A cry of alarm sounded as a sentry alerted the rest of the raiders that they were under attack. A second and a third voice cried out almost at the same time. Three guards on the camp! Kern had not counted on his enemy being quite so prepared.
Not that he could have set Daol’s team any farther out. As it was, two of the arrows fell short of the Vanir camp.
The other pair—and Kern was willing to wager these had been shot by Brig Tall-Wood and Daol, who both preferred the stronger, reinforced war bows used by Vanir as well—found two of the lower tents. The flaming heads splashed across the tent fabric, lighting them afire as two warriors came staggering out of each with swords already naked in their large fists.
Shouts and curses shattered what had been a still night. Already there were answering thrums as Vanir bowmen shot their heavy broadhead shafts out into the darkness, searching for their attackers. Kern heard no cries of surprise or pain, and hoped that the archers were firing blind, with no real hope of hitting anything.
At least, not until the second volley rose up from around the base of the hill.
Arcing out from a small copse that sat a good stone’s throw around the curve of the hillside. Licks of fire trailing off the flaming shafts like sparkbugs. The four arrows slammed down among the swarming raiders. Three buried themselves in the damp ground and grasses. One—by fortune rather than intent—struck into the right breast of a broad-shouldered raider.
The Vanir yelled in pain, a shout that quickly turned into fright as the flaming head continued to burn against his skin, his leather cuirass, dripping like wax down the front of his chest to mingle fire and flesh and blood.
Now the Vanir archers had something to reach for. And firing from off the hillside, their reach would be greater. Their bows spoke again, and this time a dozen arrows or better slashed at the small copse. Kern tried to imagine it. The shafts slamming in among slender trunks and branches, and (hopefully) into the breastwork of shields and barkskin layers stripped off nearby trees, all tied together with thin leather stays and a few propping sticks.
Enough to give Daol and Brig and the others a chance.
There were shouts in Nordheimir and in broken Cimmerian. Curses thrown out at the ambush. Calls for help, and calls for heads! He watched, but saw none of his Ymirish brothers rallying the Vanir. None of Grimnir’s faithful.
A good thing, or the counterattack might have been put together with greater speed and organization. As it was, too large a party than he was comfortable with speared down the hillside. Large men, brandishing war axes and broadswords, one with a horned helm that reached points outside the entire spread of his thick shoulders and a war bow he fired with incredible speed—nock, pull, aim, loose!—sending shaft after shaft down the hill and into the protected copse where Kern’s friends could do little but hunker down and ride out the storm.
“Now,” he whispered, seeing how close the raiders ran to the small copse.
An archer leaned out from one side, fired low to the ground, then curled back behind trees and breastwork before his arrow had even struck a target.
It bit into the meaty thigh of one of the charging warriors, knocking him over with a wounded howl.
Now. Now. Kern rose into a crouch, ready to throw his plan to the mountain winds and race to his friends’ help. “Now.”
One raider falling back of the seven . . . eight . . . nine . . . He stopped counting as the drum of horses’ hooves finally rolled up in an artificial thunder. The flaming arrows had been more than a means of getting the Vanir’s attention. It had also been the first of several signals. In this case, to tell Strom and his two cavalry officers to spur their mounts forward and race up from far behind (where the horses would never have been spotted or heard). By the time they thundered onto the battlefield, the first large group of Vanir had nearly reached Kern’s archers.
“Nearly” was short by a good twenty paces.
Trusting their horses to keep solid footing, Strom and Valerus and Niuss had closed the distance and raced forward with lances tilted forward and a full charge behind them. The Vanir archer with the incredible horned helm managed a single shot, and loosed it with just a touch too much haste. Instead of taking the horse in its broad chest or very large neck, the shaft smashed and splintered across the face of Valerus’s teardrop shield.
Then the horsemen slammed into the disorganized pack of Vanir, running at least two down beneath the spear-tipped lances and a third beneath the iron-shod hooves of Strom’s coal-black gelding. The horses barely paused, and the horsemen sawed on their reins to quickly haul their mounts into a turn that would race along the far side of the hill, away from Kern and his small group.