Cimmerian Rage(87)

She had everything she needed now. She read Wellem’s final defeat in the slump of his shoulders. She had no doubt that he would see her in a Challenge Circle if they both lived through the coming months. But for the moment, he would suffer her judgment and her sentence. He nodded, and stepped past her for the open gate, to collect the three arrows still stuck out in the mud and return them to his archer.

Nay other way to do it, she knew. The Corag war leader realized now that she would tolerate nay one measure of resistance. At least, not from him. His warriors would fight all the harder for it, for her, and to erase the stain on their personal honor.

And if Clan Callaugh required aid in her absence, Kohl, her appointed protector, would not find Wellem standing in his way.

A strong position all around.

And with such strength, she thought. They might all have a chance.





22

RIVERS SWOLLEN By rains and snowmelt rolled and crashed in a never-ending froth of white water, chasing Kern and his warriors down out of the Black Mountains. So used to the sound, the dull, angry roar ahead was lost on them until Ehmish, out in front of the pack as he so often was, stopped and dropped into a crouch to splay his hands over the flat surface of a half-buried boulder.

Kern watched him pull a knife, stabbed it into the hardpan next to the rock. Cupping his ear to the end of the handle, Ehmish listened. Then nodded. Safe enough, apparently, as the young man simply wiped the blade against his kilt and shoved it back in its scabbard.

No one asked, and he volunteered nothing.

Very quiet he’d been, in fact, since the Galla returned Daol and Kern to the others. At first there had been much shouting, and the rasp of blades being drawn free, but relief at having the two men back among them and Kern’s assurance that Daol likely owed his life to the Galla went a long way in calming his pack’s fury.

Ehmish took it all in stride, as if he’d never doubted Kern’s return. And if something else was eating at him, Kern passed it off as concern for their chief hunter and tracker, who had been teaching Ehmish his craft very patiently, and left it alone. A man’s business was his own. And he worried as well. Daol still traveled in the cradle fashioned for him by the Galla, carried most often between Reave and whoever wished to take some time on the other end of the litter. Sweating, even through the coldest nights. Shivering under the sun’s touch. He had his wits back, though, and was able to talk between long bouts of sleep. His skin was still pale, but the poisoned wound on his back seemed to be healing. It had left a blackish scab, and Kern knew that when it healed it would have a puckered, burned look to it.

Lucky to be alive. Then again, that was so true of them all.

What Ehmish had learned, listening to the ground, became obvious to them all soon enough as the water’s call became a deep, pounding roar that rolled up the mountainside like new thunder. It reminded Kern far too much of the throbbing pain still splitting his head, but he knew it for what it was. Waterfall.

Soon they worked their way down a treacherous, steep slope, covered with thick, leafy fern and nothing to hold on to but water-slick branches as they chased the falls in its desperate plunge. A light, refreshing mist washed over them. Not so heavy as a light rain. Bracing himself behind the trunk of a large red cedar, Kern caught himself turning his face up into it, letting it wash the day’s sweat and grime from his brow. The thunder rolled around inside of Kern’s head, drowning out the whispers and echoes of doubt that had plagued him for two days, ever since he’d been half-strangled and hauled up the side of that ledge.

No, ever since his time in the Galla chieftain’s tent. A flash of violet lightning leaking in from outside . . . or had it? It was there, like an afterimage burned behind his eyes. Swimming with bits of cold, blue flame that flared up whenever he blinked down hard, bringing with them a memory of that rush of power, of certainty, that had come when he’d thought about fighting his way from the Galla encampment. It had been a close decision.

He also remembered something like it when he’d been standing among his murdered kin in Gaud. Sparks driving painful knives into his skull. A mixture of rage and warmth and strength in him. He remembered feeling the presence of the other Ymirish before he could have ever known. And that far-off flare of pain when he’d worried about Grimnir.

Had he come close to striking out then? Blindly? Enraged?

When the only friends he knew in the world had surrounded him?

Questions. Doubts. Kern knew he’d never shake them. He’d lived with them for too long. With Ashul’s dying words; One of them. And ever since Cul Chieftain cast him out. When Maev had looked on him, her father dying a slow, lingering death, and said, “It should be you.”