Glory-bound: a speculative account of the Battle at Tollense

This thesis is a work of speculative historical fiction that seeks to provide a narrative explanation for the presence of Nordic Bronze Age artifacts and human remains buried under the banks of the Tollense River in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. The story is told through the eyes of Urik, a well-traveled mercenary in an ancient army, and chronicles the gathering, marching, and politicking that might have preceded the battle theorized to have taken place beside the Tollense in or around 1250 B.C.E. Utilizing current archeological research, the author constructed a work of fiction that attempts to humanize people of the ancient past while remaining faithful to current scholarship on the Nordic Bronze Age and the Tollense Valley Battlefield.

GLORY-BOUND: A SPECULATIVE ACCOUNT OF THE BATTLE AT TOLLENSE by CJ Larsen A Senior Honors Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The University of Utah In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Honors Degree in Bachelor of Science In Writing and Rhetoric Studies Approved: ______ __________ Maureen A. Mathison, Ph.D. Thesis Faculty Supervisor LuMing Mao, Ph.D. Chair, Department of Writing and Rhetoric Studies ___________ Maureen A. Mathison, Ph.D. Honors Faculty Advisor _____________________________ Sylvia D. Torti, Ph.D. Dean, Honors College December 2022 Copyright © 2022 All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT i ABSTRACT This thesis is a work of speculative historical fiction that seeks to provide a narrative explanation for the presence of Nordic Bronze Age artifacts and human remains buried under the banks of the Tollense River in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. The story is told through the eyes of Urik, a well-traveled mercenary in an ancient army, and chronicles the gathering, marching, and politicking that might have preceded the battle theorized to have taken place beside the Tollense in or around 1250 B.C.E. Utilizing current archeological research, the author constructed a work of fiction that attempts to humanize people of the ancient past while remaining faithful to current scholarship on the Nordic Bronze Age and the Tollense Valley Battlefield. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ii INTRODUCTION 1 PROLOGUE 2 CHAPTER I: THE CLAN 3 CHAPTER II: THE FORT 34 CHAPTER III: THE KING 49 CHAPTER IV: THE MARCH 65 CHAPTER V: THE VALLEY 98 AFTERWORD 130 iii 1 INTRODUCTION In 1996, a human bone pierced with a flint arrowhead was found protruding from the mud on the bank of the Tollense River in Northeastern Germany. Further excavation of the riverbank has unearthed dozens of skeletons and troves of ancient weapons and jewelry, much of it made from bronze. Archeologists have concluded that in or around 1250 B.C.E. this river valley played host to a battle involving hundreds, if not thousands, of combatants on a scale not thought possible in this obscured era of prehistory. The remains buried at the Tollense Valley Battlefield are of the Nordic Bronze Age: a chapter in Europe’s history that produced no known writing systems and can only be understood through the precious few artifacts that have survived the harsh decay of millennia. While the material culture of this age continues to be unearthed, the stories of those who died beside the Tollense River over three thousand years ago will be forever lost to time. What follows is an attempt to ascribe characters, events, and motives to the lost souls buried in the ground at Tollense. Through the liberties of fiction, I here present a story that will posit a narrative, a scenario, for what occurred in Germany in those unremembered, unattested days. I wish now to propel you, the reader, backward through history to a time contemporary with Achilles and the Trojan War, to a time where history is indistinguishable from legend, to a time of warring tribes, vengeful gods, and men of bronze… 2 PROLOGUE Dear reader, sheathe your archivist’s concerns For this tale is not governed by account But conjured fresh, by author’s pen, in aim To cast your dreamer’s thoughts to ancient times, To long-forgotten acts of Bronze Age men Contemporary with Achilles’ war. Look northward, far from Trojan battlements, To forest-covered Germany. Observe As chiefdoms, joined by blood and pantheon, Though less equated in integrity, Sound deafening horns, bare polished bronze swords, And sic their thuggish hordes upon foe-tribes. The forebears, now unknown, of German men Cast sling and spear against now-Danish stock On battlefields we’ve today marked Tollense. It’s here, companion, I set course and plot To give testimony of lives obscured, Of those unnamed clans, dynasties, and souls Preserved, anonymous, in bog and field. I, faithfully as knowledge doth permit, Unearth these souls and thrust them into script, To court your favor and, with modest hope, Assign motivation and character To singers silent, voices long decayed, Their bones neglected, buried underfoot. It’s in that spirit, noble readership, That I bestow my mind’s creation here, Not to precede truth nor abandon fact, But to contrive, by fiction’s instrument, An application of archeology, An exercise in historical report, And not a minor feat of narrative. So, at your leisure, do continue on While keeping, in your thoughts, the pondering That while this story’s plots and characters Are unequivocally fictional, They are not, in practicality, untrue. 3 THE CLAN The forest’s morning stillness was broken by the guttural, echoing sounding of a war horn. Urik woke with a nervous lurch, his soldier’s conditioning forcing his hand to the sword belt lying next to him and his body tensing to spring up from his makeshift shelter. Before his eyes had taken in the pre-dawn light, the soldier Urik was scanning the patch of forest he and his party had claimed the night before. The eight other men bunking near Urik were all similarly roused and sat up in their bedrolls, the sudden unnatural sound calling each drowsy fighter to attention. A second horn call then bellowed from beyond the dense brush to Urik’s left, a rhythmic trumpeting used by the Oefeldei clan as their wake-up call. This now-routine tune relaxed the encamped men, and they calmly began to rise from their beddings. Urik stood up from his nest. The thick-trunked fir tree he’d chosen for cover had kept the wind off his body, and his makeshift bed of piney branches and moss patches had mopped up most of the morning moisture before it could soak his woolen bedroll. The broad-shouldered warrior snapped the dew from his cloak and wiped the forest debris from his bedroll. Taking stock of his possessions, Urik found all his valuables: his razors, comb, purse, ration sack, and weaponry, all in their proper places, undisturbed by covetous hands. “Trousyc. Fire and water.”, the bearish voice of Rohm growled from behind his pine branch covering, breaking the tranquil morning silence. The mercenary captain’s command was unnecessary; Trousyc was already going about his morning duties. The old slave had the good sense to complete such tasks without prompting. He’d started every campfire in the three years of Urik’s employment 4 with the company and presumably every campfire since his acquisition by Rohm. His building of morning fires was near-reflexive, an ample supply of wood having been split the night before and kept dry under a covering of needled branches. In friendly territory where smoke wouldn’t alert an enemy, Trousyc would always stack large pieces of wood into a knee-high, hutlike structure, which he’d then fill with a generous handful of moss dried over the last night’s fire. Seeing as how the surrounding hillside had been thoroughly scouted for signs of activity and was found to be empty, the slave made a fire in that style on this morning. Trousyc’s flint struck sparks quickly in his leathery hands, and a fire big enough to warm the nine men of the camp was soon lit and burning. Trousyc the Slave then took the group’s clay water pots past the tree cover where a small runoff stream had been noted the previous night. Soon the camp was alert, warming themselves by the fire and drinking from water pots. Rohm was offered the first drink, his right as both captain of the company and master of Trousyc. The two sat together, Trousyc taking what water Rohm had left him. A stranger might mistake these two middle-aged campaigners for friends, being of similar age and each bearing a distinct world-weariness in their eyes and weathered faces. Those who knew Rohm even briefly, however, would know how brutal a slavedriver he could be, both to slaves and the hired swords in his company. At now twelve days on the war march, the fellows had long since run out of morning conversation. They chomped their foraged greens and salted pork in comfortable silence, each man knowing full well that none of his fellows cared to converse this early in the day. Though as was quickly becoming a ritual with this group, the Achaean was first to speak. 5 “Salt pork and fresh veg, eh boys? A man eats better in this company than in any roadhouse in Illdyra, to be sure.” Klymenos of Mycenae was as strange a fighting man as any Urik had encountered. Bronze-skinned southerners from the Sealands could be seen riding with trade caravans often enough, but none had ever been as colorful or as brash as Klymenos. His tunics, of which he owned several, were dyed in a deep crimson, and he wore a saffron yellow scarf for adornment. Even in winter when men covered themselves with thick wools and furs, Klymenos draped his scarf on the outside of his cloak to exhibit his extravagant alienism. His appearance, combined with the exotic intonation of his voice and his mutterings of strange gods, ensured that he was never without attention in the homesteads and villages of Teutehlend, attention from both suspicious farmers and their curious daughters. Klymenos was also a master fighter; his spear arm was honed and scarred by decades of battle experience. More than once, Urik had seen Klymenos boldly advance on an enemy, shield forward and spear held steady with such concentrated intensity that even his most hardened comrades struggled to match his war-crazed atmosphere. Each man in the company knew that Klymenos, despite his incessant chatter, was the man you wanted on your right side in the clash. When he spoke, men answered. “Aye Klymenos. What of the food in your homeland?”, young Ruprein pipped, always digging for stories of foreign lands. “I miss fresh fish and the wines of my hills, lad. I miss olives in vinegar, but most of all lads, I miss the women. Sweet as wine they are, not hard and blistered like the women in these lands.” 6 “I ‘eard it tol’ dat Achae’n wines is sheep-spi’ole”, the ever-brash Halvan remarked, his near-toothless mouth and slurred speech imparting his trademark callousness to the statement. “Compared to what, Halvan? The wines of this country?”, Urik clammed, “What wine have you tasted here that wasn’t cut with goat piss?” “Ay Halvan, what sob have you talked to in these lands what can attest to pure wines of Mycenean make, besides myself?”, the exotic southerner added through bites of salt pork. “I’d wager the sheep-spittle they tried to pass off as Achaean Red was more piss than grape.” Rohm spoke up, “That’s how Halvan likes it. S’ow he likes his women too, I’d wager”. Halvan bared a toothless grin, and the younger men knew it was safe to chuckle at the veterans’ jokes. None but the most respected members of this company would dare laugh at Halvan’s expense for fear of the swift and violent retaliation his fists would dispense. As was his daily custom, the chief’s howler Bonterk was working his way through the fires of the warband, spouting off a rehearsed briefing at each. The portly, red-faced cousin of the Oefeldei chieftain took pleasure in rising before the other retainers and berating the men for their sloppiness. From his position as the chief’s second man, he used his authority to terrorize poor levies and wide-eyed boys, though he was tactful enough to speak plainly to the career men. The mercenaries would listen to Bonterk’s half-baked philosophies each morning and share private chuckles at the partially informed orders he’d spew through bites of 7 pilfered rations. This morning, Bonterk’s speech consisted of the basic tenets of the march: dry leg wraps and snug-fitting boots. “You dumb shits don’t know the mess you’ll be in if your feet go rotten. I ain’t carrying you, and there’ll be no stopping for a rest-up! Get your kit in order or chief’ll leave you to the wolves. That’s a bloody promise, that is!” Bonterk had first introduced himself to Urik and the mercenary company with such a speech. On one of their first mornings under Oefeldei employ, Rohm’s men were taking their morning meal as they listened indifferently to Bonterk berating a neighboring campsite of farmboys for failing to bring extra stockings on campaign. The red-faced officer then lumbered over to the mercenaries’ fireside, cracking twigs and stumbling on rocks like a fawn separated from its mother until he was standing directly above the circle of men. “I assume you boys know how to keep yourselves alive, yes?”, he grumbled through his patchy, yet meticulously combed red beard. Rohm, then unaware of his superior’s ineptitude, addressed the man with the respect of his office, “Aye my lord, we’ve stockings enough to last this campaign, sure enough”. “I’d expect so, seeing as how you boys are proper fightin’ men”, Bonterk gestured towards the other campsites of the army spread over a shallow hillside. “This lot can barely rub two sticks together without help from their mamas. It’s a wonder they can tend crops or shear sheep without someone holding their hands”. 8 Bonterk then plopped down by the fire, warmed his hands, and reached for a sack of blackberries. “I expect you men to keep these others in line. Whip them into shape, ay?” Rohm countered, “It’s not the job of a hired sword to command his employer’s subjects. Won’t the chief take issue with us givin’ orders to his men?” “The chief would consider it a favor if you did whip these bums a little. He knows what a sorry lot of goatfuckers this party is. Present company excluded, of course.” “Then where are his warriors? Or his sons, for that matter? We’re on a campaign, but he’s only brought a mob of green plowboys and dusty old farmers,” Klymenos interjected, never caring much for subtlety or the chain of command. “He’s not committed his own fighting men to this campaign for reasons you’re not to ask about nor wonder aloud about once we reach Weykviś.” Bonterk leaned in closer, his beard draping dangerously close to the fire. “He’s got forty-six hired men and two hundred-odd shitheads who’ve never seen anything close to action before. He’s asking you boys, as a favor to him and to your purses, to make sure these men get all the way to Weykviś and back without too much pain and suffering. He’ll make it worth your while, that I can tell you.” At this, Rohm traded manners for frankness, “We’re paid to follow the chief’s orders. That being said, we’ll not act as shields for farmers and goatherds when the fighting starts. If that’s the intention, howler, you and I’ll have a problem.” The rough captain leaned closer to the fire, and Bonterk’s face went flush with red. His greedy fingers slipped away from the oat sack and into his lap. 9 “Captain”, Bonterk croaked, “All I’ll tell you is that we don’t intend to engage any significant forces on this campaign. In fact, our job as an army is more ceremonial than anything else.” The squatty half-noble stood himself up and brushed the dirt from his cloak. “All you boys need do is get this band to Weykviś and put on a nice show of arms when we get there. You’ll be paid the agreed-upon rate for time-in-service, regardless of whether you see action, understood?” Without waiting for a response, Bonterk scurried away, his path toward the chief’s tent marked with the sound of cracking branches. Urik looked into the faces of his comrades, trying to gauge their reactions to this development. “I hate that little fatman,” Klymenos piped up, not minding if the little fatman was still in earshot. “What’s he mean ‘show of arms’?” “Pay that fool no mind,” Rohm grumbled. “Tellin’ men they ain’t marching to war, even as they move closer to a Weykviś with each step. Bad for morale and bad for discipline. As far as anyone in this company is concerned, we’re marching to the battle of the ages. Māword himself will guide our spears, and Péhusōn will blow his horn to signal the fury of our war-dogs. Eh?” The men had all barked an “aye” in confirmation, but each was hoping, in his innermost thoughts, that what the fatman had said was true. Get these whelps to Weykviś, get paid, don’t die. Sounded like a good campaign. *** In the ten days’ marching since that fireside chat, the fighters’ anticipation for what awaited them at Weykviś had escalated from plain curiosity to excited feverishness. “What’d Fatboy mean by ‘show of arms’?” 10 “What clan hails from Weykviś? Has anyone here been to Weykviś?” “Who’re we gonna bruise up when we get there?” “Will there be women?” None of the men had ever been as far north as Weykviś. The mysteries of that place and the secrecy surrounding it had been the talk of the mercenary band at every morning fire, water break, and nighttime entrenchment. Several attempts had been made to coax information out of the younger, more talkative levies in the ranks, usually involving two or three mercenaries taking a man aside and, tactfully, probing him for whatever conversations he’d overheard in the leadup to the formation of this host. When the young men proved useless, the more weathered farmers were approached, though with more conversation and less intimidation. These men were as ignorant as their younger kin, usually spouting platitudes like “Our chief called, and we answered.” or “We march where our chieftain bid us march.” or the standard fodder’s response: “Our journey is blessed by the gods. Dyēus Phetḗr will guide our spears to glory!”. The chief’s household men weren’t worth bothering, and slaves wouldn’t dare divulge information to strangers, for they generally preferred keeping their tongues attached in their mouths. With the usual avenues of fact-finding exhausted, Rohm’s company began to express their curiosity and frustration through story crafting. Bonterk’s poor judgment in confidants had truly set the boys’ thoughts to labor at what larger schemes they were playing parts in, what machinations of gods and kings they were carrying out with this simple commission. 11 “We’re going to Weykviś to intimidate some rival clan, to be sure. Chief’ll have us march about, maybe light some fires and split a head or two, and that’ll be that. No problems, just gold in our purses and a good bit a plunderin’.” “Nah, we’ll be bashin’ up some shithead what’s done ‘is daughter wrong, I bet. I bet ‘e’s set up some marriage, right, and things ain’t gone to plan, so we’s gonna be ‘is ‘atchet boys and settle da situation.” None were more inclined to idle theorizing than Klymenos. Every morning and every night, he’d delight his bunkmates with a new premise explaining the secrecy of their employer’s errand. On this morning, after Bonterk’s leg wrap announcement had been thoroughly ridiculed, Klymenos spun his latest narrative: “Bare with me, boys. Now say our eminent employer, the chief there, say he’s gotten himself into a bit o’ debt. I don’t know how, doesn’t matter. Say he’s gotten into some debt and he’s been forced to go up to Weykviś to answer for it, right? Now —” “This sounds like your theory three days ago.” Guntlar interrupted. “We’ll go up to Weykviś, thrash about whatever merchant lord’s got a quarrel with the chief, and that’ll be that. Be original if you’re gonna bother us, eh Kly?” Klymenos was unfazed, “If you’d let me continue my story, you dim fuck, you’d have heard me say that while the chief is in debt, as in my previous theory, he’s not indebted to anyone in Weykviś. Rather, he’s indebted to someone in the other direction, south of his hall. Now get this. Guntlar, are you paying attention? My gut tells me our man is running from the debtor, right? He’s hired us boys as protection to deter anyone wantin’ to collect, kept his sons and most of his men at home to protect his land, and is now headed to Weykviś to thrash whatever traders have got gold or amber ‘round there. 12 We get the stuff, he pays us our wages, we fuck off, and he goes home a free man. Problem solved.” “That doesn’t make any sense. First off —” Just as Guntlar was preparing his rebuttal, the horn sounded again to order the breaking of camp. The men around the fire paused their conversation and moved to prepare their belongings. Urik tightened his sword belt and fetched his bedroll, ration sack, and quiver from their positions hanging on a tree branch above where he’d slept. He then took up his shield and bundle of spears and began the walk over to the adjacent clearing where the horses had been hitched. All around him were the sounds of an army breaking camp: fires being quenched, supplies being hauled to carts, and prayers to Péhusōn, the godly protector of mortals, being offered in huddled circles. Geoff, the chief’s stable slave, had already bridled Urik’s horse and saddled the animal with a hide blanket. The stout pony had served Urik well for three fighting seasons, its chestnut fur and sandy mane were as close to a constant home as the veteran had. Urik slung his kit over the beast’s back, mounted, and trotted across the clearing to where Bennek and Klymenos were waiting atop their ponies. Bennek made a poor trail companion; his tongue having been taken by some savage marauder tribe before his soldiering days, or at least that’s what could be gathered from his unintelligible mewing. Klymenos never kept his tongue still, so the two were often paired together for escort duties. Today, the three of them would ride alongside the chief and his retainers at the front of the column. The trio of riders made their way past the grain carts and through the clusters of levies clotting the trail. The undisciplined saps were standing around in circles, waiting for someone to order them into marching 13 columns. Their freshly forged and halved spears pointed in every direction, some stuck in the mud upright and others hung across their owners’ backs with no concern for where bronze spearheads might protrude. Rohm’s men were scattered amongst them, carrying on conversations of their own and indifferent to the shambolic state of their inexperienced charges. “Form ranks,” Urik barked. The men in earshot dropped their conversations and hurriedly maneuvered themselves into crude marching lines. If they’re scared of me, wait till we reach Weykviś, Urik thought as he maneuvered his pony past the staggered lines of fresh meat. After weaving their mounts through the throngs of farmers and shepherds, the mercenaries got to the head of the column where old Chief Wulraven of the Oefeldei clan sat atop his war pony. The chieftain struck a regal pose, his braided white hair held fast with bronze beads and his clean-shaven face engraved with a look of mindful contemplation. He wore a wool tunic of similar make to those of his clansmen, but his shoulders were fittingly draped in a beautiful fox-pelt cloak held tight with a large gold half-moon pin etched the shape of a horse’s head. A dozen household servants and slaves loitered around him on foot, heads bowed, waiting to heed their master’s order. Bonterk had stationed his pony next to the chief and was waving his arms erratically as he dressed down a young pack slave for some minor offense not witnessed by Urik. “You dog! I’ll have you beaten for your impertinence!” he snarled, his normally red face beaming bright as fired copper. “Let the boy alone, cousin. I’m sure he’ll address me properly from this point forward,” Wulraven croaked, not bothering to turn his head to look Bonterk in the eye. 14 “But sir, you can’t let these slaves take liberties. Respectfully sir, let me see that this weasel is disciplined proper.” Wulraven responded with sternness, this time sparing a sideways glance to his second-in-command, “That won’t be necessary. I’ll discipline my slaves as I deem fit, and I’ve already spoken in this matter.” Bonterk quelled his rage, and the poor pack slave slipped back into the throng of his fellow bonded-men, all bent at the hip and staring nervously into the dirt. Wulraven then turned to address the mercenaries, “Where is your captain this morning, men?”