The field outside Dover was mud and ruin.
The banners of Scotland lay trampled in the muck, their red lions torn to rags.
Norse shields, too, were shattered across the ground, split boards smeared with blood, broken spears jutting like a forest of splinters.
Ravens circled already, their harsh cries mingling with the groans of the dying.
Svein stood in the wreckage, helm dented, his gilt circlet bent and bloodied.
His sword dripped red as he leaned on it like a staff, his chest heaving.
Around him his huscarls gathered, fewer than when the morning horn had sounded, their eyes hollow with exhaustion.
But the Scots were gone.
What remained of Duncan’s host was retreating north, shields on their backs, their king carried on a litter after a wound to the thigh.
The field was Svein’s, though it looked more like a graveyard than a victory.
"God is with us," a captain croaked, raising his axe.
Others tried to cheer, but it died quickly in their throats, hollow and thin.
Svein forced himself upright, lifting his blade to the sky. "The Lion bleeds!" he roared, voice cracking, but still it carried. "England bends to Olaf’s cross! This land will be ours!"
The men banged shields, weary but loyal.
Yet even as they shouted, the truth weighed on them: their numbers were slashed by a quarter, their supplies strained, and the Scots, wounded though they were, still lived to fight another day.
Svein’s marshal, Håkon, strode to his side, his face streaked with blood and soot. "It is a victory, my king. But a bitter one. We hold the south... for now."
Svein’s jaw clenched. "It is enough. We will rebuild, we will draw fresh swords from Norway. Duncan is wounded, his people will falter before winter."
But even as he spoke, a rider came pounding down the bloodied road, his horse lathered, his cloak torn by wind.
He flung himself from the saddle and fell to his knees, bowing low before the king.
"My lord... the Emperor marches!" His voice cracked with terror.
"Conrad of Aachen has crossed into Jutland. His banners fly over Schleswig. Denmark burns!"
The words seemed to suck the air from the field.
The men stared, their battered faces paling further.
Svein staggered a step, as though struck by a spear.
His hand gripped the messenger’s tunic, hauling him up. "What did you say?"
The rider’s eyes darted wildly, but his voice was steady in fear.
"Conrad himself leads the host. Knights and priests, spearmen beyond count. They proclaim Denmark broken, her king absent, her throne forfeit. They claim it for the Empire."
For a moment Svein was silent, his teeth bared, his breath ragged.
Then the fury erupted. He hurled the messenger aside and slammed his sword into the earth, the mud hissing around the steel.
"Traitors! Jackals!" His voice rose into a roar.
"I bleed for Christ’s cause in England and while I strike down heathens, the Empire gnaws at my father’s bones! Was Cnut not their ally? Was he not Christ’s king in the North? And now they feast on his grave like crows!"
His captains shifted uneasily. One ventured, "My king, perhaps... perhaps Conrad fears your crown will grow too heavy. England and Norway both—"
"Silence!" Svein’s glare burned through the man.
"He strikes because I am not there to stop him. He strikes because Duncan distracts me. He strikes because Rome allows it!"
He tore the dented helm from his head and flung it to the mud.
His blond hair, sweat-matted, clung to his brow as his eyes burned with wrath.
"By God’s blood, they will pay for this treachery. Duncan, Conrad, all of them. They would rather carve up the corpse of my father’s realm than stand united against the true heathen in the north!"
The captains muttered, uneasy. Some crossed themselves, others clenched fists around axe-hafts.
For though Svein raged, they knew the truth: their king had won a victory that tasted of ashes, and Denmark, the heart of his inheritance, was slipping away while he fought in a foreign land.
Håkon bent close, his voice grim. "What will you do, my king?"
Svein’s eyes gleamed like steel in the firelight of burning torches.
"I will do what my father would have done. I will burn a path through this isle, drive Duncan’s lion back into his hills, and then I will return to Denmark with fire in my hand. Conrad thinks me a boy, unbloodied. He will see I am Cnut’s heir, and no man’s puppet."
The men roared approval, but it was the roar of men too tired to think, too battered to doubt.
And above them, the ravens wheeled, black against the bruised sky.
Far away, in halls they did not know, another man smiled at the unfolding chaos.
He had counted on Svein’s pride, Duncan’s defiance, and Conrad’s hunger. Every move had fallen into place.
But Duncan of Alba was no broken lion.
Northward, in the smoke-choked hills of Lothian, his court already swelled with new levies.
Messengers rode through the glens and straths, calling every laird who still drew breath to raise his men.
Smiths in Edinburgh hammered day and night, iron ringing until sparks burned the thatch.
Priests blessed the banners as they were unfurled anew, red lions rippling like flames against the winter wind. For more chapters visıt novel·fire·net
Duncan himself, bound in bandages but unbowed, swore before his captains that Scotland would not yield.
"England is no man’s to steal," he said through clenched teeth. "It shall not be torn from me by a boy with his father’s sword."
His wounds festered, but his will only hardened.
For every village Svein’s men pillaged, two more pledged vengeance.
For every farm trampled, a dozen youths took the spear.
He would grind the Norwegian host into the earth, bleed them until their victory rotted in their hands.
So while Svein dreamed of Denmark, Duncan dreamed of the day his host would surge south like a tidal wave, not to defend, but to reclaim.
The wolf might have vanished across the sea, but the lion still had claws.