Vikings: Lords of the Ice Sea

Chapter 254 Caught off guard
Upon opening the envelope, Uber discovered it was a letter from Niels pleading for help, and felt annoyed. "Why should I share the blame for the mess you and Hafdan made?"

Upon returning to the lord's longhouse, Uber summoned five cabinet members. Faced with this dubious news, they all advised him to postpone his actions.

Edmund: "Your Majesty, conscripting troops from across the entire territory would be extremely costly. It would be better to send envoys to gather information and confirm the situation before assembling the troops."

It was September, the barley harvest season. Conscripting militia would inevitably affect this year's harvest, and nobles in various regions would also complain, whether they were old nobles or new nobles appointed by Uber.

Uber nodded slowly. "Who should be the envoy?"

Edmund volunteered for the mission; in all of Aalborg, only he and Uber were proficient in Latin, and there was no other choice at the moment.

Urbe quickly drafted a letter of state, sealed it with sealing wax, and instructed Edmund to speed things up and return within half a month if possible.

"Yes, Your Majesty."

After carefully putting away the letter of credence, Edmund, accompanied by his two newly recruited attendants, rode off at breakneck speed.

Four days later, they arrived in southern Denmark and saw many Viking civilians on the road. These people were wearing tattered sheepskin coats, carrying round shields on their backs, and iron axes at their waists. They were complaining as they traveled.

"Is Niels gathering troops across the entire territory?"

The burly, armored man at the front of the group raised his head. "Yes, the lords under our command have received orders to proceed to Daniwilk within a specified time."

The following day at noon, a seemingly endless earthen slope appeared on the distant horizon. Edmund spurred his horse to approach and carefully examined this famous defensive fortification.

The main structure of Daniwilk is a two-person-high earthen mound, topped with a thick, low fence-like wall, outside which is a trench about two people deep.

“These logs are rotten. Go and cut down fifty oak trees.”

At that moment, hundreds of conscripted militiamen were maintaining a collapsed earthen slope. An officer in rusty chainmail was overseeing the work, directing the militiamen to clear debris from the trenches and replace rotten logs. Edmund looked around and saw that similar maintenance work was being carried out in other areas.

He approached the officer and struck up a conversation, offering him a flask of mead to build rapport, saying, "How many enemy soldiers are there? They've kept you all so busy."

Judging from his attire, the officer realized the old man was no ordinary person, and his tone softened. "More than three thousand people have gathered in Hamburg, and more are still arriving. And you are..."

"Edmund, advisor to King Uber, has been sent as an envoy to Hamburg."

For the next half hour, Edmund had a friendly and insightful conversation with the officer, learning about the long history and details of the Daniwirk Line. With his new friend bidding him farewell, Edmund crossed the line and officially entered German territory.

September 20th.

Edmund returned to Aalborg, looking quite disheveled, and his two attendants were nowhere to be seen.

"I'm sorry, Your Majesty, I was attacked by bandits on my journey, and two of my attendants died protecting me."

Uber, too lazy to pay attention to his entourage, inquired about the Franks' movements, "How many are there, and what is King Louis's objective?"

Edmund: "When I arrived in Hamburg, they had assembled about seven thousand men, plus over a thousand cavalry. King Louis did not receive me, but according to my intelligence, Hafdan burned down the Kassel estate, and among the victims was Louis's daughter, Princess Gisela. I anticipate this will be very troublesome." Upon learning of the catastrophic disaster his third brother had committed, Uber returned helplessly to his seat. He had no choice but to order a nationwide mobilization to deal with this sudden catastrophe.

However, it was too late.

At the same time, in Daniilville in the south.

After the French scouts arrived, they rode back and forth 200 meters away from the earthen slope, eliminating some continuous swamps, forests and low hills, and selected five battlefields suitable for the army to deploy.

That afternoon, the vanguard of the French army launched an attack, and Niels immediately recognized their flags as belonging to the Duchy of Saxony.

"Damn Hafdan, it's all his fault for inciting everyone to plunder East Francia. There's never any good in hanging out with this madman."

Niels's location guarded a traditional trade route between Denmark and Germany, making him a prime target for the Duke's attacks.

Under the cover of two hundred archers, a thousand soldiers, carrying wooden shields and planks, slowly made their way to the trench. Enduring the interference of the Frankish archers, Nils's troops roughly aimed through the gaps between the shields, severely reducing their lethality.

"My lord, the French front-line infantry are clad in iron armor, which cannot be penetrated by arrows."

After firing twenty volleys of arrows, fewer than a hundred Frankish soldiers fell. Niels endured the soreness in his arm, repeatedly drawing and releasing the bowstring until the French army approached the trench.

The trench was less than three meters wide. The French army laid out many walkways with wooden planks. Soon, follow-up troops brought long ladders and set them up on the fences on the earthen slopes. The soldiers endured the rain of arrows from the defenders and struggled to climb up. The most brutal and bloody siege battle broke out.

"Archers, draw your swords! All of you, charge forward!"

Niels threw away his purple bow, picked up a round shield, and rammed it into the enemy not far away. The fifty armored guards behind him also threw down their bows and arrows and took on the role of ordinary infantry.

The entire Danielvick Line is thirty kilometers long. Niels has a total of two thousand five hundred men. Currently, this section of the line only has fifty armored guards and one hundred and fifty militiamen, which is not enough to repel the enemy. His only hope is to wait for the mobile forces.

The mobile force, consisting of three hundred men equipped with armor and cavalry, was tasked with supporting various defensive lines. Upon seeing the three plumes of black smoke rising from Nils, this cavalry and infantry unit pressed on, arriving before the defensive lines collapsed and driving the French troops off the embankment.

Watching the enemy retreat, Niels, exhausted, slumped behind the fence, panting heavily. He counted his men and found that only twenty of his fifty armored guards remained, while the militia were either dead or had fled, numbering less than fifty.

"This godforsaken place can't be held. That idiot Uber, why isn't reinforcement coming at a time like this? Does he think the Franks will let him go?"

That night, Nils led his men to evacuate, making sure to light a campfire before leaving.

Before long, campfires were lit on both the east and west sides, and the Vikings along the entire Daniwilk defensive line dispersed. A few nobles led their troops to retreat into Schleswig, while the remaining nobles returned to their homes.

Two days later at noon, Niels counted the number of people in Schleswig and found only 1,040, and began to consider leaving.

"Schleswig is in ruins and is now just a large, walled village. It doesn't matter if we lose it. We might as well preserve our strength, let the French army go north, and drag Uber into it as well."

That afternoon, Niels dismissed the city's inhabitants and led his troops along the river by boat out to sea, heading straight for Pomerania.
(End of this chapter)