Chapter 415: Jarl Torsten
January 3, 871 AD
Denmark, the trading port of Ribe
The sun had just dipped below the horizon.
Usually, the marketplace of Ribe was a place of loud laughter, clinking silver, and drunken sailors boasting of their recent raids, but a pall of gloom and sadness was beginning to hang over the people.
Knud, a local blacksmith with broad shoulders and calloused hands, stood near the edge of a small tavern.
He rubbed his hands together, his eyes fixed on the path leading toward the town square.
Beside him, his lifelong friend Halfdan took a long, bitter swig from a wooden mug of ale.
"I still cannot believe it, Knud..." Halfdan muttered, wiping the foam from his braided beard. "They are actually going to execute him tonight. Right in the center of our own town."
"Keep your voice down, damn it," Knud warned quietly, glancing nervously around the crowded street.
There were far too many strange ears in Ribe these days...
"Why should I lower my voice?!" Halfdan snapped, though he instinctively leaned closer. "It is Jarl Torsten! The man owns the largest timber yard in the entire settlement. He has three massive trading ships that bring food to our tables during the harsh winters.
And his family... by the gods, he has a loving wife and five young daughters waiting for him in his longhouse. And now he is going to lose his head?"
Knud let out a long sigh.
He knew Jarl Torsten personally...
The man was incredibly proud, a true Dane who refused to bow his head to anyone who wasn’t born in the north.
"He was stupid, Halfdan," Knud whispered, shaking his head. "Pride makes men do incredibly foolish things."
"Foolish?" Halfdan scoffed loudly. "He just tried to kill one of them! Is that a crime in our own lands now?"
The story had spread through the muddy streets like a wild fire all afternoon... the massive Frankish army, tens of thousands of southern men clad in shining steel and carrying strange, long fire-tubes, had set up a overwhelming camp just outside the wooden walls of Ribe.
They were supposed to be merely passing through... but earlier today, Jarl Torsten couldn’t stomach the sight of the arrogant invaders anymore.
"He walked right into their camp..." Knud recounted the rumor, "They say he found a fat Frankish captain sitting comfortably by a fire, casually eating a roasted chicken like he owned the entire world. Torsten pulled his hunting knife and tried to slit the bastard’s throat right then and there."
"And he missed~" Halfdan groaned, rubbing his tired eyes.
"He didn’t just miss," Knud corrected him grimly. "The Frankish guards were entirely awake. They tackled Torsten into the dirt before he could even draw a drop of southern blood.
...He got caught in the middle of their camp just because of a botched assassination on a man eating his dinner."
However, the anger in the streets wasn’t just about losing a good timber merchant... it was about what his execution truly represented.
"Are we just slaves to the Franks now?" an old fisherman spat angrily, standing a few feet away from Knud and Halfdan.
The old man was clutching a wooden spear, "Just because their army is walking in our lands, we have to execute our own Jarls for trying to defend our honor?"
"King Horik gave them safe passage," another woman argued nervously, "If we do not punish the Jarl, the Franks will burn Ribe to the ground before morning."
"Let them try!" the fisherman roared back.
Though the anger was entirely justified, Knud knew the fisherman was speaking out of pure, blind emotion.
No one in Ribe could fight the army sitting outside their walls...
People obviously could see and hear the sheer scale of the Frankish mobilization.
For days, the ground had trembled under the boots of thirty thousand southern soldiers.
It was no secret where they were going... everyone in Denmark knew the grand board.
The Franks were marching straight toward the Iron Kingdom’s territories, specifically aiming for Norway, which had proudly become a loyal vassal to King Ragnar Ulfsson.
"They are going to fight the Iron King..." Halfdan murmured, taking another slow drink of his ale. "They are marching to the fjords to slaughter the Norwegians."
Knud nodded slowly, "But why from here?"
"What do you mean?" Halfdan frowned.
"If Emperor Louis wanted to invade Norway, why would he march thirty thousand men all the way up through the muddy roads of Denmark? It is exhausting. Their supply lines are stretched."
Halfdan scratched his braided beard. "Well... they have to get there somehow."
