Top 10 fantasy fiction battles: Battle of Cynuit

8. The Last Kingdom, Bernard Cornwell
Battle of Cynuit

He stared balefully across the encampment where men were drinking. “Do you know who wins battles, boy?”
“We do, Father.”
“The side that is least drunk,” he said, and then, after a pause, “but it helps to be drunk.”
“Why?”
“Because a shield wall is an awful place.”

—Bernard Cornwell, The Last Kingdom

As a self-professed lover of medieval-flavored fantasy and historical fiction battles, and as someone who relishes in bloodshed on the printed page, I nevertheless must come clean: Some periods of ennui aside, I’m quite glad that I live in modern, civilized times. I especially thank the powers that be that I don’t have to strap on arms and armor and fight in the blood-soaked hell that was a viking shield wall.

Bernard Cornwell shattered any fantasies I may have had of engaging in dark ages combat in his wonderful, ongoing series The Saxon Stories. These books have something of a shield wall fetish, and are a repository for the sweet science of making one (keep that in mind should the need ever arise). For example, there’s this good-to-know factoid:

You can hear a shield wall being made. The best shields are made of lime, or else of willow, and the wood knocks together as men overlap the shields. Left side of the shield in front of your neighbor’s right side, that way the enemy, most of whom are right-handed, must try to thrust through two layers of wood.

Cornwell describes how many battles were delayed for hours as men on both sides gulped ale to build up their courage. Shield walls were simply too brutal and murderous to stand in completely sober. Picture a rugby scrum in which the participants not only push but stab one another with spears and short blades over the rims of their shields, or underneath, at exposed legs and ankles. Many fighters would strap iron plates to their boots to turn such wicked strokes, Cornwell says.

But more about shield walls later. The background of the battle of Cynuit is as follows: Uhtred of Bebbanburg, a Saxon who was captured in a raid as a youth and raised among the Danes, Ealdorman Odda, and approximately 900 Saxons square off against the raven banner of Ubba Lothbrokson and his 1,200 Danes. Odda and Uhtred have the advantage of high ground and some degree of protection from the old, eroded, earthen fort of Cynuit. But they have only a day’s worth of water and cannot withstand a siege, so they must act.

Uhtred develops a plan to sneak out at night with a small force of 100 men and burn the Danish ships, which are moored in a nearby river. Since the Danes are so protective of their longships, Uhtred predicts that they will lose their discipline when they rush back to quench the fires. Uhtred’s small force will fight them there, on the narrow strip of marsh-lined beach where Ubba cannot bring all his strength to bear. Then, in the heat of the combat when shield walls are locked, Odda will fall upon Ubba from the rear with the rest of the men from the fort.

But this plan is easier said than done. Though he’s beginning to gray Ubba is a mighty fighter, perhaps the mightiest in hand-to-hand combat of all the Danes. He wields a wicked heavy axe in combat and no man who has stood before him in battle has lived. His men are better armed than Uhtred's. But Ubba’s one weakness is his superstitious nature. He does nothing without a sign from the gods, and in this battle the runesticks have fallen against him. Thus, when Uhtred and Odda refuse his offer to surrender, Ubba feels fear.

Uhtred’s plan works. Sneaking through the pre-dawn hours on foot he manages to set fire to a few Danish ships at daybreak, rousing Ubba’s small army like a swarm of angry bees. The few Danes near the ships are confused and easily cut down. Uhtred and his 100 men form a shield wall that stretches across the narrow beach and close with the main of the Danish army. Uhtred recalls his father’s words as the shields touch close.

Shield wall. It is an awful place, my father had said, and he had fought in seven shield walls and was killed in the last one.

