Then it was gone. As he banked his rage against later need.
Nahud’r stood over him, scimitar’s edge stained a bright, arterial red, his dark skin at odds with that of every other man or woman on the battlefield. Bending down, he pulled up a few handfuls of wet grass and began cleaning his blade. As simple as that. This was his life, now.
Kern’s, too. Wading through blood and muck, risking the lives of those he cared about, who refused to set aside their loyalty to him, even when they found a chance for a new life. They might have settled at Taur, Cruaidh, or even Callaugh. But each one of them had chosen this life instead.
Had any of them found an end to theirs, this day?
Reave and Desa were seeing to Daol between the nearby huts. Garret had one hand under Ehmish’s arm, helping the exhausted and battered youth toward an open door. His trio of archers scattered forward, searching for unbroken shafts they could reclaim. And ahead, Ossian bent over Mogh, who struggled to sit, and Old Finn hobbling out from behind the lean-to.
Strom had led his trio of lancers in a wide-sweeping circle, always moving, always ready, until the danger was certainly past. Now he trotted up, holding a broken lance overhead in casual salute. Valerus and Niuss rode to either side. Their faces were flushed and full of excitement. Niuss’s mount favored its right rear leg. An arrow shaft protruded from a bleeding wound in its haunch. Other than some scratches across Storm’s face, picked up charging through some brush no doubt, the Aquilonians appeared hearty enough.
“By Mitra’s heavenly grace, Kern Wolf-Eye.” The cavalry’s leader tossed aside the broken lance. Slapped his horse on the side of its sweating neck. “That gets the blood flowing!”
Kern nodded. It did at that. “But it won’t be so easy next time,” he said. “That one”—he nodded after the departed Ymirish—“he knows our number now. Knows about the horses. Knows too much, by Crom, and will be back.”
The far-off call of a Vanir horn, still a good distance to the west, drifted through the dead village.
“And he’ll have greater numbers, bringing together two war hosts.”
At least two. The Vanir seemed to control the entirety of Conall Valley. Moving to the call of their horns, no longer afraid for the defense of any town or village. Grimnir, loose among the clans Kern had hoped to rally to the defense of Cimmeria.
“And so?” Strom asked. “What would you do about it?”
Whatever Kern might have thought, and done, the reply died on his lips, stolen by a cold, empty feeling of dread.
“Kern!” Desa shouted for him. From back near the huts. “Kern, come quick!”
16
FOR A HANDFUL of long, painful heartbeats, Kern hesitated. It was as if Desagrena’s shout had rolled over Gaud and the surrounding forest and stolen all sound from the world. No breeze shifted through the trees. Even the crackle of flame from the burning lodge hall fled from Kern’s ears. He saw a wisp of steaming breath blow out roughly from the flared nostrils of one horse, but that was all.
No one moved. No one spoke.
Even Strom and Valerus and Niuss, who a moment before had appeared so elated, flush with victory, sobered. Recognizing that the tremble of fear in Desagrena’s voice was far from normal. The viperish woman feared very little, including any risk to her own life as she’d proven time and again.
“Kern! Aodh!” Again she shouted, one name tumbling in on the heels of the other. “Ossian!” And was answered first by a short, fierce howl that called back from somewhere within the dead village.
Then Kern was on his feet, leaving his sword stuck into the earth, arms and legs pumping as he sprinted back for the nearby huts. He had heard such concern out of Desa only once before, when Ehmish had been hurt and everyone had worried that the boy lay dying in the muck and snow.
Who was it? That was the only question haunting his thoughts.
Daol lay up back against the stone foundation of one hut, struggling to rise. He had three stripes scratched down his face, and another run of bloody gashes over his left eye. Kern remembered the arrow, stuck through the muscle on Daol’s upper arm, and his fall from atop one hut, and dismissed both at once. Reave had already broken away the head and pulled the shaft free. Daol bled, but not badly. For all of their years of friendship, he was not the one Kern worried for just now.
He knew who it was.
No need to run through his count again. The name surfaced in his mind, along with that last memory, as two raiders rounded hard one of the hovels his small line had anchored themselves between. Two burly men, one with reddish-orange strands tangled into thick locks, brandishing a war sword. Another with braids weighted on the end by wooden beads. He’d had a warhammer. A thick-handled maul made for breaking open skulls.