Sons of Ymir

by Alaric Longward

  When the dawn broke, the blizzard thickened, and we heard the horns of the legions blaring across Nallist as the enemy had landed away from the city, unloaded in the terrible weather, and staunchly marched to eradicate the last king of Red Midgard.

  They were hungry and cold.

  They knew where warmth, and food could be found.

  In the Ugly Brother.

  ***

  I inspected the moat that had been dug inside the keep. It covered the breach and was not overly deep, as the captain had warned, but just deep and wide enough to give the enemy a pause. A rough wall of stone had been erected to stand before the moat and also on top of many of the stairways.

  The tower was brimming with troops. The great hall housed most of them. All had spears, pikes, swords, shields, and even clubs. Heaps of smaller stones meant for tossing had been placed on top levels, where there were also archers, looking in every direction, ready to make life terrible for the attackers. On top, catapults and ballista had been readied, and in the great halls and on many levels.

  The tower was a deathtrap.

  Hopefully for the enemy.

  We still waited. I looked to the upper floor and found Nima looking down at me from between two broken piles. “Any sight of them?”

  She nodded. “They spent the night in the woods. Their scouts are just riding the city and the walls.”

  “No shelter?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Most of the city is burned down. There are guard towers and some few buildings that survived. They might find it in the ships in the harbor. They will be cold as goat’s arse, though. They’ll be miserable.”

  I nodded.

  The city of Nallist was a ruin, and the snowfall kept blanketing the ruins and the dead all over the city. It would be like a ghost town for the enemy.

  “They’ll come,” I said.

  Nima nodded. “There are eight thousand or fewer,” she called down. “They have lost ships to the storm. A king and queen have been seen, their horns prominent. They’ll know what happened from survivors. They might not know how many we are.”

  “They will come, nonetheless,” I said.

  “Hillhold!” yelled a man on top. “Hillhold! Come to us, for Hillhold!”

  The battle of Hillhold had not been the doing of the two legions out there, one with a black skull on white in their standards, and another with a deep red flag with a grinning golden mask. I had no idea where they hailed from, but their troops stared at the smitten hold with fury and hurt pride.

  Nima smirked. “They have a heap of corpses in the woods already. Saag’s busy.”

  “Scouts!” yelled a man on top.

  I twisted my neck to look up, saw Nima disappear, and heard her running up. There, soon, I saw archers moving and Nima giving orders. I climbed to the second level and saw a cavalry unit of a hundred from the Grinning Mask riding past the walls, huddled in cloaks.

  Nima called out, and arrows fell among the cavalry. Men were pierced and thrown to the snow, and horses were whinnying with fear and pain. Some sixty enemy turned their horses around and madly rode for the woods.

  There, I saw them speaking to the two draugr who turned to give orders.

  I waited. Soon, I saw movement as men were crossing between the tents.

  “King Maskan,” called a man from the top. I leaned forward to squint up at him. “They are dismantling the camp.”

  “They will come inside the city,” I said, “because they are hungry, their fame and honor demands it, and they think Balic will punish them if they don’t. They’ll test us this afternoon.”

  They did.

  We watched the stream of men marching in with caution from the main gates and setting up camp near the gate, and the other legion did so by the harbor. They pitched tents, took shelter in the ruins, some in the ships, and made a meager meal with what they had and found.

  A stream of men were constantly riding and marching between the gate and their ships, which were out of sight. Those men began falling to the snow, and chaos took over as Saag made attacks on anyone who seemed ripe for killing. Bands of hunters rushed from the woods and back again, and the legions had to deploy their cavalry to deal with Saag’s men.

  They lost many men and soon gave up.

  Before dark, the companies in each camp were taking their places as they shed their cloaks, took up shields, and formed companies around their standards. The Mask and the Skull were exhorted by their captains and the draugr, and soon, they marched forward, up the main street from the harbor, and the road from the gate.

  They had no siege.

  They would have to come in from the front.

