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Authors: Loren Coleman

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BOOK: Blood of Wolves
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One of the youths Cul had sent foraging along the stream banks, hoping to find a basket-trap with fish in it. He had. His bony hands gripped the body of a silver trout, its head bloody and smashed in by a rock most likely. Kern nearly overlooked him, passing on the far side of a willow clump, then jogged back to halt the lad, who handed over the fish without thinking first what Kern might be doing jogging south with his bedroll and kit.
Tempting. Truly tempting. He'd had every intention of supplementing his meager provisions with the fish. He was outside the clan now. He had every right.
But then Maev hadn't had to send him away armed, either. Or with food Cul had already withheld.
Damn.
“I want you to listen carefully to me, boy.” He crouched over until his wolflike eyes were scant inches away from the lad's. The youth swallowed hard, and nodded. “You give this directly to Maev. You hear? To no one else. You tell her I said so.” He handed back the fish.
Frowning, the Gaudic youth took it and set off on his own jog back upstream. Kern watched him go, sparing the few seconds to make certain the boy knew what he was doing, then worked himself into an easy pace alongside the stream again. One foot in front of the other. One stride at a time eating away the distance between Gaudic lands and a new life, or not.
He didn't look back.
There was nothing for him behind.
5
HE DRANK HIS fill of fresh, sweet water that night, leaning over the ice-rimed stream bank to refill his skin again and again.
Saving the hard biscuits for morning in an effort to boost his strength for the long day ahead.
A gray mist, sparkling with hoarfrost, had rolled in during the night. It cloaked the countryside in a dismal veil, hiding the sun and drawing gooseflesh across his arms and his chest, leaving only the stream to guide him southward for as long as that lasted. The air smelled of new snow, but Kern refused to borrow trouble by worrying about it before the first flake had even made itself known.
Fall down seven times. Get up eight. That was the Cimmerian way.
No time for delay, Kern rubbed life into his arms and legs, breathed on the numb ends of his fingers and checked each one for frostbite. Rolling his winter cloak and woolen blankets around the broadsword, he kept out his tattered poncho, improvising a sling around the rest using his knife belt and a short length of rope. The shorter blade and sheath he simply tucked into the wide leather strap buckled around his heavy kilt.
Good for moving fast, and drawing fast if he spotted small game. But sign was scarce, with only the wide-spaced tracks of a large, running wolf showing that morning.
For several hours he jogged along, finally leaving the stream when it hooked back to the north. He had no choice now but to trust his own sense of direction. One pace after another hammering at the frozen ground; every step carrying him closer to new life, or to death.
He tried not to think of Reave. Or Daol, when the clan huntsman discovered what had happened at the fording.
He tried not to think of Maev. Or Cul.
Nothing worked. His thoughts and memories distracted him throughout the early morning.
One more reason he missed the wolf until it was upon him.
The beast came out of the frosted mist without warning, downwind and hidden by a dead bramble of gray, thorny stalks. A large animal. Eight hands across the shoulders and ten-stone weight at least. Slamming into his back, the dire wolf bore Kern to the ground with strong forepaws scrabbling at his tattered poncho and teeth snapping for the backs of his legs, looking to hobble him. Its prey.
Luckily, it seized upon the cloth-wrapped broadsword instead. Caught in the beast's powerful jaws, the thin belt strap Kern had used for a sling parted as if cut with a fine edge.
The dire wolf bounded back, dragging the gear with it, then realized what it had was not food and abandoned it, coming back at Kern low and fast. When it attacked, the wolf rose up partly on its hind legs, snarling savagely as it tried for an arm, a shoulder, the throat.
Kern barely had time to reach for his knife, still tucked into the broad leather strap fastened above his kilt. Instinctively, he kicked out hard, stomping the large wolf against its breastbone, hurling it back from him even as he fell farther away from his lost sword.
Rolling back into the snow, and over, Kern came to hands and feet quickly. Facing the wolf more on its own level.
