Bjorn squinted through the river mist as the settlement gradually became clearer ahead of them. The wooden palisades rose from the muddy banks - nothing impressive, just the same vertical logs and rope bindings he had seen at dozens of other settlements throughout the Norse lands.
There were no chains stretched across the water to block their ships, which left the place vulnerable despite the wall around it.
He could break through those defenses without much trouble. A few well-placed catapults would tear the gates apart within minutes.
If this were a proper siege, with huskarls ready inside to fight, he wouldn't hesitate to spend three days building a catapult; then the battle in the open field would be far easier to manage with him leading it.
But that's not the case now.
It's better to ram straight through the main gate and be done with it quickly.
The deep sound of a war horn echoed across the water, pulling Bjorn back from his planning. They had been spotted, but it did not matter now. Most of Alfheim's huskarls were either dead or sitting chained in Tunsberg. Bjorn had made sure of that when he crushed their invasion force.
He turned to face his huskarls and the ones from Borre, his words were aimed more at the latter. "We are not here to steal or take slaves," he called out. "We came to end this blood feud between our people once and for all. We are not raiders. Not today."
His eyes found the coerced men among his force. "And to bring back your families and everyone else who was taken. Do you understand me?"
The men nodded, some more eagerly than others.
Eirik Bone-crusher stepped forward slightly. "That is all we want, Lord. Just to get our families back safe."
Bjorn studied Eirik's face for a long moment before nodding back at him.
Floki's fingers tightened on the haft of his axe. He stared toward the shore. "Blood feuds… they don't end easy, Bjorn. I doubt even the gods can end them."
Rollo snorted, leaning against the railing. "There's not much risk anyway, so why stop trying?"
"The gods may laugh at your ease, Rollo."
"We will end what we can, Floki". Bjorn nodded slowly ending their talk, it was neither the right place or the right time.
"Drop the sail," Bjorn then commanded.
The crew moved quickly to bring down the woolen sail, slowing their approach so the ships would not be damaged when they hit the shore.
-x-X-x-
The longships scraped against sand as they beached. Bjorn's huskarls jumped over the sides and formed up immediately - shields ready, spears aligned, moving together, showing their discipline, which clearly shows they have done this many times before.
The men from Borre scrambled out after them in loose groups, checking their weapons and talking among themselves.
The difference between the two groups was obvious to everyone watching. Bjorn's warriors had better weapons. They stood relaxed but ready, like hunting wolves waiting for the signal to attack.
The Borre men, their equipment was mismatched, some carrying weapons that weren't on their best form.
On the palisade walls, the defenders watched this display with growing fear. They could see which group posed the real threat, and it was not the eager but untrained volunteers.
Bjorn's huskarls exchanged knowing glances and allowed themselves small grins. They felt superior with their better weapons and shields, and the way they looked domineering compared to Borre's huskarls.
The men on the walls, most of them were already awake by now, and they gripped their weapons tighter and moved closer together.
Bjorn began walking toward the settlement, his boots squelching in the marshy ground. His men fell into step behind him, each warrior carrying his shield ready to lock with his neighbors if arrows started flying.
-x-X-x-
When they reached arrow range, Bjorn raised his fist and his men immediately formed their shield wall. But this was not the standard formation where each man protected his own body. Instead, they created layers of overlapping shields - the front rank crouched low with shields angled up, the second rank held theirs at chest height, and the third rank raised theirs high to catch any arrows aimed at heads and shoulders.
Before ordering the advance, Bjorn stepped forward alone. He carried a blood-stained leather sack that he had kept close in a barrel during the voyage. The defenders on the walls watched nervously as he reached inside and pulled out something pale and round.
Prince Helsing's severed head flew through the air in a high arc, the hair streaming behind it like a banner. It hit the ground inside the palisade with a wet sound and rolled several feet before stopping near a wooden post.
