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.
Chapter 14, Build a Legend
Tanya
Dealing with a fallen Kingdom is not something I had expected to do after crossing the mountains. I knew there was a possibility, and I was kind of hoping that there would be like an heir or something to easily replace lord Farthegn.
Unfortunately the dark sorcerer, as my men had started to call him and I was still not sure how that name had taken off, was unmarried and had no kids. I would assume his quest for the conquest of Fenris had so enraptured him that he'd forgotten the important part of setting up a kingdom: having someone to take over when you're done.
Without an official heir, at minimum one of proper age, his Kingdom would have fallen apart the moment he got sick or died. Then all his so-called progress would have been for nothing, resulting in a serious backstep in the civilization of this planet.
Everyday I found more reasons to be glad I'd murdered the former Lord of this land with my bare hands. Though without him around chaos would ensue and all his so-called games were lost anyways. Really I should have just packed up everything and set course for home, what happened here after I left should have been none of my concern.
However I realized quite quickly that leaving the situation as it stood would just require me to come back over here to fix it, sooner or later. I was not one to waste time and I had two weeks before I needed to start making the trip back across the mountains. So, like a good salaryman, I got to work.
Jarl Bretakollrsson wanted his castle back so I let him have the castle back but I asked if he'd be interested in signing an alliance with the Russ. That way he would appear to be the legitimate government replacement after we left. This would also spur trade relations across the mountains, which I figured would lead to a better, safer, and less warlike community. At least I hoped so. It could result in me coming across the mountains again. but at least then I'd have troops and supplies here already with general knowledge of the territory. Not to mention Jarl Bretakollrsson had watched how effective my troops had been during the combat and had started to implement some of my methods into his own formations. At the very minimum the troops here would have similar training and thus be better able to work with my troops if something like this ever happened again.
He took a minute to consider it before finally agreeing, which showed a lot of hope for the future in my mind.
The wolf priest had also agreed to this situation, as they themselves had had Independence before Lord Farthegn had tried to force everyone under his rule.
Once that was cleared up came the… well, clean up operations. Out of the seven minor Lords that had made up the support structure of Lord Farthegn's Kingdom, I had two on my side. Another one was out of the fight and waiting in his castle to find out what the world would look like after the war was over. Two were dead and another two my prisoners. I held quite a number of cards so I got to work playing them for a more peaceful situation after I left. I couldn't exactly do anything about the one waiting to find out what the world would look like after war but I could do something about my prisoners. I simply pointed out that with their forces ravaged terribly the jarl Ali Geitirgestsson, who had sat out most of the fight here, could easily pick them off one by one, thus they might be wise to align themselves with jarl Bretakollrsson.
They immediately got the hint and asked to speak with him. I had him brought to the tent where I was meeting with these prisoners and they pledged allegiance to him, setting up Jarl Bretakollrsson as a strong ally in the region.
As for the land of the two Lords who were dead, there was not much I could really do about that. Most likely they would be divided amongst jarl Bretakollrsson and jarl Geitirgestsson. A situation that was not set up for a return to the complete peaceful standards I would enjoy having but it would do and it would be safe enough for my army to return home without worrying about a massive murderfest going on behind me.
But that settled, I allowed my troops and sub-commanders to raid Lord Farthegn's vaults underneath the castle. As much as Jarl Bretakollrsson had been an ally, I needed to make sure my army was good and happy. And he didn't say that the vaults underneath the castle were what he wanted: he said he wanted the castle. With men carrying tons of wealth and other items I began the Long March home that would take us back through the mountains and to the borders of Russ where I would report the victory, receive whatever reward I was guaranteed to receive, and recluse myself back to my home with my wolves, where I hoped to not be bothered with such situations in the near future.
Marching through the lowlands was the easy part though, as all we had to do was appear somewhere and anyone who would threaten us backed down. I figured that the bandit population would be on the rise, now that the major military forces in the region were devastated, but they seemed pretty low on the ground as no one attempted to accost us. Of course being a large army tended to dissuade even enthusiasts from such behaviors. That and the Ice Fiends had probably kept such banditry down before the shift in control. There were also large populations of wolves that apparently had moved in while I had been dealing with Lord Farthegn.
