Five Bloody Heads (The Hounds of the North Book 3) Read online

  The spearman jabbed at Cruhund’s eyes, the tip darting forward more quickly than the Northman had anticipated and even though he was able to bob his head, the blade cut a sharp line across his cheek. The Dhurman attacked again. Cruhund parried and this time the spear slid harmlessly past.

  Again the Dhurman thrust. He switched quickly between targeting the hands and the face, high and low.

  The jabs froze Cruhund and as long as he was on the defensive, he was playing catch up, hoping to be fast enough to evade the next strike. It was a losing game. He needed to turn the tide of the fight. Fast.

  Around him, his men were locked in battle with the remaining Dhurmans. Not as many of the patrol had fallen as he had hoped. The element of surprise had not given them the advantage he had expected. Then he saw why. The warlock, a dark-skinned Hopht with an oiled and braided beard, sung a lilting song. The words grabbed Cruhund and the other raiding Northmen. The melody settled on them like honey and even as he leaned back from yet another attack, his limbs felt heavy and sluggish. His mind clouded with an unsatisfied desire to lie down in the tall grasses. Dark magic spilled from the warlock’s lips. Each note dragged Cruhund further into a morass.

  His attacker’s spear snagged one of Cruhund’s gloved hands. But as the Dhurman tried to withdraw his spear, Cruhund seized it behind the head. Grunting with great effort, he drove his sword down and cleft the spear in two. He knew what he had to do: close the distance with the Dhurman and kill him. But the warlock’s words hung heavy and a tiredness grew in his limbs.

  Suddenly the words ended. Energy surged back into Cruhund’s limbs. He charged forward and crashed past the broken spear shaft in the Dhurman’s hands. Cruhund kicked him in chest and as he stumbled backwards caught him with a looping swing of his sword. The man stood against the blow for a moment, and then fell with the eruption of blood from his chest and arm.

  Cruhund howled. His men’s blades rose into the mist, blood arcing against the gray sky. Unleashed from the spell of the warlock, the mercenaries embodied fury and the Dhurmans met steel and darkness.

  “Can’t stop us!” he screamed. “Wolves of the North!” He shook Spine Cleaver at the sky. “We own these lands. Own them!”

  The last of the Dhurmans lay still and the mercenaries were busy tearing rings off fingers, cutting purses free, and eyeing the line of dead men’s swords. Big Haran was pulling the boots off one of the fallen.

  Red Tail and Molgi were whispering to the horses, stroking shivering flanks. He would let them figure out which ones to keep and which ones to trade with Grymr. With the horses, armor and other supplies, Cruhund would walk away with a heavy sack of coin from the trader.

  But more important than the coin, he now had a warlock, one that possibly could heal Yriel.

  He surveyed the field. Where was the warlock? Why was he not standing imprisoned among the mercenaries?

  Then, Cruhund spotted the warlock. He was twisted in the mud, his white robe drenched in blood. Fjyrn squatted over the corpse and he cleaned his blade on the fabric.

  “What the hell did you do?” Cruhund’s shout froze his men in place, distracting them from their pillaging. He stormed over to Fjyrn.

  Fjyrn leapt to his feet and raised his trembling hands. “H-h-his song was crippling us. I did what I had to do.”

  “I told you not to kill him!” Bloody saliva sprayed out of Cruhund’s lips. “I told you to spare him. You idiot!”

  “He saved us,” said Big Haran shaking his head. “That warlock’s song was slowing us down.”

  “I gave an order!”

  “Your order was foolish,” muttered Fjyrn.

  Those were his last words. Cruhund shoved his sword into Fjyrn’s belly, plunging so hard that he lifted him off the ground. His feet kicked at the air as if he could still somehow back away.

  “No!” screamed Big Haran.

  Cruhund dropped Fjyrn to the earth, stepping on his head as he jerked his sword free. He turned to Big Haran and shook Spine Cleaver at him. “Follow my orders! Follow them! All of you! You follow my orders. Or you die!”