Silence hung over the settlement for several heartbeats. Then someone screamed. Other voices joined in - shouts of horror, recognition, and despair as the defenders realized what they were looking at.
Bjorn did not give them time to recover from the shock. "Forward!" he shouted, and his shield wall began its steady march toward the walls.
The few archers among the defenders shot their arrows, but there were too few of them. Most of their shafts bounced harmlessly off the locked shields or flew wide of their targets.
Meanwhile, Bjorn moved to the right side with his own bow and a group of veteran archers; veteran hunters now turned to huskarls. From this position, they had clear shots at the men on the walls. Bjorn drew his bowstring back to his ear and released. The arrow took an archer in the throat, dropping him immediately.
Around him, his archers did the same work, though with less precision. One by one, the defenders on the walls fell - an arrow through the chest here, one in the eye there. The survivors began looking around desperately, some glancing toward the gates as if thinking about running.
Bjorn saw the moment when their will broke. "Lay down your weapons!" he roared across the battlefield. "Prince Helsing is dead and all his forces are destroyed! Surrender now and I swear by the gods that no innocent will be harmed!"
One gray-bearded defender let his spear clatter to the wooden walkway. The sound seemed to release the others from a spell, and within moments the remaining men were throwing down their swords, axes, and bows.
-x-X-x-
Kungälv spread out before them as they marched through the gates. The settlement is prosperous as a trading hub, as expected of a royal seat.
Bjorn observed the well-built longhouses with their sturdy oak beams and the workshops with good tools.
The people who remained watched from doorways as the armed column passed through their streets. Women pulled children behind them when the warriors looked their way. Old men stood in the shadows of buildings, their faces showing resignation rather than fear. They had no huskarls to protect them, and their bravery, while admirable, did not amount to much.
Bjorn felt their eyes on him. He kept his expression neutral, neither cruel nor sympathetic. These people needed to see strength now, not mercy. Mercy could come later, once order was established. Once they understood that his rule would bring stability rather than chaos.
A child's cry echoed from one of the houses, quickly muffled. Bjorn did not turn his head.
The royal hall dominated the center of the settlement, its carved dragon heads glaring down from the peaked roof. The craftsmanship was excellent—the serpents' scales were individually detailed, their eyes inlaid with what looked like amber. No guards stood at the great oak doors, which hung open as if inviting them inside.
'Too easy,' Bjorn thought. His hand drifted toward his shiel and readied himself for a fight. If this was a trap, they would find out soon enough.
He frowned, studying the entrance for a long moment before striding through with his men close behind, shields raised and ready.
The interior hit them with warmth - torches burned along the walls, their flames dancing in unseen drafts. The central fire pit still glowed with coals. Tapestries depicting old victories covered the wooden walls, and the high seat at the far end was carved with intricate knotwork patterns.
But the warmth could not hide what lay near the king's chair.
An old man in simple brown robes lay face-down in a spreading pool of blood. His gray hair was matted with red, and his arms were sprawled at unnatural angles. The rushes around him were soaked crimson, already beginning to congeal into darker patches. The smell of copper and voided bowels hung in the air.
Death's familiar perfume.
Bjorn's expression did not change, but something tightened in his chest. He had not expected this.
Beside the corpse sat a woman with blonde hair streaked with gray. Her rough woolen dress was stained red to the elbows, and she held a bone-handled knife that still dripped blood onto the floor in slow, rhythmic drops. She was singing something in a low voice—a song that Bjorn did not recognize.
Tears ran down her dirt-streaked face, but her voice never wavered as she sang.
Bjorn studied her as he would study an opponent before a fight. She was perhaps forty, her hands rough with work, her posture that of someone accustomed to service.
A thrall, then. But thralls who killed their masters usually ran, and this one sat as calmly as if she were mending clothes by the fire.
Behind him, he heard the sharp intake of breath from several of his men.
Rollo moved closer to examine the body, his hand holding his axe. The big man's face was grim as he looked down at the corpse. "Is this King Gandalf?" he asked the woman.
