On October 25th, under the relieved gazes of the townsfolk, the Viking host finally marched south.
Following the royal banner at the vanguard, 5,300 warriors filed out of camp, trailed by more than a thousand hangers-on.
In wars of this era, plunder was routine. Soldiers seized silver, cloth, weapons, and other spoils. Camp traders bought these on the spot, converting them into coin, food, and ale, creating a grotesque sort of battlefield economy.
To Ragnar, these traders were double-edged. They slowed the march and risked leaking intelligence—but they also kept morale afloat. Their services vented the men's frustrations, sparing the commanders from becoming the soldiers' outlet.
Thus, he tolerated their parasitic presence. The host's pace slowed, needing two full days to reach Nottingham.
Just before the Vikings could seize the town, five hundred militiamen poured through the south gate, bolstering the defenses and dashing Ragnar's hopes of storming it unopposed.
On snow-dusted ground, hundreds of Vikings launched a probing assault. Behind them, a thousand archers loosed arrows at the walls. The rain of shafts drummed against timber, sending militia ducking behind merlons in fear.
Like most settlements, Nottingham was girded by a wooden palisade four meters high, with a ditch two meters deep outside it—six meters' difference in all.
With no time to build proper ladders, the Vikings flung grappling hooks and clambered up ropes, a slow and bloody business. A few reached the top, only to be swarmed and cut down.
"Pull them back."
Ragnar's voice was grim. He signaled the horn-blowers, ending the first assault.
That evening, the army encamped at a village north of town, Ragnar's command post set up in the headman's farmhouse.
After supper, he wiped grease from his mouth with the back of his hand.
"According to the villagers, Nottingham has about 1,500 souls. Perhaps four hundred grown men, plus the five hundred militia—that's near a thousand defenders. Thoughts?"
All eyes turned to Vig. His feats at York and Dublin had spread across the North, earning him not only the titles God's Chosen and Serpent of the North, but also a new one: the Battering Ram.
Vig laid out three options:
Build towers and trebuchets. At least a month and a half.
Build small catapults to hurl fire-oil. Two weeks, but the town would be ruined and useless as a supply base.
Bypass the town. Leave a thousand men to blockade it, march the rest straight on Tamworth.
Ragnar hesitated. "And the road to Tamworth?"
Vig: "Two days southwest. But there's Repton along the way—a royal burial site. Likely garrisoned."
"Bypass Nottingham and Repton?"
Not only Ragnar, but the other nobles frowned. A campaign demanded steady supply. Leave hostile garrisons behind, and the supply line would be a knife at their back.
Ragnar brooded over the map. To circle Repton as well would mean posting another garrison, leaving barely three thousand men for the assault on Tamworth.
"Damnably vexing…"
Yet in winter, time was everything. Give Mercia's king too long, and the fight would grow harder.
"Tomorrow at dawn we march. Whether we bypass Repton will depend on the ground."
Choosing speed, Ragnar left a thousand of the weakest troops behind. He ordered their commander not to idle but to build engines or scour the countryside for supplies to send forward.
"Yes, Your Majesty."
At sunrise, from the walls of Nottingham, the defenders watched over five thousand figures—four thousand warriors and a thousand camp followers—winding away like a great serpent over the snow.
One sharp-minded trader gasped.
"They're going for Tamworth!"
Murmurs spread. A few hotheads urged a sally, but most argued for holding the walls.
Seeing the pleading eyes of his people, Lord Theowulf yielded. He would hold, and let the Vikings pass.
"Praise Lord Theowulf!"
"Bless his wisdom and mercy!"
"To Hel with Tamworth!"
Cheers rang out from the battlements. To hold a wall and defend one's home was one thing; to march into the field against Vikings was quite another.
The host pushed past Nottingham, weary and cold, trudging through empty villages. Peasants fled at the rumor of their approach, leaving only deserted houses and scraps of grain behind.
But then—iron plowshares?
To his surprise, Vig found several Saxon wheeled plows fitted with iron blades—in this age, called Tynemouth plows.
"So, they've spread faster than I thought."
Pascas nodded eagerly.
"Indeed. Your heavy plow is far beyond the old wooden kind. One pass, and the earth is deep and even. The priests call it the devil's tool of pagans—but peasants don't care. They pool their silver, even borrow, just to have a smith forge one."
Pascas's own lands lay south of Tynemouth. He knew the value of the new plow and the three-field system better than most.
He'd asked his local gentry: with the heavy plow and three-field rotation, their yearly yield in silver was 1.4 times that of the old two-field method—a breakthrough without precedent.
Smiling broadly, Pascas said,
"Thanks to you, Tiss is adopting the three-field system too. In two years, when our coffers are fuller, perhaps I can even build a stone keep."
"Increasing harvests helps the whole realm—indeed, all of Europe. We're kin. No need to thank me."
Vig never intended to guard the secret of the plow. Such things could not be locked away. Better to let it spread, and earn a noble name.
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