Twenty warriors charged over the ridge, all but two on foot. Horned helms and braided horse-tails dancing as they run, long elaborate beards in various shades of red, more dark than light, over hardened leather armours, or dressed in chainmail. Some held axes, others swords and spears, or even both. A few shields mostly on the second row. Their boastful roars hurting their ears.

Galio’s order cut through the noise.

“STEADY!”

Lucius breathed once, cold air and snow plugging his nostrils, and his head throbbing. He loosened his right shoulder once, and set his heater shield proper, guige hanging loose, Bowen’s curse next to him barely registering, his muscles snapping all tense and the blade resonating before turning still in his hand.

The first Northman he pushed aside with his shield, the axe the man was holding bouncing back and slamming his owner in the face breaking his teeth, and Lucius sidestepping, attacked the one coming behind him. A hard swing, parallel to the ground at shoulder height, an executioner’s crude move, no one would praise in a tourney. The red-haired fighter never saw what happened. His friend went down, Lucius appeared in his place, clad in his crimson Alden armour, snarling tiger’s glaring eyes carved on his chestplate. The next moment his head was separated from his shoulders, a torrent of blood shooting upwards and Lucius had moved to his friend standing next to him, now attacking Bowen with a spear.

Lucius let go of his shield and cut down hard, sword held with both hands, taking the man’s left leg off at the knee. Down he went with a squeal of panicked agony and Bowen took his chance, cutting his own opponent across the face savagely, when he risked a backwards glance.

Not a minute into the attack, with the majority of their force locked on the shieldwall, Numbers right flank had cracked open.

Lucius turned his head towards the lip of the ridge while the fight raged, their side holding with Bowen’s help. He stared at the man with the riveted spangenhelm watching them, almost fifty meters away, brawny arms crossed on his chest. The man saw him as well and raised a spiked warhammer high.

Darn it!

“Post get here!” Lucius yelled back towards the treeline, as another wave of warriors jumped into view behind the man and started running towards them. The scout run holding his bow, Seia following him. “FIRE AT THEM! FAST AS YOU CAN!”

He charged the side of the shieldwall himself, right where Bowen was already duking it out with two Northmen, the rest of that first wave furiously hacking at their locked shields and defending, not always successfully, against the spear thrusts coming their way by Lucius’ people.

Half of them were maimed already, but Lucius had no idea how many people they’d lost themselves. As long as the wall is there, he thought slashing at the ribs of the first Northman he encountered opening him up like a trout. The man went down on his side and he kicked his face in, jumping on him to attack the next.

Everything turned into a blur. Snow falling, flakes as large as his hand, mud under his feet and the blood mixed with filth, turning black. He cut a warrior down, chest covered with bones, not all of them from animals, gore painting his arm to the elbow. Ducked under an axe swing, used his shield to stop another, small finger breaking and the pain shooting up his brain almost blinding.

The adrenaline fueling his resolve, he dropped the shield again, and punched his opponent in the face with his hurt hand, breaking his nose and another finger. Growling like a madman, he parried a spear away, steel tip grazing his sides, and opened the man from neck to navel in the return, his inwards spilling on his boots.

A warhammer caught him on the left shoulder, the plate bending, but holding. He stumbled back, arm useless and almost went down. Lucius stepped over a slain man, mouth hanging open grotesquely, face mauled; friend or foe he couldn’t tell and pirouetted away from the furious attacks the warrior unleashed on him.

“DIE YE FIENDISH BEAST!” Numbers snarled attacking again and again.

Lucius parried and dodged as best as he could, but he was forced back, his hand tiring, until perhaps for the same reason, his opponent stopped, appearing as wretched as he was and stepped back.

That’s him, Lucius thought, breathing heavy, his heart thundering and his whole body hurting from the exertion. He opened his mouth to taunt him into attacking again, but the Northman turned back and started slowly walking away, back towards the ridge, most of his men following. Those that could and they were a lot of them.

Lucius felt a steel shield on his back and chanced a glance, saw Galio’s strained bloody face, cheek guard gone, fever in his eyes and a smile on his cracked lips.

“Milord, kindly step behind the wall,” The sergeant offered surprisingly polite in his baritone voice. “So we can advance.”

“GAH!” Lucius groaned, when Roderick pushed his shoulder back in, almost biting his tongue clean off. He had set his two broken fingers crudely before that, wrapped them together and cut a hole in his glove to fit them through.

His stomach could only hold water.

“That’s that then,” Roderick spat and sat down next to him. Almost everyone sitting down where they stood, when they realized, there won’t be another attack right away.

“Do you think, they’ll wait for the snow to bury us?” He asked, touching a loose tooth with his tongue. He didn’t even remember getting hit in the face.

“We just licked ‘em good,” Roderick replied, deep cut on his right hand bandaged. “So they’ll talk about it some, try to come up with a better plan.”

