Book 2 : Chapter 29

Outskirts of Jungfrau, Nussegrund

Hilda of Seaxlund

The siege was breaking. With the death of their ghostly champion, the rest of the dead seemed to lose morale and simply fall over. Massive swathes of the graven force arranged against them simply giving up their spirits and returning to death- giving the defenders plenty of opportunity to push them back and start destroying the stragglers clinging to unlife.

A part of her wanted a tall mug, a handsome boy, and a long sleep. It was already well into night, the sun sailing over the horizon and leaving them under the pale light of the silver sisters. Her muscles were sore, her belly ached, and sleep tugged at the corners of her eyes.

A much larger part of her insisted that she keep killing until every one of these corpses were stacked at her feet. The part of her that burned, hot skin meeting the shames clinging to her and obscuring swathes of her god-given flesh, pushing her to join the warriors who sallied out to hew and hack their remaining enemies into destruction.

With how little she had been accomplishing, she very well may have to add another shame to her form. Her battle against the mounted champion did not end in a loss, but neither was she living up to the reputation of her people.

Not the mightiest in that battle, that was the enemy. Not the swiftest, that was that priss-ass elf. Not the cleverest, she’d probably begrudge to give that honor to the half-sized witch. Certainly not the most important, but she’d be happy to give that honor to the Lady Gullveig. 

Not even the bravest, with how that Mallorn threw himself forwards again and again, valor dripping from his form. 

If she was none of those things, then what was she? 

The cold night air was a nostalgic reminder of her homeland, whipping across her bare skin as she cleaved the old iron blade forwards. Her swing was briefly halted by bones, then forced through to split the fragile corpse in twain. The sword continued past, smashing into the skull of a second corpse and cleaving off a bowl from the bones.

Both corpses fell. She roared a battlecry as was appropriate. “BACK TO THE GRIM!”

Her heart wasn’t in it. Warriors of this empire echoed her cry, even if they didn’t fully understand it, fighting alongside her with great enthusiasm. They were good company to a distracted woman- herself. There were dozens of corpses left to destroy, most of which were of the smallest and weakest varieties. The bone giants had been pulled by some lure to the far side of the walls and there they disappeared. 

The bluish circum covering her skin pulsed with heat, keeping her invigorated as they pushed the front ever-onwards, trampling over corpses and cutting down still-walking dead. It was a shallow imitation of proper circum, she’d need a man’s help for the good stuff, but the imitation still had a shade of the power it should. 

Was that the solution? Should she just proposition a man and get the lifestuff she needed to mix proper circum? It would certainly fortify her further, and improve her performance in battle, but somehow that felt insufficient as an answer. 

She threw her shield forwards, smashing into the thin withered body of some boney monster- something that looked like a snake with seven arms. The shield cratered the thin bones of its ribs, sending the fanged thing back and preparing it for another heavy chop of her blade. 

Three of its limbs were split off with the cleaving arc. A second cleave split the thing in twain, and sent it lifelessly to the muddy earth. 

The phantom of pain in her gut reminded her that this was entirely insufficient. 

“Yonder, the men from the other walls!” One of the warriors accompanying her push called out, casting a hand to the side. She followed the gesture briefly, spying another company of men battling against stragglers in the distance, previously obscured by the elevation of the slope they were fighting across. 

“Let’s join them then!” Hilda roared to a triumphant cry from the warriors. She knew none of these men, so far from home, and that was something of a comfort. She had no heart to deal with Ilsa’s mockery or Lady Gullveig’s gentle concerns.

She wanted to be alone with the violence.

They redirected their force, chopping and hewing as they made their way to the other band of defenders that had sallied out. It was a disorganized, bloody march from the walls- the commanders had fallen injured and left the men to their red-minded ambitions of vengeance. 

In the distance, strange war-cries rose from the other band, heard barely over the stomping of boots and the shattering of straggler bones. 

“Tally-Ho! Tally-Ho! Tally-Ho!”

