April 13, 870 AD

City of Calais, Kingdom of West Francia

It had been eleven days since the Frankish camp sent a messenger to Emperor Louis the Germanic.

Duke Odo and Count Lothair were waiting for a response from their ruler. A messenger riding a fast horse could make the round trip in exactly ten days. Therefore, Bjorn calculated that the Frankish army had received their new orders yesterday.

King Erik sat on a bench nearby. He was drinking cold ale from an iron cup. Erik looked bored.

During these eleven days, the Frankish army had done nothing during the daylight hours.

They wanted to block all land trade and starve the Vikings. But Bjorn did not care about the land routes.

The Iron Kingdom had control of the sea. Every three days, a transport ship arrived at the docks carrying five thousand pounds of salted pork and ten thousand pounds of hard wheat bread.

However, the nights were different. Every single night, the Frankish commanders sent assassins to climb the stone walls.

These assassins used hooks and hemp ropes. They tried to find dark spots between the hanging lanterns.

Every assassin either stepped on a buried clay jar filled with explosive black powder, or they were shot by a vigilant musketeer standing on the wall.

In total, the Northern soldiers had killed forty-two assassins in eleven days.

Bjorn lowered his brass spyglass. He looked at Erik.

"I ordered a squad of twenty musketeers to march outside the broken main gates. I told them to patrol a perimeter of five hundred yards." Bjorn stated.

Erik stopped drinking. He nodded his head. "I remember. They were out there before they had to run back inside the walls."

"Yes." Bjorn said, "The Frankish army has hired a master horse archer. He is likely a mercenary from the eastern steppes, he fired exactly two arrows in two seconds."

Erik frowned. "And he hit them?" 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

"He hit two of our musketeers directly in the neck," Bjorn detailed. "They died instantly. We cannot waste our highly trained shooters trying to hit a moving horseman at maximum range."

"That is true~" Erik agreed, setting his cup on the floor. "They left the two dead musketeers lying in the mud."

Bjorn lifted the brass spyglass to his right eye again. He looked down at the brown mud outside the gates. He wanted to look at the two dead musketeers. He wanted to plan a safe way to retrieve their bodies for a proper burial.

Through the clear glass lenses, Bjorn saw the two bodies. They were lying face down. They were wearing their thick leather uniforms.

Every single musketeer in the Iron Kingdom carried specific equipment. They carried one iron musket, one leather powder horn, and a small leather pouch containing twenty lead balls.

"By the Gods..." Bjorn whispered.

Erik stood up from the bench. "What is it, Bjorn? Do you see the master horse archer riding again?"

"No, Erik," Bjorn said, lowering the brass spyglass. "The master archer waited for the night. The moon was hidden by thick clouds. The archer must have crawled through the mud in the dark. He took their iron muskets, their black powder, and their lead balls."

"Commander!" Julian said, "If the archer stole the muskets, he will give them to Duke Odo. They will send our weapons to Emperor Louis the Germanic in Frankfurt... The Emperor will know how our weapons work..."

Bjorn crossed his arms over his chest. "

Erik gripped the handle of his axe tightly. "We have to go get it back! I will take five hundred wild warriors right now. We will charge the Frankish camp! We will burn their silk tents until we find our missing weapons!"

"No, Erik," Bjorn commanded. "That is exactly what the Frankish Dukes want us to do. If we charge into their camp, we will lose our defensive advantage. We cannot fight them in close hand-to-hand combat. Furthermore, the archer likely stole the muskets last night. He could have already handed them to a fast rider. The weapons might be forty miles away by now."

"Then what do we do?" Julian asked. "If the Emperor learns how to make muskets, he will build ten thousand of them."

"We do not panic, Julian," Bjorn said, "Even if the Emperor has the musket today, his blacksmiths do not have the tools to forge perfectly straight iron barrels. His alchemists do not know the exact ratio of saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal required to make the powder explode without blowing up the barrel. It will take them at least three months to produce a functional copy."

"Three months is not a long time." Erik noted, sitting back down on the bench.

"It is long enough~" Bjorn stated. He walked over to a table resting against the wall.

...

The sun rose over the Frankish siege camp outside the city of Calais. A cold wind blew across the flat dirt plains. Inside a large tent made of purple silk, Duke Odo of the Western Franks sat on a chair.

He was eating a piece of roasted salted pork from a metal plate. Count Lothair sat on a bench across from him, resting his wounded arm in a white linen sling.

The flap of the tent opened. A messenger walked into the tent.

"Duke Odo," the messenger said. "I bring an urgent letter from Emperor Louis the Germanic. The master horse archer successfully delivered the stolen iron musket and the black powder to the palace."

The messenger handed a rolled piece of paper to the Duke. The paper was sealed with red wax.

Duke Odo broke the wax and unrolled the paper. He began to read the letter out loud to Count Lothair.

"Listen to this, Lothair," Duke Odo said, "They gathered fifty of the best blacksmiths from Paris, Orleans, and Lyon. They also gathered thirty of the smartest scholars from the royal library."

...

Inside the royal palace in Paris, Emperor Louis placed the stolen iron musket, the leather powder horn, and the small lead balls onto the table.