The war of the Radbodsons and Garmrsons over Norway took further decisive steps toward its conclusion in 971. Sigtrygg and Magnus suffered a setback early in the year when their vanguard was ambushed by the Norwegians faithful to Hákon at the Battle of Torgar[1], which resulted in the deaths of approximately a thousand of the allied soldiers and derailed their initial push into Hálogaland. Hákon was eager to capitalize on this victory and committed to a major counterattack in the hopes of driving the allies out of central Norway, but the scale of his trump had made him over-confident in his abilities & those of his troops, which Earl Magnus was keen on exploiting. The ambitious Norwegian plan called for both a landward thrust south from Hálogaland and an amphibious incursion into the great fjord of Þrónd behind the allied positions, to be assisted by surviving loyalists of the fallen Jarl Sveinn of Hlaðir who had signaled their willingness to emerge from their hiding places in support of the Norwegian loyalists so that they might avenge their master; little did Hákon know that the Anglo-Danes had been most thorough in their purge of the followers of Jarl Sveinn, and were forcing those few they had taken captive to send Hákon these lies under threat of grave harm to their families, now also hostages in the Danish court.
Thus did Hákon divide his already meager force in twain and send these halves into carefully prepared traps of Magnus' own. He personally led the summertime ground offensive against Sigtrygg and was able to fight his way out of the Danish trap in the closing stages of the Battle of Vémundarvik[2], despite the efforts of the Danish king's sons to cut off his retreat and annihilate his entire force in that one engagement. Alas the same could not be said of the amphibious invasion force led by his last remaining brother Ketill & their nephew Eyjólf Þorkellson, which was trapped inside the Þrónd by the Anglo-Roman fleet and massacred on the beaches of Hlaðir by Magnus' army shortly after realizing that the promised local support was not going to materialize. The losses incurred by the Norwegians in this failed summer counterattack broke the back of their already badly bloodied forces; never again would Hákon be able to regain the initiative, while the allies now resumed their advance into Hálogaland by sea and this time definitively secured beach-heads & bases at not just Torgar, but also Tjøtta and Rauðøy[3].
Magnus Haroldson, Earl of Lindsey closes the Anglo-Danish trap and leads his army against the Norwegians who had landed near Hlaðir
In Arabia, with Michael temporarily mollified by the previous year's tribute payment, Saif al-Islam concentrated all his energies on stomping out the Yamani Kharijite rebellion before the followers of Zayd al-Sadiq could distract him from the pressing need to rebuild Islam's strength & prepare for the next great contention with the Christians any longer. Though the rugged mountains which comprised much of Yaman's hinterland ensured that it would still be difficult for the Hashemite forces to make much headway quickly, the Atabeg was able to continuously advance slowly and steadily with a combination of shoring up popular support through the distribution of aid & bribes, and the construction of additional small forts to lock down every mountain pass and wadi (river valley) during the dry season. The Kharijites, for their part, continued to rely on a strategy of infiltration and ambushes: the only pitched engagement fought between the two sides this year was the 'Battle of the Red Dunes', in the Yamanis' corner of the great sandy expanse known as the Rub' al-Khali or 'Empty Quarter', when warriors of the pro-Hashemite Banu Hamdan tribe helped a Turkic cavalry troop spring a bloody surprise attack against a large column of Kharijite raiders attempting to repeat Zayd's previous successful northern raid.
While the conflicts in Scandinavia and Arabia were winding down, the one in southern India was just beginning to warm up. Aparajitavarman Pandya returned to find his kingdom ablaze, and hastened to deal with the Anuradhapuran army responsible before they could sack his capital of Madurai. The Anuradhapurans, led by their king's uncle Prince Dappula, stormed the walls of that city in an attempt to breach and conquer it before the Pandya returned in force, but were repulsed by the valiant Tamil defense and retreated to avoid being caught between said returning enemy host and the garrison should the latter sally forth. King Aparajitavarman did not give his foes a chance to catch their breath, instead pressing the Anuradhapurans down the River Vaigai until he was able to force a battle with Dappula at Ramanathapuram near its mouth. The Pandyas achieved a resounding victory there, slaying two-thirds of the 6,000-strong Anuradhapuran host before they could get out to sea or flee far enough back down Rama's Bridge that the Tamils could not pursue, but to Aparajitavarman this was only the beginning – certainly far from the end – for his plans.