Occasionally, from the front of that distant band of defenders, a corpse would be catapulted away. Soaring through the air like some great frog and landing in a crumpled heap, often on top of other straggler corpses. 

She smashed through another line of scant and faltering dead, coming within view of the other band of warriors. She could hear them call her name and see them gesture. 

“The barbarian who accompanies the Heroine- look, with the men from the other walls!” They called out. She made sure to smile, grinning to the tune of their own gladdened cries. At their head was the man who had accompanied Mallorn, the one with the mustache and the curious armor.

He was covered entirely, which would demonstrate immense shame if he were a seaxlunder, but men from other lands didn’t hold to such easily-perceived honors. The plate of metal across his chest was made in mimicry of a bare torso, and a piece of metal that covered his groin was obviously phallic in form. His plated boots were carved slightly to give the suggestion of sandaled feet and toes, and the horned helmet had its faceplate covered in a thick fur pelt in the suggestion of a beard. 

Curious, for obvious plates of armor to pattern themselves off the bare form of a properly shameless warrior. 

“Ah- Lady Hilda!” The man called out, waving towards her bombastically. The shadows that loomed across the field seemed to flee from his polished armor, leaving the man as a bright spot in the gloom of early night. “Well met on this killing field!”

She took a moment to remember his name, smirking as she approached. “Lady? I’m not one to hide in towers of stone and silk! I’d ask you remember that-” What was his name? “Oreman!”

“Haha!” The man laughed, before theatrically bowing his head in apology. “Then I’ll call you a warrior instead, and invite you and your band to accompany me!”

“Accompany you where?” She asked, tilting her head back and raising her brows. 

“The rest of my allies are in a band of their own along the road- I intend to push these dead back and meet up with them.” Oreman gestured down along the western road some distance away from the now-ruined fields that surrounded this town. He nodded his head firmly. “There will be no hurt feelings if you decide against it, warrior Hilda! A man like me is inured to rejection- haha!”

She found herself smiling at the bombast. It was an echo of the booming declarations of her homeland, albeit a much more polite and restrained one than what she’d call proper seaxlunder speak. “I suppose I can share a bit of glory with you, Oreman. I’ll come along.”

It helped that she didn’t know this man very well. If he insulted her, she could simply attack without reservation. 

“Marvelous!” He declared, then briefly turned back to the men following him. “Come on now, goodfellows! We push on to the western road!”

“”“Tally-Ho!””” A number of them cried with tired grins and raised blades. 

She began to march in the same direction, fighting alongside Oreman over the heaps of collapsed dead and tumbled buildings. There would be a truly immense effort to follow this battle, just to clean up all the corpses and burned rubble. A mile in all directions radiating out from the city, or perhaps two, saturated with the miasma-laden ruins of war. 

The crows would be fat this winter, she idly mused. 

Oreman fought with only a single, short, thick blade and his open hand. He’d lunge forwards with great speed and either grapple the enemy into a thrashing or hew them in blistering arcs. Enemies that were well armored were usually picked up, spun about, then hurled for dozens of yards before crashing into the ground and limbs flying apart from the impact.

“You’re rather strong, Oreman!” Hilda complimented. “You’re not the son of a giant, are you?”

“Ahah- no not quite!” Oreman laughed, pummeling a pair of corpses. Hilda split a bone-beast’s head from its shoulders as he readied a reply. “My family was blessed with great strength, a covenant with Great God Sotha! Are giantsons common in your lands?”

“Common enough.” Hilda replied in a casual manner, recalling lore about her peoples as her shield shattered the back of another bone-beast. “The chieftains of a tribe in a valley that neighbored ours, they maintained a tradition of raiding the cold channels to steal away Sea Giantesses to be their wives, and their sons were always mighty because of it.”

“Stealing away Sea Giants!” Oreman exclaimed in a suitably impressed tone. “A great feat, I’d imagine! I’ve only met their kind once, a tribe that had allied itself to the Empire, and the smallest among them were at least fifty feet from head to tail-tip!”

