An island of witchcraft II

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POV of Lothar Von Ruppin, fifth moon,284AC

I threw the heathen to the ground as I approached the man, who was still writhing as he clutched his head.

'So witchcraft... what happened to Aleksanteri?'

I was about to end the heathen's life with a stomp when I remembered my orders.

'Shit... what should I do now... this one is dangerous as long as he lives... but they already gave up'.

I preferred to leave him alive until I confirmed it with Aleksanteri

A small group of Finns approached me

''Herr lothar... are you okay?'', asked the Finnish sergeant.

''Yes, some scratches from my fight with the bear... I want that one completely chained, blindfolded, gagged and not allowed to move a finger without my permission'' I said pointing at the warlock.

''At your orders, mein Herr'' replied the sergeant.

The Finn gave his orders and his men obeyed.

''Many casualties?'', I asked.

''We have not yet counted our dead, but several of my brothers lost their lives in combat, Herr lothar'' replied the sergeant.

''Do you know anything about your leader... I still don't understand what happened... was he the one who gave the signal or was he caught?'', I said with some concern.

The Finn replied pointing to the east to a small group that was approaching sliding through the snow.

'It seems that he is alive'.

I waited for Aleksanteri to arrive as I watched as my men began to shackle the surrendering enemy.

''Aleksanteri.... what the hell happened to you...''I said looking at the Finn's clothes that were torn and with many open wounds,also among all of Aleksanteri's men.

''For the bear I guess you also met one of them''said Aleksanteri in a tired voice.

''Did you know about witchcraft?'', I said a bit annoyed.

''It's those stories that seem false until you smash your face against them, the warg can control the minds of animals and use their senses, the stories talk that they could change from human to animal, it seems it's something similar, the ones with the blood of the first men can use that ability, which is rare, but it seems this island is more common'' Aleksanteri said as he looked at the warg I had captured

''It wasn't easy, the shadow cat's scent and eagle eyesight made it very difficult to lose our pursuers, if we were to have a chance of controlling the island it required us to act quickly and fiercely'' Aleksanteri continued speaking.

''But what about the Maesters, with all the noise we caused it's obvious they sent letters requesting help, we lost... we have to retreat before it's too late, the Stark's might arrive soon, we'd better clean our tracks and return to the king'' I said a little annoyed at the outcome of our operation

''Do you think I would have endangered the lives of my men for a foolish plan?, the Skagosi have masters, yes, they just kill them as soon as they get to the island and answer the letters on their behalf when a raven arrives, until they get a message first from outside they have no way to communicate with the mainland and if they had a raven it would most likely be from the citadel not the Stark's, they wanted to keep the secret of the ability to control the animals'' Aleksanteri said.

''When we found the magnar fortress, I, personally, got information from them about what was happening on the island, a good percentage of their people has that ability and they don't want the masters to know about it and see them as experiments or magic users that should be exterminated, because the masters hate magic, that's why they kill them, they have no communication with the outside, only when they receive a letter first'' Aleksanteri said staring at me.

''Then our plan still stands, even though we lost several of our men in the battle, we must purge those warg all of them, they are a danger to our control'' I said pointing to the man who was completely tied up

''NO, lothar think, they are dangerous, yes, but if they are well-trained they would make the best scouts, the eagles you remember don't you, we could look for structural weaknesses with eagles, use the wolves sense of smell to look for our prey, we must try to control it first, it is a great power we have in our grasp, we must take advantage of it, it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity'' said Aleksanteri very excited

''I doubt they will collaborate with us, personally I would burn them all on the pyre, I don't agree with your plan Aleksanteri, but you are the commanding officer and I will not disobey my king's orders again'' I said with an annoyed tone.

''We have to give it a chance, we have finished with the magnar, we are missing the stane and crowl, if we finish with them the island is ours, we will have problems with the amount of soldiers we have, but this island will become the center of operations for our operations beyond the wall, more men will arrive we can establish a permanent settlement, but first we have to finish with what is left alive'' said Aleksanteri showing his eyes wide open.

''Fine and we will do it, but first we have to see your wounds Aleksanteri they are quite serious and your men's the same... are they all what you carried?'', I said looking at Aleksanteri's group.

''Who survived, they attacked us with several animals, we are the ones who managed to get out of the warg chase alive, we finally turned the tables and attacked the magnar fortress which was a tower with a wooden palisade and they were considered the most powerful on the island the two remaining nobles will only be child's play'' said Aleksanteri as he began to check his wounds.

