Early April brought the first greening of the hedgerows and the scent of thawed earth. After settling affairs in the north, Rurik at last arrived in Oxfordshire with twenty-five hundred n and a long train of siege engines rumbling behind him.
"You took your ti," Ragnar said dryly.
In the days before Rurik’s arrival, he had scoured the surrounding countryside with small detachnts, capturing nearly six hundred prisoners but finding no sign of King Æthelwulf. The land seed to have swallowed him whole.
Leaving three hundred n to garrison Oxford, Ragnar took the rest southward toward Winchester. Midway along the road, his column t another—dusty, disordered, and dragging behind it a long line of captured horses. At its head rode Ivar, exhausted but triumphant, with a thousand Saxon militian hot on his heels.
The pursuers were swiftly cut down. Ragnar rode forward, reining up beside his son.
"What in the na of the gods happened here?"
Ivar slid from his saddle, breathing hard. "Æthelwulf lives. He’s fallen back to Winchester, shoring up its defenses. When he heard the royal stud had been raided, he sent half the city’s n to retake it. Hah! Lucky for I ran faster than they did."
With Ivar’s battered host rejoined, the Viking army once again numbered nearly four thousand. They followed the Roman road south until the white walls of Winchester glead before them, girdled on two sides by the winding River Itchen.
As chief of siege operations, Rurik spent the day surveying the fortress from horseback. The river guarded the city’s eastern and southern flanks; only the western and northern walls offered ground firm enough for engines and towers. He marked those as the points of assault.
Soon the endless labors of siege began: cutting and hauling timber, raising palisades, digging trenches, and building earthen ramps. It was the most tedious and thankless phase of war. By mid-May, when tempers and patience alike had worn thin, word ca that the allied armies of the remaining Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were on the march.
Scouts reported their strength at a little over two thousand.
Ivar laughed when he heard. "Two thousand? Then they’ve co to save us the trouble of finding them."
Rurik, harried by a hundred petty demands of command, could not go himself. He left Ivar and Gunnar to intercept the enemy before it reached the city.
By now, Gunnar’s cavalry had grown to two hundred strong—tough, broad-shouldered riders mounted on Frankish horses taken from the stud. When Ivar engaged the Saxon host head-on, Gunnar wheeled his riders along the flanking hills, positioning them above the enemy’s rear.
Then, with a cry that split the sky, they charged downhill.
The Anglo-Saxons—still bound to the tactics of an earlier age—had no notion of how to et a mounted flank attack. The crash was dreadful. Spears shattered, ranks buckled, and within monts their lines dissolved into panic. The kings of Sussex and Essex fell in the lee; the ruler of Kent was struck down and mortally wounded; only the young king of East Anglia managed to escape with his life, spurring his horse westward in sha and terror.
By sunset, the allied host had ceased to exist. In half a day’s fighting, four crowns of southern Britain had been broken. Ivar gathered the captured banners, weapons, and armor, and piled them beneath Winchester’s walls—a grim monunt ant to crush the defenders’ hope.
Ragnar stood beside Rurik watching the spoils burn in the twilight. "The age has turned," he murmured. "Henceforth, it is not the shield wall but the horse that will decide battles. We must learn from the Franks. Perhaps it is ti to raise knights of our own—n who train for war even in peace, sworn to ride at their lord’s call."
From that day, his thoughts turned from conquest to order. He summoned the captured Frankish knights and questioned them closely—about their oaths, their lands, their duties, the taxes they bore, and how their sons were reared in arms. Each answer he weighed with care.
While Ragnar studied the arts of feudal rule, Rurik bore the weight of command. The camps sprawled for miles, their ditches reeking in the sumr heat. Ivar and Gunnar ranged through the countryside, ambushing the small levies sent from distant shires. By June, the last hope of local resistance was dead.
Yet victory brought no joy. The n were weary beyond words. Half a year of siege had bled their spirit dry. Every morning another handful deserted, slipping away into the woods or down the river to seek their fortune elsewhere. When Rurik sought counsel, Ragnar only said, "Do what you must."
