Blood of Wolves (27 page)

Though it was still so hard to forget. And had grown harder every day, he found, as Wolf-Eye did his best by the people who had chosen to follow him into exile. There was no promise of easier times. Not much promise of anything except another battle, and another chance to strike back at the Vanir who gutted Cimmeria with their raids and their slave-taking.

On that, Wolf-Eye delivered.

Spitting out his last arrow from where he had gripped it between his teeth, Brig nocked it in the simple hunting bow most Cimmerians preferred and drew back with long-practiced ease. He shoved all distractions to the dark corners of his mind, as his father had taught him to do long ago.

The knot in his gut.

The crawling flush that spread over his scalp.

The bellowing war cries, the choked screams of wounded men; they coiled around the back of his mind like some kind of dark, Stygian serpent that Nahud'r could probably spin another tale about. But they did not cause him to so much as flinch when it came time to draw a bead and let fly.

His mouth and throat were painfully raw, tasting of blood from his bitten tongue. A sharp spasm twinged at the back of his neck. Both picked up in the wreck Wolf-Eye had made of the sled.

Pushed back. Set aside.

He couldn't shank an arrow—he believed—any more than he could forget to breathe. His muscles simply wouldn't forget. Maybe he was not quite as fast as Daol, who thrummed off shot after shot with the Vanir war bow he'd picked up, but smooth enough.

There!—he found a Vanir running along the other side of the wall. Like a dark ghost in the twilight's gloom and frosted mist that clung to the mountains like a burial shroud. Nothing more than head and broad shoulders slipping along above the icy barricade. A good steady pace . . .

Lead him by half a stride. Both eyes open with one sighting over the arrow's pointed tip.

Draw in a calm, steadying breath, and
loose
—without holding his breath in or exhaling in such a rush of anticipation that he jerked the shot.

The arrow flew true, taking the raider in the shoulder or the neck. He tumbled to one side, went down hard with a bellow of pain and rage. He did not rise again though Brig guessed the northerner was alive and still dangerous, just hurting and maybe a bit smarter about rising above the protection of the bulwark.

Bending down, Brig scavenged the ground for an unbroken shaft. He found a piece of the shattered bark skin they had worn for armor on the sled's run. Sticking partly through it was a broadhead shaft. He pushed it through the bark and ripped it free, wincing as he remembered Maev pushing an arrow through his side in a similar fashion.

He also recalled Daol on the downslope run, saying that everything was all right. But even in the growing darkness, Brig saw the smear of blood over the broadhead's tip.

Which was how he came to search out the other man just in time to see him limping for Wolf-Eye's side.

Just in time to see the serpent rise up from the snow, with a clansman impaled on its fangs, turning those diamond-glittering eyes on Kern.

There were two waves of clan warriors bearing down on the wall now, the first rank carrying the brush and logs that would form a good pile to scale over the icy bulwark. But the leading rush of swordsmen was still too far away. They would overwhelm the demonic creature eventually. But not before it claimed Gaudic lives.

Brig acted. He slapped the broadhead-tipped shaft against his bow and fumbled the cord into the notch. Drew back with a hard yank that bent the simple hunting bow nearly in half. Then he waited. Waited for the monster to drop the body, and strike. Waited for its mouth to be exposed, and he might send the heavy shaft straight down its gullet.

Waited, holding his breath.

Daol's first shaft skewered the serpent an arm's length below its head, smashing in and through as if he'd shot nothing more substantial than a child's snow sculpture. His second, fired so fast that Brig found it hard to believe they came from the same man, did the same. A puff of white crystalline snow showered out in a jet, like blood, but only the one quick burst each time.

The serpent shook the helpless warrior one last time in its jaws, as one of the Vanir's mastiffs might terrorize a small rodent, and flung him aside to strike at Daol and Kern.

Brig loosed his arrow with a violent exhale and a jerk. Spoiling his draw. He felt the shaft scrape heavily along the side of his bow, kicking the point out too far.
Knew
he'd shanked it, even before the arrow wobbled out on a short erratic flight that missed the serpent's throat and pierced its jaw instead. The shaft stuck fast, and the serpent hissed its fury like the howling winds of a blizzard—a long, cold banshee wail.

