"You are a Vyborg soldier?" King Holaf asked the man.
"No, knight, my father was, I only wear his uniform," replied the improvised warrior without recognizing the King and still pointing the sharp steel at the height of a man.
The Lord of the East gave an order in the vain attempt to relax the nerves of the poor fugitives:
"You can lower your guard, we are with the knights of Vyborg, intent on descending the hill at this moment!"
The travellers had gathered close together with women and defenceless old people at the centre. There remained the seven men at arms as an ineffective barrier against any attack.
"Boy, where do you come from?" asked the Dragon almost snarling.
"Where do you come from, baboon?" the young man with the corroded armour replied. But his arm was tired to the point of struggling to support his sword.
"The boy has guts, I like him!" commented the third rune, before putting his war-hammer back in his belt and introducing himself: "I am the third Nordic rune, Master of War from Trondheim. Here as one of the royal escort to King Holaf Erlingson, Lord of the North, and High Marshal, Lord of the East. Now it's up to you to introduce yourself!"
The boy leaned the tip of his sword among the stones that surfaced the road. He breathed deeply closing his eyes:
"I, Sire, am Andor, son of Piotor, the last of my family. We all ran away from our homes, because Cernyj Les is damned!" replied the boy with an unusual expression, his eyes unfocused moving all the time, scrutinizing everything without seeing anything.
Once the troops were gathered, King Holaf approached the Bear Head and the Leopard, who were watching the evolution of events. He took them both by the shoulders, shaking them lightly. He was overflowing with pride, just like the drinking horns in Trondheim overflowed with cider. He complimented them:
"You have been magnificent! Perfect timing in making that diversion without any orders!"
The two warriors looked at each other, bursting into laughter, partly to vent the tension and partly because they felt they were witnesses to a miracle.
"My Lord, soon you too will have the same look of amazement on your face as we did. What would you say if we told you that the idea of putting the Dragon’s plan into action was not ours, but Boris’s?" asked the Bear's Head smiling unbelievingly.
"No, really, I wouldn't believe it, I'd think you were joking!" Holaf answered laughing.
"My King, despite the strangeness of what I have said, what I told you is the exact truth. Neither I nor my brother in arms wish to glorify ourselves with the merits of others!" The head of Leopard answered.
"Are you making fun of me? And yet your faces do not lie," the great King of the North commented uncertainly with his perplexed gaze, since he saw no teasing look eyes of his soldiers, but satisfaction.
"Lord of the North, neither I nor the fourth rune were close enough to be able to make sense of the discussion that took place among the stones on top of the hill," explained the second rune of Trondheim, bending his smiling head before concluding: "There, you have the same amazed expression, we said you would have before!"
Holaf was stunned, but glad. He turned around to look for Boris, hidden among his soldiers. He was recognizable because of his closed helmet, when no one else was still wearing one. The great warrior approached the prince and opened his helmet, revealing his usual lack of expression, accentuated by the fringe of blond hair pressed to his forehead by the helmet he wore.
"Boris, my boy, I congratulate you! It was perfect timing! You moved the troops in an exemplary manner. The action was so correct that you could not have bettered it," King Holaf complimented him and was rewarded by a beautiful smile that bloomed in that dull face and then he concluded: "We have perhaps found a military art that suits you! You know, not everyone is a strong warrior. Stories are also told of heroic Generals, who are recognized for having won battles and saved lives through bold strategic moves."
"Yes, but I would like to be Boris the Destroyer, or Boris the Mountain Smasher, not Boris the Chess Player!" the young prince answered petulantly, returning in an instant to his usual blonde looks.
"Give time to events and to yourself. Only in this way will we know by what name you will be handed down to posterity," King Holaf answered courteously, convinced that he had glimpsed a spark, immersed in all that listlessness, petulance and mediocrity. After all, the Lord of the North liked the young man, convinced that he could dig gold even where no one else had seen anything but mud.
After duly congratulating the young Prince of Vyborg, the two approached the group of survivors, who were still reluctant to trust their rescuers and tell their stories. It was an old man with a long, white beard, curved like a trunk of snowy vine, who recognizing Demitry's son, came forward. He was leaning on a stick and enjoying the support of a young girl. The old man was covered in a long robe of rough black wool down to his feet. The robe had small prickly hair all over its surface. He wore a leather belt at his waist with a sad, solitary black dragon at his side without a scabbard or sword to give it any sense. His long hair was between grey and white, like the smoke from the chimney, was covered with one of those old pointed hats with a wide brim. Once this type of hat was favoured by wizards and magicians, who were now only vague memory. The line had been broken and the knowledge of these beings was lost to mankind.
"My Prince, thanks to the Most High and Only One you have finally arrived!" exclaimed the tired man with a voice cracked by old age. "We couldn't do anything, it was horrible!" he concluded with a great sigh.
"What was horrible? Who drove you to abandon your homes?" the Dragon with his typical impetuosity.
The old man did not answer, still disturbed and out of breath. The girl on whom he leaned gently caressed the elderly man's face, whispering loving words of comfort to him. All the rest of the few survivors did nothing but draw closer together, bowing their heads to look at the ground.
