Legends Never Die: The Hard Road (ch. 131) (Patreon)

‘I might kill the King,’ Hjalmar thought to himself. It was a stray thought, but one that crept up with surprising persistence as the months passed. Hjalmar wasn't sure why the King did it, but the moment he acknowledged him on that stage while giving him some award, things had gotten… interesting. And not in a good way. 

It should have been an honor. And, if he was being a little more honest with himself, it was an honor. It hadn't come as much of a surprise when they received an award -- Ulfar made sure that the lot of them were constantly in the vanguard. Every time there was a battle to be had, their squad was amongst those chosen to fight in it. Sometimes it was a pitched battle against hundreds, and other times it was laying an ambush for bands as few as ten. The result was that they rapidly acquired experience and kills. 

First in Geatland and the Swedes. Then against the Sami and Finn tribes. And now they faced a new foe after another year of the conquest had come and gone. Their first enemy of the year? 

The Rus.

Jarl Radulfr. Personally, Hjalmar knew very little about the man -- only that King Siegfried had some dealings with him as the Jarl controlled the easiest way to the Black Sea, and that wasn't an advantage that he was willing to relinquish. For the past few years, he had heard some rumors about him -- how he was performing his own conquest of the various nearby clans and tribes in preparation for their arrival. He’d heard talk of forts and strongholds, an army amassed that was larger than anything they faced before. 

In short, it sounded like they were in for a real and proper fight. Something that Hjalmar couldn't say that he enjoyed the thought of. He rather preferred battles where they had an overwhelming advantage. 

Worse was the fact that he once more stood before the King, and the man wouldn't even give them the dream of false hope. 

“This next campaign shall be different," King Siegfried informed, standing before the assembled army. The King looked as he ever did, though a bit older. Strange to think that he had just seen his twentieth year. They were around the same age, but the King had already adorned himself with six crowns and carved his name into legend. He could drop dead where he stood, and the Sagas would make sure that he was never forgotten. “We stand before a prepared foe, who has the ability to drown us in numbers. A plan that they are reliant on because they cannot hope to match us in quality.” 

They weren’t empty words. Hjalmar would never consider himself a gifted warrior. He'd sooner call himself a poor one. But a poor fighter with great experience would always defeat an inexperienced fighter with talent. The sheer difference that experience made honestly beggared belief. In battle, there was always a tension that only a skilled skald could hope to define, but the fear lessened with every conflict. It became familiar. He learned to trust those who stood next to him and they learned to trust him, because he and they had repeatedly earned that trust in ways that couldn't be replicated in training. 

Armor made that difference stand out more. Armor… it allowed mistakes. A blow that you failed to block wouldn't cleave your arm from your body. It would be caught on the plate armor, or the chainmail, or absorbed by the padded gambeson. You might have a nasty bruise, but bruises would heal. Each bruise became another lesson learned, further enabling them to learn from experience and gain more of it, so that they became an ever more effective fighting force. 

Then came the tactics. They operated on a higher field than any of their enemies. Their enemies weren't mindless -- far from it, irritatingly enough, but they didn’t have the organization or systems in place that allowed a thousand men to react with the speed of a dozen. That mattered more than Hjalmar could have imagined in a pitched battle. 

The number of times that he had seen naked shock on an enemy's face when they glanced over their shoulder to realize that their army had been helplessly outmaneuvered… 

“I have asked much of you, my warriors, and I will ask yet more. The past two years have been a crucible, and you have emerged reforged. You are prepared for the challenges ahead. Take solace in that fact as we embark upon our greatest challenge yet,” the King continued. Hjalmar knew what the plan was, and there was part of him that admired the audacity of it. Another part despaired because it meant an absurd amount of hard work. 

Two armies numbering ten thousand men each would march down the coastline -- far enough to be separate armies, but close enough to react to each other as needed. They would smash through the initial resistance and then continue on marching down the coast to the other tribes and clans that had made their own lesser alliances. 

Much like they had practiced up until this point, smaller armies would splinter off from the main forces to meet these lesser armies on the field of battle, while the two main armies would continue on. It would be a fighting march, likely all the way back to Denmark. The wounded would be left behind with whatever forces were needed to besiege a fort, as they would slow for nothing. 

