The scuff of leather boots against rock sometimes sounded to him like the short, grinding rasps of sharpening blades.
“Death land,” Hydallan called it, squinting into the distance.
Valerus had been rubbing down his horse with a ragged piece of cloth. Now he paused. “Why?”
The small band had stopped at midday for a meal of dried beef and stale flat cakes that tasted more of old grease than the original oat and meal paste. The old tracker tore his food into small bites with fingers that trembled slightly, Kern saw, as age and hard travel wore on him. But there was still good steel in his spine, and strength in his legs as he kept to the pace Kern set from Venarium toward the southern reach of Conall Valley.
“Open ground and poor hunting. Worse for crops. Too much blood’s soaked in here.”
The horseman wore his mailed hood back over his shoulders. He scrubbed strong fingers through the tight, sandy-blond ringlets matted to his head. “Blood?” Valerus was more curious than the other two Aquilonians, often joining in conversations.
“Blood,” said Wallach Graybeard. He had his leather cuff off the stump of his left arm, and Brig Tall-Wood helped to peel away the stained cloth wrapped over the scabbed wound. “Many clansman a-died here. And Gunderman. Pict. Westermark. Aquilonian.”
Wallach had never fully trusted the horsemen, and made a point to jab his suspicions home whenever possible.
“When King Conan invaded Cimmeria, he built the first forts on the Hardpan.”
Valerus shifted from one foot to the other. “Aquilonia did not invade. We settled the border to help keep the peace and protect the trade routes. It was good for all.”
Kern wolfed down the last of his food, swallowing without tasting. “And pulled the soldiers back when the Vanir came? Left the southern flats open?”
“There were . . . problems, back home.”
Problems. Kern licked his fingers for a few last crumbs and worried a piece of gristle between his teeth. The Cimmerians knew problems as well. And they knew that when King Conan’s help might have been welcomed, the distant leader of Aquilonia had turned his back on his people. Again. Or so it looked to most.
He stood, faced northeast where the western teeth and Snowy River mountains would begin to close on Conall Valley. A gust of wind stirred his frost blond hair, and carried with it the scent of old mud and new grasses. A chill tightened his muscles as he measured the leagues ahead. Another day. Perhaps two. In his twenty-three summers, Kern had never traveled so far south. Until this desperate winter he had never been farther than a week’s travel from Gaud.
Cimmerians did not seek change. But they knew how to deal with it.
Usually with a large blade.
There was no need to call an end to the midday rest. No order given. Already his warriors tightened down cinch straps and buckles. Slung bedrolls over their shoulders. Daol and Ehmish had already drifted forward. Getting an early jump on the next leg of their run. Bows ready in case some scarce game crossed their path. The others began to shake themselves into a ragged, long line.
Reave, Desagrena, and Gard Foehammer shuffled off.
Old Finn and Mogh limped away together. The one suffering from gout swelling in his left knee, the other from the arrow that had taken him in the hip at Venarium.
Nahud’r waited nearby for Kern. The dark skin on his face exposed to the winds with his normal wraps pulled down around his neck, he looked to be tasting the air. The whites of his eyes were bright and alive.
Ashul, the other woman in Kern’s small band, offered a hand up to Aodh. Her hair hung in a knotted ponytail down to the small of her back. It swayed and danced like a snake as she kicked off in an easy jog. Kern saw a glimmer of red in the dark, long tresses. Some Vanir blood from far back in her past, showing through.
“How do you do this?”
Valerus again. Walking his horse up next to Kern while Strom and Niuss mounted and let their destriers take up an easy, ambling pace. Moving ahead.
Niuss’s leg was still bandaged from the cut he had taken at Venarium, but fortunately it wasn’t deep or festering. Yet. His horse had a long burn scar down its barrel, where the cavalrymen had cauterized the bleeding. Valerus studied the animal’s gait, then patted the thick neck on his own beast, as if thankful it hadn’t been his own mount, held down while a hot knife was slapped against the wound.
The animal was huge taken up close, easily seventeen hands to the muscular shoulders—what Valerus had called “the withers.” Thick-barreled and roped in thick muscle, it could have fed the warriors band for a week, easily. It smelled of dry grasses and fresh sweat. A musty scent. And fear. Though Frostpaw was nowhere to be seen or smelled. Kern wondered if the animal also did not care for the wide-open flats. A natural flight instinct.