Chapter 13, Legendary Build

Tanya

I was drinking a lovely cup of alcohol as I sat against a tree, patting Geri behind the ears. I had already prepared several dozen explosive ammunition balls and a few piercers as well on the trip to the castle Lord Farthegn inhabited. So I was getting better at casting the spells into the runes though the more I used the energies and the more I was noticing strangeness to them. From what memories I had been able to unlock my magic had come from within, this magic seemed to come from outside myself but I could direct it. And there were two types of magic present, I could just barely feel the difference but it was definitely there.

Type 1, the type I had been using the most, seemed to come from the planet itself. It just seemed to radiate from the dirt, the trees, everything as if Fenris itself was a conductor for magic. Type 2 seemed weaker, I could only just sense it below whatever type 1 was and it felt… it had a feeling to it that wasn't like type 1.

Type 1 felt alive, grounded, and refined. Type 2 felt dirty, unrefined, and distant as if it was coming from further away than type 1. I should be focusing more on the siege in front of me but I was basically just sitting back and letting my men throw rocks at the Castle at the moment, so I had time to think about the concept of magic.

What about more data points? I couldn't make a good estimate but I had a distinct feeling that what I was feeling was the exact same magic. Type 2 was more unrefined and everywhere while type 1 was something that had been refined here on Fenris. What was doing that refining was up for debate. I wondered if the Allfather, as he had dubbed himself, might have some sort of hand in that. After all my original theory was it was some kind of AI caretaker, could one of its duties have been to refine some sort of cosmic energy that existed in this universe for ease of use for the people of this planet.

Without more details I would never know. I guess I could try and search the caves that I've been warned about going down into. I would assume the answer to the question is usually the place you're told not to go to, but the reality was that I didn't care that much. As long as the power stayed useful, safe for me, and helped me get to my retirement I didn't care where it came from.

Well… Feeling energy was new. I was not exactly a spiritual sort, and here I was attempting to feel the energy out and try and understand where it came from. Granted I was applying the scientific method to it, trying to understand it from some sort of reasonable take other than oh it's just magic. This was some sort of energy, even if the source of this energy was yet to be determined. I might not be the one to figure it out but I would at least try. That would at least alleviate my concerns of religious overtones.

My thoughts though were interrupted as the hackles on Geri raised. Normally I would probably be wondering why that was happening but I could feel it too. That type 2 energy just increased tenfold and seemed to be coming from the castle that we were laying siege to. It was a disturbing and corrupting Force that felt like it was pushing the type one energy away and down, smothering it.

I stood up from where I had been sitting, looking around and trying to figure out what the hell was going on. I quickly noted that I appeared to be the only one feeling it. At least among the humans. They all seemed to be going about their jobs like nothing had happened, though I noted my wolves were definitely on edge at feeling the disturbing energies flowing from the castle.

Wait. I wasn't the only one looking off, I saw the wolf priest looking a bit disturbed as well, pushing his way through the crowd towards me. I moved in his general direction, wanting to find out what he knew on this subject.

The wolf priest pushed past the last couple people and stood in front of me, breathing heavily before saying, "my lady, I regret to inform you it appears that lord Farthegn has engaged in his dark magic once again."

"Dark magic once again?" I asked questioningly, looking at him, "What dark magic has he engaged in before and what dark magic is he engaged in right now?"

"The Lord of this Castle has an item that allows him to call upon the Ice Fiends for his protection. He doesn't use it often because it often sets back his plans but it's his guarantee of survival trick. Normally he only turns it on at a low rate, letting the fiends come in at a trickle. It feels like he doesn't like having his castle blowing apart underneath him and has pushed whatever this item is to its fullest extent."

I nodded my head as I understood what he was saying. Well, I understood the concept at the very least. The nature of this item left me a bit perplexed, but overall it didn't matter what it was.

Lord Farthegn had an item that was calling monsters to fight me, he turned it up on full which meant we probably had an hour before we were surrounded by creatures who ate humans. Which meant I did not have the time to lay back and let the siege engines demolish the castle piece by piece until he came out and fought himself.

