War King by Eric Schumacher

Author:Eric Schumacher [Schumacher, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Creativia
Published: 2018-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

In the end, only seven ships arrived from the neighboring lands, bringing the total, with Hakon's ships, to nine. Nine ships against Gamle's twenty. A few more men came with their rusted helmets and hand axes and spears from the various homesteads that dotted the island, but in the end, it was Gamle's army of a thousand against Hakon's motley hundreds.

Hakon's army straddled the north side of a plain called Rastarkalv, which was a morning's hike south from Birkestrand. The clouds hung dark and ominous above the plain, remnants of the fierce storm that had blown through the day before and turned the plain into a mire of wet grass and muddy pools. To their left was the gray sea. To their right, the ground sloped upward to a low ridge. On its southern end, the ridge angled sharply down to the bay into which Gamle's ships now sailed — ships filled with sword-Danes with blood and vengeance on their minds. They crowded the decks, their spear tips and helmets gleaming darkly, menacingly, beneath the dark sky. When the men in those ships saw the army that faced them, their shouts of fury rumbled like thunder across the plain.

Hakon gazed down his lines. To his right, Sigge and his crew, and some of the recent arrivals, stretched to the low ridge. To Hakon's left stood Tosti's men and more of the locals, their numbers reaching to the sea. One of the younger recruits in that group vomited in the grass. Others displayed the raw fear that haunted men before battle. Hakon could hardly blame them, for it was a hard thing to know that the army coming for your blood doubled your own in numbers. He spat into the slick grass, trying to dispel a thought that nagged at his mind like an annoying fly. Why had he not fled? Why had he let an old man talk him into this folly? He should have trusted his own gut rather than the bold words of a man bent on dying in battle.

“Yell all you can, fools!” bellowed Toralv, tearing Hakon from his reverie. “You'll be wishing you had saved your breath after charging across this field.”

Some of the men laughed at this, but not many. Down the line, another of the younger recruits vomited. No one teased him, for many of the men had done the same before their first battle. Some still did.

Hakon turned to Egil, who stood next to him draped in his armor and his signature wool shirt. Long ago, he had worn only the shirt in battle, but with age came wisdom, and now he wore both. “It is time. Do you have the standards we discussed?”

“Aye.”

“And your men know their roles?”

“I have been doing this longer than you have been alive, boy,” grumbled Egil.

Hakon smiled at Egil's sour rebuke. “Then good luck, my friend. I will see you when this is over.”

Egil donned his helmet, patted his king's armored shoulder, and without a word,

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