“URAAAAGH!!”
“KIIILLLL!!!!”
Blood boiling and fuelled by adrenaline, Erik and his warriors charged out from the charred ruins of the village, to the horror and consternation of both the knights and thralls standing over the dead bodies of their comrades.
When the warriors of the north noticed their fallen friends, a dreadful red mist came into existence around them. Wreathed in the vaporous tendrils of rage and bloodlust, they nonetheless followed Erik’s orders with a discipline unheard of from the wild Norscans.
Erik led the charge, Glaive in one hand and a proper javelin in the other, along with those of his warriors also sporting polearms.
They rapidly approached the chaotic maelstrom of tanged knights and serfs and at 50 paces, Erik gave the order to ‘darken the skies’.
“Throw men! Throw! Rain death upon them and then finish them off with the cold steel in our hands!”
Singling out the most decorated armoured knight among the panicking Brettonians, Erik continued another two paces as he swung back his arm before throwing the javelin forward with a grunt.
Meanwhile the other Marauders plucked out the short darts from their shields and threw them high up into the air.
The weighted tips caused the weapons to fall almost vertically upon the defenceless enemies, penetrating through skin, muscle and even bone as screams of pain filled the air.
But Erik did not care for the song of death sung by the thralls. Instead, he watched closely as his javelin headed straight for the presumed commander’s chest. Even with the protective breastplate, against Erik’s power it wouldn’t provide enough protection.
And yet, when the tip of the javelin touched the commander, a blinding light flashed briefly and disintegrated the sure-kill weapon.
‘Another artefact!’ – Realisation dawned immediately.
‘Hopefully it only has the one charge, else this could get troublesome.’
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A death curdling shout reverberated across the field where Isabeau was now entangled with the panicking peasants.
Shocked, she turned her head towards the source just in time to see close to a 100 more raiders charge at them.
“May the Lady have mercy on us! There were more!”
Seeing the chaotic situation she and her knights were in right now, Isabeau also realised that they would now be the ones being charged.
‘Infantry charging cavalry… such sacrilege!’
She could only watch in dread as she focused on the Norscan’s leader, a young man distinctly different from the others for having short hair and being clean-shaven. Her sword was ready, her training had not been for naught, but an irresistible tremble nonetheless went through her arm and clearly shook the poised blade.
Then she saw the unique raider pull back his arm. She then felt rather than saw something whizz from his hand and rapidly approach her and before she could even attempt to dodge from the saddle, the pendant on her neck shone in bright, Holy light and evaporated the life-threatening attack.
‘Thank you father for gifting me this when we last parted. And thanks be to The Lady that it worked…’
Still, fear had taken hold of her heart. That devastating attack would surely have killed her if not for the pendant, since that was its additional function: to block an otherwise deadly attack.
It was only when she felt her helmet rock back from being hit by something else that she returned to her senses and noticed the carnage unfolding around her.
Small shadows rained down from the sky like deadly hail, reaping the unarmoured peasants around them like wheat before a scythe while unlucky knights found the short darts penetrating right through the chainmail skirts protecting their thighs or injuring their horses on the few places not covered by armour.
Moments later, when the roar of the charging warriors reached a new crescendo and the red mist of rage was clearly visible to her, Isabeau’s mind blanked. Every fibre of her being screamed at her to turn around and run away, that there was no way she could face such a dreadful enemy.
But she did not. Instead, as soon as the fear threatened to overwhelm her, she managed to steady her mind and prepare for the onslaught.
“Let us see who is stronger, the noble knights of Brettonia or the barbarian horde of the heathen north!”
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The volley of plumbata had proven more devastating than Erik expected. The knights came out relatively unscathed, but a large chunk of the thralls had been grievously wounded and were now impeding the knights even more.
Moments later, Erik and his men crashed into the disorganised blob of enemies. They didn’t care about the lives of a handful of thralls, there were thousands of them back at the camp. All they cared about now was to kill or disable every non-Norscan they came across.
Erik had clearly marked his target, the enemy commander that had thwarted his javelin strike, but there was some distance between the two.
Running slightly ahead of his warriors, Erik swept his weapon in a wide arc at the edge of the Brettonian blob. Blood spurted through the air as unarmoured torso’s were cut horizontally in half and heads flew up into the air from those victims that had hunched over or were simply short.
A first breach made, Erik swiftly approached the closest knight and stabbed his Glaive right into the steel-clad neck. The regular steel links were no match for the powerful strike from the vastly superior Black Steel weapon and the blade entered without issue, leaving the head attached to the body only by virtue of the untouched spine.
Dodging the fearful but well-trained warhorse as it kicked at him, Erik continued cutting a bloody path as he approached his target.
Because it was supposed to be just a simple outing, he hadn’t brought his shield, Greatsword or helmet and the latter especially irksome right now. Blood spurting out of arterial wounds had sprayed all over him, drenching Erik in crimson gore, but that blood also began to dry quickly. And the crusts of dried blood were especially itchy on his bare head.
