Legends Never Die: The Prince (ch. 146)

“That's it? That's Britannia?” Ragnar asked, half leaning over the railing of my flagship, as if it would make him arrive a half second sooner. I grabbed the back of his tunic, making sure that he didn't fall over while I gazed out at the familiar white cliffs. Or, rather, I gazed at the flapping banners of Wessex, watching the men who watched us. 

“Aye, that's Britannia,” I confirmed for him, the fog thinning enough for the land to be revealed to us after three days of heavy mist. “I thought that it would be familiar to you.” As I spoke, I pulled him back so his feet were firmly back on the deck. All the while, I rested a hand on Magnus’ shoulder to make sure that he didn't get any ideas. 

Ragnar's expression pinched with thought, trying to recall a distant memory. “... I think I remember that? You told us about how Caesar proved that Britannia was real. And Aunt Morrigan is from the Eyrie?” 

My lips curled, pleased that he recalled the memory. Magnus seemed puzzled, and I rubbed his head affectionately, “That's it. You were likely too young to remember, Magnus,” I assured him. 

The young man shrugged it off, “Will we land soon?” He sounded hopeful and eager to begin their first adventure. In response, I pointed towards the flapping flags, and it took Magnus and Ragnar a few seconds to see them. His breathing hitched, “Will they try to stop us?” 

“I'm sure that they would try,” I answered, “If we were landing here.” It was difficult to tell how many men stood on the cliffside from this angle, but I was willing to bet that there were a great many more flags than men. 

Ragnar seemed a bit put out, “We aren't?” 

In response, I raised an eyebrow at both boys, a sign that they could figure it out themselves. They shared a vaguely annoyed look that I wouldn't just hand them the answer before they started thinking about it. Since the moment they could speak and walk, I had ensured that they received the best education I could give them. I didn't think it was too much to ask that they actually use what's between their ears every once and awhile in exchange. 

“... They mustered too fast, didn't they?” Ragnar started, now narrowing his eyes with suspicion. “Even with spies telling them when we left, it takes more than three days to muster so many men.” 

“The flags are just flags, aren't they?” Magnus picked up the thought. “They'd be fools to muster so many men and spread them so thinly across their border. But they're counting on us not knowing which of the flags are fake and where the enemy is to stop us from landing here.” 

“Because they want us to land elsewhere? A battlefield of their choosing where they could attack us as we disembarked. And a landing site small enough that we couldn't land all of our boats to get off as an army,” Ragnar finished. 

“Exactly so,” I praised both boys, patting their heads and smiling as they swatted at my hands. “King Ecbert, by all accounts, is a clever man. He has been preparing for this day for as long as we have. While I'm sure that we would win if it came to a battle, there is little to gain by playing to the plan of a clever enemy.” 

My spies spoke well of Ecbert. He seemed to be Charlemagne's chosen tool to bleed me of strength. To make me falter and lessen my reputation in the eyes of my young empire. For years, Charlemagne had opened his coffers, funding Wessex to conquer its neighbors, to fortify its coasts and to build its army. It was enough to secure the southern coast of Britannia, but a military alliance between Mercia and Northumbria saw an end to its unchecked expansion. 

“If we aren't landing here, then where are we landing?” Ragnar asked a pointed question and I smiled. 

“Where it is least convenient for them,” I answered, making both boys’ brows furrow, but it would be another day before my words made sense to them. 

The island of Mann was a small island located between Britannia and the Eyrie. It was sparsely populated, containing less than five thousand natives, most of whom gathered in fishing villages on the coast. Through the rolling waves of mist, I saw the island my scout ships had already secured a landing point on. The island jutted out of the sea like a misshapen thumb, large rolling cliffs that were covered in dense forests or left as barren crags. It was ideal for our purposes. 

We made landfall, and my sons were quick to scramble off the ships, only to cry out in betrayal when their legs wobbled underneath them. The men laughed, and I joined them. I could see what my father had been talking about all those years ago. “Your legs still think you are at sea, and they are compensating for a tide that isn't there. Give it an hour, and they'll remember what it's like to walk on solid ground.” 

