The iron man cannot know Tanya old life. The only people who could realistically know about that is more warpy or godly.
The Saga of the Runt (Youjo Senki/WH30k)
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Chapter 8, Legend Building 1
Chapter 8, Legend Building 1
Tanya
Eastern shores of Asaheim, The Kingdom of Russ, Northwest territory Fenris
14 months since awakening in the pod
Damn was it cold outside, I thought as I sat in the woods surrounded by a motley crew of my wolves and valuable human volunteers who learned to show the wild animal enough respect to not get snapped at. Not many were foolish enough to take the wolves as something tame that would deal with human bullshit, but enough fingers were missing from those who fucked around that anyone who continued to work with them had to be the cream of the crop, which made them valuable assistants I kept an eye on.
And I needed all the assistants I could get my hands on with tonight's prey. There was a monster in these woods, something that was playing hell on the civilian populations and since the fearsome thing on the planet tended to be wolves and I was the king's wolf manager that meant I had to volunteer myself to deal with the monster. Granted I also had the best chance of surviving of the local adventure stalk, my altered biology was too useful a tool not to abuse it for my own profit. And now that I was part of the system of this world I had access to enough tools and supplies to really have some fun.
But I get ahead of myself. It had been two months since I met the king in the woods. At the time I didn't know he was the king, of course, but things had been looking up ever since then. After the fight against the assassins that tried to take him out, which at the time I simply took as brigands trying to kill my employers, he had invited me and my wolves with him to a nearby town.
The town had not been a splendid place, simple wood sheds with tree logs embedded in the ground and sharpened to keep out the animals, but it had been enough for the king and his men to feel safe and party. They bought out all the booze and meat they could get from the village and shared not only among themselves but with myself and my pack too. Watching some wolves and ravens stumble around drunkenly had been entertaining but I had made use of that time to talk with soldiers and did the best I could to learn the words for meat and alcohol, weapons and armor, and anything else I could get.
By the next time I talked to the king in the morning, I was able to have a few words mixed in with our pantomiming, and what words they were. Figuring out that he was a king had not been hard, the amount of money he dropped the night before was a sign of wealth, but finding out he wanted to hire my services on a permanent basis had taken a bit.
I would have been a fool not to take such an opportunity but I had endeavored to clarify my contract on the matter of my pack. It was through them that much of my possible success could be achieved and to abandon them would be a foolish move.
Thankfully the king was also interested in my potential to train the wolf pups I handed out the day before. That had not been in my plan when I did that but I was glad I did as it secured another way I could raise my worth in this society. It was a simple contract that we then entered: I, as the leader of my wolves, would work to train up the next generation of wolves so that they would be able to help humanity and would bring down any other mountain wolve tribes that entered his territory, something I was more than with familiar with thanks to my time on the mountain.
In exchange, he would pay me a good stipend so I could build myself a little home near his castle and feed my wolves. It was a damn good starter deal so I shook on it, thinking I could improve on my options later if need be. With my future secured I traveled with his housecarls back to Castle Russ, setting up my wolves in an abandoned barn outside the castle grounds. And thus began the processes of integrating myself into this medieval society.
Something that proved not hard at all. With funding, I was able to pay for a woodcutter's time, and with the help of my wolves for transport, I kept the costs down. I was quickly able to build myself a modest house with some help of the locals. And then I had to talk with a lot of tradesmen as my unusually large frame required specially made furniture. By the end of my first month, I not only had a warm home to call my own but also had had enough interactions with tradesmen of this world that I could speak the language well enough that I felt I could communicate adequately. Well really I felt that way after the first week but I thought I could make myself clear with more eloquence by the end of the month.
By the start of the second month, I had a secured a good enough home and stable income which meant it was time to expand. I didn't know how long my biological clock had on it, maybe I would have a human standard of 100 or maybe more. On the other hand maybe all those neat tricks I had came at the expense of my lifespan and I only had 49 years left on my life. I didn't know and as it was I could not sit back and depend on the king's stipend
So the second month was divided between two pastimes, Wolf training and helping the human housecarls who came by my home to learn how to train their wolf pups so that they were loyal to them and able to hunt.
I would take my wolves out and hunt the megafauna, bringing down beasts and letting them eat their fill. I then brought back the furs and bones and what meat was left back to local markets, supplementing my income. This money I used to secure more resources for myself, commissioning armor in the colors the king used from the local armorer in order to show my loyalty as well upgrading my arsenal. Often my elkhorn weapons were sharper than the metal tool I had made, but they could and would break in a fight so having professionals create a real sword for me, as well some chainlinks to go under the leather I commissioned, was a necessity..
It had taken time for the sword to be created, the blade after all had to be adjusted to my size. Since I was tall enough that a two-handed sword could be wielded with one that meant it was nearly 4 feet long, not to mention I'd let a bit of my inner nationalist come through and had them create a single-bladed sword. The style here was European, with one blade on both sides, but I had them create something closer to a katana, though not properly made as there had been several alterations in the design. Having something I could keep sharp without having to worry about breaking it would do wonders for my hunting of animals.
I had asked for a simple tool and, besides my requested design choice, it should have been rather plain. this however turned out to be not true and I was a bit surprised to find that the craftsman had taken initiative on his own and etched a wolf into the cross guard of the blade. It was good work and I had been prepared to give him extra for that little mark of ownership I could use in an emergency, but he refused and said something about how a chosen of the Allfather deserved the best and it was an honor to make the best. I'm not sure what that was about but free sword upgrade is free sword upgrade so I was not about to turn it down.
Yes, using their faith in some supposed god-like being to my advantage was a bit underhanded, but they weren't demeaned. I may not have faith in their god but I believe that he existed since I suspected that I had already met him. The old man I met in the fortress and his teleportation trick, who was he and what he was about I didn't know but I suspected he was not a god, not like the damnable Being X at least.
Being X was some parasitic entity that preyed on the hopes and dreams of people while he did nothing for them and simply shoved them onto their next reincarnation in life. He had abused whatever power he had to create a world or place me in a world destined for war to try test my convictions, to force me to believe in him.
This Allfather hadn't demanded anything, he asked to help his people in ways he could not which implied he had some ability to help them already but at the same time acknowledged limits. People did seem to think of him as a god but it was worth considering he had been around a long time and had tried to help, seemingly in an advisory role.
I doubted he was either God or even a god, I suspected the old adage that any sufficiently advanced sciences will appear as magic to those who can not figure it out was in play. He was long-lived, had the ability to teleport, and had mentioned programming. Factor in a few pieces of evidence I had that humanity had once been more advanced than they were right now, such as the tunnel that appeared to have been bored Through the Black Demon's mountain and Russ Castle having a large amount of poured cement used in its construction near the older section while the new section was using bricks cut to size… I believed it was reasonable to assume that I was dealing with some highly advanced AI.
What this AI's original purpose was, I didn't know. It apparently had been modified several times by its own words, but seemed to have a goal to help humanity which was okay in my book. If it wanted to selflessly help the people of this world I was not going to complain if folk thought of it as a god. Though I suspected there may be more to the story, and answers probably laid in that tunnel network he warned me from going into.
At the moment, that was not my concern. I didn't care what secrets it hid as long as they didn't affect my life, and if there were monsters down there… Well, I was paid to hunt monsters attacking humans, not monsters leaving them alone by living in faraway tunnels.
Besides the conundrum of religion on this planet, the only other major thing that I had happened in my time setting up my new life was the constant number of shieldmaiden knocking down my door.
Fenris was a harsh planet, humanity survived here by luck and giale, which meant everyone fought and no one quit. So i had suspected that female humans of this planet would have a military leaning, but this had led to them also having a certain… boldness in their opinions.
The shield maidens in question were wives of the housecarl I had given wolves to, and they had heard the story I was some wild woman from the wilderness. I had not mentioned the whole being taken in by the wolves things but they seemed to have decided that I must have been raised by them. They had gone out of their way to "turn me into a proper woman of Fenris". They did their best to teach me how to care for my hair, which I will admit I hadn't done much for. Wolves didn't care if I looked professional and I didn't have too much time to do more than make sure I didn't have monster gunk in it.
They took my wild mane of bedhead and turned it into an interesting affair, most of it was tied up into a ponytail at the back but some had been swapped down to the right side of my head, with two braids coming down the side. It wasn't exactly something I would have gone for but this was apparently the social norm and when in Rome best do as Romans do. The only real issue I had was that one of the locks that were meant to be swept down to the right slowly raised throughout the day till it was nearly straight up. It reminded me a bit of an ahoge, something I'd rather not have on my head as everything else looked a bit professional to men. So I worked hard to keep the lockdown throughout the day and I hoped it would just go away in time.
They also suggested that I start looking for more 'Russ' styles of armors and things I could add to my gear, some I did implement as appearing as Russ as possible would allow me to secure my position quicker.
This is how I got myself in my current mess. There were monsters that needed to be killed. And I knew that if I did it would show my usefulness to the king outside of the wolves taming I did. So when the king invited me to a feast and brought up the subject of an attack along the border that needed to be dealt with I stood up and offered my services right away.
So here I was outside, not warm in any way, with a bunch of men who wanted to also prove their worth to the king and had jumped up to offer to help the moment I had done so. From my pack, Fierce and Cunning were here along with 25 wolves that I trusted to work well with my human forces. Though I accidentally changed their names when the king had asked me what I called them while noting my dependence on them. Being that I mentally referred to them by adjectives for so long It seems that I told him the names I used in Fenrisian, which was Freki and Geri. Everyone around me had then used that name when referring about them and well… Freki and Geri was a bit better than Fierce and Cunning, so I went with it. They didn't seem to mind, they liked the head pat they got for doing their job well.
And the plan for today's operation was simple: we waited. Fenris was a hell world when it came to the environment and the creatures. Yes, we could go hunting the monster in its habitat, tire ourselves out, and be slowly picked off as it chose its battles. Or we could look at a map of the territory it had been going through to determine its general direction, rush to the town that it was probably going to attack next, and build a small line of people who checked up on each other every couple of minutes.
That is what we had done, not even a terrible strategy really. We were out in the open, camping and pretty much having a merry time. Someone had brought a little alcohol though I had demanded that everyone only drink sparingly, since we didn't know how long we would be out there. Though I had to promise we would drink our fill after the kill.
There had been some grumbles but as long as they got a little alcohol every once in a while no one seemed to complain too much. And we needed to be sharp because, as I said, the monster had no enemies. It would be brave, it would be bold, and it would attack.
Humanity was not the top dog amongst the species on this planet, it was just one of many and not even near the top. So a monster like this, who lived its times in the mountains fighting other monsters just as vicious as itself, should see us as nothing but gnats. This was an unfortunate truth but something we could use to our advantage.
I had placed myself in the volunteers willing to be live bait for the monster, and yes that was a dangerous prospect but one I was willing to accept. I trusted the wolves to have my back, and if things really went South all the wolves here had saddlebags strapped to their sides that the humans could grab on while we ran for our lives.
Hopefully, that wouldn't happen but you never know with unknown mysterious monsters. I mean, for all I know I was about to fight Godzilla. Though most likely it was just one of the many massive wolves I kept seeing up in the mountains looking down into our little valley while we lived at the mountain's feet.
At least that's what I thought to write up till I heard a massive tree be thrown through the forest into a couple of other trees, knocking them over.
Getting up from a log I had been sitting on I signaled at my wolves to circle the area and tried to wave over the volunteer humans so we could form some sort of defense.
Whatever we were fighting or about to fight could throw trees and it was big. As far as I've seen wolves couldn't rip trees out by the roots, so who knew what monster we were dealing with.
"OH, alfather… NO! It's an Ice Troll!" One of my volunteers screamed before he turned tail and fled in the other direction.
I wanted to ask what he was talking about and what an ice troll was but he was gone faster than I could get a word out. And with the rest of volunteers looking like they were ready to bolt at a moment's notice I figured asking questions and getting more information on the exact nature of the beast would frighten those who were less scared into actually running. Better to appear competent and in control of the situation than confused and having no idea.
Morale is a fickle thing and can easily be broken by one wrong word, and I needed the morale up for whatever this creature was. Drawing my sword I waited for whatever this thing was to come closer. The sounds it was making told me it was at least moving in our general direction and I saw a few trees topple at a distance.
I was starting to wonder how slow this damn beast would be when the smell hit me. I don't often think about smells as a tactical advantage, preferring to use my eyes and hit the target in the light of the day. But I knew that my ability to smell was far superior than what it should be.
I could tell which of my volunteers had bothered to get themselves a good cleaning in the last week and that was a bit of knowledge I'd rather not think about most of the time. I could even tell Freki and Geri apart simply by the smell of their fur, which was mildly impressive.
The smell I was smelling now was familiar, very familiar in fact to something I had fought before, but not a wolf. No, this smelled of Yeti but somehow worse. It was an ugly decaying smell, something that reeked of death and wet fur.
Having that few moments of extra knowledge of where the beast was coming from was invaluable as I was able to immediately point in the general direction it was coming and say loudly to the men "it comes from that way, move to your prepared positions and ready your bows."
The men hearing my voice seemed to at least respond and immediately moved behind trees and raised their bows, a few of them lighting the end of javelins with pitch.
I was unfamiliar enough with the beast that I had no idea if that was actually effective or not but I figured at the bare minimum the trees were wet enough they wouldn't catch on fire and burn the whole forest down around us. Any flames they put out in the general direction of the creature would at least backlit it and make the next shots and throws more accurate.
Holding the blade in both hands I waited, watching the woods. The banging had stopped but I knew it was out there, probably trying to determine what would be the best avenue of attack if it was sentient.
Or if it wasn't maybe it was simply counting its chickens before they were hatched. Either was possible since I had no idea on the level of intelligence of these creatures.
Said creature obviously had decided that it had enough potential strength to win any fight that happened and came charging out that thicker part of the forest I had been pointing to. I was tall but the thing charging me was absolutely gigantic, standing somewhere close to double my height and covered in white fur. In its left hand it wielded a tree trunk as if it was a massive club and in its right, it had a giant boulder.
So at minimum it had the intelligence of a great ape and the body of a giant, not something I was looking forward to fighting. Not something I would ever want to fight, in fact. I considered making a move to step away but the volunteers worked against me in this aspect as they were witnesses. Unless I was willing to waste valuable human resources that were already training to work with my wolves I didn't want to upset my status in their eyes.
Taking a breath I calmed myself, steadied my hands on both my blades, and waited. The beast was charging directly at me without a care in the world, seeming intent on smashing me with that tree. I stood my ground and waited till the last moment. Something interrupted as someone thre a flaming javelin directly into the beast's face.
If I was a more shallow human, or a fool, I might have been insulted that someone had just taken the first strike. as It was… Well the beast immediately took its eyes off of me and whacked the trunk it was carrying into a tree resulting in shards of wood being sent in the general direction of the man who fired the arrow. I heard a scream which told me that someone was injured, hopefully not the guy who just bought me the moment of time as I already owed him a thank you for the opening. With a couple steps I was beside the beast and, remembering the few kendo lessons I had in my youth, I slashed the back of the creature's leg open.
A thing I regretted as I saw the blood start sizzling on the metal blade, there was probably no way around the fact I was going to need to take my sword in for repairs. But considering the roar, and the fact that it went down to one knee, it seemed that my money had been well spent.
The beast turned to try and face me, bringing the tree down to where I had been standing, but I sidestepped out of its path and then slashed up, cutting the underside of its arm then dodging back to avoid the spray of blood.
The smell off of the things seemed to just get worse with each cut, I didn't know if they just naturally stank inside themselves or if the chemical acid just smelled that bad but I could swear I could see the area around the creature distorting with the odor.
Then the mega yeti, or ice troll as the volunteer had informed me, was down to just the rock it was carrying in its other hand and one good leg. It attempted to get back up but apparently, I'd cut a lot deeper than I thought because I heard a sickening crunch and the leg shifted in a way that implied to me that the bone had broken.
Careful to avoid the ass, I moved up behind it and slashed the blade along the last leg as deep as I could. I cut in fact too deep as when it reached the other side I was missing half of the blade.
It looked like the acid had eaten through portions of the blade, causing it to snap inside the beast as it hit the bone.
If I ever fought another one of these things I was going to have to make sure to have plenty of spare swords, or spare spears. Something I could easily replace because that just cost me half of my budget for a month.
Stepping back I saw that the beast was not going anywhere, both its legs were ruined and the arm that I had cut was not strong enough to pull it in any way. It attempted to throw the Rock at me but, well, I had faster reflexes and was able to dodge out of the way.
Looking at the men who had volunteered to help I simply pointed the broken sword at the creature and said "Burn this monster!".
That seemed to break the silence that seemed to have fallen into the clearing and they let loosed their arrows into the creature, which seemed to penetrate enough to cause it pain but wasn't really killing it.
Shrugging I went to the camp and grabbed one of the six barrels of alcohol I purchased as reward and carried it to the beast, ripping the cap off of it. Careful to stay out of its range of its broken arm I dumped the contents onto its back where it quickly got set alike by the flaming javalins buried in its sides. The screaming was not exactly great, however it did wonders to remove the smell
Having accomplished that I sat back and let the men pepper it with a few more arrows. There was not much more I could do. I could let my wolves chew on it but its heart was buried somewhere deep in its chest so it wouldn't die quickly. I would need a spear to be able to get at it and with its chest on the ground, I would have to penetrate through its spinal cord or find some way around it.
So the best option to kill the thing was to simply let it burn until it took so much damage that it could just not recover.
It took some time but, after 5 minutes, it stopped screaming. About 5 minutes later the volunteers stopped shooting it with arrows.
Carefully I stood up from the tree I had been leaning against and walked over to inspect it then had one of the volunteers hand me over his sword. With careful movements I sliced its head off, just to be sure it was dead, and then handed it back with a promise to pay for a new one when we got back to civilization.
And with the monster killed I had time to check up on the wounded volunteer that had first shot the beast. Walking over there I found that he was alive though his upper arm had been penetrated by a wooden splinter the length of his lower arm. He seemed otherwise all right so I called over Geri, pulled out medical supplies, and got to work carefully bandaging him up. Pulling the piece of wood out right now would just make sure he'd bleed out quicker, so the best option was to get him to somewhere warm where he could be operated in safety and with whatever local drugs they had to numb the pain if possible. Once I was sure it was secure I helped him up onto Geri's back and told my wolf to take the wounded man to the nearest village.
The wolf noted his understanding and immediately set off, with the wounded volunteer holding tightly onto the saddlebags that made a makeshift saddle. I should really investigate how to create a saddle and see if I could make something for my wolves, they were big enough that the average human could definitely use them as a Calvary animal. Just needed the right equipment.
King Thengir of Russ
Eastern shores of Asaheim, The Kingdom of Russ, Fenris
I smiled as I listened to the news reports coming out from my kingdom, it has been 3 months since I had recruited Tanya to my kingdom's forces. And she had proven herself more than adequate as a wolf handler and was showing herself to be a proper King candidate with every day.
For the first month I had been a bit worried as she had not done much more than deal with the last remnants of the wolves, bringing them in line and helping a few of my housecarl train their own animals. Besides that, she had seemed stuck in her own project of building a nice little house. I had been there and it was a rather simple affair, effective but not exactly a place built for a king. It was right there, humble really and that was a good sign that she was well and truly what I was looking for in a replacement.
But I had slowly been pushing for her to get her legend growing. Starting last month I had started to talk about problems the kingdom was facing with certain monsters coming down from the mountains whenever she was in the room.
I assumed she was looking for things to fight and so, since that is where she was from originally as far as I could piece together from our conversations, presenting an opportunity for her to go fight these creatures thus seemed like the perfect bait.
And, starting with the ice troll, she had taken the opportunity. Every time I'd mentioned there was a problem she'd volunteered to go take it out, often with a big smile on her face as if she was a conquering hero. And the nobles and housecarls ate it up. The best part was that she didn't even cause too much problems when anyone wanted to come to witness her fights. The only demand she ever made when someone wanted to go with her was that they had to be ready to fight as well.
Something that every man of Fenris was already willing to do, but nobles didn't normally go out and do adventuring unless they were the ones in charge.
Something about Tanya was so charismatic that even the most stubborn Noble was willing to go see what she was up to. Since Lord Tyr, who had taken a wound fighting the ice troll with her on that first adventure, had received some of the credit thanks to Tanya's willingness to share a lot more nobles were volunteering to go with her.
Having the opportunity to claim you rode and fought with a chosen of the Allfather was an intoxicating possibility for many nobles. And I would not be surprised if a few of them wouldn't try to prove their worth to her in hopes to attract her as a wife. It was inevitable: where young men went, hormones would cloud their judgment.
Hadn't happened yet, or at least Tanya had not brought up any incidents to my concern, so I wasn't worrying about it just yet.
What I was more worried about was the spring which was coming in 3 months. Now winter would be over and we would be entering a time of normality, when that happened it would be possible to send a force across the mountains to deal with the treacherous king Farthegn. By then I hoped that her legend as a monster killer would have grown so wide that I could name her as the commander of the expedition across the mountains to deal with him.
There was a chance she would say no, but she seemed to like a fight as long as it was for a good cause and that treacherous bastard had tried to break the peace. What better cause would there be than bring him down?
Even if there was always a possibility of failure they should at least create enough damage on the other side of the continent that the treacherous bastard would not be able to pull something like this again for the next decade. And if she did succeed she would have proven herself worthy to not only myself but to anyone who may want to challenge her.
I'm sure someone like the young fool or any other of the minor Lords on this side of the continent might eventually try prevent her from taking what I was about to offer, but I had a good feeling.
Tanya would become a Russ and she would lead my people well after I was gone. With the legend sprouting around her now growing quickly with each monster she fought and killed, I doubted that anyone would have the courage to go against her when she officially became a Russ.
Writer note: All right we're entering a bit of a transitional period here like I understand that in a way this content may not be great but every monster she fights she probably end up fighting like six ice trolls if I did every monster she fight, it's better to just pay a quick picture of one monster or another as she fights them at least in my mind.
Maybe I'm wrong maybe you all want me to do every monster Tanya fights but I think I'd get bored of that sooner or later and I'm sure some folks would get bored of that as well better to have an example here or there of a monster she by it's how it went then do get stuck in the minutia of it and just bring updates as she's civilizes the planet of Fenris. And then I don't know maybe like 10 chapters will get the emperor could be more could be less it's not going to be within the next three that's for sure.
Edited by Pierre
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Tanya
Eastern shores of Asaheim, The Kingdom of Russ, Northwest territory Fenris
14 months since awakening in the pod
Damn was it cold outside, I thought as I sat in the woods surrounded by a motley crew of my wolves and valuable human volunteers who learned to show the wild animal enough respect to not get snapped at. Not many were foolish enough to take the wolves as something tame that would deal with human bullshit, but enough fingers were missing from those who fucked around that anyone who continued to work with them had to be the cream of the crop, which made them valuable assistants I kept an eye on.
And I needed all the assistants I could get my hands on with tonight's prey. There was a monster in these woods, something that was playing hell on the civilian populations and since the fearsome thing on the planet tended to be wolves and I was the king's wolf manager that meant I had to volunteer myself to deal with the monster. Granted I also had the best chance of surviving of the local adventure stalk, my altered biology was too useful a tool not to abuse it for my own profit. And now that I was part of the system of this world I had access to enough tools and supplies to really have some fun.
But I get ahead of myself. It had been two months since I met the king in the woods. At the time I didn't know he was the king, of course, but things had been looking up ever since then. After the fight against the assassins that tried to take him out, which at the time I simply took as brigands trying to kill my employers, he had invited me and my wolves with him to a nearby town.
The town had not been a splendid place, simple wood sheds with tree logs embedded in the ground and sharpened to keep out the animals, but it had been enough for the king and his men to feel safe and party. They bought out all the booze and meat they could get from the village and shared not only among themselves but with myself and my pack too. Watching some wolves and ravens stumble around drunkenly had been entertaining but I had made use of that time to talk with soldiers and did the best I could to learn the words for meat and alcohol, weapons and armor, and anything else I could get.
By the next time I talked to the king in the morning, I was able to have a few words mixed in with our pantomiming, and what words they were. Figuring out that he was a king had not been hard, the amount of money he dropped the night before was a sign of wealth, but finding out he wanted to hire my services on a permanent basis had taken a bit.
I would have been a fool not to take such an opportunity but I had endeavored to clarify my contract on the matter of my pack. It was through them that much of my possible success could be achieved and to abandon them would be a foolish move.
Thankfully the king was also interested in my potential to train the wolf pups I handed out the day before. That had not been in my plan when I did that but I was glad I did as it secured another way I could raise my worth in this society. It was a simple contract that we then entered: I, as the leader of my wolves, would work to train up the next generation of wolves so that they would be able to help humanity and would bring down any other mountain wolve tribes that entered his territory, something I was more than with familiar with thanks to my time on the mountain.
In exchange, he would pay me a good stipend so I could build myself a little home near his castle and feed my wolves. It was a damn good starter deal so I shook on it, thinking I could improve on my options later if need be. With my future secured I traveled with his housecarls back to Castle Russ, setting up my wolves in an abandoned barn outside the castle grounds. And thus began the processes of integrating myself into this medieval society.
Something that proved not hard at all. With funding, I was able to pay for a woodcutter's time, and with the help of my wolves for transport, I kept the costs down. I was quickly able to build myself a modest house with some help of the locals. And then I had to talk with a lot of tradesmen as my unusually large frame required specially made furniture. By the end of my first month, I not only had a warm home to call my own but also had had enough interactions with tradesmen of this world that I could speak the language well enough that I felt I could communicate adequately. Well really I felt that way after the first week but I thought I could make myself clear with more eloquence by the end of the month.
By the start of the second month, I had a secured a good enough home and stable income which meant it was time to expand. I didn't know how long my biological clock had on it, maybe I would have a human standard of 100 or maybe more. On the other hand maybe all those neat tricks I had came at the expense of my lifespan and I only had 49 years left on my life. I didn't know and as it was I could not sit back and depend on the king's stipend
So the second month was divided between two pastimes, Wolf training and helping the human housecarls who came by my home to learn how to train their wolf pups so that they were loyal to them and able to hunt.
I would take my wolves out and hunt the megafauna, bringing down beasts and letting them eat their fill. I then brought back the furs and bones and what meat was left back to local markets, supplementing my income. This money I used to secure more resources for myself, commissioning armor in the colors the king used from the local armorer in order to show my loyalty as well upgrading my arsenal. Often my elkhorn weapons were sharper than the metal tool I had made, but they could and would break in a fight so having professionals create a real sword for me, as well some chainlinks to go under the leather I commissioned, was a necessity..
It had taken time for the sword to be created, the blade after all had to be adjusted to my size. Since I was tall enough that a two-handed sword could be wielded with one that meant it was nearly 4 feet long, not to mention I'd let a bit of my inner nationalist come through and had them create a single-bladed sword. The style here was European, with one blade on both sides, but I had them create something closer to a katana, though not properly made as there had been several alterations in the design. Having something I could keep sharp without having to worry about breaking it would do wonders for my hunting of animals.
I had asked for a simple tool and, besides my requested design choice, it should have been rather plain. this however turned out to be not true and I was a bit surprised to find that the craftsman had taken initiative on his own and etched a wolf into the cross guard of the blade. It was good work and I had been prepared to give him extra for that little mark of ownership I could use in an emergency, but he refused and said something about how a chosen of the Allfather deserved the best and it was an honor to make the best. I'm not sure what that was about but free sword upgrade is free sword upgrade so I was not about to turn it down.
Yes, using their faith in some supposed god-like being to my advantage was a bit underhanded, but they weren't demeaned. I may not have faith in their god but I believe that he existed since I suspected that I had already met him. The old man I met in the fortress and his teleportation trick, who was he and what he was about I didn't know but I suspected he was not a god, not like the damnable Being X at least.
Being X was some parasitic entity that preyed on the hopes and dreams of people while he did nothing for them and simply shoved them onto their next reincarnation in life. He had abused whatever power he had to create a world or place me in a world destined for war to try test my convictions, to force me to believe in him.
This Allfather hadn't demanded anything, he asked to help his people in ways he could not which implied he had some ability to help them already but at the same time acknowledged limits. People did seem to think of him as a god but it was worth considering he had been around a long time and had tried to help, seemingly in an advisory role.
I doubted he was either God or even a god, I suspected the old adage that any sufficiently advanced sciences will appear as magic to those who can not figure it out was in play. He was long-lived, had the ability to teleport, and had mentioned programming. Factor in a few pieces of evidence I had that humanity had once been more advanced than they were right now, such as the tunnel that appeared to have been bored Through the Black Demon's mountain and Russ Castle having a large amount of poured cement used in its construction near the older section while the new section was using bricks cut to size… I believed it was reasonable to assume that I was dealing with some highly advanced AI.
What this AI's original purpose was, I didn't know. It apparently had been modified several times by its own words, but seemed to have a goal to help humanity which was okay in my book. If it wanted to selflessly help the people of this world I was not going to complain if folk thought of it as a god. Though I suspected there may be more to the story, and answers probably laid in that tunnel network he warned me from going into.
At the moment, that was not my concern. I didn't care what secrets it hid as long as they didn't affect my life, and if there were monsters down there… Well, I was paid to hunt monsters attacking humans, not monsters leaving them alone by living in faraway tunnels.
Besides the conundrum of religion on this planet, the only other major thing that I had happened in my time setting up my new life was the constant number of shieldmaiden knocking down my door.
Fenris was a harsh planet, humanity survived here by luck and giale, which meant everyone fought and no one quit. So i had suspected that female humans of this planet would have a military leaning, but this had led to them also having a certain… boldness in their opinions.
The shield maidens in question were wives of the housecarl I had given wolves to, and they had heard the story I was some wild woman from the wilderness. I had not mentioned the whole being taken in by the wolves things but they seemed to have decided that I must have been raised by them. They had gone out of their way to "turn me into a proper woman of Fenris". They did their best to teach me how to care for my hair, which I will admit I hadn't done much for. Wolves didn't care if I looked professional and I didn't have too much time to do more than make sure I didn't have monster gunk in it.
They took my wild mane of bedhead and turned it into an interesting affair, most of it was tied up into a ponytail at the back but some had been swapped down to the right side of my head, with two braids coming down the side. It wasn't exactly something I would have gone for but this was apparently the social norm and when in Rome best do as Romans do. The only real issue I had was that one of the locks that were meant to be swept down to the right slowly raised throughout the day till it was nearly straight up. It reminded me a bit of an ahoge, something I'd rather not have on my head as everything else looked a bit professional to men. So I worked hard to keep the lockdown throughout the day and I hoped it would just go away in time.
They also suggested that I start looking for more 'Russ' styles of armors and things I could add to my gear, some I did implement as appearing as Russ as possible would allow me to secure my position quicker.
This is how I got myself in my current mess. There were monsters that needed to be killed. And I knew that if I did it would show my usefulness to the king outside of the wolves taming I did. So when the king invited me to a feast and brought up the subject of an attack along the border that needed to be dealt with I stood up and offered my services right away.
So here I was outside, not warm in any way, with a bunch of men who wanted to also prove their worth to the king and had jumped up to offer to help the moment I had done so. From my pack, Fierce and Cunning were here along with 25 wolves that I trusted to work well with my human forces. Though I accidentally changed their names when the king had asked me what I called them while noting my dependence on them. Being that I mentally referred to them by adjectives for so long It seems that I told him the names I used in Fenrisian, which was Freki and Geri. Everyone around me had then used that name when referring about them and well… Freki and Geri was a bit better than Fierce and Cunning, so I went with it. They didn't seem to mind, they liked the head pat they got for doing their job well.
And the plan for today's operation was simple: we waited. Fenris was a hell world when it came to the environment and the creatures. Yes, we could go hunting the monster in its habitat, tire ourselves out, and be slowly picked off as it chose its battles. Or we could look at a map of the territory it had been going through to determine its general direction, rush to the town that it was probably going to attack next, and build a small line of people who checked up on each other every couple of minutes.
That is what we had done, not even a terrible strategy really. We were out in the open, camping and pretty much having a merry time. Someone had brought a little alcohol though I had demanded that everyone only drink sparingly, since we didn't know how long we would be out there. Though I had to promise we would drink our fill after the kill.
There had been some grumbles but as long as they got a little alcohol every once in a while no one seemed to complain too much. And we needed to be sharp because, as I said, the monster had no enemies. It would be brave, it would be bold, and it would attack.
Humanity was not the top dog amongst the species on this planet, it was just one of many and not even near the top. So a monster like this, who lived its times in the mountains fighting other monsters just as vicious as itself, should see us as nothing but gnats. This was an unfortunate truth but something we could use to our advantage.
I had placed myself in the volunteers willing to be live bait for the monster, and yes that was a dangerous prospect but one I was willing to accept. I trusted the wolves to have my back, and if things really went South all the wolves here had saddlebags strapped to their sides that the humans could grab on while we ran for our lives.
Hopefully, that wouldn't happen but you never know with unknown mysterious monsters. I mean, for all I know I was about to fight Godzilla. Though most likely it was just one of the many massive wolves I kept seeing up in the mountains looking down into our little valley while we lived at the mountain's feet.
At least that's what I thought to write up till I heard a massive tree be thrown through the forest into a couple of other trees, knocking them over.
Getting up from a log I had been sitting on I signaled at my wolves to circle the area and tried to wave over the volunteer humans so we could form some sort of defense.
Whatever we were fighting or about to fight could throw trees and it was big. As far as I've seen wolves couldn't rip trees out by the roots, so who knew what monster we were dealing with.
"OH, alfather… NO! It's an Ice Troll!" One of my volunteers screamed before he turned tail and fled in the other direction.
I wanted to ask what he was talking about and what an ice troll was but he was gone faster than I could get a word out. And with the rest of volunteers looking like they were ready to bolt at a moment's notice I figured asking questions and getting more information on the exact nature of the beast would frighten those who were less scared into actually running. Better to appear competent and in control of the situation than confused and having no idea.
Morale is a fickle thing and can easily be broken by one wrong word, and I needed the morale up for whatever this creature was. Drawing my sword I waited for whatever this thing was to come closer. The sounds it was making told me it was at least moving in our general direction and I saw a few trees topple at a distance.
I was starting to wonder how slow this damn beast would be when the smell hit me. I don't often think about smells as a tactical advantage, preferring to use my eyes and hit the target in the light of the day. But I knew that my ability to smell was far superior than what it should be.
I could tell which of my volunteers had bothered to get themselves a good cleaning in the last week and that was a bit of knowledge I'd rather not think about most of the time. I could even tell Freki and Geri apart simply by the smell of their fur, which was mildly impressive.
The smell I was smelling now was familiar, very familiar in fact to something I had fought before, but not a wolf. No, this smelled of Yeti but somehow worse. It was an ugly decaying smell, something that reeked of death and wet fur.
Having that few moments of extra knowledge of where the beast was coming from was invaluable as I was able to immediately point in the general direction it was coming and say loudly to the men "it comes from that way, move to your prepared positions and ready your bows."
The men hearing my voice seemed to at least respond and immediately moved behind trees and raised their bows, a few of them lighting the end of javelins with pitch.
I was unfamiliar enough with the beast that I had no idea if that was actually effective or not but I figured at the bare minimum the trees were wet enough they wouldn't catch on fire and burn the whole forest down around us. Any flames they put out in the general direction of the creature would at least backlit it and make the next shots and throws more accurate.
Holding the blade in both hands I waited, watching the woods. The banging had stopped but I knew it was out there, probably trying to determine what would be the best avenue of attack if it was sentient.
Or if it wasn't maybe it was simply counting its chickens before they were hatched. Either was possible since I had no idea on the level of intelligence of these creatures.
Said creature obviously had decided that it had enough potential strength to win any fight that happened and came charging out that thicker part of the forest I had been pointing to. I was tall but the thing charging me was absolutely gigantic, standing somewhere close to double my height and covered in white fur. In its left hand it wielded a tree trunk as if it was a massive club and in its right, it had a giant boulder.
So at minimum it had the intelligence of a great ape and the body of a giant, not something I was looking forward to fighting. Not something I would ever want to fight, in fact. I considered making a move to step away but the volunteers worked against me in this aspect as they were witnesses. Unless I was willing to waste valuable human resources that were already training to work with my wolves I didn't want to upset my status in their eyes.
Taking a breath I calmed myself, steadied my hands on both my blades, and waited. The beast was charging directly at me without a care in the world, seeming intent on smashing me with that tree. I stood my ground and waited till the last moment. Something interrupted as someone thre a flaming javelin directly into the beast's face.
If I was a more shallow human, or a fool, I might have been insulted that someone had just taken the first strike. as It was… Well the beast immediately took its eyes off of me and whacked the trunk it was carrying into a tree resulting in shards of wood being sent in the general direction of the man who fired the arrow. I heard a scream which told me that someone was injured, hopefully not the guy who just bought me the moment of time as I already owed him a thank you for the opening. With a couple steps I was beside the beast and, remembering the few kendo lessons I had in my youth, I slashed the back of the creature's leg open.
A thing I regretted as I saw the blood start sizzling on the metal blade, there was probably no way around the fact I was going to need to take my sword in for repairs. But considering the roar, and the fact that it went down to one knee, it seemed that my money had been well spent.
The beast turned to try and face me, bringing the tree down to where I had been standing, but I sidestepped out of its path and then slashed up, cutting the underside of its arm then dodging back to avoid the spray of blood.
The smell off of the things seemed to just get worse with each cut, I didn't know if they just naturally stank inside themselves or if the chemical acid just smelled that bad but I could swear I could see the area around the creature distorting with the odor.
Then the mega yeti, or ice troll as the volunteer had informed me, was down to just the rock it was carrying in its other hand and one good leg. It attempted to get back up but apparently, I'd cut a lot deeper than I thought because I heard a sickening crunch and the leg shifted in a way that implied to me that the bone had broken.
Careful to avoid the ass, I moved up behind it and slashed the blade along the last leg as deep as I could. I cut in fact too deep as when it reached the other side I was missing half of the blade.
It looked like the acid had eaten through portions of the blade, causing it to snap inside the beast as it hit the bone.
