Life of Leadership: Trial by Combat part 2
Life of Leadership: Trial by Combat part 2
| In-universe date | Era Nova, November–December, Year 7 |
| Real-world date | 2026-11-01 |
| Author | Valdemar Hvide |
| Category Type | Character News |
He had hoped for too much.
The so-called portal did not give a day's worth of wait before the creatures started to emerge from it. A whole horde of them.
The first report had arrived with little warning. Something had happened, and the forces left to watch the portal were struggling to contain it.
Valdemar could not wait for further clarification, as for what he knew, waiting would have made the situation worse. So he gathered what Huscarls that could be rallied in short time and marched north.
By the time he arrived, the situation had already deteriorated.
The creatures had advanced beyond the portal, attacking anything in their path. Some were nothing more than skeletons, their bones dark as coal. Others still had flesh, if you could call the rotten meat that, and then there were those slimes made of lava.
As for the Huscarls on watch duty, well, the bodies lying around the fields clearly show their fate.
Yet, there was little time for strategy, as creatures rushed toward them, hungry for more. The Huscarls just manage to get into a shieldwall before they came crashing down, as they threw themselves against the shieldwall.
One creature was met with a spear through its chest, only to keep moving until another Huscarl brought his axe down upon its head. Arrows flew overhead, finding their marks among the horde, but did not make a dent in their numbers.
Valdemar had commanded armies in peacetime before, but there was something different about fighting creatures that did not seem to fear death. They did not retreat, nor hesitate. They simply kept coming.
A creature lunged toward him, and he barely manged to blocked it, before one of the Huscarls struck it down. Another forced its way into the line, dragging a soldier down before it was cut down by several huscarls
Valdemar fought alongside his Huscarls, his first trial of combat, and hopeful the only one for some time.
Slowly, the number of creatures started to shrink, then the horn of reinforcements was heard as another 200 huscarls hit the horde from the east. The creatures were driven slowing back toward the structure, one bloody step at a time. Eventually, the fighting dying down as nothing more seemed to come from the portal
The silence that followed was one of the most unsettling times Valdemar had experienced in his time.
Only when the fighting was well over, did the civilians arrive, including Kirkebæk and the priests from the Sogn.
Valdemar remembered seeing his scholar approach the structure with no fear at all, his eyes fixed upon the still-open portal, as if he was consumed by a unseen madness. While the priests began to speak about what this could mean, Kirkebæk seemed almost unable to contain his curiosity.
The Sogn had at this point agreed among themselves, that this must be a trial put forward by the Godking to test the people of Istrania, a trial that they had been won.
Whether it was a trial or not.
Valdemar did not care.