"Can’t they just get some ships and go there by their own?" Knud asked, "The Franks are rich. They could have hired an entire fleet of mercenary cogs from Frisia and sailed directly from Paris to the Norwegian shores.
...It would be faster, cleaner, and they wouldn’t have to deal with us."
Halfdan blinked, "You are right. Why walk when you can sail?"
"...if they sail directly, the Iron Kingdom’s ironclads will catch them in the deep water and sink them to the bottom of the sea," Knud reasoned, "By marching entirely through Denmark, they keep their boots on dry land for as long as possible."
But Knud felt an unsettling knot twist in his stomach... he knew there was another reason for the southern army to march through the heart of Danish territory.
"Maybe they want to ally with Denmark," Knud whispered, the terrifying thought finally leaving his lips.
"Ally with us?" Halfdan scoffed, nearly choking on his ale. "King Horik would never ally with the Emperor. We are Norsemen! We don’t bow to the southern cross!"
"We don’t bow... but we bleed," Knud said grimly, looking toward the town square. "If Emperor Louis parks thirty thousand heavily armed men in our lands and politely asks King Horik to join his crusade against Ragnar... do you really think Horik has the strength to say no?"
Even so, the conversation was cut short.
A loud thudding suddenly echoed down the muddy street.
The angry murmurs of the Danish crowd instantly died in their throats... people scrambled to the sides of the street, pressing their backs flat against the walls of the houses to clear the way.
"They are coming," Halfdan whispered.
"Don’t do anything stupid," Knud warned, "Think of your own family."
Marching slowly down the center of the street was a heavily armed contingent of Frankish knights.
They carried tall, brightly painted shields bearing the golden lions of the southern empire, and their long swords rested on their hips.
Right in the center of the formation, being dragged through the mud, was Jarl Torsten.
The proud Danish timber merchant looked terrible... his face was entirely bruised, his nose clearly broken from the brutal beating he had received in the Frankish camp. Iron chains were locked around his wrists and ankles.
Yet, despite the humiliating beating, Torsten kept his head held high. He glared furiously at the Frankish guards dragging him toward the square.
The crowd of locals followed the grim procession, their hearts heavy with a suffocating sense of helplessness.
Knud and Halfdan joined the back of the mob, walking slowly toward the execution platform that had been hastily built in the center of the town market.
Hundreds of angry Danes surrounded the wooden platform... they were expecting to see King Horik’s personal headsman standing there.
By all the old laws and traditions, if a Dane committed a crime on Danish soil, he was to be judged and executed by a Danish blade.
It was a small, final piece of honor... however, as the crowd looked up at the torches illuminating the wooden planks, a collective gasp of shock rippled through the square.
Standing tall on the platform was not a local executioner wearing a leather hood.
It was a massively built man wearing expensive steel plate armor.
A white fur cloak rested over his broad shoulders, and his graying beard was trimmed in the neat, perfectly straight style of the southern nobility.
"By the gods..." Halfdan whispered, "Is that...?"
"..." Knud swallowed hard, "That is Marshal Gauzlin... the supreme commander of the Frankish vanguard."
People couldn’t believe their own eyes... the supreme military commander of the invading army had personally walked into a Danish town to act as a common headsman?
"Why is he up there?!" a woman yelled from the back of the crowd.
"This is our land! Our laws!" the old fisherman shouted, though his voice was drowned out by the sound of the Frankish knights drawing their steel swords.
Marshal Gauzlin slowly reached down and picked up an iron executioner’s axe that was resting against a wooden chopping block.
He tested the incredible weight of the weapon in his armored hands, looking down at Jarl Torsten, who was being forced to his knees in the mud below the platform.
This was not, in truth, a simple punishment for a failed assassination attempt; it was, as clear as day, a demonstration of dominance.
The Frankish Empire was showing every single person in Denmark who held the real power now.
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A\N: I know it has been 4 days since the last Chapter update, and I apologize for the sudden silence.
I have been focused on writing and mapping out my upcoming new novel, which has been taking up most of my time and energy.
