Chapter 448: A Sickening Certainty
As the decadent festivities in the Great Hall of Vannes dragged on deep into the night, the Lord of Wessex found himself increasingly disgusted by the boisterous revelry of his hosts.
King Salomon and King Rudolf were entirely blinded by the superficial trappings of their newfound wealth, gorging themselves on spiced wine and roasted meats while ignoring the precarious tightrope they were walking.
Alfred, however, had delivered Leofric’s administrative mandates flawlessly, asserting the Iron Kingdom’s dominance over the vassals, and now, he had no desire to waste another moment in this archaic environment.
With a subtle gesture, Alfred summoned his eldest son, Edward, away from the feasting tables.
The young boy, possessing his father’s intellect and slate-grey eyes, excused himself from the company of the Breton nobles and fell into step behind his patriarch.
"We are leaving," Alfred stated, not bothering to offer a formal farewell to the drunken monarchs.
Alfred led his son out of the Great Hall. Moored at the docks was a vessel that defied the natural laws of the world.
It was a localized patrol ironclad, a behemoth of riveted steel and high-pressure steam pipes.
Originally, this vessel had been permanently assigned to the English Channel fleet, tasked with defending the maritime borders of the Iron Kingdom against any foolish Frankish naval incursions.
However, Alfred’s rank as the supreme native administrator of the British Isles granted him the authority to commandeer the warship for his diplomatic transit.
As they walked up the heavy steel gangplank, Alfred’s thoughts briefly drifted to the glaring absence of his wife, Ealhswith.
By all traditional diplomatic protocols, the Lady of Wessex was supposed to accompany him to Vannes to solidify the social bonds with the Breton and Burgundian queens.
However, just two days prior to their departure, Ealhswith had fallen victim to a severe fever.
In the dark ages, a fever was essentially a death sentence, typically treated by archaic physicians who would bleed the patient with leeches and pray to the heavens.
Fortunately, the Iron Kingdom had aggressively outlawed such primitive medical practices...
Ragnar’s newly established medical academies had introduced the concepts of boiled water, sterilized instruments, and basic quarantine protocols.
Ealhswith was recovering in their modernized manor in Winchester, attended to by highly trained physicians who understood the absolute necessity of hydration and rest.
Still, the underlying paranoia of the era nagged at Alfred’s mind. He had been forced to leave her behind, substituting her diplomatic presence with the educational exposure of his son, Edward.
"Stay clear of the boiler rooms, Edward," Alfred commanded as they stepped onto the deck.
"Yes, Father," the boy replied.
Within minutes, the ironclad detached from the moorings. Deep within the belly of the ship, the specialized crew of mechanics shoveled high-yield coal into the blazing furnaces.
The water in the boilers converted to highly pressurized steam, driving the pistons that turned the ship’s formidable screw propellers.
In the days of Alfred’s ancestors, crossing this treacherous body of water in wooden longships or primitive cogs was a perilous gamble that could take several days, heavily dependent on the unpredictable whims of the wind and the tide.
The ironclad cut through the choppy waves of the sea, its steel hull entirely unaffected by the turbulent waters.
The sheer speed of the vessel was breathtaking...
What was once a grueling, multi-day expedition was reduced to a mere eight hours of smooth, mechanized transit.
As Alfred stood upon the observation deck, watching the coastline of the continent rapidly disappear into the darkness, he could not help but marvel at the absolute blessing of this technology.
By the time the sun began to peek over the eastern horizon, illuminating the overcast skies of the British Isles, the ironclad was already navigating into the port of Wessex.
Massive steam-powered cranes, constructed from reinforced steel beams, hoisted heavy crates of imported continental grain and raw iron ore from the holds of merchant vessels.
As the gangplank was lowered onto the pier. He expected a routine briefing regarding local agricultural quotas and tax revenues.
However, waiting for him at the base of the pier was Aethelhelm, his most trusted senior advisor and a man deeply embedded in the clandestine political maneuverings of the old Anglo-Saxon nobility.
Aethelhelm’s face was drained of color... He looked like a man who had just witnessed an execution, his hands trembling slightly as he clutched a sealed parchment.
Alfred dismissed his son with a curt nod, sending Edward ahead with the royal guards, before stepping into the shadowy alcove of a nearby warehouse with Aethelhelm.
"Speak," Alfred ordered. "What has happened? Has my wife’s condition worsened?"
"No, my Lord. The Lady Ealhswith’s fever has broken. She rests comfortably," Aethelhelm replied quickly. "It is the Iron King, Sire. The grand fleet... the expedition to the new lands across the western ocean. It has been halted."
Alfred’s eyes narrowed. He was intimately aware of Ragnar’s grand design...
The entire logistical output of the kingdom for the past year had been dedicated to building the settler fleet for the continent Ragnar called America.
To halt such a monumental, empire-defining expedition required an anomaly of unprecedented proportions.
"Halted?" Alfred questioned. "Has a storm damaged the ironclads? Has the Frankish usurper attempted a naval blockade?"
Aethelhelm shook his head. "No, my Lord. The fleet is in perfect condition. But the sovereign did not sail west. At the last possible moment, he diverted the entire armada. The Iron King has taken his army, the musketeers, the cannons... and he has sailed to Ulster."
Ulster.
The northern coast of Ireland. The very seat of power for the newly self-proclaimed "Prime Minister" of the Irish tribes, Ivar the Boneless.
To the rest of the Iron Kingdom, Ivar was merely a distant, primitive nuisance, a pagan warlord playing at modern statecraft in the muddy bogs of a fractured island.
Ragnar was supposed to ignore him. Ragnar was supposed to sail across the Atlantic, leaving the domestic administration in the hands of Louis and the regional lords.
For the past six months, Alfred had been engaging in a treasonous, encrypted correspondence with Ivar the Boneless.
Recognizing that Ragnar’s departure to America would create a temporary power vacuum in the British Isles, Alfred had secretly allied with the Viking warlord.
The plan was clear: Ivar would utilize his newly centralized Irish army to launch a massive, coordinated invasion of the western coast, while Alfred would deliberately sabotage the internal rail lines and delay the deployment of the Wessex militias.
Together, they intended to shatter Louis’s regency and carve out their own sovereign kingdoms from the ashes of Ragnar’s absence...
It was the ultimate gamble, relying entirely on the assumption that Ragnar Ulfsson’s imperial hubris would blind him to the threats in his own backyard.
But Ragnar had not sailed west.
"Why?" Alfred breathed. "Why would he abandon the American expedition for a filthy Irish warlord?"
"We do not know, Sire," Aethelhelm whispered. "The orders were absolute. They are going to annihilate Ivar."
Alfred stared out toward the churning waters of the harbor. The dramatic irony of his situation was absolute.
If Ragnar had diverted his entire fleet just to crush a minor rebellion, it was a localized tragedy for Ivar.
But if Gyda’s spies had intercepted the encrypted couriers...
If Ragnar Ulfsson knew the truth about the alliance...
Alfred realized with a sickening certainty that the Iron King might not just be sailing to Ulster to kill Ivar the Boneless.
He might be securing the western flank before turning his wrath upon Wessex.