  Both legions would arrive in the same place.

  We waited, silent, and the men were shaking, praying behind the wall.

  I walked deeper to the hall, pushed past our companies, who were ready to take their places in the hall, and climbed a makeshift platform. There, I sat down on Balic’s throne.

  I would oversee the battle.

  I would conserve my strength.

  Echoing shouts and commands could be heard. From my seat, I could see the remains of the courtyard gate. The snow was falling heavily, but I could see the gleaming mass of shield and armor filling the streets beyond the courtyard. I poured myself wine as I heard the enemy on the walls, trying to enter the tower that way, but they were inaccessible.

  The archers were looking at the enemy. They were well in the range now, milling all across the streets below. None had come to the courtyard yet.

  Then, discovering there was no side entrance, a captain of the Grinning Mask climbed through one breach in the courtyard wall.

  “Let them have it,” I said. “For Hillhold.”

  “Let them have it!” called out a young man with a clear voice. “For Hillhold!”

  On top, the archers began loosing arrows down on the foe. They sunk down to the masses behind the walls, but I saw the captain falling on his face, pierced by many. The ballista set on each level coughed up man-length spears, and the screams and oaths of the enemy echoed across the tower. There were a thousand archers working their craft on the enemy, while the others waited, guarded, and rested, and it was enough to turn the evening into a red one for our foe. We saw the air quivering as hundreds of arrows flashed down mercilessly.

  I heard the catapults coughing high above us, and knew they would be throwing burning pots of fire on the legionnaire camps which were all in range.

  A draugr, I was sure it was one, screamed, “Up! Up and through the wall. Take the keep! Do not stay here and die! Up for One Man. For Balic!”

  The enemy charged.

  They surged over the broken gates, passed the breaches on the wall for the courtyard in a chaotic mass of companies, men falling on their faces in the press, and their archers tried to take positions on the wall around the courtyard.

  Ten fell as they tried and then twenty, dropping like dead flies.

  Nima was calling out muffled curses and insults, and men kept firing from every floor. The enemy archers gave up, and then, our archers and ballista crews and even stone-throwers took the men pushing into the courtyard as their targets.

  Deadly rain tore into legionnaire flesh.

  A ballista bolt killed four.

  More and more arrows tore into the groaning mass of the two legions.

  And they kept coming, shields high, shields out, falling, crashing, and only some getting up. A few men looked like needle cushions as they walked forward, and some, in the terrible press of the enemy, were dead but upright. Twenty, a hundred, then more fell to the stone, ballista, and archers. Men screamed as they stepped into holes our men had dug, breaking legs. The ground was filling up with dead, dying, and those who were crawling to get back.

  Still they came, proud as devils.

  The enemy archers had given up on the courtyard wall, but were now shooting at the lower levels, and our men began falling. Some fell amongst us through the holes in floor.

  The en
emy finally surged up to where the gate had once stood, the breach, and, shields out, the first men were pushed through it and fell into the moat. Some fell on spikes and howled piteously.

  A captain peeked at the moat and fell on his back.

  Another, an officer with a gorgeous armor, peeked in and dodged away, an arrow taking a man next to him. We heard him calling, “Bridges, bring them forward! Bring the bridges and the ladders!”

  They were prepared.

  Such wooden ramparts were carried through the milling enemy. Ladders were pushed and pulled through the breaches, our archers falling as the enemy archers tried to stop them.

  “Stop them!” Nima screamed, and our men braved the arrows, and tried.

  The legionnaires fought with zeal.

  Dozens fell, hundred and two, as our archers shot their arrows at them, but doggedly, the bridges approached the breach, and many ladders were thrown to land against the walls, and some so that they leaned on the damaged floor of the second level. Men began climbing, falling, dying, and still climbing. One ladder crashed, and another took its places. Long pikes pushed at those who made it up, and then, the enemy archers began shooting concentrated volleys at the second and third levels. Tens of our men fell.

