Cimmerian Rage(9)

Which he’d done, making his first kill over the Pass of Blood. But his journey had nearly been cut short when a Vanir sword sliced him open from chest to hip. It was pure luck the sword’s tip hadn’t slid between the ribs, though its bright edge had scored deep lines into the bone. A painful, bloody mess.

“One nasty, great scar,” Desa said. “But he’ll live.”

Ehmish sat up from his pallet of old straw. He had dark, hooded eyes sunk back even farther after several weeks of little sunlight and less exercise. He clasped hands with Kern, trading a man’s grip even if he did not yet have a man’s strength.

“Get me out of here, Kern. Desa is the most difficult warden a man can have.” His voice was still changing, and broke on the word “man,” of all things. He grunted, angry with himself.

Kern laughed. It was hard and brittle, but a laugh nonetheless. Ehmish, at least, would be fine. “And you, Finn? How’s the leg?”

“Still mine,” the old man bit back.

A grizzled veteran with leathery skin and milky blue eyes, he sat with his back against the wall, right leg propped up on a pile of old blankets. Between his gout and a nasty blow across the knee he’d taken in the fight, there had been some question whether or not he’d even walk again.

“Resting when I can. I’ll still walk half the others into the ground.”

He might at that. Finn had proven himself a survivor time and again.

“Most men are dead at half your age,” Kern said, paying him a high compliment.

Though not the only injuries, these two were the only ones among Kern’s men being pressed to rest. The only ones, it turned out, Desa could force or cajole into resting, at any rate. The small group herded themselves back outside.

“Nahud’r? Wallach?” Kern asked.

“Busied hisself with studying the fortifications and helping on the labor parties soon as his ribs were bound,” Desagrena let him know, starting with the black-skinned Shemite Kern had rescued from a Vanir slave line. “Wallach . . .” She trailed off with a shrug.

Wallach Graybeard had lost his hand near Clan Conarch, getting it neatly severed at the wrist. Kern had helped hold the veteran warrior in place as the stump was cauterized with a hot knife and a flap of skin stitched over the end. The worst injury of the group. But even before Kern left to hunt raiders along Cimmeria’s northwest border, Wallach had promised to be on his feet before week’s end.

Brig folded arms over his bared chest. “No infection. Not yet. But he pushes himself too hard, Kern.”

Of course he did. Wallach wouldn’t be the small band’s master-at-arms if he hadn’t. One arm or two, the man was as dangerous as he was stubborn.

“We’ll all be pushing ourselves now,” he said. “I’m through with waiting and through trying to defend the border with a bare handful of men. The Vanir slip past us by night and day. They spread into Cimmeria. Too many, too fast. We need to act, and act now.”

No one gainsaid him. So Kern nodded at the broken, bloody spear. “When did it come back?” he asked.

He’d let Ros-Crana, the new chieftain of Clan Callaugh, take it. To see what she could do among the war-battered villages and strongholds of the western clans. Not much, apparently. That spark of anger was back. The one he had felt even when accepting Ros-Crana’s argument that he give her time.

Desagrena flicked oily locks out of her face. “Four days ago. From the south. She brought it here and spiked it into the wall.” Desa had thought well of Ros-Crana when she’d been war leader of the Callaughnan clansmen. But Narach Chieftain, her brother, was dead, and Ros-Crana the new head of the clan. And Desa’s opinions had apparently shifted. “A place where everyone could see it.”

And none found use for it. Kern had expected little else after seeing the bloody token. His hands opened and clenched. He felt a familiar crawling sensation along the back of his neck as his muscles tightened up. “Does Ros-Crana call a lodge council?”

Brig nodded. “Every night, these days. She tries, Kern. T’hule Chieftain and Clan Conarch make it difficult.” Frowns all around. Very few of Kern’s people thought well of T’hule Chieftain, who had been less than . . . thankful . . . for his clan’s rescue.

“She does make a point to visit the wounded as well,” Desa admitted, reluctantly. “She brings the shaman here after midday.”

Good enough. Kern stepped over toward the building, careful of the offal Brig had splashed out earlier, and seized the wooden haft. With a twisting wrench he tore it free of the door’s lintel. “Then she will notice this gone,” he said.