Dawn of the Ice Bear (18 page)

But his search was for naught. Everywhere he went, more refugees blocked his way. If he escaped the crowds, then he found himself back at the walls. The Picts had seemingly attacked simultaneously on every side. Sharzen found himself jostled by armored soldiers heading for the thick of it. “Come, man,” one said, grabbing Sharzen's arm as he tried to hurry by. “We need all hands at the wall.”

Sharzen tried to pull away, but then another soldier bumped into them. Neither of them was from Koronaka, and they did not recognize him, seeing only an armed and able man before them. “I am not a . . .” he began. But the other men moved on, not listening to his protests. Still, a seemingly constant stream followed in their wake. Sharzen glanced up at the nearest parapet, where Picts surged over the walls and engaged with the soldiers. Bodies dropped to the ground with disturbing regularity.
At least some of them belong to the savages,
Sharzen thought.

This did not bode well for his attempt at secure solitude, however. He now realized that staying in Pulliam's office might have been the best choice after all. Getting back there would be difficult.

Staying alive on that wall would be difficult, too, though. He made his decision, and started back the way he had come. The same crowded streets met him, and this time he could not ignore the shouts of some of the women. “Give us arms, Sharzen, and let us join our men on the wall!” one called.

“You may yet be called upon,” he told her. “For now, stay with the children and the old ones. They need your comfort. The Picts are being routed,” he added as he pressed on. It might have been a lie, of course—he had no way to tell what the status of the battle was. But he kept repeating it as he went, trying to bring some solace to those who waited for word. “We're whipping them!” he cried. “Even now the Picts realize their mistake in attacking us here!”

He knew he sounded like Sulish now, bringing false hope where there was none of the real kind to be had. But he addressed civilians, not soldiers. They seemed cheered by what he reported and made no move to impede his progress.

A short while later, he had reached the open square that Pulliam's office faced onto. The door to the office was open, firelight flickered inside. He could not remember if he had closed the door or not, and he assumed that he would not have extinguished the lanterns before he left it. Even so, he kept his sword ready and listened closely before entering.

The place seemed empty. Sharzen breathed a sigh of relief and was about to sheathe his blade when a figure parted from the shadows at the back of the room. It was an old man, a Pict. His hair was as much silver as black, and there were bird feathers entwined in it. He wore a ragged fur cloak fastened at the collar with a copper chain. Beneath it, his shoulder had been crudely bandaged. At his waist were a girdle and a loincloth. Leather sandals were strapped around his ankles. In his hand he carried a war axe, its head chipped from stone but with an edge that gleamed in the fire. He stared at Sharzen through narrow, angry eyes.

“Where is the crown?” the old man rasped in accented Aquilonian.

“What crown?” Sharzen replied, not sure he had understood the man correctly. But now he noticed that the man had apparently been searching for something. A massive wooden chest in which Pulliam had kept some of his personal things had been emptied haphazardly onto the floor. “Think you that there is a king here in Tanasul?”

“No crown of any Aquilonian king means aught to me,” the Pict said. “The crown I seek belongs to the Picts, by right and by history. It was stolen from the Bear Clan, and we would have it back.”

The Bear Clan! That was the bunch Lupinius had destroyed. Sharzen searched his memory, but could not recall anything about a crown, though. “You are mistaken,” he said. “We have no such crown here.”

“You can think about your answer for a few more seconds,” the Pict said. “But then you will die, and it will be too late to change your story.”

Sharzen dropped to a fighter's crouch, knees slightly bent to give himself better mobility. He raised sword and shield toward the half-naked savage, who now approached, swinging the big axe as if it weighed nothing. Even as he prepared himself to do battle, Sharzen could not ignore the irony that his own effort to find some other sanctuary had enabled this man to catch him unawares in the one place he really believed he was safe. . . .