The reality of it meant that they would likely face multiple battles a day. The armies would cycle who fought, but from everything that he’d heard that could only go so far. Eventually, those armies who simply couldn't keep up or were too weakened by casualties would be left behind to garrison territories. All the while, they would be reinforced by Norwegian and Saxon armies to ensure that the territories didn't try to pounce on a weakened foe. 

In theory, come this time next year, the conquest would be done and over with. After that… well, whatever decisions he had to make came after that. Seemed a little foolish to be making plans when there was the very real possibility that he'd die or lose something important in the battles to come, like an eye, hand, or a leg. 

Because the armor that allowed you to make mistakes made sure that you got put into a position where you could make more of them. Ironclads were the vanguard, the ones in the thickest of the fight and held the most critical locations. And, because of Ulfar and his father… 

Hjalmar stood before the King completely covered from head to toe in armor. 

He hadn't been entirely aware of it, even as it happened. Ulfar had pulled some strings and ensured that the pieces they provided the iron for were always at the top of the list. After his first few battles, he secured a hauberk. Following that came the chest plate to make sure no one turned his insides into outsides. After that, the number of battles he partook in dramatically increased, something that should have been obvious in hindsight, and two years since the conquest began he stood alongside the two thousand others who had earned their full suits of armor. 

Which meant he was considered a ‘veteran.’ The idea was quite worrying, as he felt every bit as uncertain as he had during his first battles. It didn't bode well for the rest of the army if all the veterans felt as he did. All the more so because of one special fact.

“-Begin the embankment!” King Siegfried announced to roaring cheers, and he realized that he had blanked out the rest of the speech. He hoped that it wasn’t about anything important -- just the usual fluff to get the men's blood up so they'd forget to be afraid. He swallowed a sigh before his gaze shifted to Ulfar, who also wore a full set of plate armor that was further embellished to denote his position. 

“On me,” Ulfar exclaimed, a banner moving to usher everyone forward to the ships that they would be using to land in Rus territory. Four ships, each able to seat a hundred and fifty men, for the five hundred men that made up their division. “We’re first boots on the ground, so it’s up to use to secure the landing site. These bastards know that the only way that they can hope to stop us is to make sure we never arrive.”

Hjalmar fell in step, along with the hundred men that somehow found themselves under his command. He rose through the ranks with every battle until he found himself the commander of a hundred men under the helm of Ulfar. In truth, he wasn’t quite sure how much of that was his father pulling the strings or positions earned with merit. And, he supposed it didn’t really matter. 

“We are one of five landing sites. The Rangers already report that we’re going to have to fight for the beachhead. Which is why the King will be fighting with us,” Ulfar continued, speaking loudly as the men loaded up into the ships. They were one of many that were setting sail from a small fort city that the locals had taken to calling Helsinki, but they were the first of hundreds. 

There was a loud roar of approval while Hjalmar nearly tripped over his own two feet on the way to his ship. The King? Ah, that sounded like a real pain in the ass, if he was being perfectly honest. The Rus would know that King Siegfried was the linchpin of the whole invasion, so they would throw everything that they had at him in the hopes of getting lucky.

It felt a bit arrogant to assume that they wouldn’t… but they wouldn’t. It was the same plan that everyone had up until this point, and without fail, the only ones who did the dying were the ones foolish enough to think they could take the King in a fight. 

“It’ll be the first time we'll see him in action,” Erik, one of his commanders, remarked to him, his eyes off in the distance where the king boarded his ship with his companion warriors. “You think he's as good as the stories say?” 

“I hear he's better,” another replied as a horn rang out. The thralls began to row the longship away from the shore as a wind caught their sails. 

“We'll get to see him first hand soon enough,” Hjalmar interjected as he looked away, focusing on the shores that they would soon land on in the distance. He couldn't yet see them, but they were close. Barely more than an hour or two of sailing, and they'd arrive as hostile shores, and unlike before they would be teeming with enemies behind every tree and rock. The Sami and Finns had known that they were coming, but they didn't have the raw numbers to resist them. That wasn't true with the Rus, the Poles, and any of the other tribes that had those numbers and two years to prepare. 