The victorious
Raja sailed to the nearby holy isle of Rameshwaram, where he proclaimed to his officers that their triumph at such an auspicious site in the Hindu religion could only be a sign from above that they must carry the campaign onward to the land of Lanka. As the god Rama once crossed the sea to rescue his wife Sita from the clutches of the demon Ravana, so too they should now cross the bridge which he raised up to permanently secure their homes & families by removing the threat of Anuradhapura once and for all (no attention need be paid to the fact that even if Anuradhapura hadn't struck first, Aparajitavarman planned on invading them himself anyway). Pandya princes had invaded and occupied large parts of Lanka in the past, but never managed to establish a lasting presence – something he hoped to change this time around. His brother-in-law Rajaditya Chola, now installed in Thanjavur and recognizing Pandya suzerainty, agreed to lend the Pandyas naval support from the ports of Cholamandalam; in turn, Aparajitavarman gave him high praise, and he was likened to the monkey-king Sugriva & other allies of Rama from the
Ramayana by the Pandya court. The Pandyas and Cholas accordingly began marshaling a formidable invasion army & fleet while Dappula's nephew, King Udaya II, made his own preparations to resist the mainlanders.
The army of Aparajitavarman Pandya prepares to depart for Anuradhapura. Tamil warriors such as these generally did not bother with armor on account of the climate of far-southern India and Lanka, though their weapons were no less sharp and their war elephants even more numerous than those of the subcontinent's northern half
The Anglo-Danish forces and their growing number of Norwegian supporters continued to push into Garmrson territory through 972. As was the case in the rest of Norway, most Norse settlements in Hálogaland were concentrated along the seashore, built around or near the many fjords for easy sea access – the untamed and difficult hinterland terrain, which grew only rougher still the further north one went, had long made sailing the preferred mode of movement in this kingdom, to an even greater extent than in the other Scandinavian kingdoms. Alas, the Danes knew this well, and King Sigtrygg also understood that if he took the coastal towns he would also be taking control of the vast majority of Norway's population and resources. And with the Norwegian army and fleet both having sustained crippling losses over the past years, these keys to the Danish takeover of Norway were now wide open.
Thus, Sigtrygg and Harold spent this year sailing from fjord to fjord, demanding submission from the Norwegian townsfolk and doing battle with the dwindling warriors of the Garmrsons that still dared contest their advance. Resistance was sporadic at this point: many Hálogalanders would have preferred the continuation of Garmrson rule, for the Norwegian kings had never forgotten their homeland even after moving south to richer & warmer pastures, but they demonstrably did not have the strength to fight off the army which the King & Earl brought along and their affection for Hákon generally did not extend to being willing to commit suicide for him. That the Danes (well, Sigtrygg and Eiríkr at least) were not Christians and certainly not inclined to aggressively spread the new creed from the Holy Roman Empire also mollified the die-hard traditionalists who otherwise might have been persuaded to fight to the death for their old gods & old kings. Hákon himself had withdrawn to Lyngenfjorden, the absolute northernmost Norse settlement in all of Scandinavia, where he remained beyond the allies' reach for the time being; but this safety came at the cost of slowly, yet surely, ceding the remainder of his realm to the ascendant allies.
