Blood of Wolves Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  EPILOGUE

  SINGLE COMBAT

  Kern loped up to the Vanir, a snarl of defiance baring his teeth. One of the men got a good look at him by the dimming twilight and staggered back in sudden fright. “Ymir! Ymir!”

  Why the raider called upon the Vanir’s chief god, the legendary frost-giant who—legends said—once grappled with Crom himself, Kern neither knew nor cared. All that mattered was that he had only one man left standing against him.

  And that one hesitated as well, sword raised high, confusion clouding his pale features. He struck slowly, glancing his blow off Kern’s upraised shield.

  The Vanir wouldn’t get a second chance. Kern’s broadsword bit into the raider’s thigh, drawing a bloody scar toward his groin and nicking something important. Blood sprayed out in a warm jet to soak Kern’s kilt and splash streaming droplets across his arms, his hands, his bare chest . . .

  Look for the next adventures in the Legends of Kern series

  CIMMERIAN RAGE

  SONGS OF VICTORY

  Millions of readers have enjoyed Robert E. Howard’s

  stories about Conan. Twelve thousand years ago, after

  the sinking of Atlantis, there was an age undreamed of

  when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world. This

  was an age of magic, wars, and adventure, but above all

  this was an age of heroes! The Age of Conan series features

  the tales of other legendary heroes in Hyboria.

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  BLOOD OF WOLVES

  An Ace Book / published by arrangement with Conan Properties International, LLC.

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Ace mass market edition / June 2005

  Copyright © 2005 by Conan Properties International, LLC.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-440-67817-2

  ACE Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. ACE and the “A” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  this book is dedicated to

  Robert Howard

  1906-1936

  for the adventures and heroes he gave to us

  Acknowledgments

  Working in the universe of Conan the Barbarian has been one of the best writing jobs I’ve ever had. Not only did I get to work within Robert Howard’s wonderful creation, I was allowed to create new iconic characters for people to enjoy. The best of both worlds. And for that, I’d like to thank the following people for helping me along the way:

  Everyone at Conan Properties International for working with me on this book—Theodore Bergquist, Fredrik Malmberg, and Jeff Conner. Also Ginjer Buchanan, my new editor at Ace Books, with whom I’ve always wanted to work.

  Don Maass, my agent. Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch for their continuous support. And fellow barbarian Steve York, who agreed to read quickly and had many good comments.

  Also a quick round of thanks to the usual suspects—Randall Bills, Herb Beas, and Oystein Tvedten, who are never too busy for one more research or “reading” question.

  And finally, my family. My children—Talon, Conner, and Alexia, who put up with my (at times) odd behavior. Heather, my wife and my partner, who read every word and helped keep me at task on yet another insane deadline. I am also contractually obligated (by them) to mention my cats—Chaos, Ranger, and Rumor. And I suppose Loki, our neurotic border collie, deserves a quick nod as well.

  Thank you.

  1

  KERN WOLF-EYE’S BREATHING came in sharp huffs and thin, frozen wisps. Leather harness straps dug into his shoulders. He nodded Daol around a wattle-and-daub shack, steering clear of Gaud’s trodden paths as the two clansmen kept the flat-bottomed sled, piled high with fresh-split logs and a pair of scrawny rabbits thrown on top, to a frosted patch of untrodden snow.

  Icy crust broke underfoot. The old snow packed down with a dry, squelching sound that reminded Kern of stepping on dead fire coals.

  Daol labored next to him even though the young hunter could have brought the rabbits back hours before. Both broad-shouldered Cimmerians leaned into the strain, counting the last hundred paces to the village lodge. Their final pull fell over a short downhill slope. Kern put the last of his strength into it, stomping through the snow crust.

  The sled caught, hitched, then broke free into a short, fast glide that eased their burden for a few seconds. Too late, Kern realized the sled wouldn’t stop in time. He and Daol scrambled to either side, pulling on their harnesses, but the heavy weight simply jerked them forward, and the sled hammered into the wood already stacked carefully under the lodge’s overhanging eaves. There was a sharp crack from the sled, and the end pile of seasoned split-rounds collapsed in a slow-moving avalanche.

  Daol massaged his shoulder, stared down at the tumbled wood.

  “Have to carry some in, anyway,” Kern said. He examined the front of the sled. One of the carefully sawn planks had split. “I’ll get that fixed in the morning, bef
ore going out again.”

  He stood, kicked away snow clumping to his fur-lined boots. A bright patch behind the gray cloud cover warned the sun was close to the western Teeth, ready to slip behind the massive peak of Ben Morgh.

