It hadn’t been anything severe. A dream of battle, and violet-clad skies raining lightning down among frightened clansmen. His? He never was certain. Kern did not remember seeing himself in his dream, or anyone he recognized . . . save perhaps one child who walked up and held out her arms, both ending in bloody stumps and missing hands.
“Sp’der scent,” she said as if reminding him. Like he could ever forget that foul, stomach-wrenching stench.
There were shouts of pain and anger, and a blood-chilling howl of tortured winds. Reminding him of the Pass of Blood? The winter winds that oversaw their fight at the Vanir ice wall? It would explain his dreamt memory of a demonic serpent made of snow and ice. But not the image of it feeding on a woman, head curled up to swallow her shoulder, fangs skewered through her chest. In the Pass of Blood, it had been him in the serpent’s coils. And he had survived. He had fought and lived, and gone on to track Grimnir himself with that pale, bruised corpseflesh and the bestial face filled with golden eyes and savage mouth. Raising his fearsome gaze toward the sky to shout the name of his enemy.
“KERN!”
He’d sat bolt upright, kicking away wool blanket and cloak, clawing for his short sword where it rested at the side of his bedroll. He heard Frostpaw’s disturbed howl, winding down into that long, mournful note the dire wolf could hold for an impossibly long time. Shouted for archers up front, Reave and Ossian to hold—hold the middle line!—and Ashul to . . . to . . .
Ashul was dead. Aodh’s black glare, staring across the dying embers of the watch’s fire, recalled it to him.
And to the others, as well, who stood about in various states of dress and readiness for battle. Danon seemed to be in a fight with his own bedroll, trying to extract himself from its clutches. Reave and Wallach Graybeard stood at the eastern side of camp, from where the wolf’s howl had sounded and the direction by which they would have expected a new threat to come at them. Only Gard Foehammer stood on the western side, staring back up into the mountains.
The same direction in which Kern had first thought to look.
Kern remembered stepping up next to the giant of a man, staring into the mountains, their upper slopes touched as early dawn showed from the east. “Anything?” he’d asked.
Gard held his sword ready, and his other hand rubbing at some of the scars that pockmarked his face around his eyes. “Thought I heard . . . nay. Nothing.”
It should have been easy for one of them to make a joke about bad dreams. Laugh it away. Even if no one felt like laughing after being startled from their sleep so rudely. Someone should have done so. Even Kern. Except . . . all evidence aside, he did not believe it.
And neither, obviously, had anyone else.
Now the raucous cries of crows and challenging banter of the buzzard hawks fought across the open fields. Wading the deep stream, Kern stomped up the opposite bank and found a perch atop a small hillock to survey every direction. No movement except for the great dire wolf, who trailed after them at hardly an arrow’s flight. Very close for Frostpaw, appearing in the open in broad daylight. But then the scent of death would be stronger to his keen nose, and would have drawn him with the promise of possible food.
Another quick survey. Just as empty as the first, but for a pair of golden deer in the distance, which Brig immediately trekked after in hopes of adding to the band’s meager stores. Kern almost wished there was a distraction to take him away from the rising smell of death, the arguments of the scavengers.
There wasn’t, and he climbed down to lead his warriors into the killing field.
The battle had taken place right where the stream they had followed out of the foothills emptied into a larger river. A triangle, framed on two sides by water and a third by the woods, which stood a silent vigil two arrow shots distant. Kern counted three fire pits.
One side of the battle encamped for the night. Set upon in the dark, or at morning’s light? The other likely lying in wait at the edge of the wood. Run out hard, run down on the sentries if there were any set outside of the camp, or at least get into arrow range so that archers could cause a great deal of death and damage before any alarm could be sounded. But eventually it was draw swords and have at them!
Blood and curses.
Bodies strewn across the fields.
The ringing clash of steel on steel and the slap of blade against bone.
He heard the far-off echoes of this battle, how it must have been. Like a maddened pulse, beating inside his head. A dull pounding, which stayed with him as he studied the corpses, making certain that there were no familiar faces littering the battlefield. No survivors from Gaud, come to their final end.
No one he knew. Still, Kern understood at last that he wouldn’t—couldn’t—make the phantoms go away. He’d seen enough battlefields of his own in the past month to never forget the sounds and sensations. And he’d seen enough of Grimnir’s handiwork for any two lifetimes, by Crom. The brutal savagery. Pain and anguish inflicted for the sake of sport, or as a lesson to others.