The Hyperborians looked a mixture of tall, lean Aquilonians and perhaps a few of the tawny-haired Gundermen who sometimes raided up into Conall Valley. Difficult to tell by the glowing firelight. Men in robes and men in mail. Some wore the conical helms of Aquilonia. The Gundermen (if they were) battled bareheaded with either a pike or poleax. They fought back to back, or sometimes in a triangle around a fallen horse.
A handful of merchants and soldiers struggled northward with a half dozen packhorses. And just as many Vanir in pursuit.
There were twice as many raiders as there were southern men. Merchants, Kern guessed, seeing the loaded packhorses. The professional warriors used tall shields and broadswords to protect themselves from two-on-one odds as Vanir set after them like dogs on fresh meat. The men in finer clothing often were lucky to carry an arming sword. Good enough to turn the first blow. Not usually a strong blade to fend off repeated, hacking attacks.
More arrows sliced in behind that first. A spark flared in Kern’s mind, like a warning flash, and he brought his shield up quickly. A hunting shaft pierced the metal facing, sticking into the wood back.
Short sword already naked in his hand, Kern scraped the blade across the facing by reflex, stripping away the shaft. Then he leaped, out and to one side, clearing the exposed ridge as more of his warriors ran up behind him. It was a short fall to a new ledge, and his foot struck hard, grinding across some scattered gravel.
Three skipping steps brought him down off the low ridge, and a controlled fall dropped Kern in behind two Vanir, who were using battle-axes to chop at the heavy shield thrust into their faces by a thick-chested Gunderman. For little more than pride the besieged warrior protected a fallen packhorse, the animal shrieking with the pain of an obvious pair of broken legs.
Stumbling, catching himself against the blistered rock with one hand against the rough ground, Kern stabbed up and out. Punching with the tip of his short sword, stabbing as he’d been taught to add extra reach. The tip of the blade sliced in through boiled leather, nicking between the thin, steel bands protecting the Vanir’s side. Stabbing deep.
The raider howled in pain and fury, dropping his guard long enough for the Gunderman to lash out and stab a wound through an exposed throat. Blood fountained, spraying in a jetting stream across the ground and Kern’s hands, and spattering his face with warm, red flecks.
The second Vanir reacted out of reflex as well, rounding on the new threat with a sidelong chop. The great axe blade narrowly missed Kern’s stomach, clipping the edge of his shield and nearly tearing it out of his hand.
The raw strength spun Kern aside, opening up his defenses. The raider turned his swing into an overhead blow, coming back up and around as Kern ducked and dived, rolling aside as the blade cracked down into the brittle, black rock flow not a hand breadth from his neck. Lying on his back, he lashed out with a foot to kick the battle-axe’s haft, trying to dislodge it from the raider’s grip.
Not that it mattered. With a yell much like the low rumble of a building avalanche, Reave fell down the side of the ridge with his Cimmerian greatsword raised high overhead. Airborne, a wild look buried in his eyes, the large man slashed down with all of his great strength. The sword clipped away a bull’s horn from the side of the Vanir’s helm, then bit deep, deep into the shoulder. Cleaving through flesh and bone, severing the arm and angling down into the chest as well through at least three ribs.
The Vanir died without a scream, his heart cleaved in two and a shocked look twisting his face. Kern allowed himself a brief moment of satisfaction to see it.
Then, half-jumping, half-falling down the same desperate footholds Kern had used, his warriors scrambled into the battle. Daol and Brig Tall-Wood hunkered behind shields raised by Hydallan, by Old Finn, leaning out with bows to slam arrows at the two Vanir archers who had finally knocked aside one man with a broadhead shaft into his hip. Mogh. Ossian’s dour-faced kinsman.
Kern’s warriors had faced greater odds and given better than they received. Here, with an advantage, they were ferocious. Fighting together rather than as individuals, they watched each other’s backs and pressed the Vanir raiders with the same uneven odds they had so recently used to begin slaughter of the southern merchants. Swords slashed and stabbed. Near the long finger of molten rock, Nahud’r and Garret Blackpatch slammed bodily into another raider, knocking him away from a bleeding man in dark robes.
The Vanir stumbled back, and fell, half-rolling into the molten stream.
His screams joined the shrill braying of the wounded horse. Worse when the fire leaped up and caught his cloak afire, then his beard and oily tangle of long hair. Throwing himself to one side, he escaped the live rock flow. The fiery stream had eaten half his chest away, and one hand was down to a charred stub of blackened bone.