Earl Magnus receiving the surrender of a Hálogalander thane as the allied armies moved closer & closer to the Garmrsons' final strongholds in far-northern Norway
Back in the Holy Roman Empire itself, Aloysius VI was busy putting the Senate to work. He had reshaped that august body chiefly to serve as a forum for his numerous vassals, so that they might dispute with one another using words & quill-pens rather than arms; and dispute, quite extensively, they did. Hardly any time had passed since the Curia Aloysia had first been opened before the Senate floor came to host vigorous debates, and outright shouting matches, between Senators from various rival kingdoms – among the first great disputes which threatened to boil over into bloodshed (again) were the longtime feud between the British and the assorted Irish kingdoms, reawakened by the recent deaths of the
Ríodam Íméri III and his Irish counterpart Muichertach Ó Néill within months of one another, and a three-way border conflict between the Dulebes, Serbs and Dacians in the Banat, as the last of these struggled to retain the slivers of territory they still held in that disputed region's easternmost parts.
To prove their clean break with the sordid past, the Senators (under Aloysius' eye) strove successfully to cool these embers before they could once more explode into roaring wildfires. The nominal status quo in Britannia was carefully preserved, as the British Senators and Íméri's successor Elan II were both swayed into accepting the election of British-friendly prince Brandub mac Echach of the Uí Cheinnselaig as the next Ard Rí in exchange for Irish acknowledgment of additional territorial concessions (ranging from the Fir Rois territories in the north down to the town of Nás na Ríogh[4] in the south, which Irish raiders had repeatedly tried to reconquer and then to burn down without success) to the Hiberno-Briton & Anglo-Irish lords beyond the Pale, all for lands that said lords had already acquired through conquest or intermarriage in the preceding decades.
Around the same time the Senate was unable to completely prevent bloodshed in the Peninsula of Haemus, as it had no army with which to keep the feuding sides apart or directly impose a settlement, but it was able to limit the amount of blood spilled and negotiate a peace deal between the warring kings before the year's end; the Dulebes and Serbs both inched forward at first, the former pushing as far as the gates of old Tibiscum and the latter reaching up to Oravica[5], but the Dacians counterattacked from the fortified riverine port of Orșova (their main remaining stronghold in the Banat), whereupon Voievod Tiberiu repelled the Dulebian push at the Battle of the Timiș and the Serbian offensive on the banks of the Miniș. As the Dacians were unable to make headway against either of the South Slavic kingdoms when Tiberiu attempted to carry the war onto their soil, the Voievod settled for meager war indemnities (though the Senators insisted these were proportionate to the damage inflicted upon the Dacian countryside, as neither the Serbs or Dulebes had managed to stick around for long before being driven back) from both Dulebia and Serbia.
The Dacian Senators presenting gifts, and arguments in favor of preserving their homeland's territorial integrity, to Aloysius VI
Now the Emperor was pleased that his Senate was functioning as intended and actually proving helpful in shoring up the imperial peace within Christendom (albeit not perfectly, but then it was still very early in this newly unified Senate's time), but his focus on internal affairs meant he was increasingly taking his eyes off foreign ones. His uncle Michael had long been a consistent advocate of additional, preventative wars against Islam, even to this time arguing that they should absolutely kick the Banu Hashim while they were down and that under no circumstance should the latter be allowed any breathing room to rebuild their strength. However in spite of his crusader blood, the sixth Aloysius was not as warlike as his father & some of his more martial ancestors, or even as ambitious as his grandfather when it came to seeking conquests abroad, and declined to attack the Muslims so long as they still upheld the terms of the Peace of Nineveh; he found peace & quiet to be more profitable than a campaign to take the rest of Mesopotamia, and besides the Muslims had just paid them a handsome sum at Michael's own demand a few years ago.
