Viking Invasion-Chapter 53 – The Improvement of Ships

The days that followed were filled with talk of timber and tides. Rurik questioned the captured Berbers in painstaking detail—what woods they favored, what cloth they cut for sails, how they bound their planks and set their rudders, what pitch or resin they used to seal the seams. His mind, always turning toward the future, devoured every word.

The feast that night stretched long into the small hours. At last, when the hall grew quiet and the torches burned low, Bjorn managed to escape the web of Rurik’s inquiries. He staggered toward his chamber, one hand on the wall for balance. The corridor swam before his eyes—and there, beneath the flicker of lamplight, stood a figure both elegant and unexpected.

"Princess Eve?"

He blinked, rubbed his eyes, half-convinced that mead had conjured a vision. They had barely exchanged words before; now she waited outside his door, her cloak of pale blue gleaming faintly.

A faint sweetness hung about her, neither perfume nor flower but something subtler, unsettling. She stepped closer, her eyes bright as glass.

"I find myself fascinated by the lands of Iberia," she said softly. "Tell me, Prince Bjorn—will you spare an hour to describe them?"

Bjorn swallowed, straightened, and tried to recall how a prince was supposed to speak. "Ah... of course, Your Grace. It would be an honor."

The following afternoon Rurik found them walking together in the palace gardens, sunlight flashing on the fountain’s spray. Bjorn looked uncharacteristically cheerful.

"Hey," he called out, "I’ve been thinking about our talk last night. We ought to borrow from the Berbers’ shipcraft—improve the Viking longship itself. We could build something larger, tougher, better suited for the open sea."

Rurik nodded thoughtfully. For centuries, the longship had been the pride of the North—shallow-drafted for rivers, narrow and swift, perfect for raiding along creeks and estuaries. Yet its very strength was its limit. Built for speed and shallow waters, it could never endure the endless swells of the great ocean.

"The day of the oar is ending," Rurik mused. "The future belongs to the sail."

He spoke of what might yet come: ships driven wholly by wind, their hulls deep and steady, their masts tall as towers. In time, such vessels might displace hundreds—perhaps even thousands—of tons. (Centuries later, the great sailships of war would indeed reach that scale: Nelson’s Victory, flagship of Trafalgar, displaced some 3,500 tons.)

His vision was bold. He proposed to form a guild of shipwrights and navigators, uniting the wisdom of the Berbers with Norse craftsmanship—to build a new class of ocean-faring vessel, sail-powered and strong enough to carry trade across distant seas.

The idea thrilled Bjorn. His eyes shone with the same fire that had once led him beyond Gibraltar. The two men hurried to the royal hall to present their plan to Ragnar.

Ragnar listened in silence, stroking his beard. "Hmm. It has merit," he said at last. But before he could speak further, the treasurer, Pascal, stepped forward and bowed deeply.

"Your Majesty, the treasury bleeds. Gold and silver grow thin. I beg you to be cautious."

Ragnar sighed, his patience fraying. "Yes, yes, I know." He turned to the younger men and spread his hands in exasperation.

"When I was a warrior, life was simple. Now that I wear a crown, I find myself chained to a chair! Everyone clamors for something—wives demand jewels, guards demand war, and every petty landholder drags his squabbles before me. By Odin, yesterday two farmers wasted half my day arguing because one man’s sheep had nibbled the other’s wheat!" 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

Bjorn laughed. "And how did Your Majesty resolve that profound crisis?"

"I gave each man a sword," Ragnar said with satisfaction. "Told them to settle it like warriors. The victor kept his sheep, and the loser’s widow learned to fence. Perhaps I should make that our new law—trial by combat for every quarrel. It would save me hours!"

Even Rurik couldn’t help but grin.

After the laughter faded, Ragnar drummed his fingers on the armrest. "Very well. I’ll fund your project. Twenty pounds of silver from the royal coffers. I’ll also assign a few seasoned shipwrights to work alongside those Berber craftsmen. Build your vessel—and let me see if it truly can master the sea."

"Your Majesty’s wisdom honors us," Rurik said, bowing low. The two men departed together, their spirits alight with plans and possibilities.

Outside, Bjorn suddenly froze. "Wait—Eve! She’s still in the garden! If she thinks I’ve run off—ah, curse it, Rurik, this is your fault!"