"Andor, son of Piotor, I am King Holaf, Lord of the North, could you tell me what terrible disaster has brought you to this pass?" the King of Trondheim politely asked in a friendly manner.
"My Lord, they came late at night, when living souls entrust their bodies to the warm care of a sweet bed. Nothing had alarmed us or could have foreseen what would happen. Like every night, the owls chased the nocturnal mice, giving their loud screeches, the fire in the huts crackled cheerfully warming the beds and giving a little light in the main room. I had gone to sleep in the bed that once belonged to my grandparents, a high one, over a brick stove, where my mother baked bread in the morning. There the heat gathers and increases just below the ceiling covered in swamp rushes, especially on cold nights when there is a winter wind," the boy stopped for a moment. The memory weighed like stones in his heart. It was too fresh a wound for him not to shed crystalline tears.
"Take courage, boy, leave out the poetic touches and tell us the facts! Without them we cannot make good decisions and with difficulty we will be able to help you," encouraged the third Nordic rune eager to know just who or what was the enemy.
Holaf exchanged a quick look with High without words or gestures, only their eyes were eloquent. Both Kings were aware that the time had come to face the enormous troubles that they greatly feared. But they were unable to wash their hands of their fate whatever it may be.
"My knight, if you will allow me, I will tell you the story! Andor has used so much of his energy, with his companions for all of our sakes! It is only thanks to them that we are alive," intervened a middle-aged man who was unable to fight, as his entire right leg was missing. The man was carried in turn by four younger companions who were quite strong, but a bit cowardly, as they had not faced the enemy forces.
"Your wounds date back many past winters, so you are a knight?" asked King Holaf a little delicately.
"Yes, my King, my leg was shattered by the mace of a barbarian invader of the Citadel while following the titan. But this now counts for little. What's important now is to eliminate those
beasts! I saw them with my own eyes, digging angrily at the soft straw roof, where we lived with my brothers. Bears with wolf tusks, with heads balder than those of the old ones!" was the revelation so feared by High and Holaf. Vyborg's soldiers commented on the description, incredulous and conceited. They gave no credit to the story, so similar to children's stories.
"How far is Cernyj Les from us in marching terms?" asked the Wolf, very careful to calculate everything so as not to run into surprises.
"It's not very far, with good horses like yours, two or three days more or less, and you'll see it as the third moon rises on the horizon," the disabled man who was no longer a warrior answered with little precision.
Holaf and High took the Dragon aside to discuss what to do. Boris, to his surprise was invited to join them. They had an idea of the time it would take and would certainly have asked for a detailed map of the village from the survivors. Moreover, the enemy seemed active only in the shadows of darkness, if it were still lurking.
"I suggest we go and slaughter those beasts, making sure that news reaches every corner of the Kingdom! Let all those cowards who ran away know just how vulnerable the beasts of their nightmares were!" aggressively proposed the third rune full of vigour.
"My warrior, calm down. There could be many and they will certainly be stronger and faster than us!" High specified. The whole situation seemed to be getting out of hand, like the water of a torrent when you are trying to drink.
"They can’t be all that many!!" exclaimed Boris with the apparent carelessness of a novice.
"How do you know that?" asked Holaf curious.
"If there had been all that many, given the surprise of the ambush and the undoubted strength of the beasts, I do not think that many villagers would have been able to escape," the blond prince answered logically.
"The survivors are also inexperienced fighters who were not able to defend themselves properly. The prince's understanding of the situation could have a basis of truth!" exclaimed the astonished Dragon's Head well satisfied with his surprise.
The Lord of the East approached the survivors and asked:
"Could you draw a map of the village hut by hut, access roads, ditches and any watchtowers?"
One of the soldiers of Vyborg took a roll of parchment from his saddlebag. It was of poor quality with defects and yellowing, such as is often used as sketch paper. He gave it with a charcoal to the young Andor, who had recovered and came forward to help. He drew with a firm and sure hand, not like an improvised sketcher, but like an experienced artist. Straight and simple lines flowed quickly without corrections, tracing the precise plan of fifty dwellings and three storehouses, organised according to a military plan of four squares of nine houses each.
The huts were located close to a crossroads with the left hand road a dead end. The village could be entered using an ancient stone bridge, above a deep and rapid though well contained creek, which ran along the north-east side of the town. Entering the village from the north, immediately after the bridge, a group of four buildings appeared on the right. A little further on, the wooden church with its classic bell tower and onion roof had its own churchyard, a beaten earth square. The large council hall also faced onto the same square. In the shadow of this large building stood the four long warehouses for food.
Continuing southwards, you passed through the first blocks of buildings until you reached the crossroads with the road heading east towards the dead end blocked by the curved creek, along the side of the village. While to the south just outside the village the road turned sharply, and forked, leading east along the banks of the river and south, towards the treacherous black mountains. From the crossroads, in the middle of the houses, turning west you came to a group of eight newer houses after an uncultivated field. These were placed outside the defensive palisade that enclosed the rest of the village. The watchtowers guarded each of the three gates of the palisade, while the last, alone, watched over the external houses.