. Klymenos answered for the group, “Captain Rohm’s gone ahead to find our scouts, my lord. He wants to find the farm trail to Weykviś before we march any further east. He’s concerned that we’ve already passed the trail and will have to double back.” “He’s a wise man, your captain, but I do not share his concern. Dyēus has thus far blessed our journey, and fitting offerings have been made nightly to him. Grummbuld hath assured me that we are in his favor. By our faith, we will find the path to Weykviś.” The chief’s sage Grummbuld had indeed been making nightly sacrifices of lamb and goat to the sky father. Wulraven had seen fit to drag along enough offerings to get the company safely to Weykviś and back several times over. Wulraven reined his pony forward, “Let’s be off.” Two of the chief’s bodyguards trotted up to escort their lord, and Tresden the Bugler sounded the marching call. Urik and Klymenos took up positions a few yards in front of the guards at the head of the party. Bennek moved up behind Urik, and Wulraven’s ward Clarven drove his pony beside the mute. The young war-pup bore the 15 standard of Clan Oefeldei on a tall stave in his spear hand, though he now held it low and furled so as to not catch on overhanging tree limbs. With over two hundred men, twelve horses, seventeen ox carts, and a herd of livestock led behind, this army was slow to advance and even slower to maneuver. As the head of this great serpent, the chief and his escorts steered the body of men and beast as it heaved its mass and plodded into forward movement along the hillside. As if to simulate the breath of the snake, the ranks of men swelled and contracted as they moved around rock and tree, bunching up and spreading apart as each obstacle was cleared, each man contributing to a dance that slithered the snake across the hill. The carts in the creature’s rear lumbered over those obstacles, their oxen pullers driven by sharp nips from their drivers’ canes. The column’s route through this hilly forest had been marked the previous day by the advance scouts, men from Rohm’s company who could be trusted to not cock it up and lead the carts into a muddy ditch or over a rock face. Ax marks in tree trunks and freshly shorn branches told Urik and Klymenos where to find the smoothest route for the ox carts. This hill was mostly devoid of large rocks, thank the gods, but dense patches of underbrush slowed their progress as they moved up and across the slope. The men at the rear were constantly having to fall back and lift cart wheels up and over vegetation and half-buried deadwood. Each cart-stopping impediment produced a call from the rear to halt the whole column, forcing the men in front to lead another sluggish acceleration back to marching pace once all seventeen ox-carts had been muscled over. Wulraven remained indifferent to the constant stoppages, the chief seeming none too concerned with the route his people were being led on. 16 Why the hell are we leading this column? Urik asked himself once or twice as he and Klymenos looked out for their comrades’ trail markers. “Tell me, my boy, where do you hail from?” Urik snapped his attention behind as he realized Wulraven was speaking to him, albeit without any indication of his being the target of the inquiry. “My people come from Urnevi, my lord. I’m of Urnefrid blood.” “Oh yes, Urenvi, quite. I recall a man by the name of Ousvelt who came from such a place. Do you recognize the name?” “I’m afraid not, sir. It’s a big place, sir.” “Yes, yes, of course. Ousvelt, you see, was quite a revolting man. Ousvelt had a nasty habit of…” Wulraven’s story trailed off as he began to direct his tale-telling to his sworn-man Berner riding next to him. The old chief had been a gracious, if distant, employer to Urik and the boys over the previous twelve days. Their contracts had been made and first payments issued immediately upon their arrival at his hall. His people had given generously of their spring crops so that the first night of the mercenaries’ employment was a rumpus celebration with enough beef, bread, and ale to satisfy even the most ravenous amongst them. Wulraven himself had sat quietly throughout the feast, offering conversation only to Bonterk, Grummbuld, and his flock of elder advisors left behind on the next morning’s departure. Urik recalled a story told that single night at Wulraven’s hall. After the chief had retired to his bedchamber, Guywve, an old codger lacking the elder grace of his lord, had 17 recounted, between slugs of beer, how he and Wulraven had put down a subject clan’s revolt in their youths: “Da chief, oh boys ‘ear dis, da chief rode up to dat bastard Jonton, right? ‘e rode up to em, deadeyes ‘e was. ‘fore Jonton could get ‘is shit mouf op’n to parley, our chief dare drew ‘is s’ord and cut dat fuck’s ‘ead off, one stroke. One stroke it took ‘im. We’s sat dare all a gawkin’, not knowin’ to charge or wat. Jonton’s boys all stood dare all pale and dat. Chief den, get dis, chief took Jonton’s ‘orse by da reins, ‘eadless shit still on its back, and led it down da hill to where we was. ‘e led dat ‘orse all way back ‘ere to dis hall, didn’t look back once ‘e didn’t. Bout a day lat’r, one of Jonton’s sons come up ‘ere and offer ‘isself as ‘ostage to end da ting. Dat’s our chief dat is, you best belie’e dat.” The chief behind me now is that same chief? Urik saw no ruthlessness in this elder chieftain. Maybe in his youth, he’d been a warhound. But now? *** The company hiked along the rims of several more hills before descending into a glen with sparse pockets of trees and hardly any boulders. The marchers behind the chief’s escort spread out, some walking five or six men abreast through knee-high spring grass. Urik, Klymenos, and Bennek fell back behind the chief and his guards, their trailreading skills not being required in this open pasture. Clarven unfurled his Oefeldei standard: an azure woolen banner with long tassels on the bottom, embroidered in white stitching with an image of an adder curled into a spiral pattern. The banner waved gently in the cool spring breeze, its height acting as a guide for men now ambling along in whatever formation suited them. 18 Their pace was slow, with Wulraven reining his pony to the gentlest of gaits. This flatter ground made for easy trekking that some men in the rear of the column could be heard belting out a worker’s tune, an obnoxious, repetitious droning they’d sing in the fields: My girl Boudi, sweet as pie Thresh one, thresh two, thresh three rows, high. Left me lonely, high and dry Thresh one, thresh two, thresh three rows, high. She crushed me, hurt me, made me sad Thresh one, thresh two, thresh three rows, high. Just as sad as her sister had Thresh one, thresh two, thresh three rows, high. Urik, actively forcing his pony to hold unnaturally slow strides so as to not overtake his lord, hated shambling along unintentionally like this. It also bothered him that the natural serenity of this glen, the subtle harmonies of wind rustling the grass and birds chirping in their nests, was being shattered by tone-deaf imbeciles singing songs about girls and wheat fields. Klymenos, noticing Urik’s displeasure with their unmotivated comrades, gently drifted his pony into Urik’s, forcing both pony and rider off their course. “Why so glum, chappy? Aren’t you enjoying this walk around the forest?” 19 Urik redirected his mount forward, “Yeah Kly, I love a good frolic. Can’t say I enjoy that fucking singin’ though.” Klymenos now jaunted his pony up to where Bennek was treading, “Oi Bennek, get a load a’ stick-in-the-mud. He can’t wait till we’re back miserable in the mud and rain. Poor fuck can’t enjoy some time in the sunshine, birds chirping an’ all. What do you want, Urik? More rain and sleet and shit? Lighten up, you horse’s ass.” Bennek let loose his signature toothy panting, baring his oddly empty mouth in a crude approximation of laughter. “You mistake contentment for boredom, you Achaean ass,” Urik retorted. “I’d love the grass, and the trees, and the sunshine if I weren’t sharin’ it all with that bunch of lumpabouts behind us. Can’t you hear that song? ‘Thresh one. Thresh two. Thresh three rows, high’. Is that supposed to be verse?” “They’re farmers. What are they supposed to sing about? They aren’t welltraveled men like us.” Klymenos sat up in his saddle and puffed out his chest, tunic and cloak rising around his trunk, and began to belt a song of his own: My queen, lovely lady, all covered in pearls. The shapes in her drapes give my insides a twirl! When I walk behind her, I don’t move to pass, for I love a queen with a jolly round ass! Just as the poet ended his verse and was about to start another, an incensed Bonterk came galloping up from his place among the chief’s other retainers. 20 “Oi! Knock off that singin’ there!”, the red-faced nobleman barked as he halted his mount alongside Klymenos. “You’re disturbing our lord!” “Why certainly, Bonterk. A thousand pardons, Bonterk. I meant no offense, Bonterk. I’ll apologize to Chief Wulraven immediately.” Klymenos turned his head towards the chief, roughly three pony lengths ahead. “I humbly beg your pardon, my lord.” Wulraven didn’t acknowledge this apology, though Frehren, his other guard, nudged the clan leader’s elbow and directed his attention backward. “Who calls?” Wulraven hollered. “Klymenos of Mycenae, lord. I beg forgiveness for my disturbance.” “What disturbance, man?” “My singing, chieftain. Bonterk’s informed me that my singing has caused you annoyance.” The chief now turned back in his saddle, “Bonterk! Stop bothering the men! How many times must I tell you to let soldiers have their pleasures?” Bonterk, thinking better than to argue with his elder cousin, stopped his pony’s gait and fell back into the column, staring fire into Klymenos’ smirking face as the men on foot overtook his position. *** A few miles and several work songs later, the column reached the terminus of their leisurely stroll. The elevations on either side of the glen had moved progressively closer together and had become steeper and more rocky as the men hiked further along the floor of this valley. A steep hill now stood in front of them, spanning the entire width 21 of the glen and mending into the rocky walls that encompassed the flat clearing Urik and company now found themselves in. At the top of this slope stood a stand of trees of innumerable quantity and considerable density. This thicket rimmed the natural concavity like a fence; a mosaic of green and brown, its depth obscured from the men stopped in its shadow. Wulraven raised an open hand, commanding the column to halt. This hill, being but forty paces high and consisting of seemingly solid earth, would be no hindrance for men on foot, though the horsemen would no doubt prefer to lead their mounts uphill by the reins. Similarly, the gradient was too steep for the oxen alone to safely pull the carts up, so they’d have to be assisted with manpower. Urik started scanning the hill for a crevice or depression that could serve as a shelf to rest cartwheels on during the ascent. Wulraven was in no hurry. “We’ll wait for your captain here,” the chief declared, dismounting his pony and commencing to stroll along the base of the obstacle. His bodyguards followed suit, and two slaves brought up the chief’s hounds to walk with their master. Urik spoke up, “Beg your pardon, sir, but may I suggest we get over this hill and wait for Captain Rohm on higher ground?” Wulraven either didn’t hear the suggestion or didn’t care to answer it. He and his companions continued to walk away from their company, the hounds baying excitedly and sniffing every plant in their paths. The rest of the escort, followed by the retainers and servants, then the levies, and, finally, the pack slaves and cattle-boys all sat down in whatever places their feet had stopped when their chieftain halted the march. Rohm’s men slowly migrated to the front of the horde until all forty fighters still among the army, 22 plus Trousyc, were gathered in a circle. The more aware among them echoed Urik’s objection to Wulraven’s halt with huffs and stern expressions, some staring intently upward into the forest looming above them. “We’re exposed here. Ain’t no good stoppin’ in a place with no protection,” Quick Miksen mused aloud, verbalizing what all the men were thinking. “Where’s the chief gone anyhow?” asked Guntlar. “He’s over dere. Whas he doin’?” inquired Tomank. “I think he’s picking flowers. Look, he just —” Klymenos spoke up, being the most senior man in Rohm’s absence, “Halvan, you and Ædren head up the hill and out to the left about thirty paces. Tomank and Guntlar, you go up to the right while the rest of us spread out around this clearing here. When Nabsen and Jormen catch up from rear watch, Tófern and Rolligs will —” “W’o is you gib’em or’ers too?”, Halvan interrupted. “You, ya toothless bastard. Problem?” “I don’t like yous gib’em me or’ers what Rohm ain’t gib’em you furst.” “Rohm ain’t here and neither’s the chief, so who do you think’s in command?” “Dat sub’ect ain’t been deci’ed on. Grenfin croaked, an’ we ain’t got no secon’ yet.” “Well in the absence of leadership, I’ll take the initiative.” “Says ooh?” In a blink, Klymenos closed the distance until he was eye-to-eye with Halvan. The two veterans stared into each other’s faces, neither man taking his eyes off the other’s. The smaller yet far more impassioned Klymenos visibly braced his legs and dug 23 his feet into the dirt while Halvan stood unflinching as if to bait the Achaean into throwing the first strike. The men within earshot, professionals and levies alike, all watched and waited in total silence. A tense few seconds passed, and Halvan began wheezing a forced, sadistic chuckle. He backed off from Klymenos without a word, handed his horse off to Trousyc, and started hiking up the slope toward his assigned lookout. A bewildered Ædren took up his belongings and begrudgingly ran to join his watch partner. Klymenos unclenched his jaw and, reigniting his usual charm, addressed the assembly of soldiers, “Does everyone here approve of my suggestions?” The men all nodded in silence and fanned out to cover guard positions along the clearing edges. Urik stayed behind to counsel his friend. “He’s a bastard, Kly. He wants to provoke you in front of the men.” Klymenos, his hands relaxing and his brow unfurling, “I know that. I wouldn’t mind scrapping that ugly mug myself.” The two fighters handed their ponies off to Geoff and started moving up the hill with only shields, spears, and quivers in hand. Overcoming the impediment without much difficulty, they summited into a mostly-flat glade at the edge of the tree line. Picking a spot with a reasonable line of sight into the barely illuminated woods, they knelt down with their shields resting upright before them. Stringing their bows, the two sat in silence and listened for activity beyond what little of the forest could be seen. Ten other mercenaries had also traversed the hill and planted themselves in sentry positions along its crest. Below them, the chief’s levies and servants were lazing about in the grass, some talking and others lying down in the warm spring sunshine. A few had 24 noticed the activity from the mercenaries and had positioned their shields in like fashion, but most were unconcerned with their surroundings and were taking the opportunity to rest up after a half day's march. Their commanding officer Bonterk was similarly resting, his feet propped up on a sack of wheat and a slave fetching him water from the pots. After a short while of this waiting and watching, Ruprein made his way up to Urik and Klymenos’ position. The big man slumped down next to Urik and placed his appropriately large shield in front of him. “Would you sirs mind if I asked yous a question?” the young man squeaked in his cracking, pubescent voice. Urik liked Ruprein. A man of no more than sixteen winters, yet he could outlift and outwrestle any man in the company. He was a head taller than Urik, solidly built, and had hands big enough to crush apples. He was handsome too, if such a thing mattered in a trade where men don’t stay handsome for long. The boy had come from green farmland in Dorusnigi, joining the mercenary company by happenstance the previous summer as they were escorting a trade caravan through that country. After his entire family had succumbed to a wasting plague, Ruprein was ostracized from his village for fear that the gods’ wrath would take the whole clan should he remain. Alone and near-dead from hunger, the big man stumbled into camp one night and pledged his loyalty to Rohm in exchange for food and a warm blanket. Seeing the potential utility of an armed giant, the captain eagerly offered the orphan a bowl of oats and an old saddle cloth at the price of ten years of service, a vow Ruprein happily made in the name of the Sky Father. While most of the men had found the mercenary life under similar circumstances and could empathize with a boy who had no place to go, they were duty-bound to 25 ruthlessly ridicule the young pup. They teased Ruprein for his size and constantly imitated his high-pitched voice. As the greenest man in the company, he was subjected to incessant sarcasm and was mocked for every misstep and for every question, stupid or reasonable. Klymenos was especially fond of messing with the boy. “I normally would mind,” the Achaean retorted. “I normally castrate people who ask me questions. But, seeing as how we ain’t got much better to do, let’s have it.” “Why’s this place no good? Seems all right to me.” Urik answered quickly before Klymenos could loose another smartass remark, “You need to start thinking like a soldier, Ruprein. Look around. We’re in this valley: no high ground and no cover. We have a good view of what’s behind and what’s on our flanks, but this forest is completely concealed. There could be a whole warband hidden in them trees and we wouldn’t know nothin’ about it.” “But I thought we was in safe territory. Ain’t we in Calgareen land?” “Boy, how long’s it been since we’ve seen another person besides this company? Haven’t you noticed there’re no farms, no trails, no nothing? We’re in no one’s land now, which means anyone could be out there getting ready to gut us.” “But the Oefeldeis have been saying this is the Calgareen’s land, and they’s friendly with the Oefeldeis” “The levies don’t know shit about whose land’s whose. Ain’t none of them ever been out this far. This might be Calgareen land by right, but who’s to say some clan’s not moved in and claimed it for themselves? Who’s to say the Calgareens aren’t a clan of 26 scheming asses who aren’t movin’ around in those trees there, ready to shoot us full a’ arrows and take our horses?” Klymenos spoke again, “To answer the original question: we’re being careful because we don’t know who’s out there. They could be watching us. They could have killed Rohm and the others. They could be roasting our captain on a bonfire while we wait around weaving grass bracelets and combing our hair. We don’t know, and that means we act as if we’re already surrounded. Get it?” “Sure, yeah, but why’d the chief stop us here?” “I don’t fucking know, lad. He wanted to stretch his legs, looks like. All I know is I want to get to Weykviś and onto the next job before he decides to march us into the sea or something. I think the old man’s gone off in his old age. Not exactly a live one, that chief.” Urik flashed Klymenos a questioning glance, and Kly, realizing his slip, reached over Urik’s back and collared Ruprein by the tunic. “None of what I said about the chief gets repeated, understand?” “Got it! I swear!” yelped the big man, who could probably have crushed Klymenos’ head like an apple if he’d had the stomach for it. The three continued to sit, mostly in silence, for what seemed like the entire afternoon. As time dragged on, Klymenos made a visual survey of the men of the company. Some of them were watching the forest intently while others had nodded off or were picking grass and humming to themselves. Nabsen and Jormen returned from the rear watch with nothing to report and were relieved by Tófern and Rolligs as Klymenos had suggested. Once or twice, a group of levies walked up the hill to take a peek into the 27 forest, which caused half the mercenaries to erupt in a chorus of barking and cruel epithets. Those levies quickly scurried back to the safety of the clearing and pointed their curiosity in other directions. Finally, just before the sun touched the hilltops to the west, a throaty bleat came from the scouts to the right. Urik was jolted out of his wandering thoughts. One call meant someone was spotted. Two: enemy spotted. Three: ally spotted. Urik listened nervously for how many calls would follow. He and Klymenos readied their war bows and moved to their feet, still crouching to maximize the cover of their shields. A second call came from the right. The mercenaries braced themselves, bows in hand and spears ready at their feet. Rohm’s men could be heard all across the tree line, yelling down the hill, in as softened shouts as possible, “To arms. Form ranks. Nock arrows and prepare to shoot.” The unobservant men below took some time to understand the commands and were doubly slow in executing them. They started scurrying into crude fighting lines; the would-be archers among them readying their varmint bows for a threat they wouldn’t see until it was bearing down on them from atop higher ground. The wind continued its gentle, cyclical breaths, drowning out the mercenaries’ commands and making it near-impossible to direct the troops below. Urik could barely hear the wind through the sound of his own heart beating in his ears. His legs felt heavy and his neck was locked forward as he tried to focus his attention on the forest and that thick curtain of bark. Ruprein and Klymenos on either side of him, Urik waited for his death to come through those trees. Then Tomank yakked a third call, and relief rushed over the company. “Finally! I was thinking of settling on this hill,” Klymenos exclaimed. 28 Still crouching, Urik walked with bent legs back to where he could be seen from the ground below and began pointing to the amassed levies. After pointing his finger down the hill several times, he caught the attention of one man, who started pointing to himself for confirmation. Urik started moving an open palm toward himself repeatedly, beckoning whoever’s attention he’d caught to come up the slope. Tresden the Bugler was the lucky soul. Built long and slim, he bounded up the hill like a rabbit, appearing before the mercenary with full breath and only a hint of red in his cheeks. “Where’s Wulraven?”, Urik asked in a quiet mumble as he scanned the valley below. “I seen him walk back around us, back where we came from. He’s over past them rocks by now. I’ll sound a recall.” As Tresden moved to put his lips on his horn, Urik lunged toward him, grabbing both the man’s arms and holding them at his sides. “Why would that suddenly be a good idea? Use your fucking head,” Urik growled directly into Tresden’s ear. “Run down and tell the chief the scouts have returned.” The stunned musician did as he was told, long legs stumbling over each other as they built up speed. He hit flat ground and darted between the men, eager to fetch his chieftain. As if conjured by woodland nymphs, Rohm exited the forest to the right of the men, keeping his pony at a careful walk as he navigated the edge of the hill. He was followed closely by Stafern, his riding companion that day, and the twins, Minkrel and 29 Sevren. Urik was disappointed that the two scout brothers hadn’t been captured and roasted alive by Kly’s phantom savages. Rohm rode up to where Urik, Klymenos, and Ruprein were stationed. “Stand up, boys. Ain’t nobody in this forest ‘cept us. I’d wager no one’s been through here this season.” At this, Ruprein sprang up to his full height. Urik and Klymenos more reluctantly stood straight, each taking up his shield in his left hand. Rohm dismounted, hitched his pony to a stout elm, and looked down at the army now roused into attention. “Where’s Wulraven? I have good news for ‘im.” “He’s on a walk. I sent a man to fetch him.” “On a walk?” The twins trotted up behind Rohm. Their identical weasel faces peered out from under their cloak hoods, beady eyes peering out from under thin blonde eyebrows. Minkrel’s cloak was fastened by a thick gold brooch: a brooch he did not have the last time Urik saw him. “Miss us Urik? We knows you did,” Sevren chirped. Though when one twin talked, it was coming from both of them. “With all my heart boys, truly. I was having such an awful time not having to hear or look at you these last few days. I could hardly stand it.” “I’m sure you was dreamin’ about us an’ all.” Minkrel pointed to his new jewelry. “Fancy this? You wanna know how I got it?” Before the Twins could recount their story, a horn call sounded from somewhere down below. Urik turned and spotted Wulraven and his party jogging across the clearing 30 toward the company. In mere minutes, Chief Wulraven had reached the base of the hill, his escorts lagging slightly behind him. Like a man half his age, the chief bounded up the incline with agile hops and rapid pushes of his arms, reaching the top before his much younger bodyguards. When he crested the hill, the old man was quite out of breath, though his eyes beamed wide and his voice rang with an enthusiasm Urik had yet to hear from the old man. “Well Captain, What have you discovered?” “We’ve found the trade road, sir. It’s another half day’s march through these woods, then we run straight into it.” Wulraven’s face lit up with joy, “Gods be praised! They hath smiled upon our journey! I want double offerings made tonight in gratitude.” Grummbuld, who’d panted his way up the hill behind his master, nodded in acknowledgment before dropping to his knees to rest. Rohm continued his report, “What’s more sir, We met some traders who’d just come from Weykviś. They said it's six days from where we’d met them, but I say we can make it in five if the carts cooperate.” “Joyous tidings! Thank you, Dyēus Phetḗr. Our journey is truly blessed!” “Yeah, I’d say so,” Minkrel muttered to his brother in a hushed tone that only his mercenary comrades could hear. Urik looked the twin in his eyes, and Minkrel met his gaze while making a show of adjusting his fibula. Sevren stifled a giggle. “What did these traders say of the gathering?” Wulraven eagerly inquired. 31 “King Finraeke’s army has been camped there for some time. They said that the Brunfelds and the Svylrens arrived just as they were departing and that they’d passed the Calgareens on the road two days ago.” Dumbfounded, Urik and Klymenos both looked to Rohm, who flashed them a silencing glare before returning his attention to the chief, who was overcome with elation at this news. “What a gathering this is to be! Oh Dyēus Phetḗr, bless us! Thank you, captain. You and your men are joining us for a historic occasion, truly a momentous happening!” Wulraven turned to Grummbuld. “Order the men into marching order. We set off immediately!” Rohm interjected, “Pardon my suggestion, sir, but we’re losing the light. I suggest we make camp up that knoll yonder, through the trees. It’ll give us high ground for the night.” “Of course, Captain, of course. Lead the men on. I must confer with my sage.” With that, the positively-giddy old warrior turned and started a more calculated descent from the hill. The bodyguards followed their master, as did Grummbuld after he’d picked himself up from the grass with a huff. Bonterk, risen from his spot in the grass after all the commotion, ran to intercept his cousin as the elder chief made his way downhill. The mercenaries were left alone, standing with their captain near a forest’s edge that ten minutes before had been an abyss. Klymenos broke the silence. “Fuck, Rohm? In Diktaios’ name, what’s going on?” 32 Rohm, hesitantly, faced his men and explained, “From what we were told, it’s a gathering of every clan sworn to King Finraeke. He’s called all his bannermen to meet at Weykviś. For what, the traders didn’t know.” “And they wasn’t much in a mood for talkin’,” Minkrel interjected, “Was they, Sevren?” “Nah Mink, they wasn’t very talkative,” Sevren answered, his curling smile giving way to a dry, nasally chuckle. “THAT’S ENOUGH FROM YOU TWO! Start marking a route through those trees!” The Twins turned to carry out Rohm’s order. As they reared their ponies away, Sevren turned and waved back to the men, his fingers adorned with seven or eight rings of polished silver and his wrist enclosed by several gold bands. “What does this mean for us, boss?” asked Urik, returning to the subject at hand. “Nothing’s changed, lad. We just know better what we’re marching into.” “If something big’s goin’ down, we’d better be paid accordingly,” mused Stafern. “If something big goes down, I’ll wring Bonterk’s neck,” Klymenos quipped. Rohm was unamused. “Remember boys, we’ve signed our contract. We’re in Wulraven’s service till the end of the fightin’ season. We go and do as he commands. I need you boys to help keep the rest of ‘em in line. Klymenos, I intend to announce you as my second-man tonight. Will you accept?” Though he tried to mask it, Klymenos was honored. “Of course, boss. Thank you.” 33 “Don’t thank me yet. You’ll have to command these sons-of-whores when I bite it. Now let’s get these shits up the hill before it gets dark, eh?” As Rohm turned to walk away, Urik called to him, “Sir, you have some muck on your face.” Rohm wiped the reddish brown splotches with his hand, nodded to Urik, and started walking down the hill. Let the soldiers have their pleasures. 