In the days leading up to the feast, Vig summoned local villagers and gathered what knowledge he could. Within Tynemouth's bounds lay nineteen manors and twenty-three villages—thinly populated, much of the land lying fallow. Nearly a quarter of the people had fled during the recent war.
Let them go, Vig thought. Better that than leaving troublemakers behind.
From morning till dusk on the day of the feast, delegations trickled in. All twenty-three village headmen arrived, drab in rough homespun, shoulders hunched in fear. The gentry, by contrast, came on horseback, clad in finer cloth.
At sundown the banquet began. Of nineteen lords of the land, five came in person, eight sent nephews or sons in their stead, and six scorned to appear at all—too proud, they said, to bow to a heathen usurper.
"I am Vig," he proclaimed. "I have sailed to Constantinople. I fought at Manchester and York, and by that merit King Ragnar has invested me with Tynemouth. From this day, I ask you to accept what is real: a new order. Pay your dues, and if outsiders raid you, I will answer."
By custom, the gentry sat at the right-hand table, the villagers at the left. All eyes turned to this man who called himself their lord.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, sharp-eyed, his face chiseled like stone, his black hair tied neatly back—not at all the ragged barbarian they had expected. More unsettling still, he spoke their tongue. His Old English was flawed but intelligible.
The gentry whispered among themselves. This Viking was no common brute. He was dangerous.
At last an elder asked, "Will you impose new laws, or keep to the old ways?"
Vig gave a smile he thought kind. "Your customs and faith remain untouched. Pay your taxes, that is all. If you are plundered, I will see you avenged."
Outsiders? their eyes said. You are the outsider.
Yet they held their tongues. The old king was gone, the south already bent to the new one. If this lord was not overbearing, why resist?
Relief showed at last. A fat squire led the way, and soon they were eating.
The fare was meager—fish stew, coarse bread, a mash of turnips, carrots, and peas. Five jugs of mead barely wet their throats.
Stingy barbarian, many thought. He has livestock enough. Couldn't he slaughter a single cow for us?
But aloud they praised him for his "novel" river-fish feast, saying he had wit and originality.
"Don't flatter me," Vig said suddenly. "I know you despise this meal."
He smashed his cup to the floor, shards flying. Gasps froze the hall. In one motion he drew his sword. From both sides, hulking Vikings poured in, blades bared.
The guests stiffened like sheep before the butcher, lungs heaving, eyes wide.
"Peace," Vig said with another smile. "This isn't for you. You honored me by coming. But others refused. They spat on the king, called him a filthy heathen brute. Tell me—what should be done with such men?"
He stared at his blade. In the dim candlelight the Damascus steel shimmered, deadly and ornate.
"This sword is Dragon's Breath," he went on. "I won it in the emperor's own lists at Constantinople. For half a year I have done nothing but study your tongue. Too long since I put my own hand to blood."
Madman, the elders thought. He's insane.
The oldest of them croaked, "You mean…to strike at them?"
"Indeed," said Vig. "It is a lord's duty to keep order and punish rebellion. At dawn we march. You will witness it."
For this first campaign he meant to make an example, and spared not even the Anglo peasants nearby.
At sunrise sixty-one local men, armed with little more than pitchforks, gathered outside Tynemouth. Their faces were long, as though walking to their graves.
Vig roused them with promise of reward.
"By my oath to every god known, each manor we take—its wheat you may harvest. Take what you can carry. The rest is mine."
The men's dull eyes lit. They rushed home for sacks, fear forgotten.
So Vig's first campaign began. His host: twenty shield-bearers in mail, two hundred and thirty Vikings (fifty more stayed behind as guards), sixty-one local peasants, and thirty-six gentry and headmen who had come to watch.
For baggage, twenty wagons—horses commandeered from the guests themselves. They carried little food, but timbers and parts to assemble rams and ladders.
To seize surprise, Vig pushed the march hard. By midday next, they reached their first target.
"At last," he breathed, reining in his gray mare atop a hill.
Below lay a manor, ringed by a low hedge, covering a thousand acres—roughly a square two kilometers to a side.
The demesne and orchards, ponds and woods spanned one hundred fifty acres; several dozen more grew crops; four hundred acres held ripening wheat, the rest lay fallow.
A two-field system, common in early medieval Britain: half planted in winter wheat, half left to rest.
Scanning the ground, Vig saw no ambush. He ordered the advance.
Farmers in the fields dropped their tools and fled for the hall.
It was no timber hall, but a four-story stone tower, two hundred square meters at the base, girdled by a timber palisade. Soon its walls bristled with armed peasants, ready for a fight.
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