If I ever fought another one of these things I was going to have to make sure to have plenty of spare swords, or spare spears. Something I could easily replace because that just cost me half of my budget for a month.
Stepping back I saw that the beast was not going anywhere, both its legs were ruined and the arm that I had cut was not strong enough to pull it in any way. It attempted to throw the Rock at me but, well, I had faster reflexes and was able to dodge out of the way.
Looking at the men who had volunteered to help I simply pointed the broken sword at the creature and said "Burn this monster!".
That seemed to break the silence that seemed to have fallen into the clearing and they let loosed their arrows into the creature, which seemed to penetrate enough to cause it pain but wasn't really killing it.
Shrugging I went to the camp and grabbed one of the six barrels of alcohol I purchased as reward and carried it to the beast, ripping the cap off of it. Careful to stay out of its range of its broken arm I dumped the contents onto its back where it quickly got set alike by the flaming javalins buried in its sides. The screaming was not exactly great, however it did wonders to remove the smell
Having accomplished that I sat back and let the men pepper it with a few more arrows. There was not much more I could do. I could let my wolves chew on it but its heart was buried somewhere deep in its chest so it wouldn't die quickly. I would need a spear to be able to get at it and with its chest on the ground, I would have to penetrate through its spinal cord or find some way around it.
So the best option to kill the thing was to simply let it burn until it took so much damage that it could just not recover.
It took some time but, after 5 minutes, it stopped screaming. About 5 minutes later the volunteers stopped shooting it with arrows.
Carefully I stood up from the tree I had been leaning against and walked over to inspect it then had one of the volunteers hand me over his sword. With careful movements I sliced its head off, just to be sure it was dead, and then handed it back with a promise to pay for a new one when we got back to civilization.
And with the monster killed I had time to check up on the wounded volunteer that had first shot the beast. Walking over there I found that he was alive though his upper arm had been penetrated by a wooden splinter the length of his lower arm. He seemed otherwise all right so I called over Geri, pulled out medical supplies, and got to work carefully bandaging him up. Pulling the piece of wood out right now would just make sure he'd bleed out quicker, so the best option was to get him to somewhere warm where he could be operated in safety and with whatever local drugs they had to numb the pain if possible. Once I was sure it was secure I helped him up onto Geri's back and told my wolf to take the wounded man to the nearest village.
The wolf noted his understanding and immediately set off, with the wounded volunteer holding tightly onto the saddlebags that made a makeshift saddle. I should really investigate how to create a saddle and see if I could make something for my wolves, they were big enough that the average human could definitely use them as a Calvary animal. Just needed the right equipment.
King Thengir of Russ
Eastern shores of Asaheim, The Kingdom of Russ, Fenris
I smiled as I listened to the news reports coming out from my kingdom, it has been 3 months since I had recruited Tanya to my kingdom's forces. And she had proven herself more than adequate as a wolf handler and was showing herself to be a proper King candidate with every day.
For the first month I had been a bit worried as she had not done much more than deal with the last remnants of the wolves, bringing them in line and helping a few of my housecarl train their own animals. Besides that, she had seemed stuck in her own project of building a nice little house. I had been there and it was a rather simple affair, effective but not exactly a place built for a king. It was right there, humble really and that was a good sign that she was well and truly what I was looking for in a replacement.
But I had slowly been pushing for her to get her legend growing. Starting last month I had started to talk about problems the kingdom was facing with certain monsters coming down from the mountains whenever she was in the room.
I assumed she was looking for things to fight and so, since that is where she was from originally as far as I could piece together from our conversations, presenting an opportunity for her to go fight these creatures thus seemed like the perfect bait.
And, starting with the ice troll, she had taken the opportunity. Every time I'd mentioned there was a problem she'd volunteered to go take it out, often with a big smile on her face as if she was a conquering hero. And the nobles and housecarls ate it up. The best part was that she didn't even cause too much problems when anyone wanted to come to witness her fights. The only demand she ever made when someone wanted to go with her was that they had to be ready to fight as well.
Something that every man of Fenris was already willing to do, but nobles didn't normally go out and do adventuring unless they were the ones in charge.
Something about Tanya was so charismatic that even the most stubborn Noble was willing to go see what she was up to. Since Lord Tyr, who had taken a wound fighting the ice troll with her on that first adventure, had received some of the credit thanks to Tanya's willingness to share a lot more nobles were volunteering to go with her.
Having the opportunity to claim you rode and fought with a chosen of the Allfather was an intoxicating possibility for many nobles. And I would not be surprised if a few of them wouldn't try to prove their worth to her in hopes to attract her as a wife. It was inevitable: where young men went, hormones would cloud their judgment.
Hadn't happened yet, or at least Tanya had not brought up any incidents to my concern, so I wasn't worrying about it just yet.
What I was more worried about was the spring which was coming in 3 months. Now winter would be over and we would be entering a time of normality, when that happened it would be possible to send a force across the mountains to deal with the treacherous king Farthegn. By then I hoped that her legend as a monster killer would have grown so wide that I could name her as the commander of the expedition across the mountains to deal with him.
There was a chance she would say no, but she seemed to like a fight as long as it was for a good cause and that treacherous bastard had tried to break the peace. What better cause would there be than bring him down?
Even if there was always a possibility of failure they should at least create enough damage on the other side of the continent that the treacherous bastard would not be able to pull something like this again for the next decade. And if she did succeed she would have proven herself worthy to not only myself but to anyone who may want to challenge her.
I'm sure someone like the young fool or any other of the minor Lords on this side of the continent might eventually try prevent her from taking what I was about to offer, but I had a good feeling.
Tanya would become a Russ and she would lead my people well after I was gone. With the legend sprouting around her now growing quickly with each monster she fought and killed, I doubted that anyone would have the courage to go against her when she officially became a Russ.
Writer note: All right we're entering a bit of a transitional period here like I understand that in a way this content may not be great but every monster she fights she probably end up fighting like six ice trolls if I did every monster she fight, it's better to just pay a quick picture of one monster or another as she fights them at least in my mind.
Maybe I'm wrong maybe you all want me to do every monster Tanya fights but I think I'd get bored of that sooner or later and I'm sure some folks would get bored of that as well better to have an example here or there of a monster she by it's how it went then do get stuck in the minutia of it and just bring updates as she's civilizes the planet of Fenris. And then I don't know maybe like 10 chapters will get the emperor could be more could be less it's not going to be within the next three that's for sure.
Edited by Pierre
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Community editable doc (Chapter 8) No story suggestions in the community editing document, Keep all story suggestions and comments in the thread
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possible, though he could be older...
I actually proposed this idea around chapter 2... folk were really for it, and the original idea was the straight replace, frankly i agree there is some potential in the idea, but it will have to be religated to omakes, or to anyone who wants to steal the concept and take it. remember a healthy fanfiction community is an active community
mhmmm this is very true.
yep can't wait as well because that the point I'll ether jump the shark, or folk will be "neat that solves all are questions we had for the last 20 chapters" (give or take)
- Location
- Canada
"I am Leman Russ and this is my Shoulder Lo-"
"Sister! I am your Sister, you idiot!"
They could have serious Zaraki + Yachiru vibes especially if she stayed a runt in size
Chapter 9, Building legends 2
Chapter 9, Building legends 2
Tanya
"Congratulations, Tanya you've managed to raise your rank from Wolf Tamer to Dragon Slayer," I uttered as I looked down at the scaly reptilian beast that I had just had the unpleasant task to fight.
Four hours ago, I was told there was a monster that needed to be killed and, seeing that the opportunity to raise my worth in the community often came from killing monsters, I really had no other option but to agree to kill the thing.
I had expected another large wolf, Those were very common this time of year, or perhaps an ice troll. Heck, I'd even considered the possibility of it being a tribe of ice fiends, which were apparently the correct name of the smaller yetis. Being that I was now hunting the monsters, I thought it was best to have a proper education on what kind of creatures were out in this world that I would have to deal with. Frankly, there were way too many mega animals on this near-frozen Winter Wonderland called Fenris.
And today, I happen to have run into one of the two species that could pass for dragons. Why were there dragons on this planet? I do not know, by all scientific understanding of the word they did not exist and were just misconceptions of dinosaur bones. But not here on Fenris! Oh no, on Fenris, there were two animals that could pass for dragons. First, the ice wyrm, a reptile with fur that looked very similar to an Asian style dragon with its long snake-like body. The only good thing about that beast was it could not fly, which was why I would have preferred to have fought it.
No, I had run into the second. The one that could fly, the Drake. It had apparently come down from the mountains in search of food and tried to eat one of my wolves when it had spotted us coming around as we were looking for any other ravenous creature that somehow managed to live on this planet.
Thankfully, I had been able to get my arms around the damn thing's neck and pulled it away from my wolf before it had gone further. Unthankfully, it had taken flight and I had no real option but to hold on for dear life.
For 3 hours I had held on to the neck as it had tried to get me off of it in a desperate mid-air struggle of survival.
Honestly,I was terrified the entire time that I would fall and die. Oh sure my healing Factor was good but as far up as we've got I don't think it would have worked very well. No, more likely that I would have ended up splattered across the rocks and hopefully dead. I say hopefully because for all I knew I could end up healing just enough to not die and be left a crippled mess for the rest of my life and I was sure that that life would be fairly short in such a state.
But somehow, over the course of those 3 hours and more adrenaline than I think had ever pumped through my system in all my life as a personnel manager, I was able to hold on to the Drake. After longer than I would have liked my untrustworthy steed finally got too tired flying about and landed. Where I was I wasn't exactly sure but it didn't matter as, now that the damn thing was on the ground, I was able to shove my sword deep into its spine.
Drakes, from my understanding, were an uncommon nuisance during the winter, usually only killing off farmers' livestock in their search for something to eat during the harshest parts of Helwinter. And I just couldn't be bothered to try and feed this thing if it had somehow been tamed by that ride, which I doubted. More likely it was just exhausted from having to carry my weight on its back for so long.
With the beast dead I removed its head and generally picked the direction I believe we had flown from. I figured it would take a few hours to find my way home but that was not a problem.
I'm sure that my wolves were not too far behind me and, once I reunited with them, it would be an easy ride home.
Several hours later that's exactly what happened. I walked out of a thicket of heavy Bushcraft to see my wolves, with several of the volunteer Wolf riders that had started to accompany me in the last month or so, looking around for me.
Before I even got to say anything Geri charged up to me and began licking my face, obviously having had some worry about my life I would assume. After all if I passed on who would negotiate the food rations from the King and local farmers? I was important for the pack's survival and that was a good feeling in its own way.
"Lady Tanya! it's good you survived." one of the volunteers said as he held on to his wolf as it ambled up next to Geri. Poking my memory I was able to remember that he was Lord Tyr, the man who'd taken several wounds from the ice troll a month back. He was doing much better now and had consistently volunteered to take part in my trips into the wild to hunt beasts.
Frankly, I was a bit worried about him. I could hunt these monsters because I had the advantage of an abnormal healing ability and strength while he was just a simple human who was getting off on the feeling of being involved in a hunt for monsters. He was no better than a battle maniac in that way, except instead of battling other humans, he was interested in fighting the massive megafaunas of this world.
Also, I felt a bit responsible for this. I did not know for sure that he had been like this before the fight with the ice troll, but he definitely seemed to have taken to it ever since that fight. So I was under the assumption that he had become addicted to this adrenaline rush because he'd nearly died and survived.
Take that I may be responsible, and adding that he was a local Lord, I had plenty of reason to watch out for him. Because nothing could get your boss faster in here than having the manager above you getting into major trouble that you could have helped them stay out of. Not to mention, with how dangerous this was, it was not impossible that in his battle Maniac stupidity he could get himself killed, and his family may take personal umbrage with that and come after me in some way.
Wait… Battle maniac, why does that ring a bell? Oh, the headache was starting up again. I didn't feel like dealing with that right now, so I would leave it and poke at it later when I was safely at home.
Instead, I simply held up the head of the Drake that I had severed from its body and addressed them all.
"Yeah, I survived, and the Drake did not. It was a clash of wills to see who would hold out longer. If I'm stubborn enough not to let go when I got bucked the first 10 times, I wasn't going let go over the 300th time either."
The casual way of depicting the situation seemed to bring a chuckle to the mass of volunteers. Something I noted about Fenrisian humor; when it wasn't very crude it tended to be very dry and witty. So I found that downplaying the severity of the situations I found myself in tended to at least elicit a laugh and laughter was a good way to build a rapport with anyone.
Lord Tyr nodded and then "Not many have dared take on a Drake, at least not as close as you have. I believe that the last one was killed with a giant crossbow mounted on the walls of the castle Fenris, 50 great years ago. Taking one down as you have is a spectacular showing and a sign of greatness in your future."
I slightly chuckled at that. It seemed that he was trying to get in my good graces even more than I was with him, either that or he had theories about me having plans of taking over the kingdom of Russ. I wouldn't be surprised if that had been attempted in generations before, when people of great standing came to power. But I had no interest in the petty politics of the Kingdom, I just wanted to live a nice quiet life as comfortably as possible in this world. With that being said there was ways to make sure my life was as comfortable as possible.
"Lord Tyr, this victory is not just for me. It's for all of Fenris. Every monster I take down improves the lives of the folk around me, and it is also your victory for if you hadn't stayed dedicated to a search to find me who knows what could have happened to me out here in the wilds." Better to butter up potential kings in the making than to piss them off by taking all the credits, that was the best way to maintain my potentially safe and quiet life.
Lord Tyr laughed. "You humble me with your humbleness, my lady. But if you wish to share credit I won't say no, even just seeing such a great beast lose its head is a great honor in and of itself. And I am simply glad to be of service in letting the Great Humble Hunter of Monsters return safely from her hunt."
Man… He was really trying to butter me up, I thought, wondering exactly why. Perhaps I had gained some sort of soft power by killing these monsters and he was hoping that, being close to me, it would rub off on him? It was not impossible and if it was the case… That could be useful in the future, having people looking out for me in high places was a way to maintain a safe and relaxed life after I had accumulated enough wealth to maintain my retirement. Whenever that may be.
Rubbing Geri's head I simply smiled back..
"Well, we've killed the beast and we've had our moment of joy at our survival. Now is the time to go home," I said, before pulling myself on the back of Geri. "I'm sure the king will be glad to have this new head for his mantle place and will reward us greatly for this victory."
"The king will definitely be pleased by this victory, though I think likely the priests will be even more interested." Tyr said matter of factly.
Raising my eyebrow I tilted my head and asked. "The priests? Why would they be interested in this head?"
"Drake's teeth are often used in their runecraft. They won't take all of the teeth, my lady, just a couple of the back ones and the ones inside the jaw and they'll turn them into items for use with their craft."
Ah, superstition was alive and well in this world. To be expected but at least they weren't demanding my worship or anything of that sort. As long as these priests were willing to negotiate a favorable price on the teeth I was willing to sell them to them.
Well… Considering the strange things I had seen on this world, mainly the wolf with psychic abilities and the fact that dragons existed… Maybe I should take this a little bit more carefully and with interest.
There was the distinct possibility magic was real and if that was a thing I had to consider… There were two things I needed to know: one, could I use it for my own benefit? And two, how did I prevent it from being used on me? If the priests were the practitioners of this magic runecraft well, then I guess I needed to talk to them about this matter.
Shrugging my shoulders I turn to Lord Tyr and said. "Well then if the priests want a token from the drake, we shall give them a token from the drake."
"I'm not very familiar with contacting them though. Do you happen to have a way of getting in contact with them and setting up a meeting with me at my home?" If I was going to meet with some practitioner of magic I'd rather do it in the safety of my own home and with my wolves watching.
Even if the priest sent was an illusionist he'd think twice about trying to scam me when a hundred hungry pairs of eyes were watching him from all angles, with jaws and smiles firmly set.
Tanya
It had been a few days since my unscheduled flight on top of a dragon, something that I would both ever fear happening again and cherish as a moment where I sored above the skies outside of a plane. Haven't had many opportunities in my last life to travel in planes but from what I remembered it was quite a different experience. Also not as cold.
Since that time I had enjoyed a few days of peace and rest, caring for my wolves and maintaining my humble abode. I was with Freki in the process of commissioning a few giant dog houses or rather, perhaps it would be better just to call them what they were, barns for my wolves to live in.
At the current population, I would need at least seven, dotted around the area. I could currently get away with five since a lot of wolves enjoyed sleeping next to the warm buildings. Something I noticed in the mornings when I come out of my home and found them gathered around besides of my house.
Well, I would need more: the population was steadily expanding. For example, Freki and his mate, as I now thought of the old alpha I'd beaten, had a couple of pups that followed them around. At least I was under the assumption those were their pups. They sure looked very familiar. Though It was not impossible, they were adopted pups from the common wolves we had taken out near the start of Helwinter.
I guess I would find out eventually when they grew up, Blackmaned wolves seemed to have a maturation rate that allowed them to reach maturity within half a great year or just a year, so it shouldn't take too long to find out.
As for the common wolves, they were doing all right as part of the pack. I had moved them into the pack completely by this point, and they lived amongst my Blackmaned. I had been worried that there'd be some sort of integration issues because they were separate species of wolves, but it seemed that once they acknowledged someone as the alpha of a pack, it didn't matter who else was in that pack. I was going off a working theory that the so-called Thunder Wolves, being massive tank-like animals that lived in the mountains, sometimes broke their Lone Wolf schtick to come down and take command of lesser wolves.
Such as the King of the Mountain, something I only recently learned was the name of the black wolf I had fought several months before. Apparently, it had a reputation for being a monster, and a mean one, that had caused terror and mayhem in the lowlands. Supposedly it was also older than the king himself. Considering he was 60 great years old It meant that wolves could live a ridiculously long time.
Although humans apparently could live a ridiculously long time too. How the King was nearly 120 years old I had no idea. He looked not a day over 70. I guess a hard life could work in some people's favors? Perhaps the cold was keeping them fresh? I didn't know, and it was even distinctly possible that there was something screwy going on with the genetics of the human population of this planet that I was unaware of.
I had been trying to find out more about the history of the world. Fenris, for all its Scandinavian influences, seemed… hollow, to me.
The world made no sense. During Helwinter, a period of 4 to 6 months out of a year, the planet was so far away from the Sun that the storms would instantly freeze anyone in the Northern and southernmost poles. This sent the animals into either the deeper depths in the mountains that were warmer and around the active volcanoes or into the lowlands of the only main continent on the planet, where they would cause harm and havoc among the human population.
And there would be a period of 6 months where everything would calm down with the beasts, but there would be conflicts between the people of the main continent of this world, Asaheim. They were, from what I could understand, mostly disputes about hunting rights and old grudges that needed to be settled. Wasteful amount of resources went towards these wars by my estimates and I would have no part of them if I could. There seemed to be some festivals between allied groups during the same period which encouraged trade.
Made sense. The same weather conditions that could allow an army to move would also allow trade to move if the fighting could be ended. I had a feeling that it would be the best for everyone as the economy would have a good opportunity to grow and expand. Who knows what that could lead to.
After that came the summer when the planet was drawing the closest to the star the planet circled, known as The Wolf's Eye. This period I had not yet experienced but from what I understand the glaciers would actually melt heavily during this period and there would be a bounty of sea life in the mass of ocean of the planet.
This would draw out the sea monsters that apparently existed, as if there weren't already enough reasons for trade to be disrupted.
This would push the sea tribes and the glacier tribes groups that did not live on the continent onto itt, which would bring more conflict as resources were then broken up between three groups fighting for survival. If it was just that this might not be so bad but at the zenith of Summer came the Season of Fire when the planet drew close enough to the local star that something incredible apparently happened. The mantle kicked into overdrive, setting the ocean on fire outside of the main continent. The world literally reshaped itself as new volcanoes rose from the sea and older ones fell back in, unleashing massive steam clouds that would kill anyone who didn't have somewhere safe to live. Which tended to mean the main continent.
It also had the effect of bringing somewhat warmer conditions to the main continent. Being near the North Pole it didn't get that often, but it was worth enjoying when it was here.
These conditions were not conducive to the flourishing of life, these conditions were conducive to death and extinction. Of humans, of animals, of trade. There should be no reason for anyone to live on this planet and yet there were people here. I had theories but they were generally that this was some lost colony of humanity and once that was taken into account that meant there were things I could not understand with any reasonable certainty.
I probably knew where the answers were: under the planet's surface, where I've been told not to go. I was not tempted to investigate that too much yet as I could see no gain from it.
That being said it was more likely than not that the humanity here was a Lost colony of some other group that had been reduced to the nomadic stage when something happened. Perhaps the original group had World War three'd themself out of existence? Wasn't impossible, once you have access to nuclear weapons. With the ability to colonize other planets, causing great environmental damage probably seemed like less of an issue.
Why they chose a world so overrun with disastrous things I didn't know, but factor that in with the possibility that the animals were not native and that the humans had some sort of genetic deviations… I could come up with a theory that this was some sort of reserve, an attempt to try and create a Nordic style legend world to preserve their history. Perhaps even used as a tourist trap at one point.
If true I was kind of interested in the possibility that there were other reserves like this. Was there a Greek reserve? A Roman reserve? If those two exist, was there a Japan reserve? That brought a chuckle whenever I thought about it, wondering how that one would shape up. Would it be super serious and trying to stay true to the ancient legends or were there catgirls in fake shrine maiden robes running around?
If I ever found a way to get off this planet, something that seemed very unlikely but I entertained the thought now and again, that would be one of my goals: just to find out what the Japan Myth Reserve looked like.
But I'd gone off-topic. it had have been a few days since my impromptu flight and I was enjoying my morning drink. There was a particular type of bark that, when cooked thoroughly, produced some sort of caffeine effect that I rather enjoyed. Didn't taste the best but it was better than no caffeine.
When I heard a knock on my door, there were many possibilities of who it could be from. Possibilities ranging from a message from the King, to local shield maidens wanting to take me out, to someone looking for more fundraising or some young volunteer wanting to learn how to ride a wolf.
Whatever it is I knew it was an opportunity to raise my general standing in the community and my work so I got up and walked over to the door. Pulling the wood latch out of position to open it, I saw an elderly gentleman with a staff in one hand, a raven on his shoulder, and an attempted blonde mohawk drooping to the left side. Besides that, he was wearing a fine set of clothing that looked like he had paid a pretty penny to acquire it. Not 'Noble' fine but definitely some sort of clerk position, I would estimate. Then I did see the runes on his staff and realized exactly who I was dealing with.
Standing before me must be a rune priest.
"Good morning," I said with a cheery tone, opening the door fully.
The man, whose stature fell off a foot and a half less than my own, looked up at me then smiled.
"Good afternoon, Wolf Girl. I've heard tell that you have slaughtered a Drake and, as commissioned by my order, I have come to determine the age of said beast as well as ask to purchase some of its teeth for our order's needs.
'Wolf Girl'? Well, that raised an eyebrow. It was the first time anyone had called me that since I came to civilization, but I wasn't going to let that comment sidetrack me. It could be a sign of appreciation for all I knew. Opening the door wider I allowed him to see inside the main area, which was my kitchen and motioned him in.
"Take a seat, I will retrieve the head."
The man simply nodded and took a step in, stopping when he saw the number of wolves that were inside my house and now watching him. I tried to only let in Mother Wolf and Cunning and Fierce but I occasionally let in a few others on colder days, those who hadn't grown good enough coats in my opinion.
Smiling, I said "Don't worry, they will not fight," before I stepped past him into the outside, heading towards the area where I'd buried the head.
With six to seven wolves watching him I doubted he would try and steal anything. So, knowing everything would be secure inside the house, I went to dig the head out. I had buried that outside to keep it good as I didn't know if they needed the flesh for identification. Still I figured that the fresher the head was, even if frozen, the better.
Took me about 3 minutes to walk where I buried it, another five to dig it out. By the time I returned to my little home I had expected him to have either fled because he did something stupid or to be sitting there all nervous.
I underestimated him. He was sitting in the chair right next to one of the wolves and giving them a scratch behind their ears, that was a good sign. That the wolves were willing to put up with him probably meant he was at least fair and kind enough. Considering I didn't smell any sweat of fear in the air he wasn't afraid of the wolves either, which would probably have endeared him even more to them.
Carefully I came back with the head in a burlap bag and placed the large thing on my table. I would just clean it off later so I wasn't worried about any of the gunk that used to be its blood melting into the wood. Carefully I pulled it out, letting the green and red scales blink off in the morning sun that was coming through the double-pane window I had commissioned for my home.
The priest sat up with great interest and began to inspect the head, carefully pulling back the lips to check out the teeth then tapping areas of the skull and listening to something. Perhaps their brains case were more hollow when they were younger? I didn't know. After a while he stood up and nodded at something before addressing me.
"What we have here is a middle-aged Drake, male. In my estimation it probably came down from the mountains for a simple hunt before it ran afoul of you and your hunting party. The teeth are worth their weight in gold, really."
"Really, now? So if I were to ask for gold for the teeth you would have to meet that price?" I answered, poking at that little statement.
The old man chuckled, looked at me then went back to studying the skull. he shrugged and replied. "Quite. In fact… Well, if you were to give them to me as a gift I could definitely ask the Ravens to send a message to the Allfather for you. I'm sure any message you wished to send him he would answer quite readily.
I sat down in the chair across from him and calmly spoke.
"I've already had a discussion with the Allfather, I don't need anything from the Ravens. I'm simply looking into things that can help me with having a quiet honest life here." As if to make my point, one of the Ravens that had become part of my pack fell in from the rafters of my house to land on my shoulder.
His eyes seem to widen at that before he sat quickly back to think, apparently having some sort of internal debate. He was most likely trying to find a way to negotiate a great price that wouldn't break the bank for his order. I had asked the full price simply to start the negotiations, I was fully expecting to have to come down eventually.
Finally he stopped whatever he was doing and replied.
"If the Ravens have chosen you as a Worthy messenger of the Allfather I could offer to teach the runes to you. With proper use and dedication then you can hope to use the Allfather's powers for the benefits of yourself and those who would side with you."
That reason why I hadn't considered the possibility that I'd be offered magic lessons. That was fairly entry- Oh, there's the headache.
My hand went up to my forehead as the thought of using magic caused the now familiar headache, which would imply that I had done so before. If my theory about these headaches was right and they were triggered by coming in contact with things that had been lost to me due to the cheese grater effect that some unknown entity had applied to me between my time with Being X and Fenris. That would mean that, at some point, I would have had to come across or use magic, which means if I learned it here I might be able to slowly chip away at those headaches and find out what parts from my last life I was denied in this one.
I took a moment with my hand covering my right side of the face trying to calm the pain but as soon as it was over I looked up to him and said "That is an intriguing offer, one that I would be willing to partake in. However I'm not a big fan of being called a priest."
The old priest simply chuckled and replied. "No, you're not a priest. But if your statement that he has been in contact you with is true then you're a chosen, someone the Allfather believes will bring great good to Fenris. Teaching you how runes work would simply be what the Allfather would want."
I was not a fan of religion but I was not exactly going to turn down the chance to learn something about myself. If this magic was real and could be harnessed for my benefits, well… That made the situation even better in my mind.
"That's something I can agree to," I said, holding up my hand to let him shake it so that the deal could be sealed.
His hand lost itself in mine and we shook on it before he reached into his robes and pulled out a string with several rocks and beads running through them.
"These are rune beads, one of the methods for channeling the Allfather's powers. It could take years for you to learn what they mean but it's a good starting method, though very limited compared to other methods."
Nodding my head I took the beads and looked at them then did a double-take.
The runes carved into various stones and bones were familiar, they were the same kind of runes I started using when I first appeared in this world. Some of them were alphabetical but a lot of them were numerical and I could see that this was some sort of method for creating a calculation of power. You would tune the runes to represent a certain code as it were to get a value.
In essence, this was math. I was very good at math.
"One thing, though. You must first learn how the runes are working and why they work. Jumping into this without the appropriate knowledge could have consequences for you and everything around you. Deadly, if you are not careful."
That raised my eyebrows. I looked up to him and he continued. "The powers of the runes are more stable than anything that can be achieved when not using the runes, but they can still leave you at the worst possible time and cause a disaster if you are not careful."
"How bad of a disaster are we talking here?" I asked, wanting to get a good understanding of what he was talking about.
"One young acolyte turned himself to stone, at least that's the legend. It was a long time ago, even though the statue still stands at the center of our Temple. It is now very badly degraded and there's no way for sure to know if the legend is true but well… He's there for a warning and it's a pretty good warning."
"Right." I said out loud, instantly placing this magic stuff on the 'use only as last resort' list. I would still go through the process of learning it because I hoped it would unlock my memories, but I wanted to be here and alive and flesh and not a stone statue in a temple somewhere.
Tanya
Hellwinter was coming to an end and it was glorious, no long arduous terrible winter nor monsters that would come down from the mountains for 6 full months. Then I would have to worry about monsters coming up from the sea for 6 months then I would have 6 months of freedom again… They really needed to work on how to deal with these monsters more effectively so they could have periods longer than 6 months.
As it was I had been called up, along with many people, to attend a banquet in celebration of the coming spring. Understandable given how winter was hell here, celebrating surviving it made sense. As someone who had helped them survive I guess this was a celebration in my honor in a way? I'd tried to not let that go to my head, I was simply a hunter for them. Nothing more, nothing much else.
Although I was a hunter who was currently drunk. I admit it I was drinking a little too much, I had survived nearly a year and it was a party in celebration of me in a way so letting myself go a bit was somewhat unorthodox but frankly expected from the parties I'd seen.
There had been a few get-togethers called between the beginning of Helwinter and the end, for various reasons. First-born sons, coming of age ceremonies, those sorts of things and I had seen people who were related to the reason yet so smashed that they woke up three days later. One guy had been thought dead, only to turn up walking in the woods outside my house naked. Why he had been like that I had no idea but I rolled him up in a blanket, tied him to a back of a wolf, and sent him on his way home.
But with a precedent like that I assumed it was expected of me to get drunk and so I let myself indulge.
Somewhere along the way someone had even found a mug that was my size so I was having a larger portion than I probably had in most of my first life.
But I was safe, I had wolves, I had coworkers. Sure, they were just as drunk as me but I felt they were reasonable and responsible gentlemen. And the shield girls were watching over me so I'm sure they would get me get home if I got too drunk.
It was a splendid and relaxing time and I was generally happy.
The King was sitting at the head of the table and had said a few things at the start of our little celebration but he had mostly stayed by himself, enjoying his food. Now, with the party seemingly coming to an end, he stood back up and declared.
"Lady Tanya? Please, stand." In the grumbly voice he always had.
Holding on to my chair for a little extra support I stood up and looked towards him, wondering what this was about.
"Lady Tanya, there is a monster on the other side of the mountains that needs to be dealt with. A creature so vile and treacherous that it must be cut out before its depredations on our society is allowed to spread. Will you be my champion across the mountains and deal with it?"
You want me to kill a monster on that was a problem for society? Well I wasn't going to say no to that. The removal of problems for society was a net benefit for me as far as I was concerned, and the reputation would be worth it.
"Yes, my king! I will hunt this monster and bring him down for you." I said with a cheery smile.
The king smiled and then called out."Then it is agreed! Lady Tanya will lead the forces of Russ and any ally that wishes to help us across the mountains and into Lord Farthegn's territory and end the threat of his machinations once and for all."
I blinked and instantly sobered. How I instantly sobered I wasn't exactly sure, it was as if my liver went into overtime immediately and cleared my system of alcohol.
I had just been conned, and there was nothing I could do about it. I had agreed to hunt a monster without getting more details and now I had to lead an army across the mountains to kill a man who attempted to kill the king. I had to lead a war effort. Oh this was… This was terrible, what a wasteful wasteful thing. But there was nothing I could do. If I attempted to back out of it now my reputation would be ruined and I needed that reputation to look after my pack. There was no choice but to go through with it.
Carefully, my brain spinning a mile a minute, I sat down in the chair, feeling quite small and weak at that moment at my mistake and misunderstanding. I felt so sick and fooled and this all felt so so very familiar- Here comes my headache again.
Writers note: little bit flying fighting magic and drinks, all in a good days work. Let me know what you folks think!
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Community editable doc (Chapter 9) No story suggestions in the community editing document, Keep all story suggestions and comments in the thread
Tanya
"Congratulations, Tanya you've managed to raise your rank from Wolf Tamer to Dragon Slayer," I uttered as I looked down at the scaly reptilian beast that I had just had the unpleasant task to fight.
Four hours ago, I was told there was a monster that needed to be killed and, seeing that the opportunity to raise my worth in the community often came from killing monsters, I really had no other option but to agree to kill the thing.
I had expected another large wolf, Those were very common this time of year, or perhaps an ice troll. Heck, I'd even considered the possibility of it being a tribe of ice fiends, which were apparently the correct name of the smaller yetis. Being that I was now hunting the monsters, I thought it was best to have a proper education on what kind of creatures were out in this world that I would have to deal with. Frankly, there were way too many mega animals on this near-frozen Winter Wonderland called Fenris.
And today, I happen to have run into one of the two species that could pass for dragons. Why were there dragons on this planet? I do not know, by all scientific understanding of the word they did not exist and were just misconceptions of dinosaur bones. But not here on Fenris! Oh no, on Fenris, there were two animals that could pass for dragons. First, the ice wyrm, a reptile with fur that looked very similar to an Asian style dragon with its long snake-like body. The only good thing about that beast was it could not fly, which was why I would have preferred to have fought it.
No, I had run into the second. The one that could fly, the Drake. It had apparently come down from the mountains in search of food and tried to eat one of my wolves when it had spotted us coming around as we were looking for any other ravenous creature that somehow managed to live on this planet.
Thankfully, I had been able to get my arms around the damn thing's neck and pulled it away from my wolf before it had gone further. Unthankfully, it had taken flight and I had no real option but to hold on for dear life.
For 3 hours I had held on to the neck as it had tried to get me off of it in a desperate mid-air struggle of survival.
Honestly,I was terrified the entire time that I would fall and die. Oh sure my healing Factor was good but as far up as we've got I don't think it would have worked very well. No, more likely that I would have ended up splattered across the rocks and hopefully dead. I say hopefully because for all I knew I could end up healing just enough to not die and be left a crippled mess for the rest of my life and I was sure that that life would be fairly short in such a state.
But somehow, over the course of those 3 hours and more adrenaline than I think had ever pumped through my system in all my life as a personnel manager, I was able to hold on to the Drake. After longer than I would have liked my untrustworthy steed finally got too tired flying about and landed. Where I was I wasn't exactly sure but it didn't matter as, now that the damn thing was on the ground, I was able to shove my sword deep into its spine.
Drakes, from my understanding, were an uncommon nuisance during the winter, usually only killing off farmers' livestock in their search for something to eat during the harshest parts of Helwinter. And I just couldn't be bothered to try and feed this thing if it had somehow been tamed by that ride, which I doubted. More likely it was just exhausted from having to carry my weight on its back for so long.
With the beast dead I removed its head and generally picked the direction I believe we had flown from. I figured it would take a few hours to find my way home but that was not a problem.
I'm sure that my wolves were not too far behind me and, once I reunited with them, it would be an easy ride home.
Several hours later that's exactly what happened. I walked out of a thicket of heavy Bushcraft to see my wolves, with several of the volunteer Wolf riders that had started to accompany me in the last month or so, looking around for me.
Before I even got to say anything Geri charged up to me and began licking my face, obviously having had some worry about my life I would assume. After all if I passed on who would negotiate the food rations from the King and local farmers? I was important for the pack's survival and that was a good feeling in its own way.
"Lady Tanya! it's good you survived." one of the volunteers said as he held on to his wolf as it ambled up next to Geri. Poking my memory I was able to remember that he was Lord Tyr, the man who'd taken several wounds from the ice troll a month back. He was doing much better now and had consistently volunteered to take part in my trips into the wild to hunt beasts.
Frankly, I was a bit worried about him. I could hunt these monsters because I had the advantage of an abnormal healing ability and strength while he was just a simple human who was getting off on the feeling of being involved in a hunt for monsters. He was no better than a battle maniac in that way, except instead of battling other humans, he was interested in fighting the massive megafaunas of this world.
Also, I felt a bit responsible for this. I did not know for sure that he had been like this before the fight with the ice troll, but he definitely seemed to have taken to it ever since that fight. So I was under the assumption that he had become addicted to this adrenaline rush because he'd nearly died and survived.
Take that I may be responsible, and adding that he was a local Lord, I had plenty of reason to watch out for him. Because nothing could get your boss faster in here than having the manager above you getting into major trouble that you could have helped them stay out of. Not to mention, with how dangerous this was, it was not impossible that in his battle Maniac stupidity he could get himself killed, and his family may take personal umbrage with that and come after me in some way.
Wait… Battle maniac, why does that ring a bell? Oh, the headache was starting up again. I didn't feel like dealing with that right now, so I would leave it and poke at it later when I was safely at home.
Instead, I simply held up the head of the Drake that I had severed from its body and addressed them all.
"Yeah, I survived, and the Drake did not. It was a clash of wills to see who would hold out longer. If I'm stubborn enough not to let go when I got bucked the first 10 times, I wasn't going let go over the 300th time either."
The casual way of depicting the situation seemed to bring a chuckle to the mass of volunteers. Something I noted about Fenrisian humor; when it wasn't very crude it tended to be very dry and witty. So I found that downplaying the severity of the situations I found myself in tended to at least elicit a laugh and laughter was a good way to build a rapport with anyone.
Lord Tyr nodded and then "Not many have dared take on a Drake, at least not as close as you have. I believe that the last one was killed with a giant crossbow mounted on the walls of the castle Fenris, 50 great years ago. Taking one down as you have is a spectacular showing and a sign of greatness in your future."
I slightly chuckled at that. It seemed that he was trying to get in my good graces even more than I was with him, either that or he had theories about me having plans of taking over the kingdom of Russ. I wouldn't be surprised if that had been attempted in generations before, when people of great standing came to power. But I had no interest in the petty politics of the Kingdom, I just wanted to live a nice quiet life as comfortably as possible in this world. With that being said there was ways to make sure my life was as comfortable as possible.