Before Rurik could reply, Bjorn vanished around the corridor like a man fleeing battle.

Rurik lingered in York for another week, tying up loose ends. When his business was done, he took leave of Ragnar and rode north to his own lands.

At Tynneburg, he was greeted by Herligeif, whose first question, oddly enough, concerned a plant.

"Well? Where is the Humulus lupulus?"

Rurik smiled. "Patience. I struck a bargain with a wool merchant. He’ll come to Tynneburg in summer to purchase cloth, and he’ll bring the seeds with him."

That promise appeased her—somewhat. For two days she kept him company, bright-eyed and relentless as a hawk, before he escaped to his duties.

He spent the next morning walking through the workshops of Tynne Town, especially the carpenters’ quarter in the southwest. There he placed a massive order:

"Five hundred bows, ten thousand arrows, one thousand round shields."

He had learned much during his stay in York. Rumor held that King Erik had amassed a great hoard of silver and planned to launch a campaign come spring—to subdue all the petty jarls of Norway beneath his rule.

War was coming, and Rurik, ever pragmatic, intended to profit from it. If the conflict dragged on, he would make and sell still more arms across the North.

The craftsmen, delighted by such business, bowed and hurried to divide the labor among themselves. The most skilled would shape the yew bows, while apprentices and lesser hands turned their efforts to shafts and shields.

Whenever he found an idle hour, Rurik returned to watch them work.

The making of an English longbow was a delicate art. The carpenter first split a length of yew along the grain, carving a rough stave. The heartwood—dense and unyielding—became the back of the bow, while the outer sapwood—springy and pale—formed the belly. To cut against the grain was to court disaster; the slightest flaw could cause the bow to splinter.

The unfinished staves were left to season for half a year, drying slowly to shed their moisture. Only when they had hardened properly would the craftsman begin the final shaping, shaving the wood until both limbs bent in perfect symmetry.

One afternoon Rurik posed a question.

"When I traveled through the East—through Constantinople and beyond—I saw bows made of horn and sinew, glued together with fish-bladder resin. Why do we not use such methods here in Britain?"

He asked the question to many, but only an elderly bowyer offered an answer.

"My lord," said the man, "when I was a boy in Wessex, my master once took an order for such bows—horn, sinew, the lot. We worked for months. But come the rainy season, every last one delaminated. The glue failed. The lord who’d paid for them demanded our heads, and we fled north to save our skins."

Rurik nodded in understanding. "So the damp climate itself is our enemy. No wonder the English favor single-piece bows."

Spring came again. By April of the year 846, the storms of the North Sea had at last subsided, and ships from Scandinavia began to arrive in droves.

From their crews came tidings of King Erik’s ambition. He had gathered two thousand warriors, leading them in person from raid to raid. Of these, three hundred wore iron armor, giving his host a remarkable fifteen percent in mail—an unprecedented rate in the North.

In every conquered settlement, Erik executed the local lords and exiled their sworn guards. Over the ashes he imposed the Frankish feudal order: granting lands to his favorites, naming them earls or knights, and demanding their service in war. Each knight owed forty days of unpaid campaigning each year; beyond that, he was to be paid in silver. If any failed their oaths, Erik reserved the right to strip them of land and title alike.

Rurik frowned over this news. "Strange," he murmured. "Even the British kingdoms have not fully adopted the fief system. Why is Erik the first to do so?"

The messengers told him that the king had surrounded himself with merchants who had often crossed to the continent. He made them recount the history of the Franks, studying their laws and institutions. It seemed Erik dreamed of becoming the Charlemagne of the North.

(Indeed, Charlemagne—742 to 814—had expanded the Frankish realm to its greatest reach, encompassing France, Holland, Germany, and Italy. Crowned by the Pope as Emperor of the Romans, he embodied the very ideal of Christian kingship. His rule became the model of power for centuries to follow.)

Rurik smiled ruefully. "So the battle in Northumbria wounded his pride—and perhaps I’m the thorn that pricked him. No matter. Let him dream of empire; I’ll settle for his gold."

With that, he hastened back to the workshops, urging the carpenters to work faster. The coming war would be long and bloody, but for those who knew how to supply it, the sea of silver would be deep indeed.