Still, the thrill of battle fuelled him with power and the feeling of hitting bodies and sensation of them splitting before his might gave rise to a perverse pleasure as Erik continued the carnage with glee.
The overall situation of the fight was not dissimilar to Erik’s personal experience. It was a massacre. The knights were impeded by the milling peasants, trapped in a prison of live bodies and could only trust their armour to protect them as they began to desperately strike at the Marauders.
One by one, the Brettonians fell. Dead or injured, it did not matter. They were being one-sidedly slaughtered while the Marauders barely suffered anything more serious than the odd cut from a sword.
And when Erik finally approached the enemy commander in the heart of the chaos, the nerve of the knights further back failed them as they began to hack away at their fellow countrymen in a desperate attempt to escape.
Seeing the sight, Erik let loose a bellowing laugh as he taunted the frozen knight before him.
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“Look at that! Hahaha! So mighty, so strong! Look at how they so easily turn on those they ought to protect! Looks like the might of Brettonia has fallen low if this is what passes for Knights in these parts!
You sure you don’t want to run after them? Escape while you can or perhaps persuade them to charge back in? Hahaha!”
Isabeau was appalled at the sight of her retinue killing defenceless serfs, even more so than the sight of the northmen cutting them down from their saddles in honourable combat.
‘Is this… are these heathens a punishment from The Lady? A scourge sent upon us to punish the people of Brettonia for losing their way…’ – The deeply devout woman felt her entire worldview tremble as she saw yet another serf fall under the blades of her own men.
Then, turning back to the enemy that spoke such ridiculing words, she voicelessly raised her sword and struck at him. Her world, her vision of justice and honour, had crumbled and all she desired in this moment was to strike a final blow against the enemy of her kingdom so at least she might find some redemption in The Lady’s embrace.
Sadly, the pendant had exhausted much of its power by protecting her once. The full weight of her armaments were slowly returning and slowing her down.
She helplessly watched as her weapon was effortlessly swept aside by the black metal weapon of her opponent and couldn’t resist a shudder of fear when she felt a large hand yank her from the saddle onto the ground.
Something hard, either a rock or something else, must have lain there on the ground but when Isabeau hit the ground she felt a strong force knock against her head and she instantly lost consciousness. Darkness clouded her mind and vision as the horrendous screams around her made their way into the nightmare of her sub consciousness.
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Erik felt disappointed, cheated even. He had hoped for a good fight between the enemy commander and himself but instead the opponent seemed to have no skill at all.
“Nepotism and social-rank based promotions truly are the bane of capability. Who let such a piss-poor fighter out in the field to command?”
The rest of the massacre was swiftly finished, but Erik took little part in it. The sport of battle had turned sour after the disappointment.
200 thralls and 50 knights had been either killed or (re)captured. The price was a bit over 20 of Erik’s men. All men that had been guarding the prisoners had been taken out by the knights but on the counter-charge the Norscans had lost barely anyone.
In the end only two of the knights managed to escape outside of javelin range as they desperately urged their horses to go faster. A shame, but also inevitable. None of Erik’s men had the ability to catch up with a sprinting horse.
‘Maybe if I tried my best I could catch up?’ – Erik mused to himself as he returned to where his disappointing enemy lay sprawled on the ground.
When Erik kneeled over the unconscious enemy, he noticed a few shocking details he had missed in the heat of battle.
This knight was considerably smaller in stature than the other knights and, with the exception of four other knights, the workmanship of the armour was miles above that of the rest of the knights.
And when Erik unstrapped the helmet and lifted it off the head to have a look at ‘his’ face, he gasped in surprise.
“Hoh, it was a woman! The enemy commander was a woman! No wonder those chauvinist Brettonian knights… no, I can’t attribute their shittiness to her. From the looks of it, she and that handful of other knights with better armour are different from the rest. The shit ones are most likely local knights while she is probably from a larger, more prosperous place.”
Erik then suddenly frowned as once more he heard a strong chorus of voices scream out in his mind.
‘Disappointing fight, but could put up a good ‘fight’ instead?’
‘Battle and lust, two sides of the same coin. Haven’t had enough of one so the other can replace and sate your appetite and desires!’
Slightly uncomfortable, Erik pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind. He simply didn’t fancy the idea while still drenched in gore and other filth.
‘Still, she doesn’t look too bad! Short, black hair, actually quite a pretty and cute face and she obviously has some fire in her or she wouldn’t have become a knight…’
As he ordered his men to collect their dead, put the captives in chains and pile the extra spoils on the carts, Erik decided to keep the tomboyish female knight on a separate chain.
He definitely wasn’t influenced in any way to make that decision.
“Yeah, I just want to try get some information out of a high ranking person… Yeah, absolutely just that…” – Erik tried to convince himself.
Got damn it. Need mass release…. Not chapters but loins
ugh need more
Damn... binged everything today.... need MoAr CHaOs!
Nice! I'm happy to know you enjoyed it that much! MoAr and increasingly MoOaaAr Chaos will come!
@Macrendil-Ysmir FOR CHAOS UNITED!
Thank you for the chap and i cant wait for the magic