The Lion Guard: King of Outremer

Chapter 1: The Lion Prince

"Of course, ce ne sera pas facile." Prince Kion sighed as he gazed out along the coast of Brittany alongside three others, all on destriers.

"What are you talking about, Kion? This just means we get the fun part again, Nous sommes des chevaliers après tout!" Bunga laughed.

Before them lay the feisty sea, which crashed against the sand and rocky cliffsides. Kion felt the gentle ocean breeze flow through his shoulder-length golden-red hair and cooled the four young men despite the suits of chainmail, plate pauldrons/greaves, and surcoats over them.

"I wouldn't be so eager, Bunga." The Norman Knight beside him said in a deep and powerful voice.

Sir Bunga de Albon's fair skin contrasted his thick black hair, which hung down from his head even further than Prince Kion's. Despite the young mens' athletic physique, they paled in comparison to the titan beside them.

Sir Beshte de Pithou stood almost seven feet tall with a barrel chest and broad shoulders to match. Kion often wondered if the metal from his armor could've made suits for three knights with his physique so imposing.

Lastly, the smallest of them sat a young man with reddish-blonde hair cut incredibly short. Unlike the others, he had no surcoat over his armor, nor did he carry a sheathed sword. Instead, he wore a metal crucifix around his neck.

"Look at them all, Dieu aie pitié."

Ono crossed himself while gazing upon hundreds of Norse longships descending upon the Angevine Empire's Northern Coast like a pack of ravenous hyenas ready to devour everything in their path.

The carved wooden heads of dragons and other monsters seemed to shout out in terrible snarls, but rather, it was the war cries of the Norsemen inside.

"How many do you think there are?" Kion asked Ono, who peered closer at the invading fleet.

"Those are the big ones. Hundred-twenty men per ship, maybe eighty-six, make that eight-four ships." Ono said, noting how two of the ships lost control in the waves and crashed into the rocks, sending hundreds of terrified Vikings to a watery grave, their weapons, shields, and armor weighing them down and their fellow raiders making no attempt to help them.

"I guess, Njǫrd was upset with them!!" Bunga laughed, only for Ono to give him a stern look.

"Ce n'est pas drôle! Like it or not, they're children of Christ too." Ono said, crossing himself and reciting a prayer. The Knight's face hardened.

"Tell that to the men they slaughter, the villages they pillage, the women and children they take as slaves."

"Enough!" Kion growled, silencing Bunga.

"I'd say just over-ten thousand." Ono muttered, returning to his count.

"Que le Christ soit avec nous! Ten-thousand of twenty-thousand came here to face us?!" Beshte huffed in disbelief.

"Ivar the Boneless wants revenge for his brother, Ubbe. But his Great Summer Army will meet the same fate as Ubbe's Great Heathen Army." Bunga assured Kion while patting his left shoulder pauldron.

The Prince smiled slightly. Four years earlier, the great Norse King Ragnar Lothbrok led a great Viking raid intended to pillage the northern coast of the Angevine Empire, including its capital of Angers, only to face annihilation in a decisive battle in Normandy by his Father, King Simba.

Two years later, Ragnar's son Ubbe assembled a mighty host to avenge his father, known as the Great Heathen Army. However, at the time, King Simba was away on pilgrimage, and Kion's older brother on Crusade in Spain.