Head of the Bear

The assailing wind was so cold at the ridge of the valley that Yorrik arl Urberon can’t feel the heat of the piss staining his trousers. It wouldn’t do for his men to see steam rising from the crotch of their commander and seasoned warrior, but he could’ve used any little thing to raise his spirits at the moment. And, judging by their expressions, so could’ve they.

The army below was just incomprehensible. There wasn’t an inch of ice to be seen beneath black cloaks and blackened plates of armour. Eerily, the soldiers didn’t make a sound as they marched on Yorrik’s position. No drums, no war cries. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. The crunch of the ice as they stepped in unison echoed up to the Yaarlborg’s ears. How many thousands of warriors? In utterly perfect unison. It was unnatural, terrifyingly so.

“That’s not an invading army,” a Yaarl says from somewhere from the back of the command entrenchment. “They’re not even human. It’s a walking death, come to wipe us all out. It’s like a… a… what’s that sickness that kills everyone?”

“A plague,” answers Yaarl Orin arl Uberon, Yorrick’s uncle. “A damned plague, and we’re trying to answers it with swords and steeled hearts.”

Yorrick shuffles, trying to get some feeling back into his feet. The front of his pants, already frozen, crystalises in a spidery network of cracks. He ought to punch both dissenters in the face, and send them back to the soup kitchens where the children waited, the cowards. That kind of defeatist talk could easily spread throughout an army, ending this defense before it even began. But he couldn’t find the strong words to decry them. His own heart agreed too thoroughly.

Fortunately, someone’s snorts save him some face.

Yorrick turns to his right, finding Kerridge blowing his nose on the end of his wispy grey beard, wrapped twice around his neck like a scarf. He wore naught else but the raggedy old pelt of a brown bear draped over his shoulders, his scrawny frame completely exposed to the winds.

“Fuuksek, Kerridge,” growls Yorrick. “You’re the only bloody… one of you… that I’ve got.”

He was hesitant to use the word Seer, as he’d never actually seen the man conduct any wizardry beyond the usual suspicious prophesying and healing that any experienced clan member could fuddle his way through.

“If you’re determined to freeze to death, at least use your hands to give yourself a little dignity.”

“It’s not a plague,” says Kerridge, wiping his nose a final time on his forearm, ignoring his Yaarlborg. “Far from it. It’s a plain old army, and a very poor one at that, for it has a centralised command, moreso than any other force, and is therefore easily exploitable. See that fellow over there, on the hill in the middle?”

He was easy to spot, standing unmoving at the back of the army. His black robes flutter crazily around his form, and his hood is thrown back, the skin so taunt on his face it looks like a skull.

“They’re all linked to them,” continues Kerridge. “Every single one. Kill him, and we won’t have to waste a single swing on the others. But if he’s standing at the end of it all, well, it won’t matter how many we fell.”

Yorrick feels a snarl curling his lips beneath his whiskers. In the moment, he can’t help but feel this is all a silly arguments between two old cooks.

“Listen Grandfather,” he says. “And listen all of you. My family has held this ridge from all invaders for fifty generations, precisely because we stayed on the damn ridge! Now, some of you are talking like we’ve already lost, and the rest of you want me to throw it away on some harebrained scheme. Do you doubt my courage? The ferocity of the warriors of the Bear Clan? Or is it my shrewdness, like this old dolt? Do you know what place I’ll have in the epics if I go charging down there?”

“There won’t be any epics sung if we don’t charge,” says Kerridge simply, threatening the king with the clawed sleeve of his cloak, “Because there won’t be anyone left to sing them. If you’re not going to make a move on that Spirit Walker, we might as well go back and spend our last few days at our hearths, for all the good it will do us dying on this bloody ridge. And if that’s the case, why’d you bloody well summon me up here?

“Now you listen to me, arl Urberon, and listen good, if your brain’s not as frozen as you’re making out. Cut off the head, and the body will sort itself!”

The two men stared at each. Steam finally seemed to be forming, from both the men’s their ears.