So Rurik did what commanders always do when rcy fails—he made himself feared. He divided Gunnar’s horsen into twenty patrols, sending them to hunt down deserters. The guilty were dragged back to camp, flogged, or hanged before the n’s tents. Grim work, but the rot slowed.
Then, one afternoon, a scout galloped to Rurik’s tent.
"My lord," the rider said, breathless with excitent, "we’ve found sothing strange—a place you’ll want to see."
Rurik set aside his ledgers and followed. The man led him to a hollow north of the camp where several riders stood clustered around a dark pit in the earth.
"I wager it’s so noble’s hidden treasure," one said.
"Nay," another replied uneasily. "Look at that hole—it stinks of old magic. A troll’s den, more like."
As they spoke, a tall, gaunt figure crawled from the opening, his clothes caked with mud, his hair an unnatural white. He was grinning, eyes bright with triumph.
"I went down as far as I could crawl," he panted. "The passage was blocked with dirt, so I struck it twice with my axe—and look what I found!"
From his tunic he drew a gold ring, glinting even through the gri. The others crowded close, laughing and shouting for him to buy them ale.
"Silence!" Rurik barked. The laughter died. He beckoned the white-haired man forward. "You—what’s down there? Is the tunnel built of stone?"
"It is, lord. Brick and stone both, running toward the city. I found it by chance while scouting for deserters." He scratched at his filthy neck. "The sll near killed , but the gods rewarded with this ring."
"What’s your na?"
"White-Hair Oleg, lord."
Rurik stretched, a rare smile softening his face. "Then the gods have blessed you, White-Hair Oleg. Co with —we’ll show the king."
On a wooded rise northwest of camp, Ragnar was hunting with his mistress Aslaug when Rurik rode up at a gallop.
"My king," he called, leaping from the saddle, "I’ve found a way to break the city!"
Ragnar dismissed the woman with a nod and tossed his bow to a nearby guard. "Speak."
Rurik pointed back toward the camp, where Oleg waited on horseback. "That man discovered an ancient sewer beneath the fields. The Saxons, lazy and foul as they are, have let it clog and vanish from mory. It leads straight beneath Winchester’s walls. We can clear it and send n through."
Ragnar’s eyes kindled. "Do it. A month at most. If this drags on, the army will lt away."
So Rurik set to work. He established a secondary camp on the western plain and raised a great canvas pavilion over the dig site to conceal the effort. Day and night, pickaxes rang and spades bit earth. The stench was terrible, but greed and glory drove the n onward.
After twenty relentless days, the tunnel stood open—a narrow, stone-lined shaft descending into darkness. Two hundred of the finest warriors were chosen for the venture, ard lightly with axes and short blades.
To mask their movent, the northern batteries began a furious bombardnt. Great stones howled through the sky, striking the walls with thunderous impact. Siege towers crept forward, their wooden hides bristling with arrows.
Beneath this din, the raiding party descended into the earth. Oleg led them, crawling through the sli of centuries. The passage stank of rot and damp, but when at last they glimpsed light ahead, their spirits soared.
Cautiously they broke through, erging into the courtyard of an abandoned house. Fortune had favored them—the place was deserted, its roof half-collapsed, its windows blind with dust. One by one, the warriors climbed out, forming ranks in the moonlit yard.
Oleg left a handful behind to guard the exit and led the rest through narrow lanes toward the western gate. The city slept, unaware of its doom.
When they reached the gatehouse, the sentries were few and drowsy. The Vikings fell upon them with savage speed. In minutes, the ground was slick with blood. Together they heaved against the massive beam barring the gate. With a groan of timber, it rose.
Outside, the cavalry had been waiting for hours, their mounts stamping restlessly in the dark. The mont the gates cracked open, they charged. In a heartbeat, they were through—horse and man bursting into the city like a living tide.
The clash was terrible. Steel flashed beneath the torches as the horsen hacked their way through the gathering defenders. Behind them ca the infantry, pouring in like floodwater through the breach.
For three long minutes the Saxons held. Then their line broke.
By dawn, the dragon banner of Wessex had been torn from the walls. Winchester, the proud Roman city, had fallen to the Northn.
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