34 THE FORT The march into Weykviś went as smoothly as the gods could have ensured. The road, which in truth was a vague path of crushed grass and bent tree limbs, led the Oefeldei on a mostly flat route which significantly increased their speed. Rohm’s projection of a fiveday march would’ve held true had Wulraven not taken several hours-long breaks to pray and consult the weather with Grummbuld. On the sixth morning since the finding of the road, the army marched into Weykviś territory. There was much shouting and exclamation when a lone woodsman was spotted checking his traps, the first person in more than ten days to be seen by the marchers. That woodsman, made appropriately uneasy at so many hundreds of men cheering his presence, slowly retreated deeper into the thicket as the men continued their march. Not long after that encounter, a small cluster of riders was spotted coming toward the company. Neither Wulraven nor Rohm raised any alarm, for scouts had been dispatched to ride ahead of the party and herald the arrival of the Oefeldei. Those scouts were now returning with a greeting party. Stafern and Rolligs, chosen over the twins for this assignment given their more pleasant demeanors, led seven other riders toward the head of Wulraven’s column. Berner and Frehren posted themselves in front of their lord to meet the strangers, and Rohm’s boys tensed their spear arms in world-weary habit. The strangers, dressed in clean linen and sporting identical maroon cloaks, halted their ponies a fair distance from the chief’s escort and dismounted, spears in hand but pointed toward the sky and shields held low at their hips. The man at their head, a captain judging by his age-worn face, approached with open palms and a bowed head. 35 “My lord Wulraven of the clan Oefeldei, we are honored to receive you. I am Durlond, First Captain to King Finraeke of clan Runuken. I bid you and your men a most heartfelt greeting, and I bare my king’s undying gratitude for answering his call to arms.” This Durlond had the look of a first captain. A man of some years and weatherworn skin, his muscular arms held his calloused hands aloft with a confident stillness. His entirely-shaven head bore the grey puncture art common among senior warriors in these lands. Swirling grey lines, time-worn but still distinct against his tanned scalp, distorted the proportions of his head with inhuman asymmetry. Wulraven answered the captain with appropriate gusto, “It is mine and my tribe’s honor to answer such a call. May the gods shine favor upon our king and our mission.” Durlond straightened his posture, his unblinking eyes shifting between each Oefeldei man in his sight. His eyes met Urik’s for a brief second before moving to scan another man. “My king regrets he cannot greet you here himself. He is now overseeing the final preparations for our mission. If you and your men will follow us, Chief Wulraven, I will take you to him immediately.” “Lead on, captain. I would greet our king without delay!” The army resumed its march, Finraeke men now leading the way. Wulraven rode side-by-side with Durlond, plying the man with questions of the king’s wellness and of the gathering tribes at Weykviś. A stern glance from Berner and a scowl from Bonterk were enough dissuasion for Urik, Klymenos, and the other non-nobles in the chief’s escort to slow their pace and give the chief and his new friend a lead. Still, Wulraven’s 36 enthusiastic pitch ensured that the words ‘army’ and ‘campaign’ rang clear through the sounds of stamping hooves and shuffling boots. The scenery gradually changed as the party marched another hour closer to civilization. The path fast became a proper trail of packed earth and little vegetation. Seemingly undisturbed forest became less densely foliaged and was increasingly filled with cut tree stumps and the occasional wood pile. Eventually, the trees gave way entirely, and the men passed a field of wheat sprouts just barely peeking out of the ground in the mid-spring. A few farmers, mostly dusty old men, stopped their digging and waved to the marchers. The levies shouted greetings back and the mercenaries kept their heads forward. Marching passed several more fields and farmers’ huts, levy and mercenary alike started exuding anticipation. From the gradual thinning of the trees and the increasing number of human modifications to the land, the men could tell they were drawing nearer to their destination. Suddenly, within a walk of but twenty paces, the trees parted, the trail wound to the left, and the men found themselves looking out onto a vast clearing. A few hundred yards from their vantage, a slope gradually, and then suddenly, inclined into a fiercely steep hill. The top of this hill was crowned with a wooden structure, a stockade. The individual logs of the palisade melded together and formed a great ring of brown that must have stood three or four men high above the ground it rested on. Two watchtowers of lashed timber protruded from inside this ring, two horns piercing into the heavens from within that towering fortress. 37 The excitement of seeing such a structure could be heard behind Urik and his comrades as each levy stepped around the last trees and into sight of the hillfort. Each man would gasp, shout, or call his friends to see the marvel. A great knot in the army’s tail formed as men stopped in their tracks to stare out onto the hillfort and comment on its impressiveness. “Have you ever seen such a thing?” “Must be twice the size of our chieftain’s hall!” “What lord rules these lands who could build something like that?” The levies didn’t bother to comment on the many multitudes of smaller structures dotting the foot of this hill, nor were they so awestruck by the sea of men and beasts spread all along the hill’s rim and out into every square foot of the clearing. Urik, however, was truly amazed. There must have been hundreds of tents, lean-tos, and makeshift shelters arranged in rows and circles across this clearing. Each cluster of shelters was distinctly separated, but the mass blended into a blanket that covered the clearing with disparate, random geometry. Great clusters of horses and pack animals were dotted across the field in corrals. Dozens of banners of various shapes and colors jutted outward from within the mass. The sounds of so many men shouting, laughing, cursing, and wrestling filled the hillside with the vitality of a fair, of an army. Durlond and his men continued, without pause, to lead the Oefeldei out of the trees and into the open field. The levies who’d been so jovial at the sight of the Weykviś fort were struck silent when they passed the first campsite full of strangers. The men at this camp, some lying on the ground and others sitting in conversation, all stared and gawked at the newcomers. These were proper fighters, every man among them marked 38 and scarred. A few wags shouted jeers and sarcastic greetings in an accent Urik wasn’t familiar with. The levies kept walking with their eyes held low. Klymenos, in contrast, was thrilled. “Look at this! I haven’t seen a gathering like this since I left my dear Mycenae!”, he exclaimed to all in earshot. “Must be men from a dozen tribes here,” pondered Ruprein, who was now walking between Urik and Klymenos’s ponies, dropping his head nervously as the company passed more campsites. “I’d wager so”, Urik answered gently, sensing his young comrade’s unease. Klymenos sensed it too. “Looks like every cutthroat and sellsword in Teutehlend is camped ‘round here. I recognize those ugly bastards there, with the face markings. Mean fucks, them. And look, I’ve heard of them too. I heard they eat the hearts of men they kill. Gives ‘em strength or some nonsense. And over there, that’s —” Urik interrupted his friend to comfort Ruprein. “He’s full of shit. He doesn’t know who any of these men are.” He looked over to Klymenos. “Why do you torture the boy?” Klymenos looked down at Ruprein, who was now using Urik’s pony as a wall between him and the campers. “Sorry lad. Didn’t realize you were still scared of murderers,” he said without much sincerity. With the party now at the base of the hill, Durlond bade Wulraven halt his column. “My lord, if it please you, I’ll escort you to the fort for an audience with my liege. My man Ælec will show your men to a suitable camp.” Durlond turned his pony to address the men behind him, “My men will escort you to a campsite and show you where to find water. You’re free to fell as many trees as 39 necessary for your fires and shelters, but do not take anything from the fields or homesteads. You’re in the home of the Clan Musstren, and theft of Musstern property or harassment of their people will be punished severely. Understood?” The levies close enough to the captain to hear this briefing replied with a whimpering “Yes sir”. Most were not paying much attention; their concentration distracted by the sights, sounds, and smells permeating the field. The mercenaries acknowledged the captain with nods and grumblings under their breaths. Durlond dismounted his pony and handed the reins to one of his men. Wulraven followed suit, handing his pony off to a dutiful Geoff who’d anticipated a need for his services. The old chief called back to his men, “Captain Rohm. Bonterk. See to it that the men are encamped and provisioned. I’ll send for you if need arises”. With that order, the chief beckoned Durlond to lead on, and the two started walking uphill to the fort’s entrance. Berner and Frehren dismounted and hurried to their lord’s side as he ardently ascended the considerably narrower footpath. Urik could now see that the path led up to a pair of doors, tall as the stockade and made from planked wood whose lighter colors contrasted against the unstripped logs composing the rest of the wall. The route was not directly uphill but wound along the hill’s natural curvature, at some parts bolstered with dirt, rocks, and timber to achieve as level a terrace as possible. After a few minutes' hike, the men reached the doors which, at Durlond’s shout, were lifted and pivoted inward by unseen means. The men entered the stockade, Wulraven not so much as sparing a glance down at his tribesmen as he hastened through the portal. Frehren did look down at his kin before following his lord, but the bodyguard was too far 40 away for Urik to read his face. The doors remained open only long enough for the men to enter, swinging shut with the soft thud of timber against timber. The Finraeke man whom Durlond had called Ælec bade Rohm and Bonterk follow him, and the column’s head started moving to the left. Hugging the base of the hill and having no path to follow, the Oefeldei were made to weave around campsites and other structures. Every man the Oefeldei passed stared at the newcomers, sizing them up. Urik stared back; gauging strength was a necessity in his profession. Who among these men were killers and who were lambs compelled to march by their chieftains’ dominance? From Urik’s judgment, It seemed an even split. Some camps were full of freshfaced boys, others of grizzled wardogs. Some men were dressed in clean wool tunics and sported bronze armbands, others had the look of wildmen with only furs and rough hides covering their bodies. It was a gathering of all kinds, and all kinds were staring at the Oefeldei with the same mistrusting eyes that Urik bore upon them. Ælec led the men further away from the hillfort’s entrance. When they’d traveled about a third of the way around the roughly circular base of the hill, the guide started his pony in a direction away from the fort and towards the interior of the clearing. Following closely, the Oefeldei passed several more campsites before coming upon a gathering of about fifty men in an area devoid of structures or campstuffs. Some of these men were throwing a forearm-sized stick back and forth while others attempted to intercept the stick. Urik saw one man catch the stick, run from three or four pursuers, and toss the stick to a teammate. That man evaded more opponents, and the stick was juggled between 41 several more players until an unlucky stick-bearer was taken to the ground with a hard tackle. The tackler took the stick in hand, starting the game again with the roles reversed. Walking still further, the group passed another few campsites before reaching the limit of the gathering’s expanse. Ten yards past the last camp’s makeshift ox pen, Ælec stopped and gestured toward an open space nestled between the neighboring camp and the thin stand of trees bordering the field on this side. “You can make camp here. There’s a creek through them trees there. You can chop any o’ these smaller trees, but don’t touch none what are bigger than a man’s arms ‘round, got it?” “Where are we to forage around here?”, Bonterk asked, forcing his voice into an unnaturally forceful resonance to convince the man of his seniority. “Lord Mustreen was very clear ‘bout no foragin’ ‘round here, this bein’ his people’s lands an’ all. Don’t worry ‘bout that though. We won’t be ‘ere much longer.” With that, Ælec started his pony back toward the hill, and the Oefeldei were left at their new campsite. The horsemen dismounted their ponies and started unstrapping their property from their beasts’ backs. Bonterk moved to start organizing the men, but they were already claiming sleeping spots as they’d done for almost three weeks. Trousyc and the other slaves were also conducting their campsite duties, most walking silently into the trees to find the creek Ælec had told of. Amid the activity, Rohm gave one command. “I want a double watch on our carts. Nabsen and Miksen, pick twenty men for a first watch. Extra caution, got it?” Nabsen nodded, and Quick Miksen followed him to divert twenty levies from their camp-making. 42 Rohm turned to Urik and Klymenos, “You two stay ‘ere and get this lot settled. I’ll go have a look around and see if there are any familiar faces.” “Did you have any idea there’d be so many?” Urik asked his boss. “No, and I’m not too happy about it either.” *** Camp was made in short order, and by mid-afternoon, the Oefeldei were settled in their assigned spot. They’d had no visitors since their arrival, though a great many prying eyes had made innocuous walks along the unspoken border between this camp and their closest neighbors. Those neighbors, an unfriendly band of roughnecks numbering about sixty men, had spurned Rohm’s attempt to introduce himself, saying they’d not speak to strange captains without their own captain present. Rohm had ventured into the sea of camps about two hours past, and the boys had gotten comfortable in his absence. The mercenaries had dug themselves a suitable fire pit and collected some stout logs for seating. The “no bigger than a man’s arms ‘round” rule had been observed honestly enough; they’d used Ruprein’s arms for each measurement. They’d even felled and delimbed a particularly tall larch so Clarven could fly the standard at a proper height. With their day’s labor complete, the paid men of Rohm’s company were enjoying their half day’s rest as best they could, given the many dangerous strangers close by. Some among them, particularly their second captain, were disgruntled with being sequestered in their corner of the field. “What’s taking him so long? I want to stretch my legs too,” whined Klymenos, who had spent considerable time standing atop an ox-cart, seeing what he could see. “Ain’t nothin’ for it Kly. Cap’n said stay ‘ere, so we’s stay ‘ere,” Kuint chirped. 43 “Ain’t you supposed to be settin’ the example for the rest of us?” Rolligs squawked. Klymenos jumped down from his makeshift watchtower. “You’re absolutely right. I’m your role model now, and I should be dissuading you men from vices like gambling and fighting and general depravity. We’ll all stay here and have a singsong, how about that?” With no volunteers for a song, the men resumed their restful silence, still keeping a close watch out for their captain and staring down any man who came near the camp. Rohm finally returned from his scouting mission a few hours later. Looking depleted but unscathed, the captain walked straight into camp, found where his men were posted, and sat down without a word. Trousyc was at his master’s side in an instant with water and strips of salted venison. “How was it, boss?”, Stafern inquired. Rohm took a while to formulate his answer. “Of them what speak our language, half told me to fuck off and the other half didn’t tell me nothin’ of value. I visited every camp in this field, and nobody knows any more than we do. I’m startin’ to get real pissed with all this secrecy.” “See anyone you recognize?”, Urik asked. “The Prenolks are here, remember them?” “Yeah, this job just got much better!” The Prenolk were a tribe Urik and some of the company had worked for a few summers previously on a security job. Their Chief Bolbin was a cripple who’d lost his foot to adder’s bite in his youth, but what he lacked in physicality was made up for with 44 boisterousness. He’d hobble around on a long wooden crutch, making friends with all the men and booming songs at all hours, day and night. It was a simple job, with plenty of time for songs, drink, and women. Rohm’s boys would’ve stayed with the Prenolk had Bolbin not run out of gold and bronze halfway through the summer. Still, the Prenolks had been kind employers, and it was nice to know there was a familiar name in this place. “How is ole Bolbin, eh?”, Crazy Cleenek asked. “Still his same self, true enough. Spent quite some time talkin’ at his camp. Even he doesn’t know what’s goin’ on here. All he knows is that Finraeke sent messengers tellin’ every clan under him to meet here after spring harvests with a minimum number of men and supplies. No one I talked to ever heard of anything like this before.” “No one knows where we’re going?”, Ruprein asked with a distinct tremble in his voice. “I heard all manner o’ theories, but nothin’ from anyone who’d know anything.” The men all went quiet, pondering what awaited them when this army was made to move out. With a force this size, what could King Finraeke have planned? They sat in silence until Rolligs, who was never one for silence, piped up: “Say, Rohm. When you was at the Prenolk’s camp, did they ask about our Southern friend ‘ere? Cuz I remembers the gen’leman takin’ a fancy to a lady o’ theirs durin’ our time with ‘em, which I recall didn’t make ‘em all too ‘appy. I distinctly remember our boy gettin’ caught in the act behind a juniper bush and gettin’ chased around the trees with not a bit of coverin’ on!” 45 Klymenos threw a dirt clod at Rolligs, who started giggling uncontrollably. The men who’d also been on the Prenolk job started laughing, and those who hadn’t laughed at the story itself. “Kiss my ass, all of you”, the Achaean said through an involuntary grin. *** It was near dusk when two men on foot approached the Oefeldei camp. They were king’s men, though both were far younger than those who’d met Wulraven and company on the road. The taller and apparently senior of the two walked passed the first group of shelters and approached the center point of the camp. “Are you Chief Wulraven’s men?”, he asked, his voice betraying some unease. “Who wants to know?”, a voice answered from somewhere among the gathering. The boy stuck to his business. “I’ve been dispatched to fetch a Captain Rohm for a war council. Is he among you?” Rohm stood up, “He is, though he doesn’t much like bein’ fetched.” The boy’s face went pale and he started to stammer an apology. “Never mind that, lad. Lead the way,” Rohm brushed his tunic with his hands and started maneuvering around his seated comrades. “Urik and Klymenos, come with me. Ædren, make sure nobody does nothin’ stupid while we’re gone.” Urik, surprised by Rohm’s order, rose with Klymenos and followed his captain. “Should we wake Bonterk sir?” Quick Miksen asked. “Nah. Let him rest. No doubt the poor man’s tired from sneaking rations all day.” 46 The poor man was not asleep and had heard this entire exchange. Like an angry boar, Bonterk charged into view from behind the carts and stomped toward the young messenger. “Were you not told to find me as well, boy?”, he snarled. On his heels, the boy could only nod. “Yes sir, I was to bring Captain Rohm and Captain Bonterk to the council meeting, by request of Chief Wulraven.” “Well hear that, Bonterk! A captain!” Klymenos teased, “Keep sneaking those berries and they might make you commander of this army.” Bonterk had by this point learned not to fuel Klymenos with a reaction, so the chief-cousin simply gestured for the messenger to lead on. With the setting sun at their backs, the Oefeldei delegation: Rohm, Bonterk, Urik, and Klymenos, started their walk back into the heart of camp and towards the hill. In the dusk light, the fort’s wooden walls looked to possess a deeper, sharper tone of greyish-brown than they had at midday. The party, led by their young errand boys, weaved their way through the campsites, not incurring nearly as many jeers and heckles as when they’d ridden by on horses at the front of a column of levies. They were now just four men among hundreds. Urik and Klymenos fell back behind their captains for their own war council: “Why’d the boss want us along, you think?”, Kly asked. “Probably wants us to hear what’s what in case he bites it. Redundancy, or somethin’.” “Yeah, or maybe he’s thinkin’ he’ll need some muscle if things get heated.” “If you keep your mouth shut, things won’t get heated.” “Are you referring to my little spat with the sage earlier?” 47 “That and other spats. You’re only making things harder on yourself.” “So what if Grummby doesn’t like me? Is he gonna curse me?” “What makes you so sure your gods are real and ours ain’t?” “Experience, my friend. I figure it’s all the same. I’ve traveled through lots of places and met lots of sages; they all have different names for the same gods. Same gods, same stories, same everything, just with different names. I pray, so why should I worry if I’m praying to the right names?” “Regardless of who’s who gods-wise, Wulraven listens to Grummbuld as if he can talk to gods. The gods might decide you’ve outlived your usefulness, and they might decide to use Grummbuld to speed up your journey to the Otherworld. Get me?” Klymenos paused a minute, then retorted, “Good point, but I’m still not letting that fool get us killed by messin’ around with those old bastards with the sticks.” “Fair enough.” The delegation reached the path up to the hillfort and began the ascent. Several other parties were making their way up the path, each being led by one or two of Finraeke’s men. As Urik marched upward, he looked out over the vastness of the field. From a higher vantage, he could see that the army was not as infinite as it seemed when one was walking within it. He continually looked out over the landscape as he climbed, taking in the unobstructed view of Pleh-wih and its neverending forests. The road the Oefeldei had walked that morning was easily spotted by the thinness of the canopy in that area. The Mustreens had cleared much of the surrounding terrain; fields could be seen for miles in all directions, separated by clumps of trees. Past the fields, however, was dense 48 forest sprawling forth onto the horizon. Against the setting sun, the trees looked like black hairs on a dog’s back: endless and uncountable. The entrance to the fort was open; no passwords required. The young guides stepped aside and beckoned with an open-palmed gesture for the Oefeldei men to enter. Urik suddenly felt the hairs on his neck rise and his heart quicken. He scanned as much of the fort’s interior as was visible and, unable to spot any immediate threats, crossed the threshold. 49 THE KING The scene greeting Urik inside the wall was nerve-calmingly ordinary: hovels, stables, storehouses, some small pig and goat pens, and a great many stacks of timber. The fort enclosed a sizable area on the hill’s crest; there was enough empty space for many hundreds of people within its walls. Several hundred soldiers were gathered within, presumably all Runuken and Mustreen men. In groups of ten to fifteen, they sat around at evenly spaced fire pits throughout this yard. Pitched tents and bushcrafted awnings choked the empty spaces between structures. The occupants of this high-topped fortress looked to be enjoying the same campfire banter as the men outside the walls, though they’d certainly benefited from Mustreen food stores. The smell of roasting pork filled the air with savory smoke that made Urik’s mouth water with cravings for unsalted meat. Another stark difference separated the outside and inside worlds: women. Women of all ages sat amongst the men, laughing and singing at a distinctively high pitch that trumpeted their presence with angelic euphony. Elsewhere in this ward, women were busying themselves with normal evening chores like stacking firewood and spinning wool. Even more ladies clustered together in an empty corner of the yard, entertaining several dozen children of varying ages. After three weeks of exclusively male company, the sight of even one woman could compel the most stoic soldier to stop and praise the gods’ kindness. Though they were summoned for official business, Urik and his companions dragged their feet and slowed their strides to savor these sights. “Wish we were campin’ up here. Much more comfortable,” Rohm commented, his focus diverted from their diplomatic mission. 