231. Can Not the Whole World Be Happy.
231. Can Not the Whole World Be Happy.
Where two deep forest streams merged into one.
Abundant small springs where thirsty deer came to drink, and wolves crouched low in the thickets relishing the scent of prey.
A place where the stern laws of nature had been upheld for countless ages.
This land on the boundary between Eastern and Western Europe—rich in forests and fish, and most of all, the heart of the Obotrite tribal confederation, bristling with terrifying potential because it directly bordered the rapidly rising North Sea.
Liubice was blazing.
[Hwareureuk- Hwareureuk-]
"Kill them all!"
"Kill the men and kill the women! No mercy for those who dare to reject the four-headed god! No slaves! No surrender! Kill them all, kill them!"
"Kyaaak-!"
"Aaaak!"
Just before a catastrophe of near-identical faces slaughtering one another erupted upon this land, the elite warriors of the North Sea, who had brought the long-stalled siege of Liubice to its decisive end, moved to carry out the command given by the commander they revered.
"Who said you could kill them all? Their lives now belong solely to the Fylkir. Warriors of Novgorod, stop them and restore order."
"Yes! Jarl Oleg!"
[Chak! Chak! Chak! Chak!]
The round palisade fortress bore the marks of fierce fighting everywhere. The people of Liubice had fought bravely, but Oleg, the conqueror of Huntadun and Karelia, was not an enemy that courage alone could overcome. Even wooden palisades no longer posed a threat to the warriors of the North Sea, who could surmount walls of stone.
While the warriors of Rügen Island—an unexpected ally(?)—charged headlong into the fray, deciding their assault not by strategy or tactics but by the high priest's divination, the spray of blood from a white horse's throat offered in sacrifice, and the direction of certain omens, even so—
The warriors of Novgorod, vassals of the North Sea Empire, who had fought their way back and forth between the Isle of Britain and Finnic lands under Oleg and the Fylkir, regarded the Fylkir's way of war as a kind of faith.
They rounded up the local inhabitants, coaxed them with silver and food, and dispatched them alongside scouting parties. They surveyed the slope of the hill Liubice sat upon, the optimal paths by which troops could deploy and advance, the types and required numbers of siege engines viable in this terrain, places to erect garrison camps, and the location and security measures for the supply line that Konungr Rurik would handle.
Taking all of that into account, they drew up their plan. The centurions who attended the council clutched their throbbing heads and retired to their individual tents to puzzle over small-unit tactics.
Consequently, even when the king of Rügen went to Oleg and threw every tantrum imaginable—accusing him of lacking courage, demanding he show the spirit of a true warrior—Oleg remained a man famed for his unwavering resolve.
The conqueror of Huntadun and Karelia wordlessly attended only to his own tasks.
After roughly a week, during which the warriors of Rügen—each time with the insistence of men who had already decided the answer for themselves—kept exhausting Liubice with their divinations and sacrifices, in the early dawn before the sky had even begun to lighten, the North Sea army shoved forward three siege towers—machines that combined battering rams and ladders—all at once like a thunderbolt. They surmounted the walls before the noon hour arrived, shattered the gate, and by the time the sun had fully risen, Liubice was completely in their grip.
Casualties numbered about a hundred.
The result was utterly overwhelming. Yet Oleg, who had now become the conqueror not only of Huntadun and Karelia but also of Liubice, felt only a small measure of joy. He maintained a cool poise, calmed the savage warriors of Rügen who were eager to hold a blood festival, and even gave the order to treat the surrendered well.
To his older brother Rurik, Oleg still seemed boyish and feckless, but in truth, Oleg's resolve and his prowess in battle ranked among the highest even among the Fylkir's vaunted subordinates.
Had he lacked such ability, the people of the Rus—hardly different from those fierce warriors of Rügen—would never have followed him in the first place.
