Chapter 417: The King’s Choice
Before the southern guard could even stutter out a proper reply, a small tug on Knud’s dirty tunic caught his attention.
It was one of the barefoot street kids who had been running happily alongside the dark horse just moments ago.
The young boy, named Finn, looked up at Knud with wide eyes.
"Knud..." Finn whispered, "I know who that man is. I saw him this morning near the great longhouse."
"Who is he?" Knud asked, keeping his voice low.
"He is the one who was talking to King Horik," the boy explained quickly, "He wasn’t just talking, Knud... he was shouting at our King. From the talks I heard through the window, he is a man with much more authority than the one executing Jarl Torsten up there."
Upon hearing these words, Knud was greatly surprised, but he quickly relayed the faint whisper to Halfdan, and the rumor spread rapidly among the crowded mass.
The furious shouts and the aggressive rattling of hidden weapons died down.
The people of Ribe went quiet again, staring at the rider.
If this man was ordering King Horik around in his own great hall, he wasn’t just a simple knight or a wandering mercenary... he was one of Emperor Louis’s highest-ranking commanders, a true monster of the southern empire.
The rider threw the core of his apple into the dirt. He swung his leg over the saddle and dropped down into the mud.
He just walked past the nervous guard, brushing the steel blade aside with his bare hand.
He slowly walked up the wooden stairs of the execution platform. Marshal Gauzlin narrowed his eyes, his mocking smile vanishing from his face.
"Lord Lothair," Gauzlin said stiffly, "What in the heavens are you doing here? I am handling the northern savages."
"You talk too much, Gauzlin." Lothair grunted, "You were ordered by the Emperor to march an army safely through this mud, not to host a theater play."
Lothair stepped forward, grabbed the handle of the axe from Gauzlin’s hands, and ripped it away.
Jarl Torsten looked up from the mud covering the planks, his face bruised and ruined.
"Make it quick, southern dog..." Torsten spat, though his voice was weak.
Lothair didn’t sneer. He simply nodded once in silent respect.
With a blindingly fast swing, the axe severed Torsten’s head from his shoulders.
Blood sprayed across the planks, staining Gauzlin’s pristine white fur cloak a messy crimson.
The Danish crowd was stunned... they of course saw hundreds of these types of heads slaughtered in their brutal lifetimes.
Viking raids and clan wars were bloody affairs, and the men of the north were no strangers to sudden death.
But to just walk casually between the angry mob, disrespect a high-ranking Marshal, and kill the man?
For a long second, the people of Ribe just stared in silence at the headless body of their respected timber merchant bleeding out on the foreign execution block.
Then, the shock broke... they raged again.
"Kill them!" Halfdan roared at the top of his lungs, pulling his axe from his belt and charging forward.
"For Torsten! For Denmark!"
The town square erupted into chaos... the thin veneer of peace shattered into a million pieces.
The local Danes pulled out their hidden hunting knives, heavy blacksmith hammers, and fishing spears, throwing themselves at the ring of Frankish knights!
However, the southern soldiers instantly raised their shields.
They thrust their long swords forward, impaling the first wave of furious peasants.
"Hold the line!" Gauzlin screamed, slipping on the bloody planks as he scrambled to draw his own blade.
Lothair dropped the executioner’s axe, turned around, and calmly walked down the stairs.
Now the knights were everywhere... they pushed back hard against the rioting crowd, swinging their steel swords and cutting down the local fishermen and merchants without a single ounce of mercy.
But the Danes used their numbers to drag the knights down into the mud, beating them with stones and bare fists.
"Burn them out!" a young Danish woman screamed, grabbing a burning torch from a wall mount.
She threw it into the center of the Frankish formation.
The torch missed the knights, instead landing squarely on the thatched roof of a nearby tavern.
The howling winter wind caught the open flame, and within seconds, the fire spread rapidly.
"...fall back!" Knud yelled, grabbing Halfdan by his tunic.
"We cannot break their shield wall... the fire is spreading too fast!"
People were running through the narrow dirt streets, panicked as the flames jumped from roof to roof.
King Horik had commanded peace and submission to ensure the Frankish army passed safely through their lands without burning their homes.
But the pride of the Norsemen was simply too strong to be caged by southern steel and political treaties.
The riot didn’t stay contained in the square... it quickly spilled out into the alleys and down toward the docks.
Angry locals began attacking any Frankish patrol they could find, turning the entire town into a battlefield.
The rumors of the uprising quickly made their way directly to the King.
A mile away from the burning town square, King Horik was sitting on his throne inside the grand longhouse.
He was an older man with a long, graying beard and sunken eyes.
He wore a simple gold circlet on his head, staring blankly at the fire burning in the center hearth of the hall.
Suddenly, the doors of the longhouse were pushed open.
A Danish guard burst into the warm room, he was panting heavily, leaning against his spear just to stay standing.
"My King!" the guard gasped, his eyes wide. "The town square is burning...nthe people have drawn their blades against the southern army!"
King Horik slowly closed his tired eyes, rubbing his forehead.
He had tried so hard to keep the fragile peace, to keep his people alive while the monster from the south marched through their lands toward the Iron Kingdom.
"Jarl Torsten?" Horik asked quietly.
"He is dead, my King," the guard swallowed hard. "Executed by the Frankish commanders. The people are slaughtering the foreign patrols in the streets, and the Franks are slaughtering them right back with their steel."
Though he had feared this exact moment for weeks, the reality of it hit the old King like a stone to the chest.
The Frankish army was far too powerful to be beaten by a disorganized mob of angry merchants and fishermen... the Emperor’s vanguard would absolutely crush them by morning.
The doors pushed open again, and Lord Lothair strolled into the grand longhouse.
He looked relaxed, despite the fact that the entire town was burning just outside the walls.
Lothair walked right past the bleeding Danish guard and stopped in front of the throne.
"Your people are entirely out of control, King Horik." Lothair said quietly, "So, tell me... are you going to order your personal guards to march out there and slaughter your own subjects to keep the peace, or do you want me to tell my thirty thousand men to burn this country to the ground?"
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