After a night's rest, with food and water replenished, Ivar bid farewell to the Norse settlers and steered the longship south.
Two days later they made landfall again. Inland stretched broad marshes. One sailor scooped up a handful of dark soil from the mire, crumbling it between his fingers.
"This peat will burn as fuel, and there's plenty of it here. If I'm right, this must be the great marsh north of Eoforwic—York."
After refilling at a small stream, they followed the coast onward. On the third morning they reached the appointed place: the mouth of the Humber.
The host's target was York itself, the royal seat of Northumbria. According to plan, the fleet would row upriver and overwhelm the city with sheer numbers.
But at the river mouth lay only so sixty ships—barely half of what had sailed. Many were battered wrecks, hauled ashore for repairs.
"What happened?" Vig asked a man idly fishing by the bank.
"Storms scattered us," the man replied with a shrug. "Ragnar ordered a halt here. We've waited five days for you. I'm nearly rotting."
Not far away, angry voices rose. Vig recognized Ulf and Lennart. He stepped into a tent where five jarls bent over a crude map, locked in dispute.
Ulf growled: "York is a Roman ruin, its stone walls taller than two n. A hard nut to crack. I say strike Leeds first, then west to Mancunium."
Lennart sneered. "Coward's talk! If you fear danger, stay ho and farm. Why cross the sea only to shirk York?"
Ulf slamd the table. "The army isn't gathered! Northumbria is no petty realm like Kent or East Anglia. They can raise two or three thousand n. Better to take an easy prize first—Leeds, with its timber palisade—and bleed them before we dare York."
Ragnar let the quarrel burn itself out before speaking. "Our stores are down to a third. Tempers grow short. We need food, before raiders grow restless and scatter. We strike Leeds."
At once sixteen hundred idle Vikings roared their approval. At dawn, the longships rowed upriver under Ragnar's command.
The shallow draft of a laden longship—barely a ter deep—made it a weapon of terror. Vikings could slip far inland, strike a town before its lord even heard the alarm, then vanish with plunder.
By the following afternoon they reached Leeds.
Northumbria had no beacon system. Even as the fleet landed on the south bank, peasants still tilled their fields, and a few horsen hunted nearby, blissfully unaware of doom.
"They're unprepared. Charge!" Ivar spurred a band of Vikings toward the town, eager to seize it at once.
Leeds' defenses were ager—a three-ter palisade of timber filled with rubble and earth, daubed with mud against fire.
Ivar vaulted the wall like an ape, climbing from the shoulders of his tallest warrior. Below, the streets dissolved into chaos. Church bells rang wild as townsfolk fled in terror.
"To the gate!" Ivar barked, leading Björn, Gunnar, and others to break the one point that mattered.
If the gate fell swiftly, the host could pour in. If it held, the defenders might rally, and a quick raid would beco a bloody siege.
Vig hauled himself atop the wall just in ti to see Ivar's band locked in desperate battle at the gate. He started forward—only to spot archers massing along the ramparts.
"So fast… they've been raided before," he thought grimly.
Shield high, he barreled through, smashing n from the wall. Two strokes were enough for most foes—if they dared resist at all.
Then ahead he saw a clumsy youth, pale with fear, struggling to steady a massive crossbow. The weapon looked alien, deadly.
The young man heard his comrades' screams, turned his head—and t Vig's eyes across the wall.
He bellowed, "Pagan fiend!" and pulled the trigger.
A heavy quarrel, its iron tip broad as a thumb, spat forth.
"Gods damn it—where did the Britons get a crossbow?"
Instinct hurled Vig from the wall. He landed hard, hearing a scream behind him. A body thudded beside him—one of his own n, pierced clean through his armor by the bolt.
Even iron plates could not stop such a weapon at close range.
"A fearso tool," Vig thought, heart pounding. "Thank the Norns it's slow to load and rare, or this war would already be lost."
He stooped for his shield, ready to rejoin Ivar, when pain stabbed his ankle. He staggered, nearly falling.
Pulling up his trousers, he saw the joint swelling grotesquely.
"By Thor's beard…" He had twisted his ankle. Of all wounds in war, he had not imagined this.
Cursing, he could only watch as Ivar hacked through the defenders and flung the gates wide. The host surged in to thunderous cheers. Leeds was taken in a single stroke.
~~--------------------------
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