"Lord Tyr, this victory is not just for me. It's for all of Fenris. Every monster I take down improves the lives of the folk around me, and it is also your victory for if you hadn't stayed dedicated to a search to find me who knows what could have happened to me out here in the wilds." Better to butter up potential kings in the making than to piss them off by taking all the credits, that was the best way to maintain my potentially safe and quiet life.
Lord Tyr laughed. "You humble me with your humbleness, my lady. But if you wish to share credit I won't say no, even just seeing such a great beast lose its head is a great honor in and of itself. And I am simply glad to be of service in letting the Great Humble Hunter of Monsters return safely from her hunt."
Man… He was really trying to butter me up, I thought, wondering exactly why. Perhaps I had gained some sort of soft power by killing these monsters and he was hoping that, being close to me, it would rub off on him? It was not impossible and if it was the case… That could be useful in the future, having people looking out for me in high places was a way to maintain a safe and relaxed life after I had accumulated enough wealth to maintain my retirement. Whenever that may be.
Rubbing Geri's head I simply smiled back..
"Well, we've killed the beast and we've had our moment of joy at our survival. Now is the time to go home," I said, before pulling myself on the back of Geri. "I'm sure the king will be glad to have this new head for his mantle place and will reward us greatly for this victory."
"The king will definitely be pleased by this victory, though I think likely the priests will be even more interested." Tyr said matter of factly.
Raising my eyebrow I tilted my head and asked. "The priests? Why would they be interested in this head?"
"Drake's teeth are often used in their runecraft. They won't take all of the teeth, my lady, just a couple of the back ones and the ones inside the jaw and they'll turn them into items for use with their craft."
Ah, superstition was alive and well in this world. To be expected but at least they weren't demanding my worship or anything of that sort. As long as these priests were willing to negotiate a favorable price on the teeth I was willing to sell them to them.
Well… Considering the strange things I had seen on this world, mainly the wolf with psychic abilities and the fact that dragons existed… Maybe I should take this a little bit more carefully and with interest.
There was the distinct possibility magic was real and if that was a thing I had to consider… There were two things I needed to know: one, could I use it for my own benefit? And two, how did I prevent it from being used on me? If the priests were the practitioners of this magic runecraft well, then I guess I needed to talk to them about this matter.
Shrugging my shoulders I turn to Lord Tyr and said. "Well then if the priests want a token from the drake, we shall give them a token from the drake."
"I'm not very familiar with contacting them though. Do you happen to have a way of getting in contact with them and setting up a meeting with me at my home?" If I was going to meet with some practitioner of magic I'd rather do it in the safety of my own home and with my wolves watching.
Even if the priest sent was an illusionist he'd think twice about trying to scam me when a hundred hungry pairs of eyes were watching him from all angles, with jaws and smiles firmly set.
Tanya
It had been a few days since my unscheduled flight on top of a dragon, something that I would both ever fear happening again and cherish as a moment where I sored above the skies outside of a plane. Haven't had many opportunities in my last life to travel in planes but from what I remembered it was quite a different experience. Also not as cold.
Since that time I had enjoyed a few days of peace and rest, caring for my wolves and maintaining my humble abode. I was with Freki in the process of commissioning a few giant dog houses or rather, perhaps it would be better just to call them what they were, barns for my wolves to live in.
At the current population, I would need at least seven, dotted around the area. I could currently get away with five since a lot of wolves enjoyed sleeping next to the warm buildings. Something I noticed in the mornings when I come out of my home and found them gathered around besides of my house.
Well, I would need more: the population was steadily expanding. For example, Freki and his mate, as I now thought of the old alpha I'd beaten, had a couple of pups that followed them around. At least I was under the assumption those were their pups. They sure looked very familiar. Though It was not impossible, they were adopted pups from the common wolves we had taken out near the start of Helwinter.
I guess I would find out eventually when they grew up, Blackmaned wolves seemed to have a maturation rate that allowed them to reach maturity within half a great year or just a year, so it shouldn't take too long to find out.
As for the common wolves, they were doing all right as part of the pack. I had moved them into the pack completely by this point, and they lived amongst my Blackmaned. I had been worried that there'd be some sort of integration issues because they were separate species of wolves, but it seemed that once they acknowledged someone as the alpha of a pack, it didn't matter who else was in that pack. I was going off a working theory that the so-called Thunder Wolves, being massive tank-like animals that lived in the mountains, sometimes broke their Lone Wolf schtick to come down and take command of lesser wolves.
Such as the King of the Mountain, something I only recently learned was the name of the black wolf I had fought several months before. Apparently, it had a reputation for being a monster, and a mean one, that had caused terror and mayhem in the lowlands. Supposedly it was also older than the king himself. Considering he was 60 great years old It meant that wolves could live a ridiculously long time.
Although humans apparently could live a ridiculously long time too. How the King was nearly 120 years old I had no idea. He looked not a day over 70. I guess a hard life could work in some people's favors? Perhaps the cold was keeping them fresh? I didn't know, and it was even distinctly possible that there was something screwy going on with the genetics of the human population of this planet that I was unaware of.
I had been trying to find out more about the history of the world. Fenris, for all its Scandinavian influences, seemed… hollow, to me.
The world made no sense. During Helwinter, a period of 4 to 6 months out of a year, the planet was so far away from the Sun that the storms would instantly freeze anyone in the Northern and southernmost poles. This sent the animals into either the deeper depths in the mountains that were warmer and around the active volcanoes or into the lowlands of the only main continent on the planet, where they would cause harm and havoc among the human population.
And there would be a period of 6 months where everything would calm down with the beasts, but there would be conflicts between the people of the main continent of this world, Asaheim. They were, from what I could understand, mostly disputes about hunting rights and old grudges that needed to be settled. Wasteful amount of resources went towards these wars by my estimates and I would have no part of them if I could. There seemed to be some festivals between allied groups during the same period which encouraged trade.
Made sense. The same weather conditions that could allow an army to move would also allow trade to move if the fighting could be ended. I had a feeling that it would be the best for everyone as the economy would have a good opportunity to grow and expand. Who knows what that could lead to.
After that came the summer when the planet was drawing the closest to the star the planet circled, known as The Wolf's Eye. This period I had not yet experienced but from what I understand the glaciers would actually melt heavily during this period and there would be a bounty of sea life in the mass of ocean of the planet.
This would draw out the sea monsters that apparently existed, as if there weren't already enough reasons for trade to be disrupted.
This would push the sea tribes and the glacier tribes groups that did not live on the continent onto itt, which would bring more conflict as resources were then broken up between three groups fighting for survival. If it was just that this might not be so bad but at the zenith of Summer came the Season of Fire when the planet drew close enough to the local star that something incredible apparently happened. The mantle kicked into overdrive, setting the ocean on fire outside of the main continent. The world literally reshaped itself as new volcanoes rose from the sea and older ones fell back in, unleashing massive steam clouds that would kill anyone who didn't have somewhere safe to live. Which tended to mean the main continent.
It also had the effect of bringing somewhat warmer conditions to the main continent. Being near the North Pole it didn't get that often, but it was worth enjoying when it was here.
These conditions were not conducive to the flourishing of life, these conditions were conducive to death and extinction. Of humans, of animals, of trade. There should be no reason for anyone to live on this planet and yet there were people here. I had theories but they were generally that this was some lost colony of humanity and once that was taken into account that meant there were things I could not understand with any reasonable certainty.
I probably knew where the answers were: under the planet's surface, where I've been told not to go. I was not tempted to investigate that too much yet as I could see no gain from it.
That being said it was more likely than not that the humanity here was a Lost colony of some other group that had been reduced to the nomadic stage when something happened. Perhaps the original group had World War three'd themself out of existence? Wasn't impossible, once you have access to nuclear weapons. With the ability to colonize other planets, causing great environmental damage probably seemed like less of an issue.
Why they chose a world so overrun with disastrous things I didn't know, but factor that in with the possibility that the animals were not native and that the humans had some sort of genetic deviations… I could come up with a theory that this was some sort of reserve, an attempt to try and create a Nordic style legend world to preserve their history. Perhaps even used as a tourist trap at one point.
If true I was kind of interested in the possibility that there were other reserves like this. Was there a Greek reserve? A Roman reserve? If those two exist, was there a Japan reserve? That brought a chuckle whenever I thought about it, wondering how that one would shape up. Would it be super serious and trying to stay true to the ancient legends or were there catgirls in fake shrine maiden robes running around?
If I ever found a way to get off this planet, something that seemed very unlikely but I entertained the thought now and again, that would be one of my goals: just to find out what the Japan Myth Reserve looked like.
But I'd gone off-topic. it had have been a few days since my impromptu flight and I was enjoying my morning drink. There was a particular type of bark that, when cooked thoroughly, produced some sort of caffeine effect that I rather enjoyed. Didn't taste the best but it was better than no caffeine.
When I heard a knock on my door, there were many possibilities of who it could be from. Possibilities ranging from a message from the King, to local shield maidens wanting to take me out, to someone looking for more fundraising or some young volunteer wanting to learn how to ride a wolf.
Whatever it is I knew it was an opportunity to raise my general standing in the community and my work so I got up and walked over to the door. Pulling the wood latch out of position to open it, I saw an elderly gentleman with a staff in one hand, a raven on his shoulder, and an attempted blonde mohawk drooping to the left side. Besides that, he was wearing a fine set of clothing that looked like he had paid a pretty penny to acquire it. Not 'Noble' fine but definitely some sort of clerk position, I would estimate. Then I did see the runes on his staff and realized exactly who I was dealing with.
Standing before me must be a rune priest.
"Good morning," I said with a cheery tone, opening the door fully.
The man, whose stature fell off a foot and a half less than my own, looked up at me then smiled.
"Good afternoon, Wolf Girl. I've heard tell that you have slaughtered a Drake and, as commissioned by my order, I have come to determine the age of said beast as well as ask to purchase some of its teeth for our order's needs.
'Wolf Girl'? Well, that raised an eyebrow. It was the first time anyone had called me that since I came to civilization, but I wasn't going to let that comment sidetrack me. It could be a sign of appreciation for all I knew. Opening the door wider I allowed him to see inside the main area, which was my kitchen and motioned him in.
"Take a seat, I will retrieve the head."
The man simply nodded and took a step in, stopping when he saw the number of wolves that were inside my house and now watching him. I tried to only let in Mother Wolf and Cunning and Fierce but I occasionally let in a few others on colder days, those who hadn't grown good enough coats in my opinion.
Smiling, I said "Don't worry, they will not fight," before I stepped past him into the outside, heading towards the area where I'd buried the head.
With six to seven wolves watching him I doubted he would try and steal anything. So, knowing everything would be secure inside the house, I went to dig the head out. I had buried that outside to keep it good as I didn't know if they needed the flesh for identification. Still I figured that the fresher the head was, even if frozen, the better.
Took me about 3 minutes to walk where I buried it, another five to dig it out. By the time I returned to my little home I had expected him to have either fled because he did something stupid or to be sitting there all nervous.
I underestimated him. He was sitting in the chair right next to one of the wolves and giving them a scratch behind their ears, that was a good sign. That the wolves were willing to put up with him probably meant he was at least fair and kind enough. Considering I didn't smell any sweat of fear in the air he wasn't afraid of the wolves either, which would probably have endeared him even more to them.
Carefully I came back with the head in a burlap bag and placed the large thing on my table. I would just clean it off later so I wasn't worried about any of the gunk that used to be its blood melting into the wood. Carefully I pulled it out, letting the green and red scales blink off in the morning sun that was coming through the double-pane window I had commissioned for my home.
The priest sat up with great interest and began to inspect the head, carefully pulling back the lips to check out the teeth then tapping areas of the skull and listening to something. Perhaps their brains case were more hollow when they were younger? I didn't know. After a while he stood up and nodded at something before addressing me.
"What we have here is a middle-aged Drake, male. In my estimation it probably came down from the mountains for a simple hunt before it ran afoul of you and your hunting party. The teeth are worth their weight in gold, really."
"Really, now? So if I were to ask for gold for the teeth you would have to meet that price?" I answered, poking at that little statement.
The old man chuckled, looked at me then went back to studying the skull. he shrugged and replied. "Quite. In fact… Well, if you were to give them to me as a gift I could definitely ask the Ravens to send a message to the Allfather for you. I'm sure any message you wished to send him he would answer quite readily.
I sat down in the chair across from him and calmly spoke.
"I've already had a discussion with the Allfather, I don't need anything from the Ravens. I'm simply looking into things that can help me with having a quiet honest life here." As if to make my point, one of the Ravens that had become part of my pack fell in from the rafters of my house to land on my shoulder.
His eyes seem to widen at that before he sat quickly back to think, apparently having some sort of internal debate. He was most likely trying to find a way to negotiate a great price that wouldn't break the bank for his order. I had asked the full price simply to start the negotiations, I was fully expecting to have to come down eventually.
Finally he stopped whatever he was doing and replied.
"If the Ravens have chosen you as a Worthy messenger of the Allfather I could offer to teach the runes to you. With proper use and dedication then you can hope to use the Allfather's powers for the benefits of yourself and those who would side with you."
That reason why I hadn't considered the possibility that I'd be offered magic lessons. That was fairly entry- Oh, there's the headache.
My hand went up to my forehead as the thought of using magic caused the now familiar headache, which would imply that I had done so before. If my theory about these headaches was right and they were triggered by coming in contact with things that had been lost to me due to the cheese grater effect that some unknown entity had applied to me between my time with Being X and Fenris. That would mean that, at some point, I would have had to come across or use magic, which means if I learned it here I might be able to slowly chip away at those headaches and find out what parts from my last life I was denied in this one.
I took a moment with my hand covering my right side of the face trying to calm the pain but as soon as it was over I looked up to him and said "That is an intriguing offer, one that I would be willing to partake in. However I'm not a big fan of being called a priest."
The old priest simply chuckled and replied. "No, you're not a priest. But if your statement that he has been in contact you with is true then you're a chosen, someone the Allfather believes will bring great good to Fenris. Teaching you how runes work would simply be what the Allfather would want."
I was not a fan of religion but I was not exactly going to turn down the chance to learn something about myself. If this magic was real and could be harnessed for my benefits, well… That made the situation even better in my mind.
"That's something I can agree to," I said, holding up my hand to let him shake it so that the deal could be sealed.
His hand lost itself in mine and we shook on it before he reached into his robes and pulled out a string with several rocks and beads running through them.
"These are rune beads, one of the methods for channeling the Allfather's powers. It could take years for you to learn what they mean but it's a good starting method, though very limited compared to other methods."
Nodding my head I took the beads and looked at them then did a double-take.
The runes carved into various stones and bones were familiar, they were the same kind of runes I started using when I first appeared in this world. Some of them were alphabetical but a lot of them were numerical and I could see that this was some sort of method for creating a calculation of power. You would tune the runes to represent a certain code as it were to get a value.
In essence, this was math. I was very good at math.
"One thing, though. You must first learn how the runes are working and why they work. Jumping into this without the appropriate knowledge could have consequences for you and everything around you. Deadly, if you are not careful."
That raised my eyebrows. I looked up to him and he continued. "The powers of the runes are more stable than anything that can be achieved when not using the runes, but they can still leave you at the worst possible time and cause a disaster if you are not careful."
"How bad of a disaster are we talking here?" I asked, wanting to get a good understanding of what he was talking about.
"One young acolyte turned himself to stone, at least that's the legend. It was a long time ago, even though the statue still stands at the center of our Temple. It is now very badly degraded and there's no way for sure to know if the legend is true but well… He's there for a warning and it's a pretty good warning."
"Right." I said out loud, instantly placing this magic stuff on the 'use only as last resort' list. I would still go through the process of learning it because I hoped it would unlock my memories, but I wanted to be here and alive and flesh and not a stone statue in a temple somewhere.
Tanya
Hellwinter was coming to an end and it was glorious, no long arduous terrible winter nor monsters that would come down from the mountains for 6 full months. Then I would have to worry about monsters coming up from the sea for 6 months then I would have 6 months of freedom again… They really needed to work on how to deal with these monsters more effectively so they could have periods longer than 6 months.
As it was I had been called up, along with many people, to attend a banquet in celebration of the coming spring. Understandable given how winter was hell here, celebrating surviving it made sense. As someone who had helped them survive I guess this was a celebration in my honor in a way? I'd tried to not let that go to my head, I was simply a hunter for them. Nothing more, nothing much else.
Although I was a hunter who was currently drunk. I admit it I was drinking a little too much, I had survived nearly a year and it was a party in celebration of me in a way so letting myself go a bit was somewhat unorthodox but frankly expected from the parties I'd seen.
There had been a few get-togethers called between the beginning of Helwinter and the end, for various reasons. First-born sons, coming of age ceremonies, those sorts of things and I had seen people who were related to the reason yet so smashed that they woke up three days later. One guy had been thought dead, only to turn up walking in the woods outside my house naked. Why he had been like that I had no idea but I rolled him up in a blanket, tied him to a back of a wolf, and sent him on his way home.
But with a precedent like that I assumed it was expected of me to get drunk and so I let myself indulge.
Somewhere along the way someone had even found a mug that was my size so I was having a larger portion than I probably had in most of my first life.
But I was safe, I had wolves, I had coworkers. Sure, they were just as drunk as me but I felt they were reasonable and responsible gentlemen. And the shield girls were watching over me so I'm sure they would get me get home if I got too drunk.
It was a splendid and relaxing time and I was generally happy.
The King was sitting at the head of the table and had said a few things at the start of our little celebration but he had mostly stayed by himself, enjoying his food. Now, with the party seemingly coming to an end, he stood back up and declared.
"Lady Tanya? Please, stand." In the grumbly voice he always had.
Holding on to my chair for a little extra support I stood up and looked towards him, wondering what this was about.
"Lady Tanya, there is a monster on the other side of the mountains that needs to be dealt with. A creature so vile and treacherous that it must be cut out before its depredations on our society is allowed to spread. Will you be my champion across the mountains and deal with it?"
You want me to kill a monster on that was a problem for society? Well I wasn't going to say no to that. The removal of problems for society was a net benefit for me as far as I was concerned, and the reputation would be worth it.
"Yes, my king! I will hunt this monster and bring him down for you." I said with a cheery smile.
The king smiled and then called out."Then it is agreed! Lady Tanya will lead the forces of Russ and any ally that wishes to help us across the mountains and into Lord Farthegn's territory and end the threat of his machinations once and for all."
I blinked and instantly sobered. How I instantly sobered I wasn't exactly sure, it was as if my liver went into overtime immediately and cleared my system of alcohol.
I had just been conned, and there was nothing I could do about it. I had agreed to hunt a monster without getting more details and now I had to lead an army across the mountains to kill a man who attempted to kill the king. I had to lead a war effort. Oh this was… This was terrible, what a wasteful wasteful thing. But there was nothing I could do. If I attempted to back out of it now my reputation would be ruined and I needed that reputation to look after my pack. There was no choice but to go through with it.
Carefully, my brain spinning a mile a minute, I sat down in the chair, feeling quite small and weak at that moment at my mistake and misunderstanding. I felt so sick and fooled and this all felt so so very familiar- Here comes my headache again.
Writers note: little bit flying fighting magic and drinks, all in a good days work. Let me know what you folks think!
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KillerFish
Grumpy Owl, Bird Lawyer
And this is why you don't just blindly agree to do stuff whilst drunk, Tanya! Do you want to accidentally get betrothed? Because this is how you accidentally get betrothed!
Fun story. Will probably drop it when Big E, the other Primarchs, and 40k genetics get brought into the picture because it's just a mess of characters I do not care about and infuriating world-building.
But for so long as the action stays on Fenris and close by (if Tanya can into space) with the wolves, neo-Vikings, and Odin the best AIhusbando, I'm following.
But for so long as the action stays on Fenris and close by (if Tanya can into space) with the wolves, neo-Vikings, and Odin the best AIhusbando, I'm following.
They may be on icy Fenris, but the way the men keep thirsting around Tanya, you'd think they are on Baal.
Chapter 10, legend building 3
Chapter 10, legend building 3
Tanya
I shook my head as I walked down the line of men who I would have to lead. I had never led anyone into battle, the wolves didn't count. If I had done so in the period I did not remember, that did not count either. The closest I had ever gotten to armed combat was a few FPS games and Medieval Total War 2. Neither of these qualified me as a military commander so leading Men into combat situations was well and truly above my head.
But I understood a few things. I'd watched Patton and a few war movies in my day, not to mention I had spent a good portion of my younger life reading up on military history. So I had some ideas of what to do: look impressive, act confident, and hope no one asked any important questions. It seemed like the best way to maintain control of the horde of barbarians I would be leading through the mountains to attack Lord Farthegn.
And they were a horde, of course. There were Russ's housecarls, at least 400 of them now, and another 200 shield maidens who had volunteered for this operation. As the king's personal soldiers they at least seemed to have some training and were lined up like a professional army should be. But the rest could best be summed up as a horde; three other Lords had volunteered forces, each of about 150 to 200 men, for a total of 550. They were not wearing the light blues of Russ; their colors were green, red, one extremely dark navy blue, and yellow. And their lines were not very professionally maintained, they simply were grouped up into what I would assume were cliques of friends. At least there seemed to be a standardization of equipment between most of the forces and Russ's personal army as almost everyone was equipped with spears and shields, with either a sword or personal axe as a sidearm for when the enemy was too close or the spear broke.
Except the yellows, every one of those 200 men carried a great axe of some kind. Their formation was also a bit heavier, I noted, having a lot more metal than fur and leather. I would have to find out who was the head commander of this force, because I would need to find out how to properly use them. The other three forces I could easily put into the wings of the main force but the 200 great axe soldiers… Well, they might need to be treated with a little bit more care on their positioning.
Besides those more lord-focused forces there was also what I was mentally calling the Adventurers Guild lackeys. Archers, scouts, adventurers, hunters, men of the wilds who were generally good with the bow. They had been paid good money from what I understood to work as scouts for our force, though how well they would do… I'd get to see if a lot of them were just as bad as the lesser lords' forces but I doubted that 200 archers would be a problem. They would find some usefulness in the coming fighting, but I wasn't exactly sure how I would use them yet. I had ideas but I would need to have a better understanding of the situation on the other side of the mountains.
I had nearly 1600 soldiers under my command, that did not seem like a lot but I was unaware of how many humans there were on the planet. I understood though that each person who was being contributed was someone who was not going to be able to help with farming duties as spring took full effect, so they had to limit the amount they were sending.
The same was not true of my enemy I would assume, which was a problem. Assuming that each one of these men needed at least one or two farmers to contribute to the food supply in their stead I meant I was possibly looking at an enemy that was double or triple my force in number, which was not a good odds. I did have an extra 200 wolves to add to the mix though, and they were each worth three to four humans in a fight.
Finishing my long walk down the line, I shook my head and took a breath. I needed to think of either a way to get out of this or a way to make sure that we all survived this. We had 6 months to cross the mountain, defeat an enemy with superior forces, and cross back before summer, when the environmental conditions would degrade again making crossing the mountains unhealthy.
How was I going to manage this? Looking back down the line I started to come up with an idea. It was not the most impressive idea but it was an idea and it was triggering a headache, which seemed to be a good sign.
Walking back towards the center of the line I found the king standing with several other lords who had contributed forces, all having what seemed like a lovely chat.
"Ah, Tanya! Do these forces meet your approval?" He asked with a smile that I almost thought was genuine. Man was using me for his own purposes. There was no way he really thought I would declare the truthful situation in front of him.
However, I could get away with playing up my wolf girl reputation. "The men are strong, yes. Though, as a pack, they seem unready."
'My men are ready." the lord in yellow said, seeming a little bit insulted. As expected, unfortunately. 'I assure you, miss, that my men will fight to their utmost and will bring victory and honor to this allied army.'
"Oh, I'm sure they will," I said, "every single one of these men and women will bring victory and honor, for a time."
"Is there an issue you've spotted that has missed our eyes?" the king asked, sounding intrigued, which was what I was hoping for.
"No doubt the fighting styles of each unit here are similar but they are not the same, meaning each engagement will have to be carefully planned for and set up. However, it would be more practical and successful if the set up happened here. If I was allowed to retrain them all so that they know how to work with each other in the field… An army that is more adaptable on a tactical level will have more success in this operation, since there is a possibility we will be facing a larger force." I proposed ignoring the headache.
The king nodded, seeming to understand my point, before asking. "How long would this retraining take? We cannot delay too long or the campaign could be caught on the other side of the mountains when summer hits. "
'A week here of heavy training and then, instead of a heavy march across the mountain, a light march with a light training to finish." I proposed.
"That would be cutting it close," he said. "If you're unable to defeat his army within the first 3 months you will have trouble getting back over and, as we get closer to summer, what supplies we can send over will become less and less."
"I do not have a good understanding of the enemy forces just yet I'll need these ranger types to give me more info about his movements and such but once I have this information I could theoretically have the army defeated within that time. It's all a matter of gathering the proper information and keeping my man out of the enemy's grasp until we're ready to strike."
"You have your week then. Good luck, Tanya.'
"Thank you, my Lord," I said before turning back to the forces arrayed before me.
This was going to take some time but where there are wolves there's a way. Nothing beats a pair of hungry teeth into forcing people into doing what you want, I hoped. Stepping forward I set out to get at work. First things first, time to find the sub-commanders and get them on board with the retraining.
Thankfully the subcommanders I had been granted for this operation were all having a very heated conversion, by the sound of it about who would be bringing home the most glory. The first was a man in heavy armor and yellow livery, he was most likely the leader of the yellow axe men due to the fact he was lugging around a giant great axe. If he wasn't as broad-shouldered as one of my wolves he probably would not be able to haul that thing around and I wouldn't be surprised that he might pull his arms out of their sockets if he moved wrong with an attack with how heavy it looked to be. Frankly it looked like a vanity weapon that was compensating for something but I would keep that comment to myself.
Besides him was the commander of the housecarls who had been assigned to this operation. His armor was almost as heavy as his warriors though he preferred what appeared to be a round shield and a one-handed axe as his main weapon. To their right was a man in red and green armor who had a two-handed sword strapped to his back. It didn't appear incredibly large but looked fairly old on him, possibly an heirloom of some kind. The last commander representing what could be best understood as noble forces wore dark blue and had a simple round shield and sword on his side. The last man I already knew as the leader of the Adventurer Guild and he played up the part well, wearing what appeared to be a wolf fur coat with the head of the wolf turned into a cowl. He seemed to be eyeing those of my wolves that were walking around with a wary gaze.
"Gentlemen!" I called as I walked up to them, getting them to stop whatever their conversation had been about and face me. "I'll make this quick and simple since we all want to get to work. What we have here are five different forces who have never worked together for a long-term operation. If we were fighting on our own territory this would be an acceptable situation but we are going to be crossing into enemy territory. As a result, we need to make these five different forces into a united one.
"And how do you propose we do that?" The cock sure attitude coming off of the leader of the Adventurers Guild frankly annoyed me but I did not let that show. Instead I reached into the pack at Geri's side and pulled out a shovel before tossing it to him then tossing an ax to the man in dark blue.
"Today is simple. Today we build a camp." I said pointing to the area around the men. "If we can't build a simple camp that is defensible and will not result in us coming down with diseases this expeditionary force will be killed by its own hubris. So let us learn to build a camp together."
The Adventurer shrugged before taking that comment in and nodding. "Sounds reasonable." Which was the important part. In order for a force to work with each other in the battlefield they had to learn to work with each other off the field, building a camp that would be sanitary was a step in the right direction. Tomorrow I would work on marching, shield walls, and anything else I could think of. Though I'd most likely use the sub-commanders to my advantage and ask how they usually trained their men, trying to give each one a day to train the entire force in their preferred tactics. If they at least understood how each fourth worked it would be able to work together better.
The only real problems were the heavy axe and the Adventurers Guild. I would need to spend some time figuring out what to do with them. Perhaps I could get the Adventurers Guild to learn to ride my wolves? Archer cavalry didn't sound like so bad an investment.
And if the trainees got a little too uppity about it, I'm sure my wolves could convince them to stick to their training regime. Nothing like a pair of sharp and hungry teeth looking your way to improve a person's outlook on their situation.
Sub Commander Ulfrik Eilifsson
God damn, it's cold! You think you get used to the cold and then you go up into the mountains and are reminded just how cold this world is. Didn't matter how many times I went up here either. I've been on several raids via the mountain pass before, even done even more dangerous sea travels but one trip on the sea had convinced me that I didn't want to step one foot on a ship again.
The sea clans in the coastal region may have a good time out there but me? Well, the queasiness would make sure I never really wanted to go on the water again.
Besides, despite the monsters that live here, these mountains were a safer pass to where we wanted to attack. Even if the travel was at least a week longer.
Too many boats moving would cause the sea creatures to stir. Unless you were hunting sea creatures, or you really really wanted to get somewhere fast, it was best to take the land route.
Looking down from my horse on the column of men moving I was fairly impressed at the good order they were showing. This giant witch the Russ had found seemed to have a wide set of skills besides the wide tracts of land and hips. I've seen quite a few men simply do what she told them to because she told it to them. And some of those men were the most obstinate soldiers in any of our forces.
I didn't know if it was the beauty or the commanding voice she could put on that got them to do what she wanted, though I would probably put it money down on the wolves. They seemed to be tame enough around her but it was best not to push one's luck. For myself, I didn't feel any compulsion to do what she said, her curves played no part on my mind because I was a happily married man. She had proven herself capable when it came to organizing marches and setting up camps honestly, and a real logistics-minded person too. How she would do once we got to the actual fighting, that was something I would have to see. If she got herself killed though I was definitely going to angle myself for the commander spot. All they needed to do is raid the hell out of trucebreaker Farthegn's land, no reason to fight him on the open as Tanya seemed to be preparing to do.
Not that I was against our Commander, the infighting in my own region tended to make such offices very problematicfor leadership. Having a commander from one faction controlling the others usually ended with bickering. The only reason that wasn't happening now was that Tanya was technically an independent party, with her own forces as the wolves. Yeah, she was allied to the Russ but everyone was allied to the Russ so that didn't mean much.
For now, though I was willing to wait and see what happened. Who knows maybe this time I would see some great and spectacular plan actually win against a superior force? More likely than not that we'd end up raiding and marching back over mountains, a little bit more tired than we could have been if we had just gone with straight raiding instead of training for a fight.
The glory would probably be about the same either way, it only mattered that it happened and not how it happened after all.
Riding forward on my horse, I got in front of my men and then continued on, wanting to see what was ahead on the way.
The low ends of these mountains that separated the coasts from each other were not as terrifying as the peaks near the top of the world, but the small and windy paths did make everything feel smaller. There was really only room for 3 men to walk abreast with a horse rider alongside them. It would seem like more than enough room to move but you needed to keep an eye on your men or they would do something stupid, so we had to maintain enough room for a horse to ride on the side.
I already had to save some farm boy from being attacked by a giant snake that lived in these mountains. Slimy little bugger came out of a hole and tried to drag him in, one good swing of my axe though and I cut that thing's head from its shoulders! Or neck? Do snakes have shoulders? That's a question for another time.
Whatever thought I was going to have was interrupted by a shout and large amount of noise breaking out from somewhere down the road. What was up I didn't know but I was fairly curious so I rode my horse hard in that direction to find out.
It wasn't that far, over by the dark blue company of troops really or near the center of the line. What I found when I got there was that apparently one of the larger Thunder Wolves had made it through our screens of 'rangers' as Tanya had referred to them as and was currently menacing that troop. The men were holding well and slashing at them, using their shields to keep it away, but they were not able to get in close enough for their swords to do any good.
Fine! I reached to take the great axe from the side of my horse and get ready to try and do battle with this beast when the situation developed in a strange way.
The wolf was snarling and biting at them from the left side of the road, pushing the men towards the right which was basically against a cliff face. Not a tall one, I estimated it only to be 20 feet high.
But it was high enough that I did not notice right off the bat that Tanya was at the top of it. Where she had come from, how she had gotten there? I didn't know. She tended to move up and down the line, making sure everyone was marching, being a little bit stricter with those who fell behind, and having her wolves menace anyone who tried to give her lip.
Apparently she found a way up onto the cliff and was using that as a shortcut to keep an eye on everybody since it would provide a larger viewpoint than being down on the ground with the rest of the marching column.
This, however, also meant that she was in perfect position to do something which I thought looked rather ridiculous. But very effective. She jumped over the column of blue soldiers and let gravity do the work to bring her down right on top of the big white Thunder Wolf that was menacing them.
There was a sickening crack as the armor she wore smacked against the heavy fur, possibly breaking some sort of bone inside the beast. Hard to say, could easily just be that there was ice frozen in its fur somewhere that made the noise.
Either way, Tanya was now on top of the beast and immediately got her arms around its neck. I think that was not easily achieved by the looks of it as she was barely able to hold on and pull at the same time.
The beast in question immediately started bucking and trying to get her off, smacking itself against a dead tree that had marked the side of the road before taking a few steps down the right slope and slipping off the cliff with Tanya.
As ways to go that was a marvelous one, I thought. Not only does she get a legend about taking on the king of wolves but she attempted to bring down one of the king of wolves' cousins in one on one combat. She only died because positioning screwed her over.
I shook my head and then prepared myself for the inevitable discussion with the other sub-commanders about replacing our noble wolf witch.
Then the wind picked up at an incredible rate as if a storm had been summoned and was hitting the mountains below our passage. The men, fearful of whatever this was, grabbed onto the side of the mountain and hoped they weren't blown away. I simply sat there on the back of my horse, looking stoic. I was not exactly sure about what was going on but knew that a show of confidence would lead to a better position in taking over, after her death was declared real.
Then the Thunder Wolf was thrown back up onto the cliffside by the massive amount of wind. Tanya was still holding on to the damn Thunder Wolf as if her life depended on it and I swore I saw something glowing in her left hand before they both crashed into the ground.
Everyone just stood there. We were shocked, unsure on what to do. All of a sudden Tanya pulled herself up, brushed off a little bit of snow and dirt that had gathered on her cloak, and walked over to the Thunder Wolf and checked up on it as she would have any of her others.
I expected many things but the wolf actually not trying to bite her hand off as she began making sure it was okay was not one of them. My best guess was that the Thunder Wolf I thought it was dead and wasn't exactly sure how to handle not being among the living anymore.
After a few moments of thought it seemed to shake itself free of whatever stupidity this was and stood back up. It looked around at everyone before its eyes focused on Tanya. One of her crows landed on her shoulder at that exact moment, which drew its notice. It bowed its head and backed away slowly, showing more deference than I've seen from any human to a lord.
Once it was far enough away it turned around and ran off, apparently deciding that human meat was off the menu today. Tanya turned around with a big smile on her face and said "well, gentlemen, it seems that situation is handled. Back to our march, we got a Trucebreaker to teach a lesson to and we can't waste our time up here."
The men immediately got to work doing what she said, marching in the general direction, but I just sat there on the horse stunned by the turn of events and listening to the soldiers as they walked by. Comments such as Chosen of the Allfather and Wolf King were made as they walked by.
Tanya for her part did not seem to care, only turning towards me after a few minutes to say, "good work coming up when you heard the racket. I wasn't sure what I was going to do when that thing first showed up but when I saw you there I knew I would have support."
"No, my Lady. Thanks to you, I've never seen something so wondrous as a Thunder Wolf being tackled. That is a scene that I shall replay in my memories for some time". I said, trying to be nice.
Tanya simply smiled and nodded "it was an honor, though I wish I could have done it without falling off that cliff. That was a close one."
"Yes, quite lucky that the wind kicked up right then weren't you?" I poked.
"Yes. Lucky." she said, slipping something into her pocket. My eyes caught what looked to be a rune priest beads as it was stored back.
My eyebrow raised a bit when I realized that she was dabbling with magic, making my comment about being a witch more realistic than I thought. But, as long as she was safe… That could be useful in the coming days. Having someone with powers could change any battlefield. Most of the rune priests tended to stay out of combat so it was likely to come in handy in most situations.
Nodding in my head I said "Well then, Lady Tanya, I believe we have a march to get back to. The Trucebreaker isn't going to defeat himself after all."
I got a smile from her, which was a sign I was doing something right. Someone with powers you did not want to cross as well, better to be on her good side unless I wanted to end up a Wolf myself. Who knew what kind of other powers she had.
Tanya
Felt good to be out of those mountains. There was less stress now but I had to put out so many fires and near chaotic moments.
The road we had chosen apparently was known to be hunted by Thunder Wolves, as a result we had run into four. After talking with the subcommanders I learned that it was actually expected that something like this would happen and that they had expected to take 10% losses from the wolf attacks. Thankfully we only took 1% losses, mainly from people who had done stupid things and fallen off the mountain or got their feet frozen off and had to be taken back by my wolves. At least I hope they made it back safe? They were riding on wolf back, they should be fine enough. I guess I would find out when I got home.
Either way we'd made it safely across the mountains and we were now setting up a base in an area that seemed less populated. We had a freshwater stream and I'd had the latrines dug well away from it and from the camp. I also sent out the Adventurers Guild mounted on my wolves to find out more information about the area around us.
So far their information gathering was acceptable. We had arrived in the furthest west of the Trucebreaker's territory. So far there was nothing of more than vague interest, my Adventurers Guild Riders had located several old fortresses similar to the ones I had seen when I first entered the lowlands on the other side of the mountains.
They also were long since overgrown and abandoned for the most part. Good positions for a siege if something were to happen but not one that I would like to be caught in. Best to keep the force moving as often as possible and doing as much damage to the enemy as I could.
As for the rest of the terrain it was allsnow and villages, I used the Adventurers Guild as barebone diplomats to see if those villages would be willing to give us supplies while we were engaging in hostilities against their leadership.
They had politely refused the first time which had required me to go deal with them myself. After an hour of long negotiations, while my wolves padded around the village, I was able to secure a local supply in exchange for the local currency that we would most likely be getting off the enemy once we started fighting them.
It wasn't a great deal but it was better than nothing and they seemed happy enough to have it. Although considering that the other subcommander said that we should just raid them and take what we needed, there was probably a reason for that. They were based off Vikings in their culture, I wouldn't be surprised if raiding and fighting were just as common as Viking culture had it.
So working on negotiating a deal was a definite improvement for the peasants of this land. This also gathered to me a bit of intelligence from the locals as I knew that the Trucebreaker was still in his castle far to the South.