"Well, looks like I'm going to have to learn to climb," I muttered, turning to look at the castle and trying to figure out what I would need to do to get inside. There were plenty of guards around the walls I could see and a lot of them had bows. Any movement in that direction would result in arrow holes in me. Maybe I could keep the artillery going as I tried to climb? It would keep them down and give me the opportunity. What I needed was some sort of cover, massive cover and a distraction. A way to white out the field so they couldn't see what I was doing. Wait… There was something that could be done with that concept, wasn't there?

Taking a breath I looked at the wolf priest and nodded, saying "Thank you for telling me this information and I will deal with this promptly." Looking in the direction of my sub-commanders who were having a conversation with Jarl Bretakollrsson, I moved over there and said "Gentlemen according to our priest the enemy is about to engage in dark magic, and he's summoning Ice Fiends from the wilds. We have a bit of a warning and probably an hour to set up."

They looked at me, a bit stunned, before sub Commander yellow said "Okay, that's not good. Do we have a plan for dealing with this?"

"Unfortunately not yet. I have an idea that might buy us some time but the fact of the matter is that our best option is to withdraw from the siege to our camp and fortify it as best we can." Thankfully I just trained the majority of my army on how to set up a defensive camp so it wouldn't be much harder to increase those defenses.

Sub Commander green red asked "So we pull back to our camp, build up our defenses, and hope we can kill more of them than they can kill of us while hoping the dark magic is not too terrible? Well, that sounds like a very great way to go out. Just in case we don't make it out of this, Tanya, can I just say how much I've enjoyed being part of your army? The fights are always a lot more than bash one line against the other till someone gives up."

"You're welcome, I guess," I said, remembering all of a sudden that the people before me were basing their culture on Vikings. Or were Vikings, still out on all the details. Dying in glorious battle was good for them. Dying in glorious battle against an evil sorcerer probably was the stuff of Legends to them. Well, at least morale would be high I figured.

"I have a possible strategy that could buy us some time but we need to pull back everyone to the camp and just start building up our defenses. Cut down trees, dig trenches, if there's anything you can do, do it." Looking at Geri, I said, "Follow them, dig and carry." Geri nodded, understanding the orders. He would organize the wolves to do the job. And with men and wolves working together I believe we could get this camp so fortified the Ice Fiends would never be able to take the camp.

"And this powerful strategy is what exactly?" jarl Bretakollrsson asked from his seated position.

"Man up there decides he's going to be a dark sorcerer? Guess I have to meet him in combat on his own fields." I answered with a shrug. The commanders chuckled at that and left, seeming to take my snarkiness as overconfidence. It was better than nothing and better than a depressed morale.

I took a few steps away before pulling out the rune beads I had been given so long ago, and shifted them around till I reached the desired calculation. Holding them between my hands I began channeling the energy from Fenris as best I could, focusing it to run through the calculations on the rune beads. Said beads began to immediately get colder in my hands dropping the temperature below the ambient temperature.

There was a lot of energy I needed to channel but I focused and kept at it, pushing more and more through the beads until I could feel it building up around me. The repulsive dirty energy that I had been sensing since lord Farthegn started using his mysterious item felt like it was being pushed away from me and the area around me swirling about.

I was so focused on working this spell that I lost track of exactly how long I was doing it. I was only aware that something had changed when Commander Eilifsson grabbed my shoulder and shook it, interrupting my focus.

Looking around, a bit confused, I saw that the men had been hard at work building up the defenses. When I closed my eyes there had only been a low 2-feet wall around the camp, made up of debris and such just to keep things out. Now it appeared that the hour had passed and that wall was now about 3 feet high and someone had dug a trench in front of it. So it looked like 3 feet from inside the camp but if you were outside it was more like five.

I nodded my head in approval at seeing the upgrade in defenses. By my estimate, Ice Fiends were around 7 to 6 ft tall which meant they would be more easily able to stab the creatures in their chest and upper body from this angle. Men were already lining up and preparing their weapons along the wall.

"Preparations working out?" I asked, looking to the commander.

"Yes, lady Tanya. Are you okay?" He said, looking at my hands with a bit of worry. This caused me to look at them and realize that a layer of ice had formed over them, sealing them together. It wasn't too thick but apparently I hadn't even noticed this was happening. Cracking the ice I freed my hands and brushed them off, hoping that there would not be any lasting freezer burn or anything of that nature.

