Bk 2, Ch 6: After Party

The problem, I reflected, was always bodies.

Sub-Commander Bernette had quickly explained the situation to her warriors. Subdued but nonetheless motivated by the desire to help their fallen comrades, the surviving Arkadians quickly surrendered their weapons and formed teams to assist the wounded. None moved to escape.

But motivation was not enough. So few survivors were forced to sort, move, and care for so many wounded. About three hundred fifty Arkadians surrendered, including two dozen oarsmen that had jumped ship and now bobbed in the water or splashed ashore. Many of those captured were injured themselves, able to run and retreat but unable to help lift bodies. Across the battlefield in the span of an hour, the blood of over seven hundred of their comrades had been spilt. The wounded were innumerable. The dead lay as they’d fallen, neglected for the moment.

Adding to this daunting task, Sigrid cautioned that the sand prevented healing and declared that none but the most critically injured be treated on the beach. Stretchers were in short supply and were reserved for my own men and women. We’d tried using carts, but the wheels always got stuck in the sand. Thus, the wounded had to be carried hundreds of paces into the town for treatment.

The waters of the fjord ran red with blood—figuratively of course. But on the beach, literal rivers of blood stained the sand. Over two hundred Arkadian bodies were spread out across the beach itself between the water and the trench. They lay alone and in small groups, felled by great volleys of arrows or run down during the flanking assault. A beautiful Blade with wide hips and a narrow waist coughed blood over her plump breasts, her fingers brushing the arrow stuck in one round orb. An Arkadian spearman bobbed face-down in the shallows. A lissome blonde lay on her side, plucking at the shaft through her belly. A teenage youngster, her cheap, cotton bra hanging loose, cried bitter tears as blood flowed around the broken spear shaft in her bare belly. Twenty-five Arkadian archers lay in a row like fallen dominoes, the pattern of Clan arrows noticeably denser in the sand and in their bodies.

In contrast, the mixed Arkadian and Clan dead at the top of the beach lay tangled together in a mountain of death and gore. The dead and wounded there were too numerous to be counted, but it couldn’t be less than four hundred. A small teen, blood covering one side of her face, wriggling weakly under the crushing weight of a barrel-chested Viking. Her back against the still corpse of an Arkadian spearman, a tall Wildcat used her hands to try and plug the hole in her belly. She moaned in pain, piss dribbling from her bare crotch. A gutted redhead stared upward sightlessly, her hands still tangled in the intestines spilling from her belly. Across her legs, another girl lay face-down in the guts and excrement. The dainty feet of a fourteen-summer-old trainee dug shallow furrows in the sand as she screamed in anguish and hugged the gash across her belly. Facedown on the ground, sand clung to her blood-stained belly and crotch, the flaps of torn flesh, and the intestines which hung out of the rent.

Maybe Sigrid was onto something about that sand.

The real shocker though were the Arkadian ships floating in the fjord. As soon as the surrender of the Arkadian forces was finalized, I sent boarding parties out to secure the drifting ships. They used the same canoes that the Arkadian warriors had rowed onto the beach. Jari was the first warrior to clamber up the side of the closest akatus. He took one look over the lip of the ship then vomited noisily into the water. Six dozen bodies—nearly every oarsman and warrior on the ship—bled onto one another in a great heap of flesh. They writhed together in a sickening cesspool of gore and voided fluids. Volleys of arrows had turned the ship into a massive archery butt, massacring the occupants, striking breasts and throats, and skulls. Directly in front of Jari’s face was a young oarsman slumped forward on his bench. An arrow had pierced the back of his skull, exiting out of his eye socket. The eye itself was impaled on the tip, separated from the face and leaking fluid like a runny egg.

Sigurd looked a little peeved as we stood supervising the cleanup efforts. Fifty archers formed a perimeter around the beach, half facing inwards, half facing out. Teams of captured Arkadians carried bleeding comrades up the beach, each supervised by a bored-looking Viking. In the bay, canoes lashed themselves to the ships that still floated, slowly hauling their prizes towards the shore. At the battle line, the bodies of the dead were tossed aside in piles to allow healers to get at the (barely) living.

