All of them were outfitted for travel, with packs tied to the backs of their saddles, or, in Gard’s case, slung behind a shoulder. He also carried a spear-tipped pike, using the base as a walking staff just now.
The horsemen wore chain mail and leather, with their metal hoods draped back to bare their heads to the misting steam that filtered across the glen. They slung tall shields across their back and carried lances twice as long as a man’s height. Kern had seen them in action up close, spearing the northern warriors into the ground, riding them down. The iron tips of every lance had been coated in blood and gore then.
Now the horsemen held their lances up proudly, a flame-red pennant stirring in the breeze of their passage. The man in front was not the one he had helped rescue in battle, but with hunter’s eyes and the confident set of his shoulders, Kern picked him out for a leader right away.
The man he would have tried to kill first if he had recognized such traits in a fight.
“Wolf-Eye,” the horseman said, his greeting curtailed. Either he understood Cimmerian customs, or simply did not have a good grasp of the language, because he moved right to the point of his business. “You know who we are?”
“You are the em-bass-y from Aquilonia.” He stumbled over the awkward word. Ros-Crana’s brother, Narach Chieftain, had explained it to him once. “Means you talk for King Conan.” And he had had enough of talk.
But Gard Foehammer caught him from turning away, stepping forward and grounding his pike in front of Kern. “That is part of what it means, Kern. They also act for Conan. You saw them fight.”
He had. And for that, he gave them another moment.
“The story last night.” The horseman looked down with inscrutable brown eyes. He continued to speak in careful, simple Cimmerian. “The one told at fireside as you arrived. Was it true?”
A shrug. “It was a tale of Conan,” he said, as if that explained it all.
But the Aquilonian was having none of that. “Was it true?”
Accurate to every detail? Not a chance. But he didn’t think that was what the cavalryman meant. Not for the intense stare with which he awaited an answer.
“True enough,” Kern said, biting off his reply as if it had been forced from him.
That sat well enough with the soldiers, who glanced at each other in a moment of silence. The third man back, the one Kern had helped save in the fight, offered a nod of support.
“You are heading south.” The cavalry officer finally continued. “We would go with you, at least so far as Gunderland.”
That was his plan. Circle south around the Teeth, and the massive peak of Ben Morgh, and come up into Conall Valley from Venarium. It left behind the Pass of Blood, avoiding the spring runoff that would make mountain travel treacherous, and any chance the Vanir had retaken and fortified their positions. He no longer had someone else’s army at his back.
“Bad ground,” Hydallan spoke up, “running into Venarium. Not much good for horses, I’m a-telling ya.”
The other soldier shrugged. Patted his beast on the side of its thick neck. “They came through it north. They can make it back.”
Kern was more inclined to think along the same lines as the old tracker. Few Cimmerians had any respect for horses, except as food. And these southern beasts were much leaner and looked less hardy even than the shaggy drays a few clans did keep for labor.
And traveling? His warriors could outrun most four-legged creatures over distance, climbing terrain that a horse could never think to traverse. They were fragile beasts, always breaking legs or simply falling over dead if pushed too hard, too fast. And when they took fright and bolted, they were as likely to run off with your supplies still strapped in packs to their backs and sides.
“And you?” Kern asked the blinded man, a sinking feeling warning him of the Cruaidhi’s intentions.
“Coming with,” the man said at once.
“We move hard and fast, Gard Foehammer. No time to lead you by the hand.”
A harsh assessment, but fair. Kern could not imagine the darkness Gard had been thrown into by the Ymirish’s unnatural sorceries. So many clansmen would have chosen to be “released” from such a fate rather than become a burden on their clan and kin. Sláine Longtooth should have seen to that, rather than abandoning his former champion to the charity of the Callaughnan.
“Even if you rode one of the horses, you would slow us down.”
But Gard was not quite as helpless as he appeared. And the blindfold not nearly as thick as it looked. The burly Cruaidhi stepped forward, pike swinging up and around in a blur. The blue-iron tip sliced in near Kern’s ear, where Gard pulled it to a sudden stop with muscle strength conditioned through years of training. Then, with a tiny flourish, he drew the tip in a slow slash barely a finger’s breadth away from Kern’s throat.