“Why didn't you warn us if you knew this was going to happen?” Ragnar groused, earning another laugh from me, but he seemed to be ever so slightly put at ease when he saw that the other boys that had joined the raid were in no better shape. 

What had my father said? “It's a father's joy,” I echoed him before gesturing for them to follow. “Come. Let us make camp and I'll tell you what the plan is.” 

The camp was swiftly erected. The tents were in organized rows, latrines were dug, a palisade built, with a trench before it and the dirt packed in mounds so archers could stand and shoot over the walls as needed. The ships were brought ashore, anchored and chained together. My tent was located near the center of the camp, surrounded by the kings and their nobility. 

“The island of Mann is an ideal waystation for us,” I began, unfurling a map. “It's fortified, isolated, and it can only be reached by sea. We control these waters, as we have the ships and the experience. Our goal,” I continued, taking tokens and placing them on the map, “is to secure footholds on Britannia and on the Eyrie.” 

The footholds needed to be defensible ground with natural harbors capable of supporting at least a hundred ships. They would be fortified and maintain a garrison of two thousand men at the very least. 

“We will divide our forces initially, with some going to the Eyrie and some to Britannia.” It would be the initial phase of the raid, testing the responses, and allowing greater maneuverability. “The spoils of those raids will first be held at those footholds before being transferred here for safekeeping.” Which was why warehouses were also being constructed in preparation to store the wealth that we would take, and there were many of them. 

I had built five hundred ships in preparation for the raid, but if it was even half as successful as I hoped it would be we would need multiple trips to carry everything back to Scandinavia. 

“Who will we raid first?” Magnus asked, soaking in the information. 

It wasn't me who answered. “Mercia,” Haldur spoke, entering my tent with his son Harald and Arne right behind him. “King Offa of Mercia just perished, and it is in a state of upheaval. What's more, it is the richest and most powerful of the Britannia kingdoms.” 

I nodded, confirming what he said. King Offa had been a strong king by all accounts, and one that had a long successful reign. Mercia had already been a strong kingdom, but he had turned it into a local power that was well situated to possibly unite the kingdoms of Britannia under his banner as Ecbert attempted. However, earlier this very year, he had perished, leaving the kingdom in the capable hands of his son, Ecgfrith of Mercia. 

Who was promptly murdered less than a month into his reign. 

Offa had attempted to secure his succession by killing all who could challenge his son's claim, and in doing so, the line of succession had been left shattered as Ecgfrith had no heir. Now those who had even the faintest claim to the crown were fighting each other to secure it. In short, they were in the worst position to respond to our raid, and the alliance that Offa had purchased with Northumbria with the marriage of his daughter to King Æthelred of Northumbria was in doubt because apparently he too had been assassinated, leaving Osbald of Northumbria as king. 

And he, by all accounts, was a stupid, hot headed fool. 

The disruption was so perfectly timed that I almost thought that Morrigan was behind it, even if I knew it was impossible. In the more likely case, the chaos of our arrival had emboldened shortsighted fools into action with the thought that they could seize power and legitimacy by defeating us in battle. 

“Our first notable target shall be the town of Chester,” I continued, pointing it out on the map. Then I traced the path we would take, “we will go South, towards Wessex, but not into it, before we curve back north, along the coast and into Northumbria.” 

“Why not attack Wessex? Or this area,” Ragnar asked, pointing to the territory of Wales, which was divided into petty kingdoms of Gwynedd, Powys, Dyfed, and Ceredigion. 

“The terrain,” I answered first and foremost. “It is the same reason why we will not push too deeply into Alba.” The mountainous terrain made travel difficult, the enemy would have a deadly advantage, and the kingdoms themselves were relatively poor. “Them, we will leave for the second phase of the raid. As for our lack of an attack on Wessex -- that is because I wish to see what King Ecbert does. I wish to see the depth of his loyalty to Charlemagne.” 

