The song of the elves echoed in the dense woods in the distance, and the whisper of the breeze in the night sky, and the Count of Vorsiov stood on the beacon platform, looking at the northern hussars in the heath, but the secret words of the king echoed in his mind.

The king must have arrived at Canterbury by this time, he thought, tightening his shawl so that the pine needles would not fall into the cracks of the chain mail.

That woman actually had a son, the king's son! At the thought of this, Volsiov couldn't help but frown, and even though it was still summer, he felt a bitterly cold chill penetrate his vertebrae.

The king said to him that the whole court, only he could trust, and entrusted with this matter, could he refuse to do so to his face? But...... Once that child is found, his position will be extremely embarrassing, needless to say, the queen will definitely hate herself to the bone, and King Philip behind her will probably not give up.

But he was a vassal of Edgar after all, and his loyalty had never wavered since the king crossed north to Bebanburg, and what really worried him was the future of the kingdom.

The Anglo-Saxons did not distinguish between concubines and illegitimate children, and all the descendants of kings were eligible to be called Aetheling, and they were all entitled to inherit the throne, and neither King Etherstein nor Edward the Martyr were legally married, but they could be crowned kings or even canonized.

Although the clergy of Winchester have protested against this for countless generations, and even deliberately deleted the record of the rule of the West Saxon monarchs, which the Church considered illegitimate, in the compilation of the chronicles, the customs of the northerners could not be changed overnight, just as the Bishops from Canterbury had never been able to make the Danish king observe monogamy, let alone inherit the succession.

Volsiov remembered Prince Edmund's recent defeat in the Germanic Forest, and while the underage prince could not have been responsible for the military defeat, it was a bad omen, and some rumours from the front seemed to indicate that the prince himself was disgusted with hunting grounds.

Let's observe first, if that child is worth cultivating, maybe the northerners will have another choice in the future.

This was not the first time the Count had made a mission to the kingdom of Alba, as it was Volsiov's father who had taken him in when King Malcolm was in exile in Northumbria, and later lost a son and a nephew, Volsiov's brother and cousin, to the throne of Malcolm. Over the years, the friendship between the Alba and Benician courts has maintained a stable peace on the kingdom's northern borders.

But if Henry, Earl of Oxford's report is true, Malcolm's days are running out, and once the throne of the High King is vacant, will the Scots begin to kill each other, and what will the new Lord of the North think of the alliance with London? These are all things that Volsiov needs to investigate when he goes north.

"What are you looking at, sir?" Before the Norman's voice could be heard, the scent of his horses had already arrived.

"It's nothing, my Lord Henry, it's an old habit of war." Volsiov turned back and saw Count Henry, dressed as a monk, tying his horse.

"This is your territory, not the Strait of Normandy, is it?" Henry's smile was humble and polite, making it hard to believe that he was the son of William the Conqueror, "Could anyone shoot an arrow at you from the forest?" ”

"This is the land of the king, just like Normandy." "But there are enemies everywhere," replied Vorsiov, "not only the ancient peoples of the frontiers, but also some wild beasts that hide in the places where humans gather, and may be very secretive and alert, but an old hunter will always smell him." ”

"Be careful not to let anyone else hear, my lord, or they will think you're talking about me." Henry still stood there with a smile on his face, but the arrogance in his bones could not be concealed by a black robe.

"I don't know what you're planning, young man, but this is Northumbria, your father couldn't have conquered us back then, and the North is not a place for a pretty southerner like you to show off her cleverness."

"Well, my lord, if I have any plans, it is not for you and your north, I am more concerned about our mission than Northumbria." Henry ignored the Count of Northumbria's warning and turned the conversation in another direction.

"Then you'd better learn to keep your mouth shut, this time we're going to open our ears and listen, not to show off our eloquence."

"If it were that simple, couldn't His Majesty send a horse boy north? My lord. Henry shook his head and replied solemnly, "If one wants to hear something really useful, one must first learn to ask the right questions." ”

It was rare that Vorsiov did not refute, that the young Norman might have some monk's bookish anger and some Norman cunning in his veins, but the king may not have used the wrong man this time.

Remembering Henry's question about the enemy, the Count looked with some apprehension towards the mountains to the west, and there were rumors spreading in the shadows, that there were people gathering men in the dark valley between the mountains and the sea, and that there were also some cavalry haunts north of the Great Wall, walking through the wilderness like black silhouettes, and sometimes even entering the Locian realm of King Alba. Border sentinels have spotted a lot of ruts on the roads that were once used by chariots and horses, and it seems that someone is resuming the use of these legionary roads, perhaps the Welsh, who are once again trying to rebuild the independent kingdom of the Clyde Valley? Volsiov could not judge this, and after the departure of Guspatrick Jr., there was no news of the Cumbrian Lake District to the east, and Walsiov became completely blind and knew nothing about what was going on in his western frontier.

The north is so big that the Pennines divide the land south of the Great Wall into two worlds, east and west, and the Anglo-Danes have always been impenetrable, and the valleys and forests accumulated over the years provide natural shelter for all kinds of outlaws, just as the thieves of Midland often use the vast Nottingham forest to hide their whereabouts and hide from the king's law.

In any case, this time the north was necessary, and as the lord of Northumbria, he could not take what happened at the border lightly, and if the Scots went south again, he did not want to flee to Westminster like a lost dog and report to the king that he had lost the north.