Winter raid.

(Warning contains the implied death of women, and children. Contains-Physical violence, gore, or abuse).

Three dragon-ships lay wedged in the river like spears thrown by giants, frost glistened on their snarling prows. The ice beneath them groaned low, hungry, ready to swallow any man who stepped wrong. Ninety warriors waited in silence, their breath fogging the air, the steel of their weapons catching the first light of a winter dawn.

Bjorn Ironhide stepped onto the ice. His bear cloak was crusted with rime; the pelt’s head still wore its frozen snarl above his own. Blood from yesterday’s skirmish had frozen black across his mail. He raised one massive arm and the warband fell silent.

“Mercia thinks winter keeps her safe,” he said, voice carrying across the ice like a war-horn. “We are the winter. Retrieve the silver and thralls. Leave nothing of value behind. Burn the rest. Move.”

A low growl of excitement rolled through the ranks. Shields clacking together. The raven banner snapped in Erik Redhand’s grip, the nineteen-winter-old’s knuckles white on the ash shaft.

Medb took her place at Bjorn’s right. Lean again after Sigfrid’s birth, her mail laced tight over wool, her spear balanced easily. Her eyes were bright as new-forged steel and never left Bjorn’s profile. She wanted him to see her here, wanted the roar that would mean she still belonged at his side.

Freydis Blood-Wolf stepped to his left without a word. Tall, dirty-blonde braids threaded with raid-beads, her wolf-shield slung across her back. Her blue eyes cut through a man’s courage before her sword did. She swept the town's edge once, then settled into the calm of a woman who had already counted the dead.

Bjorn drew his weapon, a double sided great axe that would need to be wielded with two hand by most men, but not Bjorn. He struck the ice with it. The crack rang out like a bell.

“Forward.”

The boots of his men hammered the river ice in perfect time. It cracked and groaned beneath them, but it held. Across the frozen water the Mercian town loomed, smoke just beginning to rise from morning cook-fires.

They crossed the frozen river in a silent rush, ninety wolves on the ice. The Mercians spilled from their thatch-roofed houses, sixty huskarls scrambling to form a ragged line on the snow just beyond the first buildings. Smoke from morning fires curled above the roofs; the stink of fear carried on the wind.

Bjorn raised his axe. The skjaldborg locked tight and advanced.

Erik Redhand planted the raven banner where he stood, young but steady as stone.

The two lines met with a crash of oak and iron on the village threshold. Spears splintered, shields cracked, men screamed. Blood spattered the trampled snow in crimson arcs.

Bjorn’s axe took a huskarl’s arm at the shoulder; the man dropping with a howl. Medb’s spear punched through the mail of a man piercing his lungs. Freydis carved short, lethal strokes, her seax slashing through flesh.

A Mercian thegn lunged at Erik, spear aimed for the banner-bearer’s throat. Medb twisted, raising her shield up, taking the blow meant for the boy. The iron head punched through linden wood and sliced her forearm. She snarled, ripping the spear free, and drove her own through the thegn’s chest.

The Mercian line began to buckle. Three of them broke rank first, turning and sprinting for the nearest houses to find better ground behind walls and doorframes. The rest followed in a frantic rush, their shields flung aside, boots kicking up snow.

Bjorn’s roar split the air. The Vikings took chase, their weapons high. They discarded their shields for speed.

The village became a slaughter-pen.

Bjorn led the charge down the single muddy lane, his axe rising and falling in short, swift arcs. Men who stood in doorways died where they stood. Those who ran were cut down between the houses. Smoke boiled skyward as the first thatch roofs caught fire.

The warriors fanned out in practiced pairs and trios. Doors were kicked in, screams were cut short. Silver crucifixes, iron-bound chests, sacks of grain were all dragged into the lane. Thralls made up of women, boys, and a few grey-bearded monks were roped together and shoved toward the river in a line.

Freydis moved through the smoke like a ghost. She slipped into a home. She emerged dragging a weeping priest by his tonsure.

Medb kicked in the next door, spear ready. A woman lunged at her with a cooking knife; Medb parried and drove the butt of her spear into the woman’s temple; she fell to the floor. Medb thrust her spear through the woman's stomach, smiling as the woman cried out in pain. Medb rummaged through the home and found a chest in the corner yielded silver pennies and a gilded chalice. She stuffed them into a sack without looking back.

Erik sprinted ahead of the main press, kicking in a door eager to find something of value.

Bjorn reached the little timber church. The door was barred from within, frantic prayers leaking through the cracks. He struck the door's twice with his axe; the latch on the inside breaking and the door's folding inward.

Terrified faces stared out from the gloom. He stepped inside, his boots crunching from ice stuck to them. Freydis shoved the priest in the church after him.

“Where is the hoard?” Bjorn growled.

The priest pointed with a trembling finger at the floorboards beneath an altar ten paces away.

The Vikings swarmed in, ripping up planks, overturning the altar. A locked iron box was found, they smashed it open: in it was coins, reliquaries, and a bishop’s ring heavy with amber.

Outside, the last houses caught fire. The flames roared up thatch and timber alike. Smoke rolled thick and black.

In the churned snow of the lane a babe sat alone, no more than a winter old, wailing for a mother who lay face-down in the snow nearby, her blood already beginning to freeze.

The last survivors, women clutching children, old men, and three monks still holding their holy books, were driven like cattle into the church. Spears prodded backs. A woman tried to escape by running down the lane, but a warrior grabbed her before she could get far. He dragged her to the church and threw her inside. The wail of hers and others inside were cut short when the doors were slammed shut.

Bjorn himself dropped the iron bar across the brackets.

“Burn it,” he said.

Torches arced through the smoke. Flames licking up the timber walls, catching the thatch roof on fire with a greedy roar. Screams rose inside high, thin, and then muffled as smoke poured through the cracks. The church became a pyre.

The warband stood back, faces lit orange, watching as the flames claimed the church in a fountain of red and orange. No one spoke. The only sounds were the crackle of burning wood and the wind beginning to rise.

Freydis walked away from the heat, boots crunching through churned snow and frozen blood. She stopped near the lonely babe in the lane, now silenced by the cold. Behind her stood a massacre. Ahead, the frozen river stretched under a sky gone the color of iron.

The first flakes of snow drifted down, fat and silent, landing on her cheek and melting at once. Then another. And another.

She looked down the lane one last time: bodies laying in the snow, overturned barrels, a broken crucifix smoldering, the babe becoming covered white. Her hand on her belly, she felt ashamed. The flames from the village painted everything red and gold, but the snow began to fall harder, soft and relentless.

Freydis drew a slow breath of cold, smoke-laced air.

“Winter always claims what summer leaves behind,” she said to no one.

The

snow kept falling, covering the dead without mercy or memory.