I spotted them watching us the entire time we were heading back towards the mountain pass to our homeland and got the main story of how they had shown up to help finish off the Ice Fiends in the final battle. It was interesting and I wondered if that Thunder Wolf was the one I had fought in the mountain pass but I figured it was probably not, that would be a ridiculous coincidence for that wolf to have been the exact same Wolf. Most likely some other Thunder Wolf with his own wolf tribe saw an opportunity to deal with the Ice Fiends and claim the territory of the wilderness for himself.
Every creature was motivated by their own needs and wants, so I saw no reason why it would want to aid us in this fight unless it somehow helped itself.
Which is what I assumed while we were marching through the glacier mountains that separated this region from our home region. Then another Thunder Wolf appeared at the front of our column with his pack and I knew that something terrible was about to happen.
I found out about this while I was in the middle of the formation; watching for problems to appear. Being the golden quote expert monster Hunter unquote it was basically my job to make sure that any mass of wolves or any other nasties didn't hit us from the sides.
But because of the appearance of the wolf I had to abandon this job and move to the front to find out what was going on.
Eilifsson was at the front of the line, looking at the mass of wolves with what I thought was a bit of trepidation. I couldn't really tell for certain as his helmet did a good job of hiding the features that would give me a definite opinion on the matter. His heavy armored soldiers had done a wonderful job at the battle a few weeks before, so I had given them the honor of being at the front of the column. They seemed to be able to battle through most monsters after all.
Riding on Geri's back up next to him I asked, "So what do we have here? Hungry wolves trying to accost us or are they trying to rob us? I know I said we would run into bandit activity later but I didn't think the wolves would turn to it."
I got a chuckle and sub Commander yellow nodded his head in the direction of the wolf. "That's the wolf that showed up during the battle," he said matter of factly. "In fact… I'm sure that is the wolf that knocked you off the cliff on our first trip across the mountains."
I looked at it, squinted, and asked, "Are you sure? It could literally be any wolf. I know that Thunder Wolves are rare and very territorial but I don't think it would have tracked us down like that. It was probably just some other Thunder Wolf summoned by the thunder that rained down during the fight."
"Nope, that wolf has the same scar on the nose." I looked again and noted that there was indeed a scar on its muzzle but that was not definite proof of anything. Frankly, I didn't really remember all the features of the Thunder Wolf I'd fought in close quarters combat several weeks back. Shrugging, I dismounted from Cunning's back and patted him on the shoulder to tell him to wait.
Looking up to sub-Commander yellow I said, "Well, keep them in back and I'll find out what this thing wants." Before starting to walk across the open cliffside to the wolf.
The roadside was not narrow as some good eight men could walk side by side without issue here but it was slippery and I had to be careful because of the ice. Once I got up to it the wolf sat on its haunches and looked back at me while I studied it. We stared at each other for a good few minutes before I shrugged and said.
"Unless you have the ability to speak through your mind I'm not going to be able to tell what you want just by sitting there and looking at me. Still, I rather hope you don't have that ability. The last wolf that did, I had to kill."
The wolf made a scoffing noise as if it understood me. In fact it probably did, its head was at least as large as mine so who knew how well the brain cavity had expanded on these wolves. What the wolf did next though surprised me a bit as it laid its head into the snow, grabbed something that had been hidden there, and shook it loose before tossing it to me.
Grabbing it I looked at it and saw that it was white hair, or fur, coming out of scaly skin that had been molted like a snake by my guess. Just going by the size of that piece, the darn thing was probably big enough to eat a human whole.
The wolf looked at the fur and then down into the valley that we were heading towards, one of the stopover points for our journey home. I followed its gaze and saw that the glacier at one end of the valley, which had been solid on our trip here, was now not so solid as the base of it had been melted by the looks of it and a cave-like structure sat there in a pool of water.
"Warning me about some kind of threat?" I asked. The Thunder Wolf nodded, which confirmed my theory on its intelligence. It looked past me to the men who were gathering to see the conversation between me and the wolves, then it nodded at the fur pelt again.
