Blood of Wolves (14 page)

With his long knife, Hydallan hacked off three chunks of meat and threw two of them to the clansmen who followed. Garret wasn't a surprise to see. A man nearly as old as Hydallan, and an old friend of the tracker. But the third man, looking sullen and trapped, was a shock.

Brig Tall-Wood.

The young warrior carried a pheasant by the feet, neck broken and flopping limply against his leg. He tossed it to Daol, refusing to meet the other man's eyes.

Kern wasn't going to let it go so easily. As everyone began to break their fast, he asked, “I thought you were watching the village?”

The young man shrugged. “Tabbot can handle that. Cul wanted to know if Maev'd been found.”

“He sent you? Sent all of you?”

Hydallan snorted, having overheard. “Sent Brig, here, when Garret and I walked out on him. He can carry his own stubborn ass up to the northern ranges. Or he can plant himself until spring, like you said.” He chewed silently for a moment. “Don't matter to me now, neither way.”

Apparently, Cul and Morne had both returned to the village, ready to draft as many men as would be necessary to make the pass and continue with Burok Bear-slayer to the Field of the Chiefs. The story came out about the raiders, and Kern's return. And how Kern had gone against the clan to lead away more good men on a fool's mission.

“I think he was just angry for not going after you hisself,” Hydallan said, speaking to Maev. “Which is why he unbent enough to throw Brig, here, in with us.” He chewed. Swallowed. “We moved all day and most of last night. Figured you all for the Snowy River country. Then we struck a few trails, all heading the same direction, and thought we'd follow up. That dark fella, he threw me for a turn. But still weren't sure you weren't no Vanir camp until Kern showed that stark mane o' his.”

“Don't take that for certain, next time,” Daol warned his father. Though he held off mentioning anything more about the frost-man—the Ymirish—until they had a moment alone.

“Not going to be much left to return home to, at this pace.” Reave glanced at Maev.

Kern shrugged aside Reave's comment. “Doesn't matter. We still need to get the others back, and we need to find Aodh and Ehmish.” The entire camp had assembled around him like a hunting pack around its leader. As good a time as any. “Our fallback was always Taur. The village can't be more than half a day at a good run.” Hydallan looked up in the sky, considering, then nodded. Kern continued, singling out the five former prisoners, excluding Daol, who had made his choice to stay. “We can break up now, with the five of you heading southwest, along Hydallan's back track . . .”

Maev hesitated. Then, “I'd like to know the boy is all right. We can head home through Taur.” Her voice grew stronger, more certain, as she mapped out a plan for herself at least. “Refugees who came through over the winter said they were well prepared for any raiders. Maybe we can learn something.”

Nodding, Kern continued. “And maybe we can pick up some trail sign on the Vanir we ran across, or the second raiding party they were going to meet. If they are in the area, Clan Taur is a good target. It'll draw them like metal shavings to a lodestone.”

It was Brig who looked at him sidelong. “What are you thinking, Wolf-Eye?”

“That we might track them. Hunt them. Catch the northerners with another nighttime attack.” More gazes looked to Kern, and several had a hungry gleam in their eyes that he recognized. “After two years of their preying on Cimmeria, I wouldn't mind taking some back for ourselves.”

To that, there was a chorus of answering nods. No matter what else separated Kern from the others, there was still a great deal of common ground. Which reminded him of his second reason.

“And I . . .” Kern almost didn't say, but they had the right to know. “I have a personal stake in this now.”

And no one save perhaps Hydallan—either there or at the village—was likely to confirm what Kern suspected after last night. He doubted anyone knew for certain, if his own mother had half the brains and determination that Maev possessed. So his answers, if there were any to be had, lay elsewhere.

“Break camp,” he ordered after an awkward silence, feeling uneasy at having to direct such a large and growing group.

They fell to work without complaint.

Wallach found Kern rolling up his own bedroll, using a short length of rope to make the sling that he'd use to carry it. “Lost your war axe back there, didn't you?” he asked, motioning Kern toward a small collection of salvaged gear.

