Blood of Wolves (26 page)

The sled's stacking surface was pitted and gouged, and full of splinters that scraped Kern's arms and jabbed at him through the rents in his tattered leather poncho. The planks felt cold against the bare skin on his arms, his legs, like ice. There wasn't much of an edge to grab on to, so Kern splayed his hands flat on the forward area, gripping as best he could.

Daol and Brig crouched over him, balancing their bows and the weight of three swords on the small of Kern's back, then Kern's shield on top of those. Hydallan would ride on a separate sled, with one of Sláine's best archers and the man with the silver-chased sword whom the chieftain trusted to deal with the snow serpent.

The bark skins were laid over them, leaving just enough room under the forward edge that Kern could make out the distant shadow that was the ice wall.

Reave crouched down at the front of the sled. “You can see okay?”

Kern's mouth was dry and his tongue felt twice as thick as normal. But he could nod.

“We'll be right behind you. Don't go getting in too much of a hurry, yea?”

“Just try not to trip over that great blade of yours,” Kern said, finding his voice again. His muscles quivered in anticipation.

Reave snorted. “No need to be jealous. It's not the length of the blade that matters, but how you use it.”

Kern laughed, shortly but warmly. “Go howl! Thick-headed ox. Desa! Get this man where he belongs.”

Reave didn't wait for the viperish woman to drag him away (likely by his braided locks). With a slap against the side of the bark skin, he thrust himself back to his feet and moved to the back of the sled, ready to push.

There was no gauging the other sleds from his position, so Kern waited with muscles trembling for action and the bitter taste of adrenaline drying the back of his throat. It wasn't until Sláine Longtooth called out “Ready,” that Kern even had an idea that they were about to shove away. Within minutes, he guessed.

Much sooner, as it happened. The chieftain must have simply glanced over his line, made a few last checks, then given the nod. “Go,” he ordered. “Send them!”

Kern braced for the shove, thinking that Reave and Nahud'r would simply brace themselves against the back of the sled and get it started with a mighty push. He heard the grunts of exertion coming from either side of him first, felt more than saw the other sleds begin to move.

There was a clap and a rubbing sound behind him. In his mind, Kern pictured Reave rubbing his hands together, bending down patiently with Nahud'r to get their hands fastened on the back of the sled, bracing themselves, and then—finally!—pushing forward with slow, strong steps.

The sled began to move, rasping over snow crust that bore the weight of the three men fairly easily.

Faster. Stronger. Gliding forward with greater and greater ease. To either side, Kern saw the nearby sleds about even with his, a few arm's lengths between each. It didn't seem like so much room anymore.

Smooth and slippery, the sled charged forward.

Kern heard the footfalls behind him, felt their hammering thuds through the sled's planks, and knew that Reave and Nahud'r were running for all they were worth, keeping the sled at speed. There were stumbling falls all around them as the running warriors finally lost balance or were outraced by the sled's natural tendency to pick up speed.

Reave, Kern felt certain, lost it first, staggering into a lopsided run, then crashing down onto the snow-covered slope. Nahud'r lasted another few steps, and managed a slight shove at the end that jumped Kern forward, almost catching them up fully with the racing sleds to either side.

The wind cut at his ears.

A spray of snow sliced up from the forward edge of each side. It smelled of fresh ice and dull, damp clay.

Kern ran a tongue across his chapped lips, squinting into the wind and gloom to try and see how they fared. His sled hit a rough patch of snow, and it shook hard. Then another. It sounded like stones scraping along the underside of the sled, loud and dangerous in Kern's ears.

“By Crom,” Brig Tall-Wood said, packing into that all the same recriminations Daol had voiced earlier.

The next patch nearly shook Brig loose as the sled bucked and slewed sideways for a few long heartbeats. Kern leaned in the other direction and dug his left foot into the snow, feeling a hard, icy rough scraping against his toes. He knew then what it was. Knew without having to see it. Snow and mud, churned into frozen slush by Sláine's repeated attacks against the Vanir wall.