  Big Haran made to move towards his cousin, whose face contorted in pain and whose hands futilely tried to contain the spilling blood.

  “Leave him,” said Cruhund turning to the horses and loot. “We leave traitors to the crows.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  DARK CLOUDS FILLED the slate sky. The grasses, dragging against Spear’s thighs, slowed down each stride away from the family of pilgrims and towards the line of trees.

  By the gods! He wanted to be free from their pitiful screaming and weeping. It was just a beast! They wailed as if he had slain one of them. Their pathetic moaning wormed inside his skull.

  On top of that his own band grumbled and cursed as they trailed after him. Lately yhey had not even tried to hide their discontent. Especially that upstart, Longbeard, forever running off at the mouth.

  Covered in blood and all Spear walked away with was a handful of dirty coins.

  He needed a lot more coin and soon, or else he would not be leading anyone. Bandits followed coin.

  When he reached the tree line, he allowed Seana to catch up with him.

  “That was disaster,” she hissed.

  “Why couldn’t we have been sent a fat merchant?” asked Spear. “Cursed luck.”

  “We make our own luck, Spear.” Her pale braided hair was visible even in the dim light.

  She hitched at the colorful wooden shield that hung from her left shoulder. Spear hated that shield. On it, the young clanswoman had painted bright blue flowers and a smiling yellow sun. He had told her it was unbecoming of a bandit. She replied she preferred her enemies to see joy before their moment of death. He warned her it was too bright. It would only attract arrows.

  Behind that shield, she was armored in a cracked leather tunic stolen from an old farmer. A copper helmet stuffed with extra padding perched on her head. She held a thick spear in one calloused hand, and on her hip hung a short blade, an axe, and two knives. Even in the shadows her eyes glimmered as if the light from the muted sky was drawn to her.

  “Never enough coin,” said Spear. “I hate these pilgrims! Last time all we got from them was moth-infested flour and fleas. Give me a fat merchant.”

  “These days more likely to walk into a patrol from one of the warlords.”

  Spear grunted. Those patrols made up of former soldiers of the Dhurman Empire riddled these lands, the unsettled border between the North and the steppes of the Eastern empires. Spear’s ragged band, as fierce as they might have looked, were no match for displaced soldiers of fortune.

  His crew, eight ragged clansmen and shield maidens, had two things in common: they had no clans to return to in the North and their only solace was in coin.

  They were the criminals, the thieves, the ones who had turned on their own brothers, banished from the North.

  They were bandits and Spear their leader. At least for the time being.

  Seana shuffled closer to Spear, her voice dropping to a whisper, her hand extending. The scent from the sprigs of lilacs she had woven in her hair billowed. He shrank back not wanting to let her make contact.

  “The others.” Seana angling her head at the line of bandits behind them. “They’re unhappy. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Hard winter. Slim pickings. Nothing I could do about it.”

  The sky, muddy gray, barely held back the rain. Spear could taste the coming of a storm. It filled his mouth. He almost did not need to wonder how hard it would come down. He knew it would be a torrent. That much was certain. More bad luck raining down on them.

  “What you did back there…” Seana said. “What we’ve become… We’re attacking our own people now. Why can’t we go back to raiding Dhurman settlements? Or track down Dhurman patrols?”

  “You think we’re heroes? That what you want? We’re nothing like that. We’re bandits. Thieves. Coin is coin. Doesn’t matter where it comes from.”

  The sky da
rkened even further so that the shadows retreated and the whole world was a muted dimness, as if light no longer had a place in the lands where he walked.

  “We’ll get coin. Soon,” he said. “I know we will. More than we could ever imagine. Piles of it. We’ll sleep on a bed of gold and silver, you and me. Wrapped in each other’s arms. And our children will be draped in silks and wear crowns.”

  Seana shook her head. “I’m done with robbing our own clan brothers. Can’t do that anymore. That’s not why I came here.”

  She stopped at the edge of the forest but Spear pressed forward into the shadows among the trees, deeper into the mists, into the darkness and rot that lay ahead.