''Well we have to reorganize and we will finish with the last remaining redoubts on the island, we have to set up camp, considering what you said it would be wise to work on something more permanent, luckily the weather is calm, but we don't know how it could change it's better to be prepared and bury our dead'' I said giving some ideas to Aleksanteri before moving forward

''Yeah, we do that... we'll take the day, prepare supplies, set up camp, put the prisoners to work and I'll send some letters to the governor of tumbleton to send more men here, we'll further weaken the defense against spies in the reach, but it's an investment that will be very fruitful if we manage to get some warg of our own for our army''Aleksanteri said as he began to give orders to his men

''Ehh... Aleksanteri... well, the harbor is pretty shattered... I used one of the galleys as a naval battering ram and we rammed the harbor, to get to the melee as soon as possible''I pointed out the tactic I used in the battle.

''Oh, well we have to repair the port... but it won't be difficult either, it's not like a big city, this port barely has a population of three thousand people, while starting to confiscate the metals from the locals, we don't want stabs from the survivors of our attack'' Aleksanteri finished as he went to check his injuries.

During the rest of the day we began to work on setting up camp and at the same time preparing the bodies of the soldiers who died, we had won, but we had suffered enough at the hands of the pagan scum, almost two hundred men had died between Aleksanteri's operation and my attack on the port, a fifth of the men we had brought to the island.

The wounded numbered over three hundred, most of them lightly wounded, but as the Finns do not wear armor, there are several seriously wounded who require special care which will put pressure on the men who are still fit to continue

We also lost dozens of Finnish war dogs that were more useful than ever at this time, as they were animals that had a dense coat that allowed them to survive in this freezing climate.

We were extremely outnumbered, since estimates suggest that the island is inhabited by more than thirty thousand savages, which leaves us in a very bad position, but we already had the magnar territories under our control.

By the end of the night, we had the camp set up and began to heal the wounded and organize everything for tomorrow.

The next day Aleksanteri and I advanced against stane house with two hundred men, since the rest were either very wounded or had to take care of the wounded while we had to continue with our mission.

We encountered many animals that attacked us, Skagos is a wild island and still with the warg, for the fact that not all of them were under the control of a lord, many were free warg that lived in the mountains, during our journey we had to kill several warg that act more like animals than men.

Apparently being so long away from the divine light of our lord had caused them not only to behave like barbarians, now they act like animals, acquiring many habits, such as eating raw meat... or even human meat, since for them, they look like wolves and not like humans.

With this kind of warg Aleksanteri agreed with me and we allowed ourselves a full day to clean the mountains closest to the settlement.

A few days later we managed to locate the castle of the stane house, which was a wooden castle that was poorly defended and equally well cared for it was not difficult for me to break down the wooden doors with one blow as we entered inside and completely massacred the stane family and took all the skagosi we could as prisoners burning the boats they used for fishing to force them to be under our control.

We arrived back to our settlement which was slowly turning into a castle between the constant work of the skagosi and Tyroshi we had captured.

Our next target were the crowl which were the most difficult to finish, not because of the warg, among their ranks there were none of them to our surprise, which made everything easier, the problem was that the castle of this lord was underground, it was a cave that had been converted into a castle which made us have to fight all over the castle corridor looking for the lord and his family, since my idea of setting fire and filling the tunnels with smoke was frustrated by the strong winds that hit the area preventing us from setting fire.

When we finally found lord crowl I killed him and all his family, placing the tombstone of the control of the lords of the skagosi clans, again we took the prisoners to our settlement that already accumulated almost eight thousand pagan souls, while we continued the work to prepare a permanent settlement and we organized patrols to control the interior zones.

As we had to watch that no trees were cut down to control the Skagosi locked on the island to prevent them from trying to escape and ask for help from other North men, as long as we controlled the ships only we could leave the island.

At the end of the month, we received letters from the governor of tumbleton that he was sending two thousand men to help control the situation, but it would take time to arrive and we had to pick up the Finnish soldiers at gulltown.

With the support of more men we could stabilize the situation and complete step two of the Finnish plans.

But for the moment we were walking by a thin thread, since we were few and the skagosi many we had to act carefully because a pagan uprising could cause a lot of damage, especially since we only have four hundred men in fighting capacity and very overextended keeping control over the population.

But well... the skagosi fear me, there are stories of the man with giant blood, among the skagosi they tell what happened when I fought against the bear, that reputation has made everyone tremble with fear when they see me because they don't want to face the giant bastard they say I am.

'but I'm more worried that there are giants somewhere because if there are warg that was a children's tale, surely there are giants too'.

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