"They'll have more details," I offered and the Wolf nodded. Which seriously was kind of impressive. I could tell my wolves were intelligent from my time with them, maybe not fully on the level of humans but definitely able to learn and understand with time. Even the common Fenrisian wolves were somewhat intelligent and they would accept the lead of the Blackmaned so it was good enough.
Thunder Wolves appeared to be on a whole another level, as intelligent as humans. Possibly even more if they could instantly understand the local language, or maybe they were just that old? They were easily the size of tanks and elephants, if elephants could live a long time then maybe these wolves could live a ridiculously long time and it had been able to learn a lot in these years? Or maybe they were an example of an old dog learning new tricks, for all I knew.
I nodded my head before saying "Thank you for this warning. We will come up with a plan to deal with whatever is down there. We will also leave you whatever meat is left on the beast after we've killed it, as payment for this service and your help."
The wolf panted with what I could best approximate as a wolf smile before nodding and wandering off, heading up a rather steep cliff further into the mountains. Unfortunately it looked like it was not going to help out in whatever conflict was about to take place in the valley below. As it just did them a good service by giving a warning of the creature down there, and probably saved them from a surprise attack, I wasn't going to hold it against it.
"Fine!" I held the fur-lined scales in my hand and walked back to the gathering group of commanders as they removed themselves from their positions in the line to find out what the holdup had been.
Holding the fur-lined scales up for them to see, I said "Apparently Mr. Thunderwolf has issued us a warning of an unknown creature living in the valley below. Are any of you familiar with this beast?"
There was a notable pause before the leader of the adventures guild and wolf scout leader Styr said "Alfather hammer! That's an Ice Wyrm skin… Those skins are worth their weight in gold." I looked at said skin in appraisal. If that was true that probably could pay off any food expenses for the next two years.
"Ice Wyrm, you say? What is an Ice Wyrm and how do we defeat it?"
"We don't! We find some other way around," the leader of the Wolf Scouts answered, as if that was a matter of course. "Large Ice Wyrms are incredibly dangerous even at the best of times and attempting to kill them is something only a demigod should attempt." It was at that moment he seemed to look at me harder then continued, "That being said… Ice Wyrms can detect motion through the ground, they can feel the vibrations of a person walking. The only one who's ever successfully killed an Ice Wyrm and been able to live to profit used a weapon that created a thunderous mass of fire that shattered much of the ice in the region south of the Russ."
Yellow Commander nodded his head in agreement before adding, "The clan Gummer still profit off that corpse their ancestor created even now. It was such a large Ice Wyrm that bits of it still are found to this day and since they had enough to purchase the area where the last of the bits had probably rained as their property… They've controlled the market on Ice Wyrm skins for the last 100 great years."
If this was an animated work I have the distinct feeling my pupils would have turned into money signs. The beast had set up a family to live for 200 years, that… That was impressive, that was beyond impressive, that was financial stability on a level I don't believe anyone in my entire family line had ever experienced!
Even if my life span was as long as Fenrisians, which was relatively long from what I've been able to learn as King Russ was 60 great years old or nearly 120 years, that would mean I would have 80 years of excess wealth to invest into my future and making sure my wolves were taken care of in case something were to ever happen to me. Granted if the army helped me I would have to share the kill with them but from the implication alone I don't think it would break the profitable status of killing this beast.
Turning to look down at the valley I rubbed my chin and thought. The creature was drawn to sound, I didn't have any explosives which was obviously what they were talking about… hold on don't I have explosives? An explosive spell would actually work, I would need something to draw the beast's notice as I couldn't just fling a rock at it and hope to hit. I would assume this beast was much faster than that and with the way they talked about it I would also assume it moved through the Earth with some speed.
Which would mean someone would need to get close to put the explosive spell right on it or near it. Any of my wolves or the men under my command who attempted that would just end up dead, which meant that was my job. Probably for the best anyway, handling an explosive spell that was active was not a safe situation at the best of times. And I would need to be the one to do that.
