Age of Conan: Songs of Victory: Legends of Kern, Volume IIl 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

  EPILOGUE

  DEATH BLOW

  Kern climbed back to unsteady feet, feeling a weakness wash through him that had little to do with hitting his head. He shook away Daol’s hand, shoving his lifelong friend to one side, wishing no touch, no sense of another’s presence.

  The violet afterglare of power swam in front of his eyes, and he knew that he’d done it again. Embraced that which he had nay use to be touching at all. Or even knowing.

  Kern felt the danger swimming up from the back of his mind before Daol ever reacted. His friend had half turned back to the rock wall. Then, suddenly, Daol’s sword swept up and he moved for Kern’s side.

  “Behind!” was all he had time to shout.

  Too late, Kern spun around in a ready crouch. A touch slow and low, his blade came up into a guard position. Hardly at strength to meet the raider leader, Kern slipped past Ossian, who lay stretched out over the ground, unconscious or dead. The Vanir’s war sword swung a backhand slash for Kern’s throat . . .

  Don’t miss the first adventures

  in the Legends of Kern . . .

  BLOOD OF WOLVES

  and

  CIMMERIAN RAGE

  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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  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. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  SONGS OF VICTORY

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

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Ace mass market edition / August 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 : 978-1-101-16156-2

  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

  my latest editor,

  Ginjer Buchanan

  with gratitude and warm wishes

  Acknowledgments

  Songs of Victory was a treat because I finally got to bring to a close the story I opened with Blood of Wolves. Kern’s outcasts traveled far and fought hard to get there. Just as a large team of people traveled a rocky and adventurous road with me in the creation of this book. I’d like to thank the following people for being a part of that journey:

  Everyone at Conan Properties International: Theodore Bergquist, Fredrik Malmberg, Jeff Conner, and Matt For-beck. Also Ginjer Buchanan at Ace, for her tireless work and efforts on my behalf. This book could not have happened without your patience and support.

  Don Maass, who represented me during this time. Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch for their friendship and help (and, occasionally, a kick). And Randall Bills, who took more than his share of annoying phone calls on this one.

  As always, my family. Talon, Conner, and Alexia, my own barbarian horde. Heather, my wife and my partner, who kept reading and kept me writing even in the hardest moments. And the animals who made appearances, sort of: Grimnir’s “great cats” Chaos, Ranger, and Rumor, and our “wanna-be wolf” Loki.

  Thank you.

  1

  MORNING ARRIVED WITH a pregnant stillness hushing Murrogh Forest. Birdsong, and the lowing of cattle that should already have been set out on their early-morning graze, were replaced by the long, slow scraping sound of stone against metal. A dry rasp—honing along one edge of a broadsword, tapering off with a fast, harsh file. Then again. Drawing out each moment with the same rough whisper.

  Schhh-nhik.

  Kern Wolf-Eye tightened one hand over the hilt of his short sword, still sheathed at his side, and stepped out from behind the short fence of saplings he’d braced up by a single pole. Overhead, gray clouds pulled a thick blanket across the sky, reducing dawn’s light to gloom and shadows. He eyed the overcast warily. Not heavy enough yet for a serious rain, he gauged. Another day of gray spring showers.

  His long, frost blond hair, plastered down by an earlier drizzle, hung in tangled, twisted braids against the side of his head. He wore a chain-mail vest of tarnished rings, bracers, and a silver armlet on each of his bare arms.

  Gooseflesh stood out on both arms as well, and the hairs on the back of his neck prickled. Neither of which had anything to do with the wet or the cold.

  Standing on one of the narrow paths that crossed the slopes below Gorram Village, Kern looked out over the forest. What he could see of it. A thick, low-lying fog tangled its way amo
ng pine and thick birch and drooping cedars, hiding the lower trails. The fog moved as if alive, roiling through thick branches. Breathing. Pushing up against the lower slopes as if rallying its strength for the short, sharp climb. The covering blanket piled up only a stone’s toss below the village’s first rock wall, behind which crouched a half dozen armed men with swords already standing naked in their hands. Ready. Waiting.

  Soon, he knew. There was something out there. A scent, like cold steel, and the metallic taste of blood burning at the back of his throat.

  Schhh-nhik.