Then it clamped down, and the arrow shattered between icy fangs.

Out of arrows, Daol had thrown aside the war bow for his broadsword, but it was Wolf-Eye who leaped in front of the jaws of the snow serpent, thrusting his shield forward. The monster's head smashed at him, knocking him back and nearly knocking him over. Wolf-Eye stumbled into Daol, who slashed around in a sidelong arc and bit into the serpent's neck.

The monster lashed back with its blunt-nosed head, snapping at him, but Daol was too quick, jumping back and pulling his arm out of reach. He circled right, Wolf-Eye left, dividing the monster's attention.

Not enough to distract it from a third man, who vaulted up from behind and swung for the back of the creature's neck. The serpent's large body hunched up, knocking the man back with a coil like a hand swatting a summer fly. It dropped that coil over the prostrate man, gathering him into a deadly embrace. Squeezing the life from him as bones cracked and frothy blood jetted out his nose and mouth.

Scrambling around on hands and knees, Brig kept one eye on the fight as he searched for more arrows. He found a couple of flight-arrow shafts, smashed into kindling. And a Vanir broadhead missing two feathers.

Then he saw another broadhead, intact, stuck in the ground only a few arm's lengths in front of him. He dived forward, snatched it out of the ground, and rolled up to his knees with the arrow sliding home. Raising the tip up the long, sinuous body. Searching for the head.

The monster already had Kern Wolf-Eye!

The serpent had shuffled its first victim farther back in its coils, still squeezing as the dying man flailed with sword and fist. A second coil wrapped around Wolf-Eye, lifting him clear of the ground. The outcast had lost his shield, and his sword arm was trapped in between his body and the serpent. He braced his free hand up between the demonic monster's fangs, against the forward edge of its mouth, holding back those deadly icicles. Pressing and straining—holding off against inevitable death.

This was Brig's chance!

Bringing the tip in line with the back of Wolf-Eye's neck, the young Tall-Wood saw it in his mind. The poor lighting. The struggle between serpent and Cimmerians. In the haste of battle, who could blame him if an arrow went slightly off its mark?

It would be a mistake of a handbreadth. A few fingers, perhaps.

Now or never. He couldn't let the demonic creature solve the problem for him. Besides, Wolf-Eye had an arm wedged between life and death. Hydallan and two Cruaidhi archers ran up from behind, sticking the back of the monster's body with arrows. Daol charged in at the fore, swinging short, careful swipes at the serpent's lower neck, wary of Kern's dangling feet.

There was still a chance that Wolf-Eye would free himself.

. . . and Cul had ordered . . .

It was right in front of him. Here. Now. Kern Wolf-Eye's life, balanced on the tip of Brig's arrow. Just a release away. The singing
thrum
of a released cord . . .

. . . shooting a man in the back . . .

He let slip one finger, his “safety,” drawing on the cord with the pads of only two fingers now. Breathing slow and easy.

. . . cowardly . . .

“Shoot!” Daol yelled, glancing back once to see Brig frozen in his spot, one knee down in the snow and bowstring drawn back to his cheek.

He was trying to, by Crom! Loose one fatal arrow and he could go home. Kill Kern Wolf-Eye. And Daol, who would fall under the serpent's coils next, and perhaps Hydallan who ran up after his son . . .

“Be strong,” he whispered, gauging the depth of his commitment. Pushing himself toward the edge. “Be strong.”

Brig sighted along the shaft, both eyes open. Checked his target, waited . . . waited . . .

“Strong.”

Loose
.

 

IT HAD TO be the head.

The head, or just behind it.

Before leaping in front of Daol, Kern remembered that Gard Foehammer said the first snow serpent had been killed after Alaric Chieftain's-Son skewered its head with a pike. Sláine Longtooth's warriors also discovered that the monster was vulnerable only in certain areas, or when a coil hardened enough to wrap about a man.

Or to silver. But the one sword the small war host had scrounged up with inlaid silver was lost now in the dark and the struggle, thrown clear when the chieftain's warrior had been snatched into the monster's jaws.

