[Fan Fiction] The Forlorn Hope

I cleared it with u/MostlyReadNeverPost. He's a real internet author now that people are writing fan-fiction about his work. This was originally a microfiction I wrote to get a handle on my character for a friend's campaign (itself inspired by Steelshod). I thought it would be appropriate to set it in the world of Steelshod, however.

 

Being in those days not so removed from our own as to the problems and raiding of Svardic ships along the North Watch coast, it was by God’s grace that Helmsfurt was beset by Svards at such a time as hosting a squad of knights of the Order of Weisschlange. Thus foiled by the natural vigilance of these warriors of God, the Svards endeavored to surround the motte-and-bailey which was otherwise Helmsfurt’s sole defense. Unable to breach the palisade, nor deceive by strategical methods the Torathi knights to come out, the Svards resolved instead to besiege. It was a Weisschlangen knight, Tybalte di Nilano who enticed the Svardic ship-chief into a parlay. Tybalte di Nilano offered such grains, livestock, and baubles which might satisfy the pagan lust for worldly goods. Facing an insurmountable prey, but unwilling to beat an ignoble retreat, the ship-chief accepted the offer with but a single stipulation: that included in the ransom would be the various and sundry icons of Torath from Helmsfurt’s chapel.

 

The Svardic raiders did not scream or shout as in campfire stories-- rather they chanted. Low and rhythmic in brassy baritones and rich tenors. In another time and place it might've been soothing. Johann recalled the chanting of monks on the solstice, when dues were burnt in Torath’s name. There was God in the chanting but for the first time in his life Johann wondered whose god it was.

Nearby, Tybalte di Nilano argued with the local fyrdsman-- the leader responsible for raising levies in times of war. They argued about gold and God. There wasn't much else to argue about.

“We are known on the coast for the chapelry!” The fyrdsman said, looming over the smaller southerner. Tybalte was a coward, but the courageous sort. He would make a thousand energetic and logical defenses for his cowardice, never forsaking the battlefield of self-preservation.

“You shall be known for nothing if the Svards burn this town to ash.” Tybalte said. He jabbed a finger at Johann. “Caedian! Tell him. Tell him what happens if these pagans charge the motte-and-bailey.”

“A two-day for the siegework, sir. Build across the ditch. Then they spend another undermining the palisade. No rampart, so no fuss from us.” Johann replied without delay. Tybalte was a coward, a craven and cunning one even. But nonetheless a brother of the Order. “We would either sally out--and they've the numbers--or hold the line when they breach the palisade.”

“And in either, the numbers win out.” Tybalte crossed his arms over his chest, “Render the material unto the pagan, knowing yourself spiritually whole.”

“Without the chapelry and pilgrim-coin, how are we to replace the grain?” the fyrdmaster said, flush with anger and fear. “Grain that you promised, Cassaline.”

“Spatalian, I am Spatalian. And what are the Weisschlangen Knights to do to protect you? Are we to die nobly so that you may die ignobly?” Tybalte said, standing straight as an ashpole pike. This was his strength. This, the argument of necessity over emotionality. The cold equation. Gutless and irrefutable.

“Why the chapelry?” Johann asked, suddenly. Tybalte turned dark eyes to him but Johann pressed on. “Their ransom of the town is already all the pig-sucking silver they can carry.”

“They wish to take from us our God.” Tybalte replied. “Take ours like plunder and show theirs the superlative.” All present rankled. Despite their fear they were still of the faith. Such a challenge to Torath did not sit well with any of them.

“Are you not men of God?!” The fyrdmaster said, a wild and hunted look in his eyes. Johann had seen the look before. It was usually followed by the fall of a butcher’s cleaver.. Tybalte opened his mouth to strike again at the argument against self-preservation, but Johann interrupted.

“We are men of God. We shall fight.” Johann said, “One of us will meet them on the field. Like Sante Jorge before the tusked horror of the mountain. If they wish to spill the blood of Torathi, we shall oblige them.” From the corner of his eye, Johann saw Tybalte doing the math. Calculating. Weighing lives like a usurer weighed coin. Tybalte did not immediately object.