The angry Danes make the mistake of charging like mad dogs and not forming a proper shield wall of their own. Uhtred’s men slaughter the first wave. “It was ax work and sword work, butchers’ work with good iron.” A battle calm comes over Uhtred and he finds killing frightfully easy with his short sword Wasp-Sting:

I lunged Wasp-Sting forward, and the Dane ran onto her point. I felt the impact run up my arm as her tip punctured his belly muscles, and I was already twisting her, ripping her up and free, sawing through leather, skin, muscle, and guts, and his blood was warm on my cold hand, and he screamed, ale breath in my face, and I punched him down with the shield’s heavy boss, stamped on his groin, killed him with Wasp-Sting’s tip in his throat.

The Danes regain their composure and order a shield wall of their own. Five or six hundred Danes advance with murderous intent. Uhtred encourages his small force to stand its ground. “They’re coming to die! They’re coming to bleed! They’re coming to our blades!” he shouts.

The clash of shield walls rings like a thunderclap. Uhtred experiences “the thunder of shield hitting shield, my shield knocked back against my chest, shouts of rage, a spear between my ankles, Wasp-Sting lunging forward and blocked by a shield, a scream to my left, an ax flailing overhead.” The battle degenerates into a grunting mass of men hacking and stabbing and dying and bleeding. Uhtred’s shield wall is driven back on the burning ships.

But then Odda arrives and takes the Danes from behind. The pressure is immediately relieved. Uhtred draws his battle-sword Serpent-Breath and attacks, discovering that he is in elite, deadly company:

Beware the man who loves battle. Ravn had told me that only one man in three or perhaps one man in four is a real warrior and the rest are reluctant fighters, but I was to learn that only one man in twenty is a lover of battle. Such men were the most dangerous, the most skillful, the ones who reaped the souls, and the ones to fear. I was such a one.

Danes begin to fall back, and some retreat to their ships, shoving them off into the sea. But Ubba bravely stands, ordering a last shield-wall in a rearguard action. A berserk rage overtakes him:

And then, with a roar of fury, Ubba hacked into our line with his great war axe … his huge blade was whirling again, making space, and our line went back and the Danes followed Ubba who seemed determined to win this battle on his own and make a name that would never be forgotten among the annals of the Northmen. The battle madness was upon him, the runesticks were forgotten, and Ubba Lothbrokson was making his legend.

In a mighty single duel Uhtred slays Ubba when the latter’s foot slips in the spilled guts of a corpse. Uhtred stabs him with Serpent-Breath in the arm, then hacks his neck. Uhtred shows his foe the ultimate respect due a viking, holding Ubba’s hand tight to his axe as he dies, since only a man who dies on the battlefield clutching a weapon makes it to Odin’s hall.

“Wait for me in Valhalla, lord,” Uhtred says to the dying man. And with Ubba’s death, the Danes are finished.

Cimmerian sighting: Mourning the loss of print fantasy pubs

I'm thrilled to report that I've been asked to write occasional blog posts over at one of my most frequented cyberspace stops, The Cimmerian. It's a site dedicated to the life and writings of one of my favorite authors, Robert E. Howard. Recently The Cimmerian made the decision to widen its scope to include more broad-based fantasy and horror news, reviews, and analysis.

When I post there, my plan will be to include the first few paragraphs here, and then post a link to The Cimmerian if you want to read on.

Here's my first (and hopefully not last) contribution to The Cimmerian.
_____

So far 2009 has been a lousy year for fantasy fans who like the feel of good old-fashioned print publications in their hands. For starters, we’ve lost the award-winning Robert E. Howard journal The Cimmerian. Elsewhere, long-running fantasy fiction and reviews magazine Realms of Fantasy is closing up shop, ending its 15-year run with the April 2009 issue. And, to top off the bad news, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, a well-regarded “best-of” anthology that spanned 21 years, has also been discontinued.

I’m not about to indulge in hyperbole and declare that print is dead, but there’s no doubt that the void left by these losses feels like, to quote J.R.R. Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey, “another piece of Mordor.”

To read the rest, click here.

Zombie alert!

