Vikings: Lords of the Ice Sea

Chapter 6 Accident
After an unknown amount of time, the guests fell asleep one after another on the tables, and the banquet gradually came to an end. Only the faint crackling sound of the campfire remained in the lord's hall.

"Drink, keep drinking,"

Ragnar rubbed his throbbing, aching head and noticed a sliver of pale light filtering through the crack in the door. Several noisy ravens perched on the roof beams, scrambling for a dirty piece of pork.

Its daybreak?
He stretched contentedly and noticed a strange woman standing blankly not far away. He casually ordered, "Maid, pour me a glass of mead."

Soon, a maid brought over a full glass of dark yellow liquid. Ragnar complained, "They're trying to fool me with this inferior stuff? Is King Eric out of wine?"

Ragnar waved the maid away and was about to drink his wine when his wife, who had just woken up, snatched the glass from his hand and drank it all in one go.

"Hey, why didn't you leave me any? I just can't do anything with you."

Ragnar walked along the long table, its surface strewn with cups and plates, and finally found a jug of mead that was mostly empty. He picked it up and showed it off to his wife:

"This is the finest stuff for banquets. Would you like some?"

He looked at Lagsa triumphantly. Just as she was about to say something, she suddenly vomited a pool of dark red blood and her slender body collapsed to the ground.

News of the assassination of the guest quickly spread throughout Oslo, and King Eric ordered soldiers to seal off the entire settlement, vowing to find the murderer.

According to Nordic tradition, the host has an obligation to ensure the safety of guests during banquets. Now that a guest has been poisoned in the Lord's Hall, if Eric doesn't provide an explanation soon, who will dare to attend banquets in Oslo in the future?
After searching for a while, soldiers from various units came to report that the woman suspected of poisoning had escaped. According to witnesses, shortly after she fled, Lord Borg also fled with his men.

Upon hearing this news, Ivar's roar echoed throughout the lord's longhouse:

"I'm going to kill him, smash every bone in his body alive!"

"I will go with you!" Eric stopped wasting words, gathered all the soldiers and guests, and including the bored civilians who were just watching the show, a total of eight hundred people were gathered, and they set off in a grand procession to Lord Borg's territory.

Lord Borg's settlement was called Tusbbi, located northeast of Oslo, more than 100 kilometers away. The group traveled for four days and, upon arriving at their destination, found the local inhabitants building a fence.

"We were unprepared during peacetime, and now it's too late."

From Vig's perspective, this fortification lacked arrow towers and had no trenches dug on the outside; at best, it was just a fence to defend against wild animals.

Upon discovering the arrival of a large number of warriors, Tushbi was thrown into chaos. Slaves who were working abandoned their tools and fled in all directions. Their masters had no time to chase after them and instead hurriedly escaped into the settlement before the wooden doors closed.

A few minutes later, Borg ordered his men to bring out a cart piled high with four corpses—two large and two small—along with five parchment scrolls. "The assassins were hired by the widow of the former Lord of Gothenburg. I have nothing to do with them! These are the bodies of the assassins and the lord's family. I swear in the name of Odin that everything I have said is true!"

However, at this point, the truth is no longer important.

First, Eric had to appease Ragnar's anger and get him to willingly lead the way. Second, he had led eight hundred men through mountains and rivers, expending a great deal of food; he couldn't let the journey be in vain, so he had to plunder something as compensation.

"Attack!" With a muffled horn call, hundreds of archers formed a loose horizontal line, drew their bows, and fired a volley of arrows at the settlement, followed by a second volley, and a third.
At the same time, more than twenty soldiers charged forward with round shields, and the villagers shot arrows at them through the firing holes left in the wooden fence, but the effect was not good, and only one person was hit in the calf.

When they reached a distance of ten meters, the soldiers swung iron hooks at the wall in front of them, then tied the ropes at the ends of the hooks to the backs of thirteen packhorses, and whipped their hindquarters with leather whips.

Huff, huff.

Under the intense pain, the packhorse pulled desperately backward, sweat dripping from its thick mane onto the soil, its heavy breathing sounding like an old, broken bellows.

Soon after, with a loud "crack," the packhorses used their brute force to tear open a section of the fence, creating a gap about ten meters wide.

Without Eric's prompting, the impatient warriors surged into the breach like a tidal wave. Led by the Ragnar father and sons, the enemy's hastily erected shield wall was more fragile than thin wooden planks. At this point, the outcome of the siege was no longer in doubt.

"Why did they all rush in? We didn't leave any reserves?"

Swept up by the crowd and rushing into the village, Vig realized a serious problem: if the enemy had set up an ambush in the woods outside the village and suddenly attacked to block the village exit, and then set the village on fire, more than a thousand people, including himself, would die!

A lack of organization will inevitably lead to losses sooner or later.

Just as he was pondering how to change the situation, a dark figure attacked from the left. Vig instinctively raised his shield to block, plunging his iron sword deep into the enemy's instep. He then pulled the sword back a small step, and while the enemy was off balance, the tip of his sword pierced straight into the enemy's throat.

"No!"

The next moment, a woman charged at him with a shield, but due to the large size difference, she was knocked to the ground by Vig's round shield and then finished off with a finishing blow.

To be honest, stabbing someone's instep is a very dishonorable act, but Vig couldn't care less about that for the time being. He lacked combat experience and could only resort to some relatively cunning tactics.

"According to later archaeological research, the average height of adult males in Northern Europe during the Viking Age was 170cm. I am not yet sixteen years old, and my height is about the same as that of an average adult male. If I grow a few more years, I may reach the range of 180-190cm, at which point I will be able to deal with most enemies."

In contrast, Britain is primarily an agricultural society, and the lower classes lack access to meat. The average height of men is only 165cm, putting them at a significant disadvantage in small-scale conflicts.

After a moment's thought, he concluded that he should eat more meat and exercise more. Since Ragnar would provide the food, he could just eat and drink to his heart's content; the stronger his body, the higher his chances of survival in this era.

A few minutes later, Vig followed the crowd to the lord's longhouse, where he was suddenly stopped by Ivar, who was covered in blood. "Have you seen Borg?"

"No, I only killed two grunts, I didn't see any armored warriors." Seeing this fierce-looking man, Vig didn't want to provoke him, so he made an excuse to send him away. "Could this guy have pretended to be a civilian and run away?"

Upon hearing this, Ivar rushed towards the stables, carrying a nicked iron sword. There was only one trembling slave left there, who confessed that Borg had run away at the beginning of the war and had deliberately put on a cloak and changed into civilian clothes.

(End of this chapter)