“They are of the Aett Bjorning.” Tybalte said after some time. The fyrdmaster furrowed his brow, and Tybalte directed his gaze to the enemy encampment. “There, that sentry. Do you see his shield? On it is the husmerk of a Svardic warrior. A debased kind of heraldry-- that one stands for Bjorn the Mange and those who follow him.” “Will they accept a champion?”

“They will.” Tybalte said with more surety than Johann would have offered. “The Aett Bjorning are familiar with the custom and practice it even among themselves. We will offer the chapelry if they beat our champion.”

“What do they risk?”

“Half.” Johann said. “Half the hen-fucking ransom.”

“Why not nothing?” the fyrdmaster asked, “Send them away empty-handed.”

“The Svards are proud. Their ship-chief would not risk leaving empty-handed. Half is good.” Tybalte said, waving towards Filipe. “Get my horse and the flag of parlay. I will announce the challenge to the Svardic ship-chief.”

 

This being their way to prove the supremacy of their craven pagan demons over He who is holy and greatest, Torath, the One True God. This was displeasing to Tybalte di Nilano as it should be to any faithful, and the parlay broke down nearly to violence. It was to mutual decision thus that the Svards would choose amongst themselves a champion, and so too among the Torathi knights would be one to represent the whole defense of Helmsfurt. These champions would engage in battle to the very death, with the stakes as outlined by the parlay of Tybalte di Nilano and the Svardic ship-chief: if the pagan champion should prevail the Svards would leave with the promised ransom as well as the gold chapelry which had given Helmsfurt some modest notoriety. And if the Torathi knight should prevail the Svards would leave with but half the promised ransom.

It is unknown by what means the northmen chose their champion, except that the chanting and swaying of figures by firelight held all the form of some vile pagan rite. And of the Svardic champion it is said that he called out his name as Sweyn Hamundarson, standing broad shouldered and straight backed and carrying a round shield which bore on it the fetid husmerk of the Aett Bjorning. And it is said that he rattled and swashed against that shield a sword, and at his hip a curved knife which it is said the northmen use in ritual slaughter for their brutish gods. And his helmet curved with two elk horn, much to the contrary of the round and unadorned batttle-helm which most Svards preferred.

 

“Torath preserve-- I was not asked to lay down my life for these peat-muckers!” bellowed one of the men. There were twenty of them, all gathered around Tybalte di Nilano. They had just been told that one of their number would have to march out of the palisade to meet the Svardic champion.

They had all seen him. None wished to go.

“Aye! Tha’s mad-wise to make such a deal. Tha’s nay a brother to sneak it up on us like such.” cut in Awl Brenner with his curious, slurring accent. “Make champion thaself--”

“It will be lots, my little lads,” Johann called over the growing din. He lowered but did not soften his voice. “The fyrdmaster shall not know you are recruits. He shall think you proper knights of the Weisschlange.”

“Pigs to the slaughter, then? One of us, e’en before we are proper anointed?” came a voice near the back. “You do it wrong, sir, that is not how Torath should have us be. You should not cast us before the pagan.”

“You’re all dog-fucking bastards,” Johann said, once more in his drill-serjeant stentorian. “But you are my little lads, and whomever is chosen by lots shall go. God wills it.”

Tybalte di Nilano’s eyes, dark and hooded in thought, never left Johann.

 

Among the Torathi it was resolved to draw by lots who should champion the cause of God, for such was the clamor to prove upon the pagans the preeminence of Him! Of reports that the lots were drawn of fear of death is but the slander and libel of the faithless, Godless, and heathen who know not His grace nor the grace of them who bear the snake-sigil. Lots drawn in the usual fashion produced for Helmsfurt a champion of Caedian birth, who stood nearly as tall as the Svard and bore at his hip an axe as the woodsman might, so too a round shield emboldened with the very symbol of Torath that He would be as a bulwark for the knight’s bulwark. And in his hand he carried a spear common in Caedia not unlike a boar-spear, having at its head a cross guard of metal for the hooking and breaking of pikeheads. It being an invention for the short-order phalanxes common to the siegework of Caedian forts, where the voulge is more useful than the pike at that place where a wall has fallen. In this manner and so outfitted the Caedian knight met the Svard outside the motte-and-bailey and outside the Svardic encampment.

