Who was Ragnar’s closest confidant?

In this second life of his, his beautiful wife Gyda and his young children were his world; he loved them more than his own breath.

But Louis held a profoundly unique place in his heart.

Yet now, Louis the Stammerer lay flat on his stomach amidst a sea of scattered papers.

The Frankish prince was bound, his hands and feet tied tightly behind his back with leather straps, and a filthy cloth shoved into his mouth as a gag.

When Ragnar talked about flying machines, electricity, or moving massive metal carts on iron rails, Erik would just laugh and ask if it could kill someone.

Leofric would nod blindly and respectfully, treating it like magic. But Louis?

Louis didn’t understand everything Ragnar poured into his mind, but he listened. He sat by the fire, chewing on the end of a charcoal pencil, genuinely trying to comprehend the impossible future.

As such, seeing this gentle man bound on the cold ground, bleeding from a fresh cut on his forehead, made Ragnar’s blood completely boil.

A violent wave of pure Viking rage washed over him, overriding his usual calm demeanor.

"Get away from him, you fucking rat!" Ragnar growled, his voice dropping into a guttural snarl.

Standing right behind Louis’s tied-up body was a tall, figure wrapped entirely in a black cloak.

The hood was pulled up, hiding the spy’s face in deep shadow, but the man was holding a wicked-looking curved dagger.

In his other hand, the spy held a massive stack of rolled-up blueprints.

"King Ragnar..." the spy purred. His voice was smooth, completely calm, and carried a undeniable Byzantine accent. "You are much faster than my employers anticipated. I was told I would have at least ten minutes while you chased those pathetic thieves in the snow."

"You have about ten seconds to drop the knife and put your hands where I can see them," Ragnar said coldly, pulling the firing hammer of his pistol back with a loud, metallic click. "Or I am going to blow a hole in your chest so big I can see the snowy street behind you."

The spy slowly bent down and pressed the edge of his curved dagger directly against the side of Louis’s pale neck.

Louis let out a whimper through his gag, his eyes wide with panic.

"I don’t think you will shoot, Iron King," the spy chuckled, "If your hand shakes even a fraction of an inch, or if my body falls forward when the bullet strikes... your favorite pet engineer gets his throat sliced open."

"Try me," Ragnar spat, keeping his arm steady. "My hand never shakes."

"Perhaps," the spy replied smoothly. "But why risk it? I already have what I came for. If you let me walk out of that window, the prince lives to draw another day. If you shoot... well, blood ruins parchment so easily, doesn’t it?"

Ragnar gritted his teeth. The spy was standing in front of the open balcony window at the back of the archives. The freezing winter wind was howling into the room, blowing the scattered papers around their boots.

If the spy jumped, he could easily slide down the sloping slate roof and disappear into the crowded alleyways of the city...

"What do you have in your hand?" Ragnar demanded, keeping the gun aimed at the spy’s hooded face. "Did you take the musket blueprints? The cannon designs?"

"Something much more interesting..." the spy laughed, shaking the roll of parchment. "Your secrets are truly fascinating, Ragnar. My Emperor will pay me a mountain of gold for these."

Ragnar couldn’t risk Louis’s life... He could build another blast furnace, he could redraw a thousand blueprints, but he could never replace a friend who actually understood the shape of the future.

"Fine," Ragnar growled, slowly lowering his pistol just an inch. "Drop the knife... Drop the knife, step away from Louis, and you can jump out that window."

"A wise choice," the spy smirked.

The black-cloaked man slowly removed the blade from Louis’s neck. He took a single step backward toward the open window, the freezing wind whipping his cloak around his boots.

But the spy was incredibly greedy... a greed that made him do something he never thought he’d have the chance to do.

Instead of dropping the dagger, the spy suddenly flipped the curved blade in his hand and violently threw it straight at Ragnar’s chest!

"Damnit...!" Ragnar roared, twisting his body to the side.

The throwing knife missed his heart, slicing cleanly through the red wool of his tunic and biting deep into the meat of his left shoulder.

Ragnar grunted in pain, stumbling backward against the doorframe.

In that split second of distraction, the spy grabbed the burning gas lamp from the floor and threw it into the pile of scattered blueprints in the center of the room.

The highly flammable paper and the spilled lamp oil instantly ignited.

A massive wall of bright orange fire erupted in the middle of the grand archives, separating Ragnar from the window and from his bound friend.

The spy let out a laugh, leaping backward onto the balcony railing and disappearing into the freezing night.

"Louis!" Ragnar screamed, ignoring the burning pain in his shoulder.

Ragnar charged straight through the wall of fire. The intense heat singed his hair and scorched the edges of his coat, but he tackled Louis, wrapping his broad body around his friend to shield him from the flames.

Ragnar pulled the bloody dagger out of his own shoulder, gritting his teeth against the stinging pain.

He used the sharp blade to slice through the leather straps binding Louis’s hands and feet.

"Come on... Get up!" Ragnar yelled over the roaring sound of the fire, pulling the gag out of Louis’s mouth.

Louis gasped for air, coughing violently as the room quickly filled with thick black smoke.

Ragnar grabbed the engineer by the back of his shirt and dragged him out of the burning room, pulling him into the clear air of the stone hallway.

Ragnar slammed the door shut behind them, cutting off the oxygen to the fire and trapping the flames inside the room before they could spread to the rest of the keep.

He collapsed against the wall, breathing heavily and clutching his bleeding shoulder. He looked down at Louis, who was sitting on the floor, coughing and rubbing his red wrists.

"Are you okay, Louis?" Ragnar panted, his chest heaving. "Did that bastard hurt you?"

"I... I am fine, Ragnar," Louis stammered, his chest heaving as he stared up. "Y-your shoulder! You are bleeding!"

"It’s just a scratch..." Ragnar grunted, pushing himself back up to his feet. "He missed the bone. But he got away with the blueprints. Did you see what he took? Did he take the musket plans?"

"N-no, Ragnar," Louis coughed, pulling out a neatly folded stack of parchment. "When I heard the door lock melting, I grabbed the musket plans and hid them in my apron. I hid the cannon designs, too."

Ragnar’s eyes widened in surprise and immense relief. "You hid them? Then what was that spy holding? I saw him with a massive stack of blueprints."

Louis looked at the closed door of the archives, his mind trying to recall which shelf the spy had raided before Ragnar kicked the door open.

"...what did he take?" Ragnar demanded.

Louis looked up, his broken spectacles making his eyes look huge.

"He took the agricultural files, Ragnar," Louis stammered, "He took the chemical formulas for our winter fertilizers... and the blueprints for the deep-earth coal mines."