Worldfall

The chilled chattering of teeth clacked out into the noise-filled silence. Soldiers waited in uneasy anticipation, skin gone white beneath their gloves from clutching their weaponry so near to their chests and faces pale from the battering winds which delivered a message of freezing cold. They stood in formation, shoulder-to-shoulder with their brothers in arms as their sleek and swift ships cut through azure rafts of ice. Their sails overhead whipped in the wind but held quick to their masts. Nobody onboard dared to speak. The white hills on the horizon crept closer. Smoke lifted into the air from distant braziers alight in the early morning and great horns bellowed their echoing cries of war on the mainland, shattering the silence.

Sheltered in the hulls, the engines of each steelboat hummed under the faraway shouts of savagery. The boats were, like the soldiers they bore, affixed in their own formations. They cut through the sea like an arrow; eleven ships bearing nine legionaries each, standing in three rows of three men at each other’s shoulders. Angling leftwards diagonally were five steelships and rightwards as well. At the armada’s head was a bulky ship, yet no slower than the others. It led the charge and at its helm, looking out over the pale blue waves and the white lands beyond, stood a centurion. Beyond the cold metal railing a frozen world loomed before him, but he saw not the Ghostlands which his men dreaded so greatly, merely his next conquest. Starkly contrasted against the argent snow spread an encampment of fur and hide tents. Jagged spike walls and hastily fashioned towers, more stacks of uncarved stone than anything, with rickety wood ramparts connecting them protected the insides of the fortress in the center of the camp from view. The gates creaked open and from them poured a many-colored mass of, and he dreaded to waste the term on such a savage people, “soldiers”. In truth, they were little more to him than undisciplined barbarians who would easily crumble without much spectacle. They were naught but a hastily assembled force of minor tribes that had rushed to the defense of their shores when the steelships were first sighted off the outer islands and the war-horns echoed over the sea. As his vessel came nearer to landfall, he saw the faces of the savages on the white shore. Gaunt, pale, hirsute…scared. Truly, they are as witless as their reputation makes them to be, the centurion thought to himself with a smirk, all the smart ones must’ve fled the moment they caught our scent. Among their vast yet disorganized numbers and the vast quantity of tales so ridiculous they bordered on amusing that had reached his ears from the north there was, among them, only one whom he managed to muster even an inkling of respect within himself for.

In that horde of northerners and civilians as green as spring grass, Vildebjørn stared back.

The young warrior turned from the sight of the encroaching boats and the infinite ocean, pushing through the howling crowd and to the gates of the scrappy fortress. The past ten years of hardships and preparations had made the people of the “savage lands'' weaker than they had been in millennia. Long gone were the days the old tales told of; where each man was eight feet and graced with the battle-favors of Thor. The War-Times had passed long ago, and in their place had come dark days where the men did not fight and the crops did not grow. The halls of chieftains had grown sad and quiet without the clangor of battle to echo from them. He almost didn’t blame the southerners for choosing these years of grief to mount their assault--they were made the perfect target in their misfortune and the abandonment of their gods, leaving only shame in the places of holiness. In the past, their every effort at an invasion was foiled as their boats broke against the hardened iron shores and their skulls broke beneath the axes of the berserkrs. Now, even the shores had softened. The conquest of the South would finally come to fruition, every man and woman present knew it.

The only ones who remained on this shore were those too proud to flee. The rest had run to the cities further inland weeks ago, when first they heard the ancient horns of warning echoing off the dark sea. They were with the Great Jarls now, but it made little difference. The Five Kings were weak in their old age, and would fare no better chance against the invaders than a squirrel against a hawk. They only delayed the inevitable.

Vildebjørn strode through the ajar gates of wood, passing through the meager gap between them and into yet another crowd, albeit a different one. Here was nobody who pretended to be a soldier. Here were only villagers: one-armed men, sickly women, frail elders and small children. Everyone else, everybody who was able to fight, were waiting for the battle outside. Out there, they chanted their songs of war to mask their nerves, in the deep and thrumming voices of the North that had refused to abandon them over the long centuries. In here, there was only sadness and despair. Death was written on the pale faces of each man, woman, and child. There seemed the smallest hint of hope that crept into their eyes as they looked to the passing warrior, but it was not enough to make them so much as dream of victory, or even survival.