“Until then, focus. And keep your shields up and at the ready,” Hjalmar warned, glancing at the ships nearby. The four of them would drive the ships right onto shore to secure the landing point; they needed to arrive at the same time and close enough to one another to arrive as a unified force rather than five bands of a hundred. 

The warning came well received an hour later as the lands of the Rus came into view. Hjalmar raised his shield along with the others as the air was filled with the whistling of arrows along with the occasional thunk. His shield dipped as an arrow slammed into it, and he took the time to peek between the gaps of the shield wall around them and the still rowing thralls. What he saw didn’t inspire confidence. 

“They're going to make us fight for the beach,” he called out, seeing a score of men ready to contest them. They shot arrows as fast as they could, trying to harry them as much as possible before they arrived. “Can't really tell with the trees… but there's a lot of them.” 

There was a point when the thought of landing on that beach would have had him breaking out into a cold sweat. But now he looked at it with a cold certainty -- they would take the beach. It was just a matter of how much blood had to be spilled. 

The ship continued to sail forward alongside the others, and the number of arrows that actually struck the ship instead of the sea increased. As well as the stones from slings. The sound of them echoed through the air before it was joined by the beating of a drum. Hjalmar took in a slow breath, held it in, then let it out. The rhythm of the drum increased until it felt like it was matching his heartbeat. And then came the signal. 

A horn blew as the ships closed into shore and Hjalmar was the first to toss himself overboard to land in waist deep water. He trudged forward, joined by others who did the same from his and other ships. They marched forward as the warriors on the shore pelted them with arrows and rocks and whatever else they had, until the Rus surged forward, intent on driving them back into the sea. 

“Pila!” Hjalmar shouted, taking a javelin and throwing it into the encroaching mass of bodies. At this range it was impossible to miss, and dozens dropped, skewered by the javelins. The others slowed, hesitant, but still pressed on. It was enough for Hjalmar to link up with the others, displaying a shield wall for the Rus to break themselves on while the remaining forces in the ships moved to reinforce them. 

Warriors battered at his shield, trying to strike out at him, but their options were limited. Their armor left them well protected. The Rus, on the other hand… boiled leathers, padded gambesons, layered furs. All of them parted with ease when Hjalmar struck back with his spatha sword. It was a weapon from the Mediterranean, short and double sided -- perfect for close combat like this, letting him make quick but deadly thrusts into the enemy before him. Meanwhile, overhead, the rank behind him were jabbing out with their poleaxes. 

They presented a wall to the enemy, safeguarding the ships while their men fully disembarked. In no time at all, the blood soaked the sand and began to flow like a river towards the sea. The drum was nearly drowned out by the war cries of the enemy that paid no mind to their losses as they pushed them back. 

The weight of numbers had its own challenges to deal with. Even as a united front, the soft sand underfoot offered nothing to dig into. The Rus couldn't break through their line, so they pushed them back. One foot at a time, they drove them back towards the sea, and as Hjalmar tried to get a grasp of their numbers, all he saw were faces and weapons. It could be a thousand, it could be ten thousand for all he knew. What he did know was that if they delayed any longer, the Rus would push them into the sea and their armor would ensure they drowned. 

It was then that the horn blew twice and Hjalmar braced himself. 

Heat. 

He felt it before he saw it, even through his helm and armor. From overhead, there was a burst of flames that came from the ships that they rode on, creating streams of fire that washed over the Rus. The war cries became screams of terror and agony. The battlefield always carried the scent of blood and shit, but in the moment that the fireships did what they were ordered, he was hit with the smell of burnt hair and cooking meat, completely overpowering the smell of blood. 

The streams of fire were short, but they ignited the tightly packed warriors that had been determined to push them off their coast and into the sea. Suddenly, that pressure vanished as those behind the push were suddenly scattering, leaping away from the flames so they didn't catch on fire as well. Still, it took some time for them to disperse, and in that time, the fireships sprayed out three more bursts of flames. 

As they were told to, Hjalmar didn’t pursue the fleeing Rus. Instead, he held his position to ensure that they didn't get caught in the belches of fire. Because of that, through the smoke, he saw a sight that made his stomach churn -- the blood soaked beach was littered with corpses, many of them burning black with fat popping from the flames that clung to them. The once white sand was dyed red and black, the organized resistance falling back to the tree line. 