Still Michael might have succeeded in changing the Emperor's mind if not for the untimely death of his ally, Aloysius Caesar (who had been eager for an opportunity to recapture some of the glory of his grandfather's generation), from wounds incurred on a hunting trip this autumn – upon encountering a number of bear cubs while on the hunt, the prince overconfidently engaged their enraged mother on sight with his party (three of whom ended up dying that same day) and, though ultimately victorious, was left with only four agonizing days in which to 'enjoy' his triumph. Now that Aloysius VI had to mourn his son, he was in even less of a mood to instigate a major conflict with the Banu Hashim, and expressly warned his uncle against trying to start such a war himself as well. While this decision would in time have baleful consequences for his heirs, in the short term the Emperor was primarily concerned with first elevating his grandson Aloysius Priminobelissimus (aged seven at the time) to the rank of
Caesar well ahead of date, and secondly with surviving long enough that the new Aloysius Caesar would certainly be of age when it came time for him to take up the purple.
Saif al-Islam took full advantage of the continued lull in hostilities between the Christian and Islamic worlds, carrying his grinding offensive against the Yamani Kharijites onward through 972 and 973. As before, his advances were slow but inexorable, with the latter year proving a decisive one in the fortunes of the Hashemite forces in Southern Arabia. Early in 973 the Atabeg's army captured the major northern city of Sa'ada after much hard fighting across the Jibal as-Sarawat mountain range throughout the previous year, once and for all putting an end to Kharijite incursions in the direction of Najran, and soon afterward they settled in for a nine-month siege of the mountain stronghold of Kawkaban[6], which was situated just a few days' march northwest from Zayd's seat at Sana'a. Kawkaban proved an immensely difficult nut to crack – its fanatical defenders were well-stocked, and the redoubtable fortress itself had been built on the summit of a mountain overlooking the farmlands where Saif's army had encamped, with no easy way to approach it from any direction.
As Kawkaban controlled the western approach to Sana'a and the terrain made it too difficult to try approaching the Kharijite capital from any other direction, Saif al-Islam could not simply bypass Kawkaban, no matter how much he would have liked to. The Hashemite forces attempted a few probing assaults, but these were easily defeated by the defenders from their nigh-impregnable position despite the former's huge and still-growing advantage in numbers, forcing a lengthy and grueling siege instead – the Atabeg ended up committing nearly 30,000 men to besiege approximately a thousand defenders on that mountain (in no small part to deter any attempt at relief by Zayd and to replenish his own losses from attrition), and the besiegers sustained far more casualties from disease the Yamani summer heat than they did from skirmishes with the garrison. Fortunately for the Banu Hashim, a lack of Roman offensives from the north and their truce with the Baqliyya of Oman still holding meant they had all the time in the world to finish this particular fight: the siege began in March and ended in December, after the surviving Kharijites ran out of provisions and committed suicide rather than face inevitable torment in Hashemite captivity, finally clearing the path for a major push on Sana'a. Around the same time, the Atabeg also reconquered Ma'rib east of Sana'a, although fortunately for him the former Sabaean capital had long since fallen into disrepair and the Kharijites were unable to put up even a tenth of the fight they had at Kawkaban against him there.
Turkic horse-archers of Saif al-Islam's vanguard riding through the arid Yemeni countryside on their way to Kawkaban, one of the keys to the last remaining Kharijite capital at Sana'a
Over in India, the Pandyas and Anuradhapurans began to test the forces they had been building up throughout 972 against one another in 973. Aparajitavarman divided the combined Pandya-Chola army, which was larger than Anuradhapura's, into one division which marched across Rama's Bridge and another which was ferried across the sea by his equally mighty navy. Both formations soon converged to concentrate on seizing a beach-head on Naga Nadu[7] (the 'land of the Naga people', as this part of northern Lanka was called then), first seizing the smaller isle of Nagadipa[8] as a forward base before pushing southward toward Anuradhapura itself. The Anuradhapuran kings had, for centuries, taken to augmenting his army with an increasing number of Tamil mercenaries from the subcontinental mainland, and there were some concerns among his officers that these men would defect to join their kindred under Pandyan pressure; however this did not happen, yet anyway, and though they failed to keep the invaders out of Lanka altogether the Tamil sellswords in Anuradhapuran service still in fact proved vital to holding back Aparajitavarman's first two attacks on the capital.