Kern took the first battering strike against his shield. It was like being struck with a maul. The shock slammed through his entire body, and it felt as if his arm might be broken. Bruised to the bone, certainly.

He and Daol split around either side, swords thrusting into the snapping jaws, jumping back from its snaring coils. Several times Kern brushed aside strikes, turning them with his shield. Close enough to feel the bitter cold radiating from the demon. To see the scales sculpted into the beast's white body. Its cries of frustration and rage were far more like savage howls than a serpent's hiss, and a carrion reek rode its breath. A smell Kern remembered. Wet gangrene.

The serpent took a third man. One Kern did not know. And when he leaped to the man's defense, hoping to jar the monster hard enough to throw that warrior clear, the serpent took him as well.

A glancing blow from its head ripped his shield from numbed fingers.

His arming sword bit only through soft snow, slicing out a spray of white powder.

Then his blade suddenly struck into hardened snow-flesh as the body turned rigid. The shock nearly jerked the weapon from Kern's hand. He held on, but it pulled him forward, off-balance.

He felt the thick body snare him, looping around and pulling him into the serpent's deadly embrace. It trapped his sword up against his chest, the edge of the arming sword lying in close to Kern's own neck, its point thrusting just above his right shoulder. He slipped his naked shield arm free just before a crushing weight settled around his chest, and a good thing, too, as he managed to get it up against the serpent's jaw before those glittering fangs sliced into him.

It was a contest Kern was bound to lose. His strength waned quickly, holding the monster's head away from his exposed throat and upper chest. He felt scales rasping against his bare skin. Smelled the dank, cold breath this demonic creature had brought with it from whatever frozen abyss it had been summoned.

“Shoot!” Daol yelled.

Kern couldn't tell who Daol yelled for, but he did feel his friend working with careful sword strokes down near his exposed legs. The coils shifted around his body, and he worked his sword up a scant measure. Then a bit more.

If the creature hadn't been wrapped around another man, finishing him off first, Kern would already be dead. As it was, he could barely breathe, and he heard the pounding of his own blood in his ears. Loud and pulsing. But if he had a moment longer, just enough to work his sword free . . .

Which was when the arrow struck.

He felt the hot breath of its passing as it whispered past his ear, and a sharp stinging pain he later discovered was the shaft's broadleaf head slicing along the inside crook of his elbow. It was a shot made with Crom's own eye. Threading the needle between his neck and his arm, plunging hard into the serpent's open mouth.

Kern felt the deep shudder of pain that lanced through the monster, nearly suffocating him as the coils constricted for the span of a handful of heartbeats. A rasping cry belched foul, frostbitten air into Kern's face.

Then it loosened its deadly grip. Enough to let Kern Wolf-Eye free his sword arm, spearing the blade forward even as he began to slip free, sliding down toward the frozen ground. The point of the arming sword rammed up beneath the serpent's lower jaw, then into the upper as well, pinning its mouth closed as Kern added a third “fang” between the other two.

He fell faster, legs crumpling as he hit the ground, dropping him into an untidy pile as breath rushed back in to fill his lungs. The serpent lashed about with its head and beat at the earth with thick coils. One spasm knocked Daol back hard. Another smashed Kern flat into the hardened earth, pressing down on him with new weight as the serpent's death throes piled it up over the top of him.

Just when he thought the pounding would never stop, the serpent's weight collapsed into nothing more than a small avalanche of snow. It fell over Kern like a smothering blanket, but one he kicked himself out of quickly enough with the helping hands of Daol and Brig Tall-Wood.

Daol had a bruise darkening beneath his left eye and a trickle of blood drawing a line from the corner of his mouth down to his chin. But relief showed clearly on his face.

Brig looked as if he had taken the beating under the serpent's coils rather than Kern. Haunted eyes. A weary slump in his shoulders and unsteady on his feet. Face taut against the pain, not wanting to show weakness.

“What is it?” Kern asked, gasping for breath.

Hydallan led a handful of archers forward, surrounding the trio crouching alongside the small snowdrift. Most turned their attention back to the bulwark's crumbling defense. Arrows lanced out into the night, adding cries of pain to the howls of loss for the snow serpent.