Hi, I'm back, no dark magic this time. I was inspired by the "Don't Drink and Drive" ad campaigns, hope you like it.
Stopping Distance
The Keel of Sven Sigaardsen was renowned as the rowdiest in the army, so experienced that every man had a hideous looking scar and an interminable battle story full of heroic charges, victory against the odds and the gratitude of the local women at their prodigious stamina and generously proportioned manhoods. The biggest braggarts and hardest drinkers of all were Anders and Henning.
The current campaign had started well. Landing from their swift silent longships and descending on the poorly defended English town like locusts, destroying and consuming everything in their path.
But a passing enemy flotilla burned the precious longships before the Danes could return to defend them. The cowardly English refused to come ashore and fight like men, being content to cast insults from the safety of their boats.
After falling out amongst the chieftains, Sigaardsen's Keel found themselves taking a separate route, heading for a Danish enclave a few days march away. On the second day they came across a monastery, and stopped to pillage.
But the following day, Sigaardson decided to cut short the celebrations and resume the march, the monks had been wine-makers, and the whole Keel was in serious danger of drinking itself to death.
The men stumbled on through the late afternoon, hot sun on their backs, Anders and Henning trailing slightly behind the main body, doggedly drinking their way through the three skins of wine apiece they carried.
Then there was a shout, a small group of English Thegns had been spotted ahead and the Keel came to a ragged halt. Henning took one bleary look at the enemy, let loose a skiirling war cry and charged straight at them with Anders running along in his wake.
Oblivious to the fact that the rest of the Keel hadn't followed, the two friends converged on the frightened looking English. Then there was a strange rippling in the grass ahead and a hundred more Thegns rose up to face the astonished duo.
Unable to stop their charge Anders and Henning pitched into the English mass. They were last seen with their spears broken, whirling their axes amidst dozens of enemy warriors, while the men of Sven Sigaardsen looked on amazed and admiring.
It is little wonder that every boast the two heroes had ever made now went verbatim straight into the Sagas, carried by the unstoppable force of eye-witness testimony from fifty hung-over Vikings.