 

“Sit still, Johann.” Tybalte said quietly. The two were astride the largest horses they’d been able to find in what remained of Helmsfurt's stables. “Sit still and look the fierce warrior of Torath that they expect.”

“Easy for you to say you twice-stripped hambone,” Johann grunted, “I’ve never taken to the saddle in my life.”

“Simply do not fall off.”

The Svards were taking their time. The champion and the ship-chief walked across the field towards them as the reaving party hollered and slammed weapon to shield-face. Even this far off, a beat was palpable.

“He’s taller than me.” Johann said.

“Stronger, too. He was with the ship-chief when we parlayed.”

“Younger?”

“Yes. He’ll break your spear soon as he can. Then his is the advantage of reach.”

Johann craned slightly to look at the ground before them.

“Too muddy for a Caedian?”

“A swamp would barely be muddy for a Caedian. He’ll have the reach, then.”

“Do you wish my sword?” Tybalte asked, glancing over at the other knight. Johann shook his head.

“No. Hatchet and knife-work.”

“He has the size even if you negate his reach. And the strength. You must have him by skill.”

Johann considered this with the slow deliberation of the damned.

“Verlatenhoop.” he said, “I’ve never had much in the way of skill, but this is the verlatenhoop. I may yet have some chance.”

“I don’t recognize the word. Krieger-tongue? ‘Sad-something’?” Tybalte asked, watching Johann. “What is it’s meaning?”

“Siegework is a dull affair, southerner, until it isn’t. We’re a sieging people, us Caedians. The start of it is for people like you, Tybalte. Cunning fellows scribbling notes and counting out rations, setting the range on onagers and trebuchet. But eventually the wall comes down,” Johann explained. The Svards were close, now, and seemed to speak aside to one another in much the same manner as Johann and Tybalte did. “When that happens, the besieged shove as many duck-sucking fools into the breach as they can. It bristles with shield and speartip. In Kriegany they call the first damned buggers to charge them verlatenhoop. The forlorn hope.”

“I see.” Tybalte said, the distant coldness in his voice telling Johann that he was already calculating.

“In Caedia it used to be the only way a peasant could get land-- if he could survive a verlatenhoop. It breeds desperation in all that blood and clamor. Seen weak-wristed men hew like a proper axemen, in a verlatenhoop.” Johann swung off his horse unsteadily, taking his shield and spear from its back as well. “I don’t imagine there was ever a chance that I did not draw the lot, was there?”

Tybalte did not answer immediately. The Svard hammered his weapon against his shield and shouted some challenge in his native tongue.

“You politick weasel. It was my idea, I suppose.”

“Do many men volunteer for the forlorn hope, Johann?” he called as the Caedian squared up against his opponent.

“No.” Johann said, his eyes not leaving those of the pagan warrior in front of him. “Usually they’re drawn by lot.”

 

The Svard bore down on the Caedian with the usual and frightful pagan fury, and this being no shieldwall the Svard smote the knight’s spear in two. But such was the knight’s battle-wise that he turned the Svard’s next blow with his hatchet, and struck him as to divest of him the sword. But so entangled, each bore off the other’s shield, and grappled wherefore none could tell who would prevail. Ever is it so that God will not hand to the unworthy what has not been purchased in leal piety, nor is it said that God will curtail the efforts of His faithful by handing them such easy victories. So it was that by the pagan knife did the Svard disarm the knight of his axe and strike him such a terrible blow to the chest that the curved knife was not so easily removed. So battle-wise was the Caedian, however, and so buoyed by love and fear of God Most High that he endeavored to embrace the weapon such that it could not be removed. And so too entangled and grappled the Svard’s arms likewise and held onto him with the terrible fury of Torath himself. Thus advantaged, he rained blow upon blow upon the Svard with his own forehead (it being often called the “Caedian Kiss” for the reputation warriors of that land have in dispensing them with frequency). And such blows did he continue until the Svard expired to his very death. So the raiding party departed with but a pittance ransom, and for his parlay and strategical device Tybalte di Nilano was landed Helmsfurt thereafter. Of the Caedian knight nothing more is reported except that he lost his eye in the exchange with Sweyn Hamundarson, and later bore the standard at Brennar’s Pass to some small notoriety.