TimTimTyner
Really Really Experienced
- Joined
- Jun 6, 2016
- Posts
- 382
"The Lost Vikings"
(closed to AmyRoberts)
NOTE:
This is a do over of an RP
that Amy and I abandoned,
in case anyone cares.
OOC Link
(for the writers only; no comments, please))
(closed to AmyRoberts)
NOTE:
This is a do over of an RP
that Amy and I abandoned,
in case anyone cares.
OOC Link
(for the writers only; no comments, please))
The longboat's journey up the slow moving river was to Hagan a sign that the Gods were still with him. Eighteen days earlier, he and 27 men, women, and children left their homes in a fjord town of Jørpeland in Rogaland, Southwestern Norway. They were packed tightly with food, water, caged stock animals, and other supplies aboard just one of 14 vessels heading for England. Their course would have taken them south to the Danish coastline, then west across the open sea.
But only two days out, while still in sight of the Norwegian coast, a fierce storm struck and raged for five days. Although the winds of Spring were normally from the southwest, this storm blew from the southeast, pushing the fleet away from the continent and into the open ocean hundreds of miles away from their original course.
Those steering and controlling the longboats attempted to keep the fleet together, but the waves and the wind simply wouldn't allow that to happen. Hagan watched as three boats were swamped and another cracked open; their occupants were lost to the sea as he watched helplessly.
When finally the skies cleared and the seas calmed, there was neither land nor any other longboats to be seen: Hagan and his people were alone. During the worst of the storm, two men had been blown overboard attempting to keep the vessel together, while a third sustained injuries and died a day later.
But the storm wasn't the end of the horror. Over the course of the next 10 days, the vessel was often left on still waters, the doldrums, and the water ran out. Again, people were dying. Two were lost to dehydration, one of them a woman just weeks short of giving birth. Illness got yet another, and eventually a combination dehydration, starvation, exposure, and despair claimed two more.
Hagan had had but had then lost in the storm the navigational tools that had made reaching and raiding England possible. Without them now, there was no way of knowing whether they were too far north or south in relation to their destination on the English coastline. At night, Hagan studied the stars for clues, but -- to be honest -- navigating by them had never been his forte, nor had it been a skill of anyone else left on the boat.
He was certain that they were almost certainly far north and possibly west of where they were supposed to be and where what remained of the fleet would be as well. When the winds returned, they set sail to the southwest, and two days later the Gods delivered them here to this river that meandered slowly from the west through a thick, lush forest.
Hagan had been to England twice to raid the coastal villages and towns, but he didn't recognize this land by anything other than the vegetation. He was certain it was England, though, it seemed more rugged and mountainous away from the river's edge.
The rising ocean tide behind them nearly negated the river's flow eastward, making rowing easier for those exhausted, hungry, and dehydrated Northmen still capable of doing so. After a mile or so, Hagan ordered the boat to the shore. There was no landing area -- the forest was thick here -- so after Hagan himself took a short swim and climb to the bank. The left side of the boat pulled closer to the bank and tied to trees at bow and stern, then one of the longboat's deck planks extended from the vessel's railing to the shore.
Over then next few hours, as the sun began lowering in the west, tents were strung between trees wherever possible. A deer was killed and a pair of rabbits snared, the three animals roasted over the largest of the fires as other smaller ones were built to provide warmth in the cold, wet forest. The most important resource found was, of course, fresh water; a small spring practically under their feet was found near the river's edge.
By night fall, the remaining 20 Northmen were all very happily asleep and already planning to make sacrifice to the Gods for rescuing them when all hope had been lost.
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The next day, the camp was a fairly quiet one. Hagan didn't know where they were, which meant he didn't know who might be near, whether it be his own equally lost and disoriented countrymen or the inhabitants of this land, presumably English Christians.
Scouts were sent along the bank to the west and east, and Hagan himself attempted to venture south, deeper into the forest. The going was rough, and the only good to come out of his own scouting attempt was that he brought back another deer to feed his people.
But the scout who had headed west came back with news: he had found a fish weir; then a foot path; and ultimately a small village that was less than a mile away. The fleet of 14 longboats had been filled with women, children, stock animals, grain seed, and other resources for settling a portion of land the Vikings controlled on the east coast of England. But the people here with Hagan were still Vikings, and Vikings were inherently raiders.
"We are too weak now to visit this village," Hagan decided. "We will wait and watch." He spoke with the warriors and shieldmaidens, as well as with some of the young boys, and they made a plan to keep watch on the village from both the river bank and the forest. "For now, eat and drink and get your strength back."
For two days, they only watched the village from afar. They set up a watch station near the fish weir trail and another deeper in the woods just a few feet inside the thick undergrowth. Hagan himself went to eye the community. There were perhaps a dozen and a half buildings, half of them residential huts and the others work areas, food storage, or animal enclosures.
Initially, Hagan didn't see signs of warriors or other armed defenders. But on the second day of surveillance, two incidents spoke loudly about the village's occupants. Three swordsmen were seen at various times walking about, keeping an eye on the other villagers as if the latter were their servants as opposed to their friends and family; these three men offered nothing in the way of labor that Hagan could see. Then, late in the evening, a young woman -- Hagan would later learn her name was Clara -- got into an argument with one of the three armed men and was dragged into a hut and, by the sounds of it, raped, not just by the one man but by the other two after each of them had come to the hut one after another.
"We will watch this village one more full day," Hagan told the others after he'd returned to their river bank camp, "and then I will make a decision regarding it."
"Our choices?" someone asked.
Hagan considered his answer a moment, then said, "We will either leave them to their fate, pack up the boat, and head back to the sea, to look for our brethren."
"Or?"
"Or," he continued, hesitating because he knew his people were still exhausted and beaten down by what the Gods had put them through. "We will attack this village, kill its warriors, and claim whatever we wish to claim for ourselves."
"And then?"
"And then," Hagan began, unsure of how to continue, "then we will seek guidance from the Gods and do as they tell us."
He really had no and then answer to give at the moment. What he did know was that the village up river was a mini version of what they had come to England to find. Yes, they were alone, just the 15 of them. But other Northmen longboats might paddle up the river in the days to come, or Hagan might learn that they were farther to the south than he believed, very near or even in the heart of the lands controlled by the Norwegian or Danish Vikings.
Or, they might find they were surrounded by English swordsmen and -- fearing annihilation -- would have to put out to sea again and find a new place to dwell.
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