“Is there one?”

“It will come down, to another attack, the way I see it.”

Lucius smacked his lips, saw Faustus get up and walk back a few feet to pay his respects to Hostus, still laying where he’d fallen and his face fell.

“Not the time,” Roderick stopped him, when he tried to get up himself. “Next time they come, they won’t back down. Keep your mind on this. Focus on how to win and leave the mourning for those that knew him better.”

“You did.” Lucius said looking at him.

“Aye, thirty fuckin’ years. Grew up together wit Hostus, we did. Right son of a bitch he was, but ye could count on him in a nasty pickle,” The last words spoken in a soft and mellow tone, a compliment much as the old man could give it.

“They hold the ridge, but they ain’t moving,” Post reported, skin cracked and bleeding where the frostbite had set. “They’ll wait for us to go to them, I reckon.”

Lucius cursed, the pain stopping him from clenching his fists proper.

They couldn’t march on them, he thought walking slowly towards the men and greeting them one by one. Roderick always following behind, a permanent frown on his face. Realized he knew all their names by now, months on the road. Bryn Bowens the Northman, the bodyguard cleaning his axe. Faustus, standing over the snow covered corpse of Hostus, a couple of fresh injuries added to the ones he carried already, hair more white than grey. Young Arrun next to him, face strained and eyes wild from the horrors he’d seen, now a proper veteran. The odd couple Post and Seia, going further up ahead to watch the Northmen, stopping to touch heads in a tender moment. The Ex-Legion guys Mamercus and Kaeso, clad in their worn out lamellar armour, taunt hard faces almost identical, going over the dead and looting weapons and valuables, the old sergeant Galio watching them a scowl on his face.

But they couldn’t wait them out as well. Not without making camp. They needed fire. Could they retreat towards the carriage? He stopped before Nonus Generidus the merchant, pot belly almost gone now that constant shiver still there. A long cleaver in his hand.

“Thought I told you, to wait with Canutia,” Lucius told him and the man fixed the cloth covering his face before answering. It hadn’t stopped snowing, but less was coming down now, than before.

“She send me. Kicked me out of the carriage,” The merchant explained. “No place for a man, cowering with the women, she said.”

“Zofia isn’t with her and she’s all woman,” Lucius noted with a rare smile.

“Said the same bloody thing. Canutia would give you the same answer, had you asked her, I think,” Nonus replied, a shiver almost doubling him over. The weather will kill him soon, Lucius thought. It will kill us all, if we stay.

“What answer is that?” He probed instead.

“She’s an O’ Dargan.”

“Tyeus curse her, what does this mean?” Lucius asked surprised.

Nonus pressed his eyes close, the white hurting him. They had a lot of red in them, when he opened them up again.

“I asked the same thing. Apparently she knows fuck all about cooking,” The merchant said and Lucius could tell he was smiling. An odd thing considering their situation. “But she’s handy with a blade.”

Yeah, Lucius thought searching for the redhead. Spotted her arguing with Dirk Curd the hybrid, skin all flushed and her leather vest unbuttoned, the heavy coat nowhere to be seen. Her leather pants muddied so much, they’d changed color.

Waiting wasn’t an option, he decided.

They had to fight.

“Have ye lost yer fuckin’ mind?” Roderick grunted moments later.

“We will do the same thing,” Lucius explained. “Form up and march on them in a line. We will stop at half an arrow’s throw, open up on them.”

“And charge?” Dirk asked, maimed fingers reminding Lucius of his own injury.

“No we won’t,” Lucius replied. “We’ll stand firm. Force them, to come at us.”

“What if they don’t?” Roderick asked and Mamercus explained it for him, Kaeso smirking next to his colleague, wearing three different gold rings and a heavy gold chain around his neck.

“Well,” Roderick said pensively, after he’d heard their plan. “I told the boys, I wasn’t coming back to Regia anyway. Just hope I die before ye Mamercus. I ain’t buryin’ yer nasty arse.”

The naphtha lit arrow smacked the Northman standing guard in the face and lit his head on fire. Three went up in flames, before a furious Benton walked up their lines and sent everyone charging down on them. Lucius saw him for a moment, standing back and talking to a heavily armoured Northman on horseback, mail hauberk with steel plates on his shoulders, large two-handed sword on his back. It was strange to him that the Warband leader so set on revenge, had chosen to remain behind. Even stranger was his foul weirdly satisfied smirk, much like his dead brother’s, when he spotted Lucius due to his distinct knight armour. Well that, and the sound of men fighting down the valley.

A lot of men.

The latter was lost as the Northmen came crashing on them and Lucius forgot about it for a time. Above their heads, hidden behind the dark clouds, the Sun moved slowly towards midday.

At least it had stopped snowing.