So I would need to be near but I would need something to distract the beast, something big and loud and… looking at my army, I had that covered. I also had another option as I felt around for the rune beads that could create some noise.
I had an idea. It was not a good idea, it was not the best idea, but it was an idea that could work from what I estimated. So the real question was: should I do it? Setting up my army for having a windfall of wealth would ensure that I was seen as a good person to have around and a prime member of the community, those were both useful things to have talked about you in the long term as it meant that people were more willing to deal with you or take a bit of loss during trade negotiations.
But I could organize things to march by it, maybe. Turning to Eilifsson I asked "If we reorganize ourselves, how long would it take us to get around this situation?"
"That's the problem, this is the major pathway between our coasts. This valley is a chokepoint that all roads go through and one of the reasons we don't like to move through it at this time of year is because of Ice Wyrms. They do tend to live in these valleys in the glaciers and eat anyone who comes through. Most of them are very small and easy to deal with but there are big ones, like the ones which the Wolf warned you about. Those are not only maneaters in size but have the full armor that make them hard to kill and worth their weight in gold."
"We could attempt to go around this valley, there are other passes that go into other valleys if the ice has melted enough… but if it's this warm the other Ice Wyrms might be up and all we'd be doing is preventing ourselves from getting home as fast as possible, meaning more Ice Wyrms will get up. This route was chosen because there's only one such situation like this along it, others have multiple."
"Well, that settles that," I said. "We need to kill that thing. And I think I have a plan to do it though we're all going to need to work together and be careful. Since we're going to need to work together I will split the profits from this kill: whatever you can carry away of its skin you can keep." I said, seeing the telltale lighting in people's eyes as they realized how much wealth that would be. Of course most of them would grab more than they could carry and then, once they realized they had to carry it all back, the road would be scattered with skin. That was a problem for the next army or trade group that had to come down this road. Probably not even a problem, that would just be a boon.
Turning to the group that contained all my commanders, I began to explain my plan.
Tanya
I carefully walked across the ice-covered floor of the valley. From what I understood, during full on summer, this area was a low lake at the end of the glacier and you could usually walk across it with some difficulty. At least that was the belief of those who had come across this road during summer time. That did not happen often because the Ice Wyrm was more active during summer as it could easily maneuver its way through the sandy floor of the lake.
Looking around I could see there had been attempts to sidestep this issue by building bridges across the parts of the lake that were only a foot or two deep. They had seemingly attempted to build a bridge that was 3 ft higher than the water level. These projects appeared to have always failed as there were plenty of holes and debris around them. That's the problem with monsters that lived underground, you couldn't tell they were coming till it was nearly too late.
At least humans couldn't, I could. Unexpected genetic ability created by whoever created this body or unexpected adaptation I had acquired on this planet, hard to say. But I could smell that creature through the Earth itself. Didn't matter that it was under layers of ice, snow, dirt and rock, I just could smell it. It was a familiar smell of death, one that I had only experienced in the life that I could barely remember. It was a stench that reeked of the dead, the dying, the sick.
Why did it smell like this? I couldn't say, perhaps it didn't clean its teeth. Perhaps it was like the Komodo dragon and developed some sort of viral poison from the things it caught in those teeth. Perhaps it just stunk because it could stink, trying to scare away predators that could harm it.
The monsters of this planet were numerous, the reasons they existed were unbelievable and frankly trying to figure out why something existed on this world was like trying to figure out why humanity existed in the first place. Which of course was probably random chance but did not help when there were creatures like being X screwing around and giving the impression that they had created the universe.
A laughable thought the more I thought about it, considering how terrible they were at their job.
But, besides that point of contention, the ability to smell the beast even under the ground gave me a lot more control of the situation then most anyone else would have. As such I knew exactly where it was and how it was slowly moving towards my location as I took a few steps onto the thin ice. The fact it was not moving fast meant it was more an ambush predator, which was good for me. An ambush predator would imply that there were restrictions on how it could attack.
Restrictions I could use for my benefit and, looking along at the 3 ft by 3 ft boulder harboring some of the most powerful explosive spells I could think of engraved on its sides, I needed those restrictions.