No need to mention the how or why of it. Wallach had been there.

“It wasn't as comfortable in my hands as I thought it might be,” Kern admitted. “Too large and awkward.”

“Because you aren't trying to chop wood. It's meant to kill a man. Fast. Brutal.” The veteran warrior might have a lot of gray shooting through his beard and what was left of his hair, but he had seen enough fighting over his four decades to know what he was talking about. “It's also meant for a bigger man. Like Reave.”

Kern nodded. “My hand wasn't much more comfortable around the hilt of a broadsword. Maybe I should stick to throwing rocks.” As humor, it fell very flat. Kern hadn't really meant to be funny. His lack in the previous night's battle worried him.

“Comfort comes with time. For now, work on muscle.”

He bent to a small stack of weapons, all the extras after the others had taken their preferences. It was a short arming sword. Hardly better than a knife. The kind of weapon you gave one of the village youths when you knew he wasn't in danger of cutting off a finger through stupidity.

Holding it in one large hand, Kern thought the blade might snap just by staring at it. “You want me to use this?”

“If you hope to stand against a seasoned Vanir, you'll learn to use it fast. Skill will have to make up for brawn right now. Now listen.” Wallach took the blade away from Kern. In his hand, it looked like a natural extension of his arm. “You don't slash with a short sword. You stab. Like this.” He took a few sharp jabs at the air.

Kern took the weapon back, tried it out. Then took a hesitant cut. “It feels better to slash with it.”

“Yes, but you are going to jab. All day. You keep that in one hand or the other, and practice. No putting it in the sheath.” In fact, after a second's thought, Wallach took the sheath and belt and rolled it into his own bedroll, keeping it from Kern.

Kern stared at the blade. A bare arm's length of good, sharpened steel. So small and light next to what he remembered of Burok's sword. He took another few pokes with it. Shrugged, then rolled his broadsword into the blankets and felt pad to give the roll some weight.

“Divide up the load,” he ordered. “Everyone shares the food. Everyone shares the weight.”

There was a solid pack load for each. Even without the butchered horseflesh, his small band and the escaping prisoners had carried away more than a fair share of stores from the Vanir. Enough for weeks, if properly rationed. Adding Hydallen and the other two barely scratched into the supplies, and both Daol and his father were master hunters. They could provide.

But an hour on the trail, when asked quietly about Kern's parentage, Hydallan provided nothing more than a shrug and information most of which Kern already knew.

“Your ma came to us from another clan already with child. During a good summer, so Gaud accepted her. And she brought a gift of blue-iron weapons from the Broken Leg Lands. Cul's war sword . . . that's the only one left. The others were traded away over the years. Then she died somewhere near your ninth summer if'n I recall.”

Close enough. Kern didn't remember for certain, but figured Hydallan had it within a year or two.

“If'n she told anyone, 'twasn't me.” He shrugged. “Does it really matter at this point, pup?”

Kern didn't answer right away, thinking it through. He slashed at some brush with the arming sword as he continued his exercise. Seeing Wallach's baleful glare, he went back to stabbing with it instead. His wrist ached from holding the sword on a tight line, and he had blisters forming on his hand in the few places not callused hard from years of swinging an axe.

“It shouldn't,” he finally admitted. “But right now it does.” By Crom, that sounded like something a Hyper-borean might say! Southlanders preferred to talk so much. Cimmerians acted. “I guess it feels like I should
do
something.”

“This ain't enough for you?” Hydallan swept his gaze over the snowy hills. “Crom's pike, Kern. What do you consider an active day?”

Whatever it might be, they began to see signs around midmorning. At the first burned-out settlement.

Sitting on a shallow river, overlooking a slice of cleared land where oats or turnips might grow over summer, the ruins were little more than a foundation of stacked river rock and a few charred timbers that had been used once for framework. The smell of wet charcoal hung in the air. The river's quiet murmur was all that disturbed the silence.

