Building a Viking Empire with Modern Industry-Chapter 202: Shattered Vanguard

With Ragnar and Bjorn anchoring a pitifully thin line of defenders against an ocean of howling madness. Barely a hundred men of the Iron Guard stood with their Lord, bracing their blackened steel shields and leveling their ash spears against the crushing weight of two thousand enraged, cannibalistic berserkers. Since the devastating internal explosion of the Gyda had robbed them of their heavy naval support, the sheer arithmetic of the battlefield dictated a swift, brutal demise for the outmanned industrialists.

Seeing his Lord hopelessly outnumbered in the churning, icy mud below, Gyda did not allow the paralyzing grip of despair to cloud her fiercely analytical mind. Standing tall upon the precipice of the eastern ridge, the Master of the Ledgers commanded a reserve force of nearly a hundred and fifty fresh Grenadiers, their repeating crossbows fully loaded and their heavy iron powder-pots primed for ignition.

"Do not let them swallow the Director’s line!" Gyda screamed over the shrieking gale. "Ignite the fuses! Rain the absolute fury of the forge upon their heads! I want every square inch of that beach bathed in fire and shrapnel!"

Moving with the mechanical precision that Ragnar had drilled into their very bones, the Grenadiers stepped to the edge of the snowy cliff. Striking flint to steel, they sparked the tarred fuses of their heavy, spherical hand-grenades, waiting a breathless second before hurling the deadly iron orbs high into the stormy sky.

Simultaneously, the crossbowmen locked their stocks against their shoulders, unleashing a relentless, whistling volley of steel-tipped bolts that blotted out the pale morning light.

Down in the mud, Ragnar expertly parried a rusted battleaxe with the hidden blade of his silver-tipped cane, smoothly drawing a heavy flintlock pistol from his belt with his free hand.

Discharging the weapon point-blank into the chest of a screaming warlord, Ragnar kicked the falling corpse away.

"Keep your shields locked tight!" Ragnar roared, reloading his pistol. "The mountain will answer our call! Hold the line, and let them pile their dead against our steel!" 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Though the Gore-King’s warriors were hardened by the freezing winters of the North and bred for the savage intimacy of an axe-fight, they possessed absolutely no defense against the terrifying, indiscriminate slaughter of the new industrial age.

A split second later, the sky completely fell upon the invading horde. Dozens of heavy iron grenades plummeted into the tightly packed ranks of the berserkers, their fuses burning down to the volatile black powder packed within.

The resulting chain of detonations was nothing short of apocalyptic. Deafening, thunderous booms echoed off the sheer rock walls of the fjord, ripping massive, bloody holes in the center of the cannibal army. Jagged shards of red-hot shrapnel tore through boiled leather armor and chainmail severing limbs and sending broken bodies flying into the freezing surf.

Before the horde could even attempt to process the explosive devastation reigning down from the heavens, the twin brass field cannons stationed in the village joined. Belching massive plumes of orange fire through the blizzard, grinding dozens of men into the snowy earth.

That is, until the sheer, incomprehensible horror of the situation finally shattered the unbreakable frenzy of the berserker charge.

Within the span of a few agonizing minutes, over five hundred of the Gore-King’s most fearsome warriors had been reduced to a smoking carpet of flesh and shattered iron. The remaining invaders stopped their advance, dropping their bloodied axes as they stared in wide-eyed, paralyzing terror at the mangled corpses of their brethren.

"What manner of sorcery is this?" a blood-spattered chieftain wailed, falling to his knees as a steel crossbow bolt embedded itself deeply into the wooden deck of a nearby longship. "The gods rain fire upon us! The iron-men command the lightning!"

After all, a chaotic horde of savages relies entirely on the terrifying, physical presence of its warlord to anchor its courage in the face of overwhelming adversity. Had King Erik Blood-Tooth been standing on that beach, roaring his fanatical, blood-soaked speeches and driving his men forward with the edge of his own blade, they might have possessed the sheer madness required to push through the explosive barrage.

Yet, their monstrous monarch was absent, having sent his vanguard to do his dirty work while he remained safe within his mountain fortress. Without the Gore-King there to enforce their discipline through fear, the suffocating grip of absolute panic rapidly infected the surviving warriors.

Despite this overwhelming display of firepower, a handful of fanatic veterans desperately attempted to rally the breaking line, screaming curses at their fleeing comrades while wildly waving their chipped swords in the air.

"Stand and fight, you cowards! The Gore-King will feast on your livers if you run!" one veteran bellowed, charging blindly toward the Iron Guard’s shield wall.

Stepping forward with a savage grin, Bjorn swung his massive Danish broadsword in a devastating, two-handed arc, cleanly severing the veteran’s head from his shoulders before the man could finish his threat.

"Send my regards to your king, you ugly bastard!" the giant general laughed, wiping a spray of blood from his heavily scarred cheek.

Seeing his last remaining warlord decapitated so effortlessly, the final shreds of the horde’s resolve completely dissolved.

Thus, the terrifying, unstoppable army of the North broke into a scrambling rout. Screaming in terror, the berserkers trampled over their own wounded, throwing away their shields and weapons as they sprinted desperately back toward the freezing surf.

They fought one another with animalistic desperation to clamber over the wooden gunwales of the surviving longships, desperately shoving their comrades into the icy water in a mad scramble to escape the roaring cannons and the relentless hail of steel bolts from the ridge.

"They are breaking!" Bjorn roared, raising his bloody sword high into the air as the massive crush of bodies retreated toward the sea. "Do we pursue them into the water, Iron Father? We can sink their ships before they even raise their sails."

Nevertheless, Ragnar slowly lowered his smoking pistol.

"Let them run, Bjorn,

If we slaughter them all on this beach, there will be no one left to carry our message back to the mountains. Let those broken men sail back to their master and tell him exactly what happens when you attempt to tax the Iron Empire."

Afterward, a heavy, ringing silence slowly settled over the blood-soaked shoreline of Kattegat, broken only by the whistling gale of the blizzard and the frantic splashing of the retreating longships disappearing into the dense sea fog.

The surviving Iron Guards lowered their heavy bucklers, collapsing to their knees as they gasped for breath, entirely exhausted but victorious against impossible odds.

Making her way carefully down the icy, winding path from the eastern ridge, Gyda finally arrived on the beach. Walking past the smoking craters and the piles of dead berserkers, she stopped beside Ragnar.

"A highly inefficient use of our explosive reserves, my Lord," Gyda noted dryly, though the subtle tremor in her hands betrayed her lingering fear for his safety.

"But I suppose the complete routing of an army of two thousand men justifies the sudden deficit in our armory."

"You balanced the books perfectly, my dear," Ragnar chuckled, reaching out to gently squeeze her gloved hand. "Your timing saved the entire executive branch from an untimely liquidation. Remind me to double the hazard pay for the Grenadiers when we return to Titan."

Bjorn stomped over, kicking a discarded axe into the surf. "They ran like whipped dogs! But the Gore-King will not let this insult stand. When he hears that his fleet was sent packing by a fraction of his numbers, he will march his entire mountain host down the Serpent’s Pass to crush us..."