"Nay," She began in a mocking tone, repeating the very word that had forced their action into exposing their prowess on language. "Invaders."
With this final word, Asvoria had signed the death sentence of her enemies and even some of her comrades. Plunging her axe deep into the collarbone of one of the newly enlisted soldiers who had joined the group for his very first outing as a kingsman.
Asvoria, Svea noted, has always known where to find the weakest animal. She is an animal hunting down the youngest of the herd.
The blonde kicked him down to retrieve her axe from his body, banging the bloody weapon against her shield to catch the Commander's attention. She wanted his eyes on her
"Spears!" Asvoria shouted, and the few they had brought protruded through the openings in the shield wall.
"Forward!" she ordered even louder, as the wall she commanded surged into the thick of it - the soldiers yelling as some of the younger recruits, who had yet to see battle with their own eyes, stumbled to unsheathe the very swords they were meant to swing in honor of their king, in honor of their country.
Looking to her own fraction of the shield wall, Svea knew it was time to act as well.
"Forward!" she agreed, for she no longer had a choice in the matter.
Twirling the axe in her callused hand a few times to regain memory of its weight, she suddenly spun around and brought it down deep into the thick neck of one who had been unlucky enough to stray too close.
He choked out blood as it spurted from the open wound, using his sword to try clawing at her flesh - but failing his final moments as she leapt over his arm, moving clear of his dying reach.
Retracting the chipped shield she had brought from the boat, Vilhelmiina pulled it closer against her body again. She grunted as a wounded soldier crawled forward, trying to shove the shield away from underneath the wood, angling it in a way meant to disrupt the battle hungry Shield-Maiden.
"Hold!" Svea ordered, running forward. Taking the momentum to step onto the shield, she used it to propel herself as she fell deeper into the battle on the coast.
Vilhelmiina's axe cracked down into the ribs of the soldier as he finally succumbed to his wounds. Her bright eyes looked down at her shield which Svea had used to jump off of in surprise, with newfound admiration.
A sudden tenderness came to her interaction with it.
"You can do that?" she whispered, grinning.
She had never thought to use her shield as anything more than a shield. But even earlier that year, she had learned it could be a weapon. . . and now she found it to be a true battle partner.
Shoving off an incoming attack, she hacked through her foe's arm, searching for her next victim as blood spurted into the already red mess of her hair.
Svea's voice was the first to break through the chaos of the battle.
"Asvoria!" she shouted, breath ragged.
Asvoria only shook her head.
She could handle herself, and easily at that. In fact, she was thriving on it; remembering the spirit of the girl she had been raised to be.
"Dragmall!" she cried back, ducking between two soldiers who lunged at her. Instead, she swept her axe low, cleaving the legs from one to steal his sword, and plunged the stolen blade through the belly of the other.
Vilhelmiina licked her lips. "Human skewers?" she whispered, half in awe at all she had learned this day. Then she turned toward the field, sprinting to aid Fjorvi.
The sound of Dragmall's name on Asvoria's tongue, without context, made Svea's skin crawl.. She could only assume her beloved was in danger, out of her sight. She could feel heat rising on her neck. She scanned the field but could not spot him; still, a hollow ache carved itself into her stomach, warning her all the same to take Asvoria's call as a warning. Her breath came in staccato bursts. Wiping the back of her hand against her lips, she caught sight of a trail of blood leading deeper into the open field, away from the village, though not far.
"Eumelia, come!" Svea shouted, giving no pause to see if the archer followed. She didn't even check if her call had been heard. She needed to trust it had been. That just a minute or two behind was the one woman she had called for help.
Valkyries, do not take him from me, was the only thought that could form. Even that came as a blur, as if another had whispered it through the fog in her mind.
Eumelia. . . do not turn on me.
Three soldiers had broken from their line to surround Dragmall, who had either been lured - or had led them himself - toward the shoreline.
"We'll gut you here," one snarled in promise, licking his lips at the thought of a first taste of blood since he had enlisted. "Then we'll find the women you came with. Remind them of obedience."
Quiet and steady, Svea came up behind the nearest one to her. She hooked the hand of her axe around his neck, yanking him backward.
He was bigger, but she had surprise on her side - and someone worth bleeding for just steps away.
The freckled soldier clawed at the weapon as she he twisted hard, the head of the axe biting deep into his neck. Pain flared through her palm as the blade sliced her own hand, but she didn't let go. Her blood for his. He gurgled once before collapsing at her feet.
Dragmall shoved the other two back, swinging both axes in his hands with quick, clumsy strikes. A farmer's blow, not a warrior's.
His aim was good, but his strength lacked the weight of years in battle. He had cut through livestock before but never man, he didn't yet understand the fragility of their skin and strength of their bone.
One man fell wounded. The second tackled him, the two rolling through the sand until Dragmall forced himself on top. He grabbed the man's jaw, the echo of his threat still ringing in his ears.
It was gruesome to him, but after their threats to the women of the group - to his Svea - how could he ever give them a chance of surviving?
Wincing, Dragmall gripped the man's jaw tighter, cracking it to the side before snapping the neck in his hands with a small pant.
He had forced stubborn cows back into the barn before with the weight of his body, but he had never done this.
He would never want to do this again.
Nausea came over him, comforting him to know he was still human in his heart. He swallowed it back down.
Turning to meet the whooshing cry cutting through the air - the sound of arrows striking the third man in the back, courtesy of Eumelia - Svea turned just in time to see her lower the bow slowly after ensuring the area was clear.
Taking the moment, Svea finished the one she had been struggling against, slitting his throat.
She released him to drench the sand, proof of the iron's harvest bleeding into the thirsty dust where the tide kissed the shore of the slain. The grit of the coast clotted with the last warmth of life from the unnamed opponent.
