After driving off the pursuers, the Northmen gave their fallen a hasty burial, heaping earth over the corpses of comrades who would sail no more. Laden with captured gear, they marched back to Leeds. There they rested several days before the remnant of two thousand warriors rejoined them—stragglers of storm and mischance.
With their ranks swelled to nearly three thousand, Ragnar judged delay intolerable. News of their incursion had already spread through Northumbria; every village and hall was mustering spears. Another week's idleness, and the Angles would field a levy of equal strength.
"Northward," Ragnar proclaimed. "We march on York!"
That very afternoon, the fleet nosed into the Ouse. Yet the river, swollen in most years, now ran shrunken and shallow. Worse still, the Angles had felled trees in the shallows and strewn them as obstacles, choking the channels and breaking the rhythm of the oars.
At last Ragnar ordered the host ashore on the eastern bank. They would march on York by foot. To safeguard the ships, he sent them downriver again, weighted with loot, to hide in some secluded bend of the Humber.
York—the Anglian royal seat—was no mere town like Leeds. Founded by Rome itself, it had been the place where Constantine the Great was hailed emperor. As Rome's bastion in the north, it still bore the mark of empire: a circuit of walls five kilometers long, stone ramparts rising six meters high. To the west flowed the Ouse, a natural moat. This was no easy prize.
Rurik, beholding its towers and battlements, lost all taste for dreams of sudden assault. Quietly, he began to reckon the long labor of siege.
In memory he summoned the engines of war: scaling ladders, siege towers, a ram for the gates, and the great counterweight trebuchet.
The ladder was simplest, but cruelest—men hauling them across open ground, climbing under a storm of missiles in what chroniclers would one day call the "ant-swarm assault." Casualties would be appalling, and a host as loose and quarrelsome as the Vikings could not endure them.
The tower was better: a wooden edifice on wheels, as tall as the walls themselves. Men hidden within could roll forward beneath cover, then pour onto the parapets in masses once the drawbridge fell.
The ram, hung beneath a timbered shed, might batter the gate—but the defenders could drench it with pitch and oil, setting the contrivance ablaze.
The trebuchet, in theory, could hurl stones mighty enough to breach even Roman walls. Yet Rurik's mind held only a rough sketch; he had no certainty he could reproduce such a marvel with these rude craftsmen.
"By the chronicles of later ages," he mused, charcoal scratching over papyrus, "a siege of this sort may last two or three months, half a year at the least. Have these sea-kings the patience?"
As he labored over his drawings, a stir rose near Ragnar's tent: the chieftain was convening a council of war.
Rurik entered and urged caution. "At Mancunium we paid dearly for rashness. This time let us be prudent. Allow me to fashion the engines, and then strike in force."
Many of Ragnar's men, chastened by past failure, nodded assent. But those newly come with King Erik of Norway had tasted no such lesson. They thirsted for glory and plunder, and mocked Rurik's prudence as cowardice, unworthy of the Dragon's Breath sword he bore.
"Say that again, whelp!" Ívar snarled. "I've a blade named Heart-Smasher—shall I test it on your skull?" He hurled a wooden cup across the tent. Shoves and curses spread, until the council dissolved in uproar.
"Silence!"
King Erik, face dark as thunder, cut the tumult short. "We crossed the whale-road for treasure, not for bickering. If agreement cannot be made, then I will act alone. I shall build ladders and storm the wall. Any who join me shall share the spoils. The rest may rot in idleness."
With that he stalked away, five nobles at his back.
In the days that followed, his men cut timber and fashioned two hundred ladders. Spies moved through Ragnar's camp, whispering in ears, stirring discontent. By the fifth day Erik had won two thousand and three hundred warriors to his banner.
On the eleventh of May, after breakfast, the host gathered in tumult upon the open field. Erik declared he would strike the eastern wall at once, hoping to seize the city before Ragnar could overshadow his fame. Even marriage to Ragnar's sister, Sola, did not temper his ambition.
"Forward! Odin beholds us!"
Eight hundred Norsemen ran with ladders on their shoulders, while three hundred bowmen formed a ragged line to shoot at the parapets.
The defenders, grim and disciplined, ignored the bowmen, and aimed all shafts at the ladder-bearers.
Then a roar rose from the battlements. Out came a corpulent youth, ringed by guards: Ælla, son of King Ælle, heir to Northumbria's throne. His presence sent courage surging through the defenders.
Their archers now bent to a new stratagem. Each ladder was borne by eight men—four on each side. The Angles shot only the left-hand carriers. When but one or two remained on that side, the ladder tilted, slowed, and often fell.
Of the two hundred, scarcely thirty ladders reached the wall. Erik, seeing his plan falter, led the rest in a headlong charge. The spectacle stirred Ragnar's men to restlessness.
"Could it be that I was wrong?" Ragnar muttered, hand on his sword. "Perhaps Erik can break the city…" He turned to the hundreds of warriors at his back, torn in doubt. "Rurik! Bring forth the fifty ladders you built. If Erik gains the parapet, we must follow."
"Yes, lord."
Rurik dashed to the camp and returned breathless, men behind him hauling ladders. Yet as they came in sight of the walls, horror struck: the defenders were tipping cauldrons of pitch and oil.
The Northmen already upon the ladders shrieked in terror as boiling tar cascaded over them. A heartbeat later, flaming brands were flung, and men became human torches, writhing and shrieking, falling in waves of fire.
The host faltered. The bravest threw up shields against the torrent. Others dropped ladders and fled. In less than half an hour, the assault was over.
"Gods…" Rurik whispered, throat dry, staring at the blackened corpses heaped by the wall. Now he understood why sieges of old were settled by blockade, by hunger and patience. A frontal storm was massacre.
He turned to Ragnar. "Londinium's walls are no weaker than these. Two years past—how did you take them?"
Ragnar, pale, gave a grim laugh. "By chance. We sailed up the Thames at night, and with hooks and ropes scaled the battlements while the city slept. By stealth, not storm. By daylight… by the gods, I never dreamed losses so dreadful. We are in dire straits."