"Perfectly fine." I said, once I confirmed my fingers moved as they should. Looking up I saw that the sky had clouded over as I had hoped and a bit of snow was falling. With any luck what I had just done would pay off and the snow that was already falling would block the view from the castle of the ground below, allowing an operation to sneak in and be pulled off.

Theoretically what I had just done was create an area of low pressure, pulling the storms that still stuck to the sea toward the mountains in our general direction. It was a bit interesting on how exactly you could pull that off, considering I had needed to create a massive area of low pressure for something like this to even work. And I was 90% sure that if I had the ability to do this in my salaryman life I would have ended up dead, my body destroying itself while focusing that energy through the item. Or frozen solid, either or was a possibility.

Looking around me I noticed that a lot of the shield maidens had created a protective circle around me. They had been serving along with the rest of the housecarls since their training was pretty much exactly the same and I didn't make note of them that often.

Fenris was an 'everyone fights, no one quits' kind of place, which also meant that little things like how many men and how many women are in a force could be easily missed. Hell a full third of jarl Bretakollrsson 's force was female. Which seemed disproportionately odd so I'd asked one of my shield maidens to ask around and why this was a thing. It turned out that most of the female forces under his command were wives and mothers of those who died fighting Lord Farthegn. They had a vendetta and had eagerly volunteered to join jarl Farthegn's forces since they knew they would have the best chance of causing pain to the one who caused the loss of their loved ones.

Not really caring why the shield maidens had decided that I was the person that needed to be protected while focusing on that energy spell. Or caring why some of them appeared to actually be from jarl Bretakollrsson's force. I looked to the sub commander of Eilifsson and asked. "Any news on the Ice Fiends? How far are they out?"

"Scouts have been reporting them coming in from pretty much all directions, except South as expected. We're not too far from the sea in our position so I doubt there's many Fiends living out on the slowly melting glaciers out there."

I noted my understanding before asking "And how bad are the numbers?"

"About two times our number, maybe more. The scouts and wolf scouts have been doing their best to murder every single one they find with archery but that's not slowing them down. Only good news is that they do not show any organization. In fact I'd say they're dumber than usual, moving as if they are compelled to come here. If they were hunting or searching as they usually would our scouts would not be having as much luck as they currently have. Frankly, I don't understand the numbers that are getting reported. We have Ice Fiends on our coast, and it has never been this bad."

"If we believe the local Intel he's been using them as some sort of 'I win' spell, most likely he forbids heavily hunting and cleaning these pests." I answered, shaking my head. I could in fact see why you would allow such a pest creature to move around and grow if he had control over them. Having something at your beck and call does allow your ability to experiment, see if you can organize it like I had done with my wolves. He obviously was not very good at it because all he could do was summon them to his castle while he hid in there. But if you have a castle and the ability to summon monsters to eat anything outside that castle, then you might as well use it.

Looking at subcommander yellow, I said "I'm going to go see about preventing this conflict from getting any worse. Hold this position and kill anything that tries to kill you, sound good?"

"Sounds like an amazing time!" The commander of the yellow said, before adding. "Jarl Bretakollrsson asks to try and minimize damage to the internal structure of the castle. He wasn't that big of a fan of the bombardment idea to begin with and he says there's some relic or something in there that he really doesn't want destroyed."

I looked over towards jarl Bretakollrsson , throwing a suspicious look his way. It was uniquely possible that he wanted the relic that Lord Farthegn was using to attempt to kill us all. Just because your enemy has evil objects doesn't mean you don't want them. If it was though he was going to be disappointed because I was totally going to destroy it. As far as I could see the Ice Fiends were a civilization dead-end. At least the wolves had uses outside of killing such as digging for the trenches or moving things around. They were useful to humanity. The ice fiends were just a ravaging horde. They were locusts but for people instead of farms and they needed to be dealt with, sent back to the mountains where they belonged or eliminated completely.

"Tell him I'll try and keep the damage as minimal as possible but things happen." I said with a shrug before walking towards the edge of the camp. I hopped over the short wall onto a wooden log that had been put across the trench. It was a good thing I did because I noticed that apparently they had time to put sharpened stakes at the bottom of the trench. That would cause some damage to the Ice Fiends but I expected that the moment the trench filled with their acidic blood those would become less useful.

