-----------------------------
If there are spelling mistakes, please let me know.
Leave a comment; support is always appreciated.
I remind you to leave your ideas or what you would like to see.
-------------------------------
Anno Domini 827,September-20-26
Pov of Sigurd
Great raids had taken place, and many of our own had passed through the gates of Valhalla with honor, filling their fathers and ancestors with pride. They died as a man should die: hands stained with blood, amid the agonized screams of our enemies, without retreat. That was also the day we learned that our jarl knew how to raid by sea.
My days of training in Svearike had finally borne fruit. My father always said I was destined to be a great warrior. When he captured my mother and took her as a concubine, he swore he had never known a woman so fierce, and that from such a union only someone worthy of wielding an axe could be born. He said I would join the hird of a great man, or lead warriors as far as the salt water reached.
Fate, however, came in the least expected way.
When my father returned from his business in Miklagarðr, something had gone wrong. We learned that he had been captured in battle and sold as a slave in that very city. The news was bitter, but also strange, because his absence had lasted longer than usual and we had already assumed he was dead. But he returned. Almost with his entire crew.
That was how we learned of the existence of his savior: a Roman.
That was unusual. According to my father, Romans fit into only two categories: either they were idiots, or they were venomous snakes. There was no middle ground. Long ago they had been the most powerful empire the world had ever known, and yet they collapsed because they could not stop stabbing each other in the back.
That was why it was so strange to learn that my father had sworn an oath. He would serve as a servant for a time, while teaching our language, and the Roman had kept his word. I thought then that he must belong to the first category: an imbecile.
Especially because he gave my father a set of armor and swords of extraordinary quality. Apparently he was a smith, and one of the best in Miklagarðr. He handed over his belongings without needing to have them taken by force.
But it soon became clear that he was not so foolish.
He made my father swear before the All-Father that he would honor the agreement, that he would return to deliver the profits, and that he would also offer us lands under his rule. At first I thought they would be poor lands, but my father spoke of their fertility with uncommon enthusiasm. He wanted to leave as soon as possible and settle there, even though moving everything and selling what would not fit on a ship would take time. There was no option but to sell the armor and swords and return to Miklagarðr.
My father insisted on serving him. He was not only a smith: he had also been a Roman soldier, and he seemed like a man destined to gain prestige. So we traveled.
It did not take me long to understand why my father was so determined. He wanted to pay one life for another. To protect him as he himself had been protected, to settle a debt that had spared him a death without honor, a death that would have condemned him to wander Helheim instead of sitting in Valhalla.
So I swore to protect his life, though I was not sure that man was worthy of my service.
It turned out there was a third kind of Roman.
A blend of serpent and honor.
Basil. That was his name.
He was a great smith. He personally forged an armor for me, so resilient it seemed capable of withstanding almost any blow. But that was not all. He was cunning as a fox, strong as a boar, and had a tongue as sharp as a serpent's fang.
Tall by Roman standards, he was a fearsome warrior. Several of my father's best men, veterans hardened by a thousand battles, could barely keep up with him. More than once I ended up eating dust before his techniques.
But what truly made him dangerous was his mind. He adapted quickly, and his tongue was as useful as his sword. He spoke Bulgarian fluently, and I saw him use it to deceive the Bulgars, gather information, and pass himself off as one of them. That was how he secured great plunder and enormous numbers of prisoners.
That was when I knew my fate was being fulfilled. I had found a great man to serve, one beside whom I would almost certainly end my days with a sword through my body and the valkyries carrying me to the great hall.
Then came the campaign in Crete, which was entertaining… until we had to watch Basil lock himself away to work on one of his creations. A machine capable of bringing down walls. Seeing it in action was astonishing. Walls that the Romans claimed would take months, even years, to fall were breached in what felt like a short time. We did not have the usual machines, and yet we forced our way in.
There I saw how the Roman snakes nearly killed our jarl before my eyes. I almost tore the head off the idiot who gave the order when I stabbed him again and again in the neck.
And then, at last, we could devote ourselves to what we did best. Raiding, taking slaves, fighting, and sailing. We reached the coasts of Africa, where the heat was barely bearable. The women were exotic. The plunder as well. There were things I had never seen before.
Basil, however, sometimes seemed more interested in books than in captive women or gold. While others coveted flesh and silver, he took the texts, opened them, and read them. He knew how to read, and he also spoke the language of the sarakenoi.
That, more than any sword, made me understand how dangerous he truly was.
We looted Djerba completely in just two days. We carried out more than five attacks against numerous villages in the area, chasing those who fled inland across the island and taking control of all the small fortifications. The plunder was immense: gold and silver coins, swords, armor, slaves, food, spices. We had enormous quantities of wealth, but Basil had a more ambitious plan, because he had set his sights on a large city… a city we normally would not have known how to enter, since it was larger than our numbers.
"Sigurd, I need you to have wood ready to build ladders, and make sure everyone practices how to hold them and climb with their eyes blindfolded," Basil said as he put on the clothes of one of the farmers whose goats we had stolen.
"What for?" I asked, intrigued, watching how he dressed exactly like our victims.
"I have a plan… but I need you all to be able to follow the idea… so practice that. Hold ladders, climb walls blindfolded, and try not to kill yourselves," Basil said. By then, he looked no different from a sarakenoi shepherd.
"And where are you going? Do you need me to go with you? It could be dangerous," I said.
"Of course it will be, but I can't travel with a giant over two meters tall at my side. Besides, you don't even speak Arabic. I have a slight accent I can hide, but how do I justify you being next to me? A Varangian slave from the north, owned by a farmer? How would he have gathered the gold to buy such a slave?" Basil said, raising an eyebrow.
"True… but in Bulgaria you did something similar. We were close. What happens if they discover you?" I said, staring at him.
