, and he tried.

Much smaller than the raiders' campfire, which had been a small lick of orange flame in the distance before they scattered their embers for the night. Ehmish stared at the three torches burning in front of him, how they dipped and wavered as he staggered forward through the thinning forest. And three more behind. Six sparks of light, dripping ashes and glowing cinders. To the Vanir, they had to look tiny and distant, carried by six individual hands.

And Kern had imagined it all without the aid of any fire for comparison. Impressive. But Ehmish still felt as if he'd been stuck out on a shaky tree limb, trying to keep his balance over a very long fall.

He wondered if that was how it always felt, to be a man.

Not that he was one yet. Or was ever likely to be, with his mind wandering. It was nearly too late, in fact, by the time Ehmish sensed the raiders approaching. A glowing cinder landed on the back of his neck, stinging him just above the collar of his winter cloak. It sharpened his focus for a moment, and suddenly he felt the eyes on him from somewhere far out in the darkness. Kern had warned him . . . quiet and quick. But the torches were barely half-burned when he heard the first stick break in the stillness. Somewhere up ahead!

Was it time? Should he give it another moment? There were no more sounds to warn him. Ehmish knew he'd have to rely on his instincts. And every one of them screamed at him.
Run!

As he'd been instructed, first the young man ducked down and back up, bouncing the long pole hard against his shoulder a few times, causing the torches to waver as the blanket ties loosened. One of them up front twisted over, falling to the ground. Looking like it had been doused against the snow. Close enough! Ehmish dumped over the entire contraption, putting the torch heads into the snow and making sure each one had hissed out its last breath of life.

Darkness plunged in, wrapping around him like a smothering blanket. His eyes had grown too used to the torchlight! Kern had warned him to squint, and stare at the ground more than the burning brands. He'd forgotten.

Shuffling to one side, eager to put some distance between himself and the raiders' attention, Ehmish tripped over a log half-buried in the blanket of light snow. It pitched him over, dropping him to hands and knees.

The frozen touch of the ground stung at his exposed fingers. Crawling forward, near panic, the young man cast about wildly for any sign of danger. Branches scraped at his knees and he smelled scorched snow from where the torches had fallen, but he heard no sign of movement and saw no shadows against the dark backdrop.

Think!
It was Kern's voice in his head, taking hold and thrusting the panic aside.
What is going on right now?

The raiders saw the lights doused. They would pause, going to ground in case their quarry had acted on impulse rather than out of fear. So they weren't moving either!

But they were in front of him. Behind him, too, likely. Ehmish was supposed to run east, but crashing blindly through the underbrush and snapping off dry branches was a good way to bring every one of them after him. Move carefully. Move quietly. Those were warrior's ways.

Fortunately for him, Ehmish was not a warrior. Yet.

With roars of challenge, the raiders suddenly leaped forward from hiding, crashing in from three sides. Ehmish stood and bolted east, the only way open to him. His eyes had adjusted enough that he avoided the dark pillars of the trees, though branches snagged at his cloak and whipped at his face. He ended up running with hands outstretched to protect his eyes.