There were few sights sadder than such a once-proud people made quiet in their weakness and shame.. They did not fear the end, that phase had passed long ago. Now, they’d simply given up and accepted their end. They were defeated long before the battle had even begun.

A mother mourned her own mother as the two infants by her side squabble over a wooden horse, oblivious to who it was that lay wrapped in cloth before them. Children joined hands in prayer to the gods for their father, outside the fortress and a man Vildebjørn knew very well. He was a baker in the village where he’d spent his young years; whenever the rations were high he’d always snuck the children an extra loaf if they asked. Now he was going to die on the field of battle, against a foe he had to hope of and with a blade in his hands he’d never swung. Vildebjørn noted the outline of a dagger in the eldest girl’s cloth sleeve, and a shortsword clung to the belt of her brother. They shall never meet again on the plane of mortals, he realized. Only in Valhalla.

He crossed the courtyard swiftly, wishing not to spend any more time among these people than he had to, and stepped under a canopy orange as hide yet streaked with flecks of white from last night’s gentle snowfall. He passed through a doorway of stone, one of the last remaining hints of the once-formidable fortress they had used as a foundation for this pitiful bastion, and into the darkened room.

A surge of heat rushed over him the moment he stepped foot into the chambers, the fierce and biting cold outside fading away nigh instantly. His eyes took a second to adjust to the stark contrast of the brightly lit morn, where the rising sun burned both in the sky and off the snow underfoot everywhere they looked, and the relative darkness of the room with only faint candlelight to aid his eyes. Shelves lined the stone quarters, and lining them were aged books with flayed sleeves and withered pages that threatened to crumble at the lightest touch, not that he’d ever cared enough to feel the pages himself, nor read the ancient words inscripted upon them. Anjorm had always said there was wisdom to be gleaned from the words of the old ones, but Vildebjørn found his thoughts and time better spent in the world and issues at hand, rather than musing over people long dead. In the center of the warm room, poring over the grand table of wood and the war-map spread out upon it, stood Anjorm. The man had grown old in the passage of years and older still from the events of them, but stood proud as a young man and as fierce as a warrior with his blood still rushing in his veins, hungry for battle. His chin was lost beneath a thick layer of white, with but a small few trickles of the obsidian he once bore. His air, just as white yet ever organized, fell down in gleaming silver waves to his shoulders, resting on the tangled wool collar of his cloak. The dirty white folds hung from his elbows as he leaned forwards over the wood surface, his troubled face painted half in amber by the torch burning to his left. Vildebjorn knew that face and the look on it well. That was his “thinking face”, the boys he’d grown up fighting alongside often called it. The way his lips frowned downwards, his jaw clenched, and his right eye twitched with each new idea; he lifted a gloved hand and scratched the scar on his cheek, the way he always did when he was deep in contemplation. His eyes snapped up from the pieces on the map when the fighter he’d raised from a boy stepped into the room, the wind whipping at his back and tugging at his auburn cloak.

“You bring news?” He spoke in a quiet murmur, and yet his words glided with ease across the quiet room. Vildebjorn nodded.

“They’re almost here--landfall in the next few minutes, I expect.” He said in a voice as grim as it was low. “The villagers are ready as they’ll ever be, but…Anjorm, they are not soldiers, nor are they warriors. They’ve never drawn blood in their lives, save perhaps to cut through steak.”

“Your point, son?”

Vildebjørn grunted. “They’re not like to see the day’s end.”

“Of course they’re not. They knew that, we all knew that, but they still chose to stay. And I chose to stay with them. You did as well, if I recall…unless you’re having second thoughts, son?”

“No.” The answer came before Anjorm’s lips even closed, before his insinuation could even simmer in the air between them. Nothing could’ve made Vildebjorn straighten his posture faster than the chieftain’s words. Even now, as he towered over the gray-haired and skinny man, the respect he felt for Anjorm was beyond telling. Before him was the reason he was who he was, his prowess in battle feared all across the Savage Lands and even in the green places south as well. That very same man studied Vildebjorn’s face now, so grown from the day he’d first laid eyes upon it; that child who fell from the stars. At last, Anjorm sighed and shook his head. He stepped out from behind the table.