Nodding my head in approval I walked on, heading towards the castle and taking out the beads again. I just rearranged them and tried to focus the energies on creating an optical illusions spell of sorts. With luck I would be able to hide my presence from sight and the snow and everything else would make sure no one else caught on that I was making a move. All I needed to do was climb the side of a castle wall that… Yeah we put a good few holes in, so it shouldn't be that hard to find somewhere to squeeze in. Once inside I'd go about finding the relic, device, whatever colorful term this Lord Farthegn used, and then I'd kill the bastard.

Every day on this side of the coast had proven that the man was a destructive force for civilization, he had attempted to destabilize the government through assassination, got the armies of others destroyed in order to weaken his enemies, and now he was using man-eating monsters in order to win a fight he couldn't win. As much as I was for live and let live as a principle there was a limit. For me, that limit was when civilization itself was being degraded and damaged by irresponsible behavior.

Assassinating the king would lead to chaos, mayhem, and, if I had not been there, in a rise in wolf attacks. Letting his armies get destroyed fighting me would have destabilized this region, allowing its rampant Ice Fiend problem to grow even more. And this calling of the Ice Fiends to destroy my army meant that they were coming down from the hills and mountains into civilized territory. Even if he turned it off immediately after my army was destroyed, which would not be happening today, they would be scattered across civilized lands and causing mayhem and destruction for years. Lord Farthegn had proven himself to be a threat to civilization, letting him live would simply create a status quo with him becoming a Saturday morning cartoon villain level of evil. I did not want to be dealing with his bullshit every 2 years.

I simply wanted to go home, retire, raise my wolves, maybe train a few Wolf riders and hunt some monsters. None of that would be possible if I had to assemble an army every two years to march over the mountain pass and deal with his bullshit. So I would be destroying this albatross around my economic future's neck while I could.

Now the question was how was I going to get into that castle.

Sub-commander Eilifsson

It had been an hour since Tanya had left on her one-woman mission to kill Lord Farthegn and destroy whatever item he was using to summon the Ice Fiends. If this had been another Lord or Commander I might have been worried that we had just been abandoned to a fate worse than death as said Lord ran for the hills in hopes of surviving to fight another day.

But this was Tanya, the lady of the wolves, and she left her wolves here. If there was one thing about Tanya I could say, it was that there was one constant with her. And that constant was that she cared for her wolves. Especially Freki and Geri, who had been hanging out near me and the other commanders this entire time as if they were on the command staff themselves. Better be fair: considering they seemed to have some sort of authority over the other wolves, maybe they were.

Either way the fact was that, no matter what, you could trust that Tanya would return just to save her wolves if nothing else. So, as long as the wolves were there, I knew she wasn't running. She was doing something to try and win them this fight even if what that something was he didn't know. Literally, because the Wolf Witch had vanished before my eyes just a few moments after stepping out of the fort, so she could really be anywhere.

Whatever she had done before then had taken full effect though, as a winter storm had set in even though it was the middle of Spring. Snow was falling heavily when it usually fell lightly this time of year and this favored our joint Force. Ice fiends had an okay sense of smell and often used that over their own eyes when dealing with parties of hunters, like those we were employing to try and whittle down their numbers. The snow was doing wonders to neutralize that sense, allowing our Wolf Scouts to run circles around the oncoming horde of monsters.

And they were coming in numbers large enough to be called a horde. At first they only showed up in small groups of 10 to 15, a regular tribe's size, something that could be expected on our side of the mountains and was easily dispatched by clever tactics and good shots to heads and hearts. But they had slowed up when they realized that someone was hunting them, obviously leaving corpses lying around would clue in even the dumbest animals that enemies were about. After that they started to come in larger groups of 30 to 40. These groups had been whittled down as best we could before they made contact with our fortifications. So far though those groups had been dispatched through Mass volley.

But all good things come to an end look because the main body of them was coming now, reports of Ice Fiends in the thousands had been coming in for the last 10 minutes. Scouts and Wolf Scouts had done their best trying to whittle them down but they were running low on ammo at this point. Unfortunate side effect of their acidic blood, meaning that even arrows that didn't break from them struggling or dying were still ruined.