If I had more time I probably would have let some poor animal walk across this ice and observed what it did but without that I couldn't do a thorough investigation.
So I was left with option number two: create a situation that would lock the animal up.
Waving a signal to the army that had gathered around the entrance of the valley the beast was waiting in, my men began to pound their spears and feet onto the ground, creating seismic vibrations at quite a level. Such a level that I was able to instantly detect a shift in the direction of the creature's movements, its slow movement towards me had slowed even more as it turned to sense in the general direction of my army. No doubt it was trying to figure out what kind of creature could make such a racket. The distraction gave me quite an opportunity to move quickly in the direction of the creature, just to the side of where it was as I could see a group of heavy stones larger than me. I had a feeling that if I got up on top of them he couldn't get to me quite as easily as it could on the ice, which would force it to come to the surface.
From there it became a waiting game of drawing it in and, well… Force feeding it the boulder and hoping that its explosion killed it, since I doubted the explosion outside of it would do much being given that its hide was considered good enough for armor.
Now in a good position I signaled the army to stop making a racket, which they did slowly but effectively. I could tell that the Ice Wyrm was now slowly moving towards the army still since that was the last thing it had heard but I got to work on part two of the plan.
Carefully I put the explosive boulder down in front of the pile of giant rocks I was standing on top of. Then I put down my rune beads, but not before setting them to cast a spell continuously. Carefully I placed it on the ground and let it do its thing before hiding as far back on the rock as I could.
The rune beads thumped as they jumped, fell back on the ground, waited a couple seconds and did it again. With some varying in the time every 2 to 3 seconds it would have a charge go through it and thump itself into the air before landing on the ground.
In a sense I turned it into an automated noisemaker, one that was directly targeted at drawing the notice of the Ice Wyrm.
And, by the slowly growing stench of the creature, I knew it was working. I wondered how slow it would stay, right up until the moment it just gave up on its slow hunting style. The ice in front of the boulders began to crack as something rushed underneath it, causing snow and other debris to be thrown into the air as the creature underneath the ice rushed at the noisemaker. That's when I got a good idea of just how big this creature was, because the amount of debris was closer to a tank driving through a river and the on the wave is made in the water.
In the last few moments the swelling of the ice that was causing it to fracture stopped as the Ice Wyrms seemed to sail underneath the rocks I was standing on. I could feel it causing a slight quake in the Earth as it moved. Circling below, evaluating its target, before the creature burst through the ground right underneath the rune beads and the explosive Rock.
I could see why people had called it a worm, its face was scaly like the dragons I had fought but it was obviously just a long snake-like creature. Really kind of reminded me of dragons from Eastern mythologies more than Western mythology ones, which is what I'd seen so far. Except instead of flying through the air it flew through the ice. Also it was not as intelligent as the creatures of my home country's mythology, as it readily swallowed the beads and the explosive rock before looking around, obviously annoyed that it had not gotten whatever was making that racket.
Looking was probably not the correct word, it didn't seem to have a pair of eyes anywhere on the body, but it did seem to be trying to move its sensory organs to detect me. Perhaps it assumed that because it didn't taste any blood or material it had not got its prey. Which was unfortunate for it but good for me. The white-furred torso shifted and turned, allowing the head to look around out of the dirt and reminding me a bit of those photos of the Loch Ness monster where the head was on a long neck. Must have extremely good neck strength, I thought, considering how heavy that skull must be to be able to smash its way through the rocks and debris of the underground.
The creature then sniffed the air quite audibly, which annoyed me. I had assumed that it was blind and relied on sound after my first few moments of seeing it but now the creature's head turned in my general direction. It had definitely smelled me and, as I drew my sword, I was really hoping the explosive would go off already.
The creature opened its massive maw, displaying its rows of sharp fangs and letting out a roar as it lunged towards my location on the rocks.
Jumping out of the way I slashed at its face, cutting a bit into the skin I thought, but I saw no blood. Obviously the skin was a lot thicker on the face, to prevent damage from sharp rocks and such. This was not a situation I enjoyed at all, I was fighting a creature that had no noticeable weaknesses and which was well on its way to chomping me into small pieces.
