Vikings: Lords of the Ice Sea

Chapter 158 The Enemy is in Denmark
Given the commander's defection, Oleg, in the capacity of his deputy, took command of the Imperial Guard and ordered the fleet to cross the sea to Gothenburg.

Surprisingly, even some of the Imperial Guards and sailors changed their minds.

“My lord, Hafdan’s command skills are too poor. He couldn’t even defeat the Welsh bandits when outnumbered, let alone conquer Sweden. In comparison, I think General (Nils) has a better chance of winning. We might as well take a gamble in Denmark.”

“That’s right. You’ve been fighting for many years and you’re only a baron with just over two thousand acres of farmland. Your future is bleak. You should at least get a count’s title for helping the general conquer Denmark.”

Ignoring his subordinates' commotion, Oleg silenced them with a single reason: "You receive His Majesty's salary and wear His Majesty's armor, yet you openly disobey orders. Aren't you worried about future punishment?"

Ragnar's face appeared in their minds, and the guards fell silent, but some sailors insisted on breaking away from the group.

"I have no connection with the king; I was merely employed by the captain. Now I'm returning this salary to him; I'm quitting!"

A sailor pulled ten smelly silver pennies from the sole of his shoe, stuffed them into the captain's hand, and then jumped into the shallow water and strode toward Nils's group.

Under his leadership, more than two hundred sailors returned their wages one after another. Some of them spent all their money before setting sail and simply took off their clothes and threw them to the captain, going to join Nils naked.

Seeing the sailors come to seek refuge, Nils wiped his eyes and said with a sob in his voice, "Thank you all for your kindness. I swear to the gods that I will never mistreat these old brothers in the future, and I am willing to be punished by the gods if I break this vow!"

Fifty bodyguards, 1,500 militiamen, 500 raiders, and more than 200 sailors—this was his only force.

In terms of equipment, Nils had accumulated one hundred sets of iron armor in recent years. Before setting off, he used five manor houses north of Nottingham as collateral to rent fifty sets of iron armor from Leonard, for a total of one hundred and fifty sets of armor.

As Niels weighed his existing resources, he pondered:
"There is no unified kingdom in Denmark, and the strength of the various settlements varies. On the Jutland Peninsula, the strongest are Aalborg, Aurus, and Schleswig. We should attack from north to south before the enemy can react. I hope Eric the Younger is not lying to me."

After lunch, Nils led his men upstream along the riverbank, reaching their first destination—Aalborg—before sunset. Large oat fields had been cultivated nearby, and judging from the crops' growth, it was a suitable place for farming.

The wooden fort stands on the south bank of the river, with walls four meters high. There are no trenches dug outside the walls, nor are there any arrow towers built. Years of rain have carved deep brown grooves into the wood, and dark green moss grows in the cracks. Sensing the approach of a large number of strangers, two ravens fluttered up from the grass nest on the top of the wall, leaving a few black tail feathers in mid-air.

"attack!"

Judging from the size of the wooden fortress, it had at most two hundred households. With an absolute advantage in military strength, Nils was too lazy to use any tricks and led his troops straight to the eastern wall of the wooden fortress.

At a distance of 100 meters, the guards on the wall launched arrows. Nils curled his lip and led fifty armored guards with bows a short distance to exchange fire with the guards.

From his youth, Nils realized that he was not as tall and strong as Ivar and Bjorn, and was among the shorter ones in the Viking community. So he took a different approach and focused on practicing archery. Fortunately, he had excellent eyesight and long arms, so he developed a rare skill in archery.

"Brothers, let's open the eyes of these country bumpkins."

Nils blew a loud whistle, drew his bow, and stared intently at a certain crenellation. The moment the defender leaned out, the bowstring vibrated, and the arrow pierced precisely into the defender's neck, the iron tip emerging from the back of his neck, the white goose feathers at the fletching still trembling slightly.

"As expected of the master, your aim is spot on." "Boss, leave us two more."

Ignoring the flattery of his guards, Nils drew two arrows from the deerskin quiver behind him. The first arrow pierced the throat of a garrison soldier who was peeking out, while the second shot flew towards an archer on the left who was trying to cover his position. The two men fell backward almost simultaneously, their blood splattering onto the moss on the wooden wall.

In less than a minute, Nils and his guards fired six volleys of arrows, forcing the defenders behind the battlements to refrain from retaliating. The remaining troops surged toward the wooden fortress, and the twenty men at the front worked together to lift a log and rhythmically rammed it against the east gate of the fortress.

After being rammed more than ten times, the wooden bolt on the inside of the door snapped open, and the door swung open. Nils's troops were the first to throw a volley of throwing axes and charged toward the shield wall behind the wooden door with shouts.

"Anglo-speakers?"

One of the garrison soldiers, who had raided Britain many times, heard a lot of Anglo accents in the shouts of the attackers. "What's going on? Are the Anglo-Saxons raiding the Vikings instead?" he wondered.

Soon, more than two thousand people poured into the narrow settlement, killing the chief and his confidants. Just as they were about to loot the houses, Nils stopped them.

"Fool! This is your territory! Who would be foolish enough to plunder their own land!"

Upon hearing that the general intended to bestow Aalburg upon someone, the middle-ranking officials exchanged glances, beginning to assess their own importance in the general's eyes.

Entering the lord's longhouse, Nils tore a linen shirt from one of the corpses, repeatedly wiped the greasy dining table, and then spread out a parchment map with messy lines.

"Look closely, this is the northernmost point of Skahn, this is our current location in Aalburg, and then all the way south are Landes and Orus."
"All the way to Schleswig, the southernmost tip of the Jutland Peninsula, I only want the Schleswig region. The rest is yours, on the condition that you follow my orders, don't kill indiscriminately, and don't desert!"

By using fiefdoms to win over the people, Nils then had his confidants inventory the warehouses and requisition draft horses and oxen from residents' homes to hastily assemble a supply convoy.

The next day, he left fifty soldiers to guard the area and care for the wounded, while the rest continued south. To prevent a rebellion in Aalborg, Nils took more than a hundred surviving adult men with him, making them his auxiliary troops.

After a full day's march, Nils passed through three villages, where the locals, too afraid to resist the two-thousand-strong expeditionary force, surrendered en masse.

In order to establish his authority, Nils did not allow his soldiers to plunder. Instead, he requisitioned some grain and livestock, and, along with the village chiefs and able-bodied men, continued south, arriving in Landes at noon on the third day.

"attack!"

The familiar procedure was followed: Nils led his archer guards to suppress the defenders' counterattack, while the rest of the men carried battering rams and ladders to launch an attack.

Compared to Britain, Denmark was technologically less advanced, lacking any Roman-era stone buildings and consisting at best of low, narrow wooden fortresses with extremely poor defensive capabilities. In less than half an hour, the expeditionary force successfully captured Landes.

(End of this chapter)