Not much we could do but hope that our reserves of projectiles would last some more, that and the spears we had been crafting for the last 2 hours. We had been creating as many wooden spears as possible since killing the creatures at a distance would be better for everyone, lest acidic blood get everywhere. One thing about this that made me a little bit happy was that this was the time for my men to shine. My particular brand of troops was specifically designed to fight Fiends as my particular area of coast was snugly fit against the mountains and we had to deal with their bullshit at an abnormal level compared to everyone else. So, for generations, my family had been working on improving our fighting techniques for this kind of battle: heavier armor and Dai axes with heavy heads at the end of a long metal pole, designed to withstand the acidic blood and keep on cutting and smashing until the enemy was dead. Even if the tip was dulled by the acid there was enough weight at the head of the ax to smash a skull. And given that my men were experts at fighting those things I had gone about making sure that the majority of my men was on the north side of our line. I sent a few detachments of my men to the East and West lines, just to make sure we could show off there as well, but I wanted the glory of this fight to go to me and my people.

I was perhaps enjoying a little bit too much the idea of taking a good share of this final battle's Fame for myself, as I almost missed a runner coming from the Western Wall of our fortified square.

"Sir, a large contingent of the enemy is breaking through the woods. Commander Larlssonhas opened up with archery fire but they are still approaching. He thinks this is the big one, sir, there's more and more coming through."

Nodding my thanks I got up from my seat and turned to the other commanders, "It looks like today's fight is about to truly begin. In case I don't see any of you after this is over… It's been an honor serving with you all," I said, before reaching down and grabbing my helmet. Quickly securing it over my head, I walked to the Western Wall.

I took my place at the center of the line and smiled at the formation of ugly beasts trying to struggle their way through archery fire. The snow was coming down all around us, adding a mythical aspect to their valiant charge. They were wielding nothing but clubs, though a few of them did have what appeared to be crude Shields. They attempted to cross the open Fields around our camp and, of course, were slowly accomplishing this but they were paying a heavy price. The ground here would be acidic forever, probably nothing would grow for a long time.

This would be a glorious fight, the only thing better would be the approval of the Allfather himself. The sky then rumbled, a flash of lights as lightning crackled across the sky, signaling his approval. There was nothing better than to have the Allfather's attention before a fight, nothing better to restore morale, boost it, or create one when you lacked it.

This was the kind of moment that swept you up and I let myself be swept up in it. Standing up onto the wall itself, looking back at my men, I said "warriors of djævelske mordere, today is a glorious day! Today we get to fight hundreds of the creatures we have fought for generations and prove that we are the best at doing it. Not only to our brothers and the Russ, Kystnære and Fjell but also to the Brothers in this land across the mountains. You are here at a moment of History, a moment of legend! You are here at the moment that djævelske mordere stood their ground and proved their worth and helped bring down a dark lord! What better story to tell your children than how you helped bring down a dark lord."

"But I don't have any," a heckler in the crowd said, getting a good chuckle from the other yellow-coated soldiers.

Laughing, I said "Well, then this story will definitely help you fix that. Nothing gets a lass more excited than defeating great evils and destroying monsters." I got a roar of approval from my men, a few of them hitting their Dai axes against the ground in a rumble answering the ones that were going on in the sky.

"Men of djævelske mordere, Allfatther is watching us from above. Though our fearless Wolf witch has gone to deal with the evil Lord Farthegn herself, she is here in spirit. Where her wolves go, she goes," I said, waving to the many wolves about the camp and lines. The sky rumbled again, seeming to punctuate my point.

"We will hold this line for the wolf witch! We will help defeat these monsters and claim Glory for our djævelske mordere, this is already decided. The only thing that is left to do is to make it happen." Raising my double-headed Dai ax above my head I shouted, "So who is ready to write our Fate in The legend today?"

I'd expected a cheer for my men, which I did get. What I did not expect was a cheer from some of the other clans, nor the wolves howling in approval. But I gladly took it as it was a good sign in my book. Smiling, I stepped down and turned to face the still oncoming horde of Ice Fiends. They were much closer but legend was already written at this point, now it was all about making it happen.

Tanya

Finding my way into the castle proved ridiculously easy, my optical illusion spell worked like planned and the snow muffled any sounds on my trip up the side of the castle wall. Thankfully I found a few holes that had been burst into the wall before I had to climb all the way up. Finding one that was about the right size and then using my Superior strength to widen it further was nothing.

Before I knew it I was inside the castle, enjoying a little bit of warmth even if the room had been sealed to try and keep the cold out. Thankfully the room's sealing was literally just a bunch of blankets shoved under the door, which I was able to push open without much issue.