However, Aparajitavarman would not be easily dissuaded from pursuing his campaign of conquest to a victorious conclusion. Soon after the end of the monsoon season, he drew the Anuradhapurans into a major battle near the site of the mostly-abandoned Lankan former capital at Upatissagāma. There he pinned the Anuradhapuran army down with his infantry, routed their cavalry with his elephant corps and then directed said elephants into the rear of the Lankan forces. Almost needless to say, this was a disastrous blow to his rival Udaya, who was lucky to escape the ensuing carnage with his life. The weakened Udaya had little choice but to abandon Anuradhapura (with the majority of the able-bodied population following him) as Aparajitavarman renewed his advance on the Lankan capital, but the war was far from over: as his ancestors had once done when overwhelming Tamil forces came knocking, the defeated king withdrew to the region of Ruhuna which encompassed much of southern & southeastern Lanka, a land of many hills & mountains where said ancestors were able to bide their time until they gained an opportunity to oust the invaders from their seats in northern Lanka. He took with him the sacred Tooth of the Buddha, a relic which was originally brought to Lanka in the fourth century and had since served as a symbol of rightful rule for the Buddhist kings of Lanka.
974 marked a changing of the guard in the Holy Roman Empire, as the generation which led Christendom into the successful Crusade four decades ago now increasingly exited the stage. Of Aloysius IV's children, aside from Aloysius V, Charles of Burgundy had already passed years ago; this year, his middle children followed in rapid succession. Maria, the 'Abbess-General' of the Gabrielites, perished at the age of sixty-seven in the spring while Patriarch Constantine of Jerusalem and Grandmaster Michael were both found to have died in their sleep on what turned out to be the same morning in the autumn of this year, aged sixty-four – as they entered the world together, so the saying went, the twins now departed it together as well.
Unlike their elder and younger siblings, these three were canonized as saints for their spiritual achievements. These ranged from Maria's vast charitable works to Constantine's intellectual pursuits & research into captured Muslim technology (most importantly his translation of Arabic medical texts, ironically his research into the Islamic religion was not counted under this umbrella despite arguably having the biggest impact on Christians' understanding of Islam going forward) and Michael's undefeated military record as a champion of Christianity on battlefields from the Levant to the Pontic Steppe, surpassing even Aloysius I whose own otherwise-perfect record was marred by a single loss – for now, the best any Aloysian prince had managed against pagans and Saracens alike. These three were not the last saints of the
Domus Aloysiani, but they would be the last truly notable ones (indeed the last individuals of such a caliber, for good and for ill) from the imperial house for the next several centuries. Together with their father they are said to have completed the process of expunging the stain left on their dynasty by their ancestor Arbogast's championing of paganism against Christianity (as represented by Theodosius Magnus and Stilicho) which began with Aloysius I's assumption of the purple.
Princess/Sister/Mother Maria, the 'Abbess-General' of the Gabrielites, now joining her father and younger brothers in Heaven as the first saintess from the Aloysian family. A composer of religious hymns and famed sponsor of hospitals & convents under the Order's black-and-white umbrella, the princess went down in history as a beacon of all the good that women could do for Christendom during and after a crusade, without once having to lift a sword
The passing of the generation which led Christendom to victory in their last great war with the Islamic world coincided with the rise of, the Muslims hoped, their own generation of ever-victorious
mujahideen. Before the likes of the Atabeg could consider challenging the Romans again (or, more realistically on account of their present weakness, raising the generation which would spearhead their next great
jihad) however, he had to wrap up the Kharijite rebellion in the south. Using Kawkaban and Ma'rib as his springboards, Saif al-Islam launched a huge push against Sana'a this year, first amassing no fewer than 50,000 soldiers and then converging upon Zayd's seat from both the west and northwest. This huge army not only cost the Banu Hashim quite a bit of their dwindling resources, but it inevitably suffered heavily from attrition as it marched through the scorched earth of Yemen and constant Kharijite ambushes.
