Blood of Wolves (15 page)

Hard to miss, when you looked. The shock of white hair, which at a distance made the warrior look very old. But no aging warrior moved so spryly, or manhandled his own men like a bear pawing at cubs. This frost-man—another Ymirish—held a battle-axe very much like the one Kern had given up. Just as large and just as heavy. Only he pumped it overhead, exhorting his warriors, as if he were brushing away flies.

“Two of them?” Reave asked.

Kern supposed he should be grateful his friend hadn't said “Three?” the way Reave glanced over at him afterward.

“At least.” Kern shrank back away from the crest of the hill, careful not to disturb the tall grasses too much and draw attention from below. Bringing his warriors in around him, he brushed aside the coincidence of another frost-man. “Whatever these Vanir are, they are not common raiders. But they bleed.” Kern looked Maev in the eye. “They die.” His gaze traveled the line. “This one is no different.”

“But in order to make this work,” Daol said, “we still have to get a message into the lodge. And we have to be able to hold the Vanir off while the Taurin decide. How are you going to do that?”

Kern glanced back up the hill. “I might be able to manage the second part of that,” he said, playing it over in his head, hoping he had an idea worth chasing after.

“And the first part?” Daol asked, obviously not liking the sudden gleam in Kern's yellow eyes. He shifted uncomfortably. “How about getting a message to the Taurin?”

“That,” Kern said, “will be your job.”

DAOL LAY IN the snow at the trailing slope of a small hillock, tucked beneath the branches of a small evergreen bush. Trying his damnedest to present
small
as Vanir raiders ran past him, intent on their siege of Taur.

Snowmelt soaked Daol's heavy tunic a dark, wet brown. The skin on his forearms felt as if it were all but blistering under the cold burn that came with crawling several hundred paces over frozen ground, moving so slowly his blood began to thicken. He breathed shallowly, tasting the scent of burning thatch, worried about even the smallest cloud of frosted vapor drawing attention to his position.

“What was I thinking?” he whispered to himself, drawing a small measure of courage from the sound of his own voice.

He knew what he'd been thinking, though. The same as Kern, and the same as the others. That every minute spent working up a better plan, or even putting this one into effect, cost lives. Cimmerian lives. Kern had given Daol an hour to work his way down the side of the hill and a quarter of the way around the besieged village to get as close as he could to the lodge. Daol's father and three others had remained on-site, watching, ready to cover his retreat if the Vanir noticed him. The others, Daol hoped, had gotten their part ready during that time.

He'd find out very soon.

It was no consolation that if the plan failed, his friends would be just as dead. Which was why he had taken so much care in his trek down to the village border, using every trick he had learned in eight years of hunting and tracking. How to divide his weight evenly across his entire body and snap not one twig beneath him. How to breathe properly while moving, and choosing the right line of attack, which kept him hidden from casual eyes.

Daol had chosen to come at the lodge across from the wind, so any raiders near him would be staring into smoke whipped off the burning homes. If their eyes stung half as bad as his, it was a good choice.

“Far as I can go. Come on, Kern.”

Moving with exquisite care, Daol slipped the bow off his shoulder and stashed it under the nearby brush. Then his short quiver of arrows. He felt naked without them, armed only with a long knife. But he couldn't take the chance that the Taurin would think him a threat. He gauged the distance to the front of the lodge. He might make it back in time, if he had to.

If he wasn't filled full of Taurin arrows on sight.

Daol never pulled his gaze away from the hilltop for too long, waiting for the signal. He saw some of the tall grasses moving up there from time to time, waving against the chill breeze or waving when there was no breeze at all. Every time, he checked the Vanir, to see if one of them had noticed.

Nothing. None of them expected an assault from behind. Cimmerians had spent the last several years fleeing before the raiders, who rarely attacked in the open unless they had an advantage in numbers.