"He who does not risk, does not win. Besides, I've studied my role well. I'm a goat herder from the village we just looted, heading to sell animals in the market of Tripoli. I carry coins: a dirham, a silver coin, and several fals, the savings of my entire family, to buy salt, dates, and grain. The goats have ropes with knots one meter apart, and I'll measure the city walls using Thales' theorem, saying I lost some goats and I'm looking for them if anyone asks why I'm near the walls… and that way we'll have ladders of the perfect size to climb," Basil said with great confidence.
"That… is clever," I said, surprised.
"It is. These small villages we take with muscle and violence. Here, we'll win with intelligence. Oh, and by the way, take those garments over there. Grind that charcoal and mix it with egg white. That way we'll have a dark paint to blacken the clothes. We'll need them," he said as he headed toward the harbor.
"Alright… anything else?" I asked as I followed close behind him and he herded the goats along.
"Make sure no ship that you can see manages to pass. That would put me in a bad position inside the city and raise questions if news arrives of villages being attacked," Basil said as he boarded a sarakenoi vessel. The sailors, dressed in local clothes, began taking him toward the coast.
As soon as he was gone, we began working on what he had ordered.
I gave the command for training to begin immediately. We took ladders and practiced constantly how to place them and how to climb them. We also dyed the long, full-body garments the locals wore to endure the heat, turning them a dark color.
Three days passed.
We attacked five ships that passed near the island. They tried to flee, but none was faster than a drakkar driven by oars. We boarded them quickly and brought them back to the harbor, chaining the captives to the oars of the Roman dromons.
At last, Basil returned from his journey. This time without goats, but with several silver coins.
"The city walls are eight and a half meters high… and the inner fortress nine," he said as soon as he saw me. "There are several watchtowers covering the sea, so we won't be able to approach too closely with the drakkars. We'll land earlier and, at dusk, in three days, we'll kill the guards in those towers so we can move the ships closer to the city," Basil said, immediately calling the carpenters.
He began working on ladders of the exact size he had requested.
We trained with Basil on how we were to move. For what we would do, we would use only those dark clothes, no armor, and carry only swords, bows, and arrows. We practiced climbing walls blindfolded and placing ladders by feel until it started to go smoothly.
We were distracted only once, when we chased a sarakenoi military ship. We outnumbered it. Twenty drakkars surrounded it and showered it with arrows from all sides.
When the day Basil had indicated arrived, we boarded our ships and began moving toward an area he had already marked.
It was dusk. We landed on a beach where nothing could be seen nearby.
We put on the black clothes we had prepared, and a group of barely fifty of us began to follow him.
As the sun sank, I understood why Basil wanted to strike on that day. Hati was about to catch Mani, and the moon gave no light.
There would be total darkness.
We began moving quickly through the area, identifying the watchtowers Basil had pointed out. Soon we noticed that one of them had three guards. They weren't really watching anything. They sat around a fire, with one man in the tower looking toward the sea, and beyond that small circle of light, nothing at all could be seen.
We moved without speaking. We drew our bows at the same time and released. All three fell before making a sound. I watched the one in the tower collapse, rolling until he lay half-buried in the sand.
In total darkness we advanced like shadows. If not for the faint sound of our steps, no one could have known that we were more than a handful of men moving together.
We attacked more towers. One after another. In a short time we had eliminated the guards from ten towers, until at last we saw the city walls, the same ones Basil had been focused on from the beginning.
There were guards patrolling the walls, few of them, and they carried torches. That made them clearly visible as they walked back and forth.
"Good. As we practiced. We'll wait until they move away from that tower near the sea, climb up, and one man will return to signal the ships to approach," Basil said as he began moving forward, crouched low.
We moved at his pace.
"Everyone down," he suddenly said.
He dropped flat to the ground and we all did the same. When I lifted my head slightly, I noticed a guard looking down from the wall, but he did not stop and continued his patrol.
"Let's continue," Basil murmured.
We pressed ourselves against the wall and advanced. I noticed a fixed light above us. It didn't move. We waited. Finally, the torch began to move toward the tower we wanted to take.
"Now," Basil said.
We placed the ladder immediately. Basil climbed like a cat, agile and silent. In a moment he was already at the top.
I tried to follow his pace, but halfway up I heard a crack. I thought it was the ladder, but I kept climbing. When I reached the wall, I saw the guard was already dead, and Basil was dragging him into the tower.
More of our men climbed up. We moved closer to Basil, who was checking the guard's pockets. He pulled out a key and used it to open the door without a sound.
He pushed the door open gently and then raised a finger to where his mouth would be. He drew a dagger.
"At my signal, we kill everyone inside. Cover their mouths."
We all nodded.
Basil made no sound as he walked. He moved differently than when he wore armor. Inside the tower we saw several guards sleeping, snoring, unaware of what awaited them. Basil pointed to them one by one.
We spread out across the room. At his signal, we covered the guards' mouths and cut their throats. They barely let out muffled sounds as blood began to run across the floor.
When we were certain, I heard a voice ask something from above.
Basil answered in Arabic.
We heard footsteps. Someone began descending the stairs . As soon as a foot appeared, Basil grabbed it hard and slammed the man into the floor. The impact was dull direct in the head. Before he could react, Basil was on top of him, dagger at his throat and a hand covering his mouth.
And silence returned.
"Good. We're secure. Let the others come. We'll secure a gate and the city will be ours… but we'll see if we can also take the fortress. With that, everything will be ours," Basil said as he changed clothes, taking those of the first guard whose neck he had broken.
-----------------------------
If there are spelling mistakes, please let me know.
Leave a comment; support is always appreciated.
I remind you to leave your ideas or what you would like to see.
-------------------------------