103.
103.
[Sshwaaaa- Hwoong- Tuduk- Tuduk- Puk!]
"Urk!"
The axe blade that cut through the rain burrowed into fragile human flesh.
With that indifferent sound, a spray of blood surged up and diluted into the falling raindrops.
The short cry let out soon merged with the screams that followed, filling the dark night sky.
[Puk!]
"Khak!"
Leaving behind the enemy slowly falling with an axe buried in his neck, I lunged at another foe who was aiming a bowstring at me and thrust my dagger in.
Blood flowed with the sound of air escaping from a lung. Unless one had an unusually rare constitution, the dagger that I had aimed at the heart on the left side had struck true.
Even letting go of the hand that held the dagger, I naturally drew a short sword from the waist of the enemy collapsing like a discarded puppet.
[Sseureung-]
An iron sword in not too bad a condition. About midway between a short sword and a long sword in size?
Seeing that all the fallen enemies carried something like this, it seemed Burgred had spent a bit of money...
'At this rate, things might get dangerous if we give them more time.'
While a faint sense of crisis flickered through my mind, I did not stop rushing forward.
The ground, wet and slippery from the rain, posed no obstacle to me whatsoever.
As I dashed forward cutting through the wind and raindrops, a quite sizeable prey came into view ahead.
As if the still loudly whistling sound had been an assembly order, there were five enemies crashing through the underbrush in a frenzy.
[Sshwaaaa- hoo- hoo- tat tat tat!]
My charging speed increased, and the moment the rearmost enemy sensed something amiss and turned his head, the sword in my hand already grazed his throat.
[Seogeok!]
"Ugh!"
[Teop!]
"Eht!"
With my eagle hand I cut, and with my left hand I grabbed another enemy's shoulder and stood him up.
[Bbeok!]
"Kheok!"
I struck the turned enemy's chin hard with the back of the sword held in my eagle hand.
The enemy collapsed with a short single scream. He wouldn't die, but he would not wake for a while.
"What the...!"
"Don't look back, run! Just run to the rally point no matter what!"
"Huff! Huff!"
Even as two of their comrades fell, the Mercian warriors glanced back and kept running.
On their faces was fear directed at me.
'The forest is wide, and this night is long.'
"Ssseup- hoo-"
[Sshwaaaa-]
As I steadied my rough breathing for a moment, the ceaselessly falling rain entered the corner of my mouth and moistened my throat.
"You will not be able to escape."
[Tat! Tat-tat!]
My senses, as I kicked off the ground again and burst forward, vividly relayed the traces of the enemies.
*****
[Tududuk- tuduk-]
The heavy rain of the previous night finally stopped, and in the forest only the occasional sound of water droplets falling from leaves could be heard.
Much had happened within it, but the slowly rising sun merely indifferently illuminated the traces of the fierce struggle.
"Anyone hurt?"
Konungr Helgi, who had returned to the rally point, and the rangers under his command all looked utterly disheveled.
With torrential rain pouring down, a deep forest utterly unfriendly to humans, and darkness, the men who had spent a night of blades and blood all stood resolutely with hollow, exhausted eyes, as if they might collapse at any moment.
"We lost seven, and none were gravely wounded."
Leofric answered calmly.
"The enemies we killed last night alone numbered over a hundred, so those who died fought to their hearts' content. It was an honorable death."
"Gods, please watch over them well."
"Until we meet again..."
Between those who live by the sword, long words were unnecessary.
In this era's Europe, life and death were that close to us. It would not be anything special.
Yet my heart was not at ease. I sought the name of the Goddess Hel in my heart after a long while, and mourned their deaths.
"The rain that fell last night was a great help to us, but it also hindered us from pursuing the enemy deeper. They will likely return, Konungr. However, this time their target will not be the main force, but the forest."
It was Refil who spoke in a calm tone.
Beside the enemies we struck last night, enemy scouts moved in several other places.
As a result, it seemed a small battle had also occurred at the main force.