I'm taking a momentary diversion from fantasy battles to report an important news flash: Run, zombies are on the loose!

One of my worst fears, along with being consumed by a great white shark, is the possibility that one day the dead will walk the earth (presumably when there's no more room in hell, to steal a line from George Romero). I mean, I love zombie books and films, but when I watch or read about cannibal corpses it's with a strange mixture of revulsion, terror, and relief that I'm not one of the poor souls holed up in the shopping mall. Thus, when I clicked the link above I had a moment of panic before I realized it was a hoax.

Suffice to say that if I was driving along I-95 on the way to work and passed a sign that said "Caution!! Zombies Ahead!!", I'd be the guy you heard about on the evening news who was hospitalized after veering off into the nearest ditch. Missing the ditch, I'd be headed for home to grab canned goods, bottled water, shotgun, and axe and bee-line for my zombie-proof shelter in the basement.

(Thanks to my friend Falze for bringing this impending catastrophe to my attention).

My top 10 fantasy fiction battles: Battle of the Blackwater

9. A Clash of Kings, George R.R. Martin
Battle of the Blackwater

George R.R. Martin is one of the most talented fantasy fiction authors writing today, and not just because of his great story-telling and characterization, or the cold-hearted, wildly unpredictable plot of his current series, A Song of Ice and Fire. Martin can also write damned good battle scenes, a few of which rank among the most convincing and violently portrayed that I’ve encountered in fantasy literature.

In particular, the Battle of the Blackwater from book two of his series, A Clash of Kings, is one of the bloodiest and most chaotic affairs I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. It features ship-to-ship combat, the use of catapults, scorpions, and alchemists’ fire, a charge of armored knights, drownings, severed limbs, men burned alive, and even prisoners executed via trebuchet (you have to read it to believe it).

The Battle of the Blackwater is a microcosm of Martin’s strengths as a writer. In this violent struggle on land and sea, he captures the gruesomeness and realism of what a pitched medieval battle must have been like, while also managing to spring several nasty shocks on the reader (true to form, Martin hideously maims the battle’s point of view character).

In this battle the forces of Stannis Baratheon sail up the Blackwater River to attack the castle of King’s Landing and approximately 5,000 defenders under young King Joffrey. Baratheon’s force is formidable—20,000 men, many borne on war-galleys, the decks of which are studded with scorpions and catapults capable of flinging stones and barrels of burning pitch.

But the army is overconfident and fails to send ahead probing ships. As a result, they run into a deadly trap. Many of the ships at King’s Landing are empty hulks full of vicious green wildfire, a substance akin to napalm which sticks to its unfortunate target and melts flesh like tallow. Martin describes it as, “Evil stuff, and well-nigh unquenchable. Smother it under a cloak and the cloak took fire; slap at a fleck of it with your palm and your hand was aflame.”

When the attackers ships move in, great trebuchets from King's Landing send rocks the size of a man’s head raining down upon them. “When they fell they sent up great gouts of water, smashed through oak planking, and turned living men into bone and pulp and gristle,” Martin writes.

Battle is joined. Ships ram one another, spilling armored men into the water, who quickly drown. Other ships lock together with grappling hooks in a death embrace, and decks are soon awash in blood as men hack each other with swords and axes.

Despite some terrible losses the attackers are winning until an unfortunate ship, the Swordfish, rams a Lannister hulk floating low in the water—with slow green blood leaking out from between her boards. The crew of the Swordfish fails to recognize the wildfire and crashes in. The explosion and towering gout of flame engulfs a dozen Baratheon ships, destroying most of their crews. More ships begin to catch fire. Then, horribly, the defenders haul up a chain-boom behind the attacking force, cutting off the mouth of bay and preventing retreat. Another dozen ships, piled up against the chain, go up in flames. The Blackwater is turned into the mouth of hell. This marks the turning point of the battle.