From there I worked my way further into the castle, trying to use a spell I remembered meant for detecting energy sources as my guide to the item, relic, whatever it was called, that was drawing in the Ice Fiends. Well, before I did, I took a look from my much higher position to try and guess and make how many ice Fiends there were.

Too many. Actually, I couldn't see them all because there were a lot of trees around this Castle, tactical mistake under the best of circumstances, but I was able to see enough moving around that I could guess. Yeah, it was going to be a while before the monsters were all killed. If I could find the device and turn it to repel them that would be useful. If not… Well, lots and lots of dead Ice Fiends were in my future.

Shuffling further into the castle though I found lots of armor stands and tapestries, normal rich people stuff for this period in time. This was to be expected, after all this was the highest-ranking Noble on this Coast so he was going to have the most stuff. Hopefully he didn't have some sort of super armor or something. That would make this already unnecessary fight ridiculously stupid. But the fact of the matter was that I had no idea what strange mysteries this guy had been screwing around with so I really couldn't make assumptions either way on what he was and what he wasn't. Was he a wizard capable of dark magic or was he using some sort of ancient technology that he possibly found? With the world as it was either could be true, which annoyed me to a certain extent.

Thankfully though my answer soon stood in front of me and I ripped the door off its hinges. It had been locked and I really didn't want to bother with this stuff anymore as I felt whatever was causing this dark dirty feeling, just on the other side of the door. Tossing the door off to the side I stepped in, having to duck my head a bit since the place had been designed for people of 6 ft average and not my 7-foot frame. I found a crystal of some sort on a pedestal, hovering over a hunk of metal with dials and buttons.

"So it's tech," I muttered, stepping towards it. I walked around the pedestal, seeing if I could figure out if there were any directions on how to turn it off. Unfortunately whatever user-friendly abilities this device once had seemed to have worn off long ago. Most of the metal looked blackened by age and there were a few dials missing, so it did not seem to have been treated nicely over the years.

I was considering just smashing it when the guest of honor appeared. A 6 ft tall man stepped into the room wearing full armor, not just chain and fur but actual plate, and carrying a large sword. He was black of hair and kept his face shaved by the looks of it which let me see a scar running down his left cheek. "Who the hell are you and how did you get in here?"

Smiling, I said "Greetings, Lord Farthegn." With a bow, I continued "I am lady Tanya, servant of the Russ."

He took one look at me and drew his sword off his side, "Well, you match the description of the bitch tearing up my kingdom. What the hell are you doing here and how did you get inside? I'd like to know before I kill you, so I can increase the security."

"I walked and climbed and walked some more," I said matter of factly. "That's why I'm here, I'm here to destroy this," I said, pointing towards the object. "Unless you can show me how to turn it to repulse the creatures below? I would have figured that it would have a feature like that."

That seemed to stop him for a moment as he looked me and the device over, "You understand that that's technology and not some sorcerer's gambits."

"Why, of course, I understand this is technology," I said with a smile, "Though I would point out that it's from a time where sorcery and technology seem to have merged, as I can feel the arcane energies of coming off of it."

"Bullshit!" The man said matter of factly, "This machine is a device like any other from the period behind history, when we were a great people and sailed the Stars. It is not some arcane trinket."

I shrugged and said "If that's what you want to believe. I just know that I feel the energy coming off from it and there are two possibilities for that: either humanity has developed technology that could interfere with supernatural magical items such as this or my own biology happens to pick up on the signal that you use to control the Ice Fiends. By the way, does it control the Ice Trolls? That one has been bugging me since I've only seen the Fiends and as far as I'm aware the Trolls are just their more grown-up cousins."

The man was standing, ready to assault me with a sword, but I really showed no fear at this point. He was human, he was not one of the monsters I'd fought. I could take him one to one, even with his armor advantage. "It doesn't, I've tried. Ice Trolls are repulsed by it. Now, if you understand this is technology, do you understand what I'm doing here? Do you understand that I'm trying to rebuild civilization?"

I looked around as if in confusion, almost actually a bit of confused myself but I was just humoring him. "You believe you are building Civilization by killing the pillars of what keeps a civilization together on this planet, its leaders? I'm afraid you're doing a hell of a terrible job at that. If anything I think you turned yourself into a degrading force on civilization and whatever civilization you finally create will be an authoritarian mess that will be worse than what was here before."

