So does the other one.
Yet one man in particular catches Torvis eye, as she patrols her fortress-city.
He sailed in this morning with the other traders.
Credit: Jonathan Hession/History
He looks at the wares being peddled but he and his men do not want to buy anything.
The reason is clear enough: The man calls for an attack, and the battle for Kattegat begins.
It is not the only battle the Northmen are fighting this week.
How many men are there, Aethelwulf asks the bishop.
Aethelwulf rages, mindfully.
And may you rest in peace!
This will be the battle of Aethelwulfs life.
His father demands that he march to the Great Heathen army; the element of surprise is everything.
But there is grace in this dull man.
He tells his son Alfred goodbye, and he reminds him that his father watches over him.
I mean your real father, says Aethelwulf.
The monk they called Athelstan.
A very special man.
Aethelwulf is a fervent Christian, and you wonder if he recognizes something biblical in his peculiar misery.
His wife was made pregnant, and so his son is not quite his son.
Perhaps Aethelwulf imagines himself a modern Joseph, nobly tasked with protecting the son of God.
Perhaps he is simply older than he once was, and tired.
His father the King has harsher words.
A time to love.
A time to hate.
A time of war.
A time of peace.This is the time of war.
Aethelwulf looks at his father and sees only an old man.
For Aethelwulf, it has always been the time of war.
Poor Aethelwulf, who has never known a time to love.
The Vikings sail on, the sons of Ragnar already quarreling through their victories.
Elsewhere in the Viking camp, the girl Helge stole from the Spanish raid tries to escape.
Floki finds her and struggles to communicate.
Im sorry you hate us, he tells her.
I dont know what to do.
Helge greets the girl with a fearful hug.
The girl looks more scared of her than of Floki.
Surely this cant end well.
(What does?)
NEXT: Battle Strategy
In Kattegat the battle rages.
Lagertha leads her shieldmaidens to the edge of town, commanding her forces along the wall.
The bastard Egil leads another force of men to the dock, attacking toward the great hall.
Lagertha sees this and realizes her mistake.
Were in the wrong place, she says.
Egils men battle through town, seem quite close to capturing Kattegat.
The tide turns quickly after that.
Astrid throws a spear in Egils side and prepares to do him the kindness of a killing blow.
Let him live, says Lagertha.
Not all are so lucky.
Among the fallen are Torvi, father of the children of Bjorn Ironside, a true Viking.
Lagertha tortures Egil, and brings his wife in front of him as a further threat.
Lagertha expected this, perhaps; she expects the worst of any ambitious man.
In the Viking camp across the sea, Harald admits a rare mistake to his brother.
Halfdan tells him to forget her; after all, women are fickle.
Harald cannot forget.
But he promises his princess that he has forgiven her right before he cleaves her husbands head apart.
I didnt catch the husbands name, but it doesnt matter much anyways.
It is Halfdans doing.
Better, perhaps, if King Harald had simply taken his brothers advice, and forgotten her.
But that is not his way.
We cannot fight in the same way, Ivar tells his brothers.
Why should they fight Aethelwulfs army with a shieldwall?
He suggests a new strategy.
Scout the field of battle.
Use the landscape, the hills.
For such a large army, they should devise a new kind of warfare.
Aethelwulf arrives, hundreds of men behind him.
They see the Viking horde on the hillside.
This continues, a merry game that is inevitably deadly.
Arrows fly out of the trees, killing soldiers of Wessex.
Aethelwulf tires of the game.
He has new orders: They shall set out for the Vikings ships, and destroy them.
This is, of course, precisely what Ivar had hoped for.
Floki rejoices in their enemies foolishness and in the brilliance of Ivar, his favorite of Ragnars sons.
You bloody mad genius!
Aethelwulf and his men walk into a trap.