However some of his lesser lords were gathering forces, apparently they were taking this whole situation very seriously compared to their lord. They had not called up the citizenry of their little peasant villages though, relying on the warrior class of this region. From what I understood it meant there were seven armies of around 500 to 700 men each, scattered across this side of the continent and slowly moving in my direction.
I didn't need the constant headaches that I had been having since taking on this job to know how to handle such a situation; I was quite a fan of military history and I was well aware of Napoleon's strategy of hitting the enemy army while it was separated and destroying it piecemeal.
And that was exactly what I was planning to do. I only had close to 1600 men while the enemy had twice that minimum, if all their forces came together I would not have a victory on my hands. So I set about making sure that they would not come together. I had my Wolf Rider Rangers, the 100 or so men I had been able to train to ride the wolves without getting themselves bitten in two, to head towards the second closest army with the plan to simply engage, distract them, and keep them chasing my men in the wrong direction.
The rest of my forces had been split up into three columns and were moving out of camp, we were going to hit the closest force of around 600 men in the afternoon.
As far as I could tell they were being lackadaisical and lazy as they didn't even have pickets out to let them know that my rangers had gotten within breathing distance of them.
Which was not my problem. If the enemy chose to be terrible at their job that just made my life easier.
Mounting up on Freki I looked over at the other commanders who were eyeing my wolf carefully.
"All right, gentlemen! Let's go settle the score on the ambush number. They don't have much right to complain, considering what they told with their crossbowmen." I said trying to exude authority and confidence.
It seemed to work as they chuckled before leader in dark blue Jon Alfgeirsson said "Yes, let's go teach these trucebreakers why you don't break the freaking truce. I swear Lord Farthegn was a fool who got lucky or a genius who overplayed. Either way this is not going to go the way he thinks.'
Nikolas Larlsson of Green and red nodded his approval before adding "a good point! Though I think he didn't believe we'd be as bold as Lady Tanya is proposing with this march. Most commanders would simply come over the mountains and raid everything, not interfere with the local systems. Really the more gold you bring across usually means the more glory."
I nodded my understanding but I simply said, "The king asked me to end a monster, that's a certain expectation that I shall meet. Raiding the countryside and being an improvision on the citizenry of this country will not meet that expectation, it'll simply put off the inevitable fight that will come from not taking this truce breaker down while we have the chance. Better to kill the poisonous snake today, while it is still outside your property, than to clean up the remains of your animals tomorrow." trying to make my opinion on the matter as clear as possible.
And I did agree with this opinion on every level. The man had broken the laws of civilization as those people understood it. Letting him walk around like that was nothing would just encourage him to do it more.
Laws exist for a reason, to protect civilization from its worse excesses. You could bend them, you could find loopholes around them, but to break them that was a betrayal of civilization. And I would not live with something that was no better than an uncivilized barbarian waiting on my borders for the best moment to cause mayhem and disaster for the people that I worked with.
Writers note: Not happy with a chapter, it serves the goal but I admit I could have done better, it was written over the course of 2/24-26, so yeah I was a bit distracted. I believe all of are and that's all I'm going to say on that matter. That's why diced to not do any of the battles I had planned for this chapter instead of shove off them to next week so I hoped I would be less distracted, chapter 10 of mando came easier so I assumed I will be able to to do that.
Let me know what you all think and enjoy.
Edited by: Preier, M.G. , Sunny
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Tanya
I shook my head as I walked down the line of men who I would have to lead. I had never led anyone into battle, the wolves didn't count. If I had done so in the period I did not remember, that did not count either. The closest I had ever gotten to armed combat was a few FPS games and Medieval Total War 2. Neither of these qualified me as a military commander so leading Men into combat situations was well and truly above my head.
But I understood a few things. I'd watched Patton and a few war movies in my day, not to mention I had spent a good portion of my younger life reading up on military history. So I had some ideas of what to do: look impressive, act confident, and hope no one asked any important questions. It seemed like the best way to maintain control of the horde of barbarians I would be leading through the mountains to attack Lord Farthegn.
And they were a horde, of course. There were Russ's housecarls, at least 400 of them now, and another 200 shield maidens who had volunteered for this operation. As the king's personal soldiers they at least seemed to have some training and were lined up like a professional army should be. But the rest could best be summed up as a horde; three other Lords had volunteered forces, each of about 150 to 200 men, for a total of 550. They were not wearing the light blues of Russ; their colors were green, red, one extremely dark navy blue, and yellow. And their lines were not very professionally maintained, they simply were grouped up into what I would assume were cliques of friends. At least there seemed to be a standardization of equipment between most of the forces and Russ's personal army as almost everyone was equipped with spears and shields, with either a sword or personal axe as a sidearm for when the enemy was too close or the spear broke.
Except the yellows, every one of those 200 men carried a great axe of some kind. Their formation was also a bit heavier, I noted, having a lot more metal than fur and leather. I would have to find out who was the head commander of this force, because I would need to find out how to properly use them. The other three forces I could easily put into the wings of the main force but the 200 great axe soldiers… Well, they might need to be treated with a little bit more care on their positioning.
Besides those more lord-focused forces there was also what I was mentally calling the Adventurers Guild lackeys. Archers, scouts, adventurers, hunters, men of the wilds who were generally good with the bow. They had been paid good money from what I understood to work as scouts for our force, though how well they would do… I'd get to see if a lot of them were just as bad as the lesser lords' forces but I doubted that 200 archers would be a problem. They would find some usefulness in the coming fighting, but I wasn't exactly sure how I would use them yet. I had ideas but I would need to have a better understanding of the situation on the other side of the mountains.
I had nearly 1600 soldiers under my command, that did not seem like a lot but I was unaware of how many humans there were on the planet. I understood though that each person who was being contributed was someone who was not going to be able to help with farming duties as spring took full effect, so they had to limit the amount they were sending.
The same was not true of my enemy I would assume, which was a problem. Assuming that each one of these men needed at least one or two farmers to contribute to the food supply in their stead I meant I was possibly looking at an enemy that was double or triple my force in number, which was not a good odds. I did have an extra 200 wolves to add to the mix though, and they were each worth three to four humans in a fight.
Finishing my long walk down the line, I shook my head and took a breath. I needed to think of either a way to get out of this or a way to make sure that we all survived this. We had 6 months to cross the mountain, defeat an enemy with superior forces, and cross back before summer, when the environmental conditions would degrade again making crossing the mountains unhealthy.
How was I going to manage this? Looking back down the line I started to come up with an idea. It was not the most impressive idea but it was an idea and it was triggering a headache, which seemed to be a good sign.
Walking back towards the center of the line I found the king standing with several other lords who had contributed forces, all having what seemed like a lovely chat.
"Ah, Tanya! Do these forces meet your approval?" He asked with a smile that I almost thought was genuine. Man was using me for his own purposes. There was no way he really thought I would declare the truthful situation in front of him.
However, I could get away with playing up my wolf girl reputation. "The men are strong, yes. Though, as a pack, they seem unready."
'My men are ready." the lord in yellow said, seeming a little bit insulted. As expected, unfortunately. 'I assure you, miss, that my men will fight to their utmost and will bring victory and honor to this allied army.'
"Oh, I'm sure they will," I said, "every single one of these men and women will bring victory and honor, for a time."
"Is there an issue you've spotted that has missed our eyes?" the king asked, sounding intrigued, which was what I was hoping for.
"No doubt the fighting styles of each unit here are similar but they are not the same, meaning each engagement will have to be carefully planned for and set up. However, it would be more practical and successful if the set up happened here. If I was allowed to retrain them all so that they know how to work with each other in the field… An army that is more adaptable on a tactical level will have more success in this operation, since there is a possibility we will be facing a larger force." I proposed ignoring the headache.
The king nodded, seeming to understand my point, before asking. "How long would this retraining take? We cannot delay too long or the campaign could be caught on the other side of the mountains when summer hits. "
'A week here of heavy training and then, instead of a heavy march across the mountain, a light march with a light training to finish." I proposed.
"That would be cutting it close," he said. "If you're unable to defeat his army within the first 3 months you will have trouble getting back over and, as we get closer to summer, what supplies we can send over will become less and less."
"I do not have a good understanding of the enemy forces just yet I'll need these ranger types to give me more info about his movements and such but once I have this information I could theoretically have the army defeated within that time. It's all a matter of gathering the proper information and keeping my man out of the enemy's grasp until we're ready to strike."
"You have your week then. Good luck, Tanya.'
"Thank you, my Lord," I said before turning back to the forces arrayed before me.
This was going to take some time but where there are wolves there's a way. Nothing beats a pair of hungry teeth into forcing people into doing what you want, I hoped. Stepping forward I set out to get at work. First things first, time to find the sub-commanders and get them on board with the retraining.
Thankfully the subcommanders I had been granted for this operation were all having a very heated conversion, by the sound of it about who would be bringing home the most glory. The first was a man in heavy armor and yellow livery, he was most likely the leader of the yellow axe men due to the fact he was lugging around a giant great axe. If he wasn't as broad-shouldered as one of my wolves he probably would not be able to haul that thing around and I wouldn't be surprised that he might pull his arms out of their sockets if he moved wrong with an attack with how heavy it looked to be. Frankly it looked like a vanity weapon that was compensating for something but I would keep that comment to myself.
Besides him was the commander of the housecarls who had been assigned to this operation. His armor was almost as heavy as his warriors though he preferred what appeared to be a round shield and a one-handed axe as his main weapon. To their right was a man in red and green armor who had a two-handed sword strapped to his back. It didn't appear incredibly large but looked fairly old on him, possibly an heirloom of some kind. The last commander representing what could be best understood as noble forces wore dark blue and had a simple round shield and sword on his side. The last man I already knew as the leader of the Adventurer Guild and he played up the part well, wearing what appeared to be a wolf fur coat with the head of the wolf turned into a cowl. He seemed to be eyeing those of my wolves that were walking around with a wary gaze.
"Gentlemen!" I called as I walked up to them, getting them to stop whatever their conversation had been about and face me. "I'll make this quick and simple since we all want to get to work. What we have here are five different forces who have never worked together for a long-term operation. If we were fighting on our own territory this would be an acceptable situation but we are going to be crossing into enemy territory. As a result, we need to make these five different forces into a united one.
"And how do you propose we do that?" The cock sure attitude coming off of the leader of the Adventurers Guild frankly annoyed me but I did not let that show. Instead I reached into the pack at Geri's side and pulled out a shovel before tossing it to him then tossing an ax to the man in dark blue.
"Today is simple. Today we build a camp." I said pointing to the area around the men. "If we can't build a simple camp that is defensible and will not result in us coming down with diseases this expeditionary force will be killed by its own hubris. So let us learn to build a camp together."
The Adventurer shrugged before taking that comment in and nodding. "Sounds reasonable." Which was the important part. In order for a force to work with each other in the battlefield they had to learn to work with each other off the field, building a camp that would be sanitary was a step in the right direction. Tomorrow I would work on marching, shield walls, and anything else I could think of. Though I'd most likely use the sub-commanders to my advantage and ask how they usually trained their men, trying to give each one a day to train the entire force in their preferred tactics. If they at least understood how each fourth worked it would be able to work together better.
The only real problems were the heavy axe and the Adventurers Guild. I would need to spend some time figuring out what to do with them. Perhaps I could get the Adventurers Guild to learn to ride my wolves? Archer cavalry didn't sound like so bad an investment.
And if the trainees got a little too uppity about it, I'm sure my wolves could convince them to stick to their training regime. Nothing like a pair of sharp and hungry teeth looking your way to improve a person's outlook on their situation.
Sub Commander Ulfrik Eilifsson
God damn, it's cold! You think you get used to the cold and then you go up into the mountains and are reminded just how cold this world is. Didn't matter how many times I went up here either. I've been on several raids via the mountain pass before, even done even more dangerous sea travels but one trip on the sea had convinced me that I didn't want to step one foot on a ship again.
The sea clans in the coastal region may have a good time out there but me? Well, the queasiness would make sure I never really wanted to go on the water again.
Besides, despite the monsters that live here, these mountains were a safer pass to where we wanted to attack. Even if the travel was at least a week longer.
Too many boats moving would cause the sea creatures to stir. Unless you were hunting sea creatures, or you really really wanted to get somewhere fast, it was best to take the land route.
Looking down from my horse on the column of men moving I was fairly impressed at the good order they were showing. This giant witch the Russ had found seemed to have a wide set of skills besides the wide tracts of land and hips. I've seen quite a few men simply do what she told them to because she told it to them. And some of those men were the most obstinate soldiers in any of our forces.
I didn't know if it was the beauty or the commanding voice she could put on that got them to do what she wanted, though I would probably put it money down on the wolves. They seemed to be tame enough around her but it was best not to push one's luck. For myself, I didn't feel any compulsion to do what she said, her curves played no part on my mind because I was a happily married man. She had proven herself capable when it came to organizing marches and setting up camps honestly, and a real logistics-minded person too. How she would do once we got to the actual fighting, that was something I would have to see. If she got herself killed though I was definitely going to angle myself for the commander spot. All they needed to do is raid the hell out of trucebreaker Farthegn's land, no reason to fight him on the open as Tanya seemed to be preparing to do.
Not that I was against our Commander, the infighting in my own region tended to make such offices very problematicfor leadership. Having a commander from one faction controlling the others usually ended with bickering. The only reason that wasn't happening now was that Tanya was technically an independent party, with her own forces as the wolves. Yeah, she was allied to the Russ but everyone was allied to the Russ so that didn't mean much.
For now, though I was willing to wait and see what happened. Who knows maybe this time I would see some great and spectacular plan actually win against a superior force? More likely than not that we'd end up raiding and marching back over mountains, a little bit more tired than we could have been if we had just gone with straight raiding instead of training for a fight.
The glory would probably be about the same either way, it only mattered that it happened and not how it happened after all.
Riding forward on my horse, I got in front of my men and then continued on, wanting to see what was ahead on the way.
The low ends of these mountains that separated the coasts from each other were not as terrifying as the peaks near the top of the world, but the small and windy paths did make everything feel smaller. There was really only room for 3 men to walk abreast with a horse rider alongside them. It would seem like more than enough room to move but you needed to keep an eye on your men or they would do something stupid, so we had to maintain enough room for a horse to ride on the side.
I already had to save some farm boy from being attacked by a giant snake that lived in these mountains. Slimy little bugger came out of a hole and tried to drag him in, one good swing of my axe though and I cut that thing's head from its shoulders! Or neck? Do snakes have shoulders? That's a question for another time.
Whatever thought I was going to have was interrupted by a shout and large amount of noise breaking out from somewhere down the road. What was up I didn't know but I was fairly curious so I rode my horse hard in that direction to find out.
It wasn't that far, over by the dark blue company of troops really or near the center of the line. What I found when I got there was that apparently one of the larger Thunder Wolves had made it through our screens of 'rangers' as Tanya had referred to them as and was currently menacing that troop. The men were holding well and slashing at them, using their shields to keep it away, but they were not able to get in close enough for their swords to do any good.
Fine! I reached to take the great axe from the side of my horse and get ready to try and do battle with this beast when the situation developed in a strange way.
The wolf was snarling and biting at them from the left side of the road, pushing the men towards the right which was basically against a cliff face. Not a tall one, I estimated it only to be 20 feet high.
But it was high enough that I did not notice right off the bat that Tanya was at the top of it. Where she had come from, how she had gotten there? I didn't know. She tended to move up and down the line, making sure everyone was marching, being a little bit stricter with those who fell behind, and having her wolves menace anyone who tried to give her lip.
Apparently she found a way up onto the cliff and was using that as a shortcut to keep an eye on everybody since it would provide a larger viewpoint than being down on the ground with the rest of the marching column.
This, however, also meant that she was in perfect position to do something which I thought looked rather ridiculous. But very effective. She jumped over the column of blue soldiers and let gravity do the work to bring her down right on top of the big white Thunder Wolf that was menacing them.
There was a sickening crack as the armor she wore smacked against the heavy fur, possibly breaking some sort of bone inside the beast. Hard to say, could easily just be that there was ice frozen in its fur somewhere that made the noise.
Either way, Tanya was now on top of the beast and immediately got her arms around its neck. I think that was not easily achieved by the looks of it as she was barely able to hold on and pull at the same time.
The beast in question immediately started bucking and trying to get her off, smacking itself against a dead tree that had marked the side of the road before taking a few steps down the right slope and slipping off the cliff with Tanya.
As ways to go that was a marvelous one, I thought. Not only does she get a legend about taking on the king of wolves but she attempted to bring down one of the king of wolves' cousins in one on one combat. She only died because positioning screwed her over.
I shook my head and then prepared myself for the inevitable discussion with the other sub-commanders about replacing our noble wolf witch.
Then the wind picked up at an incredible rate as if a storm had been summoned and was hitting the mountains below our passage. The men, fearful of whatever this was, grabbed onto the side of the mountain and hoped they weren't blown away. I simply sat there on the back of my horse, looking stoic. I was not exactly sure about what was going on but knew that a show of confidence would lead to a better position in taking over, after her death was declared real.
Then the Thunder Wolf was thrown back up onto the cliffside by the massive amount of wind. Tanya was still holding on to the damn Thunder Wolf as if her life depended on it and I swore I saw something glowing in her left hand before they both crashed into the ground.
Everyone just stood there. We were shocked, unsure on what to do. All of a sudden Tanya pulled herself up, brushed off a little bit of snow and dirt that had gathered on her cloak, and walked over to the Thunder Wolf and checked up on it as she would have any of her others.
I expected many things but the wolf actually not trying to bite her hand off as she began making sure it was okay was not one of them. My best guess was that the Thunder Wolf I thought it was dead and wasn't exactly sure how to handle not being among the living anymore.
After a few moments of thought it seemed to shake itself free of whatever stupidity this was and stood back up. It looked around at everyone before its eyes focused on Tanya. One of her crows landed on her shoulder at that exact moment, which drew its notice. It bowed its head and backed away slowly, showing more deference than I've seen from any human to a lord.
Once it was far enough away it turned around and ran off, apparently deciding that human meat was off the menu today. Tanya turned around with a big smile on her face and said "well, gentlemen, it seems that situation is handled. Back to our march, we got a Trucebreaker to teach a lesson to and we can't waste our time up here."
The men immediately got to work doing what she said, marching in the general direction, but I just sat there on the horse stunned by the turn of events and listening to the soldiers as they walked by. Comments such as Chosen of the Allfather and Wolf King were made as they walked by.
Tanya for her part did not seem to care, only turning towards me after a few minutes to say, "good work coming up when you heard the racket. I wasn't sure what I was going to do when that thing first showed up but when I saw you there I knew I would have support."
"No, my Lady. Thanks to you, I've never seen something so wondrous as a Thunder Wolf being tackled. That is a scene that I shall replay in my memories for some time". I said, trying to be nice.
Tanya simply smiled and nodded "it was an honor, though I wish I could have done it without falling off that cliff. That was a close one."
"Yes, quite lucky that the wind kicked up right then weren't you?" I poked.
"Yes. Lucky." she said, slipping something into her pocket. My eyes caught what looked to be a rune priest beads as it was stored back.
My eyebrow raised a bit when I realized that she was dabbling with magic, making my comment about being a witch more realistic than I thought. But, as long as she was safe… That could be useful in the coming days. Having someone with powers could change any battlefield. Most of the rune priests tended to stay out of combat so it was likely to come in handy in most situations.
Nodding in my head I said "Well then, Lady Tanya, I believe we have a march to get back to. The Trucebreaker isn't going to defeat himself after all."
I got a smile from her, which was a sign I was doing something right. Someone with powers you did not want to cross as well, better to be on her good side unless I wanted to end up a Wolf myself. Who knew what kind of other powers she had.
Tanya
Felt good to be out of those mountains. There was less stress now but I had to put out so many fires and near chaotic moments.
The road we had chosen apparently was known to be hunted by Thunder Wolves, as a result we had run into four. After talking with the subcommanders I learned that it was actually expected that something like this would happen and that they had expected to take 10% losses from the wolf attacks. Thankfully we only took 1% losses, mainly from people who had done stupid things and fallen off the mountain or got their feet frozen off and had to be taken back by my wolves. At least I hope they made it back safe? They were riding on wolf back, they should be fine enough. I guess I would find out when I got home.
Either way we'd made it safely across the mountains and we were now setting up a base in an area that seemed less populated. We had a freshwater stream and I'd had the latrines dug well away from it and from the camp. I also sent out the Adventurers Guild mounted on my wolves to find out more information about the area around us.
So far their information gathering was acceptable. We had arrived in the furthest west of the Trucebreaker's territory. So far there was nothing of more than vague interest, my Adventurers Guild Riders had located several old fortresses similar to the ones I had seen when I first entered the lowlands on the other side of the mountains.
They also were long since overgrown and abandoned for the most part. Good positions for a siege if something were to happen but not one that I would like to be caught in. Best to keep the force moving as often as possible and doing as much damage to the enemy as I could.
As for the rest of the terrain it was allsnow and villages, I used the Adventurers Guild as barebone diplomats to see if those villages would be willing to give us supplies while we were engaging in hostilities against their leadership.
They had politely refused the first time which had required me to go deal with them myself. After an hour of long negotiations, while my wolves padded around the village, I was able to secure a local supply in exchange for the local currency that we would most likely be getting off the enemy once we started fighting them.
It wasn't a great deal but it was better than nothing and they seemed happy enough to have it. Although considering that the other subcommander said that we should just raid them and take what we needed, there was probably a reason for that. They were based off Vikings in their culture, I wouldn't be surprised if raiding and fighting were just as common as Viking culture had it.
So working on negotiating a deal was a definite improvement for the peasants of this land. This also gathered to me a bit of intelligence from the locals as I knew that the Trucebreaker was still in his castle far to the South.
However some of his lesser lords were gathering forces, apparently they were taking this whole situation very seriously compared to their lord. They had not called up the citizenry of their little peasant villages though, relying on the warrior class of this region. From what I understood it meant there were seven armies of around 500 to 700 men each, scattered across this side of the continent and slowly moving in my direction.
I didn't need the constant headaches that I had been having since taking on this job to know how to handle such a situation; I was quite a fan of military history and I was well aware of Napoleon's strategy of hitting the enemy army while it was separated and destroying it piecemeal.
And that was exactly what I was planning to do. I only had close to 1600 men while the enemy had twice that minimum, if all their forces came together I would not have a victory on my hands. So I set about making sure that they would not come together. I had my Wolf Rider Rangers, the 100 or so men I had been able to train to ride the wolves without getting themselves bitten in two, to head towards the second closest army with the plan to simply engage, distract them, and keep them chasing my men in the wrong direction.
The rest of my forces had been split up into three columns and were moving out of camp, we were going to hit the closest force of around 600 men in the afternoon.
As far as I could tell they were being lackadaisical and lazy as they didn't even have pickets out to let them know that my rangers had gotten within breathing distance of them.
Which was not my problem. If the enemy chose to be terrible at their job that just made my life easier.
Mounting up on Freki I looked over at the other commanders who were eyeing my wolf carefully.
"All right, gentlemen! Let's go settle the score on the ambush number. They don't have much right to complain, considering what they told with their crossbowmen." I said trying to exude authority and confidence.
It seemed to work as they chuckled before leader in dark blue Jon Alfgeirsson said "Yes, let's go teach these trucebreakers why you don't break the freaking truce. I swear Lord Farthegn was a fool who got lucky or a genius who overplayed. Either way this is not going to go the way he thinks.'
Nikolas Larlsson of Green and red nodded his approval before adding "a good point! Though I think he didn't believe we'd be as bold as Lady Tanya is proposing with this march. Most commanders would simply come over the mountains and raid everything, not interfere with the local systems. Really the more gold you bring across usually means the more glory."
I nodded my understanding but I simply said, "The king asked me to end a monster, that's a certain expectation that I shall meet. Raiding the countryside and being an improvision on the citizenry of this country will not meet that expectation, it'll simply put off the inevitable fight that will come from not taking this truce breaker down while we have the chance. Better to kill the poisonous snake today, while it is still outside your property, than to clean up the remains of your animals tomorrow." trying to make my opinion on the matter as clear as possible.
And I did agree with this opinion on every level. The man had broken the laws of civilization as those people understood it. Letting him walk around like that was nothing would just encourage him to do it more.
Laws exist for a reason, to protect civilization from its worse excesses. You could bend them, you could find loopholes around them, but to break them that was a betrayal of civilization. And I would not live with something that was no better than an uncivilized barbarian waiting on my borders for the best moment to cause mayhem and disaster for the people that I worked with.
Writers note: Not happy with a chapter, it serves the goal but I admit I could have done better, it was written over the course of 2/24-26, so yeah I was a bit distracted. I believe all of are and that's all I'm going to say on that matter. That's why diced to not do any of the battles I had planned for this chapter instead of shove off them to next week so I hoped I would be less distracted, chapter 10 of mando came easier so I assumed I will be able to to do that.
Let me know what you all think and enjoy.
Edited by: Preier, M.G. , Sunny
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fan art
apparently someone made fan art for this fic https://www.deviantart.com/superiorfreak/gallery/82185358/tanya-the-runt-random-art-stuff
Found it, love it, looking forward for more.
Chapter 11, builder of legend 4
Runt 11, Builder of legend 4
Subcommander Ulfrik Eilifsson
What a glorious day for a battle, there's nothing else to say really. The last 10 minutes I have been chopping heads and breaking shields with my massive ax as the Trucebreaker's forces broke themselves on our shield wall.
The wolf witch had experimented with several ways to use my brawlers and I thought this one was the best. When the battle had started an hour ago only three formations had been in position.
My own, the dark blue commander's Jon Alfgeirsson troops and the Russ's forces.
We were well aware of where the enemy was, our scouts had been keeping a tab on them and sending back information but Larlsson's forces had simply taken a wrong turn and ended up running into a large formation of enemy flanker units.
Exact number of the enemy unit was unknown but Tanya had elected to take her Wolf Cavalry to find out if it was a real problem or something that could be handled by the red and green of Commander Nikolas Larlsson.
But she had not left before giving direct orders on how we were to handle the enemy formation in front of us, which was relatively equal to ours. I think we even had a few more troops than them.
It was a simple plan, an easy plan, and that's why it was working. We had let the enemy move their shield wall directly into contact with ours at the shallow end of the valley with heavy forest on all sides, especially behind us. Thankfully our scouts had managed to keep the exact numbers of our men hidden and the enemy had assumed that there were only the two formations, shield walls and archers, to their flanks so they'd only stretched their shield wall out as far as necessary. At the last moment our shield wall had opened up, making room for my formation of heavy ax Men to take the center.
Granted my heavy Ax Men were not doing as much damage as I would prefer, they would need to get onto a flank to do that, but this particular method had allowed us to wedge into their center, which had generally led to their formation backing up as we pushed forward. We couldn't push too hard because their own archer formations were firing into anyone who exposed themselves too much but counterfire was evenly returned and we appeared to be winning.
Unless some other formation came out of the woods behind them to support I think we're not going to lose this fight. If anything I believe we're going to push them all the livelong day until they break.
Of course that would not be the fate of this formation as whatever aid they may have been calling for seemed to have not made it in time. I had taken a step back to let some of my men get a chance to get some hits and catch my breath for another spot in the front line when I saw the Wolf Witch herself appear on the hill behind the enemy. Waving her sword about, several other wolves of common variety appeared around her as well as some Blackmaned with Russ troops riding their backs.
I expected her to charge down and slaughter the enemy from behind but apparently that was not the plan as her wolves let out a howl. The surprise attack was replaced with a stunning amount of wolf howls echoing throughout the valley that we had chosen for our little fight.
This got several of the enemies facing us to turn to see what was going on and realize their new predicament. The enemy commander seemed to realize his predicament as well and started to holler for his men to turn their back ranks around to face this new threat, which would severely weaken their whole formation.
Their attempt to turtle up and protect themselves resulted in an opening for my man to fight their way through. After all, there was now only two ranks of men between them and the center of the newly formed square.
My ax man had seen the opportunity and immediately began chopping their way through the shield wall, battering it down and trying to force their way in. This resulted in the enemy formation giving more ground and I had to call my men back a bit as there was a risk for them to be encircled by accident if they got too far forward.
This brief break in the battle resulted in the lines falling away from each other as the now much smaller force tried to compact itself and help the archers, who were being pummeled by our own scouts, retreat into their formation.
I wondered what Tanya was doing since she was up there watching this. She could definitely see the opportunity, laid bare for everyone, of a chance to unleash her wolves and butcher the enemy formation but she seemed content to let them compact themselves.
after a bit though she got off her wolf and reached into a saddlebag before pulling out a white shield. She waved it over, most likely trying to get the enemy to see that she was holding up the standard signal for a ceasefire.
Curious, I called for our archers to stop firing. This had not been in the plan but I wanted to see what she was doing.
Their own archers soon stopped firing and a silence, besides the wails of the wounded, overtook the field. Carefully the Wolf Witch walked down from where her wolves were watching and headed towards the enemy formation.
Part of me was worried as, at the angle I was at, we couldn't exactly see what was going on but she was tall enough that I could see the banner of her blonde hair above them. If she was in danger we would know and I'd get us attacking right away. Actually the wolves would howl and start charging right away if she came under direct threat, which would be a better indication than just seeing if her head went down.
What happened there I wasn't sure. After all it was quite a distance away but, by the looks of it, she was parlaying with the enemy commander. And by the fact that the conversation went on for about half an hour I assumed it was a very lengthy parlay.
After a while Tanya came around the side of the formation and walked up to me. The other commanders had gathered to my side while we waited and I could see the green and red formation had taken up the hill behind the wolves so the enemy was truly encircled at this point, there was no way they were getting out of it.
In her hand she was holding a sword and looked rather pleased with herself.
"Good news! The enemy Commander has seen reason."
"When you say 'see reason', what do you mean?" Jon Alfgeirsson asked, curious.
"In exchange for letting him and his men go, he has promised to never take up swords against us for the rest of the campaign season."
"Sounds risky. How do we know he's going to stick to the deal?" my counterpart asked, pointing out the obvious.
"Greed! It's a wonderful thing when you know how to use it to your advantage. I simply said that we have no interest in occupying the Trucebreaker's territory after this conflict. Which means that, with severely depleted forces, whoever takes over after him will not be able to hold on to that territory. I simply brought up the fact that if he gets out now there's a better chance that he will secure himself a larger piece of the pie after the conflict. He was more than willing to hand over his sword after that."
"That's a bit underhanded." I brought up, not particularly enjoying the fact that I had been prevented from some glory in battle.
"Underhanded, yes. But better for everyone in the long run; wasting resources fighting the Trucebreaker's minions will just tire us out before we get the chance to break into his fortress. So if we can find ways to get them to either side with us or flip out of the conflict entirely I'm going to take it." Tanya said, tightening her newly captured sword to her belt.
There was some sort of wisdom in what she said and, though it pained me to admit it, she was probably right.
"Fine, then can you explain what happened with the other formation that Larlsson's men ran into? I thought the only other formation in the area was being handled by the scouts we sent out earlier to keep them busy."
"As far as I can tell? That is still happening. Our scouts are keeping that next army busy chasing its tail. This formation appears to have been an advanced force that was sent to link up with our recently defeated foes from the second formation. Apparently there have been rumors of giant wolves in our army and the enemy commander of the second formation had great axes designed for fighting wolves so he thought he'd send them along ahead. Was a bit of trouble dealing with them but, well, they were mainly pointing their great axes at the shield wall of Larlsson's red and green men which meant it was easier to flank them than it would have been."
Of course the axes they brought were for normal giant wolves, not Blackmaned. They would have been much less effective than they should have been.
"Must have been a slaughter,". Jon Alfgeirsson surmised.
"Unfortunately. I would have preferred to offer them a surrender but the situation did not allow the opportunity, so I had to deal with them the old-fashioned way."
"So, we've dealt with this advance formation of the enemy there. I assume our next move is to move on to the enemy you have currently chasing your scout Cavalry?"
"Better than that. Our Cavalry will be coming into an area to the north of here, great ground for a little bit of an ambush. We can rest up there and wait for them to show up then we'll destroy them or get them to capitulate. Either way leaves our goals accomplished for today."
"Take 20 minutes for our men to scavenge any resources from the dead or wounded. What they can't take will probably be taken by the enemy formation that has surrendered. We'll be moving out in 30'." She ordered casually, expecting us to obey without a question by her simple decree.
And frankly I saw no reason not to. Oh, the men would grouch up about not being able to fully divest the dead of their valuables. But 20 minutes was more than enough time to find anything of worth, and anything that you left behind was basically a bribe to the enemy formation to not change sides back on them.
And, well, she was right on about one thing. Greed has its ways and a bribe to stay out of the conflict was going to work a lot better than an offer to stay out of the conflict so you might get something afterwards.
Nodding my head I said "let's get to work. We've got another enemy formation to beat the hell out of and not a lot of time."
Tanya
Organizing men came rather easy to me. You would think that trying to get a formation of men to fight a battle the way you wanted to would be a complex and hard process for someone who'd never done it before. As far as I was aware the closest I'd ever come to this sort of situation would be organizing the firing of individuals who had failed so spectacularly that caution required several people to tell them to leave. A very rare and minimal occurrence.
But I was beginning to think I was familiar with giving orders. The headaches had been killer when I first started marching men around, they left over time but they were still there. Either whatever mental wall that kept my memories of whatever had come before locked away was weakening or I was deadening the nerves responsible for transmitting the pain about it. Both were supposedly an option so it was hard to say and I was no doctor or anyone with a degree in how the brain works.
And frankly I don't think even they would have any idea what was going on with a person who had memories from their previous life. Last time I had checked such discussions had always been about crackpot fools claiming they were Nefertiti in the last life or maybe Caesar. Yes, reincarnation was part of Buddhism but I was not a follower of that religion, wasn't a follower of most religions. Yes, Patton had claimed to be the reincarnation of several military figures throughout history, but I had always put that down to him being very eccentric and being more about soldiers and generals being of the same stuff throughout history.
That being said I was fairly certain at this point that my last life had been in the military. At first I had thought that maybe this was more of that other instinctive guide I felt when I first arrived on this planet, providing knowledge of how things could be created that I could not explain. But there was definitely something else going on; the way I gave orders felt comfortable not in an 'I know how to give orders' kind of way but more with the feeling that I had done this before.
And because I seemed to be able to exude confidence at a high enough level that the men who ultimately led the forces I controlled tended to believe my statements. After our battle with the first enemy force we had been able to quickly maneuver to the next position and ambush the second enemy force. That force had not been as large as the first one, thanks to our early crushing of their advanced units, but they did give a good little fight for a while.
They even refused to surrender when I offered it, which had been a stupid and foolhardy thing. With their rejection I had been left with no other efficient way to defeat them than unleashing the wolves.
Casualties from that fight had been minimal; catching an enemy unaware and then grinding them down from all sides till they broke tended to result in that way.
By my estimate about a third of the army I defeated was still in action, another third dead, and another my prisoners either as wounded or in better shape.
That was the position I did not want to be in, holding captives, so I had paroled them as quickly as I could after giving them basic medical care.
That's for the enemy army that had been still in the field but I did not believe it had maintained that number. It looked like half was under control of their commanding officers but the other half looked like they were just running, which meant it was probably more like a sixth of the army was still in functioning capability. And a sixth was small enough that my wolf scouts could pummel them with arrows till they were either nothing or broke completely, which is what they were currently doing. I hoped that, in the morning, I'd hear a report that they were completely wiped out or at least out of the fight, but I wouldn't know till though the wolf scouts returned.
As for myself I was preparing for the next day of combat. There was a third force moving towards us, this one was a combined elements of two of the forces we were already preparing to fight so it was on par with our own formation. I really did not want to have to fight them at parity, that would just grind both forces down to nothing. Which would mean the end of the whole campaign as there would be no way I'd be able to defeat the Trucebreaker's main army inside his castle.
Which meant I would need to think of some way of defeating this Force piecemeal. Maybe have them chase us and string them out? That was an option but not a good one, that would just tire out my own forces if done improperly and there was not a lot of room to maneuver in this area. The roads were few and a lot of the trail was tough, the scouts could get around with my wolves fine enough but moving the entire formation of the army? That would turn anything under our feet into mud and bog us down. Which is why I had taken to moving my men in three columns on separate roads, less mud buildup. Of course it opened me up to the possibility of also being defeated in detail but so far they didn't have the forces in the region to do that, or weren't employing the scouts which I assumed they had in an effective way.
Never assume your enemy is dumber than you, this is something all militaries must grapple with and I understood that well enough. Just because I was making great use of my scouts didn't mean they weren't. The only way they could possibly be screwing that up is some sort of humorous and as far as I'd seen they didn't have much hubris.
But that was a problem for morning Tanya! Right now I was tired, it had been a long day and I just wanted to get a little bit of a rest. Laying against Fierce's side so we could share warmth I closed my eyes and prepared to get some sleep.
Then a clattering of bangs and noises broke that attempt. Sitting up, confused, I quickly got up and stepped out of my tent, looking around and trying to figure out what was the racket about.
That racket turned out to be one of my wolf scouts who apparently rode his wolf into a rack of weapons that had been put aside for a cleaning crew to make sure they were in good condition for tomorrow.
"Lady Tanya!" The man in question said, jumping off the wolf and landing in the light layer of mud that spring had brought in before running in my general direction. If he had not called my name I might have gone back into the tent but I assumed that if he was calling for me there was some important reason for it. So I folded my hands across my chest and waited for him to arrive.
The scout in question was on the shorter side so I was forced to look down on him as he ran up to me, stopping as he did and leaning over to catch his breath.
"Good evening, Mr?" I fished for his name as I was not familiar with this particular scout.
"Trygve, of second wolf scout company. I bring news of grave importance." He apparently was dead tired from whatever spurred his charge to me so I let him catch his breath, even if I was fairly worried that I was about to hear news that the enemy had encircled my position and we were about to be besieged.
If that happened we weren't in the worst position we had taken ownership of one of the Hill forts my scouts had found in the days after arrival in this region.
"Go on." I said after he took just a moment too long.