“If what he says is true,” interrupts Yaarl Orin quietly, “It won’t do us much good to have our line so spread.”

“Ice take you if you’re wrong about this, Kerridge,” says Yorrick.

The old man merely sucks his gums and spits, a hailstone of frozen saliva instantly forming as it leaves his lips.

“Now, I ask you, venerable Yaarlborg; what kind of wizard would die to a bit of pneumonia, hmmmm? And what idiot, in the same sense, can’t recognize a compatriot 500 metres away?”

“Ho, form up on me, you ruddy devils!” shouts Yorrick. “Form up on your Yaarlborg. Shields at the front, we’ll save the beserkers to break the lines further in. Get those barrels up here, and be quick about it!”

Kegs, drained just last night of their mead and now filled with frozen water, are brought to the commanders’ position. It takes four strong lads to carry each one, the sweat instantly forming a glaze of frost on their exposed arms.

“Now let these misguided fools below feel the wrath of the Ursine! And may our mummas and our cubs sleep contentedly in our dens due to our actions this day!”

The men take up a battle cry, a roaring, bawdy yell, immediately snatched away by the win, as the barrels are released. They quickly pick up speed and snow, cannoning towards the enemy front line. Whatever weak programming stored in their brains causes them to raise their shields at the onrushing weapons, for little good. They are battered away by the rollicking snowballs they way you might sweep some dust off your boots. The kegs roll and bounce deep into enemy territory, before finally loosing momentum and forming a little hillock of snow.

Onto this newly created position storms the army of Yaarlborg Yorrick arl Urberon, 51^st Great Bear of the Clan. The army races down the snowy cliff to strike the black mass like an axe chopping into a tree. And deeply do they bite, a wedge forming and crashing aside the weak front with sheer physical momentum. Then the push starts in earnest. Men throwing weight behind shields, the soldiers at their backs forcing them forward. Men fall, to be trampled underfoot as the lines slowly move forward.

But, inevitable, the tree’s trunk resists, the press of enemy bodies is too thick. A sizeable wedge has been carved out, but now the metal is lodged in the wood.

Then the fighting, though there is no art to that term, begins in earnest.

Warriors hack at one another through and over the metal line of demarcation. Swords and spears jab through gaps to slash through mail shirts and impale calves behind the greaves. The snow turns red. The shield wall begins to waver, the sides losing clear distinction from one another and blending together as pockets gain or lose ground.

Yorrick, standing close to the head of the formation, is perhaps two thirds of the way to the sorcerer. Even were he not seemingly within reach, their retreat has been cut off as the jaws of the enemy beast close around and behind the intruders. Yorrick’s men begin to form up into a square, and are more concerned with making a static stand on all sides, if only to hold off their deaths for a few moments longer.

“We have to keep moving!” the Yaarlborg cries, to deaf ears.

“Make way!” cries Yaarl Orin, hefting a giant, two handed hammer. “Open the lines! Make way!”

The great man is striding towards the front, flanked by men with eyes crazed red from drugs, drink, or simple battle madness. Their shirts are off, and upon their broad chests are daubed the three claw marks of the clan.

“We will clear the ground for you nephew! Just be sure to follow us!”

The shield wall caves in back towards the centre, and the enemy, their press now unmet by resistance, suddenly spills free in an impromptu charge. The beserkers fall upon them, whirlwinds of brutal strength. They care not for the cuts they receive, only for the ones they parse out, and theirs are far more deadly. Orin towers above the enemy, the momentum of each swing shattering collarbones and jaws yet still maintaining enough force to carry him in an arc onto the next target. A jabbing spear takes him in the chest, and, roaring, Orin simply rips it out of his enemy’s clutches, and pulls it out of his flesh, grimacing only slightly.

“Forward!” cries Yorrick. “Into the breach!”

With the field now open, the battle becomes a haphazard maul. Yorrick ducks a wild swing, already formulating a response, his hammer smashes through a knee, sending a shinbone flying. Another warrior comes at the king, and he pushes his shield up and into the chest of his enemy. The other man is lifted and then dumped unceremoniously on his back. Yorrick stomps hard with his bootheel as he presses on, hearing the satisfying crack of a jawbone break.