Yet many of Stannis’ ships make it through and the attackers manage to land a fair force on land. Some of the men bring a ram to the king’s gate and bash away at the oaken doors. The keep appears on the brink of falling after the Lannister’s mightiest warrior, the pitiless, murdering Sandor Clegane, is humbled by the roaring flames (he's mortally afraid of fire) and refuses to go out and repulse the attack.

But Tyron Lannister, the stunted, dwarfish son of Lord Tywin Lannister, leads a sortie out from the Red Keep to repulse the attackers. He shames a group of knights to follow him (“They say I’m half a man,” he said. “What does that make the lot of you?”). They slam into the attackers at the gate, running them through with lowered lances. Tyrion takes a man’s head half-off with a swing of his axe. Another knight, dazed on his feet, tries to hand Tyrion his gauntlet in an act of surrender; Tyrion realizes the knight’s hand is still inside the steel glove.

Martin describes the chaos and carnage—and Tyrion’s exultant, near suicidal mood—with master strokes:

Men were crawling up from the river, men burned and bleeding, coughing up water, staggering, most dying. He led his troop among them, delivering quicker cleaner deaths to those strong enough to stand. The war shrank to the size of his eye slit. Knights twice his size fled from him, or stood and died. They seemed little things, and fearful. “Lannister!” he shouted, slaying. His arm was red to the elbow, glistening in the light off the river. When his horse reared again, he shook his axe at the stars and heard them call out “Halfman! Halfman!” Tyrion felt drunk. The battle fever.

Down in the bay twenty galleys, wrecked and lashed together, have formed a treacherous bridge. Hundreds of Baratheon troops on the far shore are using it to leap from one deck to another and cross the Blackwater. Tyrion turns to Ser Balon Swann, one his knights, and utters perhaps my favorite line in the series:

“Those are brave men,” he told Ser Balon in admiration. “Let’s go kill them.”

Tyrion leads another charge to the water’s edge and hurls the enemy back into the water as they swarm ashore. The carnage is overwhelming: “His own killing was a clumsy thing. He stabbed one man in the kidney when his back was turned, and grabbed another by the leg and upended him into the river … A naked man fell from the sky and landed on the deck, body bursting like a melon dropped from a tower.”

Tyrion nearly drowns as the ruined ship breaks beneath him and he falls, grasping for the rail. He reaches for the hand of one of his trusted knights, Ser Mandon Moore, but the latter turns traitor and slashes Tyrion cruelly across the face.

But Tyrion and the defenders have held out long enough, and a huge combined Lannister-Tyrell army arrives to take the remainder of the Baratheon army from the rear, ending the ferocious battle.

Top 10 fantasy fiction battles: Battle at Leidhra

The ‘battle piece’, as a historical construction, is as old as Herodotus; as a subject of myth and saga it is even more antique. It is an everyday theme of modern journalistic reportage and it presents a literary challenge which some of the world’s masters have taken up.

—John Keegan, The Face of Battle

I read fantasy for the story, for the escape, for the adventure, for the monsters and magic, and for the memorable characters. The best fantasy has the added bonus of examining the important matters in life (God or his lack thereof, mankind’s purpose on earth, society and civilization) and exercises the mind in higher thinking.

But heck, I’ll admit it: I also read fantasy for the fights.

There’s nothing I enjoy more in a book than a well-portrayed battle scene. In the next few posts I’ll be exploring my top 10 favorite fantasy battles. These are epic combats that inspire with their courage, frighten with their ferocity, sadden with their pathos, and occasionally sicken with their terrible carnage and destruction. But above all else they are a joy to read.

These posts will celebrate the mass battles; fantasy has its share of great single combats too (Eowyn vs. the Witch King in The Lord of the Rings, and Gregor Clegane vs. the Red Viper in A Song of Ice and Fire are two that immediately spring to mind), but solo duels or minor skirmishes are for another day. Several of these large-scale battles, however, do feature terrific single combats within them.