50 “Uh huh,” Bonterk grumbled in a rare show of camaraderie. The young Runuken errand boys ushered their charges forward with polite urgency as if their captain could appear at any moment and berate them for tardiness. Being given no time to introduce themselves to the locals, the Oefeldeis followed their guides toward the enclosure’s main building. In the approximate center, upon a slightly-but-distinctly raised mound of earth, there rose the unmistakable mass of a chieftain’s hall. Comparable in size to the halls of Wulraven and a dozen other chieftains Urik had contracted with in his time, this massive oblong dwelling dwarfed the structures around it and stood nearly twice the height of the surrounding stockade. The rounded walls were constructed from debarked timber that was reinforced with large stones and painted over with a thick mud plaster. Its conical thatch roof pointed towards the heavens like a small mountain, a chimney hole at its center venting fire smoke. Noise emanated through small head-sized portholes in its walls, signaling that a gathering of some size had already convened within. Up the hardpacked footpath, Urik and company walked with trepidation. The entrance to the house was flanked by two Runuken men in battle kit. The older of Urik’s two guides stepped forward and, with his cracking pubescent voice, announced his charges. “Here stand the captains of Clan Oefeldei, called to attend our king’s council.” One of the guards addressed the Oefeldei directly, speaking over the head of his younger clansman, “You may enter. Keep your weapons at your sides.” The guard and his comrade stepped aside, and the four newcomers walked with some uneasy hesitation through the open doorway. Their new young friends stayed 51 behind, striking straight-postured sentry poses as they watched the men enter the chiefly hall. Inside the threshold, Urik and friends joined a crowd of men, four dozen at least, sharing boisterous conversation in circular huddles. The room was densely packed, with Urik having to lean his shoulder forward to wedge through the many bodies blocking the entryway. Out of habit, he palmed his purse and slid it to the front of his belt, making sure to keep his hands away from his knife and sword hilt. He pushed his way through the crowd, trying to find Wulraven or either of his two bodymen in this mob of humanity. Men were laughing, drinking, and swearing at such a volume in this confined space that no one voice could stand out above the rest. The fire pit in the center of the room produced a constant bellow of smoke that watered the eyes, the chimney hole being insufficient to completely vent the place. The firelight, the only light, danced through the smoky haze and off the faces in the crowd, some brightly enshrined in the flickering glow and others obscured in shadow. The faces in the crowd were old and weathered, chieftains and captains presumably, though a handful of youthful complexions were scattered among the old, their softer skin reflecting light far brighter than the leathery skin of the senior leaders. Across the fire and opposite the entranceway, Urik spotted Berner’s tall frame peeking above the crowd. He started pushing in that direction, being careful to press gently against those in his path while nodding his head at any face looking his way. The clammy flesh of strangers met Urik’s exposed arms as he weaved around conversations, the smell of dried sweat singeing his nostrils. 52 Before he could circumvent the fire pit’s circumference, Urik was pushed offbalance and grabbed by the back of the tunic by a firm set of hands. Turning to face his assailant but keeping calm enough to resist drawing his knife, the soldier turned and faced his former employer. “Bolbin! You son of a whore!” The Prenolk chieftain, round face and beaming smile illuminated by firelight, embraced Urik with a bear hug, leaning his full weight onto the mercenary. “How are ye, Urik me boy? I didn’t think I’d see ye and your boys again till dem screamin’ angel women swoop me up and take me down to Hell. How ye been, lad?” “Fair as can be expected, keeping this company,” Urik quipped as he nodded his chin toward Klymenos, who had gone unnoticed and was now attempting to sneak behind Bolbin for his own surprise reunion. Bolbin turned and, seeing the Achaean, let out a whooping exclamation, “Klymenos of Mycenae! Ye dogspawn ye! Rohm told me yees were still fightin’ with ‘im.” Bolbin took Klymenos’s outstretched arm and yanked the man forward, losing his balance in the process and falling backward to rest both their weights against Urik’s shoulder. The cripple-chief, loud enough to be heard over the crowd, spoke with a scowl into Kly’s ear, “Don’t think I forgot what ye done to shame mae clan, ye rat. Those girls ain’t been the same since ye left us. Always talkin’ about Klymenos of Mycenae and his pretty face and his bright eyes and his sweet talkin’,” Bolbin unfurled his brow and planted a sloppy wet kiss on Klymenos’s cheek. “Ye made the rest of us look bad!” The three old friends all shared a long overdue laugh. Bolbin turned back to Urik. “Rohm tells me ye’re with Wulraven now.” 53 “We are indeed. He has us marchin’ through the trees like proper soldiers.” “Good man, that Wulraven. He’s a cousin of a cousin of some kin of mine, I don’t know how far removed. Doesn’t matter.” Bolbin looked over his shoulder and called out, “We’re all kin in this hall, ain’t we chaps?” The men in earshot confirmed with varyingly enthusiastic “yeahs”. “What say you about all this, Bolbin? You must have some idea of what’s happening here, given your bein’ a chieftain and whatnot.” The jovial chief tapered his grin. “Not much more than what’s obvious. We’re marchin’ somewhere. I don’t know where or what for,” Bolbin moved in closer and whispered, “Have ye met Finraeke yet?” Urik and Klymenos both shook their heads, and Bolbin chuckled throatily. “Just ye wait. Ye won’t think ole Bolbin’s all that mad after ye’ve had an audience with King Finraeke of Clan Runuken.” Before Urik could press the cripple-chief on his meaning, he felt another hand on his shoulder. Rohm had pushed his way through the other side of the room and had now come back around to collect his lieutenants. “Let’s go boys. Wulraven will want to see us before it starts.” Nodding a farewell to Bolbin, the fellows resumed their path through the human hive. They came to the center fire pit and hung left, revolving around its rocky enclosure with careful steps so as to not be pushed into the flames by unobservant revelers. Through that fire’s heat-distorted atmosphere, Urik saw the good chief Wulraven on the opposite side of the room, standing proudly in his foxtail coat with an air of nobility 54 about him. Flanked closely by Berner and Frehren, the chief had around him gathered a sizeable crowd of which he seemed to be the focal point. Lightly shoving and gently pushing, they’d soon rejoined their chieftain. Wulraven was overjoyed in this environment, making merry with several other dusty lords who looked to be about his age. When Urik moved forward to announce their arrival, Frehren directed the Oefeldei chief’s attention away from his tale-telling and toward the newly-arrived mercenaries. “What are you doing here? Where’s Captain Rohm?”, he barked peevishly. “Right behind me, my lord. He bade Klymenos and myself come along to this council.” “Yes yes, that’s fine. Do keep your manners among these distinguished chieftains.” “Naturally, sir.” Rohm moved in beside Urik and absorbed the chief’s attention. “Captain! Your presence here is most welcome. I’d like you to be appraised of our king’s orders. I’ve found through my years that secrecy is the enemy of comradeship. Wouldn’t you agree?” The ever-tactful Rohm composed himself and, true to his station, replied, “Yes, my lord. Couldn’t agree more,”, though Urik recognized his captain’s disgruntled scowl through the flickering firelight. Wulraven returned to his mingling, and the three mercenaries were left to stand awkwardly behind their client chief and his two visibly-bored bodyguards. Wandering eyes periodically glanced their way, which the men met with nods and forced grins. 55 Bonterk had followed his cousin’s social example, disappearing into the crowd with intent to introduce himself to all present. Klymenos attempted a similar maneuver but was abruptly discouraged by Rohm’s tired grimace. The two junior mercenaries were meant to stand by their captain and listen, not gallivant around the room exchanging pleasantries. So they waited, silently, for someone to address them or to be ordered into action. With ample opportunity to survey his surroundings, Urik noted that this circular room and its central fire pit were not the entirety of the hall’s interior. On the side of the building directly opposite the doorway, a tall screen of woven branches interrupted the brown plastered wall. This screen must have been covered in cloth or pelts on its opposing side, for Urik could see only the faintest light emanating from behind it. The soft glow forcing its way through the partition was enchantingly alluring, a subtly enticing mystery begging to be investigated. Unfortunately, the four hulking Runuken men stationed in front of the screen deterred Urik’s curiosity. Doubtless, the lord of the clans was behind those branches, waiting to reveal himself at his leisure or perhaps at some predetermined moment benefiting his diplomatic stratagem. Urik could only stare at the opaque false wall, pondering what manner of man might step forth from behind it. *** With no king forthcoming, Urik and his companions kept their stations. There they stood, not saying a word to anyone outside of some small greetings and introductions when old friends of Wulraven’s came around to pay respect. Ever averse to boredom, Klymenos ventured back into the mob to find the supply of ale partaken of by 56 other men in the assembly. Unhurriedly returning with two wooden cups and one larger drinking horn, the Achaean handed the cups off to Rohm and Urik, raised his ale horn aloft, and dedicated a toast to their hosts: “To King Finraeke and the Mustreen chief, whatever his name be. May their storehouses be full and their root cellars fuller, for we soldiers have a thirst about us.” Urik drank his ale slowly and purposefully, rolling it around in his mouth and savoring every drop of the sweet nectar. It had been weeks since the welcome feast at Wulraven’s hall, and Urik suspected he’d wait many weeks more for his next drink. After a long, dull wait of what felt like several hours, Urik was deeply regretting following Rohm up the hill. Klymenos was even more restless, frequently voicing his boredom. “Think we can slip out of this place and introduce ourselves to the locals? I’m itchin’ to mingle with the local personalities.” “If you think you can avoid the guards long enough to woo one of the Mustreen girls, go ahead and try. Something tells me those two bruisers at the door won’t be apt to let you wander around too long.” “My intentions are purely honorable. Surely they’ll see that from my kind eyes and trustworthy face.” Klymenos stayed where he was, self-preservation trumping fanciful talk of evening exploration around the hillfort. The soldiers continued standing and waiting as the remaining slivers of dusk light faded from the glassless portholes cut into the westfacing wall. Those insignificant ports were soon filled with night’s blackness, only scattered stars and some pollution from torchlight breaking up the inky black shroud 57 encompassing the structure on all sides. Outside, the Mustreen and Runuken started a lively chorus of cheery camp songs, their words almost discernible through the walls and over the grumbling voices of the men indoors. Musicians accompanied the singers with wood whistles and goatskin drums, making a merry festival within the security of this hilltop fortress. Urik desperately wished to join them. Though he’d never taken to singing or dancing, he would happily lead the songs and beat the rhythms on dancing drums if it would deliver him away from this room. This room teemed with blathering clan-lords and sycophantic captains doting on their betters, fishing for opportunities to impress with their anecdotes of past triumphs. Even ole Bolbin, the affable comedian who mingled with common men and shared laughs with sellswords, was making rounds about the place, playing at clan politics. This room was an exhibition of a life Urik had tried desperately to avoid. After what felt like an eternity, there was a new development in the chief’s hall. At an unheard command, the four Runuken guardsmen turned and lifted the mysterious partition. They slid the screen to the right along the wall, opening a narrow gap from which light poured forth like dawn cresting a hill. A small elderly man wearing a fine linen tunic stepped forth from the light and walked through the opening, stopping just beyond the new threshold. The little howler inhaled a controlled chestful of air and boomed, in a concussive voice not matching his stature: “All bow in respect for Finraeke, son of Picsake, honored chieftain of the clan Runuken and father-king to all sons and daughters of Teutehlend.” 58 The chatter fell to swift silence. In one rushed motion, all present hinged at their hips and looked down to the ground. Urik, Rohm, and Klymenos followed the crowd, going so far as to kneel in the dirt in a show of overcautious subordination. Glancing up as much as he dared, Urik saw the partition shift further to the right, completely unveiling the second chamber. A second fire pit blazed within, illuminating the shadowy hall from an additional angle. Urik strained his eyes upward to see the lower halves of seven or more figures, some in tunics with leg wraps and others in calf-length skirts. Most of these legs and hips were male, but one or two of the sets had distinctly feminine curvatures. Urik could also see a multitude of gold and bronze adornments hung about these personages, catching the light from both fires. Gold bands and brooches dazzled bright sunlight yellow while their less-reflective bronze companions shown a muted, earthy brown. The newcomers moved into the main chamber, and the sea of bowed heads shuffled backward to make ample space. One set of legs, cast in shadow by the long cloak dragging behind them, walked ahead of the others and stopped a few feet from the fire pit. “Rise, friends, rise! Look upon your king,” the man commanded with enthusiasm. Cautiously, Urik raised his head and slowly stood from the ground, careful to match the rest of the assembly in his speed and timing. Purposefully, yet with involuntary hesitance, he raised his chin and looked upon the speaker. The man by the fire was King Finraeke, beyond doubt. Wearing a bulbous bearskin cloak with a wolf-pelt mantle on his shoulders, he seemed a giant among this gathering of normal men. He wore an intricately patterned woolen skirt with no tunic, 59 though his bare chest was near-completely covered by a bronze gorget and several ornate necklaces of twisted gold pendants. Looking not much older than Urik, Finraeke’s face told an unspoken story of conflict. His prominent brow and sunken brown eyes captured the firelight that sharply highlighted the many cracks, marks, and scars on his shaven face. His nose looked to have been broken and reset multiple times, bulging in the center and caving in the left nostril. The king’s hair was shaved down to the skin, and Urik could clearly discern an elaborate pattern of segmented swirls tattooed along his scalp that looked to slither and breathe with the dancing flames. The king paused for a moment, scanning the room with slow, purposeful sweeps of his eyes. Not moving his head, Finraeke stared into every face in his cone of vision, his dark eyes contrasting against his pale, fire-lit flesh. After several seconds of silence, he spoke again. “Welcome, welcome, welcome to all you faithful souls. I’m thoroughly impressed by the strength we’ve gathered in this hall.” His spirited voice, not matching his menacing countenance, was imbued with a musical intonation that rose and fell with each new syllable. “We must, of course, thank our dear friend Korumner for his hospitality and his people’s gifts of food and drink that have nourished us these past weeks.” An uncoordinated chorus of toasts and thankful exclamations rose from the crowd. One of the king’s elderly companions, Korumner, if reason served, stepped forward and accepted the comments with a wave of his hand and a slight bow. The king’s other retainers—Durlond the Captain, three grey courtiers, and two young women— clapped their hands reservedly without contributing any spoken thanks. 60 Finraeke spoke again, abruptly ending the chorus before it’d reached its natural conclusion, “You’ve been called here for a most auspicious purpose. I regret that secrecy was such a necessary precaution, but the endeavor we now embark upon will shape the lives of our children’s children for lifetimes uncountable. I would not endanger our purpose by announcing it to those whose interests run counter to our greater good. You here, in this hall now, are the loyal; you’ve proven it by being here tonight and by mustering such strength at your king’s command.” The king raised his arms out to the sides and tilted his head back, staring upward into the circle of night sky visible through the chimney hole. He stood unmoving and unflinching as smoke shawled his face and body, enveloping him in a wispy smog. “Our tribe has for too long been made to taste only precious few drops of Dhéǵhōm’s bounty. Only by ceaseless toil do our fields produce and only by careful rationing do our herds satiate us,” Finreake paused as if to savor the confusion in the air, before continuing with, “Our people’s lives are governed by the gods’ mercy. Whether we starve in winter is a matter of fortune; whether our crops sprout victuals is a matter of chance. Our kinsmen toil and die under harsh winds and bitter frost. Their sons follow, and theirs after them. So our lives have always been since our forefathers unnamed were seeded in this country by our holy Dyēus Phetḗr.” Finraeke looked down from the ceiling and stared glassy-eyed into the fire. “My friends, what if this need not be our fate? What if I told you we can take our fates into our own hands?” Silent tension filled the room. Men stirred in their skins at this near-blasphemy. 61 “We men of Teutehlend hold strength in arms to rival any tribe in Pleh-wih, yet we feud amongst ourselves in petty disputes over borders and birthrights. We chieftains align with outsiders against our fellow Teutehmen in pursuit of fickle gold and amber. We allow traders to enter our lands and traffic foreign luxuries while our own kin cannot feed their children. What are these…”, Finraeke slipped several gold rings from his fingers and held them aloft in his open right palm, “...but trinkets peddled by thieves and exchanged for the hard-won fruits of our labors?” The king rotated his hand upward, and the rings cascaded into the fire. Without a sound, the glimmering trinkets dropped below the flames and were lost to the inferno. Audible gasps ran through the crowd. “I call you here, my friends, not to lecture on kinship. My father, the king, was a great lover of brotherhood who dreamt of seeing his people delivered from suffering, of seeing the clans united by the pursuit of plenty. He dreamt this while his own blood brothers plotted in shadow to steal his title. My father died at Teutehmen hands, and his dreams of unity died with him. “I have no such illusions. I brought you to this far-off place so that we may point our selfish natures towards a common cause. I order you here to couple our interests, to see our people lifted out of obscurity and into the full light of Pleh-wih’s bounty. We will wrench our fates from those who would have us drown in the mud while they grow fat from trade and plenty.” Finraeke suddenly lurched backward; his cloak floating behind, catching the air and swirling smoke around him. He pointed his still-ring-adorned right hand towards the north wall, glaring intently into the distance like an archer taking aim. 62 “Those of you from our northernmost territories have for years petitioned your kings to push the Almandanes back into their sea,” the king seethed through a gritted jaw, “I call you here now to execute that mandate. We will march north from Mustreen lands and beyond the bounds of our fields. We will find Almandane villages and burn their halls to ashes. We will slaughter their warriors and set their people to flight.” Zealous excitement now pulsed through the room. Men who until this moment had been nervously silent were grunting in agreement and nodding their heads compulsively. Awestruck by their king’s proposal, many a chieftain was standing wideeyed and blank-faced. Urik couldn’t resist being swept into the impassioned tide. His heart quickened, his chest filled with fire, and his ears grew hot with warm blood. He wasn’t excited, scared, or relieved by the king’s proposition; he felt only heart-pounding suspense. “When this is done, we will be the sole masters of this land: from the northern seas to the southern mountains. Our stores will fill with unending sustenance; our children will grow without fear of northern raiders or vagabond merchant lords. The gods will revel in our triumph. We will be ushered into the Hall of Heroes and enshrined in song and poetry!” Amidst the stirring emotion, Finraeke turned a half-circle and pointed to a cluster of six scruffy wardogs. “Will the Gunnreig march north with me to claim their destiny?”, he shouted with a war commander’s vigor. The eldest of the dogs sounded off, “The Gunnreig will march with you.” A cheer went up from the rest of the crowd. 63 Finraeke rotated again, pointing to a contingent of fairer-groomed soldiers, “What of the Brunfelds? Do they wish to conquer fate?” The Brunfeld chief answered with a simple, forceful “aye”. A louder cheer filled the hall. “And the Aelfsigs?” “Yes, my king!” “The Prenolk?” “Yes!”, Bolbin and his two cousins roared at an ear-piercing volume. “The Kerndyles! The Malrakes! The Svylrens!” More “ayes”, “yesses”, and unintelligible hurrahs filled the hall. Every man, regardless of affiliation, pledged their clan’s service with monosyllabic utterances. Not merely asking for confirmation, Finraeke was rousing the men to a frenzy. “And the Oefeldei!?” Wulraven stepped forward, raised his fist in the air, and with all his heart roared a thunderous call. His usual aloofness was in that moment replaced by a most feverish intensity. The old chief’s eyes gaped wide, and the sinews around his mouth seemed to risk tearing for how wide his jaw was held open. The yell lasted at least ten seconds, with Urik and the other Oefeldei men only joining in the second half. Feeling Finraeke’s eyes loom over him, Urik loosed the loudest cry he was capable of making. The king was pleased, grinning with elation. “Yes! Yes! Call to our enemies! Let the Almandane dogs know our fury! Praise Māword with our battle cries!” Finraeke yelled over the Oefeldei, encouraging others to join. 64 The war council joined together in another great yell. Men strained to raise their voices to their maximum, stomping the ground and baring their teeth as if they were then facing the enemy on a northern battlefield. Bloody, sustained cries pierced Urik’s ears, displacing any other sound. He could not hear his own voice for the cacophony of shrieking battle cries drowning all. Every soul in this hall, young and old, woman and man, noble and sellsword, tore their throats in furious rapture. As the symphony of war finally subsided, Finraeke’s face beamed with wide-eyed satisfaction. He raises his hand and gestured towards the doorway. “Go from this hall. Make merry in this fort and across these fields. Conquer the night with your hot blood and strong-bred hearts. Tomorrow, we march to glory.” 65 THE MARCH So it was that at the earliest sliver of dawn, horns bellowed from atop the fort’s watchtowers and captains roused the men of Finraeke’s grand confederation from their bedrolls. Many of the chieftains, galvanized by the previous night’s emotion, personally woke their men with horn calls and bade them pack their belongings in predawn darkness. Oxen and horses were watered with urgency, and slaves were lashed with unusual frequency to quicken the pace of their morning labors. By the time mighty Sehwōl crested the hill of Weykviś, a horde of soldiers was forming a procession beneath her radiant glow. With each chieftain vying for his clan’s spot in the vanguard of the marching order, an unorganized bulk of man, beast, and ox-carts formed along the northern treeline, clustering in their hundreds within a small glade from which a northbound farm path could be accessed. On the side of this crowd nearest the path’s origin, some commotion had stalled any attempt to form a processionary line. The Mustreen, it seemed, felt they were owed the honor of marching behind the king’s men because it was in fact their land the army would be marching through. The Kerndyles, a thoroughly unsavory collection of sheep-stealing hillsmen, claimed that since they’d traveled from furthest afield to head Finraeke’s call, they had shown outsized loyalty and were owed the honor of following their king on the warpath. A standoff had slowly developed with Mustreen blocking the trailhead and Kerndyle attempting to maneuver around them. Curses were exchanged from both sides, and more than a few challenges to personal combat were offered, each being met with enthusiastic cheers from bystanders who would have loved to watch a duel or two between these glory-sick fools. 66 Urik was in no mood for bloodsport. Leading his pony on foot and wishing the gods had taken him in his sleep, he thought only of lying under a shady tree and going back to sleep. The mercenary was afflicted with a pounding headache and a painful sensitivity to the sharp curses and booming shouts of these postering halfwits. Klymenos and Rohm were similarly unamused, both pallid and drained of life after a night of festivity with precious-little sleep. Klymenos had sustained a blow to his face at some point in the night and now sported a large purple bruise on his right brow that oozed blood from its center. The petty clan quarrel developing ahead of the Oefeldei party surely had as much to do with the aftereffects of the previous night’s indulgences as it did with clan pride. The elder chief Korumner stood swaying on unsteady legs and averted his eyes from the sun while his young grandson Kodumver shook an angry fist at the Kerndyle leader, a rancid-smelling miscreant named Reegavic. The grandson, while being a man of only fifteen or sixteen winters, stood his ground against the older and far more uncouth clanhead as the two swaggered like starlings with chests puffed and fists clenched. Their respective clansmen had paired off; a few hundred men on either side held firm faces and rigid stances, each man ready to raise his shield and lower his spear should his counterpart on the opposing side move to strike a preemptive blow. Were a fight to break out, Urik was tempted to join the fray for either side if it would prove productive in breaking this idiotic roadblock. Alas, he and his company were separated from the conflict by three or four other clan groups, all of whom were shouting and jeering, actively instigating on behalf of no clan in particular. 