Fortunately, with the Konungr personally out on a night operation, there were no Jarls who could sleep soundly... Under Ubba's command, they successfully repelled the enemy and even pursued, but soon had to give it up.
'That's the problem. Defeating the enemy isn't even difficult, but continuing to be harassed like this is the real issue.'
If I had had my way, I'd have set the forest on fire, but... as I had experienced last night, rain fell often and the nature of this area, with many water-laden trees, meant fire would not catch easily.
Nor was the environment conducive to freely setting fires, with petroleum welling up in abundance...
In the end, there was no choice but to move more diligently.
"The main force must continue advancing. Fortunately, if we follow the road, their fortress is only about a day's distance, so we can hold out. The hunters of Huntadun and I will continue to guard the forest."
When I looked back at Jarl Leofric and the rangers of Huntadun standing behind him, their faces, which I had thought only knew how to grin and crack jokes, were all set hard.
Not from resentment, tension, or fear at my words that we would continue fighting.
They were men with the faces of warriors whose fire had truly ignited.
"They say in the forest, the one who takes position first is king, but that saying is actually wrong."
[Kkuuk-]
Leofric's serious face, as if I were seeing it for the first time.
The marshlander, veins bulging on the hand gripping the dagger, spoke in a resolute tone.
"At least in the marshes and forests, we are kings. I will prove that to you, Konungr, and to them."
The rangers, following their Jarl, all had vivid blue fire smoldering in their eyes.
Before that resolute determination, I merely nodded.
"I will be with you."
"Yes, Konungr...!"
*****
After that, our army's movement proceeded under the principle of 'slow but steady!'
Cavalry commander Thorbjörn, whose tasks had diminished due to the terrain, kept moving back and forth on the rear road to prevent any possible enemy flanking and guarded the supplies, and...
The main force under Ubba, Oleg, and Refil pushed forward, supporting the rangers who were locked in fierce fighting in the forests on both flanks and overcoming the crude traps and sabotage the enemy had laid upon the road.
Above all, the rangers deployed in the woods on either side of the road, along with a handful of warriors from the mountains of Scandinavia, had thrown themselves into an entirely different kind of battle.
After the slaughter of the night before, the fight against an enemy screening force that moved far more cautiously was utterly unlike any pitched shield-wall clash on an open plain or rolling hill.
A more exhausting, maddening, and spitefully vicious kind of fight.
In truth, the chance for a man to show off his skill with a sword or spear was vanishingly rare. The vast majority of casualties came from traps, arrows, javelins, throwing axes, and daggers—nothing but missiles.
The enemy's dogged persistence was enough to leave even hardened forest hunters like Leofric shaking their heads.
Yet what was truly fortunate for us, and truly unfortunate for them, was that the distance to Lincoln and the fortress called Cair Lerion—Leicester—was so agonizingly short.
By my reckoning, the march should have taken a single day. Instead, it took three full days before we arrived, by which time we and the enemy alike were so worn down that—if I might exaggerate a little—a man would have plunged into sleep the instant his head touched the ground.
Of course, in the end we overcame that bitter forest road and stood before the enemy fortress, so it was a victory on points for us, achieving the strategic aim... but still.
Watching our own rangers and the enemy scouts still locked in battle somewhere out in that boundless forest, I felt as though the very thought of forest tracks would make my teeth chatter.
'Truly, the wisdom of the ancestors is formidable. Just sticking to the rivers is the easiest and safest way...!'
My war is a war of conquest, which marks it a little apart from the wars of our forefathers... but I finally understood exactly why the vikings would rather die than stray from the rivers.
"Helgi. I see why they hurled themselves at us like madmen in the forest. Look at that."
Ubba came up beside me, exhaling a weary breath, and shook his head.
He too had barely slept a wink in three days. The cold, impassive cast of his face was now layered with such irritation and exhaustion that it almost looked decadent—but Ubba's fortitude was something astonishing.
"Indeed... the walls are a little shoddy."
