Blood of Wolves Read Online Free Page B

breath, Kern nodded. “They won’t be looking for Daol come late and from behind them. When you see him, it’s your best chance.”
    Any more advice was interrupted when Maev arrived, carrying a dagger that had belonged to her father. She held the hilt in her left hand, laid the blade across her right palm, which bore a crusted wound from the morning’s bloodshed. No words were spoken as she walked into the Challenge Circle, looking neither right nor left to acknowledge or favor any one potential Challenger. Right to the arena’s center she walked, then held up the dagger as she turned one time in place.
    Kneeling, she drove the blade down into the frozen earth, sticking it two inches into the ground.
    Then she retreated along the way she’d come, joining a group of the village women, who waited in Jocund’s company with bandages and splints and what few herbs the healer had salvaged from her kit. Challenges were rarely bloody, but accidents happened.
    Maev’s leaving the Circle was all the men had been waiting for. Two clansmen jumped in together . . . Brig and Tabbot Tall-Wood. An older Challenger followed them into the Circle—someone in the village pulling for Reave, or thinking to make a stab on his own—but the brothers grabbed each other by the wrist and caught the older man across the throat, staggering him backward as if having run into a tree limb.
    He dropped to the ground outside of the Circle, wheezing for breath but mainly unharmed.
    The village cheered the first good challenge. There wasn’t a great deal of applause, but voices rose in support and defiance.
    If it had been simply a mad rush for the dagger, Kern believed the brothers—one of them—would easily have won. But Challengers remained in the Circle until all opponents from the village had been faced down or defeated. And with every new entry a clansman could reenter to oppose, though once cast out each lost the right ever to pull the dagger from the ground.
    Three other clansmen entered at about the same time, two immediately falling on each other and the third being set upon by the Tall-Woods. Then Reave—who quickly tossed out a young pup with no business in the Circle, without much more hurt than a bloodied nose and kick in the seat—and finally Cul.
    Cul kicked Wallach Graybeard square in the crotch from behind. Kicked the veteran warrior again to roll him from the arena.
    When he did it, his eyes were on Reave.
    Like metal to lodestone, the two favorites worried less about the others involved and more for keeping a wary eye on each other as they pulled closer and closer together.
    Men had laughed at Reave’s dealing with the ambitious teenager, winced and groaned at Cul’s rough handling of Wallach. Kern took the challenge much more seriously, seeing his friend taking on all comers and being in no position to help. He grasped at the air in front of him, laying hands on imaginary opponents, ducking and weaving every punch or kick thrown at Reave, who battled like a northern Berserker unleashed on poor farmers.
    The Tall-Woods rushed him right away, but Reave stopgapped them with hamlike fists into the sides of their heads, bashing the two together and dropping them like sacks of oat meal.
    Reave had no time to drag them from the Circle, though, set upon by another of Cul’s supporters. Meanwhile, Daol entered late and rapped Morne, one of Cul’s most stalwart friends, on the back of the head, stunning the man and shoving him back over the boundary. Kern grinned savagely, and hoped, and yelled support for Reave to try and divert any attention from Daol.
    Meanwhile the Tall-Woods shook themselves back to sensibility, staggering to their feet.
    The taste of blood scratched at the back of Kern’s throat as he quickly yelled himself hoarse, sucking back great breaths of frigid air. His pale skin puckered against the cold as he ripped away his poncho and stood bare-chested