Viking Invasion-Chapter 63 – Nottingham

On the twenty-fifth day of October, beneath the relieved gaze of the townsfolk, the great Viking host broke camp and began its march southward.

The royal banner led the column like a crimson flame in the wind. Behind it trudged five thousand three hundred warriors in mail and leather, their shields glittering dully beneath the pale sun. And after them—like driftwood borne on a flood—came a thousand others: merchants, camp followers, hucksters, cooks, whores, and those nameless men who always follow armies for profit or survival.

In these times, plunder was the marrow of war. Victory was measured not only in land or captives, but in the silver bracelets, woven cloth, and blades seized from the fallen. The camp merchants trailed behind the soldiers, buying spoils at once—turning loot into coin, coin into food, and food into ale. Thus did war sustain a grotesque sort of prosperity, a mockery of peace that fattened on death.

To Ragnar, these traders were both burden and necessity. They slowed the march and risked betrayal—men who counted profit before loyalty are easy prey for spies. Yet he knew their worth. They were the valves of the army’s heart, releasing the pressure that might otherwise burst it. By feeding, flattering, and cheating the warriors in turn, they kept discontent from rising against their commanders.

So Ragnar let them follow, muttering only once about the delay. It took two full days of snow-choked road before his host came in sight of Nottingham.

The moment before the Vikings encircled the town, a band of five hundred Saxon militiamen rushed in through the southern gate, slamming it shut behind them. The chance for an easy storming was lost.

Snow dusted the earth like ashes. Ragnar gave the signal, and several hundred of his men advanced to test the defenses. Behind them, more than a thousand archers loosed arrows in high, dark arcs that hissed down upon the walls. The rain of shafts rattled against the timber palisade and sent the defenders crouching behind their parapets, hands shaking upon their spears.

Like most settlements of its size, Nottingham was ringed by a wall of oak logs, some four meters high, fronted by a ditch two meters deep—a total barrier of nearly six.

The attack was raw and hurried. With no time to build ladders or siege towers, the Vikings threw grappling hooks onto the parapets and hauled themselves upward on ropes slick with frost. Many slipped; those who reached the top found themselves hacked apart by the townsmen’s axes. The wooden wall ran red with their blood before Ragnar called the retreat.

"Pull them back."

His face was set in iron. The horn was sounded, deep and mournful, and the first assault ended in silence broken only by the groans of the wounded.

That night, the Viking army made camp around a northern hamlet. Ragnar took the village elder’s farmhouse as his quarters and summoned his captains to the table.

After supper, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and spoke: "According to the villagers’ tales, Nottingham has some fifteen hundred souls. Of these, perhaps four hundred are fighting men. Add the five hundred militia who entered today, and the garrison nears a thousand. What say you all?"

All eyes turned toward Rurik. Twice before—at York and at Dufelin—he had led sieges that ended in legend. Across the North Sea his name was sung as the God-chosen, the Serpent of the North, and most recently, Breaker of Walls.

Calmly, Rurik laid out three courses of action.

"First," he said, "we build proper siege towers and catapults. That will take a month and a half.

"Second, we build small stone-throwers and fire-pots—flasks of oil wrapped in pitchcloth. In two weeks the town would burn, but so would its stores. Nottingham would be ashes, unfit to serve as a supply base thereafter.

"Third, we go around it. Leave a thousand men here to pin them in place. The rest march straight for Tamworth, the Mercian royal seat. Time lost here may cost us the war."

Ragnar leaned over the map. "And how far to Tamworth?"

"Two days to the southwest," Rurik replied. "There’s a smaller town along the road—Repton. It holds the royal tombs. Best avoided, if we can."

"Skip Nottingham and Repton both?" Ragnar murmured. Around the table, the other lords shifted uneasily.

To bypass both towns meant leaving hostile garrisons behind them. If either struck at the supply trains, the front would choke for lack of grain and arrows. Yet every day spent besieging walls was another day lost to winter—and winter was the true enemy in these wars.

Ragnar brooded over the map, tracing the route with a calloused finger. "If I leave a thousand men here, and another thousand at Repton, I march on Tamworth with barely three thousand. Hnh. What a devil’s choice."

But he was a man who prized momentum above all things. "We move at dawn," he said at last. "Whether we detour at Repton will depend on what we find."

Thus decided, he left behind the weakest of his host—men lame with frostbite or wearied from the march—and ordered them to use their idle hands wisely. "Build engines if you can. Raid the nearby farms if you must. Keep the rest of the army fed."

The commander saluted. "As you will, my king."

At sunrise, the remaining host—four thousand warriors and a thousand camp followers—marched from the northern plain. From the ramparts, the Saxons watched their departure, the serpent of men and horses winding southward through the snow.

A clever merchant among them saw what others did not. "Fools!" he cried. "The enemy’s main strength moves on Tamworth!"

The news spread quickly. A few fire-eyed zealots urged pursuit, but most shook their heads.

"Better to stay behind our walls," said the elder, Theo Wulf, whose beard was white as frost. The people’s eyes pleaded with him, and at last he nodded. "We hold the town."

The shout went up along the walls:

"Praise Lord Theo Wulf!"

"May God reward his mercy!"

"To hell with Tamworth!"

It was easy to cheer when one need not march into the teeth of the Northmen. Defense was courage; attack was suicide. To guard one’s hearth and kin was a virtue they could understand.

And so, Nottingham rejoiced as the dragon-banner vanished into the snow.

The march south was harsh and silent. The land lay desolate beneath winter’s grip. Villages fled at the mere rumor of the Norse approach, leaving their cottages empty, their fields strewn with scraps of grain.

In one such hamlet, Rurik dismounted before an abandoned barn. His sharp eyes caught the glint of metal amid the straw.

"A heavy iron plough?" he murmured.

Indeed, there stood several Saxon wheeled ploughs—iron-shod, broad-bladed, of a design first forged in Rurik’s own lands of Tyneburg.

"So, it seems my invention travels faster than my own men," he said with wry amusement.

Pascal, riding beside him, smiled. "Aye, my lord. The heavy plough far outstrips the old wooden kind. One turn of the furrow, and the soil lies deep and even. The priests of Mercia call it the devil’s tool, saying no good Christian should use a pagan’s contrivance. But the peasants pay no heed. They join together, three or four farms at once, to pay a smith for one of your new ploughs. Some even borrow coin to do it."

Pascal governed Tis, a small domain south of Tyneburg, and he spoke with a scholar’s precision. He had questioned his reeves and found that farms using the heavy plough and the three-field system now reaped crops worth nearly one and a half times their old yield.

It was, for their age, a revolution.

Pascal’s face softened with genuine gratitude. "Thanks to you, Tis prospers. We’re spreading the new system each season. Another year or two, and I might even afford stone walls for my keep."

Rurik chuckled. "Better harvests enrich the whole realm. Don’t thank me. These are tools, not secrets. What fool would try to hide an idea once it’s loosed into the world?"

He turned back to his horse, the iron of the plough catching the morning sun—a dull gleam of progress amid the ruin of war. Behind him the army tramped onward, bound for Tamworth and the heart of Mercia, leaving behind only empty fields and a whisper of change.