The stream trailed off, running the escarpment’s edge as it bent south toward Gunderland, twisting through the settlement that was less than a village but obviously not any kind of nomadic camp. Small huts, hardly as tall as Ehmish, who stood over the first of many bodies, lost to his revulsion and grief. Each dwelling was just large enough for one or two people to crawl inside for shelter, thatched with thick grasses and patched with mud up the walls. Some of the huts had walls broken down, easy work with a heavy sword or battle-axe. Most simply had their door coverings—wool blankets, felt pads—torn away.
Kern brushed past Ehmish and checked the first hut, one of the smashed ones, and saw the hacked and bloodied body of a warrior inside. Coal black hair. Red-dyed kilt trimmed in the mottled fur of a mountain panther.
Craggy brows and deep blue eyes, he had to guess at. The man’s face had been cleaved away.
Cimmerian.
“Crom’s blood,” Hydallan said. He spat to one side.
“Was not Crom, did this.”
The others fanned around the outskirts of the village-camp. Gard Foehammer stepped forward to turn Ehmish away from the woman splayed out in shame and death at his feet. The young man’s eyes were wide and wild, and his mouth set in a hard, angry line. Hands bunched into fists at his side.
Reluctantly, it seemed, Gard pulled him over toward the stream, where the elk they’d chased had collapsed halfway across, forming a small dam. Water spilled out over the sides of the stream, creating a muddy pool before finding the lower bed. Between the two, they slowly dragged the large animal forward, into the shadow of the cliffs, pulling it by an impressive rack of antlers. Six points—a three-year stag.
Good meat. A better distraction.
By the time the rest of his pack had caught up, horsemen leading in another ten warriors on foot, Kern had walked through and inspected the tiny settlement. Counted twelve dead. All handily killed. Beheaded, at times. Usually hacked up and left to bleed out over the barren ground.
Reave had hung back from the hunt and was one of the last to arrive. The large man lumbered up with greatsword in hand and eyes kindled with rage. Some news had apparently run back with Gard or Daol. Kern was not certain who had stayed and who had left to guide in the others.
What Reave thought he could do for these people now was beyond Kern. And Reave as well, who hung the blade back over his shoulder again. He walked up to Kern, at a loss for what to say apparently.
“Fresh water,” Kern said, nodding at the waterfall. And the entire settlement was tucked back into the scarp, as protected as it could get on the Hardpan Flats. “Some cover. A good retreat back up the cliff face, if they’d had time for it.”
Cimmerians would have thought nothing of the climb. Water-slick rock or no, with the kinds of handholds Kern spotted, even the slightest youth would swarm up the cliff face like a spider.
“They didn’t. Vanir must have come on them at night. It may be they had someone on top of the cliff.” There were a few loose rocks lying at the foot of the cliff, and a body. Easy enough to scrape them off the side.
Twelve bodies. Men and women. Two thin youths. A child no more than five summers. The hard living. The condition of their settlement. Daol saw where Kern was going with this.
“Refugees. Outcasts, or simply running.” His eyes were tight slits. His voice hoarse with raw anger. “They did not run far enough. Did not want to leave Cimmeria. By Crom, they could have picked few places more desolate than this!”
“All dead?” Strom asked.
The cavalryman had not dismounted. Valerus had, and was helping Gard Foehammer and Ehmish skin the stag, pitching in to strip away meat and fat and a few good pieces of hide.
He nodded. “I would say so. Found one young girl hiding behind the waterfall. She hid from the Vanir. From being shamed by them. But it must have been cold back there. Too cold, too long.” No one looked at the falls. No one wanted to see.
“They fought. I found one dead Vanir. But they did not fight well, or together.” He rebuilt the fight in his head again, and again. Trying to understand it. To learn from it.
“Most of the warriors who did not die in the open made it to a hut. It gave them a chance to work their blades against one enemy at a time. But the raiders tore into the huts from behind as well.”
They never had a chance.
And that was precisely what Kern hoped to bring the Vanir who raided and raped Cimmeria. Death. And no chance. He heard the call of bloodlust pounding in his ears. His thirst to avenge this slaughter. A thrill of rage replaced the usual cold, cold touch of winter that often festered inside him. He’d been given a chance to run and refused it. He preferred the hunt. The endless path he’d chosen that would only lead to more bloodshed and pain. So how was he so different from the northerners?