Supreme Viking System-Chapter 66: First Contact

Dawn came thin and gray over the beachhead. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

Mist clung to the low grass and broken dunes, rolling in shallow waves from the sea, disturbed only by the ordered movement of men who did not speak unless required. The camp had taken shape through the night—trenches cut with measured depth, sharpened stakes driven at angles meant to maim rather than kill, ballista emplacements set with overlapping arcs that turned the shoreline into a killing ground should anyone be foolish enough to test it.

Three thousand five hundred men remained behind.

They did not complain.

They knew their purpose.

The fleet sat offshore like a line of dark beasts at rest, hulls creaking softly, steam pressure kept low but alive. The Salted Bear loomed among them, her silhouette unmistakable even through the fog—taller, broader, bristling with reinforced arms and iron fittings that did not belong to this age.

Anders stood at the edge of the camp, cloak drawn tight, eyes on the land rather than the sea.

England.

He tasted the word without speaking it.

Behind him, captains waited. Not impatiently. Not nervously. They had learned better than either. Anders had taught them that silence before movement was not hesitation—it was calculation.

He raised one hand.

Two thousand men broke from the camp without sound.

They moved inland like a shadow pulled loose from the earth.

The march was disciplined to the point of unnerving.

No songs