Viking Invasion-Chapter 81 – The Royal Palace

The city had fallen. Once the great stone walls were breached, order dissolved into chaos—a tangle of smoke, screams, and steel. In the narrow lanes where men grappled hand to hand, the Norsemen held the advantage: tall, broad-shouldered, unyielding. Their axes rose and fell in tireless rhythm, carving a crimson path through the last of Mercia’s defenders. By the hour of mid-afternoon, the streets ran thick with blood. The garrison was shattered; most had either perished or laid down their arms. Only a few hundred desperate souls remained, barricaded within the royal palace, clinging to their doomed defense.

Half an hour later, Rurik rode up through the smoke and rubble to the foot of the palace hill. There, among toppled statues and charred banners, he found Halfdan in one of his characteristic rages. The younger son of Ragnar had stripped off his helmet, his fair hair matted with dust and sweat, his eyes blazing.

"Bring me everything that burns!" Halfdan roared. "Oil, pitch, timber—whatever you can find! I’ll smoke these stubborn fools out and roast them alive!"

Over his mail shirt, he had thrown a white surcoat emblazoned with a blackened oak—the tree of his household, charred and defiant. The sight was strangely prophetic, like some vision of the crusaders who would one day march beneath such crosses of ash and fire.

Rurik dismounted, saying nothing, watching the soldiers heap logs and pour oil around the marble steps. Flames licked in the wind, ready to leap skyward—until a voice thundered from behind them.

"Hold!" Ragnar’s command cut through the tumult like a blade through cloth.

The Great Father of the North rode in with his guards, his cloak torn, his face streaked with soot, yet his bearing as commanding as ever. The soldiers froze mid-motion. Halfdan turned, startled, the torch still burning in his hand.

"Find a prisoner," Ragnar ordered. "Send word to Æthelwulf: I have no wish to kill him, nor to occupy Wessex."

Halfdan blinked. "What did you say, Father?" His voice faltered; the words seemed madness to him. Before he could argue further, Ivar strode forward, the iron glint in his eyes silencing all protest. With one shove, he sent his brother aside and carried out Ragnar’s command without another word.

Before long, a captive messenger disappeared behind the barred gates. Ragnar exhaled slowly, his tone softening as he faced the confused circle of warriors around him.

"Our numbers are too few," he said wearily. "We cannot hold all of Mercia, let alone Wessex. The men long for home—they dream of hearths and wives, not of conquest. This war has run its course."

A murmur of uneasy understanding spread through the ranks. Half an hour passed before Æthelwulf’s envoys emerged, bearing the white banner of truce. They bowed stiffly before Ragnar, who stood upon the palace steps with his hands clasped behind him, the setting sun painting his armor red.

"What terms does the Northman demand?" one of them asked.

Ragnar’s reply was measured, steady: "Æthelwulf may remain ruler of Wessex, if he renounces the crown and swears fealty to me."

Negotiations followed—long, brittle, and sharp as drawn steel. Æthelwulf’s side insisted upon freedom of faith and preservation of their native laws; Ragnar demanded Oxford’s fertile lands, the customs of Southampton, and strict limits upon the English armies. For hours they argued, the light outside dimming from gold to ash. By dusk, only one question remained unsettled.

"When Æthelwulf yields his crown," Ragnar mused aloud, "what shall he be named thereafter? An earl? A jarl of Wessex?"

At that, Godwin—the shrewdest of their English counsellors—stepped forward. "Majesty," he said, "the Franks have a solution. Their nobles correspond to our earls, but above them stands another rank—a creation of the late empire."

He stooped, and with a charred stick, scrawled a word upon the blackened ground: DUX.

"It is Latin," he explained. "From the old days of Rome. Dux—a commander of soldiers, guardian of the frontier. Charlemagne borrowed it, granting the title duc to the military governors of Bavaria and Aquitaine. Their power surpasses that of earls: they levy taxes, mint coin, and rule their marches as sovereigns in miniature. Such a title would fit our need."

Ragnar’s gaze darkened with thought. The word lingered in the air like an omen. Dux... duke. Rurik, standing nearby, recalled dimly that this very word would one day give birth to the English duke—the highest of noble stations beneath the crown.

