Blood of Wolves (5 page)

The weight of the Gaudic chieftains rolled over Kern, pressing him back into his seat even though some spark of defiance encouraged him to continue arguing. His mind, though, told him it was done. Cul had bestowed favor upon him. To speak out again would appear selfish and shallow, and lessened the sacrifice given by those who would be forced to abandon the village, to look for life (if it was to be had) elsewhere.

“Take this night,” Cul told the others. “Weigh your own worth, and be prepared for the morning.

“For it must be decided by then.”

 

“HE'S REALLY GOING to run the mountain line in this weather.” Kern shook his head. “It is a bad decision.”

Daol shrugged. He prodded a small dung fire with the tip of his knife, stirring the flames to keep them lively and warm as fatty juices dripped down and hissed among glowing embers. The thatched home he shared with his father was at least three times as large as Kern's small hut, where his friend barely had room to lie down among his meager possessions. Here, at least, they sat in modest comfort.

“Leave off, Kern,” he warned.

Smoke from the fire stung his eyes. He breathed in its sharp, green taste, and the scent of crisping flesh from the roasting chucker. The plump little birds were rare this time of year, but he had found three trapped by the morning sleet in a nearby thicket. Two for the clan. One for the hunter. Had to keep his strength up, after all.

“Still wrong,” Kern muttered. He sat cross-legged near the small fire pit, next to Hydallan, reaching a hand out for warmth.

Daol saw him shiver even so, and wondered not for the first time what it must be like to live with the frozen touch of winter as your constant companion. If anyone in the village accepted Kern's difference more easily than Hydallan, who had shown Kern the skills of hunting and tracking in the years before his son came of an age to be taught, it could only be Daol. Several years younger than Kern's twenty-three summers, Daol had looked up to Kern for quite some time before becoming truly aware of his friend's strangeness. And even he, at times, caught himself looking sidelong at the pale man, not understanding him.

He brushed dark hair out of his eyes, frowned, and used his knife to saw at the long bangs. He threw the hair into the fire, which gave off a quick, acrid stench. “You tried,” he said, trying to offer some comfort.

“Not hard enough. After old Finn was turned away like that . . .” Kern trailed off, shaking his head.

Daol shrugged again, though less easy than before. Perhaps Kern's ideas would have been better received if spoken through Daol or Hydallan. The young hunter wondered so at the time. But that might have put his father on Cul's chopping block. He'd felt relieved, truth be told, when Kern stared him back into his seat. Kern had been so completely certain he was already chosen to be cast out and obviously feeling he had nothing to lose.

Instead, he would be heading east, accompanying Burok to the burial grounds of Cimmeria's greatest chieftains while others paid the price in Gaud.

Hydallan shrugged, producing a pinch of hoarded sage and crumbling it over the spitted bird. “Seen it several times, meself. Usually just one or two needs go. This year?” He shrugged again.

“What else can we do?” Daol asked, turning the plump chucker. He did not mean for his question to be answered.

Kern considered it, though. “We fight.”

“Against the clan chieftain?” Daol asked, stunned Kern would say it aloud. He glanced toward the door, half-expecting the Tall-Woods or Cul himself to kick it down.

“Nay,” Kern said at once. It was obviously an automatic response, and rightly so. You did not raise your sword, or even your hand, against the chieftain. “But we don't lie down and die, either.”

“Can't fight the weather,” Hydallan said. An old Cimmerian adage. The elder man did not necessarily mean the lingering winter. Nodding slowly, he rested against his straw mattress, easing his back. His hands were not so strong anymore, and he had lost weight in the last year, but strength still pooled in the gray eyes he shared with his son.

Daol blew out a breath of exasperation. “Saw Cul posting guards on the dry pits and the lodge door.” If they were going to talk about it, he was going to add in his own frustrations. “No food from the stores tonight. Worried that some might try to take it. When's the last time Burok posted guards?”

Kern remembered. “That spring when Reave kept hiding river catch in Bear-slayer's bedding. Shook us all awake every night for three nights running with his cursing.” He couldn't help the smile. “Posted a guard at the lodge for a week after that.”

