Free Blood of Wolves by Loren Coleman

over the snow in arcing jets.
    â€œCul!”
    A shout from ahead. Not Reave or Daol. Definitely not Maev.
    It was Morne. Bleeding from a shoulder wound. His back pressed up against a tall, snow-frosted cedar, blade held out warily before him to fend off the two flame-haired Vanir who struck at him from either side. Both raiders wore leather cuirasses studded with light strips of metal. Both had full beards and long braids swinging down their backs—common among the Vanir.
    One of them, the nearer, wore a red cloak mantled with the silver fur of a wolf. He had a broadsword and shield. The other a war axe.
    The ringing clash of steel against steel hid the sound of Kern’s footfalls until nearly upon the raiders. It might have been a tremor in the ground that betrayed him. Perhaps the sound of a breaking twig or crunching snow.
    Whatever the reason, the Vanir wielding sword and shield turned suddenly, bringing his blade around in a sharp, strong arc. Clashing with Kern’s broadsword.
    The blade vibrated painfully in his grip, his hands more used to the wooden haft of an axe than violent steel. But Kern hung on to it. His own slash was awkward and bounced off the other man’s steel-faced shield.
    A savage grin peeked out of a red, full beard. The raider knew he was not fighting an experienced swordsman.
    Though the man had obviously forgotten Morne, who turned aside the other Vanir’s chopping attack, then lunged forward to slash at the back of the first raider’s leg. Hamstrung, the raider collapsed with a pain-filled bellow. Taking his sword with him.
    Kern left him, circling around to the far side, where he and Morne could divide the attention of the second raider. Morne had more trouble deciding whom to swing at. His war sword thrust out left, then right. Hesitated.
    â€œMove!” Kern yelled, shouldering in at the axe-swinging raider, throwing him against the cedar’s thick trunk.
    Morne leaped away from the sword-wielding Vanir, who lay on the ground. And away from the man with the axe as well. Without waiting to see how Kern fared, he sprinted away, still shouting for Cul.
    Bouncing back off the bole of the tree, the raider sideswiped his heavy war axe at Kern. Thinking to parry, and Kern lost the blade as it was torn from his numb grasp. A shield, dropped by the first raider, lay nearby, and Kern dived for it. Came up with it just in time to deflect a bone-rattling chop at his shoulder.
    Another chop, and another block. Then Kern moved inside, not letting the raider’s greater reach work for him, and smashed the man in the nose with the shield’s face. He heard cartilage crunch, and blood sprayed out over the metal surface of the shield.
    The man staggered backward, one hand clasped over his broken nose.
    Rather than waste more time, Kern quickly found his sword and left the two men there, struggling in the snow.
    â€œReave? Daol?”
    Kern floundered through a snow-hidden bramble patch, feeling the wooden thorns cut at his exposed legs. He followed Morne’s general direction, looking and listening, trying to draw in on another skirmish. He found the sled bearing Burok’s body, overturned up against a pair of boulders. Then another of Cul’s supporters not much farther along, lying in the snow, trying to hold in his entrails where they oozed out of a slit belly.
    He staggered past two Vanir bodies, stretched out in death. One of them had bloody fingers wrapped around the sharpened edge of an arming sword. Like the kind a slight man might use. Or a woman.
    â€œMaev!” Kern called out, bellowing at the top of his lungs.
    â€œKern? Kern!”
    Reave’s shout found him searching among the trees, looking for Burok’s daughter. Kern hauled his shield and sword toward another copse, where Reave laid about him with his Cimmerian greatsword in giant, swinging arcs, holding back four men who circled him like wolves bringing a bear to ground.
    Reave was as