Clearly the Vanir had been through here, though sometime before the last snowfall apparently. What fresh tracks they found were in singles and pairs, cutting through the woods, then—upon sight of the ruined home—quickly veering away again.

It wasn't long after that Daol spotted the greasy smear of black smoke in the sky. The way it fanned out, rising in a blanket rather than a stream, had them fearing a forest fire. Except it did not spread. Hydallan watched it carefully while everyone else checked weapons. He measured the wind and waited to see if the fire marched along with the northerly breeze. It did not.

“What kind of fire ignores the play of the winds?” Daol asked. He wasn't old enough to have seen this before.

Hydallan and Garret. Wallach Graybeard. They knew. Wallach curled fingers into his beard, giving it a quick tug. “A town fire,” he said.

“Taur is burning.”

Not all of it, as it turned out. Only a few huts and some lean-to sheds on the outskirts of the village proper. Enough to make the carnage visible for several leagues. A warning sign, and a draw to other raiders in the area.

Daol had found fresh sign of a large party of men, moving west by north, not long after spotting the distant smoke. Nahud'r, with eyes nearly as good as Daol's, picked up on smaller sign near another burned-out farm they hurriedly passed. A quick inspection found two children, a boy and a girl no more than seven or eight summers, hiding in a dry well under a dark blanket. Their parents, charred flesh and bone, lay half-buried in the ash of the hut.

Maev had taken charge of them, coaxing them up with water and honeycomb. Taking each by a hand, pulling them along, the clansfolk moved quickly onward.

Now, hunkered down in the tall grasses and brush that topped a tree-barren hill, Kern watched the fires spread. Thatched roofs burned bright and deadly every time a new one touched off from the heat or drifting sparks. Woven slats, which made up the structure of the walls, burned down through the clay mixture so common to wattle-and-daub. The smell of scorched mud spread with the ash and smoke.

It was not all wanton destruction. The raiders obviously had purpose behind them as they dug beneath large sheds for dry pits and chased panicked cattle along the village paths. A broad-shouldered ox evaded the noose thrown at it by one Vanir. It plunged into a hut and crashed out the other side through a thin wall. Tiring of chasing the powerful creature, two raiders unlimbered bows and stuck the ox with arrows until it finally keeled over.

There didn't seem to be more than a few dozen raiders storming around on the flats below, but then Taur was smaller than Gaud and a great deal more spread out. How many settlements and farms had the raiders burned out before laying siege to the main village?

“Too many,” Kern said, watching the raiders loot homes and round up cattle.

Another small team broke cover behind the village, chasing down a man trapped outside the lodge's defenses. Blades rose and fell. The scream carried to the hillside as a far-off echo.

“They have the right idea, though.” Maev crowded between Desa and Kern, having left the children on the other side of the hill with another Gaudic villager. She pointed out the waist-high breastwork of earth around the lodge where most of the village had taken refuge. A palisade of sharpened trunks stuck out at sharp angles. “It must have taken them weeks. Months.”

On the other side of Kern, Reave squinted. “What's that tangle around the palisade? In between the poles?”

Daol had the better eyes. “Spears. Stuck every which way. And I'll bet they are all tied together with good leather.”

It wasn't a fortress wall, but it worked much the same. Put six men inside with bows, and any Vanir trying to break through the barricade made an easy target.

Letting the Taurin clansfolk know they had help waiting outside their village would be just as hard. Kern's people could not hope to take on the Vanir by themselves, but to coordinate an assault meant getting someone close enough to the lodge, without getting stuck full of arrow shafts, that the Taurin might recognize and let through. Trust between clans was not a strong commodity.

“There has to be a way in.”

Reave shook his head. “The raiders would have found it. They look like they want whatever's inside pretty bad.”

“Food or prisoners,” Daol agreed. “Maybe they— Kern!” He pointed, spotting something through the smoke.

Somehow, Kern knew what he'd see, following Daol's stabbing finger. Something in the other man's voice. The way his entire body went rigid. Kern rubbed a knuckle into his smoke-stung eyes, massaging moisture back into them, and then he saw him.