When at last the sun sank behind the horizon, Ragnar raised his head and gave his final decree: Æthelwulf would be granted the title of Duke of Wessex; he would cede Oxford and the northern borderlands, surrender the port of Southampton, and swear not to muster arms without leave.

As for Ceowulf—whose courage and royal wife lent him the blood of Mercia’s ancient kings—he was to be named Duke of Mercia, ruling the western half of the realm together with the ceded Oxford lands. His loyalty would steady the hearts of the English.

Edmund of East Anglia, weaker and more pliant, was deemed unworthy of such dignity and demoted to Earl of East Anglia.

Thus the great capitulation came to pass. Æthelwulf emerged from his palace with his household in solemn procession, bowed his head before Ragnar, and knelt upon the stone steps. In that single gesture, the crown of Wessex bent before the might of the North.

Beside him, Ceowulf’s face gleamed with thinly veiled satisfaction. He accepted his new title with grace, even flattery. "You are the Charlemagne of Britain, my lord," he declared.

Rurik, listening from the shadows, could not resist a silent snort.

First Erik was called ’the Charlemagne of the North,’ now Ragnar is ’the Charlemagne of Britain.’ How many Charlemagnes can the world hold before the title grows cheap?

When the oaths were sworn, Ragnar turned to his followers, his expression gentling. "Now, who among you will be first?" 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

"I will!" cried Ulf, stepping forward eagerly. "At Tamworth, I slew Prince Burgred himself! My lands at Liverpool are poor—grant me another, richer holding!"

Ragnar’s brows drew together. The memory struck like a splinter: four years earlier, after York fell, the council of seven nobles had denied Bjorn his own fief, driving the proud son away to exile among Iceland’s snows. My son, Ragnar thought bitterly. My blood, who would rather rot in a frozen island than call my realm his home.

His voice, when it came, was cold as iron. "Very well, Ulf. You shall have Kent—at the far southeastern edge of Britain. Should the Franks come invading, you will greet them first."

One by one, Ragnar distributed the spoils of empire. Nils received Nottingham; Gunnar, Cambridge; Óm, the rich fields of Sussex south of London. To honor the English and secure their loyalty, Ragnar elevated Godwin himself to Earl of Suffolk, the lands lying northeast of London.

As for London—Londinium, as the old Romans named it—and Tamworth with its twin at Repton, both were claimed as royal domains, held under the crown alone.

When all the dukes and earls were named, Ragnar was not content to stop there. Over the following days, more than three hundred warriors of proven valor were dubbed knights—one-third stationed in York, one-third in Tamworth, and one-third in London. He knew, by the instinct of rulers, that Norse blood was truer than English hearts. These estates of mailed riders would ring his dominions like iron sentinels, watching over the restless new land.

When the ceremonies ended, feasting began. For days, the Norse banners fluttered over Winchester’s palace, and the halls echoed with song and drunken laughter.

Halfdan and his brothers marveled at the wealth of their conquered hosts—the marble floors, the golden tapestries, the painted ceilings. Yet their awe soured into envy. Halfdan, flushed with mead, sneered toward the captive king.

"You had wealth beyond measure," he said. "And still you lost. Of what use is all this finery now?"

Æthelwulf smiled faintly. "This is nothing," he said. "If you seek true wealth, look to the West Franks. Their fields are fat, their coffers deeper than all the seven English kingdoms combined. Should we—no, should you—march upon them, you would find gold enough to drown in."

The hall roared with drunken approval. Old grudges still burned from the ambush at Lutterworth, when Frankish knights had scattered them like wolves before the hunt. Men slammed their cups, shouting vengeance, vowing to sail for the continent come spring.

Ragnar listened, his mind swimming in the fog of wine. He turned instinctively to where Rurik should have been seated—but his captain was absent, still at the outer camp overseeing the wounded and the captured. Surrounded by flushed faces and slurred oaths, Ragnar felt strangely alone.

The Franks aided these English once, he mused. If they would cross the sea to fight me here, what stops them from striking again? Better that I should strike first.

His thoughts settled, slow and deliberate as the tide. If I can raise no more than three thousand warriors next year, we raid their coasts, nothing more. But if I muster a great host... then by the gods, I will sail up the Seine itself, and Paris shall feel the northern flame.

And so, in the shattered court of a conquered king, the seed of a new war was sown—one that would soon set all of Francia trembling.