Free: A Viking historical fiction (Viking Ventures Book 3) by Ole Åsli & Tony Bakkejord

Author:Ole Åsli & Tony Bakkejord [Åsli, Ole & Bakkejord, Tony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Envig AS
Published: 2021-12-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 26: Scout

At sunrise, Ulv, Vass and a dozen other men gathered at Ragnar’s campsite. Ulv filled his quiver from a barrel of arrows, and Vass had received all the weapons he had requested. The wolfskin made a few swings with the sword and inspected the edge before he nodded and sheathed it in his belt. He was studying the axe when Ragnar approached in the company of two imposing hirdsmen. The old chieftain entered the camp and picked up a stick from the firepit.

‘Come closer, friends,’ Ragnar said solemnly and started drawing with the stick in the sand. In the middle, he outlined the Seine meandering like a worm. On each side, Ragnar divided the area into seven parts and assigned scouts to each zone. Occasionally, he pointed out landmarks they could see from the camp, making it easier to identify the zones.

Ulv was assigned an area in the northeast, between a farm and a ridge. Vass was sent to the south side of the river. Neither of them got horses, as those were distributed to the four scouts operating closest to Paris and the two scouting the river behind them.

‘Return before dark. If you encounter large groups of Franks – by that, I mean warriors, not peasants or monks – report back immediately. The locations of monasteries, churches and cities can wait until your return. With any other discovery, you will have to consider if that is something I must know about as soon as possible, or if it can wait. Also consider the price of returning early, as that means that you might not find the army hidden behind the next ridge. Questions?’

‘How big is a large group of enemies?’ asked a tall Dane with a lump of a nose.

‘A large group of enemies are more than forty or fifty warriors. Or more than a hundred common people.’

‘Are forty warriors something an army of six thousand men to worry about?’ asked another.

‘Yes, forty enemies in the wrong place can be a problem. Such bands attacking us from several places at the same time will be a large problem.’

Ragnar looked around at his band of scouts.

‘Report to Toke here. And, by all means, remember that we advance up the river while you are away, so we won’t be at this campsite next time we meet. Ultimately, I trust you to make the right judgements. That is why I chose you for this job.’

When nobody said anything in response, the old Dane nodded. ‘Go!’

‘See you tonight,’ Vass said, smiling.

Ulv nodded, turned and walked up towards the bridge. He could feel Vass’s eyes follow him and regretted that he had been terse.

Soon, Ulv ran across the fields with the ridge in sight. The morning dew made his leather shoes damp. He was relieved to find the nearby farms abandoned. The farmers would have heard of the attack on Rouen and decided to get out of the way of the Viking scourge.

North of the farms, he entered a forest and immediately felt more at ease.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.