I had already spotted what Ubba was pointing at. Still, even on a fresh look, the walls were hardly impressive.
Admittedly, our standards might be a touch lofty, having already cut our teeth on the walls of Jorvik and Lincoln.
But these ones were truly manageable.
"We won't even need to build any catapults. A few ladders and a ram? The west side will be difficult because of the river, but we can hammer the other three sides and then finish off the weakest point."
I made my estimate as precisely as a surgeon planning an operation.
Turning half-coherent thoughts over in my mind, I tried to imagine how I would mount a defense if I had been the lord of that castle. Nothing useful came to mind.
Fighting from behind a fortress reduces both attacker and defender to a grim simplicity.
Without a relief force, that castle could not hold. From the outset, it looked like a fortress built for no other purpose than to briefly delay an invader.
"You speak like Ivar or Björn. In barely two years you've become a seasoned warrior."
Ubba said, raising an eyebrow.
"At least in battle, being compared to those two is a compliment. Now, let us prepare."
"As you say, my Konungr brother."
There was much to do.
The forest fighting still needed to be managed, I had to send a surrender envoy, oversee the resting of the troops, the siege preparations, and the establishment of a camp.
"Stórolf. Tell the Jarls to gather here."
"Aye! Konungr!"
[Clip-clop! Clip-clop!]
Stórolf spurred his cream-colored horse and rode out hard upon my order.
It was good that the rain the night before had given me a free bath, but far more mud and blood still clung to me, and I ached for a hot soak.
But this was no time to indulge in such luxuries.
"Hya! Let's go, Camembert."
[Prrr-]
After standing still beside Ubba, I roused Camembert, who had lowered his head to graze on the grass, and advanced a little farther forward.
Where the forest ended, at that boundary drawn by the hand of man, the wheat fields had just been sown and were slowly sprouting upward.
Beyond those still-bright-green fields, in the far distance, a slow river wound past a single fortress set before it.
From the villages around it came no sign of human presence, not even the lowing of a single animal.
Every other fortress that had faced us so far had been filled with chaos and fear. This one, however, was exceedingly...
'Well-ordered. You've made thorough preparations, Ceolwulf. You truly mean to have a go at it.'
Once we were past this place, there was no meaningful resistance left until Mercia's Tamworth.
And even as matters had come to such a pass, Burgred gave no sign of reaction whatsoever.
It was surely proof that Rhodri of the Cymry and Hásteinn were doing their work properly in the west.
Ending things clumsily now would only leave both sides utterly exhausted.
I had not been able to swallow East Anglia in a single bite for lack of spare capacity... but now, did I lack spare capacity?
And so, however the circumstances had come about, this was where things stood, and I now set my mind firmly upon finishing Mercia off for good.
Honestly, I was greedy for it.
Having come and seen it with my own eyes, I could tell: this land was no lesser than Northumbria.
If I put down roots and claimed a suitable place as my direct holding—five years, ten years? By then, not a single soul in my lands would ever die for want of food.
And not only in my lands. Even those who were merely friendly to us would at the very least be spared from starvation.
Was this why so many conquerors throughout history had thrown themselves so fervently into conquest?
The more land I consumed, the more enemies I shattered—somehow our strength only grew. With so many sweet cakes laid out before my eyes, I could not make my hand stop.
So I had to ask myself a question.
'Once I have seized all of Mercia, the whole middle of Britain will be mine. So—what comes next?'
To the north, Ivar, Olaf, and Uhtred had already begun operations against the Kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of Strathclyde.
In Wessex, apart from the forces Æthelred Cyning had deployed to the west, he was said to be slowly, steadily gathering more troops. The place was Canterbury, in the old Kingdom of Kent, sitting directly below East Anglia.
'In the end, this fight will not be finished until either the Saxons or the Northmen are driven out of this land.'
The fighting would not end.
Watching a rider carrying a pure white flag race out from that distant, tiny-looking, shabby fortress, I steeled my resolve.