The next day, Rurik led a handful of retainers to reconnoiter the southern bank. To the east of Dyfflin lay a broad, glimmering lake, and to prevent a surprise assault from that direction, the defenders were hastily cutting down the thick reeds that grew along its shore.
South of the town stretched an unbroken expanse of marshland, much like the great fens north of Jórvík, yielding a dark-brown peat that could serve as fuel. Only on the western side was the land firm and level, the ground open enough to permit a full-scale assault.
On the third day, Rurik brought his men ashore west of Dyfflin. The defenders, unwilling to risk open battle, drove great numbers of slaves to dig trenches outside the palisade, intending to flood them with river water and fashion a moat.
At this pace, by the time Rurik completed his trebuchets and siege towers, the moat would already be finished, further compounding the difficulty of an assault.
"This man has no shame," Ivar spat. "He is unworthy of the name Viking."
To goad the enemy into open battle, Ivar handpicked a score of loud-voiced warriors and set them to jeering from dawn till dusk, heaping scorn upon Sweyn, calling him a cowardly, senile boar. A full week of insults passed, yet the man never stirred.
In desperation, Ivar strode alone to within a hundred paces of the walls, just at the edge of bowshot. He raised his sword high and bellowed for single combat.
"Sweyn! Come out and face me!"
The response was not a champion, but a muddy sow driven forth, with a crude little stick-figure scrawled on its back, sword in hand—a mocking effigy of Ivar himself.
Foiled and humiliated, his patience fraying, Ivar turned to Rurik and demanded some quicker means of breaking the town.
"It will not be easy," Rurik replied gravely. "The western wall is heavily guarded, with a moat being dug before it. The northern wall is shielded by the Liffey, and Sweyn is forcing slaves to raise a second inner palisade. Even if we batter down the outer defenses with stone-throwers, we shall still struggle to force our way inside."
Taking a stick, Rurik sketched a rough map in the dirt. His face grew taut as he paced back and forth across the grass, pondering in silence for half an hour, until at last a daring idea took root in his mind.
By mid-May the wheatfields west of Dyfflin stood ripe, and Ivar’s men harvested them for grain, greatly easing their supplies. Yet the defenders made no sally. Day after day they labored at their trenches, while in the besiegers’ camp engines multiplied—trebuchets taller than ten men, vast towers creeping slowly forward, ladders without number.
Sweyn judged that the true clash would come the following month. If he could weather the first furious storm of the assault and bleed Ivar’s best warriors, perhaps there was still a chance, five in ten, of survival.
At night, after two maidservants had prepared him for rest, he fell into a fitful sleep, muttering half-dreamt fragments.
"Mm... ten arbalests are too few. A bolt can pierce mail... I should have bought more..."
Some hours later he was jolted awake by shouting and hurried footsteps. Throwing on a cloak, he stepped out to the balcony.
Dawn was breaking, and from both the north bank and the western fields the enemy’s trebuchets loosed their stones, whistling closer and closer until they slammed into wall and house alike.
"Strange," Sweyn frowned, hastily donning his mail. "So many engines are unfinished—why do they attack in such haste?"
At the western wall he beheld five siege towers creeping forward across the plain, with a host of Vikings—more than a thousand—swarming at their base.
A runner came breathless with tidings: five of the great turtle-ships had appeared upon the river, seeming to threaten the northern wall.
"Five ships can achieve nothing," Sweyn declared. "They only mean to divide our strength."
Yet to be safe, he ordered men from the east and south walls to reinforce the north.
"Half of them only—no more."
Within minutes the towers came within bowshot. Sweyn ordered fire-arrows. Shaft after shaft struck home, until one tower caught and blazed, driving the Vikings within to flee in chaos, leaving many dead.
Of the five towers, only two reached the wall. Sweyn placed men along the battlements, while he himself, with a hundred warriors, waited behind a breach torn by the stone-throwers. The gap was wide enough for five men abreast. Surely Ivar would lead his finest straight here. Sweyn had arranged ten heavy crossbows in ambush, ready to cut him down at first sight.
The best outcome would be the death of both the Boneless and the Serpent of the North. In the ensuing rout, Sweyn could sally forth and slaughter them, ending the threat once and for all.
Suddenly came cries of alarm from the rear—something amiss at the eastern wall!
A feint, or the true attack?
Sweyn’s heart hammered. After a moment’s hesitation he seized thirty men and hastened eastward.
Four minutes later he mounted the battlements. Out upon the lake three turtle-ships rowed steadily in, each with a tall, heavy plank rising from its prow.
As they neared the shore, the oars bit faster. Their keels grated upon the stones, shrieking like iron against glass, the noise setting men’s teeth on edge.
Then, with a crash, the planks fell forward, slamming onto the parapet. To the defenders’ astonishment, armored warriors poured across in a rush, storming the wall.
"Hold them!" Sweyn roared.
A towering figure led the assault—clean-faced, clad in a fine hauberk, wielding a longsword inlaid with intricate patterns that caught every eye.
That sword is mine, Sweyn thought, stepping forward almost without realizing.
By the time his wits returned, six of his men already lay slain, blood dripping from the stranger’s blade in a dreadful, almost beautiful sheen.
"You are Sweyn?" the warrior demanded. "I am Rurik Hakonarson. Yield, or fight."
Sweyn’s eyes narrowed. He did not yield. But instead of standing his ground, he suddenly vaulted from the four-meter wall with catlike agility, plunging into a house below and vanishing without a trace.
Rurik froze, sword in hand, bewildered. He stared about in disbelief, stunned into stillness for long minutes before at last the truth settled in.
So this craven dares to call himself king of Dyfflin?