"Yes, ma'am! Styr reports the enemy formation we fought today has surrendered 5 miles from here, the prisoners were paroled as advised and their Commander's sword was confiscated. Apparently he took an arrow earlier in the battle and was not in control of the formation this entire time, he finally passed after the battle and the force's subcommanders offered the sword as proof that they will stick to their word."
I blinked a couple times, a bit stunned by this. I had assumed toughness and gritty stubbornness had been the inspiration for their holding out as long as they did, finding out it was simply that their Commander was near death and no one knew what to do was a bit saddening really. If they had taken a moment to try and communicate with us instead of shooting at me when I raised the white shield a lot more of them would be alive right now.
"But that's not all, Lady Tanya. Third company reports making contact with the new enemy formation. They're coming down the road from the east."
"What happened? What are the losses like?" I asked, trying to determine how bad the situation was. Moving our formation at night was not something I had expected but then again night and day were relative this far up in the longitudes. So it was possible there were night fighters amongst this formation that could help their unit move when it got too dark.
"They requested a parlay with, I quote, the 'wolf priestess'."
I blinked again then took a calming breath and said "They want to have a parlay?". This was not what I had expected, this was in fact the opposite of what I expected. But then again I had defeated two enemy forces the day before, even with a larger force maybe the commanders of this formation had realized that it would be better to try diplomacy.
And that was something I was willing to give them, a chance to stop the waste of human resources over a trucebreaker was worth a little risk of them trying to assassinate me. Which, considering the superhuman abilities my body had displayed, I did not believe would be successful.
Looking down at the scout, noting that he was trying to figure out if I was asking him what a parlay was, I brushed that off and asked "When do they want to have this meeting?"
"Tomorrow, at midday. There's a river with an island in the middle of it, 3 miles from here, and they want to meet on the island."
Nodding my agreement I said "All right. Find a scout to send back to your formation to let them know we agreed to this, then find a place to sleep."
"Yes, ma'am!" The man replied, giving a variant on their local salute before wandering off. I shrugged and turned back towards the main command tent around the corner. I would need to track down the subcommanders and let them know the situation. Thank goodness I could operate on just a little sleep, I would probably only be getting a couple hours at this point.
Tanya
I had expected many possible things when I had heard they wanted to meet: a trap, perhaps demands for surrender. All of those things had been based on the preparatory idea that I would be facing Noble Lords wanting to suck up to their boss by handling a situation for him.
Well, one of them was a noble Lord and his forces were equipped as heavily as Russ's, their armors and weapons not too dissimilar from the housecarls that followed me besides having an orange tint to their clothing.
The other however was not a noble Lord. From the top down it was a priest of some kind and, judging by all the fur that looks suspiciously like it had come from a wolf, I was thinking it was some sort of wolf priest.
His men were no different, though with less wolf fur and claws strapped to them. They appeared to be more of a masonic order of light infantry.
Why were the wolf priests leading an army against me? I did not know, did I piss off some local deity? Was it a Tuesday? I really wish I understood more of the stuff I ended up getting myself involved in.
As for where we were meeting the island in the river was barely 10 yards wide. My enemies had arrived first and set up a table, with chairs for people to sit at.
At least, most people. I, being unfortunately of larger height than most, was afraid that the campaign chairs they had brought might snap under my weight so I was standing.
We had just gone through the pleasantries of good morning take a seat oh you can't because you're too tall no problem and were moving on to the meat of the conversation.
The noble started us off with a simple statement, "all right Russ dog witch! As Geir Bretakollrsson, Jarl under Lord Farthegn; I ask you quite clearly: what are your intentions in this attack on our lands."
Didn't even bother to ask my name? Not a lot of respect coming from these people, but then again I was the enemy so that was to be expected. "I, Tanya, champion of the king of Russ, have been given a simple mission: deal with Lord Farthegn who has attempted to destabilize the other side of the mountains by assassinating the king of the Russ. How I will go about doing this is up to me, though I would prefer minimal casualties to all sides and no dead children if I can help it."
"So you don't wish you put yourself as the new king of this territory?" Jarl Geir Bretakollrsson asked, as a servant of his handed him a goblet of mead. There were several servants running around and one was handing one to the priest. One was even heading towards me though I waved them off. I doubted that they would try and poison me but I wanted a clear and sharp mind for whatever this conversation provided and I had already been screwed once by drinking a little bit too much.
"I have no need for the land, I raise wolves and hunt monsters for sport. Lord Farthegn broke the truce with that assassination attempt, he is a monster that needs to be dealt with but no one else needs to die for his crimes."
The Jarl Geir Bretakollrsson nodded as he listened and then finally he just put the cup down on the table.
"And if I were to offer to join your little mission against Lord Farthegn in exchange for his castle? Would you be willing to accept this alliance?"
I blinked a couple times as I had not expected outright treason. It should have been something to consider, those were cruel times and I'd already proven that, given the right situation, the enemy"s smaller forces were willing to bow out of the fight.
Treason that was a bit more than I expected. "Why do you want his castle dearly enough that you'd be willing to commit treason?" I asked it outright, there was no reason to not dance around the central question.
"The castle is a family heirloom, Lord Farthegn took it when he rose the power 10 great years ago. I've been waiting for an opportunity to get it back for a long time and considering you've already defeated two of the enemy forces I would have had to fight… Siding with you seems like a good opportunity to accomplish my overarching goals of retrieving the castle."
Regional politics? Figures that an a****** willing to attempt politics by other means in the region next door would have quite a few enemies at home.
"I would be willing to accept this alliance though, let me make this clear if you were to break this alliance you would be no better than the trucebreaker to me. So unless you are willing to stick by this alliance and fight Lord Farthegn with me it would be better for you to just pull out of the war completely. I would rather you safe at home with your troops than at my back preparing to stab it."
The Jarl Geir Bretakollrsson nodded then said "There's a lot of bad blood between his family and mine. And no bad blood between you and me. I wish to see Lord Farthegn removed from power. If you will have my forces we will pay him back for the humiliation he put on my family 10 years ago."
He put his hand out and I took it, giving it a shake. Having a few hundred extra men to throw at an enemy force would be worthwhile. I would just have to be careful about how to use them and make sure that they didn't degrade the work ethic of my original forces.
Turning to the wolf priest I said "Are you also a victim of Farthegn wishing for a little bit of vengeance?"
"Oh goodness, no," the elderly man said as he sipped his Mead.
"No, no. I'm but a simple priest and follower of the Allfather, I simply came to see if the rumors were true that the enemy force was led by a warrior marked by wolves." He continued, looking directly at my right eye where the scars from the fight with the wolves still cut across my face.
"Well, the rumors are true," I answered, folding my arms in front of me. "I also lead packs wolves, what does it matter to your priesthood?"
"Oh, Legends. Nothing too serious, just that the chosen one will be marked by wolves and have them come at their Beck and call. The old stuff I've always believed was simply allegory."
"Chosen one?" I said, sounding a bit more dumbstruck than I wanted to. I was really hoping this was not going where it was looked like it was going.
"Ye,s yes, a wolf master who would unite the continent through deed and merit to bring honor and trade across the world of Fenris."
"Those are some very specific old Legends," I said, taking a moment to consider my options. 500 more light infantry would help in the coming campaign, there was still a good number of forces to hit and there was a chance they would reach a large enough number that my forces could not take them out piecemeal as we had done the first few. But on the other hand allowing the religious types to believe me some sort of Chosen One… Well, that could be bad in the long run. Not that I would abuse the power, more that the people would expect you to do things. Things such as uniting the continent and bringing trade and honor. I just wanted to raise wolves and have as good a retirement as I could get on a medieval world.
"Yes, very specific, the final proof in fact is foretold that they will call the thunder wolves to them in their moment of need. And in order to find this event someone needs to be there and witness it," He stood up and bowed. "The wolf priesthood offers our services to your campaign. Lord Farthegn has been demanding more taxes from us either way so an opportunity to remind him that he is not the chosen one is something we would greatly enjoy doing."
Ah, so that's the game. In order to prove someone was the chosen one they needed to call the thunder wolves which is something I could not do, but they also had problems with Lord Farthegn and simply wanted to piss him off. Well, enemy of my enemy is convenient
Holding out my hand, I said "I accept your services, wolf priest…" I said it in a way that I indicated I was fishing for his name
"Nafni of the Wolf order," he said with a smile, taking the hand and shaking it.
Tanya
I had feared the enemy would be able to piece together some sort of better operation, after all I had a large area of territory to cover before meeting the next enemies on my list.
Even with a stable pace of march we were only 1/3 of the distance to Lord Farthegn's Castle in 2 weeks. Those two weeks helped me integrate the new formations of troops into my own, not as well as I would have liked but having more manpower was better than having no manpower.
Over those two weeks though the land turned to mud as spring went into full effect and slowed us down to a pace that was insulting the very idea of speed. In that time the other three formations raised under the enemy Lord had managed to come together and had taken position between my Target and myself. The lowlands we traveled through were mostly trees and mud but the particular area they had chosen to set up camp was a river with only two possible points of crossing. With an amount of troops similar to my own there was no real way for me to just bully my way through either point. If I tried to they would simply pull the troops from one Target location to the other and I would be stuck at a chokepoint, sending my men into an unstable battleground whichever any Ford we tried to cross.
This was not a good position to be in, but at least we weren't starving. Our allies were able to convince local villages to supply us with food to feed my man in walls and thankfully the game around here was plentiful. And rivers, so our source of fresh water was covered.
Figuring out how we were going to get across was the big issue of the day. Part of me wished I could just fly over that River. If we could just get men on the other side and the situation maybe we could force a crossing. But trying to force our way across another Ford, even against a destabilized force, was not likely to succeed. Unless it was a big stabilization.
We needed some sort of distraction, some massive upheaval that could change the rules of the field.
What that would be I had no idea yet. Being mad at myself I decided I need to clear my head and I took Fierce out for a ride. I didn't fear an ambush so I didn't bring anyone along with me, better to leave the scouts in their place to make sure the enemy didn't hold some third secret forwarding location and attempted to hit us in our side when we weren't looking.
In other words, I just traveled alone upriver towards the North and the mountains. I had come across a few maps during the planning of this campaign so I had a better understanding of how this world, at least the main continent of Asaheim, locked; it was basically divided up into three or four zones with mountains making up the central area and lowlands being split up between mountain ranges that ran to the coast. Around the coast were icefields for the most part. Oh there were breaks in those, warm water currents that allowed natural harbors to be used during spring and summer, but even they were somewhat surrounded by icebergs till full-on summer hit and the ice was destroyed in the season of Fire.
Granted I wanted to see that from my residence, and not on this Coast. Because if that happened we were pretty much trapped in an area with people who probably would turn on us eventually. Which is why I needed to come up with some way to get us through that blockade and onto the other side. But how was I going to do it? Oh, if only i had some expl... That hurt. Pain, utter pain. I nearly fell off Fierce as a headache ripped through me but it was almost worth it as an answer to the question finally came to my mind. Though it raised about a dozen more. Explosive spell, how did I know that? Was I a wizard in my last life?? what the hell…
Writers note: this one more balanced the last chapter and I feel better about it, besides that, I would like to thank SuperiorFreak from fanfiction for providing cover art. If you like to see all the possible covers fine the space battles or SV thread as I provided a link to them there. I was honored that someone was interested enough to make something based on my work so that is all that really matters to me.
Please comment, review, and generally enjoy yourselves…
Edited by:reier, M.G. ,
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Subcommander Ulfrik Eilifsson
What a glorious day for a battle, there's nothing else to say really. The last 10 minutes I have been chopping heads and breaking shields with my massive ax as the Trucebreaker's forces broke themselves on our shield wall.
The wolf witch had experimented with several ways to use my brawlers and I thought this one was the best. When the battle had started an hour ago only three formations had been in position.
My own, the dark blue commander's Jon Alfgeirsson troops and the Russ's forces.
We were well aware of where the enemy was, our scouts had been keeping a tab on them and sending back information but Larlsson's forces had simply taken a wrong turn and ended up running into a large formation of enemy flanker units.
Exact number of the enemy unit was unknown but Tanya had elected to take her Wolf Cavalry to find out if it was a real problem or something that could be handled by the red and green of Commander Nikolas Larlsson.
But she had not left before giving direct orders on how we were to handle the enemy formation in front of us, which was relatively equal to ours. I think we even had a few more troops than them.
It was a simple plan, an easy plan, and that's why it was working. We had let the enemy move their shield wall directly into contact with ours at the shallow end of the valley with heavy forest on all sides, especially behind us. Thankfully our scouts had managed to keep the exact numbers of our men hidden and the enemy had assumed that there were only the two formations, shield walls and archers, to their flanks so they'd only stretched their shield wall out as far as necessary. At the last moment our shield wall had opened up, making room for my formation of heavy ax Men to take the center.
Granted my heavy Ax Men were not doing as much damage as I would prefer, they would need to get onto a flank to do that, but this particular method had allowed us to wedge into their center, which had generally led to their formation backing up as we pushed forward. We couldn't push too hard because their own archer formations were firing into anyone who exposed themselves too much but counterfire was evenly returned and we appeared to be winning.
Unless some other formation came out of the woods behind them to support I think we're not going to lose this fight. If anything I believe we're going to push them all the livelong day until they break.
Of course that would not be the fate of this formation as whatever aid they may have been calling for seemed to have not made it in time. I had taken a step back to let some of my men get a chance to get some hits and catch my breath for another spot in the front line when I saw the Wolf Witch herself appear on the hill behind the enemy. Waving her sword about, several other wolves of common variety appeared around her as well as some Blackmaned with Russ troops riding their backs.
I expected her to charge down and slaughter the enemy from behind but apparently that was not the plan as her wolves let out a howl. The surprise attack was replaced with a stunning amount of wolf howls echoing throughout the valley that we had chosen for our little fight.
This got several of the enemies facing us to turn to see what was going on and realize their new predicament. The enemy commander seemed to realize his predicament as well and started to holler for his men to turn their back ranks around to face this new threat, which would severely weaken their whole formation.
Their attempt to turtle up and protect themselves resulted in an opening for my man to fight their way through. After all, there was now only two ranks of men between them and the center of the newly formed square.
My ax man had seen the opportunity and immediately began chopping their way through the shield wall, battering it down and trying to force their way in. This resulted in the enemy formation giving more ground and I had to call my men back a bit as there was a risk for them to be encircled by accident if they got too far forward.
This brief break in the battle resulted in the lines falling away from each other as the now much smaller force tried to compact itself and help the archers, who were being pummeled by our own scouts, retreat into their formation.
I wondered what Tanya was doing since she was up there watching this. She could definitely see the opportunity, laid bare for everyone, of a chance to unleash her wolves and butcher the enemy formation but she seemed content to let them compact themselves.
after a bit though she got off her wolf and reached into a saddlebag before pulling out a white shield. She waved it over, most likely trying to get the enemy to see that she was holding up the standard signal for a ceasefire.
Curious, I called for our archers to stop firing. This had not been in the plan but I wanted to see what she was doing.
Their own archers soon stopped firing and a silence, besides the wails of the wounded, overtook the field. Carefully the Wolf Witch walked down from where her wolves were watching and headed towards the enemy formation.
Part of me was worried as, at the angle I was at, we couldn't exactly see what was going on but she was tall enough that I could see the banner of her blonde hair above them. If she was in danger we would know and I'd get us attacking right away. Actually the wolves would howl and start charging right away if she came under direct threat, which would be a better indication than just seeing if her head went down.
What happened there I wasn't sure. After all it was quite a distance away but, by the looks of it, she was parlaying with the enemy commander. And by the fact that the conversation went on for about half an hour I assumed it was a very lengthy parlay.
After a while Tanya came around the side of the formation and walked up to me. The other commanders had gathered to my side while we waited and I could see the green and red formation had taken up the hill behind the wolves so the enemy was truly encircled at this point, there was no way they were getting out of it.
In her hand she was holding a sword and looked rather pleased with herself.
"Good news! The enemy Commander has seen reason."
"When you say 'see reason', what do you mean?" Jon Alfgeirsson asked, curious.
"In exchange for letting him and his men go, he has promised to never take up swords against us for the rest of the campaign season."
"Sounds risky. How do we know he's going to stick to the deal?" my counterpart asked, pointing out the obvious.
"Greed! It's a wonderful thing when you know how to use it to your advantage. I simply said that we have no interest in occupying the Trucebreaker's territory after this conflict. Which means that, with severely depleted forces, whoever takes over after him will not be able to hold on to that territory. I simply brought up the fact that if he gets out now there's a better chance that he will secure himself a larger piece of the pie after the conflict. He was more than willing to hand over his sword after that."
"That's a bit underhanded." I brought up, not particularly enjoying the fact that I had been prevented from some glory in battle.
"Underhanded, yes. But better for everyone in the long run; wasting resources fighting the Trucebreaker's minions will just tire us out before we get the chance to break into his fortress. So if we can find ways to get them to either side with us or flip out of the conflict entirely I'm going to take it." Tanya said, tightening her newly captured sword to her belt.
There was some sort of wisdom in what she said and, though it pained me to admit it, she was probably right.
"Fine, then can you explain what happened with the other formation that Larlsson's men ran into? I thought the only other formation in the area was being handled by the scouts we sent out earlier to keep them busy."
"As far as I can tell? That is still happening. Our scouts are keeping that next army busy chasing its tail. This formation appears to have been an advanced force that was sent to link up with our recently defeated foes from the second formation. Apparently there have been rumors of giant wolves in our army and the enemy commander of the second formation had great axes designed for fighting wolves so he thought he'd send them along ahead. Was a bit of trouble dealing with them but, well, they were mainly pointing their great axes at the shield wall of Larlsson's red and green men which meant it was easier to flank them than it would have been."
Of course the axes they brought were for normal giant wolves, not Blackmaned. They would have been much less effective than they should have been.
"Must have been a slaughter,". Jon Alfgeirsson surmised.
"Unfortunately. I would have preferred to offer them a surrender but the situation did not allow the opportunity, so I had to deal with them the old-fashioned way."
"So, we've dealt with this advance formation of the enemy there. I assume our next move is to move on to the enemy you have currently chasing your scout Cavalry?"
"Better than that. Our Cavalry will be coming into an area to the north of here, great ground for a little bit of an ambush. We can rest up there and wait for them to show up then we'll destroy them or get them to capitulate. Either way leaves our goals accomplished for today."
"Take 20 minutes for our men to scavenge any resources from the dead or wounded. What they can't take will probably be taken by the enemy formation that has surrendered. We'll be moving out in 30'." She ordered casually, expecting us to obey without a question by her simple decree.
And frankly I saw no reason not to. Oh, the men would grouch up about not being able to fully divest the dead of their valuables. But 20 minutes was more than enough time to find anything of worth, and anything that you left behind was basically a bribe to the enemy formation to not change sides back on them.
And, well, she was right on about one thing. Greed has its ways and a bribe to stay out of the conflict was going to work a lot better than an offer to stay out of the conflict so you might get something afterwards.
Nodding my head I said "let's get to work. We've got another enemy formation to beat the hell out of and not a lot of time."
Tanya
Organizing men came rather easy to me. You would think that trying to get a formation of men to fight a battle the way you wanted to would be a complex and hard process for someone who'd never done it before. As far as I was aware the closest I'd ever come to this sort of situation would be organizing the firing of individuals who had failed so spectacularly that caution required several people to tell them to leave. A very rare and minimal occurrence.
But I was beginning to think I was familiar with giving orders. The headaches had been killer when I first started marching men around, they left over time but they were still there. Either whatever mental wall that kept my memories of whatever had come before locked away was weakening or I was deadening the nerves responsible for transmitting the pain about it. Both were supposedly an option so it was hard to say and I was no doctor or anyone with a degree in how the brain works.
And frankly I don't think even they would have any idea what was going on with a person who had memories from their previous life. Last time I had checked such discussions had always been about crackpot fools claiming they were Nefertiti in the last life or maybe Caesar. Yes, reincarnation was part of Buddhism but I was not a follower of that religion, wasn't a follower of most religions. Yes, Patton had claimed to be the reincarnation of several military figures throughout history, but I had always put that down to him being very eccentric and being more about soldiers and generals being of the same stuff throughout history.
That being said I was fairly certain at this point that my last life had been in the military. At first I had thought that maybe this was more of that other instinctive guide I felt when I first arrived on this planet, providing knowledge of how things could be created that I could not explain. But there was definitely something else going on; the way I gave orders felt comfortable not in an 'I know how to give orders' kind of way but more with the feeling that I had done this before.
And because I seemed to be able to exude confidence at a high enough level that the men who ultimately led the forces I controlled tended to believe my statements. After our battle with the first enemy force we had been able to quickly maneuver to the next position and ambush the second enemy force. That force had not been as large as the first one, thanks to our early crushing of their advanced units, but they did give a good little fight for a while.
They even refused to surrender when I offered it, which had been a stupid and foolhardy thing. With their rejection I had been left with no other efficient way to defeat them than unleashing the wolves.
Casualties from that fight had been minimal; catching an enemy unaware and then grinding them down from all sides till they broke tended to result in that way.
By my estimate about a third of the army I defeated was still in action, another third dead, and another my prisoners either as wounded or in better shape.
That was the position I did not want to be in, holding captives, so I had paroled them as quickly as I could after giving them basic medical care.
That's for the enemy army that had been still in the field but I did not believe it had maintained that number. It looked like half was under control of their commanding officers but the other half looked like they were just running, which meant it was probably more like a sixth of the army was still in functioning capability. And a sixth was small enough that my wolf scouts could pummel them with arrows till they were either nothing or broke completely, which is what they were currently doing. I hoped that, in the morning, I'd hear a report that they were completely wiped out or at least out of the fight, but I wouldn't know till though the wolf scouts returned.
As for myself I was preparing for the next day of combat. There was a third force moving towards us, this one was a combined elements of two of the forces we were already preparing to fight so it was on par with our own formation. I really did not want to have to fight them at parity, that would just grind both forces down to nothing. Which would mean the end of the whole campaign as there would be no way I'd be able to defeat the Trucebreaker's main army inside his castle.
Which meant I would need to think of some way of defeating this Force piecemeal. Maybe have them chase us and string them out? That was an option but not a good one, that would just tire out my own forces if done improperly and there was not a lot of room to maneuver in this area. The roads were few and a lot of the trail was tough, the scouts could get around with my wolves fine enough but moving the entire formation of the army? That would turn anything under our feet into mud and bog us down. Which is why I had taken to moving my men in three columns on separate roads, less mud buildup. Of course it opened me up to the possibility of also being defeated in detail but so far they didn't have the forces in the region to do that, or weren't employing the scouts which I assumed they had in an effective way.
Never assume your enemy is dumber than you, this is something all militaries must grapple with and I understood that well enough. Just because I was making great use of my scouts didn't mean they weren't. The only way they could possibly be screwing that up is some sort of humorous and as far as I'd seen they didn't have much hubris.
But that was a problem for morning Tanya! Right now I was tired, it had been a long day and I just wanted to get a little bit of a rest. Laying against Fierce's side so we could share warmth I closed my eyes and prepared to get some sleep.
Then a clattering of bangs and noises broke that attempt. Sitting up, confused, I quickly got up and stepped out of my tent, looking around and trying to figure out what was the racket about.
That racket turned out to be one of my wolf scouts who apparently rode his wolf into a rack of weapons that had been put aside for a cleaning crew to make sure they were in good condition for tomorrow.
"Lady Tanya!" The man in question said, jumping off the wolf and landing in the light layer of mud that spring had brought in before running in my general direction. If he had not called my name I might have gone back into the tent but I assumed that if he was calling for me there was some important reason for it. So I folded my hands across my chest and waited for him to arrive.
The scout in question was on the shorter side so I was forced to look down on him as he ran up to me, stopping as he did and leaning over to catch his breath.
"Good evening, Mr?" I fished for his name as I was not familiar with this particular scout.
"Trygve, of second wolf scout company. I bring news of grave importance." He apparently was dead tired from whatever spurred his charge to me so I let him catch his breath, even if I was fairly worried that I was about to hear news that the enemy had encircled my position and we were about to be besieged.
If that happened we weren't in the worst position we had taken ownership of one of the Hill forts my scouts had found in the days after arrival in this region.
"Go on." I said after he took just a moment too long.
"Yes, ma'am! Styr reports the enemy formation we fought today has surrendered 5 miles from here, the prisoners were paroled as advised and their Commander's sword was confiscated. Apparently he took an arrow earlier in the battle and was not in control of the formation this entire time, he finally passed after the battle and the force's subcommanders offered the sword as proof that they will stick to their word."
I blinked a couple times, a bit stunned by this. I had assumed toughness and gritty stubbornness had been the inspiration for their holding out as long as they did, finding out it was simply that their Commander was near death and no one knew what to do was a bit saddening really. If they had taken a moment to try and communicate with us instead of shooting at me when I raised the white shield a lot more of them would be alive right now.
"But that's not all, Lady Tanya. Third company reports making contact with the new enemy formation. They're coming down the road from the east."
"What happened? What are the losses like?" I asked, trying to determine how bad the situation was. Moving our formation at night was not something I had expected but then again night and day were relative this far up in the longitudes. So it was possible there were night fighters amongst this formation that could help their unit move when it got too dark.
"They requested a parlay with, I quote, the 'wolf priestess'."
I blinked again then took a calming breath and said "They want to have a parlay?". This was not what I had expected, this was in fact the opposite of what I expected. But then again I had defeated two enemy forces the day before, even with a larger force maybe the commanders of this formation had realized that it would be better to try diplomacy.
And that was something I was willing to give them, a chance to stop the waste of human resources over a trucebreaker was worth a little risk of them trying to assassinate me. Which, considering the superhuman abilities my body had displayed, I did not believe would be successful.
Looking down at the scout, noting that he was trying to figure out if I was asking him what a parlay was, I brushed that off and asked "When do they want to have this meeting?"
"Tomorrow, at midday. There's a river with an island in the middle of it, 3 miles from here, and they want to meet on the island."
Nodding my agreement I said "All right. Find a scout to send back to your formation to let them know we agreed to this, then find a place to sleep."
"Yes, ma'am!" The man replied, giving a variant on their local salute before wandering off. I shrugged and turned back towards the main command tent around the corner. I would need to track down the subcommanders and let them know the situation. Thank goodness I could operate on just a little sleep, I would probably only be getting a couple hours at this point.
Tanya
I had expected many possible things when I had heard they wanted to meet: a trap, perhaps demands for surrender. All of those things had been based on the preparatory idea that I would be facing Noble Lords wanting to suck up to their boss by handling a situation for him.
Well, one of them was a noble Lord and his forces were equipped as heavily as Russ's, their armors and weapons not too dissimilar from the housecarls that followed me besides having an orange tint to their clothing.
The other however was not a noble Lord. From the top down it was a priest of some kind and, judging by all the fur that looks suspiciously like it had come from a wolf, I was thinking it was some sort of wolf priest.
His men were no different, though with less wolf fur and claws strapped to them. They appeared to be more of a masonic order of light infantry.
Why were the wolf priests leading an army against me? I did not know, did I piss off some local deity? Was it a Tuesday? I really wish I understood more of the stuff I ended up getting myself involved in.
As for where we were meeting the island in the river was barely 10 yards wide. My enemies had arrived first and set up a table, with chairs for people to sit at.
At least, most people. I, being unfortunately of larger height than most, was afraid that the campaign chairs they had brought might snap under my weight so I was standing.
We had just gone through the pleasantries of good morning take a seat oh you can't because you're too tall no problem and were moving on to the meat of the conversation.
The noble started us off with a simple statement, "all right Russ dog witch! As Geir Bretakollrsson, Jarl under Lord Farthegn; I ask you quite clearly: what are your intentions in this attack on our lands."
Didn't even bother to ask my name? Not a lot of respect coming from these people, but then again I was the enemy so that was to be expected. "I, Tanya, champion of the king of Russ, have been given a simple mission: deal with Lord Farthegn who has attempted to destabilize the other side of the mountains by assassinating the king of the Russ. How I will go about doing this is up to me, though I would prefer minimal casualties to all sides and no dead children if I can help it."
"So you don't wish you put yourself as the new king of this territory?" Jarl Geir Bretakollrsson asked, as a servant of his handed him a goblet of mead. There were several servants running around and one was handing one to the priest. One was even heading towards me though I waved them off. I doubted that they would try and poison me but I wanted a clear and sharp mind for whatever this conversation provided and I had already been screwed once by drinking a little bit too much.
"I have no need for the land, I raise wolves and hunt monsters for sport. Lord Farthegn broke the truce with that assassination attempt, he is a monster that needs to be dealt with but no one else needs to die for his crimes."
The Jarl Geir Bretakollrsson nodded as he listened and then finally he just put the cup down on the table.
"And if I were to offer to join your little mission against Lord Farthegn in exchange for his castle? Would you be willing to accept this alliance?"
I blinked a couple times as I had not expected outright treason. It should have been something to consider, those were cruel times and I'd already proven that, given the right situation, the enemy"s smaller forces were willing to bow out of the fight.
Treason that was a bit more than I expected. "Why do you want his castle dearly enough that you'd be willing to commit treason?" I asked it outright, there was no reason to not dance around the central question.
"The castle is a family heirloom, Lord Farthegn took it when he rose the power 10 great years ago. I've been waiting for an opportunity to get it back for a long time and considering you've already defeated two of the enemy forces I would have had to fight… Siding with you seems like a good opportunity to accomplish my overarching goals of retrieving the castle."
Regional politics? Figures that an a****** willing to attempt politics by other means in the region next door would have quite a few enemies at home.
"I would be willing to accept this alliance though, let me make this clear if you were to break this alliance you would be no better than the trucebreaker to me. So unless you are willing to stick by this alliance and fight Lord Farthegn with me it would be better for you to just pull out of the war completely. I would rather you safe at home with your troops than at my back preparing to stab it."
The Jarl Geir Bretakollrsson nodded then said "There's a lot of bad blood between his family and mine. And no bad blood between you and me. I wish to see Lord Farthegn removed from power. If you will have my forces we will pay him back for the humiliation he put on my family 10 years ago."
He put his hand out and I took it, giving it a shake. Having a few hundred extra men to throw at an enemy force would be worthwhile. I would just have to be careful about how to use them and make sure that they didn't degrade the work ethic of my original forces.
Turning to the wolf priest I said "Are you also a victim of Farthegn wishing for a little bit of vengeance?"
"Oh goodness, no," the elderly man said as he sipped his Mead.
"No, no. I'm but a simple priest and follower of the Allfather, I simply came to see if the rumors were true that the enemy force was led by a warrior marked by wolves." He continued, looking directly at my right eye where the scars from the fight with the wolves still cut across my face.
"Well, the rumors are true," I answered, folding my arms in front of me. "I also lead packs wolves, what does it matter to your priesthood?"
"Oh, Legends. Nothing too serious, just that the chosen one will be marked by wolves and have them come at their Beck and call. The old stuff I've always believed was simply allegory."
"Chosen one?" I said, sounding a bit more dumbstruck than I wanted to. I was really hoping this was not going where it was looked like it was going.
"Ye,s yes, a wolf master who would unite the continent through deed and merit to bring honor and trade across the world of Fenris."
"Those are some very specific old Legends," I said, taking a moment to consider my options. 500 more light infantry would help in the coming campaign, there was still a good number of forces to hit and there was a chance they would reach a large enough number that my forces could not take them out piecemeal as we had done the first few. But on the other hand allowing the religious types to believe me some sort of Chosen One… Well, that could be bad in the long run. Not that I would abuse the power, more that the people would expect you to do things. Things such as uniting the continent and bringing trade and honor. I just wanted to raise wolves and have as good a retirement as I could get on a medieval world.
"Yes, very specific, the final proof in fact is foretold that they will call the thunder wolves to them in their moment of need. And in order to find this event someone needs to be there and witness it," He stood up and bowed. "The wolf priesthood offers our services to your campaign. Lord Farthegn has been demanding more taxes from us either way so an opportunity to remind him that he is not the chosen one is something we would greatly enjoy doing."
Ah, so that's the game. In order to prove someone was the chosen one they needed to call the thunder wolves which is something I could not do, but they also had problems with Lord Farthegn and simply wanted to piss him off. Well, enemy of my enemy is convenient
Holding out my hand, I said "I accept your services, wolf priest…" I said it in a way that I indicated I was fishing for his name
"Nafni of the Wolf order," he said with a smile, taking the hand and shaking it.
Tanya
I had feared the enemy would be able to piece together some sort of better operation, after all I had a large area of territory to cover before meeting the next enemies on my list.
Even with a stable pace of march we were only 1/3 of the distance to Lord Farthegn's Castle in 2 weeks. Those two weeks helped me integrate the new formations of troops into my own, not as well as I would have liked but having more manpower was better than having no manpower.
Over those two weeks though the land turned to mud as spring went into full effect and slowed us down to a pace that was insulting the very idea of speed. In that time the other three formations raised under the enemy Lord had managed to come together and had taken position between my Target and myself. The lowlands we traveled through were mostly trees and mud but the particular area they had chosen to set up camp was a river with only two possible points of crossing. With an amount of troops similar to my own there was no real way for me to just bully my way through either point. If I tried to they would simply pull the troops from one Target location to the other and I would be stuck at a chokepoint, sending my men into an unstable battleground whichever any Ford we tried to cross.
This was not a good position to be in, but at least we weren't starving. Our allies were able to convince local villages to supply us with food to feed my man in walls and thankfully the game around here was plentiful. And rivers, so our source of fresh water was covered.
Figuring out how we were going to get across was the big issue of the day. Part of me wished I could just fly over that River. If we could just get men on the other side and the situation maybe we could force a crossing. But trying to force our way across another Ford, even against a destabilized force, was not likely to succeed. Unless it was a big stabilization.
We needed some sort of distraction, some massive upheaval that could change the rules of the field.
What that would be I had no idea yet. Being mad at myself I decided I need to clear my head and I took Fierce out for a ride. I didn't fear an ambush so I didn't bring anyone along with me, better to leave the scouts in their place to make sure the enemy didn't hold some third secret forwarding location and attempted to hit us in our side when we weren't looking.
In other words, I just traveled alone upriver towards the North and the mountains. I had come across a few maps during the planning of this campaign so I had a better understanding of how this world, at least the main continent of Asaheim, locked; it was basically divided up into three or four zones with mountains making up the central area and lowlands being split up between mountain ranges that ran to the coast. Around the coast were icefields for the most part. Oh there were breaks in those, warm water currents that allowed natural harbors to be used during spring and summer, but even they were somewhat surrounded by icebergs till full-on summer hit and the ice was destroyed in the season of Fire.
Granted I wanted to see that from my residence, and not on this Coast. Because if that happened we were pretty much trapped in an area with people who probably would turn on us eventually. Which is why I needed to come up with some way to get us through that blockade and onto the other side. But how was I going to do it? Oh, if only i had some expl... That hurt. Pain, utter pain. I nearly fell off Fierce as a headache ripped through me but it was almost worth it as an answer to the question finally came to my mind. Though it raised about a dozen more. Explosive spell, how did I know that? Was I a wizard in my last life?? what the hell…
Writers note: this one more balanced the last chapter and I feel better about it, besides that, I would like to thank SuperiorFreak from fanfiction for providing cover art. If you like to see all the possible covers fine the space battles or SV thread as I provided a link to them there. I was honored that someone was interested enough to make something based on my work so that is all that really matters to me.
Please comment, review, and generally enjoy yourselves…
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reier, M.G. , Community edited by:
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thank you! some people think I put a lot of effort into this, the fact matter is I just go with my gut 9 times out of 10 when working on this one, you want to see me thinking something to death, check out bleach or mando.
Maybe Tanya can use the rune magic to make a snowstorm to freeze the river, assuming her skill with the runes are advance enough. Leman Russ have always been a Primarch associated heavily with Norse mythology, if Tanya can call down Thunder like Thor does in the Norse sagas that will be awesome.
Chapter 12 building a legend 4
Chapter 12, Building a legend 5
Tanya
Well at least my headaches were making some sense now, because obviously the last world I was in made no sense whatsoever. Magic had been real apparently, not only had it been real but apparently I was a practitioner of it. There are still massive holes in my memory but apparently a lot of my time had been spent in some kind of military institution for magicians.
I had flashes of… well, war. A lot of war, looking suspiciously like something from a World War One movie. Trenches, muck and grime, explosions mowing earth and men alike, the smell of death, all of that had come through as well as formulas. Magical formulas.
I had to assume that my life had revolved around those, which is why they had broken through easier or I just wore through whatever was holding them back quicker than everything else. Either way I was now aware of the fact that magic was real.
Or at least it had been real in that world. I actually had no evidence that it was the exact same thing in this world that I was now dealing with, which was why I was not screwing around with the enhancement spells I remembered.
But what I did remember was that I needed a specialized tool which I did not have, and a way to pull the power in an item. That, though… That was not an impossible thing for me.
This was all very conjecture and theory, not particularly my strong suit as I preferred to be more certain about what I was working with. But I knew a few things about the way this world's magic was after basically using the rune beads to summon a wind storm to save my life.
So it was real, it did work, and it required focus items in order to be practiced in safety. Not too dissimilar from how magic worked in the last world. Instead of safety though the magic needed a focus item for power control. Both of them used a form of math based on runes. The runes used here on Fenris were more simplistic than the ones used in the empire but they were similar enough that they could be read interchangeably. If anything I believed that the wider 'vocabulary' of the empire's runes made it possible to have finer control of the magic than what was possible with Fenris' runes.
That was theory and it would take time to test that out, time I really didn't have and testing that I really didn't want to do. Fighting monsters, making a little money? That was all good, I wanted to retire. Learning magic had been a pastime that would hopefully unlock my memories, which it did, but this was the extent I had intended. All it had done was give me more questions than answers, something that I thought was going to be a repeating mantra as I tried to unlock whatever memories I had of my second life.
Execution though of this theory was going to be where we learned if I was smart stupid or dead, with the manpower of one of the divisions I was able to get the men building a catapult. Catapults were apparently uncommon but happened often enough that a few commanders were familiar with how they were built, plus I appeared to have knowledge on them. This knowledge hadn't come with a headache so I think this may have been whatever was programmed into the body, and I was leaning more and more towards 'programmed 'as time went on.