Quickly I rolled and scrambled further into the large rocks that made up this miniature island in the middle of the lake. The creature held itself up higher, trying to get above said island so it could strike down at anywhere I attempted to hide. Thankfully, before it got a chance to remove my existence from the census data, the rock inside it detonated.
With a bang the neck of the creature exploded outward, spilling Orange guts and blood everywhere and sending parts of the skin flying away in ribbons as the rock shredded the neck.
The head of the creature wobbled on what was left of the neck for a moment before the weight literally ripped it off, the head coming to rest on top of the rocks just a few inches from me and nearly completing its objective of removing me from life.
The neck I couldn't see very well but I assumed it just simply fell over and slumped around the stone island. disconnected from the creature's control it probably would lay there until my men and wolves got the chance to harvest everything they needed from it.
As for myself I avoided most of the damage, I had taken no wounds from the explosion, the rocks having covered me from any shrapnel. Did not save me from the fact that I was now covered head to toe in orange goop.
Trying not to breathe in the disgusting mixture of blood and viscera I pulled myself up, looking around to see just how massive the devastation was. I was surprised to see that it wasn't too terrible.
Sure, my island was now a gore-covered mess and the rocky ice around it was in no better shape but the explosion had been successful in killing the creature and doing nothing else, so I would count that as a win. Seeing that the soldiers of my army were already celebrating as they saw me pop up, I assumed victory had been fully achieved and there was not like a second head on the other end of the wyrm I had to worry about. Or that this was like a Hydra and would grow another head. So far animals had to respect the laws of nature but I didn't put it past the animals of this planet to pull something like that, as dragons kind of did break those laws. Especially the way they flew, those wings weren't big enough in my opinion.
Blinking I walked out of the boulders and tried to wipe away the muck from my face, which is when I got an interesting surprise. I tasted a bit of the viscera and realized it tasted like pumpkins, which was a strange flavor for meat to have but… All right, guess we would be eating well tonight if it tasted that good.
Tanya
I was correct in my theory that we would eat well that night. not only was the beast very flavorful but its meat was rather easy to preserve. I wondered where that smell had been coming from but quickly figured out that, yes, it indeed came from the head. There were shreds of animals and such inside the teeth, caught there and festering.
Not the most hygienic of creatures but I'm sure the ability to poison things that are bigger was handy. No doubts it could also be used to bring down flying creatures if you got a lucky bite on them before it flew away.
But that was not my concern. My concern was about the men who had gone to task trying to free the teeth because apparently the bone was as good as ivory. And it was interesting to learn that you could use the creature's skin or scales to protect yourself from its teeth. That would imply these creatures probably didn't fight each other often. If its own species could perfectly counter its main attack vector then I doubted that they ate each other.
But that was besides the point. We quickly had a great meal that night and packed up what worm leather and other materials that we could salvage from it then began the last leg of our journey home.
And, as I had estimated, what could not be kept was thrown to the side of the road. Soldiers dumped spare Shields, silverware, anything that I'd allowed them to gather while on campaign. I imagine the trade convoys on this road would be very thankful for these resources over the years. I also imagine that some of these men planned to come back and try and gather it on their own time, probably with carts.
None of my concern if they wanted to risk their lives going through these mountains fighting monsters. Unless they were going to pay me I wasn't going to be too interested in what they got up to.
But it was a quick last leg of the journey. After a week of travel we were back on our side of the mountains, celebrating a successful war. Well, semi celebrating. We'd arrived into our South mountains, hit the first town, and I'd allowed the men to buy as many drinks as they wanted. Something that I mainly forbade during the trip, except for special occasions, so that men would be as active and perceptive on their night watches. The celebrations unfortunately went on for a couple days, most of the men making rather good fools of themselves with the amount of alcohol they drank. I would have moved the army on and got back to King Russ in order to have my mission completed but it was hard mobilizing the men with the way they were acting. Finally I decided the best option was to send a wolf Rider in charge of the Housecarls to King Russ, to let him know that we were returned to the lands with victory and were trying to make it to the castle to report in full.