  After a while, Spear turned. She was far from him. Seana’s pale hair glowed through the dark sheet of branches. Did she still smell like lilacs sprigs?

  Spear cursed. “Fucking lilacs, son of a bitch!”

  Bones snorted. The skinny little gray-haired bandit had caught up to Spear and stood panting by a tree. “Lilacs always tick me off, too. Not so much as them daffodils. I see daffodils and I want to stomp them. And don’t get me started on roses. Oh, boy, you don’t even want to hear that.”

  “This is getting to me,” said Spear. “The whole of the heavens pissing on us!”

  “Nothing new there,” said Bones, a man old enough to be Spear’s grandfather. “We’re cursed.”

  Then the first drops of rain began to fall, big fat drops that exploded on Spear’s hands, drops that splattered the coat of blood but did not wash it away.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  HALFWAY BACK TO camp, the rain ended as quickly as it had begun.

  Spear kept the bandits moving along the edge of the forest, just within sight of the road. His feet mired into the damp leaf mold. Rivulets, remainders of the storm, trickled down the black bark of the pines. Like a beast unleashed, the sun began to tear through the clouds; despite the sudden flash of warmth, Spear could not fight off the chill of the morning. Another half hour and they would be back at their camp, but, even with a fire lit, he doubted he would be able to shake off the chill.

  Seana had drifted to the rear of the stretched out line of bandits. A glance through the trunks showed her moving alongside Longbeard. Her mouth opened as if she were laughing.

  Spear broke from the others, waving Bones to lead the way, and crept to the edge of the forest.

  The mists were thinning, the peaks to the north suddenly visible. He squinted at the gray granite until he could finally make out the walls of the keep, dark, almost invisible high up the slope.

  “A witch once held that keep.” Night crouched beside Spear. He had come as if out of nowhere. His face was lost in the shadows of his warlock-stolen cloak. The man had not removed his cloak the entire time he had been among them. It bothered Spear, and it bothered the others enough that they whispered about cutting Night out of it. But they all knew better. The cloak was soaked in magic and they had all seen Night impossibly slip into the shadows before their eyes.

  “One of these days it will be mine,” said Spear, his gaze returning to the keep. “I’ll be the one looking down on this valley, not looking up, and all that I see will be mine. All this suffering will be worth it.”

  “They say the witch’s lips were sewn shut and the words could not escape. They built up inside her, a dull burn growing until she burst into flames. She is marked by blackened stone.”

  “No witch holds it now. Just a man. Cruhund. A dog! An upstart that deserves to have all his rotten teeth knocked out of his face! I should’ve killed him when I had the chance.”

  “Killing will solve all of your problems,” said Night.

  “That cloak eats you up. Don’t know how Shield ever tolerated you for so long.”

  “I was the one who deserted him. But now I return to find him.”

  “He’s lost far beyond the North. Five years since Shield walked away from that tower, the death of Birgid heavy on his shoulders. Heard nothing of the man since, not even when I pretended the clans would welcome me back.”

  “There is nothing here in these lands, Spear. A border between worlds. Another year but time never moves forward. Ghosts all around us. I’ve seen dogs in my dreams, a pack running together.”

  “The Hounds are dead. Who’s left? You, me and Shield. Three of a score! You don’t make any sense.”

  Night’s lips curled in a smile beneath his hood. The rest of his features shifted as if beneath deep waters. “What makes no sense is lingering in a border between worlds, a place where we can never be at home. And yet, here you hide. For what?”

  Spear scoffed. “For what? That’s simple.” He pointed at the keep in the mountains. “To be the lord of all I can see! No more living in the shadows of the Dhurmans! No more begging to be accepted by the clans! No one to rule over me!”

  When he turned back, Night no longer stood by him. The man had vanished as if swallowed in the mists. Drops fell from the sodden branches, drumming against the forest floor. He blew into his hands. The cold drew out the pain in his old joints. His crew had passed him long ago and were no longer visible as they wound their way through the trees back to the river trail. Spear would need to hurry if he wanted to catch up to them before they reached their camp. Instead, he stayed at the edge of the trees and stole one last glance back at the keep and wondered what it would be like to stand upon its wall and look down on this valley.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CRUHUND STARED INTO the swirl of red unfurling in the stream. It was hypnotizing, almost calming. Further up, trout broke through the surface, gasping for flies.