67 Like a hero conjured from the heart of the forest, Durlond rode forth from deep within the trees astride a war pony heavy-laden with bags and sacks of provisions. The captain, decked in a heavy red-dyed cloak and fur cap, grimaced and squinted as the sunlight fell on his flush-red face. Shielding his eyes with his free hand, he reined his mount forward with little concern for the Mustreen men in his path. The vigilant among the throng moved quickly to allow Durlond’s passage through their ranks. Those who hadn’t heard the tattooed veteran behind them were yanked aside by their more observant comrades. Without slowing his pony’s gate, Durlond parted the men before him and positioned himself between the would-be allied tribes, separating Kodumver and Reegavic with his pony’s trunk. Urik couldn’t hear the conversation over the crowd’s droning, but he could see by the frustrated flailing of Durlond’s arms and the snarl on his face that the king’s second was deeply displeased by the two leaders’ lack of cooperation. Reegavic’s face couldn’t be seen from Urik’s vantage, but Kodumver had the look of a child being scolded by his mother. Eyes wide and mouth agape, the young noble stared up at Durlond with a look of complete fascination, never once attempting to interject his people’s point of view on the matter. The beration lasted only a few minutes, but it was clearly effective; the Mustreen and Kerndyle both eased their stances and backed away from the contested ground, each man making an effort to retreat slowly and calmly as if he were doing it by choice. The army loitered at the forest’s edge for some time after this altercation. Durlond made no attempt to organize the clans into a coherent line, resolving simply to police the crowd and deter any further confrontation. Despite their early wake-up call and hastened mobilization, the men were in generally high spirits. Several different songs were being 68 sung simultaneously throughout the crowd, but variations in tunes and lyrics made otherwise familiar-sounding songs difficult to join. This mass of flesh hummed with a cacophony of shouts and hollers in dozens of distinct dialects: bored men passing their ideal time with jokes and ideal speculation on where they were being led and what tasks they’d be ordered to undertake. The constant deafening mash of so many voices aggravated Urik’s headache, and the smell of stagnant men and pack animals compounded the pressure steadily building behind his eyes. Mounting his pony for no other reason than to rest his shaky legs, Urik looked upon the extent of Finraeke’s confederation. Spearpoints dotted the clearing like grass shoots. Hordes of footmen congested the space from the treeline back to where the outermost campsites had stood, shifting and pulsing like a colony of insects scurrying under upturned deadwood. Standing in tight clusters around their companies’ carts, the clans had self-segregating to such a degree that the diverse shades of their clothing, caps, and hair were less a quilt of many fibers and more a patchwork of different cloths. The cloak and tunic colors ranged from off-white to ochre to muddy-brown umber, fitting within their palette some pine greens and woad blues. Though their colors were not uniform within the clans, smaller subgroups of men huddled together were nearly all decked in the same color, presumably the beneficiaries of the same wool dyeings. One could tell at a glance those groups who’d come from the same homestead or village, keeping to themselves even among their clansmen. The army was less a handful of clans and more a collection of many dozen kin groups, all equally wary of their unfamiliar new comrades. 69 Urik passed these morning hours trying to assess the strength of this collection. Never being one for counting, he couldn’t hope to tally the innumerable souls gathered in this place. He decided instead to count horses, which were easier to spot within this writhing mass of humanity. After some time and several miscounts, Urik arrived at a figure: fifty-six horses. Twelve were from the Oefeldei company, seven belonging to Rohm’s men and five to Wulraven and his household. The remainder were scattered about the field, each clan seeming to possess at least one. However, Urik judged that his company had both the highest concentration of horses per man and, given that a majority of these animals were ridden by chieftains and their kin, the highest number ridden by common fighters. He shared his findings with Klymenos, who unenthusiastically responded with, “That’s fine, Urik. Just grand. We’ll be the envy of them all,” while rubbing his swollen forehead and shading his face from the sun with a corner of his cloak. The wait, which for Urik passed like a slow eternity, was terminated by another horn blow from the hillfort. Unlike the call which had roused the army from sleep, this call was low and sustained, lasting for many beats past a usual call’s duration. All eyes turned toward the fort; the entire force pivoted on their feet in coincidental coordination. Though the gateway was on the southwest side of the fort and was therefore obscured from their position on the northern treeline, every man in the army knew their king was now descending that winding path from atop the high seat of Weykviś. The men near Urik, including some of his seasoned mercenary brothers, shuddered and involuntarily spilled gasps of anticipation. Ruprein, who stood close behind Urik and was using the Oefeldei ponies to screen himself from strangers’ eyes, craned his neck and stood on his 70 toes to watch the incoming royalty. Some Oefeldei levies climbed onto the sides of the supply carts whilst others simply hopped in place, all trying to steal a look at a king whose existence they’d likely only heard of from campfire gossip the previous night. Their curiosity, it seemed, was shared by the entire host: the whole army stood on its toes, waiting to gaze upon their god-king. The god-king satiated their anticipation with a spectacle befitting his station. Not long after the bellowing horn sound, a bone-white pony bounded around the hill’s base like a windswept spirit, breaking hard and fast toward the gathered crowd. Upon this charger sat a menacing figure covered in a bulk of furs and sporting what looked to be a gigantic rack of antlers atop his head. Though this form was man-like in its proportion and movement, its dynamism was more akin to that of a stampeding elk or rampaging brown bear. From his viewpoint hundreds of yards away, Urik felt an uneasy exhilaration watching this man-creature dash across the clearing with such unreserved confidence. The rider’s face was soon recognizable as he drew nearer to the warband; this cavalier was King Finraeke, sure enough. His face was painted with thin maroon streaks that radiated from his mouth across his bony cheeks and down his muscular neck. The skin under his eyes was blackened with ash, contrasting against his strong brow and giving his face the look of a decayed skull. He wore the same fantastic fur cloak he’d worn the previous night and was further draped in a cape of reddish-brown deerskin so wide that it hung across either flank of his pony and bunched around his linen-wrapped legs as they gripped the beast’s trunk. Finraeke bore no spear or shield, only carrying a sword in a leather scabbard on his left hip that bounced rapidly as the horse covered the length of the field at an impressive speed. 71 Coming to the rear of the fascinated legion, Finraeke halted his mount from a full gallop. The animal’s hooves slid in the loosened dirt, bellowing fine dust into the air around horse and rider. Those standing nearest the king shuffled backward in bewilderment, unsure of how best to show respect to their sovereign. The king sat silently upon his milk-white steed, scanning his army with slow, steady turns of his head. His antler headdress, which Urik now saw was lashed to the king’s back and did not rest on his head, haloed his upper body with its many forward-curving points. This ornate arrangement of at least four sets of white elk antlers magnified their wearer’s stature, making him look twice his real height and accentuating the width of his shoulders. Upon his head sat a shining gold band, simple in comparison to the decorations on his back but stunning nonetheless, catching the morning sunlight and reflecting a brilliant yellow light. Finraeke, having sufficiently inspected his force, broke the stillness with his booming yet mellifluous commander’s voice that could be heard by all present: “Men of Teutehlend! Today, we march north, to the death screams of our enemies and the wails of their widows. We march to war! And Māword’s favor will grace our crusade with foe-blood and far-sung glory! Our offerings have been made; our prayers have been said. Now march with me to your destiny! We go to Almandania, and from there, we will enter legend!” At this, Finraeke drew his sword and thrust it toward the northern sky. Its freshlypolished bronze blade caught the sunlight and danced like a harnessed flame in his hand. The assembly was invigorated: all those present roared and howled, stomping their feet and thrusting their spears in the air. A horn blew from somewhere to Urik’s left, then 72 another sounded off behind him, and soon every man with a horn was blowing as fierce a call as he could manage. Forgetting his headache, Urik joined the yell, drawing his sword and shaking it above his head. All the Oefeldei men, Klymenos included, contributed to this thousand-man war cry, screaming loud enough that the Almandane might well have heard it from their northern halls. This uncommon gathering was, in that moment, one army. Finraeke, still holding his sword aloft, reined his horse forward. Without need for bodyguards or a command from Durlond, the men before him parted to allow his passage to the front. Some in his path bowed their heads, but others saluted their king by pounding on their chests with clenched fists or banging their spear hafts against their wood and wicker shields. This tribute spread among the men, and by the time Finraeke had reached the trailhead leading into the trees, hundreds of fighters, from chieftains down to shield-bearers and plowboys, were drumming a beat upon their chests and shields. Starting slowly, the tempo accelerated as the drummers embraced their mob-like fervor. An accompanying chant started: an indistinct hum with simple movements that any man could replicate, regardless of his mother tongue. This chant too spread among the ranks, and all gathered partook in its simple yet harmonious rhythm, an impassioned display of fealty to the king of the Teutehmen. King Finraeke soon stood at the head of the force, the foot- and hoof-worn road north stretching into the trees before him. He turned his horse to face the crowd and raised his sword horizontally above his head, acknowledging his army’s spirit with a salute of his own. The men lost what composure they’d maintained, and the coordinated chants and chest-pounding devolved into cheers of incredible volume. Urik’s ears started 73 ringing and his headache returned with a vengeance as those around him belted their own unique war screams. The Runuken men, who numbered at least twice the force of any other clan present, had made their way down from the hillfort behind their king-chief, marching nearly unnoticed across the field in the wake of Finraeke’s grand introduction. They’d attempted to follow the antlered rider through the crowd, though their crowd-parting was hindered by their sheer numbers and the unwieldiness of their many dozen ox-drawn wagons. The yelling had mostly subsided by the time the front ranks of Runuken men had reached the trailhead, though a few scattered devotees continued their shrieks long after the bulk of the crowd had emptied their lungs. Reordering themselves into a tidy column three men wide, the Runuken stood ready to take the first steps of Finraeke’s grand enterprise. Durlond trotted his horse to the head of their line. Finraeke, looking first to his army and then slowly back to Durlond, gently swiped his sword down through the air. The Runuken hornblower trumpeted a quick four-note call, and the king’s men started walking into the trees with Captain Durlond leading their way. A short, gleeful cheer rang out, and the clans all moved in unison to be next in line. The Kerndyles and the Mustreen, neither having abandoned their places at the front of the pack, waited on the flanks of the Runuken column for their turn to steal the coveted second position. Reegavic and Kodumver, freed from Durlond’s authority, raced to the king’s side to petition their clans’ respective claims to the honor. Urik watched from his elevated position as both clan-heads bowed at the hooves of Finraeke’s horse and pleaded their cases with far more civility than what they’d shown to the king’s captain an hour before. Without being able to hear the conversation, Urik could only 74 imagine how eloquently the two were presenting their arguments and how even-tempered this disagreement was being articulated to the king. After a brief discussion, during which Finraeke appeared to speak calmly and gave no outward sign of frustration, Reegavic bowed and returned to his clansmen. Kodumer did the same, though not before taking Finraeke’s outstretched hand in his own and paying some assumedly adulatory homage. The young chief-spawn retreated back to the Mustreen ranks, and Finraeke once again addressed the army: “Where is my dear Uncle Wulraven? I bid him ride alongside me on this auspicious day.” Like a hound recalled to its master, Wulraven mounted his pony and gleefully trotted up to the king, much to the muted displeasure of those clans in his path. Bonterk, unsure of his cousin’s intentions for their men, ordered the Oefeldei levies to stay put. Wulraven reached Finraeke, and the king presented his hand to the old chieftain. Like young Kodumver moments before, Wulraven took the kingly hand and bowed his head, muttering indiscernible flatteries to his king and apparent nephew. The two chieftains then set their horses to a trot and, without beckoning the Oefeldei men to follow, merged into the Runuken column and disappeared into the trees. Berner and Frehren tried to reach their chieftain before he entered the forest, but the sea of soldiers was less cooperative for mere sworn-swords than it had been for their king’s uncle. The two bodyguards fought to weave through the crowd, leading their ponies through the ranks in a desperate attempt to join their protectee. The rest of the Oefeldei men remained in their places, waiting for Bonterk to lead them on the warpath. The chief’s second, in turn, solicited Captain Rohm for advice on the matter. 75 “If the chief wanted us with him, he’d have brought us with him,” Rohm told the visibly-uncomfortable half-noble. “I suggest we move out when it’s our turn to move out.” Emboldened by a second opinion, Bonterk ordered the men into marching lines. In that glade on the edge of Weykviś’ great field, Urik and the Oefeldei force waited, watching as clans formed columns one by one and walked bold-hearted into that foreboding woodland. The Mustreen, it seemed, had been given the honor of following the Runuken. Kodumver, riding beside his grandfather, spared a small but noticeable glance toward a silently-seething Reegavic before disappearing into the trees. After the Mustreen force had departed, the Kerndyles hurried to take the third position. After them went the Gunnreigs, then the Malrakes, and then the Prenolks, with Bolbin limping at the head of his people’s procession with the aid of a carved birch crutch. Men plodded through the forest’s threshold, some holding their heads high and marching boldly forward while others ducked their chins as if entering a sanctified god-home. The trees swallowed clan after clan, transporting them from settlement to wilderness in the span of several strides. The great army continually shifted forward, filling the space left by departing clans so that their numbers seemed to shrink as the morning turned to midday. The glade was fast emptying, but Bonterk had not yet given the call to advance toward the path. Waiting for their orders, the men nervously bounced in their boots, anxiously contemplating where this path would take them and laboring in their minds the irrational worry that they’d be left behind because of their leader’s hesitation. 76 Noticing the dwindling numbers, Rohm tapped Bonterk on the shoulder and whispered into the chief-kin’s ear. What Rohm said, only he and Bonterk could know, but his words had an immediate effect; Bonterk’s face went flush with red, and he rushed to collect his pony, then under Geoff’s careful ward. “Move out!” Bonterk called out as he mounted his steed, his quivering voice cracking on the last syllable. In one rush of movement, the men swarmed toward the treeline. Assembling in an unkempt cluster, levy and mercenary alike stacked up behind the Aelfsigs who were in the process of funneling their force onto the path. The carts lumbered behind the infantrymen, the drivers eager to start the trek but mindfully keeping their oxen at a gentle pace to allow those in their path ample time to avoid the large beasts. Urik and Klymenos lagged behind under the half-sincere guise of overseeing the Oefeldei carts, though in actuality the veterans had had their fill of zealous participation that morning and were simply taking a respite before the day’s labors. They sat upon their ponies, enjoying the relative silence of this now nearly-empty field and watching as their fellows queued for their turns to start the great journey northward. “What do you think, Kly?” Urik asked his friend, hoping that conversation would quell the nervousness knotting his stomach. “I think we’ve signed on to a fool’s errand,” Klymenos answered in a somber tone that was unbefitting his sarcastic personality. “Have you ever fought with an army like this?” “No one’s ever seen an army like this.” 77 “Maybe not in these lands, but my home has seen plenty of kings like Finraeke. They start with their grand talk and promises of glory, and they’ll get what they set out for, sure enough, but it’s the poor saps holding the shields who get fucked in the end.” “It sounds like you regret joining up with Wulraven.” “What’s done is done,” Kly huffed, rubbing his temples with his fingers. “I go where I’m told, same as you. But I have eyes, and they tell me we’re on our own.” “We, the Oefeldei?” “We, the company. No one here gives a damn what happens to a band of sellswords. Wulraven doesn’t even care about his own cousin. I swear to Poseidaōn, that man is a glory-chasing old fool who’d lead us into the Otherworld if it’d get his name in a song.” Klymenos paused and glanced from side to side before stating, in as soft a voice as he could manage, “We’ll have to make our own good fortune on this campaign. Get me?” Urik did indeed “get” what Klymenos was saying, though he couldn’t bring himself to assent to his friend’s near-treasonous assertion outright. He simply nodded and turned back toward the trees, watching the Oefeldei inch closer and closer to the path. After a few minutes, the last of the Aelfsigs had vanished into the forest, and the first of Urik’s comrades were following close behind. Leading the Oefeldei procession were Rohm and Bonterk, though it’d be clear to an impartial observer which of the two was truly leading. Behind them trotted the other mounted men of the warband: Grummbuld, Halvan, Bennek, and the Twins. After them, the men on foot paraded into the unknown. Urik could see Ruprein’s head jutting above the rest, looking back at the hillfort, that 78 immense bastion marking the northernmost projection of Teutehlend civilization. The bulky, kind-hearted boy-soldier marched along with the others, leaving safety behind to fight a strange enemy in a strange land. As the last of their companions stepped onto the path, the two stragglers yielded to the inevitable and reined their ponies onward. The glade was nearly empty: a few oxcarts were undergoing emergency maintenance and some scattered kin groups were indulging in last-minute prayers for safe travels, but otherwise, the field was silent, tranquil even. Coming to the first spruce trees that marked the path’s origin, Urik turned, as Ruprein had, to look at the hillfort one last time. The stockade, a dull brownish-gray in the midday light, stood upon its high perch, indifferent to the trepidations of the living men in its shadow. So inviting were those walls to a hesitant soldier; so alluring were its warm fires, plentiful food, and kind women. Urik wanted nothing more than to turn his horse around and charge up the narrow path, to rest in the hospitable arms of domestication for a while longer. Such fantasies were futile, he knew, but they invaded his thoughts all the same. Why be a soldier? Why fight for some selfish old man and his pompous king? Why march north to kill strangers who’ve never wronged me? “Let’s get going. Rohm’ll be pissed if we dawdle any longer.” Urik buried his fanciful thoughts, and the burdens of reality trickled back into his mind like shovelfuls of heavy dirt. He nodded to Klymenos, and the two comrades reined their ponies forward onto the now well-trampled path. After going twenty or thirty yards down this road, they were completely surrounded by trees. Another fifty yards and the forest canopy became much denser, allowing noticeably less sunlight through its branches. 79 Urik fought the urge as long as he could, but he just couldn’t help himself. He glanced backward, but this time he saw nothing but a wall of green. His heart sank; they were alone again. *** Over forty-odd days and nights, Finraeke’s army trudged across the Pleh-wih’s boundless landscapes, each day creeping further from their ancestral lands closer to their conquest. The wheel-worn farmers’ path had rapidly become overgrowth with grasses and disappeared entirely a mere two days' march north of Weykviś, so the men found themselves trekking through thick underbrush and circumventing tree trunks sooner than they’d hoped. Across the borderlands of Mustreen control and into dense, unshorn pine forests where trees grew untouched by the woodsman’s ax, the great column of fighters slithered its way north on untrodden ground. Spirits remained high in the days following the commencement of the campaign. The men marched with an unrelenting purpose to the beats of Runuken drummers, and songs were sung at volumes undoubtedly foreign to the silent forests and meadows through which the horde traveled. Their hundreds of voices seemed to shake the leaves and needles on overhanging branches. Their chests were filled with manly courage that was partly genuine and, presumably, partly contrived for the benefit of self-assurance. The wily energy of the men in those first days compelled all capable of speech to croon hymns of battle and glory. Unfortunately, their enthusiasm had almost entirely exhausted itself by about the tenth day of marching. After the path yielded to undisturbed foliage, the army’s progress had slowed from a gentle crawl to an unsteady limp. The Runuken, being the designated 80 vanguard, held the responsibility for clearing obstacles in advance of the carts: a laborious task in this pristine and rather densely-grown forest. Despite a squadron of twenty scouts being dispatched before dawn each morning to mark the day’s route, the terrain and the carts’ lack of maneuverability precipitated constant delays. Each stoppage to fell a tree or break apart a boulder in the ground was a time-consuming setback that would result in the column having to halt in place and then slowly start moving again from a standstill. Additionally, the carts that some clans, the Malrakes in particular, had brought on this campaign were of poor construction and required constant trailside maintenance, further jamming traffic along the nonexistent pathway. The apathetic lumbering of the Oefeldeis on their journey to Weykviś had been staggeringly quick compared to the maddening stopping-and-starting that Urik and his comrades were now subjected to. Mile after mile of towering woodland, unceasing but for the odd rocky hillside or low-lying dell, filled the men’s sight with a continual, unescapable blanket of green. In places where the path crested a hill or barren outcropping, the men could see leagues of forest spread across Dehǵh-mós’s face in every direction, covering the countryside in a neverending virescent sea. While being no strangers to woodlands, the tenderfoot levies who comprised approximately three-quarters of the army were wary of this desolate landscape, many of them having never ventured further afield than their villages’ hunting grounds. As they were led ever deeper into the frontier, their singing became little more than whispers, and those village groups of similar cloth huddled closer and closer together at each night’s encampment. 