"Pretty words for a Savage! Humanity needs authority to control it, otherwise it would be driven to insanity by the monsters on this planet."

"I don't technically disagree with you. We need an authority figure, someone able to rally forces to deal with problems as they come up. You're not rallying forces though, you are just ruling through might and destroying the foundations by which others may be allowed to protect the people of this planet. And, best of all, this thing," I said, pointing to the psi-emitter-like object.

"You wield a club of monsters to keep your people in line but you have no control of it. You just depend on them receding if you turn it off, is this what I am to believe?"

"Believe what you will, that item has gotten me power over this continent that none of the other Lords have ever managed. It will be the key to reuniting our civilization into one fist and taking it back into the Stars."

"Really? An item that attracts monsters will do that?" I reached out with both hands, grabbed the object, and then smashed it over my knee in front of him. It fell apart rather easily, probably fragile from decades or maybe generations of existence. Who knew how long this thing had been around. The look on his face was quite hilarious to watch.

He screwed up his face and said, "Fine! You destroyed a key component of my power, now I get to kill you. Unless, of course, your next objective is to kill me? Wouldn't that make you no better than what you called me?"

I gave him the eyebrow at that, "Oh yes, assassinating pillars of the community and destroying the centers of power? Yeah, I see how you could think that this would make me similar to you. Problem with that though? You're a degrading Force while I have built up. The actions are similar but the overall outcomes are different."

"What moral game are you playing? There's no difference! Killing a pillar of a community is killing a pillar of a community by your own logic."

Was he really trying to logic me? Did he think I was some sort of robot that would freeze up? I just shook my head and started walking towards him, "I am many things, and there are many things I don't even know. Here's the real difference, the one that makes this act different: your killing of the pillars of my communities would have drastically affected my quality of life downwards while me killing you will drastically make sure that my quality of life will continue to build up."

"What are you, a psychopath?" He swung the sword, trying to chop my head.

I caught it in my hand and ripped it out of his, reaching down and grabbing him by the neck. I lifted him up a foot in the air, "No, I'm a Human Resource manager and your net contribution to civilization is detrimental to our society and my retirement package."

Sub-commander Eilifsson

The enemy just kept coming, wave after wave of Ice Fiends charged across the open field and fell under arrow fire before getting the honor of falling to my men's axes. The fun had been going on for an hour and a half now and I had been forced to take a moment out of the line every once in a while. Fact of the matter was that the men were getting tired, even with efforts to switch men out in order to give them time to rest they were running low on the energy needed to keep striking these things dead.

Not to mention the wounded were beginning to pile up. One lucky acid spurt here, a lucky clawing there, and all of a sudden I needed to take men off the line to care for the wounded and hope that they'd either be able to take up the position in the line again or at least survive this combat. A couple good things about the snow though: the temperature had dropped so it was easier for the blood to solidify, sealing wounds, and nothing helped better against spurts of acid than rubbing snow on it to wash it away.

About 45 minutes ago though things had started to slack off a bit, the horde's behavior had changed. For the worst or the better, depending on your point of view. they stopped charging like they were mindless creatures and started charging more like animals on the hunt. The archers' effectiveness had gone down considerably but there also appeared to be less of them attempting to charge. Perhaps Tanya had been successful in destroying the device? Only time would tell at this point, if it took her an hour and 30 minutes to locate it then it would probably take at least that long for her to get back.

The change did have more benefits though. There were plenty of explosive ammunition left around so I had organized a couple of crews into firing the catapults into the midst of the monsters. It was somewhat effective.

Getting up I was about to go check up on the catapults when I looked around, noticing that Larlsson was not resting here with us. Turning to the second commander of Russ's forces after Wolf Rider leader Authgrim Bardisson, who I knew was holding the Eastern side of the line, Isgerd Buidottir of the shield maidens I asked, "Where is Larlsson?"

"He's with Allfather now, they managed to break through for a moment on the western side of the line. The wolves deployed and handled it though, so nothing too drastic there. We've been able to reestablish the line and fighting has returned to normal."