The beast growled and snapped as it paced around Kern, taking better measure of its prey this time. It hunched low, shoulder muscles bunching under a bristling silver pelt. It was Kern's first good look at the animal. Before it had been a blur of silver fur and ivory teeth. He marked it now with the dark band of fur around its eyes, like a mask, and the snow-white left paw. A younger male. A rogue with no pack, obviously.
And a starving animal, he recognized. The bones of its shoulders and rib cage stood out as knobby bumps beneath the silver fur. Scrawnier than he would have expected, especially for how hard it had hit him, the wolf was certainly missing several stones from its autumn weight.
It would have to be driven by hunger to come at a man like this. Even in packs, wolves tended to shy away from people, and their readiness with swords and bows and fire. A knife, though, was poor defense against one of the forest's best hunters. The wolf seemed to recognize this, or was too hungry to care. Its yellow eyes did not hold anger or malice in them. Simply a strong will to survive.
It rushed Kern, low and furious. Kern made a stab for its throat. Missed, and scored a bloody wound off its shoulder instead. The wolf's head turned and bit at his arm, catching his elbow in its powerful jaws and shredding further the sleeve of his leather poncho. Gripping Kern solidly, it dragged him back, off-balance, and bit down.
Kern lost the knife as his arm spasmed, but not his senses. He balled up his left hand in a great fist and smashed it down on the bridge of the wolf's nose once . . . twice . . . The animal yelped, tried to shift its bite, and Kern yanked his arm free.
A few of its sharper canines scored bloody gashes down his forearm.
Red droplets spattered against the snow.
And when the wolf drove at him again, Kern grabbed two handfuls of fur and
heaved
.
Helping the wolf along the path of its own charge, Kern threw the animal a good seven or eight paces. Far enough for a rough landing. But the animal also lived by the Cimmerian way, apparently—fall down seven times, get up eight—as it scrambled right back to its feet and began to stalk Kern again.
In that brief respite, though, Kern had stripped his poncho overhead. As the wolf angled after him he retreated toward where his sword lay, wrapping the tattered leather in a thick sheath around his left arm. If he turned for the sword, the wolf would have him in an instant. Even to glance back, locating the precious bundle, was risky enough. He managed it in a kind of awkward shuffle, always keeping his body facing the large wolf, trying to locate his gear from the corner of his eye.
No time. The wolf wasn't waiting for Kern to even up the fight. Gathering itself, it snarled and leaped, jaws snapping once again for Kern's throat.
Kern stuffed his padded arm into the beast's open jaws, got his other hand into the scruff on its neck, and threw the animal back down at the frozen ground with his entire weight coming down atop it.
The beast yelped in confusion and pain and immediately wrestled to right itself, claws ripping at Kern's arms and chest. Dirty nails dug painful trenches into his skin, but pain would be the least of Kern's concerns if the animal freed itself and came at him again. That kind of contest could only end one way. So he rolled forward, pinning the wolf with more weight, shoving his arm harder into its jaws. He felt teeth work through the leather in places, digging into his flesh again.
And he pressed harder.
No sword. No knife. Not enough purchase to snap the beast's neck. Kern barely held the animal down. The wolf's fetid breath rank in his face, and the taste of blood at the back of his throat as his own breathing labored in the struggle.
He had only the same natural weapons as the wolf, and no choice but to use them. Shifting his weight across the wolf's shoulders, Kern thrust his face beneath that toothy muzzle and struggled to bite out the animal's throat. His teeth and jaw were not fashioned for such savage tearing. He chewed on coarse, rank fur and ropy muscle, searching for an artery or windpipe. The gamy, sweaty scent of the beast clogged his nose and throat.
The large wolf struggled desperately, howling and yelping, back feet kicking up a spray of snow and dirt as they fought for purchase. Front paws raked their nails again and again over Kern's chest. Yelling his own hoarse cry, Kern pressed forward with renewed strength, and bit down until he tasted blood.
And the wolf went completely still.
There was no thought that he'd killed the animal. Its flanks still rose and fell with labored breathing. Its breath misted in the cold, winter air. A shallow whine squeaked its way up from its chest.
A warm, rank stench rose around them as the wolf pissed on itself and Kern in one final attempt to humiliate itself in abject surrender.
