Hello everyone. Here is chapter 9. I hope that you will enjoy it. :)

While Albert was helping Alfred fight off the rebels, Swain is currently leading his men to the north of Albert's kingdom and he was getting more men along the way too as reinforcements kept coming from Swain's kingdom in order to help their King conquer their enemy as well as taking the throne.

Swain liked his chances of invading and conquering Albert's kingdom along with the fact that he can be crowned King as the thought of the crown placed on his head made him smile while his men continued to row the boats in the direction of their target with the thirst for blood urging them to keep going.

"Soon we will be filling, Albert's graveyards" said Swain as he looked at his men. "And feeding the crows, the rotting corpses of his men".

The speech made the soldiers cheer in happiness with that positivity giving them more motivation to keep on rowing and it wasn't long until they finally landed on the shores in the north of Albert's kingdom as they quickly began getting off their ships with possibility of plundering and killing exciting them.

Swain got onto the shores of Albert's kingdom and he was smiling with delight at the fact that he can get all of his soldiers onto the shores, March southwards towards where Albert's castle and people are now undefended as well as crush any resistance that he knows he will face along the way.

His generals are awaiting his orders and he knew that he has the darkness to use to his advantage as he gave the order to go burn every village in sight as well as kill every peasant that lived in the village while plundering in order to put Albert in a difficult position in order to get him to come to them.

The generals told the soldiers the orders that they have been given as the soldiers started to silently run towards a nearby village and they began massacring it as well as burning down the entire village in order to prove how much of a threat that they are to not only the people, but, also, to Albert, himself.

Swain captured many women and children as he sent them to his kingdom in order to keep them as an hostage for him to use to increase the size of his Kingdom's population while killing the men, who tried to fight off Swain's soldiers, in the process as he and his army made their way down south towards Albert's kingdom.

Along the way, he killed many male villagers and capturing their wives as well as their children, who he sent to his kingdom as hostages, while he kept going down southwards until they found a suitable place to get some sleep with his men as they needed their strength for tomorrow if they are going to defeat Albert.

The next morning was more of the same as they continued down southwards while capturing every women and Children from every village as well as sending them to his kingdom along with killing the men of the villages in an attempt to decrease the population of the people of Albert's kingdom, which was clearly working.

Nearly every village had it's men totally decimated by Swain and his army while the women as well as the children were sent to Swain's kingdom to be kept as prisoners of war and news of the atrocity was travelling fast as Arthur's father, a royal messenger called Leofric, was sent out by Queen Maria to warn Albert of the invasion.

What made matters worse was the fact that the escaped rebels, who managed to escape both Alfred and Albert, are joining forces with Swain as they attempted to get revenge on Albert for getting involved with their fight against Alfred while making it clear that Albert has a difficult decision to make for what he should do next.

Should he stay where he is and gather more troops for a better chance of winning or should he March north to save what is left of his kingdom...He chose the latter and he did have help as Alfred was coming with him alongside his four thousand men to defeat an invasion that threatened everything the two held dear.

Luckily, though, there was some good news because of the fact that the northern Earls have marched north to defend their village from the invaders and this news made Albert sigh in relief of the fact that he has got a chance to get to the north of his kingdom and help his Earls in defeating the invasion force.