The sled turned, but not easily. Kern jammed his foot into the snow and ice even harder. They came within a few handbreadths of the racing warriors on Kern's right before veering away.

Elsewhere, a sled of warriors was not so fortunate. They shouted as their sled began to wander, and Kern heard the first man bail off before there was any impact of wood against wood. But that came soon. A sick, crunching sound that reminded him of smashing into the woodpile back in Gaud. At least one more body hit the earth nearby. Several others yelled in anger and not a little fear, but Kern didn't think any of the sleds overturned. At least, he hoped not.

There were other shouts in the deepening twilight. Calls of surprise and alarm in the Vanir tongue. Challenging roars from behind them, as Sláine Longtooth's war host charged forward.

Squinting forward, Kern saw the watch fires behind the wall blaze up with new strength as raiders fed brittle evergreen boughs to the flames.

The first arrow shaft didn't whistle past for another few heartbeats. It was another five or ten lengths before a broadhead
thunked
into the barkskin shield laid over their backs. Daol shouted an exclamation, then, “All right. I'm okay.”

The sled jostled them as it bounced over some uneven snow, then it leveled out over a long, rough slide leading up to the Vanir line. The blanket was worse there, chewed down to bare earth in a few places. The sleds skipped over these with grinding scrapes and violent shaking. Kern all but gave up trying to control the sled's direction. They wavered over the field, bumping and grinding against the neighboring sleds. Slowing, finally, but still too fast to bail off without worries of breaking a bow, or a bone. Too late to think about . . .

Too fast!

Kern's eyes widened as he saw the dark shadow of the wall approaching fast. Though barely more than chest high it looked very tall and very, very hard from the back of the fast-gliding sled. Kern saw a darker stain against the wall, not too far off to his right, which would be the piled logs and brush from earlier attacks. And around this was more iced-over slush and bare earth and
the ditch
—

“Hang on!” Kern had time to call out, and then the sled pitched nose down into the shallow trench that the Vanir raiders had dug across the slope.

The front edge dug into frozen ground and the entire sled stopped hard, throwing the warriors forward. Kern slid across the rough planking. He managed to get one arm in between his face and the bark shield before he smashed the tree skin in between his face and the icy wall. Splinters gouged deeply into his forearm, cutting long, shallow wounds. His head glanced off ice as strong as steel, but what lit off the sparks at the edges of his vision was when his shield slid up his back and cracked him behind the crown.

Kern didn't stay down for more than a few pounding heartbeats.

Rolling to one side, he disentangled himself from Brig Tall-Wood and the two bows which, remarkably, still appeared to be in good shape. The blanket with their swords wrapped inside lay nearby. A grab for one corner and a quick yank spun the blades over the ground in a clatter and clash of metal.

Snatching up his arming sword, Kern then hunted for his shield as Daol and Brig scrambled for the handfuls of arrow shafts littering the ground around them. It wasn't hard to find, resting on the front edge of the sled where his head had been a moment before, lying under a broken chunk of bark.

Bloodied, bruised but still whole, Kern staggered up to a crouch, staying low on the wall as warriors sprinted for his position near the makeshift ramp. Kern counted seven sleds scattered along the middle of the wall, most of them having crashed into the bulwark as he had. Another sled lay overturned about twenty paces back toward the slope, and a dark stain that might have been the last sat halfway up the slope, right about where Sláine and his war host came charging with their burning brush and charred logs and enough sharpened steel to put the fear of Crom into these northerners.

They had to hold long enough for the others to reach them. Had to keep the Vanir archers from turning the mass charge into a deadly gauntlet.

Picking themselves up from the wreckage, clansmen grabbed for weapons and shields and began to run toward Kern and the makeshift ramp. Some carried swords, and a branch or armload of brush picked up off the ground. Most of them carried bows in hand and arrows in their teeth, spitting out one shaft after another.

Nock-draw-
loose!

A Vanir warrior shouted out in pain.

