Cimmerian Rage(60)

“Yea,” Ashul said, agreeing with Reave’s earlier comment. “They’ll come quick.”

They would come quick. Faster than Kern had thought. Than he’d planned. The horns of the northern war host mingled closely—too closely—with answering blasts from the west, and a tentative call from the east now as well. The wailing echoes rarely ceased. And when they did, the long, pained howls of a wolf filled the silence. Frostpaw was close by, in the village it sounded like. Herded in among the quiet, cold homes, trying to escape the braying horns.

He glanced behind them, searching . . . There! He saw the flash of silver-gray near the corner of a larger home. The powerful dire wolf scampered around, onto a well-worn path, then danced back again as if unsure which way to run. Wailing horns in three directions. Smoke and drifting ash from the fired lodge hall swirling out from the other end of Gaud. The wolf’s instinct was to flee, but in which direction?

Kern understood completely. His instincts were now warning him away from Gaud as well. He felt equally trapped. His small band had come up from the southwest. And sparks of cold flame in the back of his mind warmed to the idea of Ymirish war leaders north and west.

Come after him.

Warriors? Sorcerers? Kern couldn’t say. He couldn’t even decide how he knew such a thing, felt it so certainly alongside the chill in his bones, but he was beginning to accept the idea that his rage had pushed him into a situation he no longer controlled and could not fight his way out of easily.

And if he sensed their arrival . . .

“Ymir-egh.” He looked northward. No raider had been foolish enough to venture out alone. They were massing. Readying themselves for the attack. Any moment. “Wasn’t that what they called out?”

Scratching carefully around the lower edge of his eye patch, Garret nodded. “Reviled of Ymir,” he said, understanding the northern tongue better than most. His smile was cold, and lopsided, lost among the cat claw scars on the right side of his face. “God-cursed.”

Reave glanced over. Horns blew again from the west. Long, mournful calls. An hour distant. Maybe less. “Did nay know you were so popular.”

Kern shrugged, but Nahud’r clapped him on the shoulder. The dark-skinned warrior brandished his wide-bladed scimitar. “Make feel welcome.”

They could certainly do that.

“We’ll try to bring them right through here,” Kern said, waving his short sword at the gap between the two wattle-and-daub huts. “Daol and Ehmish, up top. Garret and I will flank Reave along the front.”

It made sense. Kern and Garret both had newer, bronze-faced shields, and Reave had sliced the door from one hut from its leather hinges. It would make a full-body shield to protect him from arrows while the raiders closed. And from atop one of the huts, Daol would work incredible damage with the Vanir-style war bow he’d taken as spoils. Ehmish had a light hunting bow. Not as powerful, but deadly enough.

Reave boosted Daol up, the lithe warrior spreading his weight out on the thatched roof to prevent falling through. Ehmish took a cupped hand from Nahud’r, scrambled up toward the peaked edge, his bow ready, an arrow nocked.

None too soon. The dark blur of a large hawk swept out of the forest as shadows moved behind the thick cover, raiders surging forward with hardly more warning than twigs snapped underfoot or the rustle of a few long branches. Then the first warriors were out and charging across open ground, shields held up to protect them, a battle cry on their lips that froze all for an instant.

“Grimnir!”

It had every Cimmerian checking behind them for the great, giant-spawned devil. Kern felt a cold flare of pain deep inside, and one of the sparks in the back of his mind jumped up brighter for a heartbeat. But then his own anger and the pain of losing so many of his clan kin rolled forward and smothered any indecision there might have been. Grimnir wasn’t here. Kern knew.

But a Ymirish war leader was. He strode out of the forest among two dozen flame-haired Vanir. Half a head taller than most of his raiders, with hair and beard the color of a dead hoarfrost. And those golden, lupine eyes that promised he shared blood with Grimnir, and with Kern. A heavy broadsword still belted at his waist, he held a tall shield protectively before him as he raised the horn to his lips once again and blew out a long, questioning call.

To be immediately answered by three strident blasts from just inside the forest on the eastern edge of Gaud.

Kern’s grin was cold and without humor. “We hold,” he challenged his pack. “For Crom, for Cimmeria, and for Gaud!”

If there was a cry to shake his warriors out of their momentary stupor, Kern had found it. Daol loosed a broadleaf-head arrow an instant before Ehmish’s bow thrummed as well. Both shafts bit into flesh, as Daol skewered a rushing Vanir through the gut and the younger man stuck a second warrior high in the shoulder—not enough to put the second raider down, but staggering him at the least.