Perhaps Ecbert would strike out at us. Perhaps he would hunker down and ready for an inevitable assault. Perhaps he would find common cause with Mercia and Northumbria, and seek to work together with his rivals to defeat us in the field. 

Or, perhaps he would seize the opportunity to pounce on a weakened and divided foe. 

His actions would reveal his character to me, and that would determine what the future held for King Ecbert and Wessex. 

“Chester, huh?” Ragnar remarked, accepting my reasoning and poking at the map. “I wonder what it’s like?” 

I chuckled, “As soon as you get your land legs back, you'll find out.” 

…

Ragnar found that it took a bit longer than that, but by the morning of the next day he found himself once more on a ship sailing to a new land. Six thousand men stayed behind on the island, while twelve thousand went to the Eyrie and another twelve sailed with him. Or, rather, his father and uncle. His brother and cousins stood with him on the deck as they sailed to Mercia with a hundred ships. 

“This is it,” Magnus muttered to him, the first ships landing and securing a camp. 

It was. They were going on a raid. They were going to prove themselves as men, following in their father's footsteps.

There was something magical about stepping on a new land, even beyond how good it felt to have solid ground underfoot. And there was something so torturous in being so close to being able to prove himself but also so very far away as the camp needed to be established. Ragnar had watched on, seeing how Mercian scouts observed them, some running back in the direction of Chester or other settlements. 

It felt like an age had passed by the time the camp was built and their twelve thousand men were being broken up further into four bands of three thousand each. They would strike at other settlements, some splitting off even further to secure villages and scout for resistance, but Ragnar barely had it in him to spare them a thought. Not when their own column of warriors, half of them mounted on horseback, began to ride out of the camp. 

“Remember, stay close together. You are here to learn, not seek glory. Few tempt the Norns to cut short their life-thread more than reckless young blood,” their father warned them, but even that failed to temper his expectations. Nor Magnus’. “Follow in step with your guards. Do not stray from them.” 

The road to Chester was a dirt path, but not a long one. As they rode towards the town, they passed through empty villages that looked like the people had vanished mid chore. All of them fleeing to Chester for safety, if not further. 

Chester itself, however, was nothing like he imagined. 

He had toured Denmark with his father, visiting the notable towns that were steadily growing into cities. They paled in comparison to Miklagard, but they were still proper cities. Stone roads, fortifications, tall buildings, and more. There was still some hold over from what they were before, but steadily the old rot was being cleared away and built anew. 

Chester looked like a village that just… got bigger. There were farms surrounding the town, with clusters of buildings gathered around old walls likely built by the Romans, but there was nothing to protect the town beyond those walls that only wrapped around the innermost part of Chester. Which had likely started out as a fort, now that Ragnar thought about it. 

A horn blew and their portion of the army began to spread out. Much to his chagrin, he and the other noble boys weren't put in the vanguard that marched towards the town. But, because of that, Ragnar was able to watch the raid begin in earnest. 

Their warriors approached Chester from several angles, methodically checking each house that they passed for resistance. There was a loud silence as their men steadily pushed into Chester that was suddenly shattered by the sounds of chaos. He gripped his reins tighter, expecting to charge since the sound came from near the portion of the army they were in. But the order didn't come. 

Instead, through the dirt streets of Chester, men and women were escorted out of the city. There weren't that many at first, a scant few that held each other tightly in fear as warriors escorted them to a holding area. But, steadily, their numbers increased, as did the sounds of resistance. Ragnar sat with the other young men, all of them tense and ready to charge into the frey, but the order still didn't come. 

“Where are their warriors?” Magnus asked, cutting through the tension and making Ragnar realize that he had yet to see a single weapon or piece of armor amongst those that were taken into holding. The question wasn't directed at anyone in particular, but it was Ragnar's bodyguard, Valdimárr, who answered. 

“Behind the walls,” he answered in a gruff voice without emotion. “Those taken so far are those who have been left to die by the lords behind those walls.” 