  Kern looked back the way they’d come, at the crests of tall evergreens standing above straw-thatched roofs of Gaudic homes. Two leagues, he gauged. Maybe three. And they had beaten nightfall by an hour at least.

  “Good pull.” He thanked his friend. Daol had not been obliged to help, but the dark-haired hunter would not accept stronger praise.

  “Kept me warm.”

  Still, Daol refused to meet Kern’s eyes. He grabbed the rabbits by the thong binding their back legs together. They looked even scrawnier, dangling from the hunter’s callused hands. Draping them over his left shoulder, he retrieved Kern’s axe and his own bow and birch-bark quiver off the back of the sled.

  “You’ll drop off an armful of wood?”

  He wasn’t asking for himself. Kern nodded, setting the axe aside. “You will save Reave some meat?”

  Daol’s gray eyes flicked up, briefly, then he glanced down at the rabbit hanging over his shoulder. “Hindquarters. And any fat scraped off the pelt.”

  Nothing would go to waste. Especially with winter’s stranglehold on Conall Valley pushing so deep into what should have been the beginning of spring. The fur would be cured, entrails boiled down into a fatty broth, and most of the meat stripped for the chieftain. Even the bones, often thrown to the dogs in summer’s excess, would be ground up to mix in with oat meal.

  If there was any oat meal left in Gaud.

  “Find you tomorrow,” Kern said. He snagged the carrying strap left hanging on the corner post of the small lodge. Nothing more than a pair of wide leather belts stitched together, with wooden handles sewn onto either end. Spreading it over cleared ground protected by the eaves, he piled wood onto the strap.

  “Kern?”

  Daol still stood near the back of the sled, wrapping his fur cloak tightly around him now that the warmth of exertion faded. A chill wind played with the hem of his cloak and stirred his knife-cut hair. He suddenly looked much younger than his eighteen summers. That same uncertainty that had marked him before he’d made his first kill in battle with Clan Galla. Daol’s gray eyes searched the skies, the rush-laden rooftop, the side of the clan lodge. Anywhere but looking toward the man he called a friend.

  “Do you believe Reave has a chance?” he finally asked.

  A bold question, when their clan chieftain lay dying not twenty feet away. And why ask Kern? His support for Reave to eventually replace Burok Bear-slayer meant little, except some firewood and a few roots scavenged from a forgotten cave.

  “By Crom, I hope he does,” Kern answered. It was the best he could offer.

  Daol nodded, then strode off toward the slaughter pens on the south side of the village. He’d likely have the large lean-to and its bloodstained tables all to himself. No one had taken down a deer in weeks, and Kern knew the clan could not afford to slaughter any more of its small cattle herd.

  Then again, how much longer could they afford to wait? Winter still refused to release its grip. The sun had turned in the sky on midwinter’s day, but had yet to bring its warming touch back to Cimmeria. “Grimnir’s curse,” they called it, evoking the name of Vanaheim’s great warrior-chief. Hardly a week went by without refugees traipsing through from a burned-out village or farmstead, all with that name on their lips. Grimnir the invincible. The immortal. The Great Devil.

  Real or no, able to control the seasons or no, Conall Valley remained cloaked under winter’s shroud. No new snow this night, Kern judged by the taste of the air, dry and raw, but no rain to hammer away the ice and no spring sun the next day either. So, more waiting.

  In the meantime, Kern had his work to finish.

  The village lodge wasn’t large. Thirty feet to a side, and two small rooms off the back where the chieftain’s family lived. The main room served as the clan’s meeting hall, and as a place of refuge during attacks or severe storms that at times drove the folk of Clan Gaud into the common shelter for warmth and safety. In the winter, it was usually a place of stories and toasts around a blazing fire set on the hearth.

  For the last few weeks, it had been instead a place of sickness and mourning.

  Pinning the strap of split wood against the door-frame with one strong arm and the bulk of his weight, Kern slapped at the latch with his free hand and kicked open the heavy door. Regaining his grip on the wear-polished handles, he shouldered his way through the entry. The scent of corruption assailed him immediately, hidden under the scent of lye and smoked rushes. It had a taste to it, like meat left to rot in a damp cellar. Wet and warm and putrid.

  The lodge hall was warmer than outside, but not by much. Heavy, black bearskins hung from the rough-hewn rafters, forming a square tent around the center of the room, shielding the hearth and blocking in most of its warmth to keep the chieftain comfortable. Barren tables had been pushed up against the outside walls. Casks and kegs sat piled in the corners, too many of them empty as the clan rationed what little they had left from their autumn stores. Skewed benches and overturned stools, all empty save one where the chieftain’s daughter worked.