She stopped singing and looked up at them. Her eyes were red from crying, but her gaze was steady. "Yes," she whispered.
Rollo knelt and pressed his fingers against the old man's neck, checking for a pulse that Bjorn already knew would not be there. Then he put his ear close to the mouth, listening for breath. After a moment, he shook his head and stood. "He is dead."
Bjorn took a step closer, studying the scene carefully. No signs of a struggle. No overturned furniture, no scattered rushes beyond the blood-soaked area. No defensive wounds on the king's hands—the fingers were clean except where they had dragged through his own blood.
The woman showed no injuries, no bruises or cuts that would suggest she had been struck or restrained.
This had been quick and personal, not a battle. The king had either been taken by surprise or had allowed it to happen.
"Trygve," Bjorn called, without taking his eyes off the woman. "Go and bring five or six locals here. I need them to confirm who this man is."
Rollo frowned and turned to look at him. "Is that really necessary? She has already told us it is the king."
But before Bjorn could answer, Trygve stepped forward anxiously. "Lord, what about the hostages? I do not see any of our people here." His voice cracked. "My mother and little brother, where are they being held?"
Bjorn's expression softened slightly. He knew what it was to fear for family. The young man had already lost his father in the battle against Helsing, and was desperate not to lose the rest of his family.
"Bring the witnesses first," Bjorn said gently, making his voice firm but not harsh. "Then we will find out where the captives are."
Trygve nodded and hurried toward the door, nearly tripping on the rushes in his eagerness. His footsteps echoed in the hall until they faded outside.
Bjorn and Rollo looked at each other meaningfully. No words were needed. They were both thinking the same thing.
That a king who would let himself be killed might have ordered atrocities before he died.
Bjorn hoped the hostages were not dead. If they were, it would complicate things even further. Blood feuds would soon become a thing, not just between jarls but between families. Unrest would follow in these two kingdoms. The careful plans he ahad made would unravel into chaos and revenge.
'Fuck.' He thought.
He pushed the thought aside. Time enough to deal with that if it came to pass.
Bjorn turned back to the blood-covered woman. She had resumed her singing, but quieter now, almost under her breath. He waited until she paused before speaking. "Why did you kill him? What was your reason?"
She lifted her head, and something in her gaze made him frown. There was madness there, yes—the kind that came from years of servitude and suffering. But also a strange kind of clarity, the look of someone who had made a terrible choice and believed it was right.
"Because I love him," she said simply.
Rollo looked at her as if she was stupid. "You what?"
The word love sounded obscene in this place that stank of death. Bjorn raised his eyebrows. "You are his thrall, are you not? What kind of love drives a slave to murder her master?"
The woman's laugh held no joy, only bitterness and something that might have been pity. For them or for herself, Bjorn could not tell. "You would have given him a death far worse than this. Maybe you would have humiliated him in front of everyone. Would you have carved the blood eagle into his back while he still breathed?"
Bjorn kept his face carefully neutral, but her words struck closer to truth than he cared to admit. Not because he would have ordered such thing, but people will want someone to blame for their suffering.
She gestured at the corpse with her bloody knife, the blade catching the torchlight. "He was too old to die fighting with sword and shield. Too weak to earn his place in Valhalla through battle. If he had surrendered to you, the gods would have turned away from him in the afterlife."
Her voice grew stronger, more certain. "So I sent him to the gods myself. I gave him a fast death instead of letting you shame him. I gave him the mercy you would not have."
She leaned forward and carefully placed the seax in the dead king's right hand, wrapping his cold fingers around the handle with surprising tenderness. The gesture was ritualistic. Making it appear as if he had died with weapon in hand, as warriors should. Then she went back to her mournful singing, ignoring Bjorn and his warriors completely.
The hall fell quiet except for her voice and the crackling of the torches. The melody wove through the smoke-thick air, ancient and sorrowful. Even the warriors who accompanied Bjorn found themselves disturbed by this display of devotion twisted into murder.