Having firmly reined in the Rügen warriors with deft skill and manifest power, Oleg promised lavish rewards to the huntsmen who had been captured out of nowhere while hunting and turned into scouts for the North Sea army, and even went so far as to use them as couriers.
The deep forest: though the people living beyond its edge were loath to set foot inside, to those who dwelt within, paths visible only to them lay clearly revealed.
These people, after all, did not live with their eyes and ears shut. They knew perfectly well the location of the great fortress of the Franks, Hamburg—a neighboring territory and a comrade-in-arms that had fought beside them against the Northmen. So, with little difficulty, the news of Liubice would reach the hands of Konungr Bagsecg, Jarl Halfdan, and Sigurd, who would move against that fortress.
Even so, taking no chances, Oleg painstakingly composed a duplicate letter in his own confident handwriting and with his own skilled drawings, and also dispatched a messenger by way of the supply fleet Rurik had sent, so that this joyous news might swiftly reach the Fylkir's hands.
Only once Oleg set foot in Liubice himself did he realize: the vast bay visible just beyond this place could truly be a heaven-sent harbor. That a short voyage from here by sea could reach Roskilde and Novgorod meant that Árós, the North Sea's most noble city, was not far either.
Moreover, it was only the circular wooden palisade—a structure that now felt almost quaint—that had made the breakthrough so easy. The location itself, where two watercourses merged into one, could not be better.
If Jarl Leon were invited to raise a proper stone fortress here, a position that with barely a thousand men could hold against scores of times that number.
Oleg had never been a greedy man by nature, and he had worked hard, scurrying this way and that under his brother. But gazing upon a wider world beneath the Fylkir, he found a desire kindling within him: a desire to carve a single line of his name into this vast world.
'The Eastern Sword of the North Sea Empire, the Fylkir's most trusted blade.'
Was not being the Fylkir's sharpest sword perhaps the greatest glory a Northman could leave behind?
His revered older brother, Rurik—lord of Novgorod, one of the few Konungrs of the North Sea—was now so wholly beloved by the Rus that he no longer needed to worry about internal rivals.
To be sure, Rurik had first ascended the throne under the title of Knyaz, and as each passing year spewed forth all manner of troubles, he had grown gaunt and even his hair had begun to fall out. But after he had made the decision of a lifetime and placed himself under Fylkir Helgi Ragnarsson's command—
The lost weight returned, and a smile never left his lips.
According to the intelligence gathered by his subjects, who were fond of such talk, the rumor was that relations with his wife, the daughter of a prominent local household near Novgorod, had lately ignited into something fiery.
Meanwhile, troublesome Polotsk and the assorted tribes nearby were now vying with each other to pledge their loyalty.
There was no role left for Oleg to play there.
But what about this place?
The North Sea and its neighbors called this the Obotrite tribal confederation, but having entered inside and seen the true state of this land, he knew it was no confederation at all.
The warriors of Rügen, upon hearing word that Liubice was to be struck, had grown even more enraged than the Northmen and had followed in their wake, fighting as fiercely as if they had met the sworn enemy of their parents.
And how had the surrounding tribes responded to the news that Liubice was under attack? Not a single one had sent aid.
This was exactly like the relationship between Novgorod and the tribes of its region before the Fylkir appeared. No—perhaps it was the very state the Rus tribes had been in before they had invited his brother to be their Knyaz.
Then, could he not accomplish something here?
Centered on this Liubice, a heaven-sent harbor and a place of potential its own people did not yet know—with the mighty mainland of the North Sea planted firmly across the sea, and with Hamburg, which was certain to fall soon (the Fylkir could not possibly fail; he was a warrior and ruler who seemed to belong to myth), neighboring them just beyond the forest to the left.
A forward base with a secure rear and ample support.
As the savage warriors of Rügen, who had just watched the North Sea troops fight from their very side, abruptly turned meek and tractable, Oleg smacked his lips and gazed eastward and southward.