The three men shared a short laugh. Daol pulled the roasted bird off the spit and tore it into pieces with strong fingers. He handed his father fully half, and split what was left with Kern. The meat sizzled, dripping fat onto the floor.

Kern held his other hand beneath it, catching the juices, not caring if they scalded him. “Take a few days just to reach the Snowy River country,” he said, thinking about the coming journey.

Hydallan grunted. “Imagine Daol will lead 'em over, or meself. I can still find the trails even under four foot a snow.”

It was hardly a boast. Daol might have the keener bowshot, but he'd learned everything he knew about tracking and trailblazing from his father. Kern, too, had learned a lot at the side of the elder hunter, before being handed an axe, though the closest Kern now came to hunting was checking the clan traplines, looking for fish or small game caught in any of the snares set out every month.

“Three . . . four days north along the Snowy River. Then we'll pass close by the flats leading east to the Lake Lands.” Kern balanced his portion of food in his hand, as if studying it. “Maybe their winter isn't as bad. We can trade for supplies, bring them back down.”

“Mebbe their winter is even worse, and they'll be asking for ransom to let you pass by.” Hydallan shook his head, crunched through some of the small, hollow bones. “Don't be borrowing from what ain't there, pup.”

Kern nodded, accepting good advice when he heard it. Still, “A little luck, now and then, never hurts.”

“Especially when you're rolling bones and looking for sixes.” Daol licked his fingers and fished out a small bag with his gaming dice in it. Popular over drink, it also made winter nights pass a bit faster. “Up for a challenge?”

“Was earlier,” Kern said. He laughed harshly, without a measure of humor in it. “Cul nearly tossed me out of the game. You two play. I don't much feel like it tonight.” He rose, still cradling the uneaten chucker.

“You not gonna eat that, Kern?” Daol nodded at the cooling meat.

“Eat it on the way back,” he promised, tripping the door latch and giving them both a nod against the night.

Daol watched his friend go, trading a glance with his father. Both had a good feel for Kern. Both called him friend.

And quite obviously to Daol, both were wondering why, of all times, did it feel that Kern had just lied.

 

THE SNOWS HAD stopped sometime after sundown. A small break in the valley's cloud cover let a half-moon smile down on the village of Gaud. It turned the snow a silvery white, and sparkled off the frost Kern breathed out as he moved away from the home of Hydallan and Daol.

He hated lying, but had not wanted them to feel he took their generosity lightly. It wasn't easy, what he'd decided. Kern's mouth watered for a taste of the chucker's browned skin. He resisted with only the greatest effort.

The small bird steamed, but not with as much enthusiasm as before. It cooled fast. Still warm, though, when Kern found the right hut on the east side of the small village. A strong light danced within, jumping shadows at the lower edge of the door and inside the hide-covered window slit.

“Burning up all his wood.” Kern nodded. Might as well be comfortable for the night.

Old Finn answered Kern's soft knock. Slight and shriveled, the elderly man stared at Kern as if waiting to be mocked again.

Kern simply handed him the small portion of roasted bird, ignoring the complaints of his own stomach as he did it. Bad enough losing clan and kin. It was cruel of Cul to leave the village worrying over it through the night.

It was a long, cold walk back to his own hut. Kern spent it sucking every last drop of fat from his fingers and thinking on what their new chieftain might visit on the village the next morning.

KERN PACED HIS way slowly through the village, his fur-lined boots kicking through the light snow cover, stopping when he saw crusted handprints or a more recent, crimson smear.

On the door to the hut belonging to Gar and Fionna, a bloody swipe.

Two smears on the larger, ramshackle home, under which roof lived Reave's sister and brother-in-law, who had been caring for the husband's sickly parents.

Another, three huts farther along.

Daol and Hydallan passed him by, making their own rounds and their own count. Their gazes flat and empty.