Take them Njord, she called upon the god of the sea and wind. Take them for the slaughter of our men.
Standing, exhausted, Svea ran her thumb along the cut on her hand. Flexing it for a moment, she only looked up when she recalled Eumelia was there, sending her a thankful, wordless, nod. It was the first time the two had seen eye to eye. Despite their differences on nearly every fundamental level, she would never forget that Eumelia had come to their aid. . .and saved her husband's life.
Eumelia drew another arrow, the string taut against her cheek as she straightened her body. Svea's gaze flicked from her face to the arrow's tip. The arrow whistled past her ear, strands of her hair catching the wind as a man's groan followed - the soldier she hadn't seen, now falling forward with the shaft buried in him. She hadn't even sensed him.
Dragmall stepped forward to finish the job, Eumelia stopped him as she raised her hand.
"No. I claim him in the name of Jarl Aeneas," she said.
After all she had done for him, Svea was in no position to deny her.
She gave a single nod with her blessing, allowing Eumelia to take the captive back to their boats as she followed behind.
In doing so, Svea had betrayed her own heart. She shut her eyes, letting the breeze brush past her. If she didn't look at him, she could pretend that instead of life as a thrall, the man would answer questions, be beaten, then killed.
That she could live with.
The consequences of battle sat before them in the form of a string of soldiers who had been tied as captives. They were slaves to be gifted to the Jarl or sold at his discretion.
Svea could not wince before them, not in front of anyone there, but she remembered being in the same line once - inspected like livestock, degrading from the being she had once been.
As a farmer's daughter when she was taken, it had been a shorter fall from grace to slave. She, at least, had been naïve then to the horrors of war, to the lives of thralls.
These men knew exactly what awaited them, at least, they thought they did.
"Movement!" shouted one of the Vikings, prompting the archers to lift their bows, keeping a wary eye on the distance.
"Stop!" Svea demanded when her attention caught the soldier guiding the same family that she and Dragmall had spared earlier during the raid.
The mother clutching her infant, one who was ignorant to the world, was one thing, but she would not allow the little girl who had stumbled from the closet to be made aware of the battle's ruin.
She noticed now that some of the townsfolk had managed to escape, hurry out, she assumed they had been led by the man who, regardless of the eyes on him continued his mission.
Svea ran forward to stop the archers from shooting the child, "Enough!"
One of the archers released his arrow, ignoring her order.
Grimacing at the scene, she saw how the arrow had pinned the soldier's hand against the wooden wall like a written decree to the village: a message in red ink that no-one would be spared. The woman and child screamed as the soldier urged them onward, pleading that his sacrifice would not be in vain. A second arrow flew, sinking into him again.
Svea's heart thumped at the scene, slower than before.
They had fought like true soldiers; this man was only a guide, leading the innocent out of the village, cursed by the misfortune of wearing a soldier's clothes and bearing his fate.
Without thought, Svea ran to them, allowing the woman along with her children to go. She stood over the man, studying him, searching for whether he was truly worth saving, worth the trouble it would bring her. Eumelia would report this kindness to Aeneas. Asvoria would see her as weak. The rest of the group. . . she didn't dare imagine.
She stopped his hand, one which had been hardened by honest work, from tugging at the arrow. Her gaze traced the shaft, the tip was deeply lodged in the wood.
Unsheathing her seax, she quietly admitted, "It'll be better to pull your hand back." Her knife was short and brutal, a butcher's tool in a warrior's hand. It could split bone and sinew with a grunt of steel, but Svea angled it forward like it knew only one direction. Through. She cut through the arrows to shorten the pain he'd suffer, guiding his hand back.
"Why did you do that?" she asked.
It seemed a strange question for a heathen woman to ask, yet he knew she would have done the same had the attack fallen upon her own home.
Grunting, he pressed his head against the wall to let the pain pass, stifling any sound that tried to escape. His shoulders rose, betraying the effort it took to keep quiet.
"I- I've sworn to protect the people of -" he stopped, his knees bending as he sagged forward, the earlier wounds now bleeding freely again. The arrows had torn more than flesh; they had drained what little strength he had left.
He knew now there was no time for small talk. No time to answer her questions, even if some part of him wanted to know more about the Norse girl who spoke his tongue.
"Kill me," he said through his teeth, sincerely. "Better than to be a slave. Kill me."
"What?"
"Kill me," he pleaded, forcing the words out through uneven breaths. "I can see it in your eyes." He nodded faintly, swallowing hard. "You know what it's like. Don't let them do that to me. Kill me. . . all I ask is to be left a hero to these people, not something to pity. Do it now."
Svea hesitated.
"What is your name?"
"Alaric."
He gave the faintest smile he could manage to the girl who, on the battlefield, would have killed him without a second thought. In truth, with the frenzy he'd seen in her people, he doubted she would have even known he was there. He could have simply been another faceless victim.
Why had he met her, then? He couldn't say. All he knew was that whatever his fate, he didn't want to leave this village alive. Even as her question stirred something in him - what a strange thing for her to ask.
From a girl I would have never done the same for.
Her braided shifted behind her shoulder when she gave a nod. "Very well, Alaric," she said quietly. She moved to plunge the knife into him but a sudden hand gripping her wrist, twisting sharply. Bone shifted beneath the leather brace that shielded her from cuts.
The brute released her wrist. "Eumelia has claimed any survivors as slaves for Aeneas. Him included," he warned, switching to Alaric, gripping him by the arm before leading him away.
Svea crouched down beside the house, her body giving in to exhaustion. She let her head fall back, staring up at the sky as she watched the grey clouds roll in. Soon, these warning clouds would catch them with rain. Cold drops already traced down her neck, summoning the storm to come.