The sign was not meant to be subtle. And in fact, it wasn't. Two dark shadows suddenly rose over the white-blanketed hillside, silhouetted against the light gray sky behind them. Extremely exposed. Among fifteen men and women, there were exactly two hunting bows other than Daol's. Hydallan and Brig Tall-Wood carried them. Now the two men drew back, sighted, and released.

Daol thought he could hear the healthy
thrum
of bowstrings even over the crackling noise of the village's burning huts and the shouts of the raiders. Might have been wishful thinking.

He knew he heard the sudden shout of pain as a raider fell with a long shaft stuck in his shoulder. The Vanir bounced back to his feet quickly enough, though, facing right back along the arrow's flight.

Four more shadows on the hillside, all waving swords overhead. There was some distant shouting in broken Nordheimir, none of it complimentary.

The two archers drew and released. Drew back again. Released.

Another shout of pain as an arrow in the third flight found its mark, stuck through a raider's leg. Others of Kern's small band showed themselves on the hilltop. From a distance, if Daol hadn't known better, it looked like a small group all straggling up in singles and pairs.

Easy meat for the raider band.

And there he was. The frost-haired Ymirish Daol had spotted from the hilltop, striding through a small knot of raiders. He stabbed the magnificent head of his war axe at the hillside.

“At them!” he shouted in Nordheimir. Daol knew enough of the language to recognize that. “Bring me heads!”

Fully a dozen northerners peeled away from the siege to storm the hillside. As two more shadows popped up on the ridgeline, the Ymirish sent another handful of warriors, keeping a two-for-one edge while leaving about a dozen or more in the village proper to watch for any movement from the lodge.

No one watching the brush though. It was Daol's chance.

Exhaling sharply, Daol committed himself by rolling out from under the brush and jumping up quickly into a half-crouch run. His legs glided forward with the loping stride he could keep up for a day and a half. Easy. Smooth. He waited for the inevitable call of discovery.

He actually made it halfway, getting well between the lodge and the nearest raiders. It was the Taurin who gave him away, as an eager bowman inside the lodge defenses swiveled around to loose an arrow at him. The shaft dug into the ground barely half a step in front of Daol, and the young hunter sidestepped quickly to throw off any follow-up shot, waving his arms frantically overhead.

Several raiders had followed the shot as well, and now saw Daol running for the barricade. As they moved at him, roaring for his death, he burst into a sprint and shouted on his own behalf, “Friends! Taur! Help!” Everything Kern had told him to shout.

No further bowshots came from within the compound, but there was no movement at the front of the barricade either to open a break in the defenses. Daol checked over his shoulder, saw the Vanir just now struggling up the hillside, shields held up against the Gaudic archery . . . and several of the nearby raiders drawing down on him with heavy bows of their own.

The first long shaft whistled by his ear to
thunk
deep into one of the sharpened poles stuck out from the lodge bulwark.

“Crom's hairy left orb,” he shouted, “open up!”

The wind shifted slightly, blowing more of the ash and smoke directly over the lodge compound. That was all right. Daol saw the gate now. A drop-down door held on a pivot bar with a counterweight on the far side. It rose in and up, and was spiked with sharpened stakes easily the length of a man's arm. The Taurin let him approach it, but still it did not open.

Daol ran right up to the gate. He saw the outlines of people moving on the other side of the artificial bramble of spears and spikes and sharpened stakes, within the haze of smoke that lay over the compound. Upset lowing, from cattle the Taurin had managed to pull into the lodge defenses with them, was all that answered him.

Continuing to shout for their aid, he pulled his knife and turned back toward the Vanir who had braved Taurin archers to come after him. One raider had a greatsword, swinging it overhead in wide deadly arcs. The others favored broadswords and shields.

He could have used a shield. Another arrow bit into the door, barely missing his right leg. He jumped back and forth erratically, spoiling the Vanir's aim, keeping a wary eye on the door, the advancing raiders, and the hillside where half of the frost-man's men had nearly gained the hilltop, ready to join blades against Kern's small group.