Nevertheless, the Kharijites could not kill off nearly enough of the Hashemite troops to derail this final leg of the Atabeg's campaign – more than 40,000 men still survived to finally encircle and lay siege to their final stronghold by mid-summer of this year. Saif al-Islam would need every last one of those men, as Sana'a was the most formidable stronghold he had come up against to date: not only were its thousands of devoted defenders well-provisioned and its name literally translated to 'well-fortified', a boast borne out by its stout walls (further strengthened by the Kharijites over the past years), but the city itself had been built in-between two more natural fortresses in the form of the mountains Jabal An-Nabi Shu'aib and Jabal Nuqum. Saif's first move was to take control of these mountains, which would not only allow him to properly invest Sana'a but also give him positions overlooking the city (most useful for his siege artillery) and eliminate the routes used by Zayd to smuggle additional supplies into his stocks. That however would certainly be no easy feat, as the Kharijites had restored or built quite a few smaller
qusur (small castles) on & around both mountains, and even by the end of 974 the Hashemites had not fully completed this task against their dogged resistance.
A Yamani mountain castle, one of dozens which the Hashemites had to overcome (if not by force, then by negotiation with the local sheik) on their long road to Sana'a. The Kharijite seat of power itself was defended by many smaller castles like this one, situated on the mountains overlooking & protecting the city, but at least Saif al-Islam knew the end was near once he got close enough to start besieging them
On the other side of the Indian Ocean, after consolidating his hold on a mostly-deserted Anuradhapura, Aparajitavarman made his first attempt at pursuing Udaya into Ruhuna. Like Saif al-Islam and his Hashemite troops many leagues away however, the Pandyans were frustrated by the difficult and remote terrain of the region, which provided Udaya and his partisans with numerous natural strongholds, hiding places and opportunities to ambush the numerically superior invaders. Defeat in the hills south of Anuradhapura, near the village of Ambewela, put an end to this Tamil incursion by August of 974. Instead of further squandering his resources on an immediate follow-up offensive, Aparajitavarman decided to instead work to consolidate his grasp on northern Lanka, beginning by settling thousands of his soldiers and their families to turn the previously-insignificant town of Pulatti-nakaram[9] into a major Pandya base, now renamed 'Jananathapuram' by the Tamil king.
In 975, the Moors and Spaniards launched their third expedition to Aloysiana. Rodrigo and Gostãdénu had taken every measure they could think of to guarantee success at long last this time, outfitting the exploring party with the first European replications of Islamic navigation technology taken from their forefathers' conquests in the Levant and North Africa as well as a sufficient quantity of supplies and even Christian Danish & Irish guides who swore that they had sailed to and back from the uttermost West before. To demonstrate their confidence in their chances this round, the two kings appointed highborn princes as joint captains of the expedition – Rodrigo chose his third son Bermudo while Gostãdénu chose his eldest grandson Sésénnéu, as both young men had some nautical experience and more importantly, had proven willing to listen to their more experienced crewmen when in crisis.
Come September this third Afro-Spanish expedition departed from Espal first for the Ésulas Ganarés, where they resupplied and added a seventh ship to their fleet. From there they sailed southwestward, consciously avoiding the Gorgades, and within days had lost all sight of land. Guided by fortuitous winds and their navigational instruments, the explorers persisted through five weeks at sea before once more spotting land, shortly before they would have eaten through the last of their once-formidable stocks of rations. Despite damage to two of their ships from coral reefs forcing them to row to the beach in their pinnaces, the princes and their crews gave thanks to God and planted three standards in the sand of the island they had reached[10] – the jeweled 'victory cross' of the Spanish (which had replaced the older Gothic eagle since the Theodefredings fought on the winning side of the Seven Years' War and the consequent revival of their kingdom), the solar chi-rho of Africa and the blue-and-white one of the Holy Roman Empire – before they proceeding to fish & hunt turtles and birds for food; not long afterwards they encountered the first Wildermen of these far western isles, and indeed the first Wildermen to be encountered by non-Insular or Scandinavian Europeans[11].
