The dread in Bjorn Svenssen’s chest weighed heavier than the hammer of Thor himself. Holding his spear and shield with sweaty hands, the young chieftain led his band of Daenish warriors marching over hills that glowed bright gold in the face of Sol’s eastern ascent. Far to their left rose a high plateau that curved inward like a giant arena overlooking the scene. Truthfully, it was almost as beautiful a sight as Bjorn’s sweet dear Nobuhle.
It was better to think of her than the impending battle. So many balmy nights had the pair spent in each other’s company, with nobody watching but the silver circle of Mani high in the star-dotted sky. At least that had been so until one of her father’s high-ranking induna warriors had caught them in the heat of lovemaking. So furious was the Inkosi of KwaXhulu that he had wanted Bjorn and the entirety of his “unruly” countrymen put to death, never mind all the years the Daenes had aided the Inkosi’s impi armies on the battlefield.
So what if they had a problem swigging themselves mindless on the local pombe beer? Were not sellswords like themselves prone to such indulgences the world over?
It must have been a merciful twist in how the Norns wove fate that, after much heated argument, the Inkosi had instead accepted Bjorn’s offer to settle the matter through a trial of combat. The terms had been clear. If the Daenes won, Bjorn could claim Nobuhle’s hand in matrimony. If the Daenes lost, they would all lose their lives as well.
Assuming, of course, that the Xhulu did not massacre them to the last man in the thick of the battle itself. In which case, not even the glories of Valhalla could cure the loneliness Bjorn would feel in the afterlife.
The higher Sol rode in her flaming chariot, the hotter the day grew. Nonetheless, Bjorn did not regret the mail shirt he wore over his tunic. If anything, it gave him comfort him against the chill that shivered his limbs from within. He and his warband would need all the protection they could afford.
No, he could not bother himself with those thoughts. Better to think of embracing Nobuhle’s lithe, gold- and copper-bedecked figure and savoring the kiss of her moist lips. It would all be worth fighting her father’s warriors in the end.
A herd of zebra galloped away with frightened brays when the Daenes arrived at the flat field they had agreed to fight on. The Xhulu were nowhere to be seen. Not on the field, nor anywhere on the surrounding hills that Bjorn could see. It did not make sense. He had never known the proud Xhulu to shirk battle. Nor were they prone to running late, even in a country as rugged and treacherous as this far southern land.
“Where are you Xhulu dogs?” Bjorn cried out. “Show yourself!”
All he could hear was the bounding of his own voice between the hills.
Bjorn squinted at a copse of stunted trees at the field’s far end. The Xhulu could have been hiding there, plotting some sort of ambush. Again, that would be out of character for them, and it would dishonor their terms of agreement. It would still be prudent to flush them out just in case.
Across the field the Daenes stalked until they penetrated the shade of the trees. On Bjorn’s order, they dispersed to comb through the woodland, looking up and down every tree and overturning every log they could find. Still no sign of the enemy, not even tracks.
Again, Bjorn yelled to the sky for the Xhulu to come out. Other than the squawking of spooked birds, nothing.
He slammed the butt of his spear into the ground and growled a curse. “I should’ve known they were cowards!”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” one of his warriors said. “They must be planning something.”
“Or maybe we should simply wait a few moments,” another Daene said. “We might’ve arrived earlier than they expected.”
Bjorn sighed. “Fair enough. Let’s set up camp out in the field until they come.”
The moment the dejected Daenes walked out of the woods, a wall of ovular cowhide shields bristling with iron iklwa greeted them. It swept across the field with the speed of a storm-tossed wave, bending into a concave formation like a bull’s horns around the warband. As the Xhulu impi closed in, they chanted their traditional war cry. “Usuthu! Usuthu!”
Bjorn and his men raised their shields in a protective wall of their own, sticking their weapons out in anticipation of the enemy charge. Assegais from the Xhulu rear ranks soared in an arc into the Daenes. Bjorn’s shield trembled when one of the projectiles struck it, and the screams of death from beside and behind him rattled him further. In defiance of his own terror, he brandished his spear overhead and roared over the attackers’ chanting. “Odin bless us all!”
Thus did Bjorn and his men launch themselves into the enemy. The spatter of blood merged with the clouds of dust to form a scalding mist of dark red. Bjorn’s fury burned even hotter. He washed his spear and painted his shield with the blood, bone, and organs of so many Xhulu. Their shrieks of pain became the songs of skalds to his ears, and the coppery stench of spilled gore an appetizing fragrance. None of the bearskin-clad warriors known as berserkers could equal his ferocity.
A wooden iwisa club glanced across Bjorn’s back. He retaliated with a spear’s thrust straight through the assailant’s open mouth. Before Bjorn could withdraw his weapon, another Xhulu’s iklwa chopped through the spear’s shaft, splitting it in half. Bjorn ducked the next attack to unsheathe sidearm, a straight-bladed sword, which he then clove through the enemy’s skull.
For all his Daenish tenacity, the Xhulu ranks were barely thinning as he fought. No, it was Bjorn’s own warriors whose numbers dwindled as the battle raged on. The impi must have whittled the warband down to a dozenth of its starting manpower.
Bjorn could not let that drain away his courage, even as he bled away his own strength and stamina. He had to win. Nobuhle depended on him. So did the last few of his own men.