No longer so small, though, as another five silhouettes popped above the hilltop. Half of the line bent down now, digging at the earth, lifting one of the heavy logs they'd carried up earlier while Daol crept into position. Kern and Reave had led that work party on a short run away from the village, so the chopping would not be noticed. Rolling it over the hilltop, into place, had caused the waving grasses Daol had spotted.

“A sled defense,” Kern had called it. But Daol hadn't picked up on the reference then.

Now, watching five of his clansfolk start down the hill, then
heaving
the log into the face of the raider charge, he got it. He was reminded of that last good day, before Burok's death and all that followed. When he and Kern had pulled the wood sled into Gaud.

The sharp, downhill slope that had sent the sled smashing into the end of the lodge woodpile.

The split-rounds tumbling off the end of the stack Three raiders actually caught the thrown log right in the face, bowled back like pins in a stonethrow contest. The long trunk hit the ground unevenly and bounced back up, clipping another Vanir in the leg and sending him tumbling forward. It slowed everyone behind him, who had to wait and gauge the rolling log so they could swerve around or jump over it.

On the hilltop, six warriors bent down and wrestled up a second thick trunk. They began running down the hill with it as well.

That was the last Daol saw of the budding skirmish as the gate behind him swung in with violent speed, and rough hands reached out to drag him inside.

 

KERN HAD BEEN one of the first to climb over the hilltop after the initial volley loosed by Hydallan and Brig. He waved his arming sword overhead, feeling foolish at its light weight when Reave stood next to him brandishing a Cimmerian greatsword. He kept his shield up, covering himself from heart to head, looking over the tapered edge with his yellow eyes fixed more on Daol's run toward the lodge than the advancing raiders.

Now, he encouraged the Taurin. Come out now!

After the first trunk was thrown, rolling and bouncing down the hillside, Kern quickly slung his shield and rasped his sword home in the sheath Wallach had finally returned to him. Digging down near his feet, hands gripping the thick, scaly bark of the fresh-cut fir, Kern helped Reave and Nahud'r among others wrestle up the second of the two “rolling rams” they'd cut and shaped with hatchets and with swords.

“Forward!” Kern shouted, and stepped onto the downhill slope.

The Vanir were ready for the tactic this time. They slowed. A few retreated, reaching for bows to take the Gaudic warriors down before the thrown log made another shambles of their line.

“Hold,” Kern shouted, as the entire team stumbled forward. He saw that more than half of the raiders had spread out so as not to be within the dangerous path. But a few had leaped forward, never considering a second such attack, and there were two others slowly picking themselves up after being knocked over by the first.

“Hold,” he called again, buying them another few steps.

An arrow
thunked
home in the trunk right between Reave's heavily muscled arms. The large warrior stared down at it, cross-eyed and angry. Someone on the other end, whom Kern could not see, cried out in pain, and the log began to tip in that direction.

“Now!”

Kern curled his part of the log's weight up toward his chest, then pushed outward as if bowling for upright pins in a summer game. Throwing the massive trunk forward caused him to stumble and nearly fall.

Nahud'r did fall, though he tumbled around and bounced back to his feet lightly, as if he'd never missed a step.

They all unslung swords and shields and leaped after the rolling ram.

The fir trunk caught both of the shaken warriors up front with another full-force blow across the upper body. One took it in the face, leaving behind a bloody mess that matched his crimson braids. The other got his arm in the way, protecting his life for a moment. But the weight pinned him back against the earth again, shattering his arm. Several splinters and spurs poked out through his skin. Nahud'r went down on his knees, sliding through the mud-scarred snow and grass. He reversed the broadsword he held, holding it overhead like a giant dagger, then plunged it into the stricken Vanir, impaling him through the chest.

The raider breathed out blood-flecked foam and died. He was the first.

Kern took the second. No time to grab for his shield again, he ducked to one side and let the war sword of a staggering Vanir clash against the metal surface that protected his shoulder. He ducked the tip of a backhand slash aimed too high, then struck with the short arming sword, thinking all the while that he didn't have enough reach.