While the others celebrated their victory, Vig remained in the camp outside the city, writing by the light of a bright candle.
Although Wessex had surrendered, he dared not lower his guard. He had volunteered to stay behind and keep watch—after all, to be ambushed and slaughtered at a victory feast would be an unbearably humiliating way to die.
Hearing the cheers echoing from the city, Vig raised an eyebrow and kept writing. After two hours, he finally completed the Wessex chapter of The Chronicle of Britain.
Then he took out a fresh roll of parchment and began an arduous, long-term project—writing a military treatise.
The book would be divided into three parts: Training, Logistics, and Tactics.
Since it was intended for his descendants and most trusted followers, Vig wrote with painstaking detail. The section on camp construction alone stretched to two thousand words without being finished, accompanied by numerous hand-drawn sketches.
"Phew… exhausted."
Working late into the night, he still failed to complete the chapter on encampment. Rubbing his sore wrist, he made a round through the camp to check the watch, then snuffed out the candle and fell asleep.
The next morning, news reached him that Ragnar intended to march against the Franks next year. Vig was startled.
Ragnar, looking a bit embarrassed, explained, "As a king, once I've made a public declaration, I must fulfill it—otherwise my authority will suffer. I don't intend to occupy Frankish lands, only to conduct an armed expedition, a show of strength to warn 'Charles the Bald.'"
Half an hour later, the nobles—still groggy from the night's revelry—arrived to divide the spoils.
Taking the ledger from Godwin, Ragnar read it carefully from beginning to end.
The half-year campaign had yielded unexpected riches: gold, silver, jewels, armor, weapons, warhorses, cattle, sheep, and fine woolen cloth—worth over twelve thousand pounds of silver in total.
Clearing his throat, Ragnar announced, "The soldiers and field officers will receive forty-five percent. The royal household will take fifteen percent. The remaining forty percent will be divided among the nobles. The greatest contributions were made by Ivar, Vig, and Gunnar—they'll choose first. Then the rest…"
Ivar, whose own lands were still scarred by war, selected three hundred damaged suits of armor, six hundred yew longbows, and fifty thousand arrows, with the remainder of his share converted into coin.
Vig's share came to six hundred pounds of silver.
Flipping through the ledger, his first thought was to claim horses—but the supply was limited. In the end, he received thirty Frankish horses: twenty mares and ten temperamental young stallions.
Each mare was worth five pounds of silver; stallions twice that amount—two hundred pounds in total.
Next, he requested two hundred damaged suits of armor. Since the Anglo-Saxons were shorter and slighter than the Norse, they would need to be altered to fit properly.
Having no interest in anything else, Vig closed the ledger and returned it to Godwin. "I'll take another two hundred pounds in silver."
Next came Gunnar. As commander of the cavalry, he too claimed thirty warhorses, along with some armor, weapons, and six thousand sheep.
"Cambridge is fertile farmland," Vig thought, puzzled. "Why abandon agriculture for herding?"
After some reflection, he realized the answer—pasturing was easier to manage. With the help of sheepdogs, a single shepherd could handle two hundred sheep; six thousand would require only thirty men. The needed pastureland—roughly two thousand acres—was equivalent to two large estates.
"Besides wool," Vig mused, "the flock will yield milk and meat. If Gunnar focuses on breeding them, the price of wool in the market will surely drop."
Once the loot had been divided and before the army set out, the shaman Kemi Wildfire approached Vig.
"My lord, there are rumors of a great ruin twenty kilometers west of Winchester."
"A ruin? You'd better not be joking."
With little else to do, Vig gathered a few shield-bearers and rode out. Guided by a local shepherd, they reached a desolate, silent field.
From a distance, they saw dozens of gray-white monoliths arranged in concentric circles. The tallest stood nearly seven meters high, with long lintel stones resting across their tops.
"Stonehenge!"
Sensing his master's excitement, Vig's gray horse surged forward, galloping ahead of the others. He dismounted and touched one of the nearest stones—its surface rough and cold, its edges worn by centuries of wind and rain.
A faint breeze swept across the grasslands, and several black ravens croaked harshly as they descended upon the stones above.
Vig sat on the grass, unfurled a roll of parchment, and began sketching the mysterious scene with clumsy strokes. Meanwhile, Shaman Kemi and several guards noisily collected money to buy a sheep and two chickens from the shepherd, hastily performing a sacrifice on the spot.
By the time their ceremony ended, Vig had nearly finished his drawing. They camped out in the open for the night and returned to Winchester the next morning.
Ragnar, meanwhile, faced a different problem.
With the war over and the army preparing to depart, he had intended to find a comfortable manor near Tamworth for his new lover, Aslaug, as compensation for her company over the past months.
But that evening, during a banquet of allied leaders, Aslaug suddenly rose to her feet, calmly resting a hand on her belly and announcing that she was pregnant.
The laughter in the hall died. Vig lowered his gaze to his bowl of eel soup, his expression blank. The other nobles reacted much the same way—pretending not to hear, eating silently.
"What's with those faces? This is wonderful news!" Ivar broke the silence, clapping his hands and grinning. Then he recounted an old story from twenty years ago.
Back then, Ragnar had been nothing more than a precarious pirate, spending most of the year raiding the seas and the rest farming his own fields.
One cold winter night, a traveler in a tattered black cloak came seeking shelter—a gray-bearded, one-eyed old man leaning on an oak staff. Ragnar and his wife welcomed him into their home.
At the time, Ivar was eight years old, and Bjorn only five. The two boys pestered the traveler for stories. The old man, well-traveled and wise, seemed to know the answer to everything.
Eventually, Bjorn posed a trick question: "Can you tell the future?"
The traveler chuckled. "An amusing child. What is it you wish to know?"
Bjorn said, "Every spring, Father goes raiding for our lord, and he comes back in the autumn. He says that once he's earned enough, he'll stop sailing and stay home to play with me. Will that come true?"
The old man smiled faintly by the fire, took a sip of cloudy ale, and replied, "No. He has greater things yet to do. Ragnar is destined for greatness. He will have three wives and five children—and, sadly, not enough time for any of you."
When Ivar finished retelling the tale, he laughed and said, "Father, you should bring Aslaug back to York. Since Queen Sola can't stand her, why not give her some competition to occupy her time and temper?"
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