Another Xhulu iwisa batted the helmet off Bjorn’s head. He reeled around to punish the culprit. The Xhulu fighter dodged him and rammed his shield into him, throwing Bjorn off balance. Another Xhulu wrung a dark-skinned forelimb around his neck, squeezing what remained of his breath out of him. While Bjorn’s shield and sword slipped out of his hands, he squirmed in a useless effort to shove himself out of the enemy’s grapple. The rest of the Xhulu encircled him and the handful of other remaining Daenes with mocking laughter.
Bjorn watched with horror as his surviving countrymen dropped their weapons and held up their hands. He could not blame them, for they were outnumbered and incapable of doing any more serious damage to the enemy. After his captor released him at last, Bjorn joined the other Daenes in showing his surrender.
The induna who had led the Xhulu attack strutted over to where Bjorn stood. “You fought with the strength and valor of your northern bears, my Daenish brother. But the Daenish bear has lost to the Xhulu lion this time, I am sorry to say.”
The induna’s cackle afterward showed that he was not sorry for it at all.
Drums roared as they paraded the captured Daenes through the Xhulu capital. Throngs of citizenry jeered at Bjorn from along the central avenue, pelting him with rotten calabashes when they were not cheering and saluting their victorious warriors. The coarse texture of his rope bindings scraped the skin off his wrists, further sharpening the torment and humiliation he suffered.
The avenue opened into a plaza before the royal palace complex, a circle of domed thatched huts larger than the others that made up the city. Between a pair of wooden pillars crowned with elephant tusks and buffalo skulls, they dumped Bjorn and his men onto the earthen floor, with the iron point of one captor’s iklwa poking the nape of his neck. Before the bound captives sat Lungelo, the stout Inkosi of KwaXhulu himself, whose sneer spread wide over his white-dusted beard.
The Inkosi waddled off his throne of ivory-inlaid ironwood to rake his fingers through Bjorn’s mane of straight yellow hair with a grimace. “I swear, by the great Creator Unkulunkulu, I know not what my daughter saw in an unwashed northerner like you.”
“Yet you had no qualms inviting us to fight beside your impis, O Inkosi,” Bjorn said. “If you truly valued the purity of your daughters, you should’ve reconsidered bringing us ‘unwashed northerners’ into your southern realm.”
Lungelo slapped him hard enough to crack his cheekbone. “You white-skinned wretches came for our gold and ivory, not our maidens! Or so I had assumed. In the end, it matters not. What matters is that you have lost, surrendered. Therefore, as part of our agreement, you and all your countrymen shall die for your defilement. Starting with you!”
The Inkosi pulled out an iklwa larger than any other Bjorn had seen and waved it in the light of the setting Sol. The young Daenish chieftain could only slump his head with a sigh, tears welling in his eyes as he and the pitiful remains of his warband awaited their deaths. The taunting of the Xhulu audience might as well be the cries of demons from Hel’s underworld to which he would descend.
“No! Father, don’t do this!”
It was Nobuhle who had thrown herself onto Bjorn. She glared at her father with an angry spark in her teary onyx eyes. The firelight of the torches blazing all around the plaza gave her umber-brown face a radiance worthy of a Valkyrie.
“My child, get away from that northerner!” Lungelo said. “You know what we decided. He must die!”
“Never! I won’t let you,” Nobuhle said. “I love him.”
The audience fell silent after a gasp in unison.
“Don’t be a fool, daughter!” the Inkosi said. “His people are nothing but rapacious marauders. I should never have let those troublesome drunkards into our kingdom. Remember, this is for your own good!”
“If you love me so much, Father, you would honor my wish. Or is your hate for them stronger than your love for me?”
The Inkosi lowered his weapon with the angry contortion of his face softening. His gaze drifted over the surrounding crowd of spectators before falling back on his daughter. Bjorn’s heart pounded like the Xhulu drums of war in wait of the verdict.
After a deep inhale, Lungelo dropped his iklwa. “Very well, I shall spare the Daenes. However, none of them can stay.”
“Why not, Father?” Nobuhle asked.
“They lost the battle. If I were to have their chieftain earn your hand and settle among us, it would be as if he and his men had won.”
“Besides, those rowdy brutes did slay many of my warriors,” the induna who had defeated the Daenes that day growled from behind. “I for one never want to see a single Daene again!”
With guilt chewing at his heart, Bjorn surveyed the solemn faces of everyone who watched. His actions had cost the lives of many men, men who had friends and families who would mourn them forever. The induna could not have been the only person in KwaXhulu who would never forgive the reckless young Daene, let alone his mercenary compatriots.
“That is fair,” Bjorn replied. “My men and I shall return to Daenmork whence I came, never to return.”
Nobuhle tightened her embrace on him even as she hesitated to speak. “Then…I shall go with him.”
The Inkosi’s eyes widened. “What, you mean leave us for the cold and dreary far north? I would never see you again!”
“That is true, Father. But I would venture to the ends of the earth to be with my love. Besides, if the Daenes could come south to our country, why not the Xhulu come north to theirs?”
“Besides, the far north is not that dreary,” Bjorn added. “I trust that my people will treat you with the warmth and hospitality that you deserve, my dear Nobuhle.”
Lungelo lowered himself back onto his throne with a regretful bow of his head. “Then it is decided. Nobuhle, you may release the Daenes.”
Nobuhle took her father’s iklwa, cut the bindings off the Daenish prisoners one by one, and gave Bjorn an impassioned kiss on the lips.
“No matter where we go, we will always be together,” she said.
“And our love shall be stronger than iron,” Bjorn replied.
Together, they rose back to their feet and kissed again.