Either way, as the men worked on getting me the wood rope and hides and assembling it into a rudimentary catapult with basic wheels, I went to work gathering up huge stones. A few men helped me but few had sufficient muscles to work together to pull these things around. Thankfully I was strong enough that I could do it by myself for the most part. Once I had a collection of 10 or 15 of these stones I told priest Nafni to please make contact with the local runecrafters and see if they could get me a set of tools.
It took an afternoon but Nafni was able to secure me a set of stone-carving tools. From there it was all about engraving the runes into the stones, trying to make them mean something. The first stone took too long though, trying to use the empire's runes meant it was too complex and too difficult. So I switched over to the more simplistic version that was Fenris' runes for the next dozen or so.
Before long I had 15 stones that were supposedly set to explode once enough power was inputed into them and they hit something. How well that would work out, I wasn't sure. I didn't know how I was going to be able to transfer the power into them or if my theories on how magic worked in this world would be anywhere close to my ideas of how they worked in my last.
Come morning of the fourth day of the stalemate at the river I felt I had all the resources I needed to pull something.
The night before I set up the catapult just out of sight and set up the target area on the position where any enemy formation would want to be to contest a river crossing.
Then all I had to do was wait for morning. Said morning I had the housecarls approach the beach and prepare for a crossing. They had the biggest and heaviest shield so any archery that was targeted at them would be relatively well dampened and not as damaging. My theory on that would be put to test as the enemy archers went straight to work from the safety of their forest. Arrows started to come in and the enemy didn't move their forces forward to the river until my men were nearly knee-deep.
Most of the enemies looked like they had been asleep in the last few moments, it was rather early to be trying this but the earlier it was the more chaotic it would be. So as the three lines of enemy soldiers formed up, creating a wall of shields just at the edge of the river that would make it difficult for my man to complete the crossing, I was busy attempting to put power into the stones.
Trying to draw on magic power that I couldn't exactly feel was strange. In my last life the power had been within me, something I became intimately familiar with using over time. At least that had been my sense of it. This power felt like it was ambient, being drawn towards me by some unknown means, Pushing it into what I wanted it to be was slower than I would have liked. I also probably shouldn't have started with the Empire Ball, which is what I was calling the one that used the empire's runes, which was now giving me a headache as wondered what the empire was, but I managed to get it to feel like it would explode when it hit something heavy. Like the ground.
Carefully I picked it up and carried it over to the catapult which had been prepared by my men, laying it down in the scoop that would toss it into the enemy formation.
Taking a step back I nodded my head to the person I assigned as the commander of this operation, the adventurers' guild leader Styr.
Nodding back he gave a simple order to his men, who took a step back, before he pulled the lever, causing the catapult to launch the boulder high.
I had done the math last night on the exact amount of power and distance it would need to reach its target so I was a bit worried that in the end something would show a flaw in my mathematics. But I was never terrible at mathematics. The boulder flew true and crashed just behind the enemy formation. Being slightly off was to be expected considering that it wasn't exact science and it was a rather small target. It wasn't like I was trying to hit a fortress wall.
The boulder landed just behind the enemy formation and at first nothing happened, then there was a snap-hiss followed by a bright flash of light. My attempt to make an explosive ordinance had backfired as it appeared to have come out more like a flashbang. The fire from the Archer stopped as they appeared to have been blinded by the bright flash of light that had lit up the ground we were fighting over. It didn't help that beyond being early in the morning the sun was naturally a blue color and that light had been quite white.
Knowing that magic worked, and that the empire's textbook was not really going to work for the situation, I moved over and grabbed the next ball. Channeling the energy from around me into it only took a minute but in that minute the archers started to fire again into the Housecarl's as they continued to cross the river. Apparently they had had their shields up, which blocked the light as they continued to move, and the enemy formation had been facing the wrong way for the most part so it didn't affect those two forces.
Hopefully though the same would not be true for the next boulder as they placed it on the catapult, which was already being wound back into place. The design was rather rapid-firing in my opinion as it was in position and ready to fire again after 2 minutes. I simply nodded to the man at the controls of the catapult and the next shot was let loose.
This shot actually landed in the midst of the enemy formation, making me wonder if luck was on our side or if Styr had adjusted the shot in some way when I wasn't looking. I would have to ask later and see that he was rewarded for his efforts if he did.
Either way the rock landed in the exact middle of the formation, killing at least one man. Then it exploded in a thunderous bang, sending shards of rocks in anything else in all directions.
There was a momentary pause from the enemy archers and my own men who were attempting to cross the river as the central line of the enemy formation buckled, folding on itself. From where I was standing I could see many of them looking down at their former comrades, now reduced to wailing injured or piles of meat, in absolute shock.
To be expected. Explosives were not exactly a norm in Fenrisian combat, the real question is what would they do now they knew that something like this existed. Part of me hoped that realizing the enemy had superior firepower would cause them to run, it would save their lives in the meantime. After all what hope did they have if I could kill large swaths of them without even leaving my side of the river?
Unfortunately they did not appear to be ready to run, as they simply started to reform their line. As much as I hoped that overwhelming firepower would cause some sort of panic I had to remember that they were used to magic in one way or another. They knew this sort of stuff existed so they might be surprised about its way of delivery but they most likely were prepared for some casualties through supernatural means
Which meant this was going to be a little bit longer. As I began to prepare the next Rock I ordered the Archer, who had stayed relatively silent till now and hiding in the woods around me, to begin counter fire on their archers. I could have started them earlier but I wanted to give the enemy the idea that our archers were elsewhere so that they would be more open about where they were shooting from, which would mean the first few shots from my archers were directed at their counterparts with foreknowledge of their placement. They quickly got to work, firing their bows to bring down as many archers as they could, while I loaded up the next shot. It flew a little bit higher and landed behind the enemy formation, but considering this one was the more simplistic Fenrisian type it blasted nonetheless and cut down a large swath of men from behind.
Over the next 4 minutes two more rounds landed near their target, ripping up the enemy's line. At this point though it came apparent that I had a stockpile up and the counter-battery fire from my archers was being successful as the enemy formation on the shore began to fall back towards the tree line.
And opposed crossing is only really successful if you can stop them from even getting up onto the shore. Without those men there to stop my HouseCarls were able to finish the crossing and began moving towards the treeline, securing the area around the crossing. This was the signal that Alfgeirsson, my commander of blue, and Larlsson, commander of red and greens, had been waiting for and they began to cross themselves. The enemy fire was dwidling as they seemed to be retreating further into the woods. Most likely they had already realized they couldn't hold the bridge and were pulling back to their next position. What that position would be I didn't know but a crossing was a crossing.
As soon as the next two infantry units were across I sent the Wolf riders and my wolves as well as my adventurer guild scouts. I needed information on where the enemy was going and sending my trained scouts as pursuer units was the best way to find out what was going on.
Leader of the Wolf riders Authgrim Bardisson
"You know, sir… I had doubts about lady Tanya." The commander of the wolf scouts, Styr, said.
"Is that so?" I said as I looked through my monocular, an ancient relica dating back to my family's past when they were sea explorers. At least that's how the Legends went. Most relic items like this had a legend about them, about where they came from and how they came to be. Personally I just was glad to have something that gave me an advantage on trips like this; being able to see a good distance away and keep track of a target was unbelievably useful.
"Yes, sir. I thought she was going to be overhyped and overcautious. I mean sure she's big and seems to be able to command these wolves fine enough. But that's not combat experience. Just because she's out fighting monsters does not mean she knows how to fight a war. I go out there and fight monsters all the time and I know I don't know how to command in a war."
Styr was a mercenary hired from the local guild of monster hunters on our coast of Asaheim. He and men like him had been brought in because they were skilled at hunting in the wilderness and they had voted him to be their leader as he was the oldest of their group and had the most experience. Well, not old enough to be unable to learn new tricks as he'd taken quite well to riding a wolf and figured out how to fire his bow from their back easily enough.
"True, she does seem to have some sort of innate knowledge on how to make stratagems work. Wish someone could get more history out of her than 'I came from the mountain'." The mystery of Tanya was not one of the ones he was interested in, he did his job and he did it well, that's all that mattered to him. And as far as he'd seen that's all that mattered to her as they got on well enough, though she seemed to be a very private individual.
"Yeah, that's something. I do have to wonder where that innate skill comes from, cuz I don't think it came from Fenris. Any Fenrisian Commander worth their salt would have attacked across that River in separate locations to try and force at least one of them while tying down the other forces." He said as he rubbed the wolf absent-mindedly. One of the tricks Tanya had been engraving into them was that the wolves enjoyed companionship, this was a quick and easy way to build a rapport between them and the Wolf.
"Oh no. No, she just prefers to surprise the enemy with magic, still surprised that was a thing, and brute force punch across the river at one location, decimating a third or half of the army of her enemy in one go." The wolf scout leader continued as he too rubbed his wolf's ears.
"That's a pretty good summarization of situation, but wolf priests and rune priests are things. Perhaps she is a daughter of both their orders, some hidden love child of a pair of young priests who had been cast out that learned the skills of both?" He doubted that actually, but it was an interesting take on the possibility. The woman was way too private about her origins and he wondered if she'd ever open up about it.
"Okay then… Well, that explains the control of the wolves and the control of runes. Does not explain her military prowess though." Discount said as if that was still a pressing issue.
"I don't know, I think it does fairly well. She used her skills as a wolf to determine how her prey was set up and used their expectation of what a Fenris soldier would do against them as you said. A normal Fenrisian commander would have broken his formation up and tried to cross at all points, hoping to successfully push one area more than the other."
"Maybe… I don't know but the more I spend time around her the more orders she seems to give," Styr said with a shrug.
"Of course she gives more orders, she's a commander,"I countered, giving him an odd look and not exactly sure of what he meant.
"Not what I mean. When she started this campaign she was giving orders but they seemed more like she was starting to learn how to get orders. Now she's giving them as easy as a King would."
"Well a king expects their soldiers to be able to do what they demand of them, cuz they trust that their soldiers have trained to their expectations. She probably just better understands how to use each unit now."
"I don't know, man. It feels more like she knows what she's doing because she's done it before," he said, shaking his head in disagreement.
"Probably just residuals from controlling these wolves that she generously lets us ride." I said, reaching forward to pat the Wolf on its head. Before looking over at him and saying "But that doesn't matter. What's the info on the enemy formation? Where are they, what's going on?"
Styr sighed before answering. "My scouts have been tracking them and came in contact with the rear of the enemy formation earlier today. They are pressing hard for the next river, which is a day's march before them."
"So they want to try and pull the same stunt they pulled at this River, I assume. Not going to hold all us too long now that we know how to build those catapults and Tanya could obviously use those runes again."
"That's what I think too, though the river they're heading for only has one good forwarding location so they can concentrate. We know that because my scouts have been talking to the locals and they've given us a couple of good maps of the area. There is a bridge much further to the north but apparently it is currently occupied by an Ice Troll who decided that it would make a great home so he's currently living under it. I think neither one of our forces want to deal with that, too much chance for that to spill into something worse."
"Good. They'll get wrecked like they just were. We have catapults that send exploding ammunition, there is no way for them to hold a situation like that without something to counter it."
"That's my concern. I don't want to find out if they have something to counter it, do you mind if I propose a plan?"
I gave him a nod to continue, wondering why he had not brought this up to Tanya herself since she was in overall command. Though she was also with the main army, which was half a day behind us, so letting us have a little initiative wouldn't be that big of an issue I assumed.
"Well, it's quite simple: the enemy army will be at the ford by the end of tomorrow while we can be there by the end of the day. It would not be impossible to get around them, their are scouts are shit. I don't know who they hired, what band of morons they decided were going to be experts, but they're not. They're just not. We can navigate around them, get in front of them, and take the Ford."
"Okay but that puts 200 men against nearly a thousand. Those are those aren't exactly great odds and it deprives Tanya of her scouts."
"That deprives Tanya of her long-range scouts; she still has a hundred of my ground scouts with her so they won't be caught by surprise. As for the one-on-five odds I admit that's not exactly great except it's not one on five when you really think about it. Tomorrow that formation will be crossing the river after a long hard day's March. They will be tired, they will be worn out, and they will not be expecting to be fired on by arrows and then charged by a bunch of wolves as they're coming out of the water. We could cause a panic and maybe kill a good number of men before they get themselves sorted out. When they do get themselves sorted out they'll have a choice: they can either camp by their side of the river and be attacked by the main army, which is at this point double their size after whatever losses we just inflicted. Or they can try and push us, right? Well if they push us, we just fall back. All of a sudden they've secured the other side of the river, sure, but now we are going to be shooting at them from the woods whenever they're not on guard duty, ensuring that they won't have a good night's rest. When Tanya arrives the next day they'll be worn out."
"If we can pull that off that would end the fight for the river days ahead of schedule. They might even be willing to lay down their arms once they realize the situation and we can get on our way to the castle straight away." I mused, thinking on what he had proposed.
As a Housecarl I knew what was expected from me: follow the orders directly given to me, which had been to scout and keep an eye on the enemy formation, figure out what was going on. This would certainly be a step beyond those orders.
However I could not disregard that, with the distance between us and Tanya's men, what mattered now was initiative, not orders.
Turning to face the leader of the wolf scouts I told "Find someone to send a message to Tanya and tell her the plan. We're moving out now, we're not going to wait for her response." He nodded and rode off with his wolf while I observed the horizon.
Tanya
I was fairly annoyed, happy but annoyed. I did not like having members of my command acting too independently. With their operation my wolf Calvary and wolf scouts had undertaken to create a situation where my enemy had a no-win situation and been very successful. By the time the army had caught up to the enemy force they had broken down. The losses they took crossing the river and the nightlong tactics to keep them from getting a good night's rest had resulted in a formation that was falling apart at its seams.
At least half of the enemy had fled in the night or had been killed attempting to flee, from what I could gather, meaning the formation did not have the manpower to stop my wolves if they were unleashed.
Which meant the battle was over before I even had to do anything. So making a big deal out of the fact they had gone against my orders was unlikely to win me any favors. But the most annoying part about all this, the part that really upset me, is that I would have ordered them to do the same. I would have ordered them to cross that River before the enemy and do exactly what they did. I would have just been concerned they would refuse because it looked like a death sentence. Cutting off your scouts from your supporting forces and expecting them to harass the enemy throughout the night was a way to get your scouts destroyed if you didn't make contact with them again within a reasonable amount of time, which she was sure she could.
So, while everyone around me was celebrating a successful victory, I was looking at the two sub-commanders with a faint bit of annoyance, biting my lip trying to figure out how I was going to handle this. The slight headache in the back of my head was not helping, like I had come across situations similar to this before.
Finally I decided the best tack was to congratulate them but be slightly disapproving.
"Well done, gentlemen," I said, looking them over. "You have managed to save us days on this campaign and for that you have my thanks. But, in the future, do try to keep in mind that you are the army's eyes and ears. Without you we are blind and deaf, the next time you attempt such a gamble please keep some of your men on this side of the river to at least keep us somewhat informed." I gave them a very concerned and thoughtful look, hoping they would see the mistake and try to not do it again in the future.
"Yes, lady Tanya!" the two responded with broad smiles, nodding their understanding. I really could only hope they actually did.
"Fools, you'll pay for this! When Lord Farthegn hears that you've destroyed our army he will call upon the monsters to kill you." One of the soldiers… no, wait, that was a commander by the looks of his coat called from where he'd been tied up. Officially the enemy army had not surrendered so I did not have a way to parole them just yet. I was thinking I would leave them tied up against the tree and then cut one of them free with a knife after taking all their weapons, assuming they'd figure it out from there. I was also considering doing that but spaced out over several miles, that way they could not just regroup quickly into another formation in my rear.
"Monsters, you say?" I queried, walking towards him. "What monsters will he call upon that you feel will come to his aid?"
"Shut up, Bob!" another Commander ordered from where he was sitting next to him.
"I will not! I am not afraid of this oversized shield maiden and I'm not afraid of you." He bit back, turning his head to look at the person who told him to shut up before looking back at me.
"The ice fiends will come to his call. He has dark magic that allows him to bring them to the battlefield. Any army that comes to oppose him at his castle will be swept under their relentless charge."
"Interesting." I said, looking him over and trying to figure out what this could mean. Ice Fiends were the yetis I had fought in the mountains. I knew they had some level of sentience but did not know if they had the ability to communicate with other species, at the time I had assumed they did not. This, however, seemed to imply that at least in one case they could communicate with humans and had struck some sort of bargain. I wondered what this bargain was… no, wait, I didn't: dark magic.
"Let me guess. The Ice Fiends raid the outer edges of his territory that do not submit to him on his terms."
"Yes, of course. Anyone not willing to submit to him is a traitor anyways."
Great. So either he was letting the Ice Fiends eat his potential troublemakers, or he was pushing out those troublemakers into areas where they were more likely to be eaten by the yetis.
Neither one of them were definite proof that he was controlling them with dark magic and had some sort of alliance with the yetis though.
"He's already moving his forces against you. This place was chosen specifically do end this whole charade."
I was going to ask what he meant when I heard a thump and a roar. Looking north where the sound came from I saw an Ice Troll slowly marching its way down the river towards us. In one hand appeared to be one of this man's soldiers, crushed, and the other held a massive log, meant for smashing people by my guess.
"You see! Here comes one of Lord Farthegn's servants now, to destroy you all."
"You daft idiot!" Ulfrik Eilifsson said, slapping the back of his head. "You sent one of your men to rile up an Ice Troll and now it's come downriver to find whoever sent the idiot.".
"Still that means you're going to have to fight it and that'll destroy your army." This man was getting on my nerves now. Reaching over to Freki I pulled my spear off its side-saddle. This spear had an antler tip, like my old Spears, but it had a few new additions. First it was more finely created, crafted with materials I could get from the somewhat more modern society of Fenris rather than what I could get while living in the woods. And, second, I had inscribed the spell for piercing on the side.
I wanted to see what would happen so, carefully channeling energy from the earth beneath me into the spear, I took aim and let loose.
A few moments after it left my hand it seemed to speed up and then there was a rather loud bang before it smashed into the chest of the ice roll, piercing through to the other side. Right, apparently I had been well on target. It fell forward face-first to the river the fist-sized hole pouring its acid blood everywhere.
"If your lord depends on beasts to fight me you'll find that a rather unpromising answer to the question of stopping me." I said, giving the man a smile before padding Freki on the head.
"All right, gentlemen. Pack everything up, we're moving out." I called. It was time to be on our way and see about ending this whole campaign.
Lord Farthegn
How have things come to this? I had simply wanted to assassinate one God damned King and push my power across the continent, finally uniting this world from the barbaric mess it had become. And now most of my subcommanders and Lords were dead, in hiding, or had betrayed me because they saw an opportunity to strike at their betters.
I had spent most of my life trying to unify the damned continent of Asaheim, ever since I realized that none of the people on this world mattered. The signs that this was some remnant of an ancient civilization, that we had fallen far from where we had once stood, were everywhere when you had the eyes to look for it. Most people just assumed it was the gods' work but for me it was obvious that humanity had had a higher position at one point.
And I thoroughly believe that if I could unify the continent under my rule I would be able to bring humanity back to that point. If the continent could be brought under my single rule there was a chance of finding out what was in the caves beneath the mountains, what secrets were there and what powers could be unlocked for the people.
In my youth I had traveled with a group of adventurers into one of those caves, seen the dark City that laid beneath the mountains. We had been too fearful to go too close. The legends of the monsters that lived in there were rare due to the simple fact that those who got too close usually ended up dead, so their stories were lost with them.
Small scouting parties like I had been part of would have been chewed up and killed if we had attempted to enter that city, as the creatures there would have made sure we never saw the light of day again. But I could tell that it was far more advanced than anything on the surface, the fact that there were flameless light sources on the streets were sign alone that there was a great power down there.
And now my dreams of someday uniting the continent and leading an army down there to take it for humanity were going up in smoke. All because some upstart giant bitch had decided to ruin my day.
Well, I would just have to ruin hers. There was no way I was going to let my dreams die because some lapdog of Russ got lucky and defeated my so-called loyal servants. I still had the item I retrieved from the outskirts of the dark city so many years ago. A small device powered by some unknown means that, with a few presses of a button, agitated every Ice Fiend within a radius of 50 miles and brought them towards my location. It would take time for them to arrive but they would come and they would eat this enemy army as they attempted to lay siege to my castle. It would be hilarious watching the screaming and murder from the safety of my own home.
"My Lord? There's something you may want to see," one of my servants said as he walked into my study where I had been going over the paperwork that came from running a large Kingdom. So much taxes to collect, so little time.
"What is it, Valgard?" I asked, not even looking up.
"The enemy army is doing something. I think they're building siege equipment, my Lord." He said, sounding more concerned than he should be.
"Of course they're building huge equipment. Won't do them any good, this place is impenetrable. There is no way for anything to break down the walls of this fortress. " I asserted. Nothing but the truth as this Castle had stood for longer than most kingdoms had existed, which was one of the reasons I had made a point of taking it in my conquest of his continent. An impregnable fortress was the key towards victory in any conflict, especially when you could call monsters to do your bidding. Just because you called them didn't mean you could control them, they would just as easily eat me if given the chance.
'My Lord, this is true but… They have a rune priest with them, by the looks of it."
I chuckled at that and said "What is he going to do? Call the thunder? Freeze the outer layer of the castle in the storm? This place has seen such conflicts before and survived, there is nothing-"
There was a thunderous bang, as if a clap of lightning hit outside the castle, and then my windowless study now had a window and the servant who had been standing in front of me was a red smear across the wall and floor.
"Well… That was unexpected." I muttered as I got up from my seat and walked over to the newly formed hole in my wall. I was two layers of rock in and yet there was a hole. Looking down through the hole I could see the enemy army was preparing a catapult, some blonde giant of a woman holding a massive stone in her hands before placing it on the scoop. I watched as the piece of rock was thrown from the catapult into the air. It got a certain distance away before all of a sudden accelerating with a thunderous boom, smashing into my castle with such speed that it left a rather large hole.
"There goes another plan," I muttered, knowing that this would require an actual fight on my part.
Writers note: Alright there we go chapter for this week, and may I say this week has been good for me in a writing capacity, I think the next chapter has a chance of being much longer than this one. Anyways what to say about this chapter, magic, memories, fighting, and build up.
What else to say, One shot and info post will now have a section that tell you what to be expected to come out how some projects are coming, it will update at least every Thursday or so. There will also be commissioned Warhammer one-shot for youjo senki coming out, in the said one-shot thread. L4's Snippet, one-shots and Index
Edited by: Preier, M.G. ,
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Community editable doc (Chapter 12) No story suggestions in the community editing document, Keep all story suggestions and comments in the thread
Supporters: Neso, Markus, Mackenzie Buckle, Silver Wolf, Daniel Martinez, Falk Hüser
Tanya
Well at least my headaches were making some sense now, because obviously the last world I was in made no sense whatsoever. Magic had been real apparently, not only had it been real but apparently I was a practitioner of it. There are still massive holes in my memory but apparently a lot of my time had been spent in some kind of military institution for magicians.
I had flashes of… well, war. A lot of war, looking suspiciously like something from a World War One movie. Trenches, muck and grime, explosions mowing earth and men alike, the smell of death, all of that had come through as well as formulas. Magical formulas.
I had to assume that my life had revolved around those, which is why they had broken through easier or I just wore through whatever was holding them back quicker than everything else. Either way I was now aware of the fact that magic was real.
Or at least it had been real in that world. I actually had no evidence that it was the exact same thing in this world that I was now dealing with, which was why I was not screwing around with the enhancement spells I remembered.
But what I did remember was that I needed a specialized tool which I did not have, and a way to pull the power in an item. That, though… That was not an impossible thing for me.
This was all very conjecture and theory, not particularly my strong suit as I preferred to be more certain about what I was working with. But I knew a few things about the way this world's magic was after basically using the rune beads to summon a wind storm to save my life.
So it was real, it did work, and it required focus items in order to be practiced in safety. Not too dissimilar from how magic worked in the last world. Instead of safety though the magic needed a focus item for power control. Both of them used a form of math based on runes. The runes used here on Fenris were more simplistic than the ones used in the empire but they were similar enough that they could be read interchangeably. If anything I believed that the wider 'vocabulary' of the empire's runes made it possible to have finer control of the magic than what was possible with Fenris' runes.
That was theory and it would take time to test that out, time I really didn't have and testing that I really didn't want to do. Fighting monsters, making a little money? That was all good, I wanted to retire. Learning magic had been a pastime that would hopefully unlock my memories, which it did, but this was the extent I had intended. All it had done was give me more questions than answers, something that I thought was going to be a repeating mantra as I tried to unlock whatever memories I had of my second life.
Execution though of this theory was going to be where we learned if I was smart stupid or dead, with the manpower of one of the divisions I was able to get the men building a catapult. Catapults were apparently uncommon but happened often enough that a few commanders were familiar with how they were built, plus I appeared to have knowledge on them. This knowledge hadn't come with a headache so I think this may have been whatever was programmed into the body, and I was leaning more and more towards 'programmed 'as time went on.
Either way, as the men worked on getting me the wood rope and hides and assembling it into a rudimentary catapult with basic wheels, I went to work gathering up huge stones. A few men helped me but few had sufficient muscles to work together to pull these things around. Thankfully I was strong enough that I could do it by myself for the most part. Once I had a collection of 10 or 15 of these stones I told priest Nafni to please make contact with the local runecrafters and see if they could get me a set of tools.
It took an afternoon but Nafni was able to secure me a set of stone-carving tools. From there it was all about engraving the runes into the stones, trying to make them mean something. The first stone took too long though, trying to use the empire's runes meant it was too complex and too difficult. So I switched over to the more simplistic version that was Fenris' runes for the next dozen or so.
Before long I had 15 stones that were supposedly set to explode once enough power was inputed into them and they hit something. How well that would work out, I wasn't sure. I didn't know how I was going to be able to transfer the power into them or if my theories on how magic worked in this world would be anywhere close to my ideas of how they worked in my last.
Come morning of the fourth day of the stalemate at the river I felt I had all the resources I needed to pull something.
The night before I set up the catapult just out of sight and set up the target area on the position where any enemy formation would want to be to contest a river crossing.
Then all I had to do was wait for morning. Said morning I had the housecarls approach the beach and prepare for a crossing. They had the biggest and heaviest shield so any archery that was targeted at them would be relatively well dampened and not as damaging. My theory on that would be put to test as the enemy archers went straight to work from the safety of their forest. Arrows started to come in and the enemy didn't move their forces forward to the river until my men were nearly knee-deep.
Most of the enemies looked like they had been asleep in the last few moments, it was rather early to be trying this but the earlier it was the more chaotic it would be. So as the three lines of enemy soldiers formed up, creating a wall of shields just at the edge of the river that would make it difficult for my man to complete the crossing, I was busy attempting to put power into the stones.
Trying to draw on magic power that I couldn't exactly feel was strange. In my last life the power had been within me, something I became intimately familiar with using over time. At least that had been my sense of it. This power felt like it was ambient, being drawn towards me by some unknown means, Pushing it into what I wanted it to be was slower than I would have liked. I also probably shouldn't have started with the Empire Ball, which is what I was calling the one that used the empire's runes, which was now giving me a headache as wondered what the empire was, but I managed to get it to feel like it would explode when it hit something heavy. Like the ground.
Carefully I picked it up and carried it over to the catapult which had been prepared by my men, laying it down in the scoop that would toss it into the enemy formation.
Taking a step back I nodded my head to the person I assigned as the commander of this operation, the adventurers' guild leader Styr.
Nodding back he gave a simple order to his men, who took a step back, before he pulled the lever, causing the catapult to launch the boulder high.
I had done the math last night on the exact amount of power and distance it would need to reach its target so I was a bit worried that in the end something would show a flaw in my mathematics. But I was never terrible at mathematics. The boulder flew true and crashed just behind the enemy formation. Being slightly off was to be expected considering that it wasn't exact science and it was a rather small target. It wasn't like I was trying to hit a fortress wall.
The boulder landed just behind the enemy formation and at first nothing happened, then there was a snap-hiss followed by a bright flash of light. My attempt to make an explosive ordinance had backfired as it appeared to have come out more like a flashbang. The fire from the Archer stopped as they appeared to have been blinded by the bright flash of light that had lit up the ground we were fighting over. It didn't help that beyond being early in the morning the sun was naturally a blue color and that light had been quite white.
Knowing that magic worked, and that the empire's textbook was not really going to work for the situation, I moved over and grabbed the next ball. Channeling the energy from around me into it only took a minute but in that minute the archers started to fire again into the Housecarl's as they continued to cross the river. Apparently they had had their shields up, which blocked the light as they continued to move, and the enemy formation had been facing the wrong way for the most part so it didn't affect those two forces.
Hopefully though the same would not be true for the next boulder as they placed it on the catapult, which was already being wound back into place. The design was rather rapid-firing in my opinion as it was in position and ready to fire again after 2 minutes. I simply nodded to the man at the controls of the catapult and the next shot was let loose.
This shot actually landed in the midst of the enemy formation, making me wonder if luck was on our side or if Styr had adjusted the shot in some way when I wasn't looking. I would have to ask later and see that he was rewarded for his efforts if he did.
Either way the rock landed in the exact middle of the formation, killing at least one man. Then it exploded in a thunderous bang, sending shards of rocks in anything else in all directions.
There was a momentary pause from the enemy archers and my own men who were attempting to cross the river as the central line of the enemy formation buckled, folding on itself. From where I was standing I could see many of them looking down at their former comrades, now reduced to wailing injured or piles of meat, in absolute shock.
To be expected. Explosives were not exactly a norm in Fenrisian combat, the real question is what would they do now they knew that something like this existed. Part of me hoped that realizing the enemy had superior firepower would cause them to run, it would save their lives in the meantime. After all what hope did they have if I could kill large swaths of them without even leaving my side of the river?
Unfortunately they did not appear to be ready to run, as they simply started to reform their line. As much as I hoped that overwhelming firepower would cause some sort of panic I had to remember that they were used to magic in one way or another. They knew this sort of stuff existed so they might be surprised about its way of delivery but they most likely were prepared for some casualties through supernatural means
Which meant this was going to be a little bit longer. As I began to prepare the next Rock I ordered the Archer, who had stayed relatively silent till now and hiding in the woods around me, to begin counter fire on their archers. I could have started them earlier but I wanted to give the enemy the idea that our archers were elsewhere so that they would be more open about where they were shooting from, which would mean the first few shots from my archers were directed at their counterparts with foreknowledge of their placement. They quickly got to work, firing their bows to bring down as many archers as they could, while I loaded up the next shot. It flew a little bit higher and landed behind the enemy formation, but considering this one was the more simplistic Fenrisian type it blasted nonetheless and cut down a large swath of men from behind.
Over the next 4 minutes two more rounds landed near their target, ripping up the enemy's line. At this point though it came apparent that I had a stockpile up and the counter-battery fire from my archers was being successful as the enemy formation on the shore began to fall back towards the tree line.
And opposed crossing is only really successful if you can stop them from even getting up onto the shore. Without those men there to stop my HouseCarls were able to finish the crossing and began moving towards the treeline, securing the area around the crossing. This was the signal that Alfgeirsson, my commander of blue, and Larlsson, commander of red and greens, had been waiting for and they began to cross themselves. The enemy fire was dwidling as they seemed to be retreating further into the woods. Most likely they had already realized they couldn't hold the bridge and were pulling back to their next position. What that position would be I didn't know but a crossing was a crossing.
As soon as the next two infantry units were across I sent the Wolf riders and my wolves as well as my adventurer guild scouts. I needed information on where the enemy was going and sending my trained scouts as pursuer units was the best way to find out what was going on.
Leader of the Wolf riders Authgrim Bardisson
"You know, sir… I had doubts about lady Tanya." The commander of the wolf scouts, Styr, said.
"Is that so?" I said as I looked through my monocular, an ancient relica dating back to my family's past when they were sea explorers. At least that's how the Legends went. Most relic items like this had a legend about them, about where they came from and how they came to be. Personally I just was glad to have something that gave me an advantage on trips like this; being able to see a good distance away and keep track of a target was unbelievably useful.
"Yes, sir. I thought she was going to be overhyped and overcautious. I mean sure she's big and seems to be able to command these wolves fine enough. But that's not combat experience. Just because she's out fighting monsters does not mean she knows how to fight a war. I go out there and fight monsters all the time and I know I don't know how to command in a war."
Styr was a mercenary hired from the local guild of monster hunters on our coast of Asaheim. He and men like him had been brought in because they were skilled at hunting in the wilderness and they had voted him to be their leader as he was the oldest of their group and had the most experience. Well, not old enough to be unable to learn new tricks as he'd taken quite well to riding a wolf and figured out how to fire his bow from their back easily enough.
"True, she does seem to have some sort of innate knowledge on how to make stratagems work. Wish someone could get more history out of her than 'I came from the mountain'." The mystery of Tanya was not one of the ones he was interested in, he did his job and he did it well, that's all that mattered to him. And as far as he'd seen that's all that mattered to her as they got on well enough, though she seemed to be a very private individual.
"Yeah, that's something. I do have to wonder where that innate skill comes from, cuz I don't think it came from Fenris. Any Fenrisian Commander worth their salt would have attacked across that River in separate locations to try and force at least one of them while tying down the other forces." He said as he rubbed the wolf absent-mindedly. One of the tricks Tanya had been engraving into them was that the wolves enjoyed companionship, this was a quick and easy way to build a rapport between them and the Wolf.
"Oh no. No, she just prefers to surprise the enemy with magic, still surprised that was a thing, and brute force punch across the river at one location, decimating a third or half of the army of her enemy in one go." The wolf scout leader continued as he too rubbed his wolf's ears.
"That's a pretty good summarization of situation, but wolf priests and rune priests are things. Perhaps she is a daughter of both their orders, some hidden love child of a pair of young priests who had been cast out that learned the skills of both?" He doubted that actually, but it was an interesting take on the possibility. The woman was way too private about her origins and he wondered if she'd ever open up about it.
"Okay then… Well, that explains the control of the wolves and the control of runes. Does not explain her military prowess though." Discount said as if that was still a pressing issue.
"I don't know, I think it does fairly well. She used her skills as a wolf to determine how her prey was set up and used their expectation of what a Fenris soldier would do against them as you said. A normal Fenrisian commander would have broken his formation up and tried to cross at all points, hoping to successfully push one area more than the other."
"Maybe… I don't know but the more I spend time around her the more orders she seems to give," Styr said with a shrug.
"Of course she gives more orders, she's a commander,"I countered, giving him an odd look and not exactly sure of what he meant.
"Not what I mean. When she started this campaign she was giving orders but they seemed more like she was starting to learn how to get orders. Now she's giving them as easy as a King would."
"Well a king expects their soldiers to be able to do what they demand of them, cuz they trust that their soldiers have trained to their expectations. She probably just better understands how to use each unit now."
"I don't know, man. It feels more like she knows what she's doing because she's done it before," he said, shaking his head in disagreement.
"Probably just residuals from controlling these wolves that she generously lets us ride." I said, reaching forward to pat the Wolf on its head. Before looking over at him and saying "But that doesn't matter. What's the info on the enemy formation? Where are they, what's going on?"
Styr sighed before answering. "My scouts have been tracking them and came in contact with the rear of the enemy formation earlier today. They are pressing hard for the next river, which is a day's march before them."
"So they want to try and pull the same stunt they pulled at this River, I assume. Not going to hold all us too long now that we know how to build those catapults and Tanya could obviously use those runes again."
"That's what I think too, though the river they're heading for only has one good forwarding location so they can concentrate. We know that because my scouts have been talking to the locals and they've given us a couple of good maps of the area. There is a bridge much further to the north but apparently it is currently occupied by an Ice Troll who decided that it would make a great home so he's currently living under it. I think neither one of our forces want to deal with that, too much chance for that to spill into something worse."
"Good. They'll get wrecked like they just were. We have catapults that send exploding ammunition, there is no way for them to hold a situation like that without something to counter it."
"That's my concern. I don't want to find out if they have something to counter it, do you mind if I propose a plan?"
I gave him a nod to continue, wondering why he had not brought this up to Tanya herself since she was in overall command. Though she was also with the main army, which was half a day behind us, so letting us have a little initiative wouldn't be that big of an issue I assumed.
"Well, it's quite simple: the enemy army will be at the ford by the end of tomorrow while we can be there by the end of the day. It would not be impossible to get around them, their are scouts are shit. I don't know who they hired, what band of morons they decided were going to be experts, but they're not. They're just not. We can navigate around them, get in front of them, and take the Ford."
"Okay but that puts 200 men against nearly a thousand. Those are those aren't exactly great odds and it deprives Tanya of her scouts."
"That deprives Tanya of her long-range scouts; she still has a hundred of my ground scouts with her so they won't be caught by surprise. As for the one-on-five odds I admit that's not exactly great except it's not one on five when you really think about it. Tomorrow that formation will be crossing the river after a long hard day's March. They will be tired, they will be worn out, and they will not be expecting to be fired on by arrows and then charged by a bunch of wolves as they're coming out of the water. We could cause a panic and maybe kill a good number of men before they get themselves sorted out. When they do get themselves sorted out they'll have a choice: they can either camp by their side of the river and be attacked by the main army, which is at this point double their size after whatever losses we just inflicted. Or they can try and push us, right? Well if they push us, we just fall back. All of a sudden they've secured the other side of the river, sure, but now we are going to be shooting at them from the woods whenever they're not on guard duty, ensuring that they won't have a good night's rest. When Tanya arrives the next day they'll be worn out."
"If we can pull that off that would end the fight for the river days ahead of schedule. They might even be willing to lay down their arms once they realize the situation and we can get on our way to the castle straight away." I mused, thinking on what he had proposed.
As a Housecarl I knew what was expected from me: follow the orders directly given to me, which had been to scout and keep an eye on the enemy formation, figure out what was going on. This would certainly be a step beyond those orders.
However I could not disregard that, with the distance between us and Tanya's men, what mattered now was initiative, not orders.
