Songs of Victory by Loren Coleman

Author:Loren Coleman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

14

IT WOULD HAVE been hard to be more prepared for an ambush and so stunned by it at the same time.

The ferocity of the assault all but bowled Kern over at first, putting him and many others on the defensive, giving ground quickly as they traded one long step after another for time. Time to regain their footing. Time to call up those warriors who had trailed the main pack.

There were shouts along the back trail. Calling forward for the wolves and the Galla to hold, and back to rally the others. No way to know if they’d be in time. Swords rose and fell, slashing and stabbing, and Kern retreated behind his shield to let that first, maddened rush burn itself out.

Except that it didn’t.

One of Tergin’s men stepped forward, matching his opponent with a series of clashing parries, unused or unwilling to fight within a concerted group. Vanir to either side turned into him and ripped their blades across his abdomen, his chest.

Tergin nearly gave his life away then, leaping forward to save the man, who was already dead. Daol prevented that by tackling the Galla warrior around the chest, lifting and driving to all but carry him toward the back of an overmatched, bowing line.

Two raiders launched themselves at Kern, but their swords tangled and Kern punched his short blade once, twice into the throat of one of them. Warm blood gushed, rushing down the length of his blade and spraying across the back of his hand before he fell back again. And again.

Another mud-spattered warrior threw himself onto Reave’s greatsword in desperation, impaling himself with a good arm’s length of steel running out his back. Reave dropped his blade to catch the raider’s arms, the flame-haired berserker caring only to take a Cimmerian with him into death.

The raider spit blood, wrestling with Reave back and forth across the muddy spit of land, taking a long time to die.

Which was when the second group of Vanir swarmed out of the fog and frozen waters, drawn to the sound of combat. Within that second pack stormed a Ymirish warrior with rage and glee twisting his face into a horrible mask, wielding a large broadsword and a tall, full-body shield. A head taller than Kern, they still shared the same golden, lupine eyes and frost blond hair. And Kern remembered this one from Gaud. The man who had attacked Kern’s warriors among the empty shell of their former village. The one whose raiders had cost the Cimmerians dearly, mortally wounding Ashul and leaving her to die in the mud and filth and rain.

This Ymirish wore a thin, patchy beard, though Kern recalled it as having been full and thick at Gaud. He still commanded a great red-tailed hawk, which circled overhead, diving behind him again and again, emitting great, piercing shrieks.

Vengeance stirred within Kern, and for the first time since smothering the call of dark power at Murrogh’s lakeside, he felt the thrust and surge as the darkness nearly burst forth again.

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