John Dalmas - The Yngling

"We'll be both bait and trap, and when we're done they'll have learned to hate and fear the northmen."

They broke camp at sundown and rode by moonlight to the woods near the enemy camp without encountering a patrol, then lay down to sleep until the moon set.

This time the raiders moved out on horseback, four hundred of them, silent until a patrol challenged them less than five hundred meters from the enemy camp. With loud whoops they charged, striking at anyone on foot as horse barbarians ran among the tents. Through the camp and back again they rode, chopping and striking in the confusion and darkness, then broke up and rode away hard into the concealment of night. Their shouts and laughter as they straggled into their own camp might have kept everyone awake until dawn if the group leaders hadn't insisted that they quiet down and rest.

Soon after daybreak several thousand horse barbarians were circling the woods and looking grimly into its thickets while more arrived periodically from other camps. Several times impatient groups charged their horses toward the woods, breaking off when swarms of arrows met them near the trees from freeholders stationed among the branches and from warriors on the ground.

About midday a large army of mounted men wearing black mail came into sight in broad, ordered columns, dismounting out of bow shot. Men in the treetops counted the width of the columns and the number of ranks and shouted down that there were about four thousand. The freeholders were ordered out of the trees. The orcs formed a line of battle, several deep, opposite one side of the woods and then, shields raised, began to walk forward. At thirty meters a war horn blew from among the trees, triggering a flight of arrows, and the orcs began to double time toward the woods.

Once engaged, the warriors drew back, tightening their protective line around the freeholders and the horse herd. The battle continued until midafternoon between the mailed and grimly silent orcs and the shouting, grinning northmen, and as the hours passed, the orcs became grimmer. Finally trumpets sounded and they began an orderly retreat. The northmen permitted them to disengage and followed them with twanging bows until they were out of range in the prairie.

For the rest of the day the neovikings moved among the trees, taking scalps, equipping themselves with black mail shirts, and dragging orc bodies to the edge of the prairie where they piled the mutilated corpses for the enlightenment of the watching horse barbarians, shouting their counts to the tallymen and exchanging clouts of exuberance. The scalps numbered seventeen hundred and thirty-seven. Their own dead came to a hundred and ninety-six, and they released sixty-five more whose bodies were too badly wounded to ride.

"So those are the orcs." Bjorn Arrbuk laughed. "You told me they are the toughest we'll see on the ground. Surely that can't be true."

Nils nodded. "It's too bad they broke off when they did; they were getting tired faster than we were. And we may have trouble getting them to fight us again on ground of our own choosing."

Bjorn turned to his runners. "Make sure that enough sentries are out and have the men eat and get some sleep. We'd better get out of here tonight. When the moon sets we'll sneak across to the big body of timber where we can move around again."

The next day the northmen camped in the forest. Their nighttime crossing hadn't gone undetected for long, but they had maintained stealth even among the questing squadrons of horse barbarians, moving through the blackness in small groups or singly, breaking into a gallop and fighting only when they had to. Many abandoned their horses for diversion and slunk across on foot. They scattered everywhere, reassembling in the forest with the locational sense of the wilderness-bred. At daybreak they counted ninety-seven missing and were in a vile mood.

The day was spent napping and filing the nicks out of their swords while small mounted patrols went out to explore the forest. One patrol found a band of fewer than thirty Poles and Ukrainians, all that were left of a mixed force of three hundred who had fought a pitched battle with a large force of orcs two days earlier. Another patrol watched an attack on horse barbarians by a large number of Magyars, who seemed to have abandoned their small-unit tactics for hit-and-run attacks by larger forces. The battle was brief and bloody, and about eight hundred effectives reached the cover of the trees where, after brief fighting, the horse barbarians had broken off the engagement.

Men of the patrol led Nils to the Magyars. They had reassembled deep in the forest and were camped by a brook, sharpening their weapons and nursing their wounds. Nils recognized their commander and the burly psi who squatted beside him, eating their horsemeat in the shade of a linden. "Lord Miklos!" Nils called. "Zoltan!" The tall knight got up slowly. "Nils. So we do meet again." He spoke and thought like a man half-asleep. "We heard that the northmen had come and that they'd even night-raided the very camps of the enemy. Butchering him and running off his horses. You can't be as good as we've heard, but we enjoyed the stories." He sounded apathetic, as if he had not actually enjoyed anything for a long while. "Did you know that Janos is dead? In our first battle."

Tears welled in the dull eyes. "I'm all used up, friend; I didn't realize how old I'd become. But I won't need to last much longer. As far as I know, the eight hundred you find of us here are all that are left of thirty-eight hundred that crossed Uzhok Pass. We've done our best, but we've been outnumbered time and again, and our spirits are dying with our friends. We have no hope. Even our hate is dulled; the fire is dead in it."

"If you'd been with us yesterday, it might have been relit," Nils said quietly. "We got four thousand orcs to attack us in heavy timber, and when they pulled out, they left more than seventeen hundred dead. We took scalps enough to have made a large tent, and our own losses were two hundred sixty."

The gray Magyar looked up at Nils for the first time. "How many of you are there?"

"We started with twenty-two hundred warriors and have lost four hundred, while seventy more have wounds bad enough to impair their fighting. We released the spirits of those who were badly wounded. We couldn't take them with us and wouldn't leave them for the enemy."

Miklos nodded. "We, too. We've seen what they do to their prisoners. What will you do next?"

"We're exploring, patrolling, so we can decide what's to our advantage. We always look for an advantage. Come with me and meet our war leader, Bjorn Arrbuk. You can help us plan." The invitation was a gesture; he knew, approximately, what the answer would be.

"How old are you, big friend?"

"This is my twentieth summer."

The old knight shook his head. "Perhaps tomorrow, if I can. If nothing happens. But today I must rest."

By evening another patrol reported two small forces of Poles and Ukrainians in the forest, totalling two hundred and eighty effectives. The various reports also gave a picture of the tactical situation. This forest too was almost an island in the prairie, but a big one, about twenty kilometers long and mostly five to eight wide. It connected with more extensive forests to the west by a neck of timber about a kilometer wide. Strong forces of horse barbarians patrolled the prairie on both sides and an army of orcs were digging a ditch and piling a barricade of felled trees across the neck.

Bjorn Arrbuk called his officers together. "Have the men break camp. We're going to move out right now so we can travel while the moon is still up. We'll camp about a kilometer from the orc line. Nils, go to your friend, the Magyar chief, and to the others, the Poles and Ukrainians. Tell them we are all surrounded and we're going to break out at sunup. Tell them we want their help, but we won't wait for it. If they won't come now, we'll leave them to fry in their own grease. Meet us at our new camp." The war leader grinned and punched Nils's shoulder. "Tell them we're going to kill lots of orcs tomorrow and they can watch."