(Novel) Charlemagne's War

Charlemagne's War is the true story is Charlemagne's most infamous battle. 

Blurb (from Amazon.com)

In Saxony, a small pocket of pagan rebels hold out as Charlemagne seeks to expand his sprawling empire, and crush the old religion for good.


A final war looms between Charlemagne’s vast army and the Saxon’s mad or noble few, led by King Widukind. 


At his orders, warrior leaders drag a ragged band of the frail and the young, into a battle that cannot be dressed up as noble or fair. 


Private feuds and fears make enemies of friends, cruelty and revenge muddies everything, and King Widukind must confront the philosophy that threatens his own with extinction.


This is the true story of Charlemagne’s most infamous battle, told through those who fought him. The awful facts relayed through human stories, sometimes cowardly and sometimes strange, as scores are settled once and for all, and the Saxons must confront the end of times

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Excerpt - Meeting the king

At last these men were to see the walking god Widukind. For many, it would be the first time.

He stood before the great Irminsul, on the brow of a gentle hill. He was a giant. Swathed in rivers of foreign furs from head to toe, encased in skins few men could have identified, he was a wonderful embodiment of Saxony. His face was too far away to be distinguished, but raped by his glamour each saw what they wanted. To Isegrimm he was an old leathered warhorse, thick and heavy, gnarled like the Donor Oak, wild like the forests themselves. To one-eyed Cynewulf he was a revelation, bathing him in a brand new knowledge of a world surpassing bravery and bile. To Ratflad he was terrifying spectre, an evil death incarnate.

When the crowd was complete, he began to roar. “Saxons! Rebels! You loyal few I salute you! You have not given up! Your gods! To Charlemagne! We are united! He comes! With more men! And more evil icons! Than ever before! We will meet the Christian whores! And destroy them!” He paused, and indulged a softer tone. “Tonight is for you. Revere your own gods, think of your own clan and your women at home.” His voice rose again: “Tomorrow is for us! The Saxons! Are you ready! Are you ready! We march! Tomorrow! At dawn!”

The crowd roared back its assent, and swords and axes and pikes were raised high, armor clashed on armor, shield on shield, heart on heart. Disparate men were brothers under Widukind.

Excerpt - Wives

He paused for a second, surprised by his new tone, at last not some simpering fool, but an honest, naked man, something he had forgotten he could be. “Sometimes I see five men or more parade drunk from my home, together, and I walk in and I see my wife lying there, in our bed, naked, sheets and pillows tossed all around the room, looking so fucking happy, happier than she ever looked for me. And I don’t feel angry, or betrayed, but it’s still the only time I feel anything much, when I look at her, and I feel so sad that I can’t make her grin like that, that I can’t give her that expression she wears of pure satisfaction, of love and exhaustion and passion, and I feel so, so sad that I must despise her so much, and that she bores me so much, when clearly there is beauty to be found in her. But then morning breaks and she cooks and she’s dull again, and I cannot even raise my eyes to her, let alone speak. And she’s sorry for a short while, but soon finds me dull again in turn and then she’ll shout, and I’ll leave, and when I return I’ll see all these men again, and they’ll wave and laugh at me, and the pity and sadness all wells back.” He paused for breath, choking back these hard-won tears. “So best for all that she’s taken by as many strong Christians as can be and then killed, with that lovely, blissful smile lighting her face into death, and she need never think of me, but only of all those men who made her so very, very happy.”

Excerpt - Bones

Far away from the looming melee Ratflad was in a frenzy of his own. His figures were complete. Twenty-two bones carved into twenty-two coarse and depraved Christian shapes, gashes for eyes and gashes for the rest, blunt and boorish they resembled sadistic ghouls more than men, things fit for a child’s nightmares, odd sizes and odd dimensions, some of leg bone, some of finger, lending the pack an evil, cursed quality, a quality of sumptuous darkness.

He had put them in a half-circle around himself, each stuck upright in the mud, waiting for his command. Ratflad in a world of his own, hunched hidden, dancing and tilting as the florid tirade of war hit his ears, always aware that this war could still track his treachery down, while he perfected his arrangement of dolls, grabbing and sticking down the bones in sudden seizures, and always he muttered against those he had betrayed, his attention in a thousand shards:

Excerpt - Battle

And then the first arrow flew. Into this stodgy brick of men came one then two, three, four a volley a barrage of sharp-toothed metal piercing fur and flesh so deep it was as though the greedy arrows ate it, and burrowed into it like maggots. The troops’ reacted with inevitable confusion, they ran and cowered and some, the young and untrained, simply looked to sky, their last moment on earth one of animal stupidity as arrows rained into eyes and throats.