After driving off the pursuers, the Vikings buried their dead in shallow graves, then marched back to Leeds with captured gear. A few days' rest later, their scattered warbands finally rejoined them. Their numbers swelled close to three thousand.
Ragnar would not waste time. Word of the invasion had spread through all Northumbria. Every delay meant more fyrds mustering, another two or three thousand Anglian levies on the horizon.
"Northward—to York!" he commanded.
That afternoon the fleet rowed into the Ouse. Yet the river was thin that year, its waters low. Worse, the Angles had felled trees into the shallows, choking the channel. Progress was impossible.
Ragnar led his men ashore on the east bank, deciding to march to York on foot. To guard their plunder, he ordered the ships to return downstream and hide in a quiet bend of the Humber.
York was no village stockade. Founded by Rome itself, here Constantine the Great had once been acclaimed emperor. Its stone walls ran five kilometers around, six meters high, and the western flank was shielded by the river. Compared to Leeds, it was a fortress.
One glance at the ramparts killed any thought of a sudden storm. Vig began instead to sketch siege works. Four came to mind:
Scaling ladders—simple, but costly in lives.
Siege towers—mobile wooden towers as tall as the walls, disgorging armored men at the ramparts.
Battering rams—sheltered by a wooden roof, but easy prey for fire and oil.
Counterweight trebuchets—capable of hurling stones to shatter walls, but so complex he had only half a memory of their design.
"Months," Vig thought grimly, charcoal scratching on papyrus. "Two, three… perhaps six. Do these Vikings have the patience?"
Near Ragnar's tent, voices swelled. Another war council.
Vig burst in, urging caution. "We bled at Manchester. Let me build engines first—only then strike in earnest."
Some nodded. But the men of King Erik—who had yet to taste defeat—mocked him. One sneered that Vig was too timid to bear the dragon-sword.
"Say that again, louder!" Ivar snarled, hurling a cup across the table. "I've a blade named Heartsplitter. Shall I put it beside his?"
Chaos erupted, men shoving and spitting insults until Erik himself barked them down. His face was dark with anger.
"We came to Britain for plunder, not brawls," he growled. "If you cowards won't join me, so be it. I will build my ladders. Those who fight with me will share the gold. The rest—rot in your tents."
Erik stormed out with five allied jarls. Within five days he had carpenters hammering two hundred ladders. His men whispered through Ragnar's camp, drawing away eager warriors. By the sixth day, twenty-three hundred followed Erik to assault York.
May 11, morning.
After breakfast, warriors gathered in disorder on the plain. Erik chose to strike the eastern wall—swiftly, before Ragnar's fame eclipsed his own. Kinship meant nothing; though Ragnar had given him his sister Sola in marriage, ambition weighed heavier than blood.
"Forward! Odin watches us!" Erik roared.
Eight hundred men rushed first, heaving ladders on their shoulders. Behind them, three hundred archers loosed at the parapets.
The defenders ignored the archers. Their shafts rained instead on the ladder-bearers.
Suddenly, a roar erupted from the battlements. A fat youth in fine robes strode with a guard of retainers—Prince Ælla, son of Ælla, heir to Northumbria.
The presence of the royal heir electrified the defense. Their arrows grew sharper, their aim crueler. They shot only the left-hand bearers of each ladder. With the balance ruined, ladders faltered and staggered forward only slowly.
Of two hundred, barely thirty reached the wall.
Realizing disaster, Erik hurled the rest of his host forward. The spectacle was grand enough to stir even Ragnar's ranks to restless muttering.
"Could it be… I was wrong? Might Erik truly break them?" Ragnar's hand tightened on his sword-hilt. He turned to Vig. "Fetch the fifty ladders you built. If Erik's men gain the wall, we must follow at once!"
Vig sprinted to the camp. Five minutes later he returned, shoulders aching under timber. But as he reached the field, a sickening sight met him: the defenders tipping barrels of pitch over the wall.
Scalding black torrents splashed onto the climbers. Then torches rained down. In an instant, ladders became pyres, men became writhing firebrands, shrieking as they stumbled in flames.
The host broke. Those below fled in terror, shields raised uselessly against falling fire. Within half an hour the great assault was over.
Vig swallowed hard, staring at the charred heaps beneath the wall. Now he understood why medieval sieges so often meant long blockades, not storm. An assault was butchery.
He turned to Ragnar. "Londinium's walls are no weaker than these. How did you breach them two years ago?"
Ragnar's face was pale. "Not like this. We came by the Thames, in darkness. Ropes and hooks—we scaled the walls by night. Damnation… I never dreamed a frontal assault would cost so dear. Now we are in trouble."
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