The Lost Shieldwall

:The following chronicle was brought to my attention by fellow historian, Saxon-buff, and dear friend Professor Williams. He and I have been colleagues here at Cambridge for years, and have worked together on translating countless Norse and Old English texts. Initially, when he shared this discovery with me, both of us ectstatic at finding a surviving Saxon text that far north, especially after the great purges against Saxon lords during much of William the Conqueror's reign. However, the morbid contents of the text (and later, on the pages themselves) made us rethink our positive assumptions.
I don not want to give too much of this away right at the start, so please continue. While, hopefully, this may be one of the many examples of chroniclers overexaggerating events that happened long ago, I still haven't done enough reasearch to know for certain. Here is the translation.
Transcribed to Brother Honorius of Greenhead, Northumbria, by bondsman Offa Randwulf, during the Yule season in the year of our lord one thousand and twenty-six, under the rule of the good king Canute, ruler of Wessex, Mercia, and all kingdoms of England.
A shieldwall of 3 dozen men, including he bondsman, were sent by Ealdorman Aelfrith to collect tribute owed by subjugated Scots and poorer Angles who had built their homesteads outside of the crumbling Roman defenses far to the north of any civilized society, other than our two villages (Greenhead and our sister, Gilsland). The formation of such a group was decided by the Ealdorman due to hushed rumors amongst the village elders of some sort of rebellion brewing amongst the northern savages. If such outbreak of the peace were to occur, it would bring the Southern Lord's wrath on Aelfrith's head, and leave him in the shitter with the other men he had "dealt" with.
From here Offa says, in rather mangled and painfully forced-out English, that he wishes no disrespect to Lord Uhtred or to any of his house.
From Aelfrith's decision and subsequent ordering of the local forces, very little happened on the way from the relative safety of Northumberland to the wilds of Cumbria. Only there could they see the carnage.
They took the old Latin road which lead far, far off to the north. No more details had been gained or given to the men. Trudging along, and collecting the kings tax whenever possible, Offa interrupts to say that these were not Christian people and that they were fierce, and needed to take anything remotely useful to their purpose.
On the eve of the seventh night away from Greenhead, Offa camped his men in clearing that was off to the side of the road. Here he let them relax, drink, and gamble as is the soldier's way. However, the men noticed fire blazing from some settlement a few miles from where they were encamped. Offa, while battle hardened and a pillager himself, thought it odd that any warband would waste good sleeping and drinking time by ransacking some homes or barns at such an hour as this. He sent three men to investigate, and told them to return by morning. They left at an easy pace, drinking mead and singing scraps of bawdy tavern shanties, promising to bring back an explanation as to what the situation further up the road was. The rest of them were chilled by the atmosphere, and slept the rest of the night uneasily, plagued by troubled dreams.
That next morning, the three men had not returned from their venture up the road, and smoke plumed over the horizon. Offa, worried, marched his men quickly up the road, not daring to stay in the clearing for longer than he had to. During the march north, many men swore to Offa that they had heard strange sounds and had seen strange figures far off in the countryside and woods. Of tall, creatures moving among the trees, and glowing, disembodied eyes. The men whispered of bad omens, and how the unlucky three may have met their fate by some cursed hands.
Offa chastized his men, and kept them in rank. However, he too was deeply troubled by their dissapearence, and thought that the Scots could be up to some dark Pagan ritual. Whatever it was, the matter would simply have to wait until the warband reached the village.
When the men reached the dying embers of the village, almost nothing was left. Corpses littered the main road, structures were utterly demolished, and most importantly, one of the three was still alive. The men who had spotted the soldier rushed to his aid, and saw that he had deep lacerations on his chest, and that his tongue had been removed. They were able to resucitate him, yet not much information was gained, due to the loss of his tongue. When asked about the other two scouts he simply shook his head, and when presented with questions regarding the fate of the village, he looked off forlornly into the distance. He didn't respond to a single question afterwards.
At that moment, a large flock of ravens shot from deep inside the forest, temporarily blotting out the sun. The men were terrified, and begged Offa for some sort of retreat. He refused, saying that he wouldn't leave without the rest of his men, or the tribute this village owed them.
During the rest of the day, the men were put to work. A dozen were put to the task of burying the corpses, and taking anything which they may have needed to survive the night. Four were put on sentry duty on the northern, eastern, western, and southern extremities of the village. The rest did the best they could to build some sort of defence around the remains of the village, using strewn pieces of rubble, timber from the villages carpenter and lumberjack, digging shallow trenches to keep themselves protected from the elements, and preparing anything else they could muster. They were prepared by nightfall. The surving scout died, croaking and creating ungodly sounds as he passed. The men buried him with the villagers.
A few hours after sunset, large howls erupted from the darkness outside the village. The eastern sentry came back to the main group running, and claimed to have seen horrible beasts in the moonlight.
Category:Deletion Log Refugees
Category:Bad Creepypasta
Category:Beings
Category:Jornel
Category:TOTALLY NOT UNFINISHED U GUIZE
Category:Old Shit