Barely more than holes dug out of some riverbank, in his mind. He stood between them. Drank up the scent of blood and anger. Let it course through his veins in a warmth he had never known before answering the Call, and still reveled in feeling.
“Came through here, and fought, and died, and fell back.”
But not all in vain. Lodur knew, stepping back behind the huts, that all of the lifeblood spilled had not been Magni’s raiders. There. A dark patch that crawled among the ground muck, where a body had lain, and died. Slicked with the blood of their enemy. Warm and leathery of taste. Blood of the Cimmerian herds they had come to cull, to slaughter, and take as spoils.
Because the great frost-giant god, Ymir, had once laid claim to this land. Had been driven off by the cursed Lord of the Mound, banished to the frozen wastes of the north, but had never forgotten. And, passing His cold fire through many First Born, the giants who raged among legend and the Vanir religion for centuries, and then to the Great Ones such as Grimnir himself, that hunger had soaked into the land through so many generations, until the Ymirish were ready to reclaim Cimmeria for all. So it had begun.
So it would now be.
“One of them is dead,” Lodur whispered. His voice was flat, and cold, like the Hardpan Flats he had crossed in the days coming from Venarium. It carried no farther than his own ears, and those of Grimnir, should the Mighty One deign to hear.
“Fallen here. Bloodied, and broken . . . she! She died in pain.” An exquisite taste, like the first run of autumn’s tree syrup. He smiled thinly. “A great deal of pain.”
So it had not been Kern. The one of corrupted blood. But he had been here as well, Lodur knew. Echoes of the false one’s presence hammered into the back of his mind like a thin, cold dagger. Kern had stood here, had knelt over his fallen warrior.
His woman as well? That would be pleasing to Grimnir. And to himself.
He reached into the impressions left behind, into the jumble of emotions and the echoes of words spoken and long since passed from the ears of lesser men. Anger and jealousy, hatred, those were the tastes Lodur easily recognized. The bitterness of sorrow and regret were less familiar, and all but indecipherable—except for one. One voice he was able to pull free from the tangled knot, like a silver thread plucked from rough woolen yarns.
... we move on . . .
Conviction. And a cold, calm center that could only be one of Ymir’s brood. Ymir’s blood. One that had not yet awakened to the Call and was still encased in northern ice.
Lodur stalked after that thin, silver thread, following the echo of Kern’s passing back among the village huts and homes. With a sharp glance he called forward the Vanir, who began moving into the village but would keep their distance. A tug of power, an afterthought, summoned Magni forward of them all, to Lodur’s side. He felt his brother cast his hawk into the air, to circle high overhead. So close, it seemed, that Lodur could almost share his thoughts.
We move on.
Kern’s thoughts. Kern’s speech. The Ymirish sorcerer snarled, trying to drive them away now. But it was a scent, a taste, that he could not wash out once sampled. And it merely grew stronger, the closer he went to the still-burning lodge hall. As if the stench of burning flesh and his sense of Kern were tied together.
It must have been a grand fire, he decided, looking over the glowing embers and charred timbers not yet wholly consumed. An entire lodge hall stacked with split wood and bodies and tinder brush. A magnificent funeral pyre, burning throughout the day as flames battled the early drizzle of rain, drying out timber and consuming them one lick at a time. Now, near the end of its life, the fire was hottest only where a portion of one wall had stood until recently, shoved hard to collapse over the last body added to the pyre. Over her body.
The heat of the glowing embers washed against him, raising a false sweat across his face. The flames would burn another few hours, he decided. The deep bed of glowing coals, half a day longer. But in the end there would be very little left but ash and a few sticks of charred bone.
He remembered seeing the thick, tall column of smoke early that morning, waving like some black standard across the valley sky, drawing him in. He had sensed then that one of his brethren moved closer. Magni, coming down from the north. He had laid out with his horn, hoping to draw the other away, to join forces, knowing better than to underestimate Kern. Having learned that the hard way.
“Magni was tricked. Lured into false confidence.” He spat into the fire. Watched his spittle sizzle against a pile of coals, hissing, turning the glowing embers dark in spots. He stepped closer. Right up to the edge of the fire. The intense heat shoved at Lodur with a physical presence. Baking him.