"Damn, I have to make sure to give him a good funeral after this," I muttered, looking out at the line. If commanders were falling things were starting to get desperate. We needed some sort of strategy to break the enemies' will to fight, otherwise we were going to be swarmed over and eaten. As much as a glorious end that would be I'd rather prefer to live a few more years. I just needed to find some way to restore them around, keep the fight going and maybe in an hour or two the Ice Fiends would retreat.

The sky rumbled as it had been doing for the entire battle. The storm was picking up, maybe? I didn't know what Tanya had done but it definitely brought in a hefty cold front. Shrugging I started heading towards the line when a howl greeted me. A large thunderous howl that seemed to shake the ground itself. And then the sky lit up as lightning bolts began raining down on the Fiends around the camp.

Pushing my way through the dazed members of our expedition to get to the line I held myself up to see what the hell was going on outside our fortifications. And was thoroughly shocked and stunned by the sight in front of me: dozens, if not hundreds, of Ice Fiends burning, the lightning having hit them and set them up on fire. Guess that acid blood came with a few issues, uh? The trees were not doing much better either as they too were burning, though at a much-reduced rate compared to a dry season.

And to top off this sight of devastation, and completely restore the morale of everyone around me, a massive Thunder Wolf came out of the trees. It came from the direction from which the Ice Fiends had been coming from, and it was surrounded both by common Fenrisian wolves and Blackmanned. They let out a howl in unison before charging into the combat; ripping into the rear of the dazed formation of ice fiends.

How had Tanya summoned these creatures, I did not know. All I knew was that I was glad to see them as they were murdering the hell out of our enemy. It was not long before the Ice Fiends began to just scatter, running into the woods to try to get away from the massacre.

The wolves did not stay as the monsters fled, instead they gave chase and ran after them. Before long the only ones left in the field were the Dead, the dying, and the Thunder Wolf who was looking us over rather intently. As if judging if we were worthy to be left alone.

Whatever final conclusion it would have come to was cut off as the snapping of a branch brought everyone's eyes to the side of the battlefield that faced Lord Farthegn's Castle. There stood Tanya, carrying something over her shoulder that looked like it might be a person. She was looking at the Thunder Wolf, curiously by the way her eyes took it in.

After a moment the wolf bowed its head and I realized I'd seen this wolf before, back on the march through the mountains. Had it been following us this whole time? I had no idea, I wanted to finish this battle. The wolf headed off into the wilderness, hunting most likely the remnants of the Ice Fiends.

With a shrug Tanya stopped looking at the wolf and marched the rest of the way into camp before dumping an armored body on the ground. Geri and Freki immediately came up and began cuddling up next to her and she patted them on the head before saying.

"Job is done and it looks like you guys managed to survive. What are our losses?"

Smiling, I said, "Minimal, Lady Tanya." I didn't have the exact numbers but that would serve, I believed.

She nodded and walked past me, heading towards her tent, "Alright, see to the wounded and make sure everyone is good and healthy. We'll clean up the area around the camp as best we can but I'm going to take a moment to reorient myself, I feel exhausted."

"Yes, Lady Tanya!" The voices came not just from the command staff but most of the camp as well, we were all in agreement at this point. Everyone would have their moments of Glory or two to look back on this campaign, but the campaign as a whole was Tanya's Glory.

Writer note: And there we go chapter 13, lot of little things ending their end of the evil lord saga, the end of the war, and fleshing out some culture. I hope everyone enjoys it! Out showing my wring process this (Siege of Keep/troll/wolves) is all I had in mind when I wrote this chapter, you be the judge if I fulfill those points.

Edited by: Preier, M.G. ,

Community edited by:

Community editable doc (Chapter 13) No story suggestions in the community editing document, Keep all story suggestions and comments in the thread

Supporters: Neso, Markus, Mackenzie Buckle, Silver Wolf, Daniel Martinez, Falk H,

Mana Rope

Art thanks Sky66 who Commissioned the Artist J-likes-to-draw

Reviews
SuperiorFreak: true though that was the point, that he had no reaction to it
Magos Halcyon: yes it is
Chronolocked: most likly
SomePervyGuy: would tattoo work hmm maybe thought it would only work for one spell though having spell casing object that can't be taken away from you could be useful.
Ozpin52: thank i hope this chapter delivers just as much enjoyment,
Guest: very Cool
skrapsynneh: here more!
Guest: here you go!
Eins minus zwei: ahh good to know fore future.