Cimmerian Rage(84)

21

ROS-CRANA LED A small contingent of six warriors forward, marching into the shadow of Corag’s palisade walls. In her left hand she raised a standard-bearer spear, with Clan Callaugh’s mountain lion skull mounted against the crosspiece. Each footfall was matched in her ears by the thunderous beating of her heart. They came with swords sheathed but ready hands on their hilts. No peace-bonding. Not even a small leather cord looped around the guard, as a token of respect for the local chieftain.

She was here to see Wellem bend his neck to her, and Clan Callaugh, or see this village pulled down around his ears.

There was nay a third option. Not anymore.

Her mouth tasted dry, like sun-cured leather, and a cold sweat dampened the nape of her neck though the sun was still hours away from burning off the morning fog. A whistle pierced the desperate stillness and a black-shafted arrow embedded itself into the muddy ground right in the path of her next step. She halted. Her half dozen bodyguards did likewise. No one broke ranks or so much as spoke, though a few hands tightened on their weapons, knuckles white with strain. Not out of fear, she knew, but with a thin resolution to keep their blades in their sheaths. This was the third arrow to threaten them since breaking her small party—her em-bass-y, to use the Aquilonian word—away from the impressive war host assembled on the glen’s upper ridge. And threats, without action, were insult.

She stepped over the arrow and continued on.

The walls loomed above them, timber poles strapped together with leather bracing and coated with a special tar mixture to resist burning. Four times the height of her largest man, at least. But the defenses of Corag were nothing to her. Nothing to the woman who had studied Callaugh’s defenses her entire life and had thoughts even on how to defeat those.

Here, she doubted it would take more than half a day. With archers on the ridge, she could rain arrows down on the palisade rampart. There were two low hillocks to offer cover for a party of brave men and women, and hooks on the poorly built tower would soon have it pulled down, ripped away from the wall and likely breaching the palisade with a few timbers uprooted out of the muddy, spring-softened earth. Even if not, bring in a hefty tree felled from the ridgeline, and the gates would shatter. Lose ten . . . fifteen men. But Corag would be hers, and Wellem’s head would be pegged up on a pole before nightfall.

If it came to that.

With other leaders, and the warriors of four different clans watching her, always measuring her strength versus theirs, she knew that it might.

In the week since storming out of T’hule Chieftain’s lodge hall, in fact, she had known little else but such measuring stares. A few warriors had looked ready to challenge her as she turned her back on T’hule, and Clan Conarch, beneath his own roof. But Conarch and Callaugh had existed for far too long in their uneasy peace for anyone to break it without a direct command from the chieftain. And Conarch had been weakened, in two years of battle and bloodshed. The Vanir had burned and pillaged, murdered and raped their way across the northwest lands, and not even Grimnir himself had ever summoned up enough strength to raze the birthplace of Conan to the ground, true. But weakened, yea, that they were. Kern had seen that. Ros-Crana recognized it now.

And T’hule, he’d had to swallow it with every raid, every burned crop, and in every minor insult as the southernmost villages sent fewer and fewer warriors to his aid.

Ros-Crana had split the ranks wide open that night, refusing to bend her neck to him when he all but dismissed the heroic efforts of Kern Wolf-Eye. Outcast he might be, but when a blood debt was owed, one at least acknowledged it. And she hadn’t. She had counseled Kern with restraint and offered him little support, when deep down she had known he’d the right of it. Cimmeria did not belong to the Vanir, by Crom. Had they truly grown so contemptuous of his gifts as to be willing to lie down in front of such injury?

Not anymore. That was her pledge to herself. And a chieftain honored all pledges. Especially those.

Her brother had taught her that.

Yea, he might have. But how Ros-Crana approached Clan Corag’s dismissal of her summons was pure Kern. A lesson that Wolf-Eye had taught her during the bleak winter days. To lead by example and, when challenged, to never hesitate.

Which was how seven Callaughnan warriors came to be assaulting a gated village. With no weapons drawn.

A fourth arrow whistled in, and dug into the soft mud not a finger’s width from her foot. Ros-Crana growled deep in her throat, turned an angry glare up to the top of the palisade, but the archer was not about to show himself. You never wanted an enemy to know whence death might come.

But this one, he had come too close. One nick, one drop of bright scarlet blood, and she would be unable to control her small cadre of warriors. They would certainly draw blades and charge forward the last two dozen paces. Hammering at the gate ahead. Their six against the fourscore of Clan Corag, calling to the warriors on the ridgeline for support. Maybe half of those would charge to her side, and it would be a one-sided slaughter until she was able to reassert control and set a proper assault.