Blood of Wolves by Loren Coleman

could seem like more in twilight and fog, coming out of two directions. Cul shrugged it away. “Too many. We’d lose as many as we’d save going after them. If the raiders haven’t already bled the life from them in sport.”
    To be fair, it looked like a hard admission for the new chieftain to make. No doubt thinking about Maev more than the rest. But, “You will order Hydallan to chase you along the Snowy River country while his son is tortured and dragged off to the northlands?” Kern shook his head. Yet the old man might do it. Clan before kin. Daol’s father had shrugged aside the expulsion so easily, after all.
    â€œBy Crom, Wolf-Eye, that is exactly what I mean to do!” Cul stormed over toward him, hands grasping at the air. “And it is not your concern any longer! You are outside the clan. I no longer see you.”
    â€œWell I do!” Reave jumped to his feet, greatsword in hand with its point dragging the ground behind him. Six feet of naked blade. “Kern means to chase down the raiders took Daol from us, then I’m with him.”
    In fact, Kern had made just that decision. Made it when he started back to the north, in fact, chasing after the raiders, intent on coming to the aid of his friends. He would not leave Daol in their hands.
    Nor would he allow Reave to sunder his standing in the clan.
    â€œDaol would not have you do this,” he said, stepping up next to his friend, voice hoarse and low. A shift in the breeze blew green smoke into Kern’s face, stinging his eyes. “It’s a fool’s adventure, Reave. Let me do what I can.”
    â€œTen, maybe twelve raiders? You might need help.”
    Reave could never count. The Cimmerians had taken a good measure in the fight, but not that good. Cul had left two raiders for the crows come morning. Reave another, though with Kern’s help. Daol, apparently, a fourth. Maev, five. That left . . .
    â€œNineteen,” he told Reave. “Or more.”
    â€œSettles it, then. Take at least the two of us.”
    â€œThree.” At fireside, Aodh shoved the stick he’d been prodding the coals with deep into the fire, stirring up a swarm of waspish sparks. He brushed them away from his face and stood abruptly. “I go as well.”
    Cul looked about to say something, but Aodh jumped in first with a sharp tongue. “Burok Bear-slayer was my chieftain eighteen years. I can nay abandon his daughter, then stand by his grave?”
    Aodh was also an aging warrior, Kern saw, and might also be wondering if he would be the next one forcibly expelled from the clan.
    So might Wallach Graybeard, whose hair was thinning on top and whose beard was shot through almost fully with iron gray. Who also stepped forward. He could not meet Cul’s dark gaze, but he did nod once. “I as well. Better to die a warrior than live in hunger and feeble age.”
    Not the best of omens, but Kern could hardly refuse the men to follow their own consciences. He looked from one face to the other, each one looking flushed in the firelight. Each one with a hard look of determination.
    â€œAnd me.”
    The young voice wavered and broke, though from his age and not out of fear. The boy, Ehmish. The one who had taken back the large trout to Maev. He couldn’t be more than fifteen summers. He also looked a touch scared, a hesitation in his dark eyes, but he stepped forward with one hand on the short knife belted at his waist.
    â€œNo,” Kern said, shaking his head.
    It was more than Ehmish’s not being considered a man by clan standards—not until he made his first kill in battle. Every youth made his own decision when to join a war party. When to go looking for his manhood. But Kern knew Ehmish had no idea what he was getting himself into, life as an outcast. Chasing down Vanir raiders.
    A short life, most likely.
    â€œShow some sense, boy,” Cul snapped, eyes blazing dangerously as his