“I taught you to be a fiercer berserkr than any seen since the days of old,” Anjorm began, as though reading Vildebjorn’s thoughts. He had a tendency to do that. “I taught you to be unstoppable in combat, to inspire your shield-brothers with your valor and terrify your foes with your might…but I never could teach you respect or humility, the makings of a true jarl.”

“I will never be a jarl, Anjorm.” His whole life, he’d been reminded of that. Though he grew up in the main’s hall, grew up playing with the man’s children, and grew up fighting under the man’s flag, he was not a natural-born son of the chieftain. He never had been. He knew exactly who he was: he was Vildebjørn, son to nobody, heir to nothing. All of the politicking and leadership he'd decided long ago would be better taught to Anjorm’s own children, but not him. He had no claim to anything other than what he seized in his own hands and took for himself.

“Perhaps not, yet still: people look up to you, Vildebjørn.” Anjorm said. “They see you, and they see their protector, the very image of strength. They see the man who brought back the head of the Jarl-Draugr of Nodura, they see the man who wrestled a troll and won. In the years to come, they will look to your brothers for leadership, but they will look to you for safety.”

“There are no years to come,” He countered sharply. “This is the end. For all of us. Sooner or later, they’ll catch your sons too, after they’ve finished butchering us here.”

“Have I truly taught you nothing at all, then?” Anjorm snapped. “No true man would accept defeat before the battle’s begun. A boy, maybe, a frightened boy fresh off his mother’s breast, but no man. And less still would carry a weapon and think themselves proficient with it in the very same breath that they concede with. Is that you, Vildebjørn.” His gaze was drawn into the burning eyes of his father in all but blood, those burning eyes that had burned all his youth, those burning eyes like torches that lit the way ahead through dark, treacherous trails for all those who followed him. His answer was immediate.

“No.” The response seemed to please Anjorm, who blinked as he nodded. When Vildebjørn saw his eyes again, they burned no more, and he was reminded that this man was no god, only a proud spirit trapped in flesh that grew old. He’d always been good at reading Vildebjørn like the books which he divulged himself in so greatly, but over the years Vildebjørn had learned well how to read him; and now he felt Anjorm’s hunger not for victory, but instead for Valhalla.

“Erik and Ivarr will be halfway to the Five Cities by now,” Anjorm gestured towards the map between them, the gauntness of his wrinkled fingers betraying the immense strength hiding latent within. His sons, he’d commanded to leave with the others. The brothers had wanted to stay and fight, though they knew well what the outcome of the coming battle would be, yet they had been sent away all the same. ‘The others shall need a guide,’ Anjorm explained to them three days prior, ‘and you have made the journey a dozen times.’ They’d grunted and moaned and complained that they couldn’t die with the others, but in the end they had done as their father commanded. Vildebjørn would miss them dearly, he expected. “When they get there, and alert the Old Kings…there is a hope of survival for our people, if they convene quickly and make the right choice.”

The choice they’re not strong enough to ever make, Vildebjørn thought, but he did not say it. Instead he only nodded.

“The men we face…they are but one of the bronze-and-silver “centuries”—a small army, meant to test our might, I expect.” Anjorm turned his attention further south of where he had first pointed out to Vildebjorn, a coastline in the Bay of Wolves. “We outnumber them four men to one.”

“But they’re disciplined.” Vildebjorn made a guess masked by a statement. Anjorm nodded his approval.

“And better armed. Each one carries a spear a man, a shield a man, a sword a man, a dagger a man…where ours wear leather and hide, theirs wear steel. And that’s not to mention the witchcraft they practice.” It was all Vildebjorn could do not to wince, hearing how vastly stacked against them the odds were, though it was nothing he hadn’t known or suspected before.

“So, we’re fucked? I knew that already.”

Anjorm smiled. “Aye, we are. But remember: this is the first time in some three centuries they’ve gotten brave enough to try an attack like this. They think us starving and desperate…so we’ll show them what hunger and desperation does to a man. They think us savages…so we’ll show them real savagery. We do not break easy, do we, boy?”

“No,” The smile crept across Vildebjørn’s face. There was no doubt in his mind he’d die this morning, but what a glorious death it’d be. He intended to make a count of every head he lopped off, so that he may boast of it to the legendary warriors of old in Valhalla. “That, we do not.”

“Damn straight. Now come, Vildebjorn! Die with me, and may the valkyries sing as they carry us away!” Anjorm reached to the handle at his hip and drew his blade.