Spaniards rowing from Prince Bermudo's ship to the first bit of land they had spotted in the New World, which they would soon name 'Santa María del Pilar' or simply 'Pilar', thereby finally achieving success in their exploratory missions after two costly failures in the past
As neither the Europeans nor these local Wildermen shared a common language, making it impossible for either Bermudo or Sésénnéu to explain why they were fishing on the tribe's territory, efforts at communication soon broke down and the suspicious locals threatened to enter into a skirmish with the outsiders. Sésénnéu was prepared to fight, but the calmer and less reckless Bermudo soothed tensions by making a peace offering of one of his many ornate rings and in so doing, got the Wildermen to understand that he was a prince of his people – and that he would very much like to speak to
their prince. The natives agreed to present the Europeans to their
kasike or chieftain, a man named Antülikan, and despite their continued communication difficulties they managed to reach a truce, with the Europeans peaceably sticking around for some time and being guided to the local springs so that they might refill their freshwater supply.
Bermudo & Sésénnéu remained in contact with Antülikan for several more days, learning more about his people (among other things, they translated his title into the Espanesco
cacique and Afríganu
gaséggé, a word which their descendants would use as a generic term for all Wilderman chiefs) and the island itself (dubbed
Karukera or the 'Island of Beautiful Waters' by the locals, which was translated into 'Garugérra' by the Moors while Bermudo himself renamed the place 'Santa María del Pilar' after the first-ever Marian apparition said to have been beheld by the Apostle James while he was preaching in Hispania) as well as recruiting translators who they tried to teach their own tongues to from the ranks of his tribe. On the seventh day, the Europeans got caught up in a sudden raid by a rival tribe on Antülikan's village while they were visiting and helped repel the attackers, in the process demonstrating the superiority of their metal weaponry and light armor to the astonished tribesmen. After the raid had been dealt with, it was explained to the princes that the people of this lagoon had long suffered attacks from their stronger neighbors and hostile islanders, who plundered their homes whenever they could get away with it and would take away those they did not kill as slaves.
Bermudo volunteered to remain behind with some fifty men, in order to protect and train their new allies (in the process taking one of Antülikan's daughters, Laliwa, as his concubine in order to seal their alliance) while Sésénnéu would sail back home to report their findings and gather reinforcements along with one of the
cacique's sons, who would prove the existence of not only new lands but new peoples that far southwest from Europe. This the African prince did by December, being carried by the winds not to either Spanish or African waters but rather to the Lusitanian port of Lisbon, though not before he took a detour to explore the seas west and north of Garugérra – he saw quite a few other islands, some of which seemed rather larger than Garugérra, though he never set foot on any of these before looping around to sail back home. As the Lusitanians had no good reason to obstruct this Stilichian prince, he was soon able to report his findings to his exultant father and grandfather, who agreed to furnish him with anything he asked for on his second voyage to the west (unfortunately, his Wilderman hostage died of illness before they could leave Lisbon). Of course, news that the Moors and Spaniards had found more islands in the waters around Aloysiana could not be hidden for long, spreading from Lisbon to the ears of the Lusitanian royals before Sésénnéu had even made it back to Africa and eventually making it to Aloysius VI's own desk by the year's end.
A meeting between princes Bermudo & Sésénnéu on one hand, and the Wilderman chief ('kasike' or 'cacique') Antülikan on the other
But the Romans and their vassals were not the only ones to sail for the New World in 975. Over in Norway, victory was at hand for the Anglo-Danish, and the various descendants of Ráðbarðr were eager to finally complete their revenge. However, Hákon was not the sort of man to resign himself & his entire extended family to death at the hands of their wrathful kindred, and with his enemies tightening the net around Hálogaland while he was unable to rebuild his crippled army back into any condition to repel them, he decided that if he could not beat them in Norway then he would simply escape to greener pastures far away from their grasp. Magnus and Sigtrygg had somewhat expected Hákon's breakout attempt out of Lyngenfjorden – by now the last major fjord still under his control – since they figured he might just try such a desperate maneuver once boxed into a corner with not even an illusory hope of defeating their forces, but they were not prepared for the courage and ferocity of his warriors borne from that desperation, and the last Garmrsons successfully punctured through the allied blockade at the Battle of Bœr[12] on the summer solstice of this year.
