Conan himself killed five doughty foemen—No, ten! Fifteen!—and was said to have carried the torch that put the walls to the flame.
Kern almost thought he could hear the distant echoes of those screams. The calls of men at battle. Foolish, of course. No one heard the echoes of battle so many years past. Still, something stood the short hairs up on the back of his neck. And though he shook his head to clear it, there was that sound again, like the burning of the original fortress.
Whatever the source bothering him, one thing was clear. Venarium lived once again. As a Vanir camp. There weren’t more than two or three lean-to shelters and a dozen simple tents pitched on the hillside just now, but Daol had already pointed out another twenty . . . thirty areas of cleared brush and crushed-down grasses where Vanir raiders had camped not so long ago.
“Too many still,” Daol said. “At best, Kern, it’s even numbers.”
And the small band had survived so long without losing another life only because they worked together, and with larger clans, putting the enemy at a disadvantage.
“I said—”
“I heard you, Daol.”
Kern checked the sun, a bright patch hiding behind a cover of thin, white clouds today. Two hours until twilight. His warriors, camped over the other side of the hill, were tired and sore from a long run. He could not even expect the Aquilonian cavalry until dark. Hardly enough time to rest for a fight. And he was in too much a hurry to put it off for a day—perhaps two—while they regrouped and rested and planned.
The valley. And Grimnir. Those had to be his priorities.
But to let the Vanir rest comfortably, establish a stronghold of their own to raid and pillage among Cimmerian villages? Could he allow that so easily? Even for a people who rejected him and his warriors at most turns, except when they were needed?
No.
“Tonight,” he said. Unsure of why he felt a desperate need to accomplish this and move on so quickly. A gut instinct. And Kern had learned to trust those. “It must be tonight.”
Nahud’r merely shrugged, as if expecting the call. “What will we do?” he asked.
“Only as much as we need to.” He shifted away from the view, looking first to the black-skinned man, then to Daol. “Hard and fast, and then we move for the valley. We’ll need the Aquilonians. And some of Ehmish’s spider-holes.” He continued to stare at Daol.
The younger man shifted his crouch from one foot to the other. “Anything else?” he asked.
Kern smiled without humor. “Yes.”
“I thought so.”
By THE DARK of night, Kern and Reave led the small knot of warriors to the base of the hill on which Venarium rested. He looked back, checking that Nahud’r and Ashul and Aodh had gone to ground, waiting behind brush or nested down in the long grasses. Reave thumped him on the shoulder.
“They know what to do,” his friend reminded him, barely any strength behind his breath. It carried no farther than Kern’s ears. “Nay worry for them. Worry for us if that Crom-cursed wolf of yours comes much closer and draws a look from up there.”
Kern nodded. He saw well enough by the half-cloaked moonlight, and had also spotted Frostpaw a good quarter turn earlier of the constellation Dragon. The dire wolf was little more than a dark shadow gliding across the grassy hillside off to their left just now. A large creature, certainly, twelve-stone weight and wide across the shoulders, but the night was its home. Which was both good and bad. The animal thought nothing of traipsing out into the open in the dark. Fortunately, it was fairly soft-footed.
“I will worry about the wolf,” Kern promised. “Just keep that bear’s growl soft.”
Reave did not worry for the Vanir raiders, he knew. One or two of the flame-haired warriors would be, at best, crouched near the dying embers of a cooking fire. No. The trouble was whether or not a Ymirish warrior or— worse!—a sorcerer was up there in the camp. Besides being extremely dangerous of themselves, if their gold-fire eyes were anything like Kern, they had exceptionally good night vision.
But Kern did not believe there was a sorcerer. Or any Ymirish close by. No good reason, again, to say why, except for the calmness that had stolen over him. They crept forward a few cautious lengths. The large man, for looking as bearish as he sometimes sounded, moved with the careful grace of a deer. Slow. Quiet. And always coiled for a great leap forward. His Cimmerian greatsword, nearly as long as Kern was tall, was strapped across his back with the cord-wound handle across his left shoulder.
Kern stretched out his full length, chest buried against the damp ground. Waiting. It did not take long. And he was grateful that the first he noticed of the others—which meant the Vanir raiders were just as likely to have remained oblivious—was when four arrows with flaming heads sliced across the dark, leaving ghost scars across his eyes as they burned long and fiery through the night.