Vikings: Lords of the Ice Sea

Chapter 258 Snowfield
As Nils drew his bow, hundreds of arrows suddenly shot up from the forest.

"Enemy attack!"

The Frankish screams of terror were instantly drowned out by the rain of arrows. The horses that had been struck by arrows let out mournful cries and, losing their minds, galloped wildly, causing widespread chaos. Wagons overturned, axles snapped with a piercing crack, and barrels of wine rolled to the ground, the strong stench of alcohol mixed with the smell of blood spreading in the cold wind.

"Form a shield wall!"

With more than a third of their men lost, the surviving hundred soldiers huddled together in a circular shield formation. Nils remained expressionless, continuing to lead his archers in a hail of arrows. The cold bowstrings dug into his frozen fingers, each pain transforming into a deeper killing intent, until he had emptied both quivers of arrows.

By this time, the surviving Franks had already abandoned everything and disappeared into the distance like startled rabbits. The Vikings seized the opportunity to clean up the battlefield, prioritizing the acquisition of enemy armor, followed by weapons and arrows.

After a long period of activity, the ground began to tremble slightly. Unable to fight the cavalry, Nils reluctantly abandoned the grain sacks and animal carcasses on the ground and led his army to quietly retreat into the depths of the pine forest.

After winning the first battle, Nils quickly launched the next round of harassment. In order to improve the soldiers' movement speed, he also creatively equipped everyone with long and curved birch sleds.

After being attacked from the rear, Louis the German, who was stationed at the front in Wael, sent two waves of reinforcements to annihilate them, but both were defeated by Niels.

At this point, the Viking coalition maintained a strength of 5,000, while the French army had only 8,000 soldiers capable of fighting, resulting in a stalemate.

February 862 AD.

One day, after defeating another Frankish caravan, Niels was cleaning up the battlefield when he accidentally found a letter from a family among the corpses. The letter was from a nobleman at the front, addressed to his family in a castle in Bavaria.

In the letter, the nobleman complained that he had only been paid half of his overtime wages for the previous month, with the remainder being made up with plundered grain and furs.
After reading the Latin letter with a mixture of reading and guessing, Niels vaguely sensed something was amiss. He ordered his men to sift through all the letters and carefully studied them that night, concluding that King Louis was unable to pay the wages for those serving beyond their allotted time, and that the main force of the French army was very likely to retreat.

The opportunity arose, and Niels informed Hafdan in Aarhus that he was requesting reinforcements to launch a surprise attack on the French army during their retreat.

Schleswig is located in southern Denmark. If the Franks were to invade again, Schleswig would be the one to suffer the most. The only option would be to inflict heavy losses on the enemy and buy a few more years of buffer time.

Upon receiving the news, Hafdan dispatched 1,500 men by ship to Pomerania. The group was a mixed force, including Norwegian reinforcements and minor nobles from Sweden.

When Niels fled, he took a thousand soldiers with him. Now, Hafdan has thrown in a thousand five hundred ragtag troops, plus another thousand five hundred from the West Slavic tribes, bringing his forces to four thousand.

"enough."

The following week, as usual, Niels led his elite troops to harass supply convoys and deduced the enemy's retreat time based on correspondence.

Could it be a scam?
At this moment, he was filled with unease, suspecting that this was a trap set by Louis to lure the Vikings into attacking. Niels suffered from insomnia for several days as a result, until the main Frankish force retreated south as expected.

February 15th.

At eight o'clock in the morning, the sky was covered with leaden-gray clouds. A long marching column trudged laboriously across the snow, interspersed with many supply wagons of varying sizes. Most of these were civilian requisitioned vehicles of extremely poor quality; every now and then, a wagon could be seen lying on the ground, then being lifted by French soldiers to the roadside and abandoned. "Just how much have they looted?"

Niels lay on the low hill to the southeast, suspecting that southern Denmark had been sacked by this group and that even if the war was won, it would be impossible to return to the pre-war state in the coming years.

Soon, a small squad of Frankish cavalry came to scout the low hill. Looking around, they saw only a vast expanse of white snow. Their vigilance instantly relaxed, and they took out the salted meat from their pockets to replenish their strength.

Ten minutes later, the Frankish cavalry roared away to scout the woods further to the east. Instantly, the still snowfield seemed to come alive, and more than two hundred archers in white cloaks shook off the snowflakes and stretched their nearly frozen limbs.

Suddenly, the mournful cries of mounted scouts came from the woods to the east, revealing the ambush. Nils grabbed his bow and arrows and rushed to the top of the hill, leading his archers to unleash a rain of arrows on the French army.

At the same time, a deafening roar erupted from the forest, and more than 3,000 soldiers rushed out of the woods one after another, like a torrent surging towards the enemy's marching column.

The attack came too fast, too fiercely, and too unexpectedly! The hastily formed French formation collapsed, and the soldiers' terrified cries were drowned out by deafening roars and the clanging of weapons. Before the spearmen in the front ranks could even lower their spears, they were slammed to the ground by burly bodies wrapped in animal skins. Then, more Vikings squeezed through the gap, wielding one-handed axes to hack and smash the nearby enemies.

"Hold the line! Archers, return fire!"

The officer, draped in a scarlet cloak, reined in his horse and shouted, attempting to regroup. But a powerful arrow pierced his throat with deadly accuracy; his tall frame jerked violently, a strange gurgling sound emanating from his throat, before he tumbled headfirst off his horse.

With their commander assassinated, the 2,000-strong French vanguard fell into chaos, their morale plummeted, and they fled in different directions for their own survival.

"Don't pursue them, the enemy cavalry will be here soon!"

Niels gathered 3,500 men and ordered the wounded to be sent back to the woods for cover. The remaining troops did not stay or retreat into the woods, but instead retreated south along the road.

Not long after, a large contingent of French cavalry arrived at the battlefield, easily annihilating more than three hundred enemies scattered nearby. They then regrouped and pursued Nils' main force southward.

As they ran, they noticed the ground trembling more and more violently. Niels shouted, "Speed ​​up! Drop the spoils! We'll come back for them after we win!"

Some followed his advice, abandoning their belongings and fleeing desperately, while others, unwilling to give up their captured armor, gradually fell behind the ranks.

Soon after, Nils left the road and continued to flee southeast. At this time, he only had 2,500 men with him. Some soldiers deserted and ran away on their own, while others were caught and killed by French cavalry for carrying too much wealth.

At 9:30, the French cavalrymen crossed a slope, and the scenery ahead suddenly opened up. The terrain was flat and open, and a large group of light infantrymen were fleeing with a blue flag. The flag depicted three intersecting arrows and was Nils' personal flag.

"Charge over there and kill him."

The commander tightened the reins, the warhorse's forelegs kicked off the ground, its neigh piercing the cold air, leading nearly a thousand cavalrymen in a charge.

(End of this chapter)