Some of this list is borderline “fantasy,” since I’ve included entries from the historical fiction genre and events that really happened. But since the details of these ancient battles are largely lost to the passage of time, and out of necessity must be heavily re-imagined by the author, I have included them here.

So without further ado, and in no particular order, sound the horn, shields at the ready … Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!

(Warning: If you haven’t read these books, be prepared to experience some spoilers).

10. Hrolf Kraki’s Saga, Poul Anderson
Battle at Leidhra

I’ll tell you right off the bat that the final, climactic battle from Poul Anderson's Hrolf Kraki's Saga will be hard to top. It features boar-trolls, attack dogs, shield walls, men in bear form, heroism, slaughter, and ultimate ruin. In brief, the build-up to the battle is as follows:

A great host of evil led by the false King Hjorvardh and the wicked Queen Skuld march through the night to murder Hrolf Kraki and his men, sleeping unawares at the stockade fortress of Leidhra. Fortunately Hrolf’s man Hjalti sees the traitorous host coming and rides his horse at a breakneck pace to rouse his lord. Hjalti’s horse dies from exhaustion as he reaches Leidhra, and, leaping from his falling mount, awakens Hrolf and his men to the danger with a fragment from the ancient Bjarkamal:

Athelings, rise up and honor your oaths,
all that you swore when the ale made you eager!
In foul winds as fair, keep faith with your lord,
he who withheld no hoard for himself
but gave us freely both gold and silver.

Hjorvardh and Skuld’s massive army encircles the fort. They dispatch messengers to tell Hrolf that he can save his life if he kneels to Hjorvardh, but Hrolf answers like every good Viking king should: He extends his middle finger and tells his men to drink up.

“Let us take the best drink we have,” he called, “and be merry and see what kind of men are here. Let us strive for only one thing, that our fearlessness live on in memory—for hither indeed have the strongest and bravest warriors sought from everywhere about.” To the messengers: “Say to Hjorvardh and Skuld that we will drink ourselves glad before we take their scot.”

The next morning Hrolf and his 11 champions and the rest of his men issue from behind the walls to fight the enemy on open ground. The description of their charge is a sumptuous visual simile: “Along their ranks went that ripple as of wind across rye, which bespeaks a peak of training.”

Formed in a great wedge Hrolf’s men smash the enemy’s center, killing countless of the foe. Fighting in front of the press is a great red bear, which none recognize but is one of Hrolf’s men, Bjarki, fighting in bear form. Later Bjarki fights as a man, hewing shields, helmets, arms, and heads, his own arms bloody to the shoulder from killing.

Hrolf and his men have the early advantage, but their charge and crushing advance leaves them overextended and surrounded by the great mass of the enemy. Skuld summons a wolf-gray troll-boar the size of a bull, and later uses undead and a handful of shadowy monsters to attack the Danes.

The battle rages the entire day, and as night falls hope begins to fade. Great are the deeds of Hrolf’s champions, but the enemy are too many. Hrolf’s most trusted friend, Svipag the one-eyed, is thrown and slain by the boar, and Bjarki is gored and slain as he finally kills the beast. The circle of defenders around Hrolf inexorably closes. Grief-stricken by the impending death of his king and the end of the glorious reign he brought to Denmark, Hjalti speaks a lengthy set of staves, including the following memorable lines:

Let us die in the doing of deeds for his sake;
let fright itself run afraid from our shouts;
let weapons measure the warrior’s worth.
Though life is lost, one thing will outlive us:
memory sinks not beneath the mould.
Till the Weird of the World stands unforgotten,
high under heaven, the hero’s name.

At the end, his death at hand, Hrolf leaves the dwindling shield-circle and wades alone into the sea of foes until he too is slain. “Man after man he felled. No one of them slew him; it took them all.”

