Bilal climbed the stairs to his war room. Runa, Leif, and Astrid were waiting. The atmosphere was suffocating. The armory was a crater.
"If Olaf and the Swedes are marching together, it is an army of thousands," Leif said, tracing the map. "But we have the Emperor. If we send a fast ship to England, Cnut will sail his fleet here. Olaf will scatter like a rat."
Before Bilal could answer, a commotion erupted in the Great Hall below.
A messenger had collapsed at the doors. He was freezing, his lips blue, clutching a sealed leather tube. He had ridden three horses to death to reach Axiomra.
Bilal broke the seal. He read the runic script. As his dark eyes scanned the parchment, the blood drained from his face.
"Cnut is not coming," Bilal whispered, dropping the parchment onto the heavy oak table.
"Why?" Runa asked, stepping forward.
"Because Olaf and the Swedish King didn't just target us," Bilal explained, his strategic mind piecing together the terrifying puzzle of 1026 AD. "They laid a trap for the Emperor. Cnut sailed his massive fleet into the Baltic Sea to crush them. But Olaf's men built a dam of timber and peat upstream on the Helgeå—the Holy River. When Cnut's fleet anchored in the estuary... they broke the dam."
The room went dead silent. Bilal had taught them the physics of water mass and velocity. They knew exactly what a tidal wave of logs and freezing water would do to a wooden fleet.
"Cnut's vanguard is destroyed," Bilal continued, his voice heavy. "He is trapped in a naval war of attrition. He cannot send us a single ship. He cannot send us a single man."
This was Axiomra's fatal weakness.
Bilal had built a city that survived because the Emperor's shadow protected it. But now, the shadow was gone. They were entirely alone. The "Demon of the North" was finally cornered, stripped of his magical fire, and vastly outnumbered.