Viking Invasion-Chapter 71 – The Trial of Arms

The air in the hall grew heavy as King Æthelwulf’s words faded. With an impatient flick of his hand, he signaled to his guards — the three Viking envoys were to be executed.

Steel flashed; cold and merciless. Yet Gunnar, commander of Ragnar’s royal guard, stood tall before the naked blades. His gaze did not waver.

"Kill me if you must," he said, voice booming across the chamber. "But remember this — for every one of us you slay, a hundred of your captured nobles and priests will hang in return. Three lives for a hundred. My forefathers would call that a bargain well struck!"

The guards hesitated, waiting for their king’s word. Before Æthelwulf could reply, one of his ealdormen leaned close and whispered urgently into his ear.

"Your Majesty — you must keep those captives alive. Once the Vikings are broken, their submission will strengthen your claim. Then, summon a council of the wise — let them acclaim you not only as the King of Wessex, but as the rightful ruler of Mercia as well."

The king’s eyes lit with sudden understanding. He struck his thigh with his palm.

"Yes... yes! Of course."

By blood, he was not without a claim — one of his distant ancestors had been a Mercian princess. Through her, he could trace a tenuous right to that fallen throne.

He raised his hand again, this time halting the execution. The blades withdrew, and Æthelwulf’s mind spun furiously.

If I lead the armies myself and defeat these heathens, my name will resound throughout Britain. The nobles of Mercia will rally to me, and the people will see the hand of God upon my sword. Then — united crowns, united faith, united kingdom.

He dismissed the guards and ordered the envoys expelled rather than slain. Then, taking quill and parchment, he composed a long and solemn letter to His Holiness the Pope.

He began by painting the grim landscape of the isle — how the kingdoms of Northumbria and Mercia had fallen into heathen hands, how the rest, weak and fragmented, lacked both courage and unity.

"Only Wessex," he wrote, "stands firm beneath the Cross. Only Wessex bears the weight of all Christendom in this forsaken land."

Then, in careful, deliberate strokes, he listed his forebears — kings and queens, bishops and saints — reminding Rome that among them was a princess of Mercia, whose blood yet ran in his veins.

"Now that the Mercian royal line is extinguished," he wrote, "I, Æthelwulf, by right of descent and by favor of Heaven, am fit to inherit their crown once I have purged their realm of the pagan scourge."

He ended the missive with a vow and a bargain. Should the Holy Father acknowledge his right, he would, in return, enforce the tithe with holy zeal — compelling even the most miserly of his peasants to yield their tenth to the Church, whether by persuasion or by whip.

When at last he finished, his hand cramped and aching, he passed the letter to his scribes. The ealdormen crowded close, correcting a few misused phrases and faulty Latin endings. Æthelwulf sighed, rewrote it from the start, sealed it with wax, and pressed his signet into the molten red — the emblem of the golden dragon of Wessex.

"Carry it to Rome," he commanded. "Ride as if the Devil himself were at your heels. No delay, no rest."

"Yes, Your Majesty!" cried the courier, saluting before vanishing into the chill of the morning.

Weeks passed. Snow turned to slush, and the frozen fields began to breathe again beneath the pale light of spring. Yet no reply came from Rome. Æthelwulf’s patience thinned to a thread.

Instead of papal blessing, he received word of something wholly unexpected — aid from across the sea.

When the Wessex envoy passed through Paris, news of the Viking conquests had reached the court of Charles the Bald, King of West Francia. Alarmed by the fall of Tamworth and the unchecked spread of the Norsemen, Charles acted with rare swiftness.

For decades, his own coasts had been scourged by raiders — swift ships slipping up the Seine, the Loire, the Garonne, burning abbeys and taking slaves. If these same pagans secured a permanent foothold in Britain, he knew, the raids upon Francia would multiply a hundredfold.

So, out of both prudence and fear, he dispatched an auxiliary force to his island ally: one thousand men — six hundred levied footmen, sixty mounted knights, and more than three hundred squires and mounted retainers.

When the Frankish herald arrived at Winchester bearing this news, Æthelwulf received him in the great hall beneath the banner of the golden wyvern. Yet his eyes narrowed with suspicion.

"The Frankish king asks nothing in return? No land, no gold?"

"None, sire," the envoy replied, bowing deeply. "His only wish is to see the Viking filth scoured from the north, that their ships trouble neither our shores nor yours again."