Celebrating REH with some comic-book savagery

As usual, I'm a day late on the news: Yesterday marked what would have been the 103rd birthday of Robert E. Howard, founder and reigning champion of the swords-and-sorcery genre. But my absent-mindedness didn't prevent me from celebrating Howard's life with a bit of fun reading in his memory--namely, revisiting the pages of The Savage Sword of Conan issue 24.

Re-reading SSOC 24 was certainly a blood-soaked trip down memory lane. This particular issue debuted in November 1977; I bought it second-hand in an old comic book shop for $1.00 probably 10 years after that. It's one of the best dollars I've ever spent, in hindsight.

Was there ever a better comic book/magazine than The Savage Sword of Conan? Only a Turanian boot-licker would say yes. For proof, click on the picture above to reveal the awesomeness of this issue's table of contents:

SSOC 24 includes one of Howard's better short stories, The Tower of the Elephant. It's a great adaptation by Roy Thomas, and is illustrated by perhaps my favorite Conan artist, John Buscema. Here's a great panel in which Conan first encounters the blinded and crippled Yag-Kosha, prisoner in the tower of the evil wizard Yara.

As I wrote in a previous post, one of the reasons I hold SSOC in such high esteem is that it was so much more than a comic book--a more accurate description is probably illustrated magazine. In its early days SSOC contained a wide range of articles dedicated to all things REH, and occasionally took a broader look at other happenings in the fantasy genre. This particular issue includes a review of Amra, a long-running fan/literary magazine devoted to the works of Howard and other sword-and-sorcery authors, plus an article on an event held by the Buffalo, NY chapter of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA).

The SCA photos in the magazine are a howl (there's several more than I've included here). I don't do LARP or dress up in armor (save on a few select occasions), but this does look like fun. Although the guy on the lower left... nice helmet and shield, but the long-sleeve t-shirt and beer gut ruins the effect.


If The Tower of the Elephant, AMRA, and weekend warriors in t-shirts and great helms weren't enough, SSOC 24 also includes a reprint of Howard's epic poem "Cimmeria," as illustrated by the immortal Barry Smith in five glorious black-and-white pages. Here's the last page... nuff said.


If that's not a steal at $1, I don't know what is.

Long live REH!

Ranking on Rankin and Bass, and rating Poe's best

Not much to add today, just a few links to point out that I've found interesting.

Over at Black Gate, Ryan Harvey posted a very thorough review of the old Rankin and Bass production of The Return of the King. It's certainly the most comprehensive look at this film that I've encountered. I only wish I was half as fond of the film as Harvey was. There are a few scenes from The Return of the King that I enjoy and found to be well-done (I agree with Harvey's assessment of the Witch King and Eowyn confrontation, and also wish Peter Jackson included more of Tolkien's dialogue. And John Huston does voice the best Gandalf ever). But, overall, I deem Return of the King a pretty poor film, much worse than the flawed, but worth owning and watching, Rankin and Bass version of The Hobbit.

I tried watching Return of the King back-to-back with Ralph Bakshi's The Lord of the Rings a while back, and actually thought that The Return of the King suffers in comparison (and I'm no fan of Bakshi). Also, Return of the King fails as a "sequel" to Bakshi's film since it doesn't even pick up in the right spot. Ah well.

Over at The Cimmerian, Steve Tompkins has penned a nice 200 year birthday tribute to Edgar Allan Poe. I really must take note of these important dates as I always seem to forget about literary dignitaries like Poe, J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, etc, when their birthdays roll around (but as long as I remember my wife and kids,' I'm okay).

Anyhow, Poe is one of my favorite authors and resides firmly in the top three of my "horror trinity," which also includes H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King. If forced to pick a favorite Poe story I'd have to go with The Masque of the Red Death, of which every word rings as poetry and contains one of the best closing sentences I can recall from any story ("And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.") But for chills its hard to top the suffocating brick-by-terrible-brick conclusion of The Cask of Amontillado, which left me with a terrifying visual that has remained seared into my imagination ever since.