“I thought you soft empire-men would disapprove of the practice?” Hilda asked, raising a brow at the armored man.

“Oh I do, but the feat remains impressive!” Oreman nodded firmly as he bludgeoned the face of a corpse into pulp. 

Fairer words than she had heard from most softlanders. She grunted in acceptance and let the brief conversation die down again. 

A pact with a god for strength? The gods already gave her two hands and a beating heart, what more should man ask for? The gods of softer lands coddled their men too much. It certainly wasn’t the solution to her lacking performance. 

She was Hilda, daughter of Harald, high-chieftain of Sulis. She had fought and taken longships of treasure from the soft men of Meander before she had reached adulthood. Her arm was strong and her gut was iron.

And yet, failure or disappointment after failing and disappointment. The moment she lost to that elf and joined with the Lady Gullveig’s quest, she had lost something, something essential to her success that she could not name. 

Were the dangers that much greater? Were the gods unhappy with her?

“Look!” A man called out, gesturing down along the road. “Figures off the path!”

Hilda squinted over at the man, taking note of his bright catlike eyes and whipping, bristly tail. Looking down along the path revealed nothing in particular that she could see, nothing but blurry shapes in the distance, so she supposed he had much clearer vision in the darkness than she. 

“Why- I think you’re right, goodman!” Oreman declared after looking in the direction for a time. “My allies must have pushed up and held ground at-” The man suddenly went quiet, then began to gallop ahead at a ferocious pace. Each kick off the ground sent him bounding ahead of the group, and each landing was accompanied by the shattering of some straggler corpse.

Hilda, in no rush to be shown up again, quickened her pace into a hard sprint in effort to keep pace. Judging from their respective speeds, she was perhaps two-thirds as swift as he.

No longer even the fastest, was she?

“Henry! Lir!” Oreman called out ahead, waving a hand at a blurry figure with slumped shoulders, holding a short blade defensively before him.

The scene began clearer as she approached. A young man in ruined armor remained standing, protectively arranged before a number of terribly injured and fearful others. His sword was snapped in half, and he was drenched in rotting blood, and there was at least a dozen corpses strewn across the ground before him.

Barely standing, leaning on the hilt of his sword, was another man. He was bare-chested, as was appropriate, but his torso was absolutely ruined with injury and blood. 

Laid across the ground behind this man was the slumped form of a small woman drenched in blood and clutching a long knife. She wore a ripped white dress and her legs were half-submerged in a mound of gore- the corpse of some monstrous spider that she had seemingly been half-swallowed by before killing it and ripping her legs free. Her legs which were stained in thick gore in the faint moonlight. 

Behind her a pair of women clutched each other in abject terror, seemingly unharmed and clutching onto knives of their own. 

“Orrin! Lir is critical!” The distinct arrogance of an elvish voice called out, dropping from a tree and clutching a bow. He looked mostly unharmed save the occasional splatter of blood across his little cloak and heeled boots.

She only knew it was a ‘he’ because an elvish woman would be displaying her breasts, Hilda figured.

“You need to take him to the Heroine- he’s been impaled!” The young man called out in firm desperation. “Him and Dordi- her flesh was falling off!”

“Of course!” Orrin- Hilda realized that she had been calling him by the wrong name at this point, and a faint embarrassment welled up in her- dashed forwards to the slumped man with the bare chest to take him up in his arms. “Hilda, please aid me! Carry Dordi”

“Which one?” Hilda asked, moving to aid. There was no time for twine-picking while death was near. She pulled her shield back into the crook of her arm and sheathed her sword on its underside. 

“The one near the spider!” 

Hilda took up the woman who had apparently been half-eaten, ignoring the insect gore that stickily clung to her form, and began to run alongside Orrin. Orrin’s helm was faced dead ahead as he practically jumped over the warriors who accompanied them and began to rush back to the walls, an air of deathly tension around him. 

