Rochester, Kingdom of Wessex, 886 AD
Rochester, Kingdom of Wessex, 886 ADEvery church bell in Rochester pealed out the alarm. Sixty-nine Viking masts burgeoned in the Medway if the panicked counting of the lookouts was accurate. Lord Raedulf confirmed the sharpness of their eyes for himself from his vantage point on the sturdy ramparts of the town, whence he issued a volley of orders, including the urgent dispatch of a rider to London to inform King Alfred, who was holding court there with his son-in-law, Lord Aethelred of Mercia—a man Raedulf instinctively disliked. There followed instructions to bar the gates and ready arms and boulders, excavated in the country, to hurl down on potential besiegers, who were now in the offing.
Ealdorman Raedulf smiled grimly at the thought that he had
