“This wasn’t about plunder,” he said. “There were no slaves taken. This was punishment. Like it was with Cruaidh.” Another cold, shocking splash over his face. “This is my fault.”
Daol’s father hawked and spat off to one side. “You don’t know that, pup. Don’t go a-borrowing trouble that ain’t yours.” His gray eyes were distant and his face pinched shut against the day’s horror. But his voice was sharp and strong. “You don’t know that,” he said again.
“I do, Hydallan.” Kern straightened, standing in the shallow creek, staring up into the gray skies. “Don’t ask me how, but I know. Grimnir.” He spat the name out like a rancid piece of meat. “The demon did not come to Gaud specifically, mayhap, but he is here, in the valley, because of us.” He paused, and considered. “If they knew for certain about Gaud, not as many would have escaped.” They would have found the bodies of every one they had known and cared for if that were the case.
Daol exchanged glances with Aodh, who shook his head. “Might as well say it was Sláine Longtooth and the Cruaidh war host. Or could just as easily be that the demon’s defeat at Conarch drove him into new hunting grounds.”
Reave finished washing away the worst of the blood and gore from his hands, his arms, then stood abruptly. “You think they escaped?” he asked, going back to Kern’s earlier comment. Not giving up hope that some of their kin had survived.
“I do. To the north. Maybe the east.” He looked out over the ruined village, where a few of his warriors still wandered. Still waited. “Scattered through the valley. Mayhap a few might push for Cruaidh.”
Garret scratched a finger beneath his black eye patch. “But where would Cul Chieftain lead them? Or Maev?” Neither of their bodies had been discovered. Yet. Cul’s sword being found in the possession of Vanir, though, did not argue well for the chieftain’s survival.
Maev . . . Had she challenged Cul? Or risen in his place to lead? Or had she become a captive once again, enslaved to a northern warlord?
Kern did not want to think on that. Not now.
“Or Ossian’s father,” Aodh reminded them. “The Taurin would follow their own chieftain first.”
But Hydallan shook his head. “Ossian found his father. Near the slaughter pens. ’S laying him out in the lodge.” He hedged, then, “The rest of us, we did what you said, Kern. Gathered all the dry thatch we could from the underside of different homes. Piled in the winter wood and brought bales of tinder from the dry pits.”
He nodded and stepped away from the flowing creek. There was one last thing to take care of. “We had better get to it.”
Gaud was dead. All that was left was the funeral pyre.
It had been the work of a few hours only with so many hands, to load up the lodge hall with the wood Kern had spent most of the winter stacking in long cords. And the valleymen were expert at scavenging dry brush and wood, even with the land so thoroughly soaked. Carved from the bottom of old, fallen logs. Sheltered areas beneath thick forest overhangs. And evergreen branches would burn quick enough once a fire baked them dry. Wallach Graybeard led a small work party that did nothing but bring armloads of pine and cedar, piling the branches into the lodge until nothing could be seen of the several dozen bodies laid out in respectful rows.
It was to this that Kern took a bright-burning torch, the flames leaping high and hot with the granules sprinkled on by Nahud’r steady hand. He walked into the lodge by himself, stepping carefully through the piled evergreen and over mounds of split cordwood. He touched off fires in all four corners of the massive room.
Green smoke smothered the air quickly, unable to escape fast enough through the small smoke holes or the larger area broken through the thatching. It stung at his eyes, and burned down into his lungs. The pain was sharp and welcome.
Breathing shallow, Kern escaped to the door, then stood just inside its open frame to watch the fire catch and run. When he was certain that it would gather and grow, and eventually take the entire lodge with it, he stepped back. Out into the rain. Still carrying his torch as he joined his band of warriors, who waited to see what he would do next.
Ossian stood near the front of the silent pack. His face was a mask set in stone. His hand bled where he had cut his palm earlier, then smeared the lodge door with a sign of his mourning. Everyone had done so, in fact. Even Nahud’r and the three Aquilonian soldiers. In the face of so much death, there were no divisions.
“My thanks, Wolf-Eye,” was all Ossian said at first.
Kern understood him. Every body had been laid out on a small pile of deadwood and evergreen except for Ossian’s father. Liam Chieftain of Clan Taur. He had been raised up on a table, dressed respectfully, and left with his hands crossing against the sword laid out over his body. With Cul missing, his was the honor of a leader’s rite.