“...Or… Good to… see you well.” The man in his arms gasped out between weak and shuddering breathes. A note of grim humor was in the man’s tone, weak as it was.

“Save your breath, Lir! The heroine is a mighty healer, and her mentor is too- we’ll get you restored in mere minutes!” Orrin barked at the injured fellow in his arms.

Hilda’s cynicism told her that the injured man wasn’t long for this world. The blood-soaked woman in her arms might not be either. Morbidly, Hilda watched as another strip of flesh began to slip away and fall off from the woman’s face, leaving a blood-stained cheek behind. 

She didn’t look… injured beneath the missing flesh, but flesh slipping off one’s form like this couldn’t be a riskless thing. 

“...Orrin… You jostle me about… Set me down, if you would.” The man muttered out with blood slipping from his lips and spilling across his neck and collar. 

“I can’t do that friend!” Orrin shook his head, kicking up waves of mud and corpses behind him. “Bear with my handling for a few minutes more- a few minutes till we’re back at the walls!”

“Orrin… Listen to me…” The man gasped out, reaching up to clutch at Orrin’s pauldron. “Listen… The cult- it was allied with vampires. Vampires.”

“You can tell me about that later, once you’re healed!” 

“Listen to me. The vampires are allied with Lord Dey.”

“I don’t know who that is, old friend!” Orrin laughed tensely, leaping over the corpse of a bone giant and sliding briefly in the mud once landing. 

“I remembered- I remembered where I heard that name…” The man choked out with grit teeth. “Conwin the third- battled against the beasts of Dey- north of the Twistwood. You need to… you need to root them out…”

“We’ll root them out together Lir!” Orrin snarled.

Hilda felt the distinct awkwardness of a woman who didn’t belong. Not here, not at this moment. She clutched the injured woman closer to her chest as she dashed, trying to shut out the moment occurring so close to her. 

“A mark… it's their weakness…” Lir groaned out, head slumping back in his friend’s hold. “Promise me… Or…”

They were almost to the walls at this point, mounds and mounds of ashen dead only barely halting their advance to the gates. 

“I promise- whatever it is I promise to fulfull it! Promise in turn to hold on!” Orrin desperately bargained as they made it near the gates. Roaring at the men at the walls, he approached the gates at a sprint. “OPEN! OPEN THE GATES DAMN YOU! I’VE A INJURED MAN HERE!”

“Sir Orrin?!” A man called from atop the walls.

“OPEN THEM UP OR I’LL BLUDGEON YOU, I SWEAR IT!” Orrin roared again. 

Slowly, gradually, the gates began to rise. Snarling, Orrin gently set his friend down against the wall and marched over to the gates, squatting low and bracing his hands at the bottoms of the immense plates of banded wood.

The gate’s almost tripled in speed as he groaned and roared, practically ripping them open and flinging them high above his head. The gates bounced up before being caught against internal mechanisms, and men could be heard from inside struggling with the sudden shift in weight and load.

Orrin dashed back to his friend and moved to heft him again, but paused as a hand came up to grab at his helmet.

The injured man opened his mouth as if to say something, but if anything was said, it was too quiet for her to hear. 

Slowly, with shaking hands, Orrin removed his helmet. His back was turned to her, so Hilda could not see his face nor his expression. 

The injured man smiled.

And all was still. 

Slowly, Orrin’s shoulders began to quake. His hands came up to grasp either side of the still man’s face, and leaned down to plant a kiss on his forehead. Those same arms clutched the still man to his chest, and Orrin remained kneeling there outside the open gates.

“...Go… Get Lady Dordi to healing, please…” Orrin muttered, not turning towards her.

Hilda nodded, and left the scene through the gates. She was silent.

What was she to say, a stranger to both of them?

In the light of pale moons, she could hear faint sobs behind her.

Her face twisted up, and she rushed ahead to escape the sound.