The Gate Breached

The horn blast echoed. Hradec’s soldiers charged the walls, carrying scaling ladders through the cacophony of war cries.

Under the cover of several shield-bearers, Noren hauled two massive battleaxes—one on each shoulder—and pressed toward the gate.

The fortress’s gate was a double-leaf oak monstrosy, ten feet high, seven wide, and ten inches thick, bound with iron straps. It had been rebuilt after the plague by Jaromir’s order.

Yet when a fortress falls from within, the gate is useless.

Months ago, the rebellion succeeded because traitors inside opened these very doors. After seizing the castle, that same sturdy gate had blocked Jaromir’s army, and now it stood against Hradec’s forces.

But it wouldn’t hold for long—because she had arrived.

“Eighty! Eighty! Eighty!”

Noren swung both axes into the gate. Each blow embedded deep into the oak, tearing out great chunks of wood as she wrenched them free.

Against a gate without a portcullis, destruction was only a matter of time.

After twenty-odd strikes, a vertical gash two feet long and two inches wide gaped in the door. Through it, she could already see the panicked faces of the rebels in the courtyard.

Suddenly, the sky darkened. A heavy thud followed:

“Thump!”

Stone fragments rattled off her iron helmet, clinking through the gaps in the shields above her.

Rocks! She hesitated for a heartbeat, then hefted her axes again to widen the breach.

But before her third blow fell, a sudden tightness seized her chest.

She jammed both axes into the gate, released the hafts, shoved the shield-bearers aside with both hands, and kicked backward, scattering the men behind her.

In the next instant, a cascade of golden liquid poured from above, reeking of filth. The boiling temperature made the air sultry.

“Vile fox! Using boiling shit!” The shield-bearers who had been knocked down scrambled up and cursed the enemy on the gatehouse.

“Eat shit, you bastards!” The wretch above laughed.

“Give me a spear.” Noren’s face darkened. She snatched a boar-spear from a shield-bearer, reversed it, and gripped it by the tip.

With a casual glance, she hurled it upward.

“Thud!” The sound of flesh being pierced was clear. The wretch’s face filled with disbelief. Blood gushed from his mouth. “No… impossible… at this angle… this height…”

He toppled backward and fell from the gatehouse.

He landed in the “golden soup,” red and yellow mingling.

“Wait, what are you doing?” Noren grabbed two shield-bearers who were charging forward.

“Breaking the gate, of course,” they said, as if it were the most natural thing.

Their matter-of-fact tone left Noren speechless.

“Don’t you see the shit?”

“Yeah?” They gave her a puzzled look. “So?”

The golden-haired girl’s eye twitched. She had clearly seen that the axe heads embedded in the gate were coated with yellow filth.

Was she expected to fight with shit-stained axes?

She never struck below the belt specifically to avoid such filth. Now she was supposed to break down the gate with a shit-covered axe?

No way.

Noren’s mild germophobia had chosen the worst possible moment to rear its head.

“Where are you going?” The shield-bearers watched in confusion as the golden-haired girl abandoned the frontline and ran off.

“To find a proper tool!” Her voice drifted back as she sprinted in full plate armor, her long legs eating up the ground.

“…”

The shield-bearers exchanged glances, raised their shields to block incoming arrows, and retreated behind the mantlets.

Screams rang around the ladders. Blood splattered. Bone fragments flew from severed limbs… The defenders on the gatehouse breathed a slight sigh of relief. If the gate fell, they would face close-quarters combat around the entrance, with no retreat and only blood and fire ahead.

****

“(In Slavic) Aaaaah, everyone look at me!!!” Noren was back, and she had brought a proper tool.

Amid the fierce battle cries, many noticed her—friend and foe alike. They all sucked in a breath, for she was simply absurd.

The six-foot shieldmaiden in heavy armor now carried a log over her shoulder. It was over a foot in diameter and more than two fathoms long, stripped clean of branches, a bare trunk.

Everyone knew what she intended to do.

“Stop her!!!” A cry of alarm rose from the defenders on the wall.

Archers and javelin throwers, after a sharp intake of breath, loosed their missiles at the shieldmaiden.

Even the allies were stunned by Noren’s strength. Their jaws dropped as if unhinged, their expressions frozen, as if someone had hit pause.