When he saw the map, Holaf was displeased and almost offended. He shouted like a thunderstorm on the Nordic Strait:
"More than thirty houses at most! When I meet the King of Vyborg again, I'll give him a head butt straight between his eyes! This is a disgusting nightmare: three entrances, low walls of little use, seven distinct groups of buildings, one group outside the palisade. And those will certainly not be watchtowers, but four wooden platforms, as shaky as blades of grass!"
The idea of seeing King Holaf bend down from his height to give a header to his father, pleased Boris, making him smile, without disappointing anyone.
High commented disconsolately:
"Forty soldiers plus eight of us and Prince Boris are too few to think about dividing into groups."
"It seems that it is the fate of the Nordic tide to invade Cernyj Les!" exclaimed the satisfied Dragon's Head.
"With only five of you, you can't be the Nordic tide! The area is wide and treacherous, even if there are only two of those ‘things’ they would make martyrs of us!" The God-Slayer answered harshly and bluntly.
"We'll have to attack from the north, set fire to the shacks next to the entrance to make sure we're not surprised from behind. It would be a good move to use the pikes in the square in front of the church to fight those monsters!" As usual the Demon of Trondheim expressed his ideas for action in rapid and direct words.
"A phalanx in the style Mirmidon of Tahnatos, in short," Boris summed up with incredible technical accuracy, while in the role of a conceited prince he adjusted his hair with his hand.
"But how do you know all this, prince?" the Dragon asked, astonished for the once again.
"Master, you don't know, how many hours I spent at that brothel! I certainly couldn't just go from one whore to another, so I read the books belong to the Commander of the Heart Guard. That man was only interested in military strategy and the best armies of the Empire of the United Men. I only regret not having been able to read anything about the armies in the north or east, I did not have time, so sizeable was the collection of tomes," Boris explained lightly.
"And his father believed him to be a lascivious, empty and incapable young man!" commented High, smiling, but joking: "But he wasn't wrong about lascivious!"
The joke diverted everyone’s attention, dispelling for a moment the doubts about the dangerous future.
"So there is no objection to the plan of action?"Holaf asked. High shook his head satisfied and added:
"We are going blindly against a dark shadow with ravenous jaws in the slender hope, that they are alone and stupid. There are many obscure points in your plan and even more so given the lack of information available, but I doubt that we could think of anything better.
"Fortune favours the bold, given to the few beings capable of deeds equal to those of the Divine, but accomplished by flesh and blood men. Only these warriors will be allowed to enter Valhalla, and we will certainly be among them with this feat!" complained the Dragon with a threatening look on his face.
"What the Dragon Head said, makes sense to me too!" Boris added, his eyes glittering with admiration for the warrior with his fearless heart, driven by anger and thirst for fame.
Chapter 16
Steel and glory
It only took the time of a pheasant’s flight for the decisive approval of the two Kings for the idea of returning to their saddles and riding to the cursed village. All he could do for the survivors was supply them with bad food, show them the way, and wish them a good trip to the capital of the Free Realm of Vyborg.
Not everyone wanted to march towards the safety of high walls, a strong army and solid terracotta roofs; the young warrior, tired and thirsty, decided to follow the handful of brave knights. The garrison galloped towards the treacherous enemy, knowing it was endowed with inhuman strength, huge claws and powerful tusks capable of piercing the armour of warriors.
The young Andor, despite all his past misfortunes, felt the blood in his veins boil with the desire for revenge. His brown eyes see
med injected with molten gold. They had an almost magical glow just at the thought of being able to avenge his mother, father and his four brothers, who remained in the village. In his heart the young man, who had become a warrior out of necessity, still had some hope of finding his own loved ones healthy, perhaps hidden in the false floor of the hut, or at least he had a seed of hope of finding traces of their escape beyond the walls.
"You can ride with Sersy, young armiger, if that's not a problem for you," King Holaf suggested to Andor.
"My King, if it's not a problem for the girl, I certainly won't complain," the newcomer replied obediently, trying to figure out which of the three women could be Sersy.
"If I were you I wouldn't be so cocky: Sersy is beautiful, provocative and spoken for by one who it would be best to have on your side always and everywhere," whispered the God-Slayer into the boy's ear.
"And who would he be, my King?" asked curious Andor.
The answer came by itself, as the glow of the day became shadow, and the outline of the Dragon stood out as black as death in front of the young and tiny Andor.
"Boy, do you have any use for your hands?" the third Nordic rune asked in a threatening tone.
Andor did not respond, intimidated, staring the warrior with his war hammer at his belt with evident traces of coagulated blood, encrusted in the incisions, as if it was a decorative frieze.
"I will take your silence as a yes, therefore, those hands must be very proper and not go slipping into any trouble!" The irascible warrior’s threat came to an end. It was not even slightly veiled.
A little further down the line, Sersy smiled, having heard the huge warrior of the north threaten the young boy, moved by jealousy over her.
"What answer will you give to rune number three?" asked Tyra in a low voice, clutching at Sersy with shining eyes.
TRONDHEIM SAGEN: Earth Shattering Page 29