Reave looked back and shook his head, torn between amusement and worry for the band’s weapons master. Kern nodded, agreeing, but there was nothing to be done about Wallach’s condition just now. He slid forward and edged the large man aside, leaning into the wall. The wood was silver with age and rough-splintered. Carefully, he put an eye to the knothole, looking down a muddy path on the far side, between a pair of older shacks that had once been the home of . . . there!
Two of the Vanir, male and female, rounded a corner. They wore leather skirts, reinforced with bronzed strips and armored cuirasses. She had a buckler strapped to her left arm. Each wore a metal cap mounted with a set of horns. His boots looked of Cimmerian make, as did the cloak he wore trimmed in the silver-gray fur of a timber wolf. Her buckled-on shield had a face of blue iron with a triple-spiked boss in the center. Spoils of battle.
The woman led the way, hand on the hilt of her sword but the blade still sheathed. The only thing he carried in his hand was a horn, the kind Vanir used to call to each other over short distances. But it was their casual stance, and the way they walked unafraid into the village, as much as the horn he carried at the ready, that convinced Kern.
And Reave, apparently. “They are nay alone,” the big man whispered, tugging fingers into his thick, brushy beard.
He nodded. These two, at least, moved with the confidence of warriors with large numbers at their back. Too used to easy victories. Never far to run, should things turn sour.
Reave leaned to one side, picked up his Cimmerian greatsword. “Where, d’you think?”
Kern sat back from the aged planks, considered. “Not far. Coming down out of the north.” Though he couldn’t resist sidelong glances, finding the nearby edges of the forest, where spring green could hide an entire war host by the time they were twenty paces outside the first tree.
He also couldn’t take a great deal of time to decide. He’d raised the challenge. He’d set the field with his warriors. And the two Vanir raiders were coming closer, step by casual step.
He leaned away from the wall, looking at the rooftop of a nearby home where Ehmish had once again flattened himself out over the damp thatching on the back-side slope. He waved, and caught the young man’s attention. Shook two fingers at him, then poked one hand into the other as if running into a wall. A violent slash across his throat, then again across the thin, hard line of his mouth.
Find the second two. Kill them. Quietly. Ehmish would pass along the silent commands to whoever was closest to the other pair of raiders.
Leaving this pair to the three of them. Kern reached back down to shake Wallach alert. Rolling up onto his knees with only a slight wince of pain, keeping his capped wrist pinned tight to this side, he and Reave stationed themselves at either side of the lean-to’s single wall.
Kern swallowed dryly and pressed his eye back to the open hole. Close, now. Very close. She was still up front, keeping her eyes on nearby windows and doors. Looking for any sign of new life, other than the column of black smoke rising from the center of the dead village. She side-stepped out of some clinging mud, choosing a path around the lean-to shelter. Reave’s side.
Slowly, so any shadow against the thin cracks between planks would not betray him easily, Kern rotated into Reave’s back. He left his shield slung across his back. Short sword ready, he tapped it twice against the large man’s shoulder, letting Reave know that Kern would follow him. With a soft grunt of exertion, Reave heaved his bulk out and around the corner, greatsword flashing in a wide arc with plenty of muscle behind it. Strong enough to cleave through the thin facing on the woman’s cuirass and any boiled leather backing it. Ready to smash her aside, giving Kern a clear a path at the second raider while Wallach rushed around the far corner to take him from the side. A simple enough plan.
It should have been easy.
It should have been.
Mayhap that women were not always as strong as men, but they were no less skilled. And a female warrior, Cimmerian or northerner, who joined a raiding war host was not to be discounted. Reave should have known that, partnered to Desagrena with her viperish tongue and a blade just as quick and as deadly.
It could have been that he just didn’t put the extra weight of strength behind his blow, as he might have against a man.
It could also have been that he had jumped early, taking her casual approach as an easy opening.
Or maybe she was just that good.
With hardly a heart’s beat to react, the female raider brought her arm up into the way of Reave’s powerful swing. The greatsword’s tip, slashing in at her chest, rang against the buckler’s blue-iron facing, skipped against the spiked boss, then slid off at a downward angle that bit the sword into her side. Catching against the cuirass as she howled in pain and anger.