Turning to face the leader of the wolf scouts I told "Find someone to send a message to Tanya and tell her the plan. We're moving out now, we're not going to wait for her response." He nodded and rode off with his wolf while I observed the horizon.
Tanya
I was fairly annoyed, happy but annoyed. I did not like having members of my command acting too independently. With their operation my wolf Calvary and wolf scouts had undertaken to create a situation where my enemy had a no-win situation and been very successful. By the time the army had caught up to the enemy force they had broken down. The losses they took crossing the river and the nightlong tactics to keep them from getting a good night's rest had resulted in a formation that was falling apart at its seams.
At least half of the enemy had fled in the night or had been killed attempting to flee, from what I could gather, meaning the formation did not have the manpower to stop my wolves if they were unleashed.
Which meant the battle was over before I even had to do anything. So making a big deal out of the fact they had gone against my orders was unlikely to win me any favors. But the most annoying part about all this, the part that really upset me, is that I would have ordered them to do the same. I would have ordered them to cross that River before the enemy and do exactly what they did. I would have just been concerned they would refuse because it looked like a death sentence. Cutting off your scouts from your supporting forces and expecting them to harass the enemy throughout the night was a way to get your scouts destroyed if you didn't make contact with them again within a reasonable amount of time, which she was sure she could.
So, while everyone around me was celebrating a successful victory, I was looking at the two sub-commanders with a faint bit of annoyance, biting my lip trying to figure out how I was going to handle this. The slight headache in the back of my head was not helping, like I had come across situations similar to this before.
Finally I decided the best tack was to congratulate them but be slightly disapproving.
"Well done, gentlemen," I said, looking them over. "You have managed to save us days on this campaign and for that you have my thanks. But, in the future, do try to keep in mind that you are the army's eyes and ears. Without you we are blind and deaf, the next time you attempt such a gamble please keep some of your men on this side of the river to at least keep us somewhat informed." I gave them a very concerned and thoughtful look, hoping they would see the mistake and try to not do it again in the future.
"Yes, lady Tanya!" the two responded with broad smiles, nodding their understanding. I really could only hope they actually did.
"Fools, you'll pay for this! When Lord Farthegn hears that you've destroyed our army he will call upon the monsters to kill you." One of the soldiers… no, wait, that was a commander by the looks of his coat called from where he'd been tied up. Officially the enemy army had not surrendered so I did not have a way to parole them just yet. I was thinking I would leave them tied up against the tree and then cut one of them free with a knife after taking all their weapons, assuming they'd figure it out from there. I was also considering doing that but spaced out over several miles, that way they could not just regroup quickly into another formation in my rear.
"Monsters, you say?" I queried, walking towards him. "What monsters will he call upon that you feel will come to his aid?"
"Shut up, Bob!" another Commander ordered from where he was sitting next to him.
"I will not! I am not afraid of this oversized shield maiden and I'm not afraid of you." He bit back, turning his head to look at the person who told him to shut up before looking back at me.
"The ice fiends will come to his call. He has dark magic that allows him to bring them to the battlefield. Any army that comes to oppose him at his castle will be swept under their relentless charge."
"Interesting." I said, looking him over and trying to figure out what this could mean. Ice Fiends were the yetis I had fought in the mountains. I knew they had some level of sentience but did not know if they had the ability to communicate with other species, at the time I had assumed they did not. This, however, seemed to imply that at least in one case they could communicate with humans and had struck some sort of bargain. I wondered what this bargain was… no, wait, I didn't: dark magic.
"Let me guess. The Ice Fiends raid the outer edges of his territory that do not submit to him on his terms."
"Yes, of course. Anyone not willing to submit to him is a traitor anyways."
Great. So either he was letting the Ice Fiends eat his potential troublemakers, or he was pushing out those troublemakers into areas where they were more likely to be eaten by the yetis.
Neither one of them were definite proof that he was controlling them with dark magic and had some sort of alliance with the yetis though.
"He's already moving his forces against you. This place was chosen specifically do end this whole charade."
I was going to ask what he meant when I heard a thump and a roar. Looking north where the sound came from I saw an Ice Troll slowly marching its way down the river towards us. In one hand appeared to be one of this man's soldiers, crushed, and the other held a massive log, meant for smashing people by my guess.
"You see! Here comes one of Lord Farthegn's servants now, to destroy you all."
"You daft idiot!" Ulfrik Eilifsson said, slapping the back of his head. "You sent one of your men to rile up an Ice Troll and now it's come downriver to find whoever sent the idiot.".
"Still that means you're going to have to fight it and that'll destroy your army." This man was getting on my nerves now. Reaching over to Freki I pulled my spear off its side-saddle. This spear had an antler tip, like my old Spears, but it had a few new additions. First it was more finely created, crafted with materials I could get from the somewhat more modern society of Fenris rather than what I could get while living in the woods. And, second, I had inscribed the spell for piercing on the side.
I wanted to see what would happen so, carefully channeling energy from the earth beneath me into the spear, I took aim and let loose.
A few moments after it left my hand it seemed to speed up and then there was a rather loud bang before it smashed into the chest of the ice roll, piercing through to the other side. Right, apparently I had been well on target. It fell forward face-first to the river the fist-sized hole pouring its acid blood everywhere.
"If your lord depends on beasts to fight me you'll find that a rather unpromising answer to the question of stopping me." I said, giving the man a smile before padding Freki on the head.
"All right, gentlemen. Pack everything up, we're moving out." I called. It was time to be on our way and see about ending this whole campaign.
Lord Farthegn
How have things come to this? I had simply wanted to assassinate one God damned King and push my power across the continent, finally uniting this world from the barbaric mess it had become. And now most of my subcommanders and Lords were dead, in hiding, or had betrayed me because they saw an opportunity to strike at their betters.
I had spent most of my life trying to unify the damned continent of Asaheim, ever since I realized that none of the people on this world mattered. The signs that this was some remnant of an ancient civilization, that we had fallen far from where we had once stood, were everywhere when you had the eyes to look for it. Most people just assumed it was the gods' work but for me it was obvious that humanity had had a higher position at one point.
And I thoroughly believe that if I could unify the continent under my rule I would be able to bring humanity back to that point. If the continent could be brought under my single rule there was a chance of finding out what was in the caves beneath the mountains, what secrets were there and what powers could be unlocked for the people.
In my youth I had traveled with a group of adventurers into one of those caves, seen the dark City that laid beneath the mountains. We had been too fearful to go too close. The legends of the monsters that lived in there were rare due to the simple fact that those who got too close usually ended up dead, so their stories were lost with them.
Small scouting parties like I had been part of would have been chewed up and killed if we had attempted to enter that city, as the creatures there would have made sure we never saw the light of day again. But I could tell that it was far more advanced than anything on the surface, the fact that there were flameless light sources on the streets were sign alone that there was a great power down there.
And now my dreams of someday uniting the continent and leading an army down there to take it for humanity were going up in smoke. All because some upstart giant bitch had decided to ruin my day.
Well, I would just have to ruin hers. There was no way I was going to let my dreams die because some lapdog of Russ got lucky and defeated my so-called loyal servants. I still had the item I retrieved from the outskirts of the dark city so many years ago. A small device powered by some unknown means that, with a few presses of a button, agitated every Ice Fiend within a radius of 50 miles and brought them towards my location. It would take time for them to arrive but they would come and they would eat this enemy army as they attempted to lay siege to my castle. It would be hilarious watching the screaming and murder from the safety of my own home.
"My Lord? There's something you may want to see," one of my servants said as he walked into my study where I had been going over the paperwork that came from running a large Kingdom. So much taxes to collect, so little time.
"What is it, Valgard?" I asked, not even looking up.
"The enemy army is doing something. I think they're building siege equipment, my Lord." He said, sounding more concerned than he should be.
"Of course they're building huge equipment. Won't do them any good, this place is impenetrable. There is no way for anything to break down the walls of this fortress. " I asserted. Nothing but the truth as this Castle had stood for longer than most kingdoms had existed, which was one of the reasons I had made a point of taking it in my conquest of his continent. An impregnable fortress was the key towards victory in any conflict, especially when you could call monsters to do your bidding. Just because you called them didn't mean you could control them, they would just as easily eat me if given the chance.
'My Lord, this is true but… They have a rune priest with them, by the looks of it."
I chuckled at that and said "What is he going to do? Call the thunder? Freeze the outer layer of the castle in the storm? This place has seen such conflicts before and survived, there is nothing-"
There was a thunderous bang, as if a clap of lightning hit outside the castle, and then my windowless study now had a window and the servant who had been standing in front of me was a red smear across the wall and floor.
"Well… That was unexpected." I muttered as I got up from my seat and walked over to the newly formed hole in my wall. I was two layers of rock in and yet there was a hole. Looking down through the hole I could see the enemy army was preparing a catapult, some blonde giant of a woman holding a massive stone in her hands before placing it on the scoop. I watched as the piece of rock was thrown from the catapult into the air. It got a certain distance away before all of a sudden accelerating with a thunderous boom, smashing into my castle with such speed that it left a rather large hole.
"There goes another plan," I muttered, knowing that this would require an actual fight on my part.
Writers note: Alright there we go chapter for this week, and may I say this week has been good for me in a writing capacity, I think the next chapter has a chance of being much longer than this one. Anyways what to say about this chapter, magic, memories, fighting, and build up.
What else to say, One shot and info post will now have a section that tell you what to be expected to come out how some projects are coming, it will update at least every Thursday or so. There will also be commissioned Warhammer one-shot for youjo senki coming out, in the said one-shot thread. L4's Snippet, one-shots and Index
Edited by: Preier, M.G. ,
Community edited by:
Community editable doc (Chapter 12) No story suggestions in the community editing document, Keep all story suggestions and comments in the thread
Supporters: Neso, Markus, Mackenzie Buckle, Silver Wolf, Daniel Martinez, Falk Hüser
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- Location
- Massachusetts
Viking Artillery OP
Glad to see more of Tanya back to her old self. Could she eventually build a computational orb that could filter out Chaos from effecting Psykers?
Glad to see more of Tanya back to her old self. Could she eventually build a computational orb that could filter out Chaos from effecting Psykers?
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They
That would be game changing if true.
- Location
- CT
She could probably even build multi core orbs on her own, and with Magnus and Vulcan's help, she could probably devise both the Armed and Storage Devices from MGLN. Unfortunately, I suspect that making Intelligent devises would go over all that well, considering what happened last time AI interacted with the Warp on a large scale.
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- Location
- Massachusetts
Belasarius Cawl: "But what if we DID? It would be 01000101 01110000 01101001 01100011."
- Location
- CT
Tanya, with a Binary translator she built out of a datapad; "01001010 01110101 01110011 01110100 00100000 01101100 01101001 01101011 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01001001 01110010 01101111 01101110 00100000 01010111 01100001 01110010"
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Held back the Chapter last week since I had two mainline stories coming out in order to get my self chapter ahead, so chapter 13 will be coming Thursday or 48+ from now
Chapter 13 legendary build
Chapter 13, Legendary Build
Tanya
I was drinking a lovely cup of alcohol as I sat against a tree, patting Geri behind the ears. I had already prepared several dozen explosive ammunition balls and a few piercers as well on the trip to the castle Lord Farthegn inhabited. So I was getting better at casting the spells into the runes though the more I used the energies and the more I was noticing strangeness to them. From what memories I had been able to unlock my magic had come from within, this magic seemed to come from outside myself but I could direct it. And there were two types of magic present, I could just barely feel the difference but it was definitely there.
Type 1, the type I had been using the most, seemed to come from the planet itself. It just seemed to radiate from the dirt, the trees, everything as if Fenris itself was a conductor for magic. Type 2 seemed weaker, I could only just sense it below whatever type 1 was and it felt… it had a feeling to it that wasn't like type 1.
Type 1 felt alive, grounded, and refined. Type 2 felt dirty, unrefined, and distant as if it was coming from further away than type 1. I should be focusing more on the siege in front of me but I was basically just sitting back and letting my men throw rocks at the Castle at the moment, so I had time to think about the concept of magic.
What about more data points? I couldn't make a good estimate but I had a distinct feeling that what I was feeling was the exact same magic. Type 2 was more unrefined and everywhere while type 1 was something that had been refined here on Fenris. What was doing that refining was up for debate. I wondered if the Allfather, as he had dubbed himself, might have some sort of hand in that. After all my original theory was it was some kind of AI caretaker, could one of its duties have been to refine some sort of cosmic energy that existed in this universe for ease of use for the people of this planet.
Without more details I would never know. I guess I could try and search the caves that I've been warned about going down into. I would assume the answer to the question is usually the place you're told not to go to, but the reality was that I didn't care that much. As long as the power stayed useful, safe for me, and helped me get to my retirement I didn't care where it came from.
Well… Feeling energy was new. I was not exactly a spiritual sort, and here I was attempting to feel the energy out and try and understand where it came from. Granted I was applying the scientific method to it, trying to understand it from some sort of reasonable take other than oh it's just magic. This was some sort of energy, even if the source of this energy was yet to be determined. I might not be the one to figure it out but I would at least try. That would at least alleviate my concerns of religious overtones.
My thoughts though were interrupted as the hackles on Geri raised. Normally I would probably be wondering why that was happening but I could feel it too. That type 2 energy just increased tenfold and seemed to be coming from the castle that we were laying siege to. It was a disturbing and corrupting Force that felt like it was pushing the type one energy away and down, smothering it.
I stood up from where I had been sitting, looking around and trying to figure out what the hell was going on. I quickly noted that I appeared to be the only one feeling it. At least among the humans. They all seemed to be going about their jobs like nothing had happened, though I noted my wolves were definitely on edge at feeling the disturbing energies flowing from the castle.
Wait. I wasn't the only one looking off, I saw the wolf priest looking a bit disturbed as well, pushing his way through the crowd towards me. I moved in his general direction, wanting to find out what he knew on this subject.
The wolf priest pushed past the last couple people and stood in front of me, breathing heavily before saying, "my lady, I regret to inform you it appears that lord Farthegn has engaged in his dark magic once again."
"Dark magic once again?" I asked questioningly, looking at him, "What dark magic has he engaged in before and what dark magic is he engaged in right now?"
"The Lord of this Castle has an item that allows him to call upon the Ice Fiends for his protection. He doesn't use it often because it often sets back his plans but it's his guarantee of survival trick. Normally he only turns it on at a low rate, letting the fiends come in at a trickle. It feels like he doesn't like having his castle blowing apart underneath him and has pushed whatever this item is to its fullest extent."
I nodded my head as I understood what he was saying. Well, I understood the concept at the very least. The nature of this item left me a bit perplexed, but overall it didn't matter what it was.
Lord Farthegn had an item that was calling monsters to fight me, he turned it up on full which meant we probably had an hour before we were surrounded by creatures who ate humans. Which meant I did not have the time to lay back and let the siege engines demolish the castle piece by piece until he came out and fought himself.
"Well, looks like I'm going to have to learn to climb," I muttered, turning to look at the castle and trying to figure out what I would need to do to get inside. There were plenty of guards around the walls I could see and a lot of them had bows. Any movement in that direction would result in arrow holes in me. Maybe I could keep the artillery going as I tried to climb? It would keep them down and give me the opportunity. What I needed was some sort of cover, massive cover and a distraction. A way to white out the field so they couldn't see what I was doing. Wait… There was something that could be done with that concept, wasn't there?
Taking a breath I looked at the wolf priest and nodded, saying "Thank you for telling me this information and I will deal with this promptly." Looking in the direction of my sub-commanders who were having a conversation with Jarl Bretakollrsson, I moved over there and said "Gentlemen according to our priest the enemy is about to engage in dark magic, and he's summoning Ice Fiends from the wilds. We have a bit of a warning and probably an hour to set up."
They looked at me, a bit stunned, before sub Commander yellow said "Okay, that's not good. Do we have a plan for dealing with this?"
"Unfortunately not yet. I have an idea that might buy us some time but the fact of the matter is that our best option is to withdraw from the siege to our camp and fortify it as best we can." Thankfully I just trained the majority of my army on how to set up a defensive camp so it wouldn't be much harder to increase those defenses.
Sub Commander green red asked "So we pull back to our camp, build up our defenses, and hope we can kill more of them than they can kill of us while hoping the dark magic is not too terrible? Well, that sounds like a very great way to go out. Just in case we don't make it out of this, Tanya, can I just say how much I've enjoyed being part of your army? The fights are always a lot more than bash one line against the other till someone gives up."
"You're welcome, I guess," I said, remembering all of a sudden that the people before me were basing their culture on Vikings. Or were Vikings, still out on all the details. Dying in glorious battle was good for them. Dying in glorious battle against an evil sorcerer probably was the stuff of Legends to them. Well, at least morale would be high I figured.
"I have a possible strategy that could buy us some time but we need to pull back everyone to the camp and just start building up our defenses. Cut down trees, dig trenches, if there's anything you can do, do it." Looking at Geri, I said, "Follow them, dig and carry." Geri nodded, understanding the orders. He would organize the wolves to do the job. And with men and wolves working together I believe we could get this camp so fortified the Ice Fiends would never be able to take the camp.
"And this powerful strategy is what exactly?" jarl Bretakollrsson asked from his seated position.
"Man up there decides he's going to be a dark sorcerer? Guess I have to meet him in combat on his own fields." I answered with a shrug. The commanders chuckled at that and left, seeming to take my snarkiness as overconfidence. It was better than nothing and better than a depressed morale.
I took a few steps away before pulling out the rune beads I had been given so long ago, and shifted them around till I reached the desired calculation. Holding them between my hands I began channeling the energy from Fenris as best I could, focusing it to run through the calculations on the rune beads. Said beads began to immediately get colder in my hands dropping the temperature below the ambient temperature.
There was a lot of energy I needed to channel but I focused and kept at it, pushing more and more through the beads until I could feel it building up around me. The repulsive dirty energy that I had been sensing since lord Farthegn started using his mysterious item felt like it was being pushed away from me and the area around me swirling about.
I was so focused on working this spell that I lost track of exactly how long I was doing it. I was only aware that something had changed when Commander Eilifsson grabbed my shoulder and shook it, interrupting my focus.
Looking around, a bit confused, I saw that the men had been hard at work building up the defenses. When I closed my eyes there had only been a low 2-feet wall around the camp, made up of debris and such just to keep things out. Now it appeared that the hour had passed and that wall was now about 3 feet high and someone had dug a trench in front of it. So it looked like 3 feet from inside the camp but if you were outside it was more like five.
I nodded my head in approval at seeing the upgrade in defenses. By my estimate, Ice Fiends were around 7 to 6 ft tall which meant they would be more easily able to stab the creatures in their chest and upper body from this angle. Men were already lining up and preparing their weapons along the wall.
"Preparations working out?" I asked, looking to the commander.
"Yes, lady Tanya. Are you okay?" He said, looking at my hands with a bit of worry. This caused me to look at them and realize that a layer of ice had formed over them, sealing them together. It wasn't too thick but apparently I hadn't even noticed this was happening. Cracking the ice I freed my hands and brushed them off, hoping that there would not be any lasting freezer burn or anything of that nature.
"Perfectly fine." I said, once I confirmed my fingers moved as they should. Looking up I saw that the sky had clouded over as I had hoped and a bit of snow was falling. With any luck what I had just done would pay off and the snow that was already falling would block the view from the castle of the ground below, allowing an operation to sneak in and be pulled off.
Theoretically what I had just done was create an area of low pressure, pulling the storms that still stuck to the sea toward the mountains in our general direction. It was a bit interesting on how exactly you could pull that off, considering I had needed to create a massive area of low pressure for something like this to even work. And I was 90% sure that if I had the ability to do this in my salaryman life I would have ended up dead, my body destroying itself while focusing that energy through the item. Or frozen solid, either or was a possibility.
Looking around me I noticed that a lot of the shield maidens had created a protective circle around me. They had been serving along with the rest of the housecarls since their training was pretty much exactly the same and I didn't make note of them that often.
Fenris was an 'everyone fights, no one quits' kind of place, which also meant that little things like how many men and how many women are in a force could be easily missed. Hell a full third of jarl Bretakollrsson 's force was female. Which seemed disproportionately odd so I'd asked one of my shield maidens to ask around and why this was a thing. It turned out that most of the female forces under his command were wives and mothers of those who died fighting Lord Farthegn. They had a vendetta and had eagerly volunteered to join jarl Farthegn's forces since they knew they would have the best chance of causing pain to the one who caused the loss of their loved ones.
Not really caring why the shield maidens had decided that I was the person that needed to be protected while focusing on that energy spell. Or caring why some of them appeared to actually be from jarl Bretakollrsson's force. I looked to the sub commander of Eilifsson and asked. "Any news on the Ice Fiends? How far are they out?"
"Scouts have been reporting them coming in from pretty much all directions, except South as expected. We're not too far from the sea in our position so I doubt there's many Fiends living out on the slowly melting glaciers out there."
I noted my understanding before asking "And how bad are the numbers?"
"About two times our number, maybe more. The scouts and wolf scouts have been doing their best to murder every single one they find with archery but that's not slowing them down. Only good news is that they do not show any organization. In fact I'd say they're dumber than usual, moving as if they are compelled to come here. If they were hunting or searching as they usually would our scouts would not be having as much luck as they currently have. Frankly, I don't understand the numbers that are getting reported. We have Ice Fiends on our coast, and it has never been this bad."
"If we believe the local Intel he's been using them as some sort of 'I win' spell, most likely he forbids heavily hunting and cleaning these pests." I answered, shaking my head. I could in fact see why you would allow such a pest creature to move around and grow if he had control over them. Having something at your beck and call does allow your ability to experiment, see if you can organize it like I had done with my wolves. He obviously was not very good at it because all he could do was summon them to his castle while he hid in there. But if you have a castle and the ability to summon monsters to eat anything outside that castle, then you might as well use it.
Looking at subcommander yellow, I said "I'm going to go see about preventing this conflict from getting any worse. Hold this position and kill anything that tries to kill you, sound good?"
"Sounds like an amazing time!" The commander of the yellow said, before adding. "Jarl Bretakollrsson asks to try and minimize damage to the internal structure of the castle. He wasn't that big of a fan of the bombardment idea to begin with and he says there's some relic or something in there that he really doesn't want destroyed."
I looked over towards jarl Bretakollrsson , throwing a suspicious look his way. It was uniquely possible that he wanted the relic that Lord Farthegn was using to attempt to kill us all. Just because your enemy has evil objects doesn't mean you don't want them. If it was though he was going to be disappointed because I was totally going to destroy it. As far as I could see the Ice Fiends were a civilization dead-end. At least the wolves had uses outside of killing such as digging for the trenches or moving things around. They were useful to humanity. The ice fiends were just a ravaging horde. They were locusts but for people instead of farms and they needed to be dealt with, sent back to the mountains where they belonged or eliminated completely.
"Tell him I'll try and keep the damage as minimal as possible but things happen." I said with a shrug before walking towards the edge of the camp. I hopped over the short wall onto a wooden log that had been put across the trench. It was a good thing I did because I noticed that apparently they had time to put sharpened stakes at the bottom of the trench. That would cause some damage to the Ice Fiends but I expected that the moment the trench filled with their acidic blood those would become less useful.
Nodding my head in approval I walked on, heading towards the castle and taking out the beads again. I just rearranged them and tried to focus the energies on creating an optical illusions spell of sorts. With luck I would be able to hide my presence from sight and the snow and everything else would make sure no one else caught on that I was making a move. All I needed to do was climb the side of a castle wall that… Yeah we put a good few holes in, so it shouldn't be that hard to find somewhere to squeeze in. Once inside I'd go about finding the relic, device, whatever colorful term this Lord Farthegn used, and then I'd kill the bastard.
Every day on this side of the coast had proven that the man was a destructive force for civilization, he had attempted to destabilize the government through assassination, got the armies of others destroyed in order to weaken his enemies, and now he was using man-eating monsters in order to win a fight he couldn't win. As much as I was for live and let live as a principle there was a limit. For me, that limit was when civilization itself was being degraded and damaged by irresponsible behavior.
Assassinating the king would lead to chaos, mayhem, and, if I had not been there, in a rise in wolf attacks. Letting his armies get destroyed fighting me would have destabilized this region, allowing its rampant Ice Fiend problem to grow even more. And this calling of the Ice Fiends to destroy my army meant that they were coming down from the hills and mountains into civilized territory. Even if he turned it off immediately after my army was destroyed, which would not be happening today, they would be scattered across civilized lands and causing mayhem and destruction for years. Lord Farthegn had proven himself to be a threat to civilization, letting him live would simply create a status quo with him becoming a Saturday morning cartoon villain level of evil. I did not want to be dealing with his bullshit every 2 years.
I simply wanted to go home, retire, raise my wolves, maybe train a few Wolf riders and hunt some monsters. None of that would be possible if I had to assemble an army every two years to march over the mountain pass and deal with his bullshit. So I would be destroying this albatross around my economic future's neck while I could.
Now the question was how was I going to get into that castle.
Sub-commander Eilifsson
It had been an hour since Tanya had left on her one-woman mission to kill Lord Farthegn and destroy whatever item he was using to summon the Ice Fiends. If this had been another Lord or Commander I might have been worried that we had just been abandoned to a fate worse than death as said Lord ran for the hills in hopes of surviving to fight another day.
But this was Tanya, the lady of the wolves, and she left her wolves here. If there was one thing about Tanya I could say, it was that there was one constant with her. And that constant was that she cared for her wolves. Especially Freki and Geri, who had been hanging out near me and the other commanders this entire time as if they were on the command staff themselves. Better be fair: considering they seemed to have some sort of authority over the other wolves, maybe they were.
Either way the fact was that, no matter what, you could trust that Tanya would return just to save her wolves if nothing else. So, as long as the wolves were there, I knew she wasn't running. She was doing something to try and win them this fight even if what that something was he didn't know. Literally, because the Wolf Witch had vanished before my eyes just a few moments after stepping out of the fort, so she could really be anywhere.
Whatever she had done before then had taken full effect though, as a winter storm had set in even though it was the middle of Spring. Snow was falling heavily when it usually fell lightly this time of year and this favored our joint Force. Ice fiends had an okay sense of smell and often used that over their own eyes when dealing with parties of hunters, like those we were employing to try and whittle down their numbers. The snow was doing wonders to neutralize that sense, allowing our Wolf Scouts to run circles around the oncoming horde of monsters.
And they were coming in numbers large enough to be called a horde. At first they only showed up in small groups of 10 to 15, a regular tribe's size, something that could be expected on our side of the mountains and was easily dispatched by clever tactics and good shots to heads and hearts. But they had slowed up when they realized that someone was hunting them, obviously leaving corpses lying around would clue in even the dumbest animals that enemies were about. After that they started to come in larger groups of 30 to 40. These groups had been whittled down as best we could before they made contact with our fortifications. So far though those groups had been dispatched through Mass volley.
But all good things come to an end look because the main body of them was coming now, reports of Ice Fiends in the thousands had been coming in for the last 10 minutes. Scouts and Wolf Scouts had done their best trying to whittle them down but they were running low on ammo at this point. Unfortunate side effect of their acidic blood, meaning that even arrows that didn't break from them struggling or dying were still ruined.
Not much we could do but hope that our reserves of projectiles would last some more, that and the spears we had been crafting for the last 2 hours. We had been creating as many wooden spears as possible since killing the creatures at a distance would be better for everyone, lest acidic blood get everywhere. One thing about this that made me a little bit happy was that this was the time for my men to shine. My particular brand of troops was specifically designed to fight Fiends as my particular area of coast was snugly fit against the mountains and we had to deal with their bullshit at an abnormal level compared to everyone else. So, for generations, my family had been working on improving our fighting techniques for this kind of battle: heavier armor and Dai axes with heavy heads at the end of a long metal pole, designed to withstand the acidic blood and keep on cutting and smashing until the enemy was dead. Even if the tip was dulled by the acid there was enough weight at the head of the ax to smash a skull. And given that my men were experts at fighting those things I had gone about making sure that the majority of my men was on the north side of our line. I sent a few detachments of my men to the East and West lines, just to make sure we could show off there as well, but I wanted the glory of this fight to go to me and my people.
I was perhaps enjoying a little bit too much the idea of taking a good share of this final battle's Fame for myself, as I almost missed a runner coming from the Western Wall of our fortified square.
"Sir, a large contingent of the enemy is breaking through the woods. Commander Larlssonhas opened up with archery fire but they are still approaching. He thinks this is the big one, sir, there's more and more coming through."
Nodding my thanks I got up from my seat and turned to the other commanders, "It looks like today's fight is about to truly begin. In case I don't see any of you after this is over… It's been an honor serving with you all," I said, before reaching down and grabbing my helmet. Quickly securing it over my head, I walked to the Western Wall.
I took my place at the center of the line and smiled at the formation of ugly beasts trying to struggle their way through archery fire. The snow was coming down all around us, adding a mythical aspect to their valiant charge. They were wielding nothing but clubs, though a few of them did have what appeared to be crude Shields. They attempted to cross the open Fields around our camp and, of course, were slowly accomplishing this but they were paying a heavy price. The ground here would be acidic forever, probably nothing would grow for a long time.
This would be a glorious fight, the only thing better would be the approval of the Allfather himself. The sky then rumbled, a flash of lights as lightning crackled across the sky, signaling his approval. There was nothing better than to have the Allfather's attention before a fight, nothing better to restore morale, boost it, or create one when you lacked it.
This was the kind of moment that swept you up and I let myself be swept up in it. Standing up onto the wall itself, looking back at my men, I said "warriors of djævelske mordere, today is a glorious day! Today we get to fight hundreds of the creatures we have fought for generations and prove that we are the best at doing it. Not only to our brothers and the Russ, Kystnære and Fjell but also to the Brothers in this land across the mountains. You are here at a moment of History, a moment of legend! You are here at the moment that djævelske mordere stood their ground and proved their worth and helped bring down a dark lord! What better story to tell your children than how you helped bring down a dark lord."
"But I don't have any," a heckler in the crowd said, getting a good chuckle from the other yellow-coated soldiers.
Laughing, I said "Well, then this story will definitely help you fix that. Nothing gets a lass more excited than defeating great evils and destroying monsters." I got a roar of approval from my men, a few of them hitting their Dai axes against the ground in a rumble answering the ones that were going on in the sky.
"Men of djævelske mordere, Allfatther is watching us from above. Though our fearless Wolf witch has gone to deal with the evil Lord Farthegn herself, she is here in spirit. Where her wolves go, she goes," I said, waving to the many wolves about the camp and lines. The sky rumbled again, seeming to punctuate my point.
"We will hold this line for the wolf witch! We will help defeat these monsters and claim Glory for our djævelske mordere, this is already decided. The only thing that is left to do is to make it happen." Raising my double-headed Dai ax above my head I shouted, "So who is ready to write our Fate in The legend today?"
I'd expected a cheer for my men, which I did get. What I did not expect was a cheer from some of the other clans, nor the wolves howling in approval. But I gladly took it as it was a good sign in my book. Smiling, I stepped down and turned to face the still oncoming horde of Ice Fiends. They were much closer but legend was already written at this point, now it was all about making it happen.
Tanya
Finding my way into the castle proved ridiculously easy, my optical illusion spell worked like planned and the snow muffled any sounds on my trip up the side of the castle wall. Thankfully I found a few holes that had been burst into the wall before I had to climb all the way up. Finding one that was about the right size and then using my Superior strength to widen it further was nothing.
Before I knew it I was inside the castle, enjoying a little bit of warmth even if the room had been sealed to try and keep the cold out. Thankfully the room's sealing was literally just a bunch of blankets shoved under the door, which I was able to push open without much issue.
From there I worked my way further into the castle, trying to use a spell I remembered meant for detecting energy sources as my guide to the item, relic, whatever it was called, that was drawing in the Ice Fiends. Well, before I did, I took a look from my much higher position to try and guess and make how many ice Fiends there were.
Too many. Actually, I couldn't see them all because there were a lot of trees around this Castle, tactical mistake under the best of circumstances, but I was able to see enough moving around that I could guess. Yeah, it was going to be a while before the monsters were all killed. If I could find the device and turn it to repel them that would be useful. If not… Well, lots and lots of dead Ice Fiends were in my future.
Shuffling further into the castle though I found lots of armor stands and tapestries, normal rich people stuff for this period in time. This was to be expected, after all this was the highest-ranking Noble on this Coast so he was going to have the most stuff. Hopefully he didn't have some sort of super armor or something. That would make this already unnecessary fight ridiculously stupid. But the fact of the matter was that I had no idea what strange mysteries this guy had been screwing around with so I really couldn't make assumptions either way on what he was and what he wasn't. Was he a wizard capable of dark magic or was he using some sort of ancient technology that he possibly found? With the world as it was either could be true, which annoyed me to a certain extent.
Thankfully though my answer soon stood in front of me and I ripped the door off its hinges. It had been locked and I really didn't want to bother with this stuff anymore as I felt whatever was causing this dark dirty feeling, just on the other side of the door. Tossing the door off to the side I stepped in, having to duck my head a bit since the place had been designed for people of 6 ft average and not my 7-foot frame. I found a crystal of some sort on a pedestal, hovering over a hunk of metal with dials and buttons.
"So it's tech," I muttered, stepping towards it. I walked around the pedestal, seeing if I could figure out if there were any directions on how to turn it off. Unfortunately whatever user-friendly abilities this device once had seemed to have worn off long ago. Most of the metal looked blackened by age and there were a few dials missing, so it did not seem to have been treated nicely over the years.
I was considering just smashing it when the guest of honor appeared. A 6 ft tall man stepped into the room wearing full armor, not just chain and fur but actual plate, and carrying a large sword. He was black of hair and kept his face shaved by the looks of it which let me see a scar running down his left cheek. "Who the hell are you and how did you get in here?"
Smiling, I said "Greetings, Lord Farthegn." With a bow, I continued "I am lady Tanya, servant of the Russ."
He took one look at me and drew his sword off his side, "Well, you match the description of the bitch tearing up my kingdom. What the hell are you doing here and how did you get inside? I'd like to know before I kill you, so I can increase the security."
"I walked and climbed and walked some more," I said matter of factly. "That's why I'm here, I'm here to destroy this," I said, pointing towards the object. "Unless you can show me how to turn it to repulse the creatures below? I would have figured that it would have a feature like that."
That seemed to stop him for a moment as he looked me and the device over, "You understand that that's technology and not some sorcerer's gambits."
"Why, of course, I understand this is technology," I said with a smile, "Though I would point out that it's from a time where sorcery and technology seem to have merged, as I can feel the arcane energies of coming off of it."
"Bullshit!" The man said matter of factly, "This machine is a device like any other from the period behind history, when we were a great people and sailed the Stars. It is not some arcane trinket."
I shrugged and said "If that's what you want to believe. I just know that I feel the energy coming off from it and there are two possibilities for that: either humanity has developed technology that could interfere with supernatural magical items such as this or my own biology happens to pick up on the signal that you use to control the Ice Fiends. By the way, does it control the Ice Trolls? That one has been bugging me since I've only seen the Fiends and as far as I'm aware the Trolls are just their more grown-up cousins."
The man was standing, ready to assault me with a sword, but I really showed no fear at this point. He was human, he was not one of the monsters I'd fought. I could take him one to one, even with his armor advantage. "It doesn't, I've tried. Ice Trolls are repulsed by it. Now, if you understand this is technology, do you understand what I'm doing here? Do you understand that I'm trying to rebuild civilization?"
I looked around as if in confusion, almost actually a bit of confused myself but I was just humoring him. "You believe you are building Civilization by killing the pillars of what keeps a civilization together on this planet, its leaders? I'm afraid you're doing a hell of a terrible job at that. If anything I think you turned yourself into a degrading force on civilization and whatever civilization you finally create will be an authoritarian mess that will be worse than what was here before."
"Pretty words for a Savage! Humanity needs authority to control it, otherwise it would be driven to insanity by the monsters on this planet."
"I don't technically disagree with you. We need an authority figure, someone able to rally forces to deal with problems as they come up. You're not rallying forces though, you are just ruling through might and destroying the foundations by which others may be allowed to protect the people of this planet. And, best of all, this thing," I said, pointing to the psi-emitter-like object.
"You wield a club of monsters to keep your people in line but you have no control of it. You just depend on them receding if you turn it off, is this what I am to believe?"
"Believe what you will, that item has gotten me power over this continent that none of the other Lords have ever managed. It will be the key to reuniting our civilization into one fist and taking it back into the Stars."
"Really? An item that attracts monsters will do that?" I reached out with both hands, grabbed the object, and then smashed it over my knee in front of him. It fell apart rather easily, probably fragile from decades or maybe generations of existence. Who knew how long this thing had been around. The look on his face was quite hilarious to watch.
He screwed up his face and said, "Fine! You destroyed a key component of my power, now I get to kill you. Unless, of course, your next objective is to kill me? Wouldn't that make you no better than what you called me?"
I gave him the eyebrow at that, "Oh yes, assassinating pillars of the community and destroying the centers of power? Yeah, I see how you could think that this would make me similar to you. Problem with that though? You're a degrading Force while I have built up. The actions are similar but the overall outcomes are different."
"What moral game are you playing? There's no difference! Killing a pillar of a community is killing a pillar of a community by your own logic."
Was he really trying to logic me? Did he think I was some sort of robot that would freeze up? I just shook my head and started walking towards him, "I am many things, and there are many things I don't even know. Here's the real difference, the one that makes this act different: your killing of the pillars of my communities would have drastically affected my quality of life downwards while me killing you will drastically make sure that my quality of life will continue to build up."
"What are you, a psychopath?" He swung the sword, trying to chop my head.
I caught it in my hand and ripped it out of his, reaching down and grabbing him by the neck. I lifted him up a foot in the air, "No, I'm a Human Resource manager and your net contribution to civilization is detrimental to our society and my retirement package."
Sub-commander Eilifsson
The enemy just kept coming, wave after wave of Ice Fiends charged across the open field and fell under arrow fire before getting the honor of falling to my men's axes. The fun had been going on for an hour and a half now and I had been forced to take a moment out of the line every once in a while. Fact of the matter was that the men were getting tired, even with efforts to switch men out in order to give them time to rest they were running low on the energy needed to keep striking these things dead.