  A few sharp glances shot his way. Warriors he didn’t recognize, for the most part, hunkered down behind boulders or small piles of rock, or another of the wooden fences hastily built and propped up to shield a man. Or woman. Who waited, same as he did, for what would come. Clansfolk who were shorter than the average Cimmerian. Stock ier. With brown eyes and strong, square jaws.

  Eastern folk.

  Only one of Kern’s “wolves” crouched nearby. Aodh. Kneeling at the base of a small rock wall, sitting back on his calves. Lean and muscular from a hard winter’s running and fighting. A veteran warrior of better than forty summers, only the salt-and-pepper hair he kept tightly shorn and the extra gray sneaking into a thick, drooping moustache told his age.

  Broadsword laid out flat across his lap, Aodh held a whetstone clutched in his right hand. He drew the stone down the length of his blade, stropping the edge with long, even pulls, blue eyes never once leaving his work.

  Schhh-nhik.

  Kern ignored a nearby hiss of annoyance from one of Gorram’s warriors, just as he left Aodh to his own deliberate preparations. The calm and the quiet before battle got at everyone, sooner or later. He trusted each man and woman to see after themselves.

  The village was, after all, as readied as they could make it in the short time they’d had. Rock walls repaired. Brush that might have offered an easy handhold on the way up the hillside cleared. Kern’s warriors had cut saplings by the hundreds, thinning the local forest, sharpening their tops to make rough-hewn spears that were anchored into the hillside, the sharpened points angled back down the slope, thrusting into the face of any attacker who might try to climb for the village.

  Two dozen huts. A slaughter pit. A couple of lean-tos. Gorram Village was about as small as they came, though the chieftain of Clan Murrogh had promised it to be wealthy in cattle and strong arms. Kern hadn’t believed it, coming upon the hillside village the day before. No room for oat crops. Poor grazing land. But the Gorram had surprised him, turning out forty well-armed warriors and (later) showing him nearly two dozen cattle penned back inside a cleft in the hill. The lands of eastern Cimmeria were constantly showing Kern a new face.

  Such as the one that suddenly popped above another rock wall, nearly at Kern’s left shoulder.

  The boy wore a sleeveless jerkin and a simple brown kilt. Curly locks of honey-brown hair framed a round face still pudgy with youth. A dark smear of dirt covered one side of the lad’s nose and half of one cheek as well. Gangly arms, Kern saw, and slender hands not yet built for a sword. Twelve summers, if a day.

  Biting back a curse, Kern shoved his half-drawn blade back into its sheath. He rubbed a hand over his face, feeling fresh stubble scratch against his palm.

  “Bad idea, boy, sneaking up on a man.” He gave the child an angry glare, satisfied when the lad jumped back as if bitten.

  “Truth,” the boy whispered, his voice raw and full of wonder. “You do have the wolf eyes. The other boys, they said it was all made up.”

  So much for satisfaction.

  Kern felt something inside him darken, like a door closing on a windowless room, and a warm thrill of anger he quickly smothered under a cold, dark blanket. It was always there, the rage—the power—lurking in the back of his mind. It tempted him at every turn, if he’d only look inward and embrace it.

  And naturally the boy had hit upon the core of Kern’s troubled past. One merely had to glance in his direction. The Gorram might not all fit the usual look of the Cimmerian, a people who ran toward hair dark like coal and blue eyes the color of a summer sky, but in comparison to Kern they were Crom’s nearest kin. Kern’s frost blond hair and waxy skin would have pegged him as an outsider no matter what. But his golden eyes, sharing a wolf’s feral gaze, were what everyone remembered, and so many feared.

  Just a boy, he reminded himself. “Why aren’t you locked in a room?”

  “Climbed out the window. Wanted to see for meself.”

  “Now you have. So get back to your hut.”

  The boy raised himself over the wall on those skinny arms. “Gonna make me?”

  A touch of defiance that Kern remembered well. He’d had it, certainly, growing up in Gaud. Maybe a bit stronger than most, as an outsider even within his own clan. It wasn’t a completely unhappy memory. And a bit better than most, these days.

  So rather than argue, or make trouble among the Gorram by chasing the boy back up the hill, Kern shrugged. He started to turn away, paused, and pulled a long dagger from the scabbard tied into his wide, leather belt. He tossed the blade to the sandy-haired youth.