Kern couldn't breathe. He raised his head from the blood-matted fur, trying to clear the taste from his mouth without setting the animal back to its struggles. His face so very close to those powerful jaws, and its head, he stared into the yellow eye that so closely matched his own. The animal looked confused and frightened, its gaze turning vacant as Burok Bear-slayer's had been toward the end of his illness.
“If I let you up,” Kern whispered, more to hear his own voice, to realize he was still alive, “you're going to come at me again.”
The animal whined again. Yea or nay, there was no understanding it.
But Kern wasn't sure if he had the stamina or the strength left to fight the dire wolf on its own terms, holding it down and trying to rip out its throat with his own teeth. If he could manage it, he'd have meat enough to carry him through to the southern lands. If he failed, he knew the wolf wouldn't think twice before leaving him bloody and dying in the snow.
A battle of survivors. Of outcasts.
“By Crom, we aren't so different,” he told the wolf, still spitting out the taste of blood and hair. “Let's see how much fight is left in either of us.”
And Kern thrust himself away from the animal, rolling for his nearby blanket roll with his cloak and his sword tied up inside. Seizing one corner of the blanket, he tugged it violently to spin out his gear over the ground.
Grabbing for the broadsword's hilt.
Twisting around, preparing for the attack.
The wolf was gone.
Running back into the trees, favoring its right foreleg and not looking back until it cleared the trunk of a fallen young elm. There it hunkered down with little more than its ears and eyes above the snow-dusted bole. Staring with an unblinking lupine gaze, alert for Kern's next move.
Bloodied and bruised, and utterly exhausted, Kern fell back on his own haunches and saluted the beast with a wave of his sword.
“Call it a draw,” he said. And set about collecting his gear.
6
LACKING CLEAN CLOTH and any knowledge of forest herbs, Kern flushed the shallow cuts across his chest and arms with fresh water and left the wounds to cleanse and clot on their own. They bled freely at first, until his blood started to thicken. He hoped they might crust over quickly. But his rough trek overland reawakened the wounds every time his skin pulled tight across his chest or when his arms brushed against his body.
He left a blood spoor across the snow Daol could easily have followed.
Or any four-legged hunter.
Having tied cloak and poncho into his bedroll, Kern carried Burok's broadsword in his hand. A safeguard, in case the large wolf should make another charge at him. One pace after another. One league after the next. He saw the animal a few more times and always at a distance—a shadow in the morning fog. Tracking him by the scent of his blood, he guessed.
Too hungry to leave off. Too frightened, yet, to risk another attack.
Kern worried about the night, and what might happen then. So when he stumbled across the trail of a large party soon after midday, at first he considered it a favorable occurrence.
At first.
A large group, he reckoned. They had trampled the snow in a wide swath. Kern found enough clear boot prints to determine they were moving from southwest to northeast. Making for the Pass of Noose, maybe. Or just planning to follow the Snowy River country farther north.
That much made sense. It was the horse signs that confused him. Half a dozen of them: he counted by tracks through the ground cover of light snow. Good-sized animals, but hardly the long-haired draft horses that fared best in northern lands. Even then, Cimmerians rarely relied on such animals. Nordheimers, neither. Finicky beasts, in most clansmen's opinion. With healthy appetites and poor stamina. They couldn't climb cliff faces or move stealthily on the hunt. Horses also had the poor habit of breaking their legs in rough ground, and falling over dead if you pushed too hard. And if they ran off—or were taken in a raid—it was usually with half (or all) of your supplies strapped to their back.
And these were metal-shod, Kern noted, finding a good impression in the packed snow. That meant southerners. Nemedians, perhaps. Early in the year for a merchant caravan, and there was no sign of wagon tracks. Aquilonian soldiers, pushing back into Cimmeria? Had King Conan decided to extend a gauntleted hand into his birthland once again?
Kern stood on the trampled path, breath frosting before his eyes. The scent of winter freezing his sinuses closed. He looked south, and was lucky to make out the dim outlines of trees a hundred paces away. Though he knew what lay that direction. Forest and hills, then the snow-swept plains below Conall Valley, which finally gave way to Gunderland.
BOOK: Blood of Wolves
9.18Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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