Asgarth the Invincible: Chapter V

Asgarth hung around the mighty clash of armies for a while, curious to see who would get the upper hand. Reinforcements rushed from both sides, Nord and Swadian noblemen and common soldiers alike rushing to die horribly in the name of their respective kings. Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity of pain and senseless slaughter, the Swadian invaders broke and ran to the south.

“Hurrah!” rejoiced Asgarth, wishing he had been allowed to join in like the hero he truly was.

He rode down into the field of battle, now strewn with the detritus of battle, broken men and horses, limbs and body parts scattered across the grass and shrubs like confetti after a particularly violent wedding, the cries of injured and dying men a perverse chorus to the bride that was Death and her husband, Lamentation.

Not far distant he espied the banner of Jarl Gundur, a great noble of the north. “Hail ye well met,” Asgarth announced as he rode unto him. “I am Asgarth the Invincible, sire, an adventurer come to this land in search of fame and glory. Hast thou need of such a man in your war-band?”

“My losses this day were terrible indeed,” enunciated Gundur, shaking his weary head in a tired fashion, surveying the corpse-encrusted land before him. “Aye, I will take thee under my banner, Asgarth the Invincible.”


Thus did Asgarth join Gundur’s war-band.

Pausing only to bury the dead, Gundur’s force betook itself from the field of slaughter, heading into the Swadian borderlands. For three days and nights they rode back and forth, from town to village, but nobody would tell Asgarth what they were looking for.

On the fourth day still nothing had happened. Asgarth had joined a war-band expecting to see some war, not so he could have a horse-holiday with a group of sweaty men. “This is bullshit,” he muttered, and left Gundur’s war-band for the direction of the royal city of Sargoth, where he had been heading in the first place before all this bullshit happened.