Dakota Viking Sends: Death on the Shore

Source¹

The smell of peat smoke on the sea breeze was a familiar comfort. He was shearing sheep, flipping the struggling 7-14 stone ewes with practiced ease and strength. His hands, for all the hard work, were buttery smooth from the lanolin on the sheep wool. His wife liked that.

As he snipped away the fleece from one side of the ewe he grabbed her leg and flipped her to the other side, and started shearing. A shout, cry of alarm …

Daividh looked down the hill, sails, two longboats, pulling in fast.

“Damn them!"

Bad grain crop, the root vegetables were sodden by too much rain, the sheep weren’t lambing, and the Highlanders kept stealing their cattle. Only thing to get them through the winter was the sea, winter in the North Sea was not what you wanted to bet your life against. They had plenty of drying fish, trouble was, the Norsemen always took it all, meaning they’d have a very rough winter when the sun didn’t rise for days.

He dropped the ewe, stabbed the shears into the ground and trotted down the hill, calling over his shoulder at his young boy, “Keep the flock together, if the Danes get up this far run! For your Grampas!”

By God they couldn’t let the Norsemen take their winter food!

He burst into his hut and barks at his wife and daughter “Get up the hill now! Connor is with the flock, GO! NOW!” To their credit they see he’s serious and quickly run.

His weapons aren’t much, a bronze headed spear, a pitted sword the Danes left on shore years ago, a small leather wrapped oak target shield, a couple of knives, his wits and his desperation.

Down to the shore, the longships were still a ways off. Some men (and boys) were lined up at the water's edge with bows and slings. Daividh and some of his close acquaintances; other shearers, fishermen, the town blacksmith (and his apprentice) gathered back among the buildings, they want to separate small groups, not fight the whole force. He could see other small groups waiting among the huts, storage bins, and fishing boats.

Shouts up from shore as arrows are exchanged, slingshot out, smaller boys chucking rocks, shouts, jabbering, the missile men retreating up the gravel shore, as the longboats grind to a stop. Archers turn and fire, slingers start twirling then loose, a clatter of shot hits like hail, the men are surprised at seeing the handful of Danes go down so quickly.

Archers and slingers pull back into the cluster of huts and start taking potshots of opportunity. The Norsemen form two lines and lock shields, not many of them went down on the march up the beach. Once the Danes reached the buildings and had to split the shield wall into smaller groups, the Scots hit …

Screaming their best war-cries … ones, twos, and fives, all charged into the exposed flanks of that broken shield wall.

One of those Dane bastards stepped around the corner shield up, Daividh stabbed up with his spear trying to get under the shield, which the red bearded Dane used to drive the spear down and away. Exposed, a spear thrust at him, bat away the point and step close, too close to spear, slip the hand up the shaft and thrust like a knife, red goes down. Spear pulled from his hand. Next one in sight wearing a nasal helm, thrusting a sword … deflect the sword with the target shield, grab the helmet off his head and proceed to get a few satisfying crunches beating the helm into a hairy skull.

Daividh pulled his old, pitted sword and strode past the blacksmith who was hammering on a Dane’s shield with vengeance. The smith’s apprentice (born nine months after a Viking raid, and with hatred for the Norse) was holding his own with an axe.

The other shearers were in hand-to hand combat, brawling, wrestling and throwing Danes like sheep. A blade was utilized now and again to stop a fight. The fishermen were fighting like the scrappers they were.

Concerned about his blacksmith buddy wearing himself out, Daividh thrusts the old Viking blade into the neck of the Dane fighting the blacksmith …

“Hey! You! I had him he was mine!!”

“I know Dale, but we canna' wait that long, now move.”

They plow into the other fights from the sides and back, ending fights two or three to one, quickly they gain momentum storming into the scattering shield wall and sending the Danes running back to their boats.

Not many Norse left, too few to sail away? They should have all manned the same boat, they might have made it, but they manned the boats they came in, and split their force to be slaughtered.

Daividh broke that old Viking sword at some point during the butchery … Not one was spared, he was using a seal skinning knife at the end. Nasty work.

There were two Dane ships on their beach, both had loot and wealth this village had never seen. All theirs.

They also had a fine selection of “new” Norse forged blades lying on the beach. Fresh bait for the crab pots, and food for the sheepdogs ...

More important, they kept their winter cod.

¹ Forgive me the guy in the helmet and mail, someone like him would probably not have been present in this tale. But the painting was too good to pass up. (It's hard to find pictures of Vikings losing!)

Editor's Note: DV is on a roll, who am I to stand in his way?