A third stands before Yorrick, this one more prepared and seemingly more graceful, less jerky. He thrusts forward, and instead of blocking, Yorrick sidesteps, letting the blade pass harmlessly in front of his stomach. His own swing comes around, though there is not enough power behind it to do anything other than knock the warriors helm off. Readjusting his neck with a crack, the enemy stands tall again, facing Yorrick.

Two pits of darkness lock with the eyes of the king. The skin on this thing’s face has withered away, the muscle and flesh stripped long ago.

“You’re already dead,” says Yorrick. “What is this?”

A low moan sounds from behind him. He turns to see Orin, the great man’s eyes dull. He is stuck through with so many spears, it’s a wonder he can move properly. And yet he seems determined to fight on, doing his best to swing his long hammer around the shafts which hinder him. Some of his own household guard, still not alert to what has become of him, take those blows in the back of the head or shoulder, falling be set upon by the skeletal enemy.

“Ancestors take him,” says Yorrick, easily stepping behind the slow arc of Orin’s hammer, then back in to pulverize his uncle’s skull with a blow.

Yorrick doesn’t have anything left in his bladder, but finds he doesn’t need it. Whatever happened on the ridge was an aberration. He roars, and the battle cry is taken up by the few remaining men of the clan.

The enemy has again formed ranks in front of him, the sorcerer’s sneering visage less than a hundred metres from them. Yorrick roars at them again, and, surprisingly, they shrink back a step.

“So, you apparitions can still feel fear, eh? Well, you ought to. Yaarlborg Yorrick arl Uberon won’t join your ranks so easily!”

He roars one last time, although this time it sounds mighty, beastial. It sounds very much unlike a human. Yorrick turns.

Behind him, standing on two legs and towering well above the roof of a longhouse, is a mighty brown bear. This one is not ragged and old, its pelt thick and full. It is huge, a beast in its prime, rolls of muscle rolling from the strange grey maw and neck all the way down its haunches.

Yorrick begins to charge even as he watches the bear leap over him, landing with a thunderous crash on the ice before him. It hits the enemy line with its shoulder lowered in a very un-bearlike manner, and from there proceeds to swipe its massive paws, sending skeletons flying.

“Forward!” screams Yorrick. “Press forward! Don’t worry about the fight! All that matters is the head.”

The bear has made some good progress, but has become bogged down as the enemy infantry begin to clamber all over his hide. They cannot pierce its shaggy natural defences, but their weight begins to tell.

Yorrick and his men catch up and wedge themselves between this natural siege engine and the enemy lines, cutting away at the hangers-on like peeling leeches from a carcass. He does his best to shield his own flank from the enemy, but their blades sink deep, time and again, into his back.

With the help of the Yaarlborg’s men, the strange arrowhead begins to move again. The sorcerer suddenly decides the front lines have drawn a little too close to his position, and begins to shuffle away. But he hasn’t taken account of the snow that has been piling up around him as the battle raged.

The bear bunches its haunches, compacting the ice beneath its feet. It leaps the last distance over the enemy ranks, and with a lunge, snaps the sorcerer up in its jaws, lifting him overhead and biting him in half with a wet crunch.

Instantly, the warriors surrounding Yorrick sag. He watches as their bones, lifeless once again, turn to dust, mixing with the swirling snow. It is picking up, blanketing the field, erasing everything they’d done that day.

Yorrick sits down heavily, then decides this is not quite enough, and lies down, waving away the concerned looks of his few remaining comrades. Yorrick can’t feel the pain of his many wounds. He supposes the snow is numbing the many long cuts on his back, but he also knows that death is finally cooling his blood.

A hairy, wet nose nudges at his cheek.

“I’m sorry I doubted you, Kerridge,” says the Yaarlborg, patting clumsily at the bear. “Can you do one more thing for me? I’m not really entitled to ask, but I’m asking.”

The bear lows softly.

“Can you drag me back up to the ridge? I want the epics to say I held it.”