A DAY IN HOFN

It was midday, on a Saturday and the main city of the Viking kingdom was bustling with activity. Sweat ran down the bodies of slaves as they hauled goods into their master's carts. Women exchanged gossip with neighbors in the heat of the day for lack of anything better to do and also because women will be women. The air was filled with the warm smells of freshly dug earth as Joda and his small team of escorts passed through a neighborhood quite close to a large farm.

The sounds of little children playing, some crying as their parents dished out punishments for wrongs done either the previous day or that morning competed with the twittering of the nearby birds who took the hollering as a sort of challenge and so did their best to outdo the little pale children without feathers. Joda took in a deep breath of the nice, fresh air and smiled. Be it at home, or in a foreign country in the body of a total stranger, the sounds of life always sounded the same to him; Beautiful.

"So what is the name of this place exactly? I haven't heard anyone mention the name of this town and it's a little unsettling, to be honest." Joda asked the young man who walked beside him who was no other than Bello. He had taken the day off to spend with his 'family' but was now babysitting Joda instead. Not that he cared. He was highly interested in the young boy.

"That is because you don't go out much. How long have you been in this place, again?" Bello asked as they moved.

"Two, three months I think."

"And you've spent all of that time indoors with an exception of today, so obviously you won't know much." Bello pointed out and continued.."anyway, the name of this 'city', is Hofn, In the Viking kingdom."

"City? This place looks like a village." Joda snorted without filter and more than one Viking looked at him in annoyance.

"That is because we're far from the loud parts of town and closer to the castle. One of the past kings had moved his lodgings from the inner parts of town to this part simply because there was too much noise in the center. He had decreed that all loud businesses should keep out of these parts. In return, he lessened the tax burden on these folks and things have stayed that way since. We're not all that far from the center where you'll see most of the marvels of this Kingdom but this place works just fine for me." Bello shrugged.

"I see. How many cities, towns, and villages does this kingdom have?"

"Last time I checked, we had 20 cities, 35 towns, and more than a hundred villages," Bello answered proudly as if he was mentioning the number of different toys he had to a curious friend.

"What do you mean, last time you checked?"

"Just what I said. We weren't this big seven years ago. But since the war started, we've been on the rise. The treaty binding the three great kingdoms has long been breached so it's now every kingdom for itself in the rush for territory. We've been gaining more land with every raid, mostly on the knights who seem pretty mellow at the moment. The Samurai though are another issue all together. Those guys are trouble."

"I see" Joda, who didn't see at all continued. "Who started this war?, Why?. Also, if you want more territory, why don't you just move to another continent or something instead of fighting?"

Bello sighed as he heard Joda's questions. At times he forgot that the boy was only a teenager and that he didn't even come from the kingdom.

"I will start with your last question." Bello started. " I don't know how it is over there in the knight kingdom but at this place, strength is valued over anything. The only thing that comes close, maybe even more valued than strength Is loot. We've been on this land for generations and are not prepared to leave it. Leaving this place in search of new, unoccupied, and most importantly, unchallenged territory is akin to retreating. And any form of retreat is treated the same. With disdain and scorn. We will rather extend our rule into enemy territory with blood and bodies whiles picking loot than run away into new lands that we don't even know if we have on this planet." Bello paused his speech and took a long sip from his water gourd before continuing.

"We started the war. Before you say anything, let me point out to you some things about this planet. There's only one continent as far as we know it and it's not even big. The rest of the planet is covered in water. We know because we have tried a lot of times to expand our influence over the seas to whatever people may be hiding in whatever undiscovered lands but our efforts always yielded zero results. The soldiers either got lost at sea or came back empty-handed. The only people we discovered were the Samurai and the Vikings. We tried to take them over at first but God were they strong.

After a couple of failed attempts, we gave up and came to an agreement. We won't attack each other anymore and open our borders freely for trade and commerce. Things went well for a couple of centuries until one of our prized explorers noticed something dreadful. The Ocean was swallowing our territory with each passing year. Everybody panicked. Our territory could barely support our number and now the ocean was eating it up? The king begged the other two kingdoms for assistance but they ignored him. We resumed our exploring in hopes of discovering new lands and we failed again and again until the king said it was enough.

If persuasion wasn't going to work with our neighbors, then force sure would. So we attacked. We pushed. And with every raid, we captured more territory and loot. With every attack, we grew. We were getting pretty deep into the territories of the two kingdoms until the Shogun of the samurai struck back and started retaking their territory with frightening speed. We lost a lot of men to those weirdos so we left them alone. For now.

The knights though are on the verge of a civil war and quite weak so even though the excitement has died down a little, we still hit them every once in a while when they least expect it. It's good practice for our young recruits. The loot is always welcome." Bello finished with a sickening smile and Joda didn't know if to be worried at his nonchalance or impressed with his loyalty to his kingdom. Before he could reply though, the young man spoke again.

"Aaah, there's our destination. The Hofn market." Bello's smile widened as he heard Joda's stomach rumble in acknowledgment of the news.

"Let's go" Joda agreed with his stomach.