THE VIKING KING'S BRIDE

⚔️ THE HIDDEN PATH

The mountain air grew thick with the smell of smoke as Alice and the freed assassin, whose name was Freddy, descended through the hidden hunter paths.

The path was treacherous, a narrow ledge of jagged rock hidden behind frozen waterfalls and thick pine branches.

Freddy led the way, his breath pluming in the freezing air. He kept looking back at Princess Alice, his cynical eyes filled with a new, uneasy respect. She was shivering, her face is pale, but she had not complained once.

"We are close to the valley floor," Freddy whispered, signaling her to stop behind a dense thicket of pines.

"But the city we left three days ago is gone" Princess Alice listened to him.

Through the trees, the distant sound of chaos drifted up the mountain. It was not the structured cadence of the city guards. It was the raw, terrifying roar of victory, the clashing of iron shields, the crackle of burning wood, and the deep, booming laughter of the northmen.

"They have taken the lower gates," Princess Alice murmured, her sharp mind immediately analyzing the sounds.

"The royal army collapsed. My father surrendered."

"Worse than that," Freddy said, turning to face her. His expression was grim, then he pointed in another direction. "Look down there."

Through a break in the treeline, the coastal city lay stretched out beneath them. Twenty-five dragon-headed longships choked the harbor, their black and crimson sails draped over the stone docks like predatory wings.

In the center of the city, the grand palace still stood, but the royal banners had been torn down. In their place hung the massive, raven-emblazoned flags of the Viking conquerors.

"They didn't just raid us, Princess. They occupy us," Freddy said, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper.

"And your sister Margaret is inside that palace right now, preparing to marry their king to save her own skin." Freddy continued.

Alice clutched her tattered cloak tighter around her shoulders. A sudden, bitter laugh escaped her lips.

"She wanted a throne so badly that she bartered my life to a blind Seer. Now, she inherits a crown of ashes and a husband she fears. There is poetic justice in that."

"But what about you?" Freddy asked, stepping closer.

"You can’t go back there. If Princess Margaret sees you alive, she’ll have you executed before you can even speak to the King. And if the northmen catch you, a royal princess is a prize they won't pass up."

Princess Alice looked at Freddy, her gaze remained calmed and filled with a quiet, fierce intelligence.

"I am not going back as a princess, Fred. To the city, Princess Alice Carpio died on this mountain. But the city is my home, and its people are starving. You told me your village was desperate. If the Vikings control the port, no grain will reach the lower districts. Your family will die of hunger, not just winter."

Freddy shifted uncomfortably, the truth of her words cutting through his rough exterior.

"What are you suggesting?"

"You know the secret tunnels beneath the city walls, the ones in which the smugglers use," Princess Alice said, her mind weaving a strategy out of the chaos.

"Take me into the lower city. Dress me in the rags of your village. I will be a nameless servant, a shadow in the streets. I need to see this Viking King they are serving for myself. I need to understand what we are truly fighting against them."

Freddy stared at her, completely stunned by her bravery. "You are mad. You're a high-born lady. You wouldn't survive an hour in the lower slums, let alone under a Viking occupation."

"You underestimated me on the mountain, Fred. Do not make that mistake again," Princess Alice replied, her voice ringing with absolute certainty.

"My sister thinks she won. Let her play the bride to a warlord. While she is distracted by her grand wedding, we will build resistance from the dirt up."

Freddy looked at the burning city, then back at the young woman who had saved his life instead of taking it. Slowly, he knelt in the snow, striking his chest in a gesture of true loyalty.

"The lower villages have never bent the knee to the palace, Princess. But now they will follow you. Lead us the way." Freddy said.

As the sun began to dip below the horizon, painting the smoking city in shades of blood and gold, Princess Alice took her first step down into the conquered valley. She was no longer the weak princess of the court. She was a ghost, entering a den of dragons.

The transition from a sheltered princess to a nameless peasant was completed in the shadow of a rotting fishing shed. Freddy had managed to procure the clothes of a village girl who had fled the initial invasion, a coarse, grease-stained woolen dress that smelled faintly of smoke and dried fish, and a heavy, unwashed kirtle that hid her small frame.

With a handful of wet suit from a burned hearth. Alice darkened her fair skin, and she even put a dark brown ink in her eye lashes, smudging the charcoal over her high cheekbones and rubbing it deep into her fingernails. She tore the hem of her shift and hid her father’s bangles gift into a small pouch and tied it tightly against her thigh, bound by a strip of leather.

When she looked at her reflection in a puddle of muddy water, Princess Alice Carpio was gone. In her place stood a hollow-eyed, silent refugee.

"Keep your head down, your shoulders hunched, and never look a Northman in the eye," Freddy muttered as they approached the iron-barred drainage grate that led beneath the city’s eastern wall.

"To them, you are nothing but dust beneath their boots. If they think you're pretty, or if they think you're important, you're dead. Or worse."

"I understand," Alice said confidently in low voices.

They crawled through the cramped, foul-smelling stone conduit, the water freezing cold against her bare knees.

When they finally emerged, they were in the maze-like alleys of the Fishmarket District, the poorest, most crowded slum in the lower city.

The state of her home tore at Alice’s heart.