  As if delighted by the horror, the blizzard grew in intensity and was burying the dead where they were undisturbed.

  Two wooden bridges were finally carried to the breach, and laboriously hauled forth, so the mass of men huddling behind their shields in the breach, could act.

  They began chanting.

  “Balic! Balic!” and banging their shields. They got up, and moved for the moat, the bridge above their heads, and the first men with shields out. They filled the breach, their faces screwed with anger, their mouths panting, open, eager to get to grips with men they could fight.

  I nodded and snapped my fingers. Around me, mostly hidden by shadows and on other hastily built parapets, archers and two ballistae prepared. The ballista shot first. They tore at the thick ranks, taking down ten and then more, throwing the shields into ruin and the men behind them as well. Then, the arrows began tearing men down, leaving them howling— some even jumped to the moat to escape the arrows—and still, the men were pushing in from behind.

  Madly, bravely, the foe kept coming. They climbed the ladders, their archers tore down our men, those especially who braved fighting their men climbing up the ladders, and our men on top began firing on the archers, and it seemed like a game designed to kill everyone.

  The bridges were picked up again.

  Our ballista fired again.

  The bridges fell yet again.

  One was bashed to pieces by corpses falling on it and a bolt that tore at the planks, but the other one doggedly came up and over the carnage, carried up and forth by the madly brave men. A bald captain with huge moustaches was screaming at the men, who exerted all their strength. On top, some enemy had reached the second floor, and I heard spears finding flesh and armor as a furious battle was being fought. Men were falling out of the second floor in numbers.

  “Fire already!” I screamed.

  The ballista fired again. The captain was thrown back. The bridge, the men carrying it full of arrows, finally brought it inside, pulled it up, and it crashed down. The men, six, seven, fell one by one.

  “Ready!” our captain yelled, and men lifted their spears behind the makeshift stone wall.

  Shields first, the enemy rushed to the bridge. The bridge was bounced up and down with their weight. Our end of it fell in to the moat and spilled the men forward.

  New companies surged forward and saw the moat. Many fell to arrows and the final ballista bolts and still pushed through, pulling corpses out of the way. The stones were red with blood, and the walls heavy with snow. It all seemed almost unreal.

  The enemy seemed as if it was made of stone.

  They continued to advance, shields up, many falling to arrows, others falling into the moat.

  One ballista had found one more spear, and it fired again, the spear impaling a young standard bearer and a female guard, breaking the bridge.

  “Inside and fill it!” yelled a man in the breach. “Corpses will be our bridge! Get in and climb over them, you damned cowards!”

  He died to arrows and a stone.

  The soldiers heard him and surged over. They dragged stones and corpses and threw them down, rushed over, fell, and filled the moat. They wept, bled, and cursed, and soon, they began climbing out of it.

  Our men pushed spears into their flesh, their weapons hefted overhanded. They stabbed down, back and forth, back and forth, and butchered the enemy. More came, more died and fell, and so it went on until the moat was full, the corpses filled the yard, and still, they came, crawling over their dead, pulling back their wounded and dying like it mattered little to them.

  The standards of the Skull and of the Mask were moving near the courtyard gate. There, I saw a horned mask, the draugr screaming at her men. Another rode past her, whipping at someone who refused orders.

  I got up and jumped down, pointing a finger at the breach. Behind, far in the hall, the great ballista, one that had been pre-sighted to the far gate, finally opened fire.

  The great ballista, twice the size of the others, meant to sink ships, shuddered as the bolt was released.

  The air itself seemed to groan as the bladed spear, the length of a small galley, flew past the breach. It tore through the thronging brave mass of the enemy, then ripped a man from a horse and disappeared into the horde of men, where the standards and the draugr were busy.

  A standard fell. A man was rolling on the ground, armless. Two horses were kicking their hooves into the air. One general and many captains were still.

  One corpse, half under a horse, was headless. A horned helmet was next to it, rolling around on a snowy, red stone.

