Cimmerian Rage(21)

Dour-faced Mogh stated it best. Tromping up with his gear already bundled into the heavy felt tent covering, two pieces of thick rope forming loops that he’d slung over both shoulders. New broadsword slapping against his thigh and a steaming oat flat cake stuck onto the end of his long dagger.

He spit to one side, then nodded at the black overcast.

“That’s about right,” he said.

Ossian laughed hard and chucked his fellow Taurin hard on the shoulder. Aodh and Ashul kicked out a nearby cooking fire, tossing the last few griddle-hot flat cakes to those who stood nearby. Kern caught one, dancing it on his open palm while it cooled enough to eat. Wallach Graybeard fumbled the other, trying to catch with both hands when he only had the one now.

Kern watched him recover the flat cake from the ground, brushing away the dirt and a few flecks of dead grass. The oldest veteran in the group, save Old Finn, Wallach had seen more raids and fought in more battles than any other two clansmen in Kern’s pack combined. In the battle against Grimnir, he’d lost his left hand to a battle-axe. Kern and four others had held him down while Desagrena cauterized the wound with a red-hot blade. The still-raw stump was now covered and capped with a circle of boiled leather.

His iron-gray hair was thin and scraggly on top but long enough on the sides to pull back into a twisted ponytail. His beard was thick and square-cut, and near fully gray, with only a few hints of black left to it. Often serving as the small band’s weapons master, Wallach carried his weight even with just the one hand—slinging a load beneath his right shoulder and a good-sized broadsword tied across his back.

Ready to move.

Kern bit into his flat cake, through a dark crust that tasted more of stale grease than anything. Watching and waiting. Not many from Clan Callaugh had bothered to turn out to see the valleymen off. A few warriors who had fought close alongside Kern and his pack. A few women who had lain close alongside Mogh, and Daol, and Brig Tall-Wood, bringing travel packs of dried beef and, in Daol’s case, a dark-honed dagger of blue iron.

Receiving a weapon from the young Callaugh woman was no small token as it was. But such an expensive blade flustered the younger man. He accepted it after a sidelong glance at his father. Then reached up to pull the woman’s left-side braid forward to cover her ear. Her blue eyes were afire with interest and strength, and she nodded. If she’d expected to be taken with the small warrior band, she showed no hint of disappointment. Content, apparently, with Daol’s gesture of affection and what amounted to a promise to return. When he could.

If he could.

A better parting than Kern had ever managed. Then again, what had passed briefly between him and Maev, Burok’s daughter, had been little more than her care for the future. Hadn’t it? At least for her? Better, she had said, that she not know for certain if any child was raider-get.

Maev had seen away her clan kin when the small band finally struck out from Taur. But no words passed between them. No promises. She’d refused to trade even the briefest of glances with Kern Wolf-Eye.

Not the send-off Kern would have wished for his friend. He wished Daol better luck in such pursuits.

“S’a nice blade,” was all Hydallan said, as his son returned to the gathering pack.

Ehmish limped up with Desagrena and Reave. Nahud’r gathered himself in a dark woolen cloak and, with an eye on the brooding skies, wrapped his head tightly in a long scarf. Desert-fashion.

Nodding, Daol tucked the sheathed blade into the wide leather strap belting his kilt. “It is,” he said.

Reave was not about to let it go at that. “Only fair,” the large man said, voice a deep rumble very much like the thunder that answered from the nearby mountains. “She must have thought the same about yours.” He grunted as the off-color remark earned him Desa’s elbow into his gut.

Daol glared at his friend, but said nothing more. Then he busied himself studying the wet, black cliff overhang, steaming as always with the hot spring runoff.

But not all of the few who gathered at the edge of the glen were content with curt nods or a stolen clench. Nahud’r saw them first, approaching from the far side of the village. Three men on horseback and another walking alongside with his hand on the flank of the lead beast. The Shemite nodded in their direction, his left hand always resting easily on the hilt of his long, curved scimitar.

Kern wolfed down the last of his oat cake, licked the grease from his fingers, knowing that such trail fare would be very common in the days ahead. Watched them approach. He had expected something. Though not this, exactly. Part of him had expected Ros-Crana herself to see them off, though apparently she had spoken all she’d had to say the night before. Instead, he waited as a blindfolded Gard Foehammer and the three Aquilonian horsemen approached.