Bjorn stood motionless, thinking.
The woman had acted out of love, she claimed. But was it love for the man or love for what he represented? Kings were symbols as much as they were men. Perhaps she had loved the idea of him more than the reality. Or perhaps she truly had cared for the old man, and this was the only kindness she could offer.
It did not matter, he decided. The king was dead. The question now was what to do with his killer.
Soon Trygve returned with several townspeople - merchants, craftsmen, and elders who had known their king for years. They confirmed while gasping in shock what the thrall had told them: the dead man was indeed Gandalf, King of Alfheim.
Bjorn dismissed them with a nod and they left quickly, grateful to be away from the death and the blood and the mad thrall's singing.
He looked down at the body again, at the peaceful expression on the old king's face. A good death, perhaps, compared to what might have come. But not the death Bjorn had planned. Not the plan Bjorn planned for him.
"We find the hostages," Bjorn said finally. "Then we deal with the rest."
The thrall kept singing, oblivious to them all, her voice rising and falling like waves on a distant shore.
-x-X-x-
Through careful questioning, Bjorn learned that the hostages from Kaupang and Borre were being held somewhere close to a powerful chieftain the king had trusted, though not a Jarl.
The huskarls from Kaupang who had been forced to fight for Prince Helsing were all dead, killed either in the battlefield of Borre or during the failed invasion of Tunsberg.
But the civilians - wives, children, elderly parents - were still alive and mostly unharmed. They had been too valuable as bargaining pieces to waste on casual cruelty.
Bjorn assigned the rescue to Rollo, along with five of his own huskarls and all seventeen of Borre. Before they left, he pulled Rollo aside.
"If anyone have harmed the hostages, bring them to me alive," Bjorn said quietly. Bjorn was planning to put them on trial and kill them, they are loyal since they were tasked with protecting the hostages, and Bjorn was not in need of loyalists to a dead king.
While his men went to free the captives, Bjorn turned to the problem of establishing his rule properly. He was currently Earl of Kattegat, powerful yes, but still a foreign Jarl.
If he simply declared himself King of Alfheim by conquest alone, ambitious men would eventually rally behind some distant cousin of the royal family and challenge his authority.
Better to do this according to tradition and law.
He talked with the law speaker here, then sent messengers throughout Alfheim, summoning all karls, bondsmen, chieftains, and the only jarl in Alfheim to an emergency Thing at Kungälv. The message was clear: King Gandalf was dead, Prince Helsing was dead, and many more problems to solve.
Everyone will come with their own agendas of course. But Bjorn was sure he could outmaneuver them politically, it will be slow, and he knows that.
-x-X-x-
While waiting for the arrival of people to the thing, Bjorn began to move among those who had come early. He talked to farmers about their fields, the quality of the grain, and what if there was a way to improve the harvest. And if there was a way, would they use it immediately. He was trying to understand the thoughts of the people better.
He listened to fishers describe how the river had risen and fallen, which spots were good for nets, and which had been emptied by other villages.
Craftsmen spoke of the hours they spent shaping wood, repairing tools, or tanning leather, and Bjorn asked questions not out of curiosity alone, but to gauge their skill and reliability.
Some bondis had arrived ahead of the rest, and he noted their demeanor: who was calm, who became frustrated quickly, who had a quiet confidence, who was fidgety. These small observations built a picture of the people he would soon rely on.
Rollo arrived the next day, bringing the hostages.
Bjorn saw at once that some of the women were in terrible condition; their faces and bodies bore marks of abuse, and their eyes held fear and disbelief.
He felt a tight knot in his chest, a recognition that the path he had chosen came with consequences he could not ignore. He did not turn away, did not avert his gaze, because he wanted them to know he saw them, that their suffering mattered.
Deep down, he knew he had played a part in the chain of events that brought them here. That knowledge weighed on him, but it did not crush him.