  Behind him, the sky above the pines was returning to black. The last of the daylight faded in the west. The stars would be lost again to the clouds that constantly hung over the wilderness of the border.

  “How the hell you get so bloody?” asked Big Haran as he stomped to the stream bank. Big Haran sucked at the end of his golden mustache, strong jaw working.

  “Pilgrims. Wouldn’t give us what we wanted,” said Cruhund as he washed the blood off his armor and trousers. He scooped handfuls of water and scrubbed at the blood lining his nails. The water was icy cold, sending its ache deep into his bones.

  “Where’d you go? You take four of your men and you ride off right after we fought the Dhurmans? You left us. Your own men! We had no idea where you were.”

  “I need to tell you where I go?! I’m back now.”

  “Leaders lead! They don’t just vanish into the hills! And you wonder why we talk knives about you.”

  Cruhund kept his voice low and measured. “You talk like that in front of the others and I’ll gut you. Just like I did your cousin. Got it?”

  Big Haran chewed unspoken words behind his lips.

  Half an hour ago, when Cruhund and the four others returned to the forest camp, hardly a word was said. None of his men – the displaced soldiers returned from Dhurma, the outcasts from the clans of the North, or the one or two wild-bearded men from the borderlands themselves – asked where Cruhund had been or what he and the others had done to become so painted in blood. The whole lot of them, nearly twenty, just sat on dragged logs sharpening the edges of their swords or tending to blisters on their feet. A few napped on beds of pine needles.

  Except Big Haran. He had just glowered. Now he came at Cruhund with traitorous words.

  “While you were where you were, we found a patrol,” said Big Haran. “They belonged to One Eye. He’s pushing into our territory.”

  “Now they’re dead, right?”

  “That patrol is. We saw more in the distances this afternoon.”

  “What do you want me to do about that?”

  Big Haran tossed a stone, breaking the smooth surface of the stream. A half dozen finches, invisible the moment before, burst out of the bushes and into the dark sky. Yellow flashed beneath their wings. “It’s time we turned our sights to something bigger than pilgrims and traders.”

  “One Eye?! You want to go after One Eye?! He’s got at least
two hundred men.”

  “A dozen less now.” Big Haran’s lips curled in a smile.

  “The keep is our stronghold,” said Cruhund. “We go into those fields against a bigger force and we have nowhere to retreat. You were a soldier. You know a smaller force has to be sneaky.”

  “A few coins here and there, four dozen men, there’s so much more we can do.”

  Cruhund spit on a wide flat stone near Big Haran’s feet. Blood and saliva splattered on the surface of the rock. He could smell the rot of his own mouth. “Big plans you got, eh? Almost think you’re the one who runs this crew. But we wouldn’t want to think that, would we?”

  “Where were you? The rest of us off hunting down patrols and you doing what?”

  “Who the fuck were you when I found you? Driven out of Dhurma, tossed out of your own clan, even One Eye didn’t want you. Think I need to keep you here with me?”

  “Just like you didn’t need Fjyrn? He was my blood and you struck him down.”

  “One thing I said. One thing! ‘Leave the warlock alone!’ And what does the little inbred do?”

  “That not how men lead. You can’t rule us with your sword.”

  Cruhund rose, water and blood dripping from his hands. “You think?”

  Big Haran sucked one end of his mustache between his lips. Then his breath escaped and he shrunk before Cruhund.

  “I’m with you,” sighed Big Haran with eyes that reflected the darkening sky. “Just when you’re not there, we get to thinking. And what happened with Fjyrn, I don’t know what to think.”

  “Don’t think! Do as you’re told. Then everything will be fine.” Cruhund opened a wide bloody smile to Big Haran. “Let the others know. We return to the keep in the morning.”