But only that far. 

“They're regrouping! Forward! Ten paces!” Ulfar shouted out, and as one, their band of a hundred men moved up ten paces, and through the smoke, they were once more pelted with stones and arrows. “Ten paces!” They advanced another ten, as they did so, Hjalmar heard another horn belt out. A signal. 

Their reinforcements had arrived, the ones that would help them secure the landing sight. However… just as the horn rang out, Hjalmar heard another. One that didn't belong to them. 

Incredibly, the Rus began to pour out of the treeline that they’d just retreated to -- they weren't in the same numbers as before. Barely a trickle at first, but Hjalmar understood what was happening when more joined them. They inspired each other with their bravery to continue the fight despite the fireships, turning what should have been them fleeing for the hills into a fight. 

“Pila!” Ulfar shouted, and their division threw their second javelin, thinning the horde that was intent on slamming into them. Hjalmar braced for impact, and the Rus once more slammed into them. Only this time, they weren't fighting alone. 

From the corner of his eye, he saw it. Half of a body flying overhead and landing on top of the Rus, who sputtered in confusion and shock. Their gaze trailed off to see what happened, and that's when they saw him. 

King Siegfried was impossible to miss. He was a head and shoulders taller than the second tallest man Hjalmar had ever met, so he towered over them. His wolf pelt cloak was pushed back, leaving only the head adorning his shoulder as he lashed out with his legendary blade, Gram. It moved in blurs that were almost too fast to see -- what he could see, however, were the arcs of blood that King Siegfried seemed to paint with his blade. 

He was joined by his Companions, who secured the line that the King was single handedly cutting through the Rus. And, for a moment, Hjalmar was stupified. The King looked like he was cutting grass with a scythe, almost. The men before him might as well have been blades of grass for all of the resistance they put up. Honestly, Hjalmar wasn't even sure what he needed an army for. The King could probably win the war on his own. 

But he forced his slack jaw to close with a click. Now wasn't the time to stop and stare. Now was the time for action. 

“Ten paces!” Hjalmar roared, knowing that they needed to make the most of the opening that the King was giving them. He waited for the order to be relayed to Ulfar and for him to confirm it before they moved as one. The Rus were pushed into the meat grinder that was the King's Companions, and with them out of the way, they pushed another ten steps. Then another ten. And another, until they had secured the beach in its entirety. 

The fire, the Rus could have recovered from, but getting pushed back after the fire? Hjalmar felt it as he held the line -- the pressure eased up little by little as the Rus abandoned the fight. They pushed up to the tree line before the order came to stop and dig in.

It was only then did Hjalmar realize how tired he was, or how long he had been fighting as the sun's position was different than when the battle started. He half collapsed where he stood in the shade, taking off his helmet to see that it was covered in dried blood. He was swiftly joined by the others as they looked out to sea, seeing hundreds of longships arriving and being pulled ashore. The smoke was starting to thin out a bit, revealing the scope of the battle. 

There were fewer bodies than he expected. It always caught him by surprise, but he always thought there would be mountains of corpses after every battle. Instead, there were just dozens of them scattered about, bleeding and burning where they had fallen. 

It was through that smoke he saw them. The King and his Companions approaching. Ulfar immediately rose to his feet, while Hjalmar remained seated, forced to look up at him as the King removed his unadorned helmet. 

“You did well,” he praised them. “Without your efforts, we could not have taken the beachhead so easily,” he said, and that rang a bit false in his ears. “Rest. Recover. Because come tomorrow, the true battle begins.” 

“What are we facing?” Hjalmar asked, looking up at the King with a steady gaze. “I've heard rumors, but no one seems to actually know.” 

King Siegfried looked down at him, his gaze measuring before he smiled ever so slightly. It set his teeth on edge. Yet, he gave him an answer he wasn't obliged to. Though, when he did, Hjalmar wished that he hadn't. 

“Eighty thousand. Come tomorrow… we'll have a battle against eighty thousand warriors. Everyone that that stingy old Jarl could scrounge up.”