These Norwegian die-hards managed to evade attempts by the allies to pursue them, traded their family jewels and finery for safe passage through the waters of the increasingly Christianized Norse Kingdom of the Isles, and made their way to Iceland. Both the English and Danish Ráðbarðrson branches were infuriated at their dynastic enemy having eluded their vengeance when they had come so close to delivering it, but realistically the expenses associated with hunting the Garmrsons down all the way to Iceland outweighed their bloodthirst. In any case, developments in the winter months made such a costly adventure seemingly unnecessary: despite having been driven from his seat at long bloody last, King Hákon had not lost his haughty and stubborn demeanor, which scarcely endeared him to the Norsemen who had settled Iceland – the Icelanders had gotten quite used to essentially living in a state of anarchy, knowing no ruler greater than the
goðar (local landed strongmen who generally 'ruled' with an exceedingly light hand) and the rare sessions of the
Alþingi ('All-Thing', an island-wide general assembly), and very few were inclined to support this prideful outsider when he demanded their aid in retaking his throne.
Despite having managed to survive multiple crushing defeats & near-death experiences and coming all this way, Hákon abruptly got himself killed in an altercation with the
goði of Reyðarfjall[13] in December of 975, the news of which greatly amused his enemies back in Europe (including Eiríkr Sigtryggson, who had received the surrender of the last pro-Garmrson holdouts and was crowned King of Norway weeks after the Battle of Bœr) and cooled their tempers. Meanwhile this murder not only brought great despair but also confusion and a loss of purpose to the Garmrson household still on Iceland, as it became abundantly clear to them that there was no hope of using Iceland as a base from which to retake Norway – even if somehow they could bring a majority of the clearly fiercely independent-minded Icelanders onto their side, Iceland had neither the resources nor the manpower to make such a quest feasible. Rather than throw his life away chasing the Norwegian crown (an endeavor which he understood would require him to perpetuate the fratricidal Ráðbarðrson-Garmrson feud until either he had wiped out his Danish relatives or, more likely, they killed him), his last surviving son and heir Sæmundr decided to instead sail west and persuade those Norsemen who had settled in Vinland to rally to his banner, with the ultimate objective of establishing his own kingdom far away from Scandinavia and the troubles which had plagued his forefathers there. With any luck, the Vinlanders would prove more receptive to his proffered guidance than the Icelanders had been of his father's.
A spirited debate between an Icelandic goði and Hákon the Exile over why the former should bow to the latter & support him wholeheartedly in his plans to retake Norway from Iceland
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[1] Torget.
[2] Vemundvik.
[3] Rødøya.
[4] Jimbolia.
[5] Oravița.
[6] Now part of Shiban Kawkaban.
[7] The Jaffna Peninsula.
[8] Nainativu.
[9] Polonnaruwa.
[10] Grande-Terre, the eastern half of Guadeloupe's largest island. The explorers first made landfall on the beach of Porte d'Enfer, a large lagoon on the northern coast of Grande-Terre.
[11] These would have been an Arawak tribe, related to the Taíno historically encountered by Columbus, as Arawak peoples were known to have migrated from the Orinoco Valley in modern Venezuela to populate the Caribbean islands around 500 BC.
[12] Bø, Nordland.
[13] Reyðarfjörður.
Sorry for the unusually long wait between the last chapter & this one guys, I came down with an eye infection (stye) and it's taking longer than expected to go away. The regular update schedule will resume once I'm definitively over it.