81 The hardened fighters, who Urik estimated numbered one man in every six or seven, manifested their own paranoia. Flinching at the sounds of cracked twigs and drawing bows at every rustled leaf, the warriors exhausted themselves bracing for an ambush by an enemy of whom no trace had yet been found. The scouting parties hadn’t seen any evidence of settlement since leaving Mustreen lands, yet experienced men knew that scouts could only see in one direction. Many a warband had been lulled to security by a confident lookout or loyal guard dog, only to be set upon in darkness by silent stalkers more familiar with the terrain. Men who witness such butchery, either by surviving an ambush or by participating in one, never blindly trust a scout’s word again. Urik’s alertness was heightened and his hands were ever-primed to take up a spear or draw his sword. He was used to this anxious alertness from his years trekking through the territories of tribes not his own, yet he was paradoxically more on-edge among these hundreds of so-called comrades than if it were just his company of forty-six forging a trail. Despite the songs and campfire banter that had worked to bridge some of the tribalistic divides between clans, there was still a palpable uneasiness to every interaction. Individual clans kept wide separations between each other on the march, and few representatives from any clan had called upon their neighbor camps to socialize. The Prenolk who’d traveled with Rohm’s men years previously had paid a visit to their former hirelings on the first night, but even they had been hesitant to share a fire with Oefeldei men and kept to the mercenaries’ fires only. Some minor scuffles had broken out over trivial offenses: a Brunfeld stepped on an Aelfsig’s foot, an Aelfsig accidentally knocked over a Kerndyle’s water pot, and a Runuken nearly blinded a Svylren for his crude rhyme about Finraeke’s daughters. On the morning of the seventh or eighth day, a 82 sellsword in Gunnreig employ drew a knife on a Prenolk over some misplaced rations. That sellsword was last seen lying against a birch tree with his face bloodied and legs bent at unnatural angles, holding a pleading hand out to unsympathetic passersby as they marched forth to continue the expedition. Captain Durlond investigated on behalf of the irritated Gunnreig chieftain, but the ration sack in question was never found. Wulraven, and Bonterk, when his cousin allowed him to tag along, had represented their clan at nightly meetings in Finraeke’s tent: a shelter made not from branches and moss but from many deer hides and woolen blankets sewn together into a great sheet and suspended in the air upon a delimbed tree trunk. This tent was so bulbous that it took eight of the king’s slaves to bundle it and three of those slaves to load it onto an ox cart. The king’s hospitality had seemingly run out in Weykviś, for no mercenary or non-noble was ever allowed within the vicinity of his mobile hall, which was always placed at the center of the Runuken encampment. Every night, the chieftains and chiefkin from each clan would migrate to the king’s tent and stay within its soft walls until well past sunset. Wulraven never offered any explanation of what decisions were made in these councils, only directing the Oefeldei into their proper place in the marching order, which was set to a rotating schedule to avoid reigniting the Mustreen/Kerndyle feud. King Finraeke had little to do with the management of his army. Never had Urik, or any man in the company, been led by a commander so elusive. He’d not addressed the soldiery since that first riveting speech; all orders were dispatched during the nightly war council or conveyed by Durlond and his lieutenants. Finraeke was occasionally seen during the breaking and raising of camp, inspecting his troops from horseback and surrounded at all times by a gaggle of chieftains and household advisors. He’d forgone 83 the elaborate headdress, but his face was at all times adorned with crimson war paint sourced from each morning’s ritual offerings. Despite holding his chin high and chest forward, anyone observing the king with objectivity could see that the long march had sapped much of his zeal. Admiration for the king was still high among his subjects, but doubts were silently raised among the foreign-born fighters in hushed voices over nighttime fires. On and on, day after day, the legion marched from dawn to dusk. The pace of the march was quite leisurely when accounting for the frequent stops made to clear obstacles or to consult the scouts on the best route forward. However, the men were compelled to walk from the first hint of dawn to the last flickers of dusk with no breaks for rest or nourishment. Thankfully, the terrain had gradually changed in the army’s favor, becoming more flat and less densely forested with each step northward. The endlessly rolling hills of uncountable ancient conifers had flattened out into gently-waving meadows dotted with groves of less-massive trees. The oxen and horses had ample opportunity for grazing in this country; grasses and shrubs grew far more plentiful than they had under the canopy of the mighty forest. The men also enjoyed being free of the claustrophobic tree cover, though this more-open country brought with it an increased risk of being spotted by the enemy. Fires were kept small and their smoke was dissipated by blankets or needled branches hung over the flames. The carts were fitted with leafy branches to act as camouflage, and the beasts of burden were corralled within the densest trees available to avoid detection. The open ground also left the men exposed to the elements. Sometime around the fortieth or forty-first day of the expedition (the count varied from man to man), the army 84 was subjected to a torrential rainstorm. Unlike the brief summer drizzles that’d sporadically refreshed the dust- and dirt-covered travelers, this rain was profuse, forceful, and unrelenting. A ceiling of dark clouds loomed menacingly over the land, blocking Sehwōl’s warm emanation from providing some measure of comfort to the soaking-wet souls under her watch. All day and into the night, Perkwunos struck down upon the mortal realm with his war club, producing crashing thunderclaps and brilliant flashes of streaking blue fire from atop his heavenly perch. The Bringer of Rain blessed his mortal underlings with succor enough to nourish the crops of men, yet the farmers now played the part of warriors, and their crops were many miles behind them. In their present state, Perkwunos’s generosity was cause for lamentation. The host had slowed to near-stationary in this downpour. Carts sank in the mud and slid sideways on their wheels when traversing unlevel ground. Ox, horse, and man struggled to lift their mud-caked legs as they trod lightly as possible through puddle after muddy puddle. The men at the rear of the column were cursed to walk the loosened ground trod upon by the men in front, digging their boots into the muck with each step so as to not slip and fall into the muck. Grummbuld and the other sages chanted prayers for mercy, humbling themselves before the weather god to plead for relief. Still, the rain fell. By the time the order was finally given to halt and make camp, the men were completely exhausted. Firelighting was impossible in these damp conditions. Even if a fire pit could be adequately sheltered from the rain, there wasn’t an ounce of dry tinder in sight. The weary marchers elected instead to huddle together, trying to keep warm despite the wet wool clinging to their tired bodies. Thankfully, the warm summer air protected 85 them from mortal danger; a colder night would have risked their deaths instead of merely rendering them miserable. Urik and a handful of his companions crouched under a crooked oak tree and held their cloaks, sopping wet and three times their normal weights, above their heads in a futile attempt to protect their skin from the water dripping off the leaves overhead. Tófern had tried for some time to light a fire with his bow drill, but his tinder pouch and all its contents had been soaked through, leaving no possibility of fire-starting. Supping on moist oats and venison jerky, the boys stewed in their misery and waited either for the rain to stop or for their exhaustion to put them to sleep in their current poses. None were in the mood for banter. None except the company fool. “You think Finraeke’s really the son of Ungwenis?” Miksen pondered aloud, unprompted. “W’o tol’ you dat?” challenged Halvan. “Ain’ no son o’ da fire god runnin’ ‘round wif dis lot. You’s got’ be real thick to be’ieve rubbis’ li’e dat.” “Yeah Mik, where’d you hear that?” Tófern inquired. “I heard some-a dem Mustreen boys talkin’ about it today. They says Ungwenis molded Finraeke out of flames and that's what made ‘im a great warrior.” Crazy Cleenek joined the conversation. “Them Mustreen boys think that because the king’s helpin’ em sort their Aly-man problem, he’s some kinda fire god or somethin’. Ain’t nothin’ godlike ‘bout a fire god what prances ‘round on a big horse and don’t keep us dry in this fucking rain.” “That’s true,” agreed Minkrel. “We seen him today before the marchin’. He was wet as any of us, wasn’t he, Sevren?” 86 The other twin corroborated his brother’s story. “Aye Minkrel, he was wet, to be sure.” Cleenek continued his rant. “If he’s truly made o’ fire, them Mustreens should tell him to go north himself and light them villages up so we don’t ‘ave to.” “What if he is a god, Cleenek?” Urik chirped. “I doubt he’d look very kindly on your makin’ jokes about him like this.” Cleenek was unfazed. “If King Shiny-Ass and his necklaces wanna come over ‘ere and burn me like deadwood, let ‘im try. Just ‘cause he’s got the most men and the big tent don’t make him a son of Ungwenis.” Nabsen spoke up with a concerned squeak. “Even if he ain’t, he’s still the king. Ain’t a good idea to be talkin’ ill o’ the king ‘round his men. You’ll get us in some nasty trouble if they catch you talkin’ like that.” Before Cleenek could balk at his friend’s good sense, the men heard the sloppy squelching of footsteps in the mud behind them. Turning to meet the newcomer, they were surprised to see the king’s captain standing above their pitiful resting spot. Durlond stood stoic in the rain, no cloak or cap shielding his bald head from the deluge. His eyes were bloodshot and baggy, yet the veteran addressed the group without a hint of tiredness in his deep, rumbling voice. “You men with Wulraven?” Urik answered. “Aye, lord. We’re Oefeldei men by contract.” “You’re sellswords then?” “Yes, sir. Bound to Chief Wulraven by god-oath.” “How many horses have you?” 87 Sensing trouble in this line of questioning but knowing better than to lie to the king’s right hand, Urik answered in as nonchalant a tone as his fatigued mind could marshal. “Seven, lord.” “Including Wulraven’s horses?” Durlond probed, pouncing on Urik’s evasiveness. “Seven belonging to men of our company, lord. Twelve in total.” “Good. Your seven riders will join me and my men outside King Finraeke’s tent at first light. Bring as much ration as you can carry.” “Yes, lord,” Urik muttered softly, overcome with a sudden feeling of dread. “Spread the word. I’d better count seven of you tomorrow,” the captain ordered before turning and trudging away with heavy, soggy footsteps. Urik locked eyes with Halvan. The two fighters stared at each other vacantly, neither of them knowing how to react to the order they’d just received. The twins hadn’t caught on. “What’s he want us for?” Minkrel asked. “We ain’t scouted since we left Weykviś.” “Yeah, he’s got plenty-a boys for scoutin’,” concurred Sevren. Urik was too preoccupied with worry to answer. Luckily, Quick Miksen was on hand to explain that which should have been evident from Durlond’s command. “He wants you boys to go find the Aly-mans. He don't know where they at.” *** Before sunrise the next morning, seven wet and sleep-deprived men from Rohm’s company: Urik, Klymenos, Bennek, Halvan, Minkrel and Sevren, and Crazy Cleenek, 88 joined thirty other mounted warriors outside the royal tent. Rohm, disinclined to leave his remaining soldiers under Wulraven’s command, had offered his horse and his spot on the expedition to Cleenek, who was overjoyed at the chance to make first contact with the elusive foe-men. The other unlucky sobs enlisted for this mission were mostly Runuken, their red cloaks betraying their allegiance from afar. Urik recognized Ælec, the lieutenant who’d guided the Oefeldei to their campsite at Weykviś, as well as several other swornmen from Finraeke’s personal guard. The rest of the draftees were of undetermined affiliation, though Urik judged by their war kits that they were mercenaries as well, conscripted to the mission because they too owned horses by nature of their trade. These king’s men and sellswords, all just as tired and miserable as the Oefeldei men, nodded halfhearted greetings to the newcomers and sat upon their horses in silence, waiting with apprehension for the order to depart the relative safety of the army. Finraeke and Durlond exited the tent just as Haéusōs commenced her illumination of the eastern sky. The now clean-faced king resembled a mortal man, appearing to this small early-morning gathering without his blood runes or bulky ornamentations. The purported son of the fire god looked as if he hadn’t slept since Weykviś; his eyelids were baggy, his shoulders were slouched, and his body seemed stiff as birchwood. Exchanging a brief word with his captain, the king didn’t so much as acknowledge the presence of his unwilling mounted patrol before returning to the warmth of his shelter. Durlond mounted his pony and, with no more sentimentality than he’d shown previously, delivered a briefing that was both concise and effective: “Follow me”. Without cheers, fanfare, or a single horn call, the party broke from the main force. Passing the outlying campsites and a few napping sentries, the intrepid pathfinders exited 89 camp and pointed their steeds due north. Under an orange and magenta dawn, they pressed forward with a spirit of urgency. Their pace was blisteringly quick, with the horses running at a full gallop for the first time in months. Durlond led his ragtag force of clansmen and cutthroats, loyal sworn-men of Teutehlend and mercenary sellswords, away from sight of camp and into the unknown, unscouted wildlands of Almandania. Despite the joy of running his pony the way the gods had intended, Urik felt a knot of trepidation growing in his chest as his tired mind began to comprehend the magnitude of the situation. Failure to find the enemy before midsummer would mean failure for the whole endeavor. Soon the lilies would bloom and birds would fall silent in the daytime; the days would grow longer and the nights shorter. Quick approaching was the Festival of Dehǵh-mós, the day on which the sages lit great bonfires and offered the gods an earthly feast in gratitude for the land’s fertility. On or shortly after that day, the men would turn back toward their homes, with or without the permission of their godking, so that they could return to their fields and families before harvest time. Finraeke’s glorious crusade to conquer the Almandanes would dissolve and his reputation as a warrior king would be forever tarnished. The king would return home a failure, and only Dyēus Phetḗr knows who he’d blame for his disgrace. Durlond’s detachment of thirty-eight cavaliers moved like a windstorm over the land. Taking full advantage of their mobility and lack of encumbering ox-carts, the force covered ground as fast as their mounts could carry them. The flatlands the men now rode through were bereft of the constant tree cover which had unnerved the army in the early days of the campaign, instead consisting of clumps of trees dotted among a sea of grasses. Staying ever-mindful of their vulnerability in this foreign land, the company 90 moved cautiously from treeline to treeline, using elevation or rock formations for concealment whenever possible. Durlond, true to Urik’s first impression of the man, was a seasoned campaigner and an expert scoutmaster, leading the squadron through depressions and around elevations that would hide the riders from detection by observers scanning the horizon from the north. He also possessed a keen sense of practicality, seemingly knowing exactly how hard to run the horses, and the men, before ordering a rest. Rest was in dangerously short supply. Breaks for sleep were taken midday so that men and horses could ride through the night. After dawn each day, a secluded dell or rock outcropping would be chosen for a resting spot. The chronically-fatigued riders would drape their double-folded cloaks over their faces to block the daylight and were fast asleep within seconds of lying down. Chatter was scarce; the task at hand required all the energy and focus these soldiers could give. Two watchmen were elected at each stop, tasked equally with standing sentry and with keeping each other awake until dusk when the hunt began again. For five days, the riders searched for the Almandanes. Durlond adopted a strategy of following small creeks downstream, hoping to find a larger water source where fishing villages might be. Every broken branch, every oddly-shaped rock, and every pile of loose dirt was inspected for signs of tampering. More than once, someone in the company called out to the others that he’d seen a figure walking along a stream or lying on a hillside, but each sighting of human life was subsequently proven to be a pile of rocks or a trick of windswept branches. 91 Moving under the pale gray light of Mehnot, who, fortunately, was in his fullest form at this time, the men rode through trees that seemed to sway as they passed by. Dancing shadows in the men’s peripheral vision were constant causes for alarm; moonlit trees and rocks looked much like ambushers to drowsy eyes. Urik was simultaneously hyperaware of his surroundings and too tired to dwell on his situation. He reined his pony to match the others’ speed, trying his utmost to scan the fast-passing land for danger but knowing full well that he and his comrades risked detection and death with every clopping hoof step. On the night of the fifth day, or possibly the early morning of the sixth, the scouts’ efforts bore fruit. After having followed a small brook for the better part of a day and finding that it joined a more significant stream flowing northward, the men had committed to following the water to its destination. Gradually, the stream widened as it was met by several smaller tributaries. This meandering watercourse, while not fastmoving, swelled in width as the men trekked further along its banks, measuring fifty-odd yards across at its widest points. Mere hours after finding the stream, the equestrians were cantering alongside a full-fledged river. The ground surrounding the waterway grew increasingly boggy and soon became impassable on horseback, forcing them to ride over the more-solid ground on the periphery of the riverbank. Nestled within a small basin, this sheltered wetland was flanked on either side by shallow slopes and small, rolling hills. This valley contained an abundance of water grasses and hosted large flights of ducks and other waterfowl. Taking to the sky whenever the horsemen passed, the birds filled the still morning air with rustling wings and a cacophony of excited quacking. 92 The party teemed with muted excitement; this waterway had renewed their hope of locating some indication of life that would lead them to an enemy settlement. Through the dark of early morning, the riders in Durlond’s band spurred their horses onward with renewed zeal, their eagerness to find the Almandanes and report back to the army overriding their apprehension at encountering unknowable adversaries. The men rode with newfound vigor into the break of dawn, sensings in their hunters’ souls that their prey was close at hand. And as Sehwōl revealed herself on this sixth day, fortune smiled upon the hunters. Bennek was the first to see it. Riding at the front of the pack, he suddenly jerked his reins backward, rearing his pony to a sliding stop in the bogged mud. The mute dismounted in a lurch and started pointing frantically toward a riverbend on the horizon, spewing excited huffing sounds like a hound held back by its lead. The rest of the party, drowsy from another night of riding, were slow to react, but one by one they halted and scanned the section of river that Bennek was gesturing at. Urik was embarrassed not to have seen it sooner. Floating just above the water a mile or two ahead of him was a straight dark line that spanned the width of the river. Its details were indiscernible at this distance, but it was clear at first sight that this line was out of place, alien to the river basin. This line was not natural. Durlond snapped Urik out of his wonderment with a sharp hiss and in a hurried murmur ordered his men to dismount and lead their horses to cover among the shrubs and tall grasses growing alongside the river’s marshy banks. Staying low and tugging on his pony’s reins with his whole body weight, Urik retreated from the water and clambered halfway up the moderately-steep slope rimming the riverbank. Quickly hitching his beast 93 to a gnarled, rotten tree trunk, the soldier grabbed his shield, spear, and quiver before joining his comrades further up the hill. Cleenek, Halvan, and the twins were already crouched with weapons in hand, awaiting Durlond’s command, as Urik, Bennek and Klymenos made their way up the gentle slope, all the while keeping their heads down and bodies low to the ground. When all thirty-eight fighters had stowed their mounts and stood ready for combat, their captain briefed them on his battle plan in a forceful whisper: “Ficner and Korlogi, follow me up this hill. We’ll crawl up to high ground and take a look. The rest of you, make your way forward through this grass. If you hear three horn blasts from us up top, charge forward and start slashing at anything that moves. If you don’t hear anything, stay the fuck down. Get me?” The assembly nodded in unison. Durlond and the two Runuken began scaling the remaining half of the basin hill, keeping low while running up a small seam that provided them concealment from any eyes looking from the direction of the mystery object. The remaining scouts followed their orders, crouch-walking along the hillside and keeping to where the vegetation was most heavily concentrated. Trodding through brambles and slippery marsh grasses, the men tried to keep silent as they crept closer to the ominous dark thing spanning the river. It took Urik what felt like days to reach a moderately elevated vantage point overlooking the structure. After crouching and crawling for at least a mile, his back ached and his legs were starting to cramp. Urik and his fellow guerrillas lay prone along a slight ridge in the hillside, allowing them a closer, unimpeded view of the river below. To their 94 simultaneous relief and dismay, there were no people or dwellings in the valley. However, what they did see was nothing short of incredible. A wooden road, straight as a spearshaft, spanned not just the river but the entirety of the valley floor. Protruding from the waterline by roughly a foot, this causeway joined two disconnected ends of a dirt trail that snaked up and out of the basin on either side, cutting an east-west route across the river and through the surrounding morass. Urik followed the trail on the opposing bank with his eyes and saw that it crested the shallow basin wall and slithered southeast before disappearing into a thick grove of beech trees. Judging by the lack of grass shoots in its tracks, the trail had been traveled heavily since the spring snowmelt. The fighters on either side of Urik lay in stark silence, gazing down at the causeway. In an instant, their worries and much-pondered misgivings were made substantive by this undeniable proof of the Northerners' existence. The irrational delusions these men had each half-harbored in their minds, that the mysterious Almandanes were merely characters in fireside stories, shattered with their first glimpses at the impressive platform of wood and earth below. The loss of those tiny hopes, those improbable daydreams, dealt a deep spiritual blow, the pain all soldiers feel when confronted by grim reality. Tired, hungry, eager, and dismayed, the men lay still upon the damp ground for several minutes before hearing a single, drawn-out horn call coming from the hillcrest directly above them. Reflexive shock hit them like a wave. They flattened their bodies into the dirt, laying their heads flat against the soft ground. Muscles were tensed for 95 action and weapons were gripped in white knuckles, their owners making ready to charge this silhouette at the third call. Except there was no third call; nor was there a second. Instead, a single silhouette stood up from the tall grasses atop the hill and came bounding down the hillside, picking up speed as it descended diagonally toward the causeway. The figure was instantly recognizable by its red cloak and tanned bald head; Durlond had foregone caution and was now running to examine the new find. Sluggishly, the men stood and brushed dirt clods from their tunics, their guards lowered by their captain’s uncharacteristic foolhardiness. Urik scanned the valley again and, seeing no signs of life, sauntered down the hill with the rest of his fellows. The causeway was a truly impressive construction. The flat walking surface was formed by many hundreds of man-sized logs split into halves and laid down side-by-side. The tops of many vertical posts jutted from the water at regular intervals, presumably acting as supports for the mighty platform. The waterlogged wood was stained a dark gray, and the walkway was caked with a smooth layer of pale brown mud. As Urik got closer, his heart dropped again when he saw the shapes stamped into the sludge: footprints. Durlond stood at the foot of this mammoth thoroughfare, appearing to bask in its glory. Relief, and a small measure of satisfaction, graced his weary face. As his soldiers gathered to examine the causeway for themselves, however, the captain returned to his inexpressive persona and began issuing orders. “Ælec. Take three men and find the army. King Finraeke planned to march directly north, so you should be able to catch them near that knoll we camped under on 96 the third day. Tell our king, and only our king, that we’ve found what we were looking for. Lead him here fast as you can. Don’t bother sneakin’ around, just get back here double-quick. Understand?” Ælec sounded off with a hardy “yes sir” and gestured to the three Runuken men standing nearest him. The four soldiers ran across the muddy riverbank toward their horses and disappeared behind the hill they’d so carefully crawled over not ten minutes before. After his dispatch was safely away, Durlond addressed the rest of his scouts. “We need to fan out and set sentries all ‘round this valley. You Oefeldei men, follow the trail west for a few miles. See what’s out there, but keep hidden. The rest of you, fetch your beasts and follow me over the bridge.” The scout-sentries sprinted to fetch their gear and mounts, seemingly forgetting their exhaustion. Urik found his pony exactly where he’d hitched her and thanked the gods she hadn’t broken the rotting tree and wandered off. Her dull eyes and nonreactive demeanor told of the fatigue compounded over the previous six days. Urik imagined his eyes looked just as dull and his movements just as sluggish. The strain of their hunt had left man and beast utterly depleted. Patting his faithful companion on the neck and leading her down the hillside, Urik looked across the basin to the beech grove looming atop the valley crest. The trail going east seemed to end so abruptly when it reached those trees, disappearing behind dark green curtains and leading to someplace Urik couldn’t begin to speculate about. Staring into the trees as we walked along the marsh toward the causeway trail, he let his 97 shoulders relax and his mind wander, seizing this fleeting moment of ephemeral tranquility before the new day’s labors. Urik’s heart suddenly lurched into his throat. Though he was beyond tired and standing several hundred yards from the grove, he could’ve sworn he’d seen a brown speck move between those trees. He peered into the far-off thicket, forcing his heavy eyelids open with all his will, and made ready to cry out an alarm. He watched and waited through many heavy heartbeats. Panic took hold of the soldier as he forced his eyelids open with all his will, yet no further movement crossed his sight. Urik stood staring, mind racing and palms sweating, for several minutes before anyone noticed his strange behavior. “Oi, Urik! Let’s get a fucking move-on!” yelled Cleenek, who’d already gathered his possessions and was waiting with the other five company men on the westward trail. “Yeah, Urik. You’s slowin’ us down with yer daydreamin’,” Sevren jeered. “Move yer ass, Urik!” added Minkrel, piling on his brother’s comment. “You can splash around in the water later. Now’s time for work,” chirped Klymenos. Shaking his head to refocus his scattered thoughts, Urik resumed the walk toward his comrades. His worry gradually subsided and his heart slowed to a normal pace. Replaying the moment again and again in his mind, he started to doubt his own sight. Maybe he’d seen something, a deer perhaps, or maybe his sleep-deprived mind was playing tricks on him. That was probably it: no sleep. Tired eyes see strange things, and Urik’s eyes were very tired. 