“Leave off, Kern. Do not attempt this. We have the spring, perhaps part of summer, to heal. And there is Clan Conarch to worry for. They are heavily weakened, and there is no more dangerous clan than one that is vulnerable.”
Was that what truly stayed Ros-Crana’s hand? Pushed against a wall, did she look north and see a threat equal to Grimnir? Or an opportunity?
“Grimnir pushed south with the core of his army,” he reminded her. “South. That is not the retreat of a defeated leader. He will return sooner than you think. I mean to discover what he is about and to put myself in his path.”
“He will destroy you.”
“Mayhap,” Kern admitted.
“Fool. To throw yourself into the jaws of the beast is not courage, Wolf-Eye. It is madness. And rage.”
He counted his warriors, saw them all drawing close now, protecting his path back to the lodge entrance. Kern swallowed dryly, knowing that his next step would be the first on another long path with little rest or relief. And he took it. Moving away from Ros-Crana and her last-minute entreaty. Madness. And rage.
“That,” he said, “may be all we have left.”
5
BITTER RAINS SLASHED at the lower slopes of Ben Morgh this night, filling streambeds and cutting new, muddy sluices between the broken hovels of the Tunog village. Here, the rains splashed in a hard rhythm against thatched roofs, or slapped at the walls, running down overlapping skins of thick bark. There, the icy droplets popped and sizzled across a soupy mixture of water and earth, sounding oddly like meat crisping over a fire.
And, in other places, the rain splashed into unblinking eyes and pooled in the open mouths of corpses left to rot in the muck and mud.
Lodur kicked aside another body, this one with a leg bitten off at the hip. He splashed through a deep puddle. Already soaked to the bone, his frost blond hair matted and water dripping down through his thick beard, the Ymirish worried little for the wetness and less for its icy touch. He’d lived his entire life with the cold of winter in his bones, and not even the great white bear cloak draped over his shoulders could ward away that chill. A night’s discomfort meant little to any of his blood.
And the misery of any Vanir raiders meant even less.
Grimnir’s war host was large, still numbering over fivescore men and women. Most of them huddled with the camp dogs against the side of broken huts, seeking warmth and refuge beneath overhanging thatch. A few pitched canvas tents, or built hasty lean-tos with poles and bark from ruined huts. They slept fitfully, their night full of cold shivers and muttered curses. The strongest among them had fought for and claimed one of the dozen large huts left to the village, kindling fires that had finally banked down and now cast a dim, orange glow through shattered doorways.
Except for these glowing coals, the night’s darkness was near absolute. Thick, black storm clouds blocked out moon and stars. The rains had long since doused any attempt at night watch fires. Still, Lodur had no problem finding his way through the village. His golden, lupine eyes drew in every measure of light, every orange flicker. To him, the night was hardly worse than a gloomy twilight.
To him, the night was an ally.
Or would have been, were the night—and the war host—still his to command.
He approached the center of the village as he had every challenge placed in his path. Directly. Storming forward with steel at his side and a cold slab of ice in his chest, he climbed a narrow path that led up the side of a rocky upthrust, where two Vanir guarded the trailhead. Large men, even for the flame-haired warriors of Vanaheim, they were still half a head shorter and a good stone’s weight beneath Lodur’s own bearing. One reached out, as if to hold him.
He could have crushed them together for presuming to challenge one of the blood. Instead, he brushed by with a glare. “He calls me,” the Ymirish said.
That was enough for the guards. No one questioned a Ymirish who invoked his will. Just as no true Ymirish defied it. Ever. And if Lodur were marching on his death, now, finally, he’d meet it the same way as he had every battle.
Without fear. Without weakness.
The village lodge hall was not much larger than a good-sized hut, actually, though it had a strong roof and thick walls and good position atop the upthrust. The Tunog clansmen had thought to rally here, but abandoned it quickly on seeing the full strength of Grimnir’s war host come against them and the savage creatures summoned down from the upper, wild reaches of Ben Morgh. Yeti, almost as large and fearsome as Grimnir himself.
A few of the Tunog wounded, trapped inside, made one strong, final stand. Buying time for the others to escape, to flee across the mountain’s wide-ranging slopes while Grimnir’s yeti shrugged aside arrows as if they were mere splinters and pulled open the walls in several places.