Kern gave immediate chase, but the other man’s panic lent him impressive speed. The raider leaped from one flat expanse on the rock flow to another, avoiding the cracks and steam vents and a new thin fissure of molten rock.
The raider dropped his shield while scrabbling up a short rise. All but threw himself down the other side.
Anything to escape.
Kern gained the top of the same mound, hands clawing for purchase among sharp edges and gravel. From there, he looked out over a new expanse of soft, overlapping mounds of black rock. Flatter, easier ground, but pocked with many overlapping cracks filled with glowing rock flow that oozed out in several places, as if pressed by a giant hand from below. The heat pushed Kern back with a physical presence. Rain spattered and hissed against the ground as a thing alive. Wisps of the steam caught the reddish-orange glow, drifted over the entire area in a bloody mist.
Caught out among the vents and glowing fissures, the wounded Vanir stumbled to a halt.
At first, Kern thought it was because the Vanir had seen the mounted Aquilonian cavalry cutting across his escape: Strom and Valerus and Lucian, having ridden around the broken ground Kern’s warriors had scrambled over to chase up on the battle, rode astride their surefooted mounts in a hazardous dash, with lances lowered and pointed right at the backs of the Vanir raiders trapped on the steaming, black expanse.
The merchant guard had set a line in front of the raiders, protecting what packhorses they had left. The horsemen rode up too fast from behind, like vengeful demons out of the red-stained gloom. There was no escape.
Kern paused, panting heavily as he drew the hot air down into his lungs, where it burned like live coals. The moment’s hesitation likely saved his life. He watched as the cavalry charge leaped over open fissures, and the horses caught desperate footholds. As three lance points bore down on a separate target. As three men were flung back, run through by an iron tip, then flung aside on the sheer momentum delivered by the blow.
Finally, horsemen and merchant guard fell on the remaining raiders, lances cast aside and swords out, blades rising and falling, rising and falling.
A brief and bloody slaughter.
The Vanir scrambled back toward Kern. Away from the carnage and screams of dying men. Falling down, then jumping back up with a fearful yelp. Leaving behind him widening fissures with savage-bright rock flow spilling across the broken, black expanse.
The ground trembled with the deep crack of shattered rock. Kern crouched low, seeking a strong center close to the ground. A terrible grinding scraped into his ears, and a backwash of new heat slammed over him. Scalding hot, as with the rage of battle, so strong he wondered for a moment if it hadn’t driven every last trace of winter from his bones.
Reave and Desa joined him then as the raider fell once again to hands and knees, losing his sword, as the rock shelf completely broke free and settled into a pool of molten rock. The edges widened on three sides, where the flow was so hot the rain hardly struck anymore, blasted into a mist of steam before ever reaching the ground. Gard Foehammer crawled up from the back side of the mound, shielded his eyes from the yellow-orange glare as the Vanir struggled on a tilting table of black rock, the slab breaking up and slipping into the pool in chunks. Sinking beneath him into the raging heat until the only way out of the inferno was to climb back up the ledge where Kern crouched, surrounded by three of his warrior pack.
Golden eyes glowing in the reflected fire. Hair bleeding from frost white to a dark red as it soaked in the rock flow’s unnatural light. He waited. Watched. Then leaned down as the Vanir struggled up the side of the small rise. Sweat poured from the raider’s brow and soaked through his clothes. His hair was singed black on his arms. His face was flushed, or maybe scalded, a dark scarlet.
Kern grabbed the other man by the braided beard, hauling him halfway up the rock face as the rock cracked and fell into the pool right beneath his feet. Hauled him into a half-standing crouch, hanging back over the infernal heat that singed the hairs on Kern’s bared arm. Baked his face. Warmed him.
Then Kern shoved the other man back and away. Throwing him back onto the disappearing ledge, where he landed on a coarse, smoking patch with a screaming howl.
The Vanir’s clothes smoldered as he scrambled to his feet, a wild, desperate look in his eyes. Baring his teeth against the pain, the raider took a sprinting run at the next-closest edge where the rock flow had widened out the length of a man, perhaps more, and jumped—
—foot sinking down into yellow-orange rock flow up to the knee, then the hip, as the greedy fire ate the raider alive.
Fire jumped up the leather skirt and cuirass, turning the Vanir into a human torch in barely a whisper of time. He screamed. High-pitched and full of pain, as the horse had screamed. But there would be no mercy blade to end the Vanir’s suffering. Four sets of eyes watched him burn, struggling against the rock flow’s fiery grip. Eaten one handbreadth at a time to the overpowering scent of charred meat.