Bjorn was realistic; he understood the world he lived in, the choices he had made, and the casualties that came with pursuing power.
Yet he also understood responsibility.
He carried it quietly, letting it guide his decisions, shaping how he treated those under his protection.
He did not dwell on regret. Instead, he focused on what he could do now; how he could act to prevent further harm, to give the survivors some measure of control over their own fate, and to see that justice, however harsh, was enacted fairly
Among the arrivals were Trygve and his younger brother. Trygve's face was drawn and grim.
In conversation, Bjorn learned that Trygve's mother had killed herself after being raped. His younger brother, barely ten, said almost nothing.
He did not cry, did not complain, but his eyes held an awareness beyond his age, they followed every movement around him.
Bjorn felt a deep pity for the boy, recognizing both the trauma he had endured and the intelligence that had been forced into him too early. He remembered the boy's eyes clearly, noting the weight they carried, and wondered how he could offer him some measure of safety and guidance.
The public procession began shortly after. People walked in order, chanting, singing, raising their voices in rhythm.
Bjorn stayed to the side, observing. Some moved with pride and focus; others glanced around nervously, uncertain of what was expected of them.
Behind the procession, preparations continued for the thrall who had killed the king. She was to be burned alongside him on the pyre, serving him in the afterlife.
The night before, she had lain with several men who told her, as they were with her, "Tell the king that we are doing this because of our love for him."
Bjorn did not believe it. He did not think they were speaking the truth, but he did not interfere. Their customs were their own, strange and hard for him to understand, but not his to stop.
In Earl Haraldson's funeral, there was no such thing as men laying with the women, but was it because the thrall of Haraldson was old and this one was young, Bjorn did know.
Over the next several days. Ale was shared from large wooden vessels, toasts were sworn, and games were played.
Some were competitive, some simple, but in all of it, Bjorn saw the way tensions between his men and the locals eased, even just between neighbors.
Arguments cooled, minor disagreements were forgotten, and people laughed at small victories in games. On the final day of the erfi, the ritual ale-sip marked closure.
Men and women drank, repeated oaths, and celebrated together.
Bjorn noticed how the ritual bound them, creating a shared rhythm that prevented grudges from taking root.
On the fourth day, preparations for the funeral began. The king was washed carefully and dressed in fine linens. Grave goods were collected: weapons, silver obtained through trade, and a thrall who would accompany him.
The pyre was built near the river, and skalds began composing dirges.
Bjorn was present in every step of the funeral, making his presence known. They did look at him strangely of course the first time they saw him because of his silver hair and young face, and warily because of his huskarls, but soon the people have grown accustomed to his presence since he didn't raid or pillage.
For the people with power it was a different matter entirely, they were playing games, testing the waters trying to get information form Bjorn, some trying to get on his good side with good words.
After the funeral, Bjorn focused on preparing his speeches for the 'thing'. He considered what words would be effective, what topics could offend, and what conflicts might arise.
Above all, he worked to prepare himself for the unexpected; moments when someone might act out of anger or fear, when decisions would have to be made quickly, and when the stability of the assembly could be challenged.
At the same time, he prepared for the trial of the dozen men who had harmed the hostages. Honor dictated that he could not strike them down outright.
Through questioning, Bjorn learned that they had acted not from malice toward these particular women, but because they had believed the women "did not matter" compared to others who had living huskarls the last time news reached them.
******Author's note :
In the next chapter, I'll show a Thing; a real assembly where disputes are settled and power is recognized according to law and tradition.
Bjorn has to navigate politics, ambitions, and local customs to secure his rule.
It's slower, more complicated, and far less glamorous than fighting, but it's necessary.
This will be the only time I show something like this. After that, if Bjorn conquers a kingdom in Scandinavia, I'll simply summarize any problems he faced and how he solved them, before skipping forward to show the consolidation of his power.
Anyway After the assembly, we return to Northumbria.