Together with his firm resolve to gain the Fylkir's approval for his own plan at the grand victory feast that would surely conclude the war.
*****
The North Sea's war was over.
This carried a dual meaning: it signified that the great war geographically surrounding the North Sea had come to an end, and it also meant that the war in which the North Sea Empire, fighting fiercely alongside me, had participated was finished.
"—Thus, His Majesty the ImperaThor of East Frankia acknowledges that the Fylkir of the North Sea has taken possession of northern Saxony, and—"
In the palace of Hamburg. In a high-ceilinged hall where the banner painted with the cross had been lowered and the symbol of Hel—half woman, half skull—had taken its place, I was receiving an envoy.
The high-backed throne, stiff and rough as if to display the emperor's authority, no longer troubled my body in the slightest.
The envoy of the East Frankish emperor, sweating profusely as he earnestly wove diplomatic phrases, looked up at me, who gazed down from that throne with a posture as familiar as if the seat had always been mine.
They said he was a Comes from the Franconia region. As Franconia was the emperor's power base, he was likely a figure of considerable influence.
Yet the power of East Frankia posed not the faintest threat to me now, here in my palace in Hamburg.
"His Majesty the ImperaThor absolutely does not wish for unnecessary enmity to linger between the North Sea and East Frankia, or between their two rulers."
"Haha."
Commending the envoy's effort in finishing his difficult speech, I granted him a good-humored laugh.
"His Majesty the ImperaThor of East Frankia is indeed a great elder of the empire. There is not a single word of his that is not perfectly reasonable—how could I not follow his bidding? Though it is true that unfortunate events and misunderstandings caused faces to redden, pray convey to him well that such was not my true heart."
"How could it be otherwise...! His Majesty the ImperaThor bears only goodwill toward the Fylkir, ruler of the North Sea, and I shall certainly deliver the Fylkir's words most faithfully...!"
Vague and ambiguous words passed between us, but I knew the truth all too well.
Ludovicus—or Ludwig, the emperor of East Frankia. This was a man with a history of rebelling against his own father for his own gain, and who had once invaded West Frankia itself to threaten Carolus.
It had been less than five years since he had fought a great war with Moravia, and even earlier, when Knyaz Boris of Bulgaria had shown signs of making a move, he had conducted some kind of transaction with the Eastern Roman Empire to stir up the Croats next door.
All of this information had been relayed to me by Damian, who had held a high position in the Eastern Roman court at the time, with the caveat, "This is, of course, only what I myself heard secondhand...," so it was certainly all true.
'He is definitely aiming for me. As if he would meekly hand over this northern Saxony.'
I might not know about Hamburg, but Verden, a little further south—he would surely wish to reclaim that by any means necessary. It was a land too valuable to surrender meekly; above all, he could not abandon the sea and the vast waterway of the Weser River.
When I first began this war, I had not expected to achieve quite so much, but even an excess of accomplishment gives me no desire to meekly spit back out what I have taken.
I was not certain what manner of ruse Árpád of the Magyars had employed, but hearing that Ludwig had suffered an embarrassment in cooperation with Moravia only strengthened my belief that I could hold onto what I had seized.
If I could somehow settle the matter of Bohemia, now caught between Moravia and our North Sea, I might even gain a powerful ally.
But there was no need to dwell on the next war while still in this chamber.
"I shall hold a small feast for the envoy, and I do hope you will attend and enjoy it with us."
"That the Fylkir of the North Sea himself should host a feast—it shall be the honor of my house!"
Though we both knew the general course of what had happened and what was to come, the envoy and I donned the masks of diplomats and upheld each other's face.
At any rate, the war in this place was over.
Even though the neighbors under the North Sea's shadow would now either ready themselves in earnest or fight to bloody ruin.
'It is time to go home.'
As I pictured Inga and Sigmarr's faces, I let myself smile earnestly. The East Frankish envoy, seeing that my mood had lightened, was able to beam just as brightly in return.