Six, all told, by the time Kern threaded his way through Gaud and ended up near the lodge. By then he thought he could taste the blood, its metallic bite stinging at the back of his throat. Cul's words came back to him, echoing in his mind.

Many had, apparently. Six brave souls had decided to end their own suffering and ease their burden on clan and kin.

Kern rubbed a hand over his face, rough calluses burning against his freshly scraped cheeks, thinking he might still wake up from a terrible dream.

The lodge was a hive of activity, with people coming and going and several clansfolk looking excited to be off despite the solemn night. Others moved mechanically, wrapped up in their own silent mourning. Cul seemed extraordinarily pleased with himself. He oversaw preparations for a midmorning departure. Setting others to packing sacks and travel casks, and ordering the slaughter of one of the village oxen. A skinny cow that had stopped giving milk. Half her meat would be wrapped and taken along on the trek.

Maev was there as well, an arming sword belted at her narrow waist. She left provisioning to the others. On her order, Burok's body had been brought up from the dry pits and the door he was stretched upon fashioned as a litter with long poles strapped beneath it as handles. It could be dragged or carried as was convenient. For the moment it rested on the hauling sled Kern often used for wood gathering. A good idea for as long as the snow cover lasted.

Likely the entire way, given the look of the eastern mountains.

“Wolf-Eye,” Cul called out, as Kern walked up. “You'll help pull the sled today.”

Kern shrugged, accepting the order in turn. There had been no cruel glee in assigning him the work. Neither was there any vote of confidence in the clansman's strength, or honor, in being assigned the task of helping convey Bear-slayer's body to its final rest. It was simply handed out, almost beneath the new chieftain's notice. As if he had already forgotten Kern and the stand the other man had made the previous night. That it no longer mattered.

One clansman had not forgotten the previous evening, though.

Old Finn limped up to the lodge wearing his best winter gear, a bundle tied into his woolen blankets and hung over one shoulder, and a fresh-cut walking staff in one hand. The broadsword he once wielded alongside Burok Bear-slayer strapped proudly across his back. Except for his age, and favoring his right leg, he looked like a clansman ready for battle.

The activity quieted, then ground to a halt as the village's eldest warrior approached. Most had likely assumed him “released” in the night. Kern had noted the clean door on Finn's hut that morning, hoping it meant more than there was no one to mourn for him. Kern hadn't the heart to check for himself just then, faced with the other losses.

Now he wished he had.

Finn paused near Kern, just long enough to whisper, “Welcome at my fire anytime,” then limped on.

Cul said nothing, watching the man's slow approach with something akin to amusement. No one doubted that Finn was quitting the village. He was certainly fitted for travel minus any decent provisioning of foodstuffs. None would be forthcoming. Cast out or quit of the clan, once outside, outside for good. His few personal items would be bundled up in the coarse gray blankets.

Finn did not bother stopping in front of the chieftain. He hobbled up to the remaining lodge door, taking an exaggerated interest in the lopsided entrance. He nodded at the open side, no doubt making his own farewell to Burok Bear-slayer.

Then he looked directly at Cul, back at the remaining door, and spat.

Swords rasped free of their sheaths as a few of Cul's supporters took the insult to their chieftain personally. Reave leaped in front of Morne, laying hold of his shoulder and straining against the man's anger with his own thick arms. Those farther away from the incident simply waited for Cul's order, or Reave's failing to hold Morne off.

“Let him go,” Cul said, and Kern tensed to jump in at Reave's side.

But Cul had not said it to Reave, but to the others. He no longer appeared amused, but at least he did not seem murderously angry. Swords were homed. Those who would not drop their anger cut at Finn with nothing but glares.

Finn was no longer part of the clan. He was a traveler, moving on to another place.

South, Kern wanted to suggest. South as fast as Finn's legs could carry him, and hope he found a new clan to take him in or better weather and spring shoots. Cimmerians always went south, ever since the time of Conan, toward opportunities in the so-called civilized lands.

Which was likely why the pugnacious old man deliberately turned north, into the teeth of winter and the Nordheim realms.