98 THE VALLEY After eight days of hiding in hastily constructed blinds and strictly rationing their dwindling food stocks, Durlond’s scouts had grown increasingly worried that relief was not on its way. Their anxiety-induced mental calculations repeatedly concluded that it should’ve taken no more than two and a half days for Ælec to locate the army and no more than four days for the army to arrive at the causeway. Multiple theories tormented the stress-filled minds of the stranded scouts. Either Ælec and his companions hadn’t found the army yet, or they had found Finraeke’s forces but were leading them on an incorrect route back to the valley. The third option, the one in which the messengers had been pursued and killed (or worse, captured and interrogated) by Almandane hunters, was never brought up in discussion, though this scenario weighed most heavily on the beleaguered company. Urik and his fellow derelicts waited, hoping their allies would arrive before starvation, or the enemy, came to their riverside outpost. Their days’ activities consisted of patrolling the surrounding countryside on foot, manning one of their several improvised treetop watchtowers along the basin rim, and ruminating on their precarious situation. In the time between their patrols and sentry shifts, the anxious fighters would laze about their campsite, futilely attempting to disrupt their catastrophizing thoughts by grooming their horses to impeccable condition and sharpening their bronze blades to fine edges. Durlond had forbidden the lighting of above-ground fires, and the usual stealthy practice of digging deep fire pits with chimney tunnels was unfeasible in the waterlogged ground along the river. Hence, the men spent their nights in near-darkness. Mehnot had begun turning his face away from Pleh-wih by this time, meaning each subsequent night 99 was darker than the night preceding it. Only the stars, Dyēus Phetḗr’s countless celestial children, kept the mortals under their heavenly gaze from feeling truly abandoned. The causeway plagued Urik with a constant reminder that he was trespassing on hostile ground. No matter how hard he avoided looking in its direction, his eyes were unwillingly drawn toward the dark line stretching across the river. That simple wooden walkway consumed his mind, becoming the fixation of his miserable, ever-churning theorizing. Why did they build this thing? How many men did it take to build it? They must come through this valley often, so why do they not come now? These questions and their countless derivations hounded Urik’s mind at all hours, to the point where even looking at the causeway knotted his stomach and filled his mouth with bitterness. He hadn’t yet walked across it; part of him was scared to do so. Thankfully, Urik’s torment was partly alleviated on the ninth morning when the Runuken vanguard, instantly recognizable by their red cloaks and the red banner carried by one of their lead horsemen, was spotted traveling down the enemy’s trail. The twins were manning the easternmost lookout that morning and were the first to spot the army snaking its way over the gently-rolling meadows. One of them carelessly blew his horn to proclaim the army’s arrival, infuriating Deslond. The captain rode at full gallop to the sentry post, dismounted in a huff, and, standing over the hastily-dug foxhole, mercilessly berated Minkrel and Sevren for endangering his men. Urik and Klymenos had drifted over from their observation post to investigate the noise and, coming into earshot midrant, were thoroughly entertained by the red-faced captain’s screaming and the weaselfaced brothers’ sheepish cowering under the barrage. 100 “Blow that horn again, and I’ll shove it down your fucking throat!” the captain screamed, rivaling the problem horn for volume. “We was just lettin’ the men know our boys are—,” “I don’t give a shit what you thought you were doing! Never endanger my company by thinking for yourselves. One of you fucks up again, I’ll send both of yous over that bridge and let the Almandanes shut you up proper. Get me?” Minkrel and Sevren nodded, and Urik thought he saw a momentary flicker of remorse flash across their pointy rat faces. “I’m riding out to meet them,” Durlond proclaimed, his voice shifting back to its usual gruff tenor. The captain turned to Urik and Klymenos. “Watch these shits, and make sure none of the others do anything stupid.” The two de facto leaders nodded silently. Once the captain had mounted his pony and ridden off to rendezvous with his clansmen, Klymenos began a lecture of his own. “You two might be the dumbest pair of toads I’ve ever seen. What in Preswa’s grace were you thinking? You outta be spanked like the naughty children you are.” “Fuck you, Klymenos,” Sevren lashed. “We ain’t gotta hear it twice.” “Yeah. Fuck you, Klymenos,” snipped Minkrel. Although moronic, the twins’ horn call was inconsequential to the army’s covertness. The Runuken, followed closely by the Malrakes, were marching over the flat grass fields with no concern for concealment and were making enough noise to alert all of Almandania to their presence. As the newcomers neared his lookout station, Urik heard their drums beating a triumphant double-step and their voices belting a droning battle anthem. Finraeke, astride his white charger and decked once more in his antler 101 headdress and blood markings, trotted before his host with chest forward and chin high, a return to his former confident regality. Beside him rode Durlond and Ælec, the latter of whom had several small circles drawn on his face with charcoal to bless his guidance. Not a single glance or acknowledgment was cast toward Urik and his friends as the king passed by their sentry post. Urik, Klymenos, and the still-perturbed twins stood up from their hole and knelt in reverence. When Finraeke and the royal courtiers had passed out of sight, the mercenaries relaxed their stances and sat back down to watch the procession. After the red-cloaked Runuken men and their wagons had passed them by, the less-dapper Malrake contingent followed. Again, the mercenaries knelt for the Malrake chief before returning to their seats. Strangely and concerningly, these men were bringing up the rear of the column; no other clans were marching behind them. “Where’s everybody else?” Urik pondered aloud. Klymenos was wondering the same but was more inclined to seek an answer. Standing up and walking to the edge of the trail, the Achaean appealed to all in earshot, “Oi! Where’s the rest of the men?” An elder levy dressed in shabby furs and carrying a flint-tipped spear replied to the query. “They’s probably way back ‘round dere.” The man pointed behind him with a gnarled finger. “They’s was goin’ too slow. We’s walked all night wif the king, dat’s what we did. We’s beat da rest of dem fir our spot ‘ere.” One of the man’s younger companions chimed in. “We all got to marchin’ right quick when the king told us yous boys found the Aly-mans. We was wif the Runuken boys the whole time. Dem others didn’t keep up so good.” 102 Klymenos, who was now walking alongside the Malrake column as it continued down the path, asked, “So where are the Oefeldei? Have you seen them?” “We ain’t seen dem for a few days, I reckon,” the old man replied, nonchalantly. “They’s wadn’t fast as our boys. Eh?” The Malrake men grumbled in agreement. Thanking the men for their insights, Klymenos ended his walk apace the marchers and returned to his comrades. “They don’t know where the others are,” he reported to the group. “That old badger says Finraeke marched all night to get here. The fucker left half his army behind.” “So our boys are lost?” Sevren asked, worry tingeing his voice. “Nah, stupid. They’s prolly right close. You’ll see,” Minkrel assured his brother. “Yeah. Probably right close,” Urik echoed, more to convince himself than to comfort Sevren. “Why would the king quick-time it here? We still ain’t found the Alyboys yet.” Klymenos just shrugged and lay back down in the trench. Drumbeats faded into the distance behind them as the vanguard continued toward the river. After a few minutes, the drums stopped entirely. A lively round of cheers went up as the newcomers came to the basin’s crest and set eyes upon the infernal causeway. A series of whoops and hollers were then heard emanating from within the river basin for some time after the men had descended out of view; no doubt Finraeke was delivering another rousing speech to commemorate this great discovery. The four mercenaries continued to watch for friend and foe, uninterested in the king and his oration. The Runuken/Malrake force had taken a significant lead over the 103 other clans in their ill-advised race to the causeway, and it was another few hours before another clan, the Prenolks, stumbled into view and made their way down into the valley. “Thought you boys’d be wolf shit by now,” Bolbin said with a chuckle as his caravan passed by the sentries. The chieftain’s voice was cheery, but his eyes and face told the silent story of an exhausting few days. “We thought the same of you, old man,” Urik responded, “What happened out there?” Bolbin limped over to Urik and Klymenos and, leaning in close so as to not be overheard by his passing clansmen, told the story of Finraeke’s folly. “We were makin’ our way north, just as we done since ye boys left us. Few nights ago, that Runuken boy Ælec comes bargin’ into the king’s tent, all covered in mud and lookin’ right flustered. He starts badgered on ‘bout how he’d found somethin’ and how the army needed to move right then and there. King Finraeke told us to leave the tent, so me an’ the other chiefs waited outside for a bit. When he come out, the king says we’ve found the Almandanes, but we needed to hurry if we were gonna catch ‘em. So we pack up camp and start followin’ Ælec and his boys. Been marchin’ for two days straight, no sleep for no one. The clans all got separated in the night, but Finraeke kep’ on movin’. We was lucky to see this here trail, else we’d still be marchin’ north.” Before any of the soldiers could ask, Bolbin anticipated their next question. “I don’t know where yer clan is. They was nearer the rear when we started. Sorry I can’t help ye, but I think the Brunfelds are right close behind us. They might know somethin’.” 104 The jovial cripple-chief nodded a tired goodbye and hobbled to catch up with his men. They too moved down into the basin and, most likely, stood in awe of the wonder it contained. Through the late morning and into the afternoon, more disconnected pieces of the great army trickled into the valley. The Brunfelds and Kerndyles arrived within minutes of one another, and the Mustreen came fast behind them. As each clan passed their spot, Klymenos inquired as to the whereabouts of Wulraven and the Oefeldei, but none of the exhausted marchers could provide any more information. As more men and carts crowded the limited dry land on the riverbank, the fast-growing camp spread up the basin hill and spilled out onto the flatter ground above. Minkrel and Sevren, at the firm insistence of Klymenos, ran back to the advance scouts’ now-overrun campsite to guard its contents against loss and pilfery. Urik and Klymenos remained in their lookout blind, waiting in anticipation for their clan’s arrival and growing evermore disquieted by their tardiness. “You think they’ll make it here?” Urik asked after grappling with the question on his own for some time. “Rohm and the boys will make it, I have no doubt,” Klymenos replied. “Bonterk’s fat ass will probably be chafed beyond healing if he’s had to walk his horse for any distance, but he’ll probably make it too.” “I’m serious, Kly. What if they’re lost? Do we go looking for them?” “Would they go looking for us?” Urik liked to think the answer was an unequivocal “yes”, but he’d been in the company of mercenaries long enough to take his friend’s meaning. 105 By late afternoon, all clans besides the Oefeldei and the Gunnreigs had caught up to their king. Urik and Klymenos sat in their blind, refusing relief from watch duty until their comrades were accounted for. Hours crawled by. Each minute without movement was a simultaneous relief and curse. Finally, just before dusk, a single rider was spotted charging east along the trail at breakneck speed. The watchmen almost sounded a call to arms but thought better of it when they realized the rider was half the size of a man. Clarven, Wulraven’s young ward, was riding alone through hostile territory, bouncing uncontrollably on his pony’s back as it darted overland like a soaring eagle. As the young man came into focus, Urik and Klymenos jumped out of their hole and boisterously waved their arms overhead. Luckily, the sharp-eyed youth quickly spotted the soldiers and hastened toward their position. “Clarven! Where’re the men? Where’s Wulraven?” Urik pressed as soon as the boy was in earshot. Clarven, looking half-dead from exhaustion and half-crazed from worry, answered, “They’re makin’ their way down this trail. Should be gettin’ here by nightfall. We lost sight o’ the Runukun last night an’ we been sendin’ scouts out e’er since.” The boy, face welling up with tears, added in a quavering voice, “I didn’t think I’d find you. I thought the Aly-men was gonna get me.” “You did well, lad. You found us,” Klymenos enthused, “Go down that hill there and find our boys. Tell Halvan and Bennek to come up here, then get yourself something to eat from my rations.” The fatigued rider dismounted his pony, wiped his tears away, and started toward the camp, which had by that time expanded to within sight of the lookout post. 106 Urik breathed easier now. His comrades were on their way and were, at least as far as Clarven knew, unscathed. As he sat in that pitiful trench, long-absent tranquility coursed through his veins and lifted an unseen weight from his shoulders. Spontaneous reminders of reality and her troubles still bit into his thoughts like axes into a stout trunk, but the anticipation of his coming reunion counteracted the foreboding he’d felt since setting out on this foolish journey. The mercenary sat in silence, watching the horizon and making a conscious effort to enjoy this flicker of contentment. Bennek reported promptly, but Halvan took his time leaving camp. Both had anticipated their next assignment and brought their ponies with all their battle kit. “So where we off ta?” Halvan asked, clearly annoyed at having been picked for this assignment. Klymenos briefed the searchers. “Clarven said the Oefeldei are coming down the trail as we speak. Follow it west and see if you can find them.” “Why don’ yous do it?” “Because after a hard march through day and night, who wouldn’t want to see pretty faces like yours?” “Dat ain’t no reas’n fer nuffin.” “How about because I said so?” “Yous ain’t cap’n.” “I’m second-man, and I don’t want to have this discussion again.” “Righ’ now, you’s got six men. We two of da six,” Halvan gestured back to Bennek. The mute stood silent, eyes shifting back and forth, seemingly indifferent to his riding partner’s challenging of authority. 107 Halvan continued, “We don’t feels we should go ou’ dere if you’s ain’t goin’ too.” Klymenos stepped out of the hole and stood before his challenger. Halvan passed his horse’s reins to Bennek and “Your feelings on my orders are irrelevant,” Klymenos snipped, “which means they don’t matter.” “Fuck you. I knows wha’ irrevelant means—” Klymenos, quick as a viper, sucker-punched Halvan square in his jaw. The brute staggered backward, but he didn’t fall. Touching his bloodied lip with a finger, Halvan grinned and drew his sword. Klymenos, in turn, drew his Mycenaean-style knife with his right hand and shifted it to his left before drawing his Teutehman-style sword. Both combatants paused for a heartbeat, then, in near-unison, tossed their weapons into the grass behind them. The two fighters began their brawl, migrating away from the hazardous hiding hole until they were standing on the compacted Almandane trail. Klymenos, honor-bound to finish the fight he’d initiated, attempted to close the distance while simultaneously avoiding Halvan’s longer reach. Feeling his opponent’s aggressiveness, Halvan wisely chose to maintain distance, using his longer reach to throw a series of targetless jabs that deterred Klymenos’ advance. The smaller and nimbler Klymenos then tried to flank his opponent, sidestepping to-and-fro, looking for an opening in Halvan’s defense. Despite his sluggish mannerisms and overall lankiness, the bigger man was surprisingly quick on his feet, countering every attempt to bypass his guard with a pivoting step and a sweeping 108 hook. The Achaean was well-trained in hand fighting, whereas Halvan had learned through years of brawling. The pugilists circled for some time, testing each other’s guards and reading each other’s body language. Klymenos was the more technical fighter: attempting feints and using footwork to keep Halvan off-balance. Halvan, using his size and reach, stood relatively still and replied to Klymenos’ maneuvers with counterpunches that, while sloppy, looked to pack the force of a cudgel strike. Each man kept to his style, countering every move against him with footwork or a bevy of mean-looking counters. Klymenos was treating this fight like a death match, with fiery determination showing on his scowling face and clenched jaw. Halvan, in contrast, was clearly enjoying himself, holding his mouth agape and taunting his opponent with sarcastic head bobs and exaggerated exhalations. After he’d danced several circles around his opponent with no success, Klymenos committed to an all-out assault. Bouncing left, then right, then left again, he made a feint step to the right before crouching low and diving under Halvan’s guard. Having less than a second in which to work, the musclebound boxer became a wrestler, lifting Halvan’s right leg off the ground and pushing off the ground with the full strength of his legs and back. Both men tumbled to the dirt, Klymenos landing on top of Halvan. Not waiting for the big man to attempt a reversal, Klymenos straddled Halvan’s torso and rained haymakers down onto his chest and head. Halvan grabbed Klymenos’ tunic and tugged on it with all his might, but he couldn’t find enough leverage to pull the smaller man off his chest. After a fury of at least fifteen punches to the face and collarbone, Halvan stopped moving and released his grip, his arms falling beside him. 109 Urik and Bennek moved quickly to separate the victor from the unconscious man. Klymenos, breathing heavily, stood up from his opponent’s chest and started pacing around the field while shaking out his stinging, bloodied hands. Urik looked down at Halvan: his face oozed blood from several cuts and his left eye was already beginning to swell. His nose was broken and bent to the left; a feat, seeing as how it’d curved to the right before the fight. He wasn’t moving, and his eyes were rolled back into his skull. Urik looked to Bennek, who looked back at Urik unfazed. The mute untied his waterskin from his belt and, without much compassion, emptied its contents onto Halvan’s unmoving face. After a few seconds of continuous pouring, the dead man woke with a start, sat up at the waist, and gasped for air. “Dat li’ole fuck figh’s like a fucking badger,” the brute exclaimed through his tender jaw. Hearing this comment, Klymenos returned to the sight of his victory. Urik stepped between his friend and the defeated man, but Klymenos looked him in the eyes and nodded, calm and controlled. Standing aside, Urik watched Klymenos offer an open hand to Halvan, who accepted the gesture and pulled himself to his feet. “You’s a quick fucker, I’s grant. Nest time, I’ll catch yous by the bullocks so yous won't move so mutch.” “Next time I’ll punch that snout of yours back into place. Seems I went too far the other way.” Halvan felt at his broken nose and, with both hands, cracked the cartilage back into place with one quick push. Blood streamed down his chin and soaked the collar of 110 his tunic. Craning his neck backward and pointing his nose into the sky, the crazy fool chuckled throatily. Klymenos, returning to the task at hand, declared, “Right. I’ll fetch my horse. We still need to find our men before sundown.” Bennek attempted his hollow version of a whistle and pointed a finger toward the setting sun. Cresting the horizon, haloed by Sehwōl’s golden chariot, a mass of black figures was moving steadily closer, their features obscured by shadow. Urik squinted and shielded his eyes from the light with his hand. Hoping these figures were the Oefeldei but not forgetting the precariousness of the situation, he was prepared to sound his horn at the slightest hint of aggression. Klymenos fetched the blades from the grass and handed Halvan’s back to him hilt-first. The men watched with pounding hearts and waited for some indication of the strangers’ allegiance. The flag gave them away. That blue and white Oefeldei banner, carried by a horseman near the front of the party, fluttered above the column in the gentle summer breeze. Though its colors were obscured by the brilliant sunset behind it, the flag’s shape and long tassels were enough to identify its heraldry. As they drew nearer, the strangers’ numbers—four horsemen, seventeen ox-carts, and a mob of around 250 man-shaped shadows—confirmed their identity. Urik relaxed, exhaling an anxious breath. The four mercenaries started walking the trail to meet their comrades halfway. As they neared the column, Berner and Frehren broke from the group and rode forth to investigate the strangers. “Who goes there?” Berner challenged as he and his companion came upon the four. 111 “Your mother,” Klymenos quipped. “Miss me, sweetheart?” The sworn-men relaxed their stances and beckoned their clansmen forward. Wulraven and Bonterk, who bore the banner in Clarven’s absence, trotted forward to question the long-absent mercenaries. “What have you to report, men?” the chieftain asked without salutation. Klymenos, again taking the conversational lead, explained, “King Finraeke and most of the army are camped by a river, ‘bout a mile down the trail from—” “Praise Dyēus Phetḗr! Our king hath led us to our destination!” Wulraven exclaimed. “Is he well?” “Oh yes, he’s tip-top,” the Achaean answered, his voice drenched in sarcasm. “Joyous news! Our endeavor yet breathes life!” Without further inquiry about the army, the enemy, or the missing Clarven, the chieftain waved his men along. Urik, Klymenos, Halvan, and Bennek stood aside as the Oefeldei levies, disheveled as those who’d arrived before them, lumbered down the trail toward the river. The mercenaries, who looked just as enervated, if not more so, than their levy counterparts, had congregated at the back of the column. Upon seeing his men, Rohm mustered his energy and ran to meet them. Clasping each man’s hand in succession, the captain looked genuinely happy to be reunited with his soldiers. “Though you boys were food for the crows,” the gruff veteran joked, though his words were undoubtedly laced with truth. “Not on your luck, captain,” Urik replied with a grin. “What’s the situation down here?” 112 “The army’s camped down in the valley. This trail comes to a bridge and continues on the other side of the river,” Klymenos explained again. “We don’t know where it leads, and we haven’t seen any Aly-boys yet.” “Good. Now that we know where the bastards walk, their road will lead us right to ‘em.” “Think that’s what the king has in mind?” Urik inquired. “I think that’s the king’s only chance to get some fightin’ in before this lot o’ goatfuckers has to turn back to their farms. Only question is which way he takes us: east or west.” As the men were briefing their leader, the thirty-nine other mercenaries had come upon their spot alongside the trail. “Urik! Klymenos! Didn’t think I’d see yous again!” an overjoyed Ruprein exclaimed as he weaved through the pack to see his friends. “Why so little faith?” Klymenos asked with feigned indignation. “Every one of you had us marked for dead, didn’t you?” “All things considered, we thought it pretty likely,” Stafern bluntly rationalized. “Oi Halvan! What ‘appened to yer face?” Tófern asked mockingly. “Same fing what ‘appen to yers if ye ask me ‘nother ques’ion,” the bruised bully snapped, his blood-congested nose stifling his already-slurred speech. “So what’s all this about an Aly-man bridge?” Guntlar inquired. “It’s at the end o’ this trail, plain as day,” Urik explained. “Real eyesore, by my reckoning.” Turning to Rohm, the soldier counseled, “We’d better get movin’. There’s 113 hardly any room to camp down there, and I’d bet the firewood’s bein’ picked clean as we speak.” “Agreed,” the captain assented. “Lead the way, boys.” The company began the last hoof to its objective. After a short walk, the men were staring down upon the river basin and the expansive camp raised within it. The king’s giant tent was pitched atop the basin crest on a flat spot overlooking the valley. The army’s many ox-carts were parked even further from the river to prevent them from rolling down the hill into the muddy bog. Few fires burned; the warm night air allowed that task to be put off until the morning. Across the field, men lay in their campsites without songs or chatter. The completely exhausted soldiery was content to sleep silently, savoring a night’s rest after two days of continuous marching. With the dusklight nearly gone, Rohm’s company caught up with the Oefeldei and began setting their camp. Being the last clan to arrive at this place, Wulraven’s men were confined to the camp’s outer edge, far from the basin crest and out of sight of the river. The chief’s slaves were in the process of pitching his tent when the mercenary company arrived at camp. Bonterk, too tired to conduct his usual inspection of levy sleeping quarters, was snoozing under the cover of a lone birch tree. This left his men to organize their camp without the chief-cousin’s supervision, which they seemed to accomplish without much difficulty. Thankfully, Durlond had assigned his Runuken scouts to the night watch, so Urik and his companions were free to rejoin their company for some past-due rest. After collecting their horses and gear from their old riverside sleeping spots, the seven Oefeldei men of Durlond’s expedition, plus the brave young Clarven, joined their clan in their far- 114 off campsite. After hitching his horse to a fallen log, Urik claimed a spot of ground that looked to be comfortably flat and hung his possessions upon a nearby pine tree. Unrolling his bedding, the soldier lay down on his back and looked up at the night sky, now devoid of sunlight and nearly pitch black but for the legions of stars dotting its canvas. The heavenly bodies of Dyēus Phetḗr’s sky-children danced among the clouds and seemed to lull the weary man to a peaceful trance. Shutting his eyes, Urik ended his anxiety-ridden day at peace, content to be among Finraeke’s confederation once again. He drifted to sleep feeling more at ease than he’d felt in weeks. The perils of Almandania seemed far away as Urik’s consciousness faded, and the fears he’d felt were at least temporarily alleviated by the men snoring around him. *** Urik awoke to the guttural sounding of a war horn. His eyelids lay heavy, and his body resisted his half-hearted attempts to unfetter from his layers of wool coverings. The night’s light rain had wetted his face and filled the air with a pleasant earthy musk. Content to lie in his bedroll a few moments longer, Urik savored the morning calm and the warm sunlight pouring onto his face. That was until he heard the second horn, then another, and another, and several more. None were playing the usual waking tune. Urik’s heart started pounding the wall of his chest like a