 

 

USAM HAD CLIMBED one of the ladders along with a steady river of warriors. At the top, soldiers had tried to block their approach. But the Picts battled fiercely, and by the time Usam reached the parapet, it had been cleared of soldiers. Picts dropped from here to the ground and spread out to harass the Aquilonians. Usam followed suit, though the landing was hard on his old legs. A pair of soldiers had thought to capitalize on his first staggered steps, but he had shown them he was not slowed by a little pain. He'd screeched out a war cry and plowed into them with axe flying.

Once clear of the initial fight, he had worked his way quickly into the town, away from the walls. A big square led to a large, log building with a massive stone chimney. The structure looked important, particularly the way it commanded the square, so Usam set out for it first. The crown, if it was here, would most likely be kept in a place of honor, he reasoned. This place looked like the most prestigious building that he could see from here, so it was a start.

The building seemed empty when he went in. Lamps were lit, and the front door was open, so he assumed that whoever had been inside had rushed out when the attack came. That was fine with him—it gave him a chance to look around without having to kill more of the enemy first.

What he found seemed to be a public space, with long tables for eating and drinking. But beyond that was a smaller, enclosed space such as the fort's chief or commander might use as his headquarters. This was just what Usam had been hoping to find. He ransacked every space that might be big enough to hide the Teeth of the Ice Bear and had been about to go deeper into the building's interior when he'd heard the scuff of a boot on the outer steps. He stepped into black shadows at the back of the room, held his breath, and waited. Just one man entered. He was armed, but looked soft, bloated. Usam stepped out to face him.

Now that the man denied knowing anything about the crown, Usam prepared to split his skull. If the man was lying, he would speak up, or die. Either result would satisfy the Pict.

He could tell by the trembling of the man's arms when he lifted sword and shield that his foe was no warrior. Usam swung his axe in a slow circle, at his side, then over his head, as he approached. The Aquilonian's eyes grew wider, and he tried to ready himself for the first blow, but Usam kept varying the angle of the swing. Keeping his opponent guessing. The other man's lip quivered, and Usam wondered if he was going to beg for mercy. He hesitated a second, just in case the Aquilonian had decided to tell him where the crown was after all.

But the man simply closed his mouth again, as if aware how it made him look. Tired of waiting, Usam charged.

 

 

OUTSIDE, A FEROCIOUS wind howled, loud as the souls of every wolf who had ever died, joining their voices. Conor sat inside his home with a fire crackling and a mug of ale close at hand. He had hung furs against the walls to provide one more barrier against the cold. Smoke blew back down the stone chimney from time to time, but he was warm and dry, and both things counted, on this strangest of Cimmerian autumn days, more than most.

The wind was so violent that he almost didn't hear the hammering on his door. Or to be more precise, he heard it, but didn't think it was anything more than something blown up against the door or an outside wall. He was not expecting anyone, and only the worst kind of imbecile would be about on a day like this one. It was only when the knocking turned into a determined pounding that he realized someone was outside. Reluctantly, Conor opened the door to admit whoever it was.

Snow blew into the hut when he tugged open the plank door. Two figures stood there, shadows against the field of white. The taller of them ducked his head to pass through Conor's doorway. Conor recognized the blunt features, the squarish head, the black hair hacked chin length with a knife. Roak Treefeller. Biggest man in Taern, with arms as massive as Conor's thighs. Behind him came Morne, more compact but with shoulders wider than an axe handle's length, a scar as big across as two of Conor's fingers running from chin to brow, and a perpetually angry expression because of it. He stepped back to admit them.

“What brings you out in this storm?” he asked.

“We wouldn't be out if it was not important,” Roak assured him.

“It's Grimnir,” Morne added.

“I've heard the name,” Conor said. “A Vanirman, is he?”

“Vanir,” Morne said with a nod. “But no mere man. A sorcerer of the worst kind.”

“We believe him to be responsible for this weather,” Roak said. “As a cover for an assault on Cimmeria. And a Cimmerian men call Wolf-Eye is leading a counterattack. Warriors from every village are joining Wolf-Eye's effort. We have rounded up Taern's best, and we leave today. Will you join us?”