Sigurd finally spoke. “I thought the plan was to kill them all, my Lord.”

“It was, yes,” I replied, my eyes still looking out over the beach.

“So why the change?” he asked.

I let out a sigh. “We’d already lost too many warriors in the shield wall. Wiping out the survivors would have cost dozens more.”

“The healthy ones aren’t the problem,” he replied, “Why are we allowing the wounded to live?”

“I needed something to coerce the survivors so that they would surrender and stay in line. Besides, it’s not like we lose anything by letting them live.”

“My Lord, now we’re going to have to guard, house, and feed hundreds and hundreds of wounded and sick captives,” Sigurd pointed out.

“The gold, Sigurd, think of the gold.”

“We can pack the live ones into the buildings easily-enough, but there’s no space for as many as five hundred wounded!”

“You’re exaggerating. Half of those will be dead by morning. Make the live ones sleep outside in pens,” I instructed, “Pack the wounded into the houses so the flies don’t eat them alive. The Zavalan houses are spacious; there should be more than enough room while will have our new slaves expand the town.”

“Then there’s the disease, my Lord,” Sigurd continued, “With so many injured, the risk of sickness ravaging the town is high.”

I hadn’t thought of that. Plagues were common in the Clan homelands, where starvation and cold sapped the strength of men, women, and children alike. The warmer climes in this land seemed to boost health, but cramped spaces and spilt bodily fluids were a recipe for widespread sickness. Still, there were solutions.

“Then we maintain strict cleanliness, especially with the wounded. Any house where the wounded show signs of plague will be burned immediately—with their inhabitants. See what else Sigrid recommends on that subject,” I answered.

Sigurd had more to say. “My Lord, then there’s the food situation. We originally had enough provisions for another two months. But now that we have to feed some five or six hundred additional mouths, it will barely last two weeks. And you’ve already raided the surrounding farms.”

“So farm the grain that’s sitting in the fields and send some of the slaves or warriors fishing,”

“The grain may buy us another two weeks. And you know your warriors won’t eat anything from the fjord; those fish will have been feeding off of human flesh,” he said.

Clan warriors were notoriously superstitious. Eating human flesh, or by extension anything that had been fed on human flesh, was one of the big ones. Eating human flesh was said to turn one into a horrible, hairy monster—a creature of darkness that came and slit people’s throats in the night.

“So feed the fish to the prisoners!” I cried in exasperation.

“My Lord, we destroyed most of the fishing boats to build obstacles on the beach,” Sigurd replied patiently.

“Bah! Fine, we’ll just go raid some coastal village and take their food! Now go find Sigrid and see if she needs any help with the wounded!”

Sigurd saluted and left. He knew better than to argue any further. He had gotten the better of me this time, but I would never admit defeat. Shaking my head in disgust, I walked down towards a knot of my men grouped at the shore.

As was my custom, I preferred to exercise leadership by walking around. I spent time consulting with my warchiefs, inspecting the sentries, chatting with the men, and occasionally helping with the heavy lifting. I even helped drag one of the two captured galeas onto the shore.

One of my tasks—and by far the least pleasant one—was helping with the dead and wounded. The defense of Zavala had been costly. Some ninety of my warriors, dead or injured, had fallen. The majority were already dead. I had no word on how many of the wounded would soon follow, but I did know though that Froki would be one of them.

“Tell my children… I am in Valhalla,” he coughed wetly. Blood bubbled up sickeningly from the hole in his chest. I swore to him that I would. Gently, I held him steady as I drew my knife and slid it under his armpit and into his heart. Blood bubbled in his throat as he exhaled for the last time.

The Zavalan slaves had spent the fight locked in the old warrior barracks under the guard of a few of those warriors lightly-injured in Zavala’s capture. Now, I made good use of them to collect and carry my wounded and dead while most of my warriors accomplished other tasks. With their assistance, the process of bringing the wounded up to Zavala as quickened, if only slightly.

I patted Birte on her good shoulder as she was carried away, then stood and looked around.