It wasn't as one-sided as the Cimmerians would have hoped, though. Right now, in fact, the swiftness of their arrival was all the advanced team had in their favor. The odds were stacked heavily against them. Arrows sliced through the twilight gloom, shattering against shields, searching for unprotected flesh and finding it.

Kern saw one archer pitch backward with a shaft through his throat, the broadhead tip sticking out near his spine.

Another man staggered forward with two shafts sprouting from his shoulder, and another in the meat of his calf muscle.

But as near as Kern could tell, in the building dark and the confusion of shouts and dying groans, Sláine's plan was working. With nearly two dozen archers grouped together, able to claim some protection from the bulwark, a few men could do a lot of damage and keep the raiders from concentrating fire on the onrushing war host. A man would drop here and there, wounded more often than dead, and never in the numbers they would have lost with three or four more feints to build up piles of wood as siege ramps. A handful of lives, spent to breach the wall. Once the main body of Sláine's host arrived, they would form the anvil.

And Gard's reinforcements would be the hammer.

The second wave broke cover from above with hearty yells and the thunder of another hundred pair of feet rushing down the battered slope. These were fresh arms and sharpened blades, saved back for a moment to prevent such an easy stream of bodies that the raiders could not help but turn their full attention on the charging army.

Now there were three targets for the raiders to worry about, and pressure eased along the forward line. Kern waited, crouched with shield ready, for his chance to lend a hand. As a Vanir leaned up over the bulwark, almost right over his position, Kern rose up and thrust his sword through the man's neck. A warm jet of blood gushed over his fingers, making the hilt slippery. The raider pitched back, gargling with a wet fury, drowning in his own blood.

“We have them,” Brig yelled over, bloodlust thick in his voice. A stream of blood washed down over his face from a cut scalp, but he didn't seem to notice. His bowstring sang as he drew back and loosed again, and again. “By Crom,” he said, “we have them.”

It looked that way to Kern as well. But he had forgotten the Ymirish sorcerer.

And the snow serpent.

A high-pitched cry of pain lanced through the battle calls and shouts, dragging Kern around with his arming sword and shield held ready. Low to the ground and not a stone's throw away, a large body coiled up and around, brushing aside a nearby archer, falling over another man and pinning him to the ground. Where the serpent's head reared up, higher than the bulwark, the Vanir's blazing fires on the far side threw red-and-orange glints into its faceted eyes and along its deadly icicle fangs.

And caught in those fangs, the long spikes digging painfully through his stomach, was the same man Kern had seen struggling forward earlier with three arrows already stuck in him. A swordsman.
The
swordsman, in fact. The one Sláine Longtooth had counted on to bring down the snow serpent.

Who, with one final throat-rattling scream, died in the jaws of the monster.

BRIG TALL-WOOD LOOSED his arrow with a casual release that belied the knot twisting up his guts. With every whisper of a Vanir shaft narrowly passing him, sparing his life for another few heartbeats, that knot dug deeper. Tensing for the moment when a broadhead slammed into him again.

Would knock him over, setting his body afire.

As it had in Taur.

He'd been thinking about that moment more and more, ever since stepping forward when Sláine Longtooth began hand-selecting archers for the assault. The Cruaidhi chieftain hadn't said a thing to him, but nodded to Kern instead. As if Wolf-Eye was anything to Brig other than the man he was supposed to kill. Under
his
chieftain's orders.

But rather than think about Cul—or Tabbot or the others back in Gaud knuckling under this hard, harsh winter—and how he would accomplish his task, finally, he remembered the arrows that had knocked him to the snow-covered hillside, bleeding the life from him in droplets and dribbles. He remembered how Hydallan had come to his aid, the old man leaving himself vulnerable as the others formed a tight knot around Kern Wolf-Eye and the rest of the wounded. And how Wolf-Eye stood his ground, protecting Aodh and Maev—protecting him as well!—until the Taurin came to their aid in the battle.

This time would be different, Brig had promised himself. He put himself back into danger specifically to have his chance at the band's outcast leader. The chaos of battle. An arrow just a little off its mark. That's all it would take.