I would have preferred to do it myself but I hoped that at least my attempts would be seen as it were, dealing with the nature of armies.
I received a response the next day, informing me that the army could disband and I could meet him myself at his castle for an official celebration of the end of the war, which was a quite acceptable order in my opinion.
I gave my thank yous and acknowledgments to the command staff, wished warriors of the army a happy summer and was off with my wolves, heading towards the king before the evening rolled in. No doubt the army would slowly disband, each Force returning to their lord to bring them wealth and Glory, but that was their tales. Mine was to just go home and get the mission completed so I could go home and take care of my wolves.
By that evening I was already walking up the steps of the castle, having been let in by a Housecarl that had stayed to watch over it.
They led me to the Great Hall where the King was sitting on his throne as various local and lower nobility had their conversations.
"Tanya! Tanya, come in. Come in!" He said, seeing me enter.
Bowing, I said "King Russ, I come bearing the news of a great victory on the other coast. Lord Farthegn has been defeated and removed from power, the new Lord in charge of that region has sworn to be our allies. I have brought the spoils of victory, and a bit of a hunting trip sidequest." Several Housecarls were behind me and I stepped out of the way as they brought then unfurled the white-furred scales of the Ice Wyrm that I had packed on one of my wolves. It was enough for him to make a new Cape so I was hoping it would be appreciated quite a bit.
The king stood up from his throne and stepped down to walk towards me, looking over the white fur as his men held it up. He nodded at me in approval.
"A wonderful gift," he said, running his hand down the fur before turning to me. "And you say that Lord Farthegn is dead? Even more of a success than I had hoped, you are truly sent by the Allfather." He exclaimed cheerfully before he took a step away. "Tanya, would you do me the honor of kneeling before me?"
Oh? Oh, this could be unfortunate. No doubt I was about to get some form of lower nobility. Hopefully the territory that I would have to deal with wouldn't be too hard to control. I wanted to take care of my wolves, not run the countryside. Well hopefully it won't be too bad, I thought as I took a knee and bowed my head.
One of the Housecarls came forward, bringing with him a small ceremonial Ax. With a hand the king picked it up and carefully laid the blunt end of the ax against one shoulder then the other.
"Tanya of the wilderness, you have proven your Worth to the people of Russ! Because of you the world is a safer place, not only from monsters that hunt Us in the nights but also from monsters that would hunt Us in the day. I bestow upon you this honor and pronounce you Tanya Russ, my daughter." The crowd erupted in applause and calls of Joy at the pronunciation. Everyone seemed quite happy, except myself.
It felt like my stomach dropped a good few feet below the ground as I realized how much my position in the world had just been raised. I was no longer just some wilderness wild woman who'd wandered into civilization. I wasn't even a local Noble, I had gone straight to heir of the king. I had to take a couple heavy breaths to settle my mental faculties as I realized how heavily I had been played. I had known the King was childless but I never thought he was looking to create an heir when he'd sent me on this mission. I thought too short-term, the near indestructibility of my body had allowed me to become too self-assured with my existence and now I was paying for it. Oh no… I had to say something or I'd look even worse and I could not refuse.
Clearing my throat, I said "Thank you, my king. It is an honor to be your daughter and I will serve the kingdom well."
I was then slapped backhanded across the face, which was a shock to the system even seeing it coming. "And that is a family ritual passed down through our line, to always remember we are not here to make ourselves profit. We are not here to abuse our people, we are the Russ. We either serve the people or we don't deserve to lead them. Do you understand?"
I noted my understanding, though I took some amusement in the way he was shaking his hand as if he was in some pain after slapping me. Having a stronger skull paid off in that one moment.
But I was now trapped. I'd basically been told I would either take the position, serve with honor and serve the people, or I would be removed from the Russ. I doubt they could kill me, but you didn't need to kill someone to exile them. You just needed to burn down everything they loved to do that. Was that the threat he was putting forward? I doubt it but it was something to make it clear that if I did not serve up to the people of Russ's opinion they could remove me. I would need to be on my best behavior and serve the community as best I could, or everything I built could fall apart.