  The draugr king, screaming with anger, rode away.

  The enemy, horns blowing, retreated. We let them go.

  We proceeded to replace men, clear the moat, recover the arrows, and then, we rested.

  Nima came down to me and leaned her head on her arms. “We lost over three hundred on top. Fifty here below. Many are just wounded, but if they get in …” Her eyes looked over the terrible battle scene. She raised herself. “We will recover only half of the arrows and ballista shots. The catapults keep hammering their camps, and they cannot stay there. They’ll sleep out in the cold.”

  “They’ll be back this night,” I said. “We sleep in shifts. I shall stay here.”

  She placed a hand over mine. “Will you tell me what happened here? You met Balic.”

  I nodded. “I met Balic.”

  “And they say there were jotuns here,” she said. “Is that possible?”

  I nodded. I showed her the ax. “They died. There are more.”

  She leaned back. “Is Balic dead?”

  I pushed the thought of Rhean from my head, and she came back. I shook my head and felt cursed forever. “Balic,” I said softly, “mattered little. We must win this battle, and then we shall deal with Balic’s …” I went quiet.

  “Wife,” she said. “Queen Rhean,” she said, and saw the sadness in my eyes. “She hurt you,” she said.

  I nodded. “She, and one other. It seems I must suffer for her, forever.”

  She punched me and got up. “Putting her under the ax will heal the wounds, eh? Now, I have arrows to find.”

  I could only hope she was right.

  ***

  That night, they did come again. This time, they took the moat fast and pushed to the stone wall. They were bitter, angry, and desperate, and only after two hours of fighting and slaying them, archers firing volleys at them, they finally crawled away.

  Resolutely, bloodily, we repulsed them to Helheim.

  That morning, we slept, ate, and sat, waiting. I watched their miserable camps, enjoyed the terrible storm that kept brining in new snow to the land, and watched the enemy dead and wounded being heaped in the depths of the ruin
s so their live companions couldn’t see them.

  They had lost at least three thousand men. We, nearly eight hundred.

  Soon, their horns were blaring, and slowly, the half-frozen legions got to their feet and moved up again. They came again—frozen, hungry, desperate. We threw them back, using stones and debris as our arrows were spent. They stayed out of arrow range, and no longer went back in. They burned wood, warmed themselves, and came again.

  They came three times that day, and we repulsed them again and again.

  We lost hundreds of men doing so. Our weapons were spent, and men tired.

  The enemy was down to three thousand men, barely a single legion, and retired for the night, the men walking in the snow like a stream of skeletons.

  They didn’t come that night.

  ***

  The next morning, they no longer came.

  I watched the enemy camps from the top. Their remaining tents were heaped with snow that kept falling, and most of them were hiding in the ships. Fires were burning on the piers where men were warming themselves.

  Maggon and Nima were there with me. I saw Saag far below, and men were hauling new arrows up to the keep. There weren’t enough, but it helped. Maggon was shaking his head and scratching his chin. “I feel sorry for the pitiful bastards. They ate their horses last night. I could smell it in the wind. A soup of bone and gristle, and I bet they ate it mostly raw.”

  “I don’t pity them,” I said coldly. “Their last draugr, the king?”

  “He keeps out of sight,” Nima said. “We have done well.”

  “Any other draugr lord or lady the sentinels might have seen?” I asked.

  “No,” she said and gave me a quick look. “She’s not there.”

  Maggon looked at the enemy and didn’t ask what she had meant.

  She wasn’t there. I might have felt her, if she were. Nima was right.

  “They have few thousand men able to fight,” Nima went on. “Should we attack them?”

  “The ships must not be harmed,” I said. “But, alas, we have no time.”

  “Are we busy?” Maggon asked. “The men are actually bored now. They know they can keep the breach by now. We should harass them at least.”

  “No. Spare the arrows. Next time,” I told them, cocking my head, “they will have catapults and other siege equipment. We will be tested to the limits.”