  Maev rose from her seat beneath one of the narrow windows, setting aside the dagger she’d been honing against a smooth stone. It joined a small pile of freshly sharpened blades, all glistening with a light touch of oil. Another half dozen small blades, each showing some rust from disuse, lay in a second, smaller pile.

  Shutting the door with a solid shove, she cut the light down to a dimness challenged only by two un-shuttered windows and a small oil lamp hung near the doors.

  Maev shared similar features with most of Clan Gaud’s villagers. With most Cimmerians in fact. Like Daol she had coal black hair, ragged-cut below the shoulders where she simply hacked it off every month or so with a sharp edge. Her eyes were bright, sapphire blue, and her skin just a shade darker than fair.

  Next to her, next to most of them, Kern was a pale reflection. His frosted blond mane, fairer even than the Nordheim tribes to the north. Such a light, ivory yellow to be almost white. The color of old frost. His pale, cold skin that never tanned, no matter how long he worked outdoors in the summer.

  And the amber yellow eyes so few would look into. Night eyes.

  Wolf eyes.

  Maev had no problem meeting his gaze. Her strength did not allow her to bend under the hall’s smothering presence. Searching Kern’s face, her eyes blazed with a fierceness Kern often found disconcerting. Now he welcomed them for their defiant gleam. So many Gaudic villagers had given up, walking around with a defeated slump in their shoulders and attending the clan’s daily needs with less and less energy. The harsh, unending winter sapped their strength, and Burok’s injury corrupted their will as surely as the gangrene ate away at their chieftain’s flesh.

  She said nothing to him, measuring Kern the way one might size up a boar in the slaughter pens. The strap of wood grew heavy, and Kern’s muscles ached with a dull throb, but he waited. For her approval or her denouncement, he wasn’t certain.

  Finally, she stepped around Kern and led him back to the hanging tent, drawing aside one of the heavy bearskins, allowing him to pass.

  The scent of decay nearly throttled Kern as he stooped beneath the hanging skin. It burned into his sinuses and clawed with oily fingers at the back of his throat. He coughed once, then swallowed against the slick taste coating his tongue. He nodded at Jocund, the village healer, who hovered over the chieftain’s exposed leg and glanced up only briefly.

  A modest fire crackled and spit on the hearth, but it was still intensely hot within the curtain of bearskins. The shaggy walls trapped the heat most effectively. Kern set his strap of wood near the ever-needful pile, then fed the fire with a split-round, careful not to throw too many sparks. By the dancing light Burok’s face held some color above his thick, black beard, but it was all a reflection of
the licking flames. Kern saw past the false health, at the ashen pallor and the face drawn under weeks of pain and suffering.

  Burok Bear-slayer grimaced, stared up at the ceiling where the covered smoke hole wept an occasional drop of moisture that fell sizzling into the fire’s hot coals. He appeared even thinner today, skin pulled taut over angular cheekbones and yet too soft around the eyes.

  “Easy, woman!”

  The chieftain’s voice was hoarse and angry, and he sounded very much like his namesake. A light sheen of sweat stood out on Jocund’s forehead, creased with her decades of concern for the village and its people. Below her nose she had rubbed a glistening salve, likely to deaden the scent. She held a wooden peg in each hand. A fine wire stretched between them. In sharp sawing motions she stripped away more of the corrupted, gangrenous flesh which crept up toward the tourniquet.

  Above the strap of leather more veins stood out, already swollen with infection. The healer had to know the leg, and the life, were beyond saving. Kern knew.

  By the haunted look in Burok Bear-slayer’s eyes, the chieftain obviously knew it as well.

  All because of an accident. Stepping through a crust of snow and breaking his leg in a marmot hole. Kern had been there, heard it happen. The wet snap and hardly a grunt of pain to tell of it. And the bone splinter, sticking out through the skin. No one else had been close enough to signal, and certainly they couldn’t call out just then for worry of Clan Taur.

  “Get me home, Kern.” That had been the chieftain’s only order. He didn’t call Kern “Wolf-Eye.” He never had.

  Ten miles on an improvised litter, in the face of a frigid, easterly wind, Kern dragged Burok back to Gaud with barely a stop to ease his flagging muscles. Another Gaudic warrior would never have made it. There were others stronger than Kern, more able with a sword or battle-axe, certainly, but none had his resistance to winter’s touch. Even so, both men had frostbite waxing their cheeks when Kern staggered into the village, and the wound itself had frozen around the edges despite Kern’s wrapping his own cloak about the village leader.