The Lion of Alba marched south with fire in his heart and steel at his back.
Riders swept ahead of the host, their horns echoing across the hills, but no answering horns came.
Scouts vanished into the woods and fields, yet returned with nothing but silence.
It was strange. Too strange.
On the borderlands of Northumbria, Duncan expected ambush.
His men advanced shield to shield, spears lowered, eyes fixed on every ridge and treeline.
But no arrows came. No wolf-howls split the night. No sudden rush of blades from the dark.
The villages they passed bore scars of pillage but not utter ruin.
Doors hung open, hearths smoldered cold, granaries half-emptied.
In some houses, women and children remained, stunned and hollow-eyed, clutching what scraps had been spared.
In others, there was only absence: daughters taken, husbands missing, wagons gone north with the wolves.
Bread and wine had been seized for the long voyage, coin stripped from coffers, herds driven to the rivers.
Yet it was not only wealth they had carried away.
Rumors whispered that men had walked willingly into the night with them, leaving crucifixes behind, swearing oaths to the old gods, promising to till the fields of Iceland, Greenland, or whatever other windswept shore the wolf claimed as home.
The captains muttered among themselves. "They’re waiting for us," some said.
"They’ll fall upon us when we are deepest in the march."
Others shook their heads, whispering of sorcery, of the gods of the North cloaking their sons in mist and shadow.
Duncan said nothing, but his jaw tightened with every mile. The air smelled of smoke and salt, and yet no enemy came.
When at last they reached the walls of London, the truth struck like a hammer blow.
The gates stood open, hacked apart with axes and left to sag on broken hinges.
The streets were scattered with broken shields and torn banners.
The great hall was blackened with smoke, its rafters split, its throne empty.
There were no wolves.
The host poured into the city, weapons ready, but found only silence and ruin.
The river beyond swelled with the tide, empty but for a few charred boats.
Of the Northmen’s fleet, not a single sail remained.
Here and there, townsfolk crept from shadowed doorways, gaunt women clutching babes, old men leaning on splintered staves, children peering with hollow eyes from behind soot-stained walls.
Their faces were pale masks of hunger and fear.
Some fell to their knees when they saw Duncan’s banners, weeping openly, begging for protection.
Others simply stared, silent and broken, as though their souls had been carried away with the ships.
London still stood, but it was a carcass, and its people were ghosts.
"They are gone," one of the captains whispered, voice heavy with disbelief.
Duncan stood in the square, staring at the scaffold where Cnut’s chains still hung.
The timbers were dark with blood, dried to rust in the torchlight.
Ravens squabbled above, wings flapping as they fought over scraps left from the feast of wolves.
Gazing at it, Duncan felt the weight settle into his chest.
The wolf had not stayed to conquer, nor to hold.
He had come only to devour, to desecrate, and to vanish into the sea, leaving a kingdom half-gutted, not dead, but marked with scars that would never fade.
He clenched his fists, the red lion snapping above him in the chill wind.
"They did not even trouble to defend what they took," he muttered. "They plundered England, and left her bleeding."
Silence fell over his captains.
For the first time, they understood: this was not a war for thrones. It was something far darker.
The cries of the survivors cut through the silence, their suffering dragging him back to the present.
Duncan gazed upon them, and in that moment the weight of it struck him: England was leaderless.
Cnut’s blood stained the scaffold, his son and heir, Svein held Norway, and no Saxon lord had the strength to rally what remained.
All that lay before him was ruin, and all that ruin cried out for a king.
He turned slowly, his captains waiting for his word. His voice was quiet, but there was steel in it.
"England has no crown," he said. "No hand to lift her from the mud. If Svein comes, he will find her ripe for the taking, unless we stand first. The wolf has left this land broken, but not barren. It falls to us now. To me."
He looked again upon the faces of the townsfolk, hollow with grief, and felt the old fire stirring in his chest.
"By right of conquest, and by duty of blood, I am king of these people now, England and Scotland together. And I will see them fed, and sheltered, and guarded. For if I do not, they are carrion for the next beast that comes."
The red lion snapped above him in the wind, bright against the blackened timbers. His captains exchanged wary looks, but none spoke against him.
Duncan clenched his fist.
"Let word spread. England has a king still. And if Svein presses his claim, he will find not a ruin, but a realm ready to meet him."
Some of the weary souls looked up at him, hope flickering like embers in their hollow eyes. Others only wept, too broken to believe in kings anymore.
Duncan stepped down from the scaffold, the crunch of ash and broken timber loud in the silence.
He placed a hand on the shoulder of a kneeling man, thin as a reed, and lifted him gently to his feet.
"Rise," he said, his voice softer now. Tʜe sourcᴇ of thɪs content ɪs novel-fire.net
"Your land will not be left to wolves. Not while the Lion stands."
The words spread on the breath of the crowd, carried from ear to ear, trembling but growing steadier with each telling.
By the time his banner was planted at the gates of London, the whisper had become a murmur, and the murmur a prayer.
King of England. King of Scotland. The thought was heavy, terrible, but it was his.