hammer; his blood pulsed in his ears. His eyes shot open, and his limbs were instantly imbued with coursing energy. Jumping to his feet fully alert, the soldier tried to orient himself in the chaos. All around him, men were rushing to stand and find their weapons, none knowing why so many horns had blown in succession. The horns kept blowing. Dozens of horns from 115 multiple directions filled the air with a cacophony of cries that, when heard all at once, morphed into a single maddening buzz. “To arms! To arms!” a voice cried out somewhere behind Urik. More voices echoed the first. “To arms! To arms!” After hurriedly tying his sword belt to his waist with a sloppy knot, Urik reached for his spears and shield. Not bothering to separate his fighting spears from his javelins amid the emergency, he grabbed the entire bundle by the sinew string holding it together. He was about to fetch his bow and quiver from the tree branch he’d hung them from but was diverted by Rohm’s command. “Urik! Klymenos!” the captain growled, “Get these men in order!” Kicking a still-laying Nabsen in the leg and yelling at Kuint for fussing with his bedroll, Urik tried to address the immediate concerns of readiness before allowing himself time to worry about the call to arms. The men were in different states of alarm. Some, like Bennek and the purple-faced Halvan, had calmly equipped themselves and were standing by for orders, but most were scrambling to find their bearings amid the turmoil of so many sounds and rushing bodies. Their attention was entirely swept up by the flood of panic, by the shouting and cursing and the praying and the infernal hornblowing. Like a lost pup, Ruprein sat in the dirt with spear and shield in hand, looking up at the commotion around him. Urik watched as Klymenos walked over to the giant, grabbed him by the tunic, and hoisted the big man to his feet. “Wake up and move, you shit!” the second-man yelled into Ruprein’s face. 116 Not waiting for a response, Klymenos dragged the petrified recruit by his tunic and led him to the center of camp where the men were assembling. Pale in the face, Ruprein stood hunched at the neck and swayed side-to-side, seemingly too terrified to turn his head or stand aside for men scurrying around him. Within a minute or two of the first horn call, the mercenaries were gathered together in a messy cluster, armed and awaiting orders from any authority. Nerves were raw. Heads bobbed erratically, trying to set sights on the imminent danger. Men paced in circles or hopped in place, doing anything they could to distract their bodies’ impulse to take action. Trousyc the Slave, carrying both his and Rohm’s weaponry, scuttered around the camp trying to find his master, who had himself run to the Oefeldei levy camp to locate Chief Wulraven. The horses hitched nearby neighed and stomped their hooves, but any attempt to calm them would be a distraction the company couldn’t afford. The chaos and noise agitated all present at a time when level-headedness was essential. “Quiet everyone! Stand still!” Klymenos yelled in his booming war voice. Most of the men complied, though Tomank and a few others continued to babble incessantly, offering rapid, heavily abbreviated prayers to their protection gods. Rohm returned shortly. Trousyc followed close behind, still lugging two shields and an armful of spears. The captain, wasting no time, called his company to order. “Right. We wait here till someone tells us what the fuck’s going on. No runnin’ off! Tófern, I want you to —” “To the river! Run to the river!” a shrill voice cried from behind Rohm. 117 It was Bonterk. The squatty chief-cousin was tromping through the camp, trying to simultaneously roust his terror-stricken levies and tie a sword belt around his waist. He clomped up to Rohm, out of breath from his running and shouting. “Captain! Take your men down to the river! We must defend the bridge!” “Not till someone tells us what’s happening. Where’s the chief?” “No time! The bridge is under attack!” Rohm paused, his weathered face hard as stone. He looked down at the dirt for a half-second before exhaling forcefully and turning back to his men. “We go as we’re commanded,” the captain proclaimed. “To the river!” “Run! Run!” Bonterk urged, his face red and sweating. “Shut up! We stay in ranks.” “No time. There’s no time! We need to —” “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” It was too late. Ten or twelve company men had sprinted out of earshot, commingling with the sea of cloaks and speartips flowing down into the valley. “Shit,” Rohm exclaimed as he stared daggers at Bonterk. “Let’s move! Stay together!” Leading his men through the quickly-emptying camp, Rohm marched with his head up and eyes fixed ahead. Trousyc ran to catch up with his master and, having finally delivered Rohm’s effects, fell into ranks next to him. Urik, with Klymenos on his right and Rolligs on his left, tried to hold his head high for the sake of his own morale. His heart felt as if it would tear out of his chest, and his palms were so sweaty he feared he’d lose hold of his spear bundle. Behind him, he heard and felt his comrades’ heavy 118 breathing, their under-breath chanting, and their numerous other techniques for calming their nerves. Urik attempted the tried-and-true technique of deep nose breathes and short exhalations, but no calming method could hope to counteract the apprehension, the inescapable disquiet, permeating the field and all its occupants. The company marched, steadfast and resolute, across the field toward the slope leading down to the causeway. Scattered Oefeldei levies rallied behind their familiar mercenary companions, and some total strangers who’d been separated from their kin in the confusion began following the group for protection from the stampeding mob. Soon, a cluster of around 100 fighters was stomping down the hill, joining the sea of men already choking the ground at the top of the basin. The trail was unfindable in this mob; the entire hillside had become a walkway for the hundreds of warriors migrating to the water’s edge. Urik couldn’t see over the heads of the men in front of him, but he could feel himself drawing ever closer to cresting the hill and looking out upon the causeway. Sudden dread filled his entire body, weighing down his legs and rendering his arms sluggish and hollow. Time slowed to a crawl. Dreaded reality, with her horns and drums and screams, pulled Urik forward like a sacrificial lamb on a rope. He was powerless to stop the march; all he could do was lift his chin and walk on. When it came time for the company to crest the basin and gaze upon the source of the panic, Urik couldn’t bring himself to look. He kept his eyes intently fixed on the back of the stranger in front of him. When that man started descending the hill, Urik’s attention inadvertently shifted, for a split second, to the countryside stretched out before 119 him. Though he’d tried not to look, Urik couldn’t take his eyes off what he saw on the other side of the river. Like ants, they swarmed down the opposing basin hill. Hundreds of figures, perhaps a couple thousand, surged over the land, sprinting down into the valley from every direction, all heading toward the causeway. The beech grove across the valley that Urik had fixated on days before was now teeming with brown and black specks, producing them like fleas from an old saddle blanket. Though he was too far away to see their faces or examine their clothing, Urik saw that every one of these personages carried a shield in one hand and some manner of weapon in the other. The Almandanes, the Teutehmen’s prey, had found them first. Tracking the far-off enemies as they ran down the hill, Urik saw the point of contention. The causeway was brimming with hundreds of men from both sides of the river. The Teutehmen and the Almandanes had both occupied their sides of the walkway with as many men as they could stuff onto its narrow deck. The middle third of the causeway was empty; no fighter from either side dared to force a clash on such a precarious battleground. Instead, steady streams of missiles—arrows, javelins, sling stones, and basic thrown rocks—were being exchanged across the gap. Dozens of men on both riverbanks were launching projectiles, hitting their foes’ flanks with showers of deadly missiles. These volleys were devastatingly effective; dozens of lifeless bodies, wearing cloaks of many different colors, were floating in the water, slowly drifting downstream in the imperceptible current. Now inching their way down the basin, Rohm’s men were stuck in the middle of a sluggish stampede. Packed shoulder-to-shoulder, the men could do nothing but shuffle 120 their feet and fight their own comrades for breathing space. The night rain and thousands of preceding footsteps had rendered the hillside a muddy slick. Gods help the men who lost their footing in this mass; those who did were either immediately helped up by their comrades or lost to the boots of the men behind them. Like hogs in a pen, the Teutehmen army was being driven toward the water. With their morale dwindling and their boots slipping in the mud, each tiny step forward became more and more taxing. Near stationary in this throng of bodies, Urik looked around for a commander, someone from whom they could take direction. Wulraven was nowhere to be seen, nor was King Finraeke and his ridiculous headdress. The only chieftain in sight was the Kerndyle chief Reegavic, who had been foolish enough to ride his horse down the hillside. Urik watched as the animal slid uncontrollably in the mud, panicked, and dumped its rider onto the spears of the men below. Down one chieftain with no others in sight, the army continued leaderless toward the causeway. Halfway down the hill, their forward progress ground to a halt. No one wished to join the already-doomed men on the causeway, and the riverbank was filled to capacity with archers, slingers, and javelineers. So the men on the hill, Rohm’s company among them, stood in place and watched the carnage beneath them. Men continued to fall into the river, struck by projectiles or accidentally shoved in by the push of the crowd. Even those men who were still conscious when they hit the water were as good as lost, for the shower of missiles made swimming just as hazardous as standing on that damned bridge. Still, men funneled onto the causeway, replacing their fallen comrades man-forman. In a cyclical pattern, one side would advance a few yards only to be repelled back by a renewed assault from the opposing side. More men fell, taken by the river, but the 121 battle lines stayed mostly fixed in place. Both sides had the men, and, apparently, the ammunition, to keep this fight going for some time. After the entire Almandane force had run to position themselves on the hill opposite the Teutehmen army, a second battle, a battle of noise, raged on as the killing continued below. Over the death screams and shrieks of pain, deafening battle-chants filled the air, boiling the warriors’ blood and invigorating their spirits. These weren’t songs in the traditional sense; they had no lyrics, notes, or set pitch. Rather, these chants were grunting/humming/groaning rhythms sung by choruses of hundreds. Those who had enough space banged their spearshafts against their shields in time with the rhythm, and those who didn’t simply added their voices to the symphony. The drummers, perhaps the most vital men in the army in times like these, kept a steady, aggressive beat on their goatskin instruments. Hornblowers played along with their side’s chants as well, blowing long notes to accompany the drumbeats or piping short half-notes to accentuate the chants’ rhythms. Those on the Teutehmen side couldn’t hear the Almandanes’ cries over their own battle-chants, and the same was almost certainly true for their opponents across the river. Now in midmorning, Sehwōl’s warm embrace quickly became a nuisance for the Teutehmen. The Almandanes had planned their assault well: their eyes faced away from the sun. Their enemies on the west bank, however, had to squint to see across the river, and this certainly affected the accuracy of their missiles. Urik had to repeatedly avert his eyes from the action on the causeway, a move that unnerved him each time. Even worse than watching the carnage was being forced to look away due to simple discomfort. 122 Calls for more ammunition were relayed from the front line of skirmishers through the disorganized ranks. Slowly, quivers and bundles of javelins were passed overhead from man to man down the hill to the riverbank. Sensing the urgency of the moment, Urik removed his bronze-tipped fighting spear from his bundle and passed the remaining throwing spears along to the men in front. Even with this influx of throwing ordnance, the shower of missiles noticeably lightened as the battle drew on. When the deliveries to the front ran dry, the Teutehmen archers and javelineers began collecting the enemy’s unsuccessful projectiles from the marsh and sending them back to him with force. Their Almandane counterparts appeared to practice the same tactic on their side of the river, and so the ranged fight continued a while longer. Eventually, even the reuse of enemy missiles declined as both armies’ arrows and javelins found themselves sunk to the bottom of the river, stuck into the wood of the causeway, or embedded in the flesh of unlucky combatants. A standstill was reached, roughly an hour after the horns first sounded, where the fighting paused, and each side continued screaming their lungs out in the spirited attempt to intimidate their adversaries. During this informal ceasefire, the wounded men who’d managed to paddle back to the riverbank were led up the hill to receive attention from the sages. Their moans and painful screeches punctuated the war-cries of their as-yet uninjured tribesmen. The yelling and chanting dimmed slightly as each man was carried through the ranks; their bloody wounds shattering what romantic ideations of war-fighting the men still retained. It was during this pause in the action that King Finraeke appeared to his soldiers. Wearing a standard Runuken red cloak over a simple linen tunic and bearing bloody battle runes on his face and arms, the king looked more a warrior than he had at any time 123 previous. Walking nonchalantly down the trail through an eagerly-parting crowd, Finraeke stared intently across the river at the enemy force, never taking his eyes off his foe. Following close behind, Chief Wulraven and the other clan-heads accompanied their king to the causeway’s beginning. Stepping onto the wooden structure, the king raised his gold-inlaid bronze sword to the sky. Cheers resounded like thunder from the Teutehmen, and antagonistic boos and jeers sounded off from the Almandanes. The enemy made several attempts to strike Finraeke with arrow volleys, but the faithful soldiers still manning the causeway blocked the incoming shafts with their shields and, in at least one unlucky bastard’s case, their bodies. Appearing unintimidated by the foe-horde behind him, the king gazed upward into the western sky and addressed his men in his typical fashion: “Look, my friends! Look across this divine river! Our enemies hath delivered themselves to us! We need not hunt them like the cowering rabbits they are. We’ll strike them down in honorable battle! Man to man, we’ll prove our mettle and the strength of our spear arms! Those pitiful fools will regret meeting us upon this auspicious day. Māword hath delivered these barbarians like quarry ready for the slaughter! How will we honor his graciousness?” “Stick ‘em!” one man yelled. “Gut ‘em!” screamed another. “Tear ‘em apart!” a few men shrieked in near-unison. Finraeke chuckled knowingly and continued his inducement, keeping his eyes fixed upon the sky, not once looking down at his men. 124 “No foe can stand before the beating of our drums and the push of our arms. Who, then, will follow me across this causeway and claim his eternal glory?” Throat-tearing screams filled the valley. The Teutehmen army suddenly lurched forward, driving all at once to heed their king’s call. Finraeke’s intimation that he’d be the first to cross that menacing walkway stirred the troops into a frenzy that eclipsed mere devotion and approached complete zealous fervor. Urik and the rest of Rohm’s company were pulled along in the wave of passionate bloodlust, some among them enthusiastically rallying to the charismatic king and others moving forward to avoid being trampled by the zealots behind them. As he and his comrades were forced down the hill, Urik witnessed something he could scarcely believe and would never forget. After relieving a nearby levy of his wicker shield, King Finraeke turned to face the Almandanes and, in a soft, measured tone that was completely drowned out by the army’s cries, bade the men on the causeway let him pass. Urik watched the god-king snake around and between the walkway’s occupants until he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the lead men, coming within twenty yards of the enemy’s vanguard. Raising his golden sword once more, the Son of Ungwenis let out a raging battle cry and rushed shield-first into the maw of Almandane spears. The men behind the king charged as well, and those nearest the causeway jumped on to fill the empty space. What had been a no man’s land of apprehensive deadlock became a raging battleground in the blink of an eye. What became of the king after his suicidal charge, Urik was not in a position to witness. The reaction of all present to the death-defying action was to follow Finraeke with all haste, no matter how many allied soldiers were trampled in the push or shoved 125 into the water. Men flowed down the hillside like a raging rapid, funneling onto the causeway as fast as their legs could carry them. For every man who set foot upon the walkway, another was either struck down by the enemy or forced into the river by the press of his fellows. The Almandanes, taken temporarily off-guard by their adversary’s actions, pressed their own fervorous charge onto the causeway. The water teemed with bodies on both sides of the river, some splashing their way back to land and others floating motionless. Swept up in the excitement of Finraeke’s daring, Urik hadn’t realized how close to the causeway he and his men had moved in the subsequent push forward. He was now nearing the base of the hill; the ground beneath his feet was gradually flattening to a negligible slope. Not ten yards in front of him, men were shoving each other to earn their spot on the glory-bound path over the river. Urik looked to his left and then to his right, his overstimulated mind acting on instinct to find a route away from danger. To his mortal disappointment, he was boxed in on both sides by his mercenary brothers, who were themselves hemmed in by streams of warriors trying to pass the company on either side. There was no way out, and to turn back was to court a deserter’s death. By his bad luck or by the gods’ unknowable will, Urik was committed to this fight, and his only path to survival lay across that cursed river. As the clash of arms raged, Wulraven and the other chieftains stood to one side, urging men forward with waves of their clean swords. Urik saw the young Mustreen grandson Kodumver attempt to join the fray before he was pulled back by his grandfather. Berner and Frehren, along with the other chieftains’ sworn-men, kept straying soldiers on track and away from the nobles. Men who attempted to retreat from 126 the river in futile moments of last-second clarity were intercepted by the bodyguards and shoved back into the ranks of advancing warriors. Those who tried a second time to cheat their fates were met with more severe reprimands; five or six dead men lay in the mud around the cluster of clan leaders, and none of them were Aly-men. After an agonizing wait that Urik wished would never end, the sobering moment was at hand. The last members of the Brunfeld pack ahead of him had boarded the bridge to destiny, and it was now the mercenaries’ turn. Rohm was the first to reach the causeway. Like a true soldier, he stepped onto those rotting planks without hesitation, raising his shield to cover his left side. The faithful Trousyc followed his master’s step and filled the gap on Rohm’s right. Halvan and Bennek stacked up behind them, and Rolligs cut in front of Urik to pair with Crazy Cleenek, who actually seemed eager to join the fight. Once those two had advanced far enough to allow space for more bodies, it was Urik’s turn to join the push. Urik took one deep breath, uttered a plea for mercy, and stepped onto the causeway. The waterlogged wood felt sturdier underfoot than the loose mud of the riverbank, a minuscule improvement to an all-around terrible situation. Raising his shield to his left, Urik pressed his torso as close to Rolligs’ back as was possible without pushing the man into the water. Klymenos stepped onto the causeway on Urik’s right side, a development for which Urik was truly grateful, and Ruprein stacked up behind the Achaean. Beside Ruprein, much to Urik’s astonishment, stood Bonterk, sword drawn and shield held outward with vigor. With no time for quips, jests, or words of reassurance, the men concentrated on the bloody business of the day. 127 The column advanced mere inches at a time. Every move forward represented another ally dead or knocked out of the fight, so Urik resented even the most meager progress. Time dragged on with cruel lethargy; every heartbeat and every step forward seemed to last a full hour, yet Sehwōl barely moved across the morning sky. Urik’s left shoulder burned from holding his shield straight-armed to the side, though he dared not drop his guard for fear of the sporadic projectiles still being lobbed by Almandane skirmishers. One or two sling rocks had already bounced off his wooden slab, and Urik had no intention of letting one of those fast-moving bullets strike his bare flesh. He kept his shield arm extended despite his aching muscles, covering as much of his body as possible while also providing Bonterk some supplemental protection. Between his shield, his comrades’ shields and bodies, and the oppressive sunlight, Urik could barely see the opposing riverbank. Momentary cracks in his guard yielded brief glimpses at the enemy force clustered on the basin hill, but those cracks were hastily filled by an adjustment of the shield or a ducking of the head and could not give a complete view of the battlefield. All Urik could be sure of was that the Almandanes were numerous and determined to hold their bridge. He could see nothing of their faces, their clothing, or their heraldry, and he couldn’t hope to hear their language over the screaming and grunting that polluted the valley. Curiosity about his foe persisted, in spite of the carnage being wrought around him. On this hellish crawl forward, where men had time enough to think amid the chaos of battle, one thought continually trespassed upon Urik’s mind: I could’ve just as easily been on their side. The sights Urik did have a clear view of, much to his displeasure, were the bodies claimed by the river. Try as he may, his eyes continually drifted toward those poor souls, 128 bloodied and left to drift down that slow-moving waterway. Besides the three or four red Runuken cloaks he could see adorning the dead, Urik couldn’t discern the allegiances of these unfortunate corpses. Teutehmen or Almandane, all men looked the same as they float around like lily pads, waiting to sink into the silty muck below. Pleading with his restless thoughts to focus their attention on the assault in front of him, Urik resisted the urge to peek at the dead men. That is, he resisted for a time, before morbid curiosity overtook his sense of reason. Sneaking a sideways glance, he found himself looking at something he wished he hadn’t seen. Floating face-down about three yards from the causeway was an unremarkable corpse clothed in deer pelts, a greenish woolen cloak, and a grown linen tunic. What set this body apart from the others was not one defining feature, but the lack of an ordinary one. Where this man’s left foot should have been, a healed-over stump was all that remained. Bolbin, joyful, fun-loving Bolbin, was dead. Urik’s heart jumped further into his throat as anger overtook his curiosity and all his relativistic ponderings. Those fucks killed Bolbin! Those sons of whores killed my friend and left him to rot in this disgusting northern river! I’ll avenge him. I swear on Dyēus Phetḗr, Dhéǵhōm Méhtēr, and all their children that no Almandane dog will live to see the end of this day! I’ll charge across this causeway and paint my face red with their bl— Urik felt a sharp prick in his chest, akin to what he’d felt in the past after bouts of heavy coughing. As quick as it’d appeared, the intense, localized pain gave way to a cold numbness that spread from his chest up to his shoulders and around his entire back. Feeling suddenly nauseous, Urik waved his spear hand in front of his torso. He winced in 129 pain and felt his face drain of blood when his spear touched the arrow shaft embedded in the right side of his chest. Standing upright and dropping his shield arm, Urik looked over at Klymenos. The Achaean’s eyes were affixed forward; he hadn’t seen the arrow hit. Opening his mouth to cry out for help, Urik couldn’t make a sound. His mouth filled with blood, and his vision grew dark. He didn’t feel himself falling. The last thing he heard was the rush of water flowing over his ears, then nothing at all. 130 AFTERWORD Current archeological scholarship estimates that between 3,000 and 5,000 combatants participated in the Battle of the Tollense River, making it the largest known battle of Bronze Age Europe. Assuming a 20–25% casualty rate consistent with organized, pregunpowder warfare, somewhere between 600 and 1250 people lost their lives on the banks of the Tollense over three millennia ago. Did they march to war in a bid to seize land and glory, as depicted in this story? Were they feuding over trade routes, as has been recently proposed by experts in the field? Was it perhaps an issue of succession or an internal dispute within one large tribal group? The short, disappointing answer to these questions is that we will never know and can never know. Time, like the muddy banks of the Tollense, swallows the stories of those passing through it; though, unlike those bogged marshes, time never returns the stories it steals. We may learn increasingly more about how Bronze Age humans lived—their tools, their food, their clothing, and so on— but we’ll never be able to piece together a record of their hopes, their fears, their friendships, or their loyalties. This is where art and creativity might intersect with science and history. By telling fictional stories of our past through the lens of verifiable facts, the emotional might be paired with the practical to bring us closer, in spirit, to the ancestors we can never know. 131 Name of Candidate: CJ Larsen Date of Submission: December 20, 2022