Chapter 41

With a sickening squelching sound and an outcry of pain Sjorn buried his trusty war axe in another enemy's neck and shortly afterwards pulled it back out, grunting in tiredness as his arms had begun to get heavier with each enemy he cut down.

While his breath was rustling through his pumping lungs and forming clouds when exhaling before his mouth Sjorn was taking stock of their situation with a swivelling head.

'It could be worse I suppose…' The old warrior thought to himself as he saw another son of Jormag get skewered by one of his man with a spear through the chest, clean and simple.

Snapping back out of his musings Sjorn caught an attacking war hammer at the handle and with a cry of rage buried his second axe in the chest of the attacker that went down, gurgling and suffocating on his own blood all the while.

'We have to fortify the gates somehow or the enemies supply of men will never end!' Sjorn thought and swiftly made to put his conclusion to reality.

"Mjoll! Gather your leftover men and help me fortify the gate! We need to cut their supplies off or we'll never see the end of them!" Sjorn called over to one of his subordinates who only nodded back in a hurry before rushing off to find her scattered troop.

While Sjorn waited for Mjoll and her troop to return back to him he went about doing the only thing he could do while waiting and that was lowering the enemy's numbers! Thus, Sjorn rushed back into thickened battle with a war cry and soon was hacking and cleaving through enemies like there was no tomorrow…

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Meanwhile the group of people meant to head for the caves had begun their track through the dark and frosted over alleys in order to avoid the routes where the enemy may expect them to head through. While the Havroune had organized the groups Alvar had broken down a few doors of nearby houses and swiftly ruffled through the things inside to look for something, anything really, that he could use as a weapon.

In the end he hadn't found much besides a freaking hammer possibly belonging to a blacksmith and the wooden lid of a barrel that he decided could be used as a makeshift shield.

With his new weapons in hand Alvar returned to his family who were a little surprised by his new gear but couldn't fault him in a situation like this, especially since Alvar was training to be a warrior and had probably more experience in fighting than many of the attending civilians, even if his size was a glaring problem should it come to a fight.

Not long after Alvar's return the groups of refugees started to make their ways into the direction of the valley at the bottom of Hoelbrak where the caves were located. The only problem they came across was that they had to get past the huge gates of Hoelbrak somehow. A glaring weakness in the layout of Hoelbrak as Alvar had come to realise. After all, if the main gates were the only route of escaping in the circle of mountains Hoelbrak was located in than they would be trapped should the enemy manage to breach their defences and luck would have it that exactly that had happened.

Alvar swore to himself right then and there that if he ever had command over a large force of men and women that he would always keep a path for escape ready should a case like today become a possibility. In fact he wondered why the leaders of the Norn had picked a location such as this for the capital in the first place?! Yes, it was good to defend but on the other hand their enemy was not only consisting of humanoid troops and thus causing many tactics for war to become rather irrelevant. For fucks sake, their enemy was an ancient dragon! Did they really become so arrogant over the years of safety so far in the south that they hadn't seen the problems with such a location as their stronghold or had they simply chosen to ignore them?

With such thoughts in mind Alvar crept through the dark with his grandparents right behind him and the mist guard at the front of their group, hoping that they wouldn't come across enemies on their way out of Hoelbrak.

Unfortunately for the group of refugees their hopes were smashed into bits not long after they had started their escape, beginning with an arrow that burrowed itself in the eye of a member of the mist guard. Afterwards all hell broke loose and Alvar found himself remembering his teacher's words as if in a trance. You truly could not prepare someone for the first real battle adequately…