Æthelwulf nodded, though uneasily. A thousand men were a blessing — and a burden.

"Horses," he muttered darkly. "Too many of them. Each beast eats like six men — oats, peas, salt by the barrel. Four hundred horses will devour half my stores before spring is done. Better he had sent more footmen and fewer mouths."

The envoy blinked, uncertain if he had heard correctly. To him — a Frankish noble — cavalry was the flower of war, the true strength of Christendom. Infantry were little more than fodder.

He studied the old king and suddenly understood — the men of Wessex had no stirrups. Their riders clung to the saddle by knee and faith alone.

"Your Majesty," he said carefully, "without stirrups, a rider cannot strike with full force — nor hold his seat when the shock of the charge comes. When my king’s knights arrive, allow them to demonstrate the art of mounted war. I believe it will open your eyes to the true power of horsemen."

Æthelwulf frowned but finally gave a curt nod.

"Very well. Let them show us what these foreign steeds can do."

Within days, a broad field was fenced off with wooden rails outside Winchester. There, the king commanded a tournament of sorts — a contest between his own noble riders and the newly arrived Frankish knights.

At dawn, the air hung thick with the mingled scents of manure, rust, and ale. Grooms buckled straps and tightened girths; squires polished helms and fitted caparisons embroidered with their masters’ crests. The ring of iron against iron echoed like faint thunder beneath the gray sky.

The ten Frankish competitors — most barely past their twentieth year — gathered laughing and jesting, their breath steaming in the chill air. Each bore a blunted sword for practice and the pride of generations in his bearing.

"By Saint Martin, I miss my father’s cellars," one grumbled. "Even our poorest wine would put this island swill to shame."

"And their food," another said, wrinkling his nose. "Yesterday’s venison roast was dry as dust. Only the eels had any flavor at all."

"You’re both too kind," a third laughed. "These people eat like peasants and build like them too. Their nobles would be mere wool merchants at home."

Around the lists, villagers and monks crowded shoulder to shoulder. Priests raised crosses, murmuring blessings; children climbed trees for a better view. Vendors shouted above the noise, hawking salted meat and mugs of frothy ale.

When the king took his seat upon the wooden dais, he could not suppress a gasp.

"By Heaven," he murmured, "their horses are giants."

Indeed, the Frankish destriers loomed a full head taller and twice as broad as the lean ponies of Wessex.

"This may go poorly," Æthelwulf admitted. "My riders will be thrown like sacks of grain."

A trumpet blared. Two riders entered the field, each lowering his blunted sword in salute. The crowd fell to a hush.

Then, with a crack like tearing sky, the horses surged forward. The impact came in a blur of hooves and steel — and the Wessex rider was flung backward, tumbling across the earth in a whirl of dust and laughter.

The Frankish knight wheeled his mount, saluted again, and trotted off to thunderous cheers.

The wounded Anglo-Saxon was carried away on a plank.

Æthelwulf rose, grim-faced.

"Enough!" he declared. "This contest proves nothing. The difference lies in the horses, not the men. End it here."

Boos rippled through the crowd. The Frankish youths, flushed with triumph, shouted protests, demanding the chance to prove their worth in combat on foot.

Pressed by the spectators’ clamor — and by pride — the king relented.

Thus the second trial began: the trial of men, not beasts.

The knights and thegns cast aside their saddles and entered the ring with blunt swords and oak shields. No rules were set, save that a man must fell his foe to claim victory.

They fought hard and close, iron crashing on wood, sweat and blood mixing in the trampled mud. When it ended, of ten bouts, the Franks had won seven.

Humiliated yet defiant, several Anglo-Saxon nobles demanded rematches, and the sun slid low as duel followed duel.

By dusk, one name rose above all: Maurice, a Frankish knight whose youth belied his skill. He had struck down ten challengers in succession, his sword ringing like a church bell in the evening light.

At last, the king called a halt. The field stank of blood and ale, and the stars were beginning to burn through the haze.

The crowd cheered; the Franks preened; the Saxons muttered into their beards. None, least of all Æthelwulf, guessed what seed had been planted that day.

In the years to come, this chaotic, brutal contest would be remembered by scholars as something new — the first of its kind.

What began as a mere quarrel between allies would, in time, evolve into a tradition that spread across Europe: the tournament, the ritualized theater of war.

And from that muddy field in Wessex, the age of chivalry had begun to stir.