“Cover her!” One shield-bearer was the first to react. He raised his shield and moved forward to block arrows. The others snapped out of their trance and surged forward too.

Outside the stone fortress stood several mantlets—logs as thick as a man’s arm lashed together with hemp ropes, or simply nailed and braced with planks.

“Archers, counter-fire!” Tolruk leaned out from behind a mantlet, three fingers pinching an arrow. He nocked, drew, and released. In an eyeblink, the light bodkin pierced an unprotected spot on a Polish mercenary archer’s neck.

Hradec’s archers looked uneasy. They were merely conscripted hunters, many lacking the stomach for battle. Only a few could shoot back. Most cowered behind the mantlets, some with arms too sore to draw, others psyching themselves up but never daring to leave cover and loose their arrows.

The rebels and Polish mercenaries’ resistance was futile. No one could slow down a pure-blooded Norse shieldmaiden—a descendant of the bloodline, a Hercules.

“Open—up!”

With a mighty roar, she rammed the thick log straight into the closed doors.

As the allies watched expectantly, the wood fibers cracked with a sharp report.

The bar behind the oak gate snapped with a crack.

The gate…

opened!

“(In Norse) Charge! Odin favors us! Victory is ours!” The Norsemen, who had been waiting in reserve, pounded their chests and shouted at the sky, then surged toward the gate with weapons raised.

“What?! The gate’s breached? How? This backwater couldn’t possibly have a ram!” A Polish mercenary paled. He shoved the wooden haft of his hammer forward, causing a conscripted soldier from Hradec to stumble. Using that opening, he fled from the wall.

With the gate broken, the keep would be the last stand.

****

“All glory to me!” Kjell raised his war-axe high. The blade reflected the defeated face of a fallen rebel. A flash of cold light—two pieces!

“That’s a good line. I’m taking it!” Noren grabbed a long-handled axe and spun like a windmill. Two mercenaries raised their weapons to block; a rebel raised his shield.

“All glory to me!!” The wooden haft shattered under the axe blade. The two mercenaries’ bellies split open horizontally. They looked down at their gaping wounds, fell to their knees, and died.

Finally, the axe lodged in the shield.

The rebel who had blocked Noren’s blow with his shield trembled, teeth chattering. Then he let out a shriek like a violated maiden.

“Aaaaaah!”

“Damn it, what are you screaming for?!” Noren saw a full-grown man bawling like a deflowered virgin.

She grimaced. “Your neck gets a scar, that’s all. Twenty years later, you’re a man again! What’s there to cry about!”

“Filthy!” she cursed at the weeping man. Then she planted her foot on the shield and yanked the axe free.

“Aaaah!” Another scream.

“Oh, the shield broke and hit his hand.” The golden-haired shieldmaiden leaned in for a look. The rebel’s wrist was severed, exposing white radius and ulna.

His face crumpled and pathetic. He looked up at Noren, tears streaming down his wrinkled cheeks.

“Please… please…”

“Tsk… sss… hmm…”

She clicked her tongue, about to say something, when a spear thrust out from behind her like a striking viper.

“Thwack!” A palm-wide spearhead sliced through the man’s neck. Blood spurted out, drenching her.

“Noren, stop dawdling!” A heavy-armored soldier with a feathered helmet shouted at her. “Kill cleanly! They’re retreating into the keep!”

The man’s death was as cheap as a weed, like a coin that no one would bother to pick up.

“…” Noren looked at the dead man, then down at her bloodied hands. Her mind went blank for a moment.

‘Did I just hesitate?’

‘On the battlefield, it’s kill or be killed. No room for mercy.’ she admonished herself.

Her bloodied hands slowly clenched.

Her voice firmed once more. “Yes, Aunt.”

****

The moment the gate was breached, the fate of the rebels and Polish mercenaries inside Opava Castle was sealed. If they had formed a U-shaped shield-and-spear wall inside the gate, they might have stalled Hradec’s attack. But none had imagined that a single person could break down the castle gate. That sealed their defeat.

As for retreating to the keep… just delaying the inevitable.

After a day and a night, under the fiery assault of the Norse and Hradec soldiers, the Hradec forces captured the keep with relatively light casualties.

The Opava Rebellion was put down.