  “Going to be outside, be armed.”

  The boy stared at the dagger, then at Kern. “Father forbids me to fight yet.”

  Kern did not bother pointing out that the lad’s father had likely forbidden him from peeking a nose out of the hut and turned his attention back to the shroud of fog as a dark flash tickled at the back of his mind. “If our enemy makes it this far, what your father forbids won’t matter so much, boy.”

  The youth weighed the dagger in an open palm. “Mayhap they won’t come.” He sounded disappointed.

  But Kern knew better. The short hairs on the back of his neck stood up, bristling.

  “They are already here,” he said, then ducked back behind the nearby wooden fence as an arrow slashed up from the fog, shattering against the rock wall just below the boy’s face.

  “Raiders!”

  Several voices raised the call of alarm, all shouting at once. More arrows whistled out of the morning’s cover. Dark shadows down inside the fog resolved into men who moved, loosed a new flight, and scrambled forward again while reaching for another shaft.

  A second arrow struck the wooden fence Kern Wolf-Eye hid behind. It shook the rickety shield with a hammerlike blow, the tip forcing its way through a thin crack between two saplings. Then a third and a fourth shaft slashed by to shatter against the rock wall as the lad’s eyes went wide with fear and excitement.

  “Get your fool head down!” Kern grabbed up a stone and chucked it at the boy’s head. It clipped an ear and finally convinced the youth that he’d be better off hiding behind the rock wall.

  Nearby, Aodh crabbed out from behind his pile of stones, then rolled back into cover as a new flight buried itself in the ground where he’d lain. He flashed Kern a handful of fingers. Two, three . . . four times.

  Twenty. Twenty raiders would never have been enough to take Gorram Village, even before Kern’s warriors arrived to help them prepare for any siege. Twenty raiders might have caused trouble. Killed a few men. Stolen some cattle if they’d kept surprise on their side. Against the entire village, armed and prepared, they had no chance. They simply did not realize it yet.

  Kern’s “men of the wolves” planned to show them their folly. Any moment now.

  He guessed fairly close. Slipping out from behind his small fence, Kern snatched up his shield, which lay in the mud nearby, and readied himself. Glancing around one of the shield’s edges, he saw that the first few shadows had nearly reached the lowest rock wall.

  Vanir!

  So easy to tell, with their fire-red hair and the helms they decorated with the horns of different beasts. They charged up out of the fog, ignoring the switchback cattle paths. Warriors with blades and shields readied scrambled up the mud-slick slopes, while archers with their heavy war bows covered from behind. They yelled full-throated battle cries, and Kern heard more than one
maddened voice spitting out a curse of “Ymir-egh.” Cursed of Ymir.

  These raiders had come for him. Sparks of anger jumped behind Kern’s eyes, stinging at the forefront of his mind.

  Soon.

  Somewhere, still lost under the cover of the fog, a horn bellowed out their war call with a long, mournful blast. Driving the Vanir forward. Kern needed no such instrument. His men knew their task. Had honed it to a skill in their several months of living, fighting, and bleeding together on battlefields ranging from Conall Valley through the Broken Leg Lands and over the eastern passes of the Black Mountains.

  Almost . . . now!

  Like rock scorpions striking from ambush, four men, hunkered down behind cover one level below Kern, suddenly rose with bows. They fired down at the charging Vanir, slamming arrows into their upraised shields, slowing the charge. Then a second volley after the first.

  One arrow slipped past and buried a broadleaf head into a raider’s shoulder. It spun the man around, unbalancing him on the treacherous footing. He slipped, fell, and rolled back down the hillside until he slammed against an outcropping of boulders.

  His shout of pain was cut short as his head cracked against a sharp edge of stone.

  Despite the late-held volleys, two of the flame-haired northerners managed to get a hand on the lowest wall, straining to pull themselves up. One reeled away with a shriek of pain as a sword flashed out from behind that wall to come hacking down across his wrist, severing his hand.

  As blood pumped out in hot splashes from the waving stump, Desagrena rose from hiding. Kern recognized her lithe form and quick movements, even from behind. She skewered her broadsword through the man’s chest once . . . twice . . . and he fell back, already dead before he hit the ground.