Not to mention the wounded were beginning to pile up. One lucky acid spurt here, a lucky clawing there, and all of a sudden I needed to take men off the line to care for the wounded and hope that they'd either be able to take up the position in the line again or at least survive this combat. A couple good things about the snow though: the temperature had dropped so it was easier for the blood to solidify, sealing wounds, and nothing helped better against spurts of acid than rubbing snow on it to wash it away.
About 45 minutes ago though things had started to slack off a bit, the horde's behavior had changed. For the worst or the better, depending on your point of view. they stopped charging like they were mindless creatures and started charging more like animals on the hunt. The archers' effectiveness had gone down considerably but there also appeared to be less of them attempting to charge. Perhaps Tanya had been successful in destroying the device? Only time would tell at this point, if it took her an hour and 30 minutes to locate it then it would probably take at least that long for her to get back.
The change did have more benefits though. There were plenty of explosive ammunition left around so I had organized a couple of crews into firing the catapults into the midst of the monsters. It was somewhat effective.
Getting up I was about to go check up on the catapults when I looked around, noticing that Larlsson was not resting here with us. Turning to the second commander of Russ's forces after Wolf Rider leader Authgrim Bardisson, who I knew was holding the Eastern side of the line, Isgerd Buidottir of the shield maidens I asked, "Where is Larlsson?"
"He's with Allfather now, they managed to break through for a moment on the western side of the line. The wolves deployed and handled it though, so nothing too drastic there. We've been able to reestablish the line and fighting has returned to normal."
"Damn, I have to make sure to give him a good funeral after this," I muttered, looking out at the line. If commanders were falling things were starting to get desperate. We needed some sort of strategy to break the enemies' will to fight, otherwise we were going to be swarmed over and eaten. As much as a glorious end that would be I'd rather prefer to live a few more years. I just needed to find some way to restore them around, keep the fight going and maybe in an hour or two the Ice Fiends would retreat.
The sky rumbled as it had been doing for the entire battle. The storm was picking up, maybe? I didn't know what Tanya had done but it definitely brought in a hefty cold front. Shrugging I started heading towards the line when a howl greeted me. A large thunderous howl that seemed to shake the ground itself. And then the sky lit up as lightning bolts began raining down on the Fiends around the camp.
Pushing my way through the dazed members of our expedition to get to the line I held myself up to see what the hell was going on outside our fortifications. And was thoroughly shocked and stunned by the sight in front of me: dozens, if not hundreds, of Ice Fiends burning, the lightning having hit them and set them up on fire. Guess that acid blood came with a few issues, uh? The trees were not doing much better either as they too were burning, though at a much-reduced rate compared to a dry season.
And to top off this sight of devastation, and completely restore the morale of everyone around me, a massive Thunder Wolf came out of the trees. It came from the direction from which the Ice Fiends had been coming from, and it was surrounded both by common Fenrisian wolves and Blackmanned. They let out a howl in unison before charging into the combat; ripping into the rear of the dazed formation of ice fiends.
How had Tanya summoned these creatures, I did not know. All I knew was that I was glad to see them as they were murdering the hell out of our enemy. It was not long before the Ice Fiends began to just scatter, running into the woods to try to get away from the massacre.
The wolves did not stay as the monsters fled, instead they gave chase and ran after them. Before long the only ones left in the field were the Dead, the dying, and the Thunder Wolf who was looking us over rather intently. As if judging if we were worthy to be left alone.
Whatever final conclusion it would have come to was cut off as the snapping of a branch brought everyone's eyes to the side of the battlefield that faced Lord Farthegn's Castle. There stood Tanya, carrying something over her shoulder that looked like it might be a person. She was looking at the Thunder Wolf, curiously by the way her eyes took it in.
After a moment the wolf bowed its head and I realized I'd seen this wolf before, back on the march through the mountains. Had it been following us this whole time? I had no idea, I wanted to finish this battle. The wolf headed off into the wilderness, hunting most likely the remnants of the Ice Fiends.
With a shrug Tanya stopped looking at the wolf and marched the rest of the way into camp before dumping an armored body on the ground. Geri and Freki immediately came up and began cuddling up next to her and she patted them on the head before saying.
"Job is done and it looks like you guys managed to survive. What are our losses?"
Smiling, I said, "Minimal, Lady Tanya." I didn't have the exact numbers but that would serve, I believed.
She nodded and walked past me, heading towards her tent, "Alright, see to the wounded and make sure everyone is good and healthy. We'll clean up the area around the camp as best we can but I'm going to take a moment to reorient myself, I feel exhausted."
"Yes, Lady Tanya!" The voices came not just from the command staff but most of the camp as well, we were all in agreement at this point. Everyone would have their moments of Glory or two to look back on this campaign, but the campaign as a whole was Tanya's Glory.
Writer note: And there we go chapter 13, lot of little things ending their end of the evil lord saga, the end of the war, and fleshing out some culture. I hope everyone enjoys it! Out showing my wring process this (Siege of Keep/troll/wolves) is all I had in mind when I wrote this chapter, you be the judge if I fulfill those points.
Edited by: Preier, M.G. ,
Community edited by:
Community editable doc (Chapter 13) No story suggestions in the community editing document, Keep all story suggestions and comments in the thread
Supporters: Neso, Markus, Mackenzie Buckle, Silver Wolf, Daniel Martinez, Falk H,
Mana Rope
Art thanks Sky66 who Commissioned the Artist J-likes-to-draw
Tanya
I was drinking a lovely cup of alcohol as I sat against a tree, patting Geri behind the ears. I had already prepared several dozen explosive ammunition balls and a few piercers as well on the trip to the castle Lord Farthegn inhabited. So I was getting better at casting the spells into the runes though the more I used the energies and the more I was noticing strangeness to them. From what memories I had been able to unlock my magic had come from within, this magic seemed to come from outside myself but I could direct it. And there were two types of magic present, I could just barely feel the difference but it was definitely there.
Type 1, the type I had been using the most, seemed to come from the planet itself. It just seemed to radiate from the dirt, the trees, everything as if Fenris itself was a conductor for magic. Type 2 seemed weaker, I could only just sense it below whatever type 1 was and it felt… it had a feeling to it that wasn't like type 1.
Type 1 felt alive, grounded, and refined. Type 2 felt dirty, unrefined, and distant as if it was coming from further away than type 1. I should be focusing more on the siege in front of me but I was basically just sitting back and letting my men throw rocks at the Castle at the moment, so I had time to think about the concept of magic.
What about more data points? I couldn't make a good estimate but I had a distinct feeling that what I was feeling was the exact same magic. Type 2 was more unrefined and everywhere while type 1 was something that had been refined here on Fenris. What was doing that refining was up for debate. I wondered if the Allfather, as he had dubbed himself, might have some sort of hand in that. After all my original theory was it was some kind of AI caretaker, could one of its duties have been to refine some sort of cosmic energy that existed in this universe for ease of use for the people of this planet.
Without more details I would never know. I guess I could try and search the caves that I've been warned about going down into. I would assume the answer to the question is usually the place you're told not to go to, but the reality was that I didn't care that much. As long as the power stayed useful, safe for me, and helped me get to my retirement I didn't care where it came from.
Well… Feeling energy was new. I was not exactly a spiritual sort, and here I was attempting to feel the energy out and try and understand where it came from. Granted I was applying the scientific method to it, trying to understand it from some sort of reasonable take other than oh it's just magic. This was some sort of energy, even if the source of this energy was yet to be determined. I might not be the one to figure it out but I would at least try. That would at least alleviate my concerns of religious overtones.
My thoughts though were interrupted as the hackles on Geri raised. Normally I would probably be wondering why that was happening but I could feel it too. That type 2 energy just increased tenfold and seemed to be coming from the castle that we were laying siege to. It was a disturbing and corrupting Force that felt like it was pushing the type one energy away and down, smothering it.
I stood up from where I had been sitting, looking around and trying to figure out what the hell was going on. I quickly noted that I appeared to be the only one feeling it. At least among the humans. They all seemed to be going about their jobs like nothing had happened, though I noted my wolves were definitely on edge at feeling the disturbing energies flowing from the castle.
Wait. I wasn't the only one looking off, I saw the wolf priest looking a bit disturbed as well, pushing his way through the crowd towards me. I moved in his general direction, wanting to find out what he knew on this subject.
The wolf priest pushed past the last couple people and stood in front of me, breathing heavily before saying, "my lady, I regret to inform you it appears that lord Farthegn has engaged in his dark magic once again."
"Dark magic once again?" I asked questioningly, looking at him, "What dark magic has he engaged in before and what dark magic is he engaged in right now?"
"The Lord of this Castle has an item that allows him to call upon the Ice Fiends for his protection. He doesn't use it often because it often sets back his plans but it's his guarantee of survival trick. Normally he only turns it on at a low rate, letting the fiends come in at a trickle. It feels like he doesn't like having his castle blowing apart underneath him and has pushed whatever this item is to its fullest extent."
I nodded my head as I understood what he was saying. Well, I understood the concept at the very least. The nature of this item left me a bit perplexed, but overall it didn't matter what it was.
Lord Farthegn had an item that was calling monsters to fight me, he turned it up on full which meant we probably had an hour before we were surrounded by creatures who ate humans. Which meant I did not have the time to lay back and let the siege engines demolish the castle piece by piece until he came out and fought himself.
"Well, looks like I'm going to have to learn to climb," I muttered, turning to look at the castle and trying to figure out what I would need to do to get inside. There were plenty of guards around the walls I could see and a lot of them had bows. Any movement in that direction would result in arrow holes in me. Maybe I could keep the artillery going as I tried to climb? It would keep them down and give me the opportunity. What I needed was some sort of cover, massive cover and a distraction. A way to white out the field so they couldn't see what I was doing. Wait… There was something that could be done with that concept, wasn't there?
Taking a breath I looked at the wolf priest and nodded, saying "Thank you for telling me this information and I will deal with this promptly." Looking in the direction of my sub-commanders who were having a conversation with Jarl Bretakollrsson, I moved over there and said "Gentlemen according to our priest the enemy is about to engage in dark magic, and he's summoning Ice Fiends from the wilds. We have a bit of a warning and probably an hour to set up."
They looked at me, a bit stunned, before sub Commander yellow said "Okay, that's not good. Do we have a plan for dealing with this?"
"Unfortunately not yet. I have an idea that might buy us some time but the fact of the matter is that our best option is to withdraw from the siege to our camp and fortify it as best we can." Thankfully I just trained the majority of my army on how to set up a defensive camp so it wouldn't be much harder to increase those defenses.
Sub Commander green red asked "So we pull back to our camp, build up our defenses, and hope we can kill more of them than they can kill of us while hoping the dark magic is not too terrible? Well, that sounds like a very great way to go out. Just in case we don't make it out of this, Tanya, can I just say how much I've enjoyed being part of your army? The fights are always a lot more than bash one line against the other till someone gives up."
"You're welcome, I guess," I said, remembering all of a sudden that the people before me were basing their culture on Vikings. Or were Vikings, still out on all the details. Dying in glorious battle was good for them. Dying in glorious battle against an evil sorcerer probably was the stuff of Legends to them. Well, at least morale would be high I figured.
"I have a possible strategy that could buy us some time but we need to pull back everyone to the camp and just start building up our defenses. Cut down trees, dig trenches, if there's anything you can do, do it." Looking at Geri, I said, "Follow them, dig and carry." Geri nodded, understanding the orders. He would organize the wolves to do the job. And with men and wolves working together I believe we could get this camp so fortified the Ice Fiends would never be able to take the camp.
"And this powerful strategy is what exactly?" jarl Bretakollrsson asked from his seated position.
"Man up there decides he's going to be a dark sorcerer? Guess I have to meet him in combat on his own fields." I answered with a shrug. The commanders chuckled at that and left, seeming to take my snarkiness as overconfidence. It was better than nothing and better than a depressed morale.
I took a few steps away before pulling out the rune beads I had been given so long ago, and shifted them around till I reached the desired calculation. Holding them between my hands I began channeling the energy from Fenris as best I could, focusing it to run through the calculations on the rune beads. Said beads began to immediately get colder in my hands dropping the temperature below the ambient temperature.
There was a lot of energy I needed to channel but I focused and kept at it, pushing more and more through the beads until I could feel it building up around me. The repulsive dirty energy that I had been sensing since lord Farthegn started using his mysterious item felt like it was being pushed away from me and the area around me swirling about.
I was so focused on working this spell that I lost track of exactly how long I was doing it. I was only aware that something had changed when Commander Eilifsson grabbed my shoulder and shook it, interrupting my focus.
Looking around, a bit confused, I saw that the men had been hard at work building up the defenses. When I closed my eyes there had only been a low 2-feet wall around the camp, made up of debris and such just to keep things out. Now it appeared that the hour had passed and that wall was now about 3 feet high and someone had dug a trench in front of it. So it looked like 3 feet from inside the camp but if you were outside it was more like five.
I nodded my head in approval at seeing the upgrade in defenses. By my estimate, Ice Fiends were around 7 to 6 ft tall which meant they would be more easily able to stab the creatures in their chest and upper body from this angle. Men were already lining up and preparing their weapons along the wall.
"Preparations working out?" I asked, looking to the commander.
"Yes, lady Tanya. Are you okay?" He said, looking at my hands with a bit of worry. This caused me to look at them and realize that a layer of ice had formed over them, sealing them together. It wasn't too thick but apparently I hadn't even noticed this was happening. Cracking the ice I freed my hands and brushed them off, hoping that there would not be any lasting freezer burn or anything of that nature.
"Perfectly fine." I said, once I confirmed my fingers moved as they should. Looking up I saw that the sky had clouded over as I had hoped and a bit of snow was falling. With any luck what I had just done would pay off and the snow that was already falling would block the view from the castle of the ground below, allowing an operation to sneak in and be pulled off.
Theoretically what I had just done was create an area of low pressure, pulling the storms that still stuck to the sea toward the mountains in our general direction. It was a bit interesting on how exactly you could pull that off, considering I had needed to create a massive area of low pressure for something like this to even work. And I was 90% sure that if I had the ability to do this in my salaryman life I would have ended up dead, my body destroying itself while focusing that energy through the item. Or frozen solid, either or was a possibility.
Looking around me I noticed that a lot of the shield maidens had created a protective circle around me. They had been serving along with the rest of the housecarls since their training was pretty much exactly the same and I didn't make note of them that often.
Fenris was an 'everyone fights, no one quits' kind of place, which also meant that little things like how many men and how many women are in a force could be easily missed. Hell a full third of jarl Bretakollrsson 's force was female. Which seemed disproportionately odd so I'd asked one of my shield maidens to ask around and why this was a thing. It turned out that most of the female forces under his command were wives and mothers of those who died fighting Lord Farthegn. They had a vendetta and had eagerly volunteered to join jarl Farthegn's forces since they knew they would have the best chance of causing pain to the one who caused the loss of their loved ones.
Not really caring why the shield maidens had decided that I was the person that needed to be protected while focusing on that energy spell. Or caring why some of them appeared to actually be from jarl Bretakollrsson's force. I looked to the sub commander of Eilifsson and asked. "Any news on the Ice Fiends? How far are they out?"
"Scouts have been reporting them coming in from pretty much all directions, except South as expected. We're not too far from the sea in our position so I doubt there's many Fiends living out on the slowly melting glaciers out there."
I noted my understanding before asking "And how bad are the numbers?"
"About two times our number, maybe more. The scouts and wolf scouts have been doing their best to murder every single one they find with archery but that's not slowing them down. Only good news is that they do not show any organization. In fact I'd say they're dumber than usual, moving as if they are compelled to come here. If they were hunting or searching as they usually would our scouts would not be having as much luck as they currently have. Frankly, I don't understand the numbers that are getting reported. We have Ice Fiends on our coast, and it has never been this bad."
"If we believe the local Intel he's been using them as some sort of 'I win' spell, most likely he forbids heavily hunting and cleaning these pests." I answered, shaking my head. I could in fact see why you would allow such a pest creature to move around and grow if he had control over them. Having something at your beck and call does allow your ability to experiment, see if you can organize it like I had done with my wolves. He obviously was not very good at it because all he could do was summon them to his castle while he hid in there. But if you have a castle and the ability to summon monsters to eat anything outside that castle, then you might as well use it.
Looking at subcommander yellow, I said "I'm going to go see about preventing this conflict from getting any worse. Hold this position and kill anything that tries to kill you, sound good?"
"Sounds like an amazing time!" The commander of the yellow said, before adding. "Jarl Bretakollrsson asks to try and minimize damage to the internal structure of the castle. He wasn't that big of a fan of the bombardment idea to begin with and he says there's some relic or something in there that he really doesn't want destroyed."
I looked over towards jarl Bretakollrsson , throwing a suspicious look his way. It was uniquely possible that he wanted the relic that Lord Farthegn was using to attempt to kill us all. Just because your enemy has evil objects doesn't mean you don't want them. If it was though he was going to be disappointed because I was totally going to destroy it. As far as I could see the Ice Fiends were a civilization dead-end. At least the wolves had uses outside of killing such as digging for the trenches or moving things around. They were useful to humanity. The ice fiends were just a ravaging horde. They were locusts but for people instead of farms and they needed to be dealt with, sent back to the mountains where they belonged or eliminated completely.
"Tell him I'll try and keep the damage as minimal as possible but things happen." I said with a shrug before walking towards the edge of the camp. I hopped over the short wall onto a wooden log that had been put across the trench. It was a good thing I did because I noticed that apparently they had time to put sharpened stakes at the bottom of the trench. That would cause some damage to the Ice Fiends but I expected that the moment the trench filled with their acidic blood those would become less useful.
Nodding my head in approval I walked on, heading towards the castle and taking out the beads again. I just rearranged them and tried to focus the energies on creating an optical illusions spell of sorts. With luck I would be able to hide my presence from sight and the snow and everything else would make sure no one else caught on that I was making a move. All I needed to do was climb the side of a castle wall that… Yeah we put a good few holes in, so it shouldn't be that hard to find somewhere to squeeze in. Once inside I'd go about finding the relic, device, whatever colorful term this Lord Farthegn used, and then I'd kill the bastard.
Every day on this side of the coast had proven that the man was a destructive force for civilization, he had attempted to destabilize the government through assassination, got the armies of others destroyed in order to weaken his enemies, and now he was using man-eating monsters in order to win a fight he couldn't win. As much as I was for live and let live as a principle there was a limit. For me, that limit was when civilization itself was being degraded and damaged by irresponsible behavior.
Assassinating the king would lead to chaos, mayhem, and, if I had not been there, in a rise in wolf attacks. Letting his armies get destroyed fighting me would have destabilized this region, allowing its rampant Ice Fiend problem to grow even more. And this calling of the Ice Fiends to destroy my army meant that they were coming down from the hills and mountains into civilized territory. Even if he turned it off immediately after my army was destroyed, which would not be happening today, they would be scattered across civilized lands and causing mayhem and destruction for years. Lord Farthegn had proven himself to be a threat to civilization, letting him live would simply create a status quo with him becoming a Saturday morning cartoon villain level of evil. I did not want to be dealing with his bullshit every 2 years.
I simply wanted to go home, retire, raise my wolves, maybe train a few Wolf riders and hunt some monsters. None of that would be possible if I had to assemble an army every two years to march over the mountain pass and deal with his bullshit. So I would be destroying this albatross around my economic future's neck while I could.
Now the question was how was I going to get into that castle.
Sub-commander Eilifsson
It had been an hour since Tanya had left on her one-woman mission to kill Lord Farthegn and destroy whatever item he was using to summon the Ice Fiends. If this had been another Lord or Commander I might have been worried that we had just been abandoned to a fate worse than death as said Lord ran for the hills in hopes of surviving to fight another day.
But this was Tanya, the lady of the wolves, and she left her wolves here. If there was one thing about Tanya I could say, it was that there was one constant with her. And that constant was that she cared for her wolves. Especially Freki and Geri, who had been hanging out near me and the other commanders this entire time as if they were on the command staff themselves. Better be fair: considering they seemed to have some sort of authority over the other wolves, maybe they were.
Either way the fact was that, no matter what, you could trust that Tanya would return just to save her wolves if nothing else. So, as long as the wolves were there, I knew she wasn't running. She was doing something to try and win them this fight even if what that something was he didn't know. Literally, because the Wolf Witch had vanished before my eyes just a few moments after stepping out of the fort, so she could really be anywhere.
Whatever she had done before then had taken full effect though, as a winter storm had set in even though it was the middle of Spring. Snow was falling heavily when it usually fell lightly this time of year and this favored our joint Force. Ice fiends had an okay sense of smell and often used that over their own eyes when dealing with parties of hunters, like those we were employing to try and whittle down their numbers. The snow was doing wonders to neutralize that sense, allowing our Wolf Scouts to run circles around the oncoming horde of monsters.
And they were coming in numbers large enough to be called a horde. At first they only showed up in small groups of 10 to 15, a regular tribe's size, something that could be expected on our side of the mountains and was easily dispatched by clever tactics and good shots to heads and hearts. But they had slowed up when they realized that someone was hunting them, obviously leaving corpses lying around would clue in even the dumbest animals that enemies were about. After that they started to come in larger groups of 30 to 40. These groups had been whittled down as best we could before they made contact with our fortifications. So far though those groups had been dispatched through Mass volley.
But all good things come to an end look because the main body of them was coming now, reports of Ice Fiends in the thousands had been coming in for the last 10 minutes. Scouts and Wolf Scouts had done their best trying to whittle them down but they were running low on ammo at this point. Unfortunate side effect of their acidic blood, meaning that even arrows that didn't break from them struggling or dying were still ruined.
Not much we could do but hope that our reserves of projectiles would last some more, that and the spears we had been crafting for the last 2 hours. We had been creating as many wooden spears as possible since killing the creatures at a distance would be better for everyone, lest acidic blood get everywhere. One thing about this that made me a little bit happy was that this was the time for my men to shine. My particular brand of troops was specifically designed to fight Fiends as my particular area of coast was snugly fit against the mountains and we had to deal with their bullshit at an abnormal level compared to everyone else. So, for generations, my family had been working on improving our fighting techniques for this kind of battle: heavier armor and Dai axes with heavy heads at the end of a long metal pole, designed to withstand the acidic blood and keep on cutting and smashing until the enemy was dead. Even if the tip was dulled by the acid there was enough weight at the head of the ax to smash a skull. And given that my men were experts at fighting those things I had gone about making sure that the majority of my men was on the north side of our line. I sent a few detachments of my men to the East and West lines, just to make sure we could show off there as well, but I wanted the glory of this fight to go to me and my people.
I was perhaps enjoying a little bit too much the idea of taking a good share of this final battle's Fame for myself, as I almost missed a runner coming from the Western Wall of our fortified square.
"Sir, a large contingent of the enemy is breaking through the woods. Commander Larlssonhas opened up with archery fire but they are still approaching. He thinks this is the big one, sir, there's more and more coming through."
Nodding my thanks I got up from my seat and turned to the other commanders, "It looks like today's fight is about to truly begin. In case I don't see any of you after this is over… It's been an honor serving with you all," I said, before reaching down and grabbing my helmet. Quickly securing it over my head, I walked to the Western Wall.
I took my place at the center of the line and smiled at the formation of ugly beasts trying to struggle their way through archery fire. The snow was coming down all around us, adding a mythical aspect to their valiant charge. They were wielding nothing but clubs, though a few of them did have what appeared to be crude Shields. They attempted to cross the open Fields around our camp and, of course, were slowly accomplishing this but they were paying a heavy price. The ground here would be acidic forever, probably nothing would grow for a long time.
This would be a glorious fight, the only thing better would be the approval of the Allfather himself. The sky then rumbled, a flash of lights as lightning crackled across the sky, signaling his approval. There was nothing better than to have the Allfather's attention before a fight, nothing better to restore morale, boost it, or create one when you lacked it.
This was the kind of moment that swept you up and I let myself be swept up in it. Standing up onto the wall itself, looking back at my men, I said "warriors of djævelske mordere, today is a glorious day! Today we get to fight hundreds of the creatures we have fought for generations and prove that we are the best at doing it. Not only to our brothers and the Russ, Kystnære and Fjell but also to the Brothers in this land across the mountains. You are here at a moment of History, a moment of legend! You are here at the moment that djævelske mordere stood their ground and proved their worth and helped bring down a dark lord! What better story to tell your children than how you helped bring down a dark lord."
"But I don't have any," a heckler in the crowd said, getting a good chuckle from the other yellow-coated soldiers.
Laughing, I said "Well, then this story will definitely help you fix that. Nothing gets a lass more excited than defeating great evils and destroying monsters." I got a roar of approval from my men, a few of them hitting their Dai axes against the ground in a rumble answering the ones that were going on in the sky.
"Men of djævelske mordere, Allfatther is watching us from above. Though our fearless Wolf witch has gone to deal with the evil Lord Farthegn herself, she is here in spirit. Where her wolves go, she goes," I said, waving to the many wolves about the camp and lines. The sky rumbled again, seeming to punctuate my point.
"We will hold this line for the wolf witch! We will help defeat these monsters and claim Glory for our djævelske mordere, this is already decided. The only thing that is left to do is to make it happen." Raising my double-headed Dai ax above my head I shouted, "So who is ready to write our Fate in The legend today?"
I'd expected a cheer for my men, which I did get. What I did not expect was a cheer from some of the other clans, nor the wolves howling in approval. But I gladly took it as it was a good sign in my book. Smiling, I stepped down and turned to face the still oncoming horde of Ice Fiends. They were much closer but legend was already written at this point, now it was all about making it happen.
Tanya
Finding my way into the castle proved ridiculously easy, my optical illusion spell worked like planned and the snow muffled any sounds on my trip up the side of the castle wall. Thankfully I found a few holes that had been burst into the wall before I had to climb all the way up. Finding one that was about the right size and then using my Superior strength to widen it further was nothing.
Before I knew it I was inside the castle, enjoying a little bit of warmth even if the room had been sealed to try and keep the cold out. Thankfully the room's sealing was literally just a bunch of blankets shoved under the door, which I was able to push open without much issue.
From there I worked my way further into the castle, trying to use a spell I remembered meant for detecting energy sources as my guide to the item, relic, whatever it was called, that was drawing in the Ice Fiends. Well, before I did, I took a look from my much higher position to try and guess and make how many ice Fiends there were.
Too many. Actually, I couldn't see them all because there were a lot of trees around this Castle, tactical mistake under the best of circumstances, but I was able to see enough moving around that I could guess. Yeah, it was going to be a while before the monsters were all killed. If I could find the device and turn it to repel them that would be useful. If not… Well, lots and lots of dead Ice Fiends were in my future.
Shuffling further into the castle though I found lots of armor stands and tapestries, normal rich people stuff for this period in time. This was to be expected, after all this was the highest-ranking Noble on this Coast so he was going to have the most stuff. Hopefully he didn't have some sort of super armor or something. That would make this already unnecessary fight ridiculously stupid. But the fact of the matter was that I had no idea what strange mysteries this guy had been screwing around with so I really couldn't make assumptions either way on what he was and what he wasn't. Was he a wizard capable of dark magic or was he using some sort of ancient technology that he possibly found? With the world as it was either could be true, which annoyed me to a certain extent.
Thankfully though my answer soon stood in front of me and I ripped the door off its hinges. It had been locked and I really didn't want to bother with this stuff anymore as I felt whatever was causing this dark dirty feeling, just on the other side of the door. Tossing the door off to the side I stepped in, having to duck my head a bit since the place had been designed for people of 6 ft average and not my 7-foot frame. I found a crystal of some sort on a pedestal, hovering over a hunk of metal with dials and buttons.
"So it's tech," I muttered, stepping towards it. I walked around the pedestal, seeing if I could figure out if there were any directions on how to turn it off. Unfortunately whatever user-friendly abilities this device once had seemed to have worn off long ago. Most of the metal looked blackened by age and there were a few dials missing, so it did not seem to have been treated nicely over the years.
I was considering just smashing it when the guest of honor appeared. A 6 ft tall man stepped into the room wearing full armor, not just chain and fur but actual plate, and carrying a large sword. He was black of hair and kept his face shaved by the looks of it which let me see a scar running down his left cheek. "Who the hell are you and how did you get in here?"
Smiling, I said "Greetings, Lord Farthegn." With a bow, I continued "I am lady Tanya, servant of the Russ."
He took one look at me and drew his sword off his side, "Well, you match the description of the bitch tearing up my kingdom. What the hell are you doing here and how did you get inside? I'd like to know before I kill you, so I can increase the security."
"I walked and climbed and walked some more," I said matter of factly. "That's why I'm here, I'm here to destroy this," I said, pointing towards the object. "Unless you can show me how to turn it to repulse the creatures below? I would have figured that it would have a feature like that."
That seemed to stop him for a moment as he looked me and the device over, "You understand that that's technology and not some sorcerer's gambits."
"Why, of course, I understand this is technology," I said with a smile, "Though I would point out that it's from a time where sorcery and technology seem to have merged, as I can feel the arcane energies of coming off of it."
"Bullshit!" The man said matter of factly, "This machine is a device like any other from the period behind history, when we were a great people and sailed the Stars. It is not some arcane trinket."
I shrugged and said "If that's what you want to believe. I just know that I feel the energy coming off from it and there are two possibilities for that: either humanity has developed technology that could interfere with supernatural magical items such as this or my own biology happens to pick up on the signal that you use to control the Ice Fiends. By the way, does it control the Ice Trolls? That one has been bugging me since I've only seen the Fiends and as far as I'm aware the Trolls are just their more grown-up cousins."
The man was standing, ready to assault me with a sword, but I really showed no fear at this point. He was human, he was not one of the monsters I'd fought. I could take him one to one, even with his armor advantage. "It doesn't, I've tried. Ice Trolls are repulsed by it. Now, if you understand this is technology, do you understand what I'm doing here? Do you understand that I'm trying to rebuild civilization?"
I looked around as if in confusion, almost actually a bit of confused myself but I was just humoring him. "You believe you are building Civilization by killing the pillars of what keeps a civilization together on this planet, its leaders? I'm afraid you're doing a hell of a terrible job at that. If anything I think you turned yourself into a degrading force on civilization and whatever civilization you finally create will be an authoritarian mess that will be worse than what was here before."
"Pretty words for a Savage! Humanity needs authority to control it, otherwise it would be driven to insanity by the monsters on this planet."
"I don't technically disagree with you. We need an authority figure, someone able to rally forces to deal with problems as they come up. You're not rallying forces though, you are just ruling through might and destroying the foundations by which others may be allowed to protect the people of this planet. And, best of all, this thing," I said, pointing to the psi-emitter-like object.
"You wield a club of monsters to keep your people in line but you have no control of it. You just depend on them receding if you turn it off, is this what I am to believe?"
"Believe what you will, that item has gotten me power over this continent that none of the other Lords have ever managed. It will be the key to reuniting our civilization into one fist and taking it back into the Stars."
"Really? An item that attracts monsters will do that?" I reached out with both hands, grabbed the object, and then smashed it over my knee in front of him. It fell apart rather easily, probably fragile from decades or maybe generations of existence. Who knew how long this thing had been around. The look on his face was quite hilarious to watch.
He screwed up his face and said, "Fine! You destroyed a key component of my power, now I get to kill you. Unless, of course, your next objective is to kill me? Wouldn't that make you no better than what you called me?"
I gave him the eyebrow at that, "Oh yes, assassinating pillars of the community and destroying the centers of power? Yeah, I see how you could think that this would make me similar to you. Problem with that though? You're a degrading Force while I have built up. The actions are similar but the overall outcomes are different."
"What moral game are you playing? There's no difference! Killing a pillar of a community is killing a pillar of a community by your own logic."
Was he really trying to logic me? Did he think I was some sort of robot that would freeze up? I just shook my head and started walking towards him, "I am many things, and there are many things I don't even know. Here's the real difference, the one that makes this act different: your killing of the pillars of my communities would have drastically affected my quality of life downwards while me killing you will drastically make sure that my quality of life will continue to build up."
"What are you, a psychopath?" He swung the sword, trying to chop my head.
I caught it in my hand and ripped it out of his, reaching down and grabbing him by the neck. I lifted him up a foot in the air, "No, I'm a Human Resource manager and your net contribution to civilization is detrimental to our society and my retirement package."
Sub-commander Eilifsson
The enemy just kept coming, wave after wave of Ice Fiends charged across the open field and fell under arrow fire before getting the honor of falling to my men's axes. The fun had been going on for an hour and a half now and I had been forced to take a moment out of the line every once in a while. Fact of the matter was that the men were getting tired, even with efforts to switch men out in order to give them time to rest they were running low on the energy needed to keep striking these things dead.
Not to mention the wounded were beginning to pile up. One lucky acid spurt here, a lucky clawing there, and all of a sudden I needed to take men off the line to care for the wounded and hope that they'd either be able to take up the position in the line again or at least survive this combat. A couple good things about the snow though: the temperature had dropped so it was easier for the blood to solidify, sealing wounds, and nothing helped better against spurts of acid than rubbing snow on it to wash it away.
About 45 minutes ago though things had started to slack off a bit, the horde's behavior had changed. For the worst or the better, depending on your point of view. they stopped charging like they were mindless creatures and started charging more like animals on the hunt. The archers' effectiveness had gone down considerably but there also appeared to be less of them attempting to charge. Perhaps Tanya had been successful in destroying the device? Only time would tell at this point, if it took her an hour and 30 minutes to locate it then it would probably take at least that long for her to get back.
The change did have more benefits though. There were plenty of explosive ammunition left around so I had organized a couple of crews into firing the catapults into the midst of the monsters. It was somewhat effective.
Getting up I was about to go check up on the catapults when I looked around, noticing that Larlsson was not resting here with us. Turning to the second commander of Russ's forces after Wolf Rider leader Authgrim Bardisson, who I knew was holding the Eastern side of the line, Isgerd Buidottir of the shield maidens I asked, "Where is Larlsson?"
"He's with Allfather now, they managed to break through for a moment on the western side of the line. The wolves deployed and handled it though, so nothing too drastic there. We've been able to reestablish the line and fighting has returned to normal."
"Damn, I have to make sure to give him a good funeral after this," I muttered, looking out at the line. If commanders were falling things were starting to get desperate. We needed some sort of strategy to break the enemies' will to fight, otherwise we were going to be swarmed over and eaten. As much as a glorious end that would be I'd rather prefer to live a few more years. I just needed to find some way to restore them around, keep the fight going and maybe in an hour or two the Ice Fiends would retreat.
The sky rumbled as it had been doing for the entire battle. The storm was picking up, maybe? I didn't know what Tanya had done but it definitely brought in a hefty cold front. Shrugging I started heading towards the line when a howl greeted me. A large thunderous howl that seemed to shake the ground itself. And then the sky lit up as lightning bolts began raining down on the Fiends around the camp.
Pushing my way through the dazed members of our expedition to get to the line I held myself up to see what the hell was going on outside our fortifications. And was thoroughly shocked and stunned by the sight in front of me: dozens, if not hundreds, of Ice Fiends burning, the lightning having hit them and set them up on fire. Guess that acid blood came with a few issues, uh? The trees were not doing much better either as they too were burning, though at a much-reduced rate compared to a dry season.
And to top off this sight of devastation, and completely restore the morale of everyone around me, a massive Thunder Wolf came out of the trees. It came from the direction from which the Ice Fiends had been coming from, and it was surrounded both by common Fenrisian wolves and Blackmanned. They let out a howl in unison before charging into the combat; ripping into the rear of the dazed formation of ice fiends.
How had Tanya summoned these creatures, I did not know. All I knew was that I was glad to see them as they were murdering the hell out of our enemy. It was not long before the Ice Fiends began to just scatter, running into the woods to try to get away from the massacre.
The wolves did not stay as the monsters fled, instead they gave chase and ran after them. Before long the only ones left in the field were the Dead, the dying, and the Thunder Wolf who was looking us over rather intently. As if judging if we were worthy to be left alone.
Whatever final conclusion it would have come to was cut off as the snapping of a branch brought everyone's eyes to the side of the battlefield that faced Lord Farthegn's Castle. There stood Tanya, carrying something over her shoulder that looked like it might be a person. She was looking at the Thunder Wolf, curiously by the way her eyes took it in.
After a moment the wolf bowed its head and I realized I'd seen this wolf before, back on the march through the mountains. Had it been following us this whole time? I had no idea, I wanted to finish this battle. The wolf headed off into the wilderness, hunting most likely the remnants of the Ice Fiends.
With a shrug Tanya stopped looking at the wolf and marched the rest of the way into camp before dumping an armored body on the ground. Geri and Freki immediately came up and began cuddling up next to her and she patted them on the head before saying.
"Job is done and it looks like you guys managed to survive. What are our losses?"
Smiling, I said, "Minimal, Lady Tanya." I didn't have the exact numbers but that would serve, I believed.
She nodded and walked past me, heading towards her tent, "Alright, see to the wounded and make sure everyone is good and healthy. We'll clean up the area around the camp as best we can but I'm going to take a moment to reorient myself, I feel exhausted."
"Yes, Lady Tanya!" The voices came not just from the command staff but most of the camp as well, we were all in agreement at this point. Everyone would have their moments of Glory or two to look back on this campaign, but the campaign as a whole was Tanya's Glory.
Writer note: And there we go chapter 13, lot of little things ending their end of the evil lord saga, the end of the war, and fleshing out some culture. I hope everyone enjoys it! Out showing my wring process this (Siege of Keep/troll/wolves) is all I had in mind when I wrote this chapter, you be the judge if I fulfill those points.
Edited by: Preier, M.G. ,
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Community editable doc (Chapter 13) No story suggestions in the community editing document, Keep all story suggestions and comments in the thread
Supporters: Neso, Markus, Mackenzie Buckle, Silver Wolf, Daniel Martinez, Falk H,
Mana Rope
Art thanks Sky66 who Commissioned the Artist J-likes-to-draw
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yacov
Lurking and sometimes blurting
- Location
- Clogging a drain
Given how "low casualty" all the other engagements were, this is probably one of Fenris' least bloody campaigns since the dark age of technology.
A lot of people back home are probably initially going to assume they never made it to the enemy and just got lost when they see how many of them come back.