Conor thought for a moment. He had only heard rumors of this Grimnir, and they all indicated that he was a great threat to every Cimmerian. But he had not heard of Wolf-Eye at all. It would no doubt be a dangerous campaign, not to mention cold and unpleasant.

Besides, if the rest of Taern's warriors left the village, who would be left to protect it from other threats? Who would be left to make love to its women? No, better that someone stay behind. And that someone would be he.

“I cannot join you,” he said. “This Wolf-Eye is no one to me. My place is here in Taern, making sure no evil befalls our own people.”

Roak and Morne locked eyes, and Morne's big shoulders moved in a faint shrug. “You would let your betters die protecting your homeland?” Roak asked.

“I told you it was pointless to ask him,” Morne said.

“It is my homeland I'm thinking of,” Conor said. “My home is Taern. I would not abandon it in a time of need.”

Roak shook his great head slowly and started for the door. Morne fixed Conor with a look that, on his ruined face, was as fearsome as the visage of a horrific demon. “This will not be forgotten, Conor,” he said. “Upon our return, there will come a reckoning.”

“I wish you safe journeys,” Conor said, crossing to close the door behind them.
And may your scarred, ugly head be ripped from your body and left to rot in the snow,
he thought but did not add. When the two were gone and the door closed, Conor went back to the fire and tossed another split log onto it. He would wait at least one day after they had left, maybe two, he decided. Then he would start to spread the word to the village's women that he had stayed behind to take care of them.

No matter what their needs might be.

THE BLACK RIVER'S source was a spring in the foothills, just across the border with Cimmeria. The spring fed a lake in a mountain meadow, and from the lake, water flowed into the channel that, many miles downstream where additional creeks and snowmelt fed into it, became the raging river they had navigated in Kral's canoe all this way. The lake was a deep indigo color, frozen at the edges, and around it the meadow was carpeted in white. There seemed to be no smell at all, or if there was, Alanya's nose had been frozen, and she could not detect it.

They all stepped from the canoe onto solid ice and dragged it to the shore, where Kral made it fast to a leafless tree. “We may need it again, when we have the rest of the teeth,” he pointed out. “Best to know it will be here when we come back for it.”

Alanya couldn't argue with that. She had not given much thought to getting back out of Cimmeria once the quest was over—if it even turned out that Conor had the missing teeth in his possession. It was just as possible that he had sold them, and they would be off again to some other part of the world.

But whenever it was all over, the hard decisions would come. Go back to Tarantia to run Father's business affairs, with Donial? Could the two of them ever agree on how to run a business? And what about Kral, who would take the crown back to its cave beneath the Bear Clan's home? And Tarawa—would she go to Aquilonia with them? She seemed to like Donial, and he was clearly smitten with her, so possibly.

On the way up the river, she could tell that Kral longed to be home again. Even though there was little left of his clan, he could join another clan or stay on at the Bear Clan village to help protect the Teeth of the Ice Bear. He had been worried about the emptiness of the land, the fact that all of the Picts seemed to have gone off someplace. Finally, as they worked farther north, they had seen the smoke from many fires, on the Aquilonian side of the Black. Kral had seemed heartened by the sight. “There they are,” he had said, relief evident in the glow on his face. “Making war against the settlements is my guess. Mang meant to unite the clans against them, to regain the Teeth, and it looks as if he did so.”

“Should we go to them?” Alanya had asked, worried about the scale of the battle. “Tell them that the Teeth is not in the settlements at all?” She had been told that Conan was sending an army to help the settlers, and when it arrived, she feared the Picts would be destroyed completely. She was surprised that her loyalties had shifted toward the Picts in this case, but when she reflected on it, decided that what she truly longed for was peace. Neither side should be crushed under the other's heel, and both should learn to get along peacefully. Her father had given his life for the cause of peace between Pict and Aquilonian. Perhaps, she thought, there was a way that she could continue that legacy.