“... Oh,” Ragnar muttered under his breath, his lips thinning. That was… disappointing. His gaze lingered on the people who were gathered, seeing how they clung to each other and looked at them with eyes full of terror. They weren't warriors who had fought and lost. They were just people who had been abandoned and mounted what resistance they could. 

His gaze caught a boy who looked like he was the same age as him, and there was such fear in his eyes that Ragnar had to tear his gaze away. He swallowed a lump in his throat, turning his attention to the town itself to see that the men had reached the walls and encountered the first true sign of resistance in the raid. Men shouted and jeered from the walls, letting loose arrows and stones. 

Ragnar only realized his tension when his horse shifted uneasily underneath him, and he forced himself to take a relaxing breath. Something that his father made all the more difficult, as once runners came back to confirm that the exterior of the town was secure, Father rode forward with a handful of his bodyguards towards the front gate. 

“I am the Allvaldr Siegfried the Wolfkissed,” Father announced himself with a booming voice that carried easily throughout the town. Or, at least, that’s what it felt like. “I would speak with Earl Cyneberht, who commands this town to negotiate your surrender. At my back are five thousand men, while another fifteen thousand scour your countryside. Resistance is futile and, at best, wasteful.”

Ragnar saw the effect his words had on the men on the walls, looking down at his father with barely concealed terror. What stories had they heard about him, Ragnar wondered, to inspire such an immediate reaction? Yet, they did not answer for a long few minutes, dispatching runners. Only when one man did speak, Ragnar knew he wasn’t the Earl. 

“I am Eadræd, commander of the garrison of Chester,” A man in his mid thirties to early forties announced himself at the gate. “It is beneath Earl Cyneberht to bandy words with a pagan and a barbarian, so I speak with his voice. He claims that God shall strike you down should you attempt to breach our gates. That you and your five thousand pagans will fall ill with a most terrible pox that will have you on your knees, renouncing your false gods and pleading for His mercy.”

Most couldn’t speak their language, but even those that couldn’t knew that an insult had been delivered based on how the men on the wall cheered. Ragnar clenched his jaw hard enough that his teeth hurt -- he had never heard his father so brazenly insulted before. 

“Perhaps,” Father returned, his tone one of patience, apparently unbothered. “Yet, if that were true, then He would have had an easier time preventing our landing on your home. I can only take that as a sign that He allowed our passage. That He wants us here. Oh, how terribly you must have sinned, for God to send me to punish you.”

That cut their jeers and a deeply uncomfortable silence fell over the town of Chestnut. One that was broken by the thwang of a bowstring, a sound that seemed impossibly loud, only because of how sudden the silence was. Ragnar only realized what had happened when his Father moved, snatching an arrow from the air that was aimed at his neck. 

“How terribly indeed. You attack a man who offers a hand of peace. You abandon your own people without thought and hide behind walls you did not build,” Father said, holding up the arrow before snapping it between his fingers. “To those with the wisdom to recognize this folly, lay down your arms and you shall be spared. Those of you with honor and courage, know that you will die cleanly and the gods will recognize your courage.” 

With that, Father turned his horse around and marched away, giving a gesture for preparation to begin. In response, siege weapons began to roll up. 

They were true wonders. Secrets of Rome, and Alexander the Great before them. A siege balista. 

In practice, it wasn’t much different than a crossbow, only scaled up so instead of a bolt it launched a steel tipped javelin that was attached to a thick rope. Men cranked a wheel, bringing back the rope that would launch the projectile, and each notch was announced with an audible click. Once the wheel wouldn’t be cranked anymore, another signal was given. All that tension suddenly came undone, launching the javelin forward directly at the wooden gate. The tip punched through the wood, bending to make it harder to dislodge. 

The rope attached to their ends began to tighten as men began to turn another crank to a great wheel, a dozen men turning at the pegs. One of the javelins came loose, taking out a plank of wood. The other, however, punched through something thicker. Something surdy. Sturdy enough that when the men kept pulling at it, that half of the gate suddenly buckled, tearing off the frame. 

The effect was immediate. The men on the walls began to panic, scrambling to guard the sudden gap, meanwhile their archers climbed up on the houses around the walls to start shooting arrows. Men raced forward with ladders to assault them as men formed a turtle formation, racing up the main road. 

Ragnar watched it all from afar, gripping the reigns of his horse with white knuckles. Watching as the men overcame the defences. Had they remained firm, the attack would have likely been rebuffed, but combined with Father’s words and the near instantaneous fall of the gate afterwards, it incited panic into the defenders. 

A horn was blown right next to him, and the signal that he had eagerly awaited for days came so suddenly that he was caught entirely unprepared for it. His horse was well trained, however, following the others as his part of the army was throwing themselves into the opening made by the men. His heart was hammering at his ribs, and it felt like he couldn’t get a lung full of air, his horse galloping towards the gate. 

He expected to find the town beyond the walls to be full of fighting, but he only heard sounds of it elsewhere. 

“Dismount. The horses will only get in the way going forward,” Valdimárr instructed and Ragnar obeyed more out of habit than conscious thought. His shield felt unusually heavy. His axe even heavier. His throat felt parched and there was a cold sweat dripping down his back as he formed up with the others, as practiced. “Look like most have surrendered, but there is still fighting. We must secure the town, street by street. Stay close and stay calm.” 

Ragnar nodded, following behind Valdimárr as the other guards arranged themselves in a protective formation. Magnus stood at his right, and it was a much needed assurance as they started to march through the streets, walking past blood and corpses. The smell was potent, burning at the back of his nose, but it paled in comparison to that great battlefield that Father brought him to before. 

The fighting echoed through the streets, steel against steel, often punctuated by screaming. Ragnar half expected that around every corner, they would find a waiting band of warriors. But each corner instead held disappointment it felt like. They’d only found more bodies or those that had surrendered. He didn’t drop his guard in any case, his shield was kept high. 

He thought he was prepared. A lifetime of training and instruction from his father, one of the most renowned warriors in their history, and yet the very moment that training was needed, it flew right out of his head the instant he saw an arrow sprout from one of their guard’s necks. It didn’t kill the man, the arrow caught in the mail coif, but he still went down to a knee and every single muscle that Ragnar had suddenly locked up. 

The only thing that he could move was his eyes, following the trail of the arrow to a rooftop further up the street. He watched as the archer notched another arrow, raised the bow, pulled back the drawstring -- all of it happening with agonizing slowness as the archer seemed to be looking right at him. The arrow was let loose from his bow, traveling the space between them-

Ragnar moved without conscious thought, jerking his shield over to cover Magnus. The arrowhead punched through the wood plank, emerging just before Magnus’ eye. His younger brother jolted where he stood, and it was only then that Ragnar realized that he had been in a similar state of inaction. Their eyes met before they shared a nod. 

The training still seemed to have abandoned him, but his body knew what to do when screaming men rushed forward, emerging from a house, charging at them like mad beasts. Their guards formed a line before them, while he and the scions formed a shield wall behind them. Their guards acted as a stalwart wall, but then he saw it. Two of them pivoted ever so slightly, allowing one man to pass, before they closed their wall behind him. 

It couldn’t be anything less than intentional. An attempt on their lives? Or… 

Another test by Father?

The man roared, knowing that his life was forfeit, and lunged for them. There was no conscious thought behind Ragnar's actions then. His body just moved, batting away a wild swing before he chopped with his axe, catching the man in his unprotected neck. Blood spurted, fat drops splashing across his face, and more when he pulled back the blade. 

The man gargled, collapsing to a knee, his expression twisting into one of disbelief and terror. Ragnar watched him fall, collapsing to the ground, his lips moving to say something… but he couldn’t get the words out. 

… Ah. 

He just killed someone. For the first time. 

He swallowed the sudden lump in his throat, washing it down with the knowledge that by the time his father had been his age he had killed hundreds of men in the Saxon revolt. Ragnar put it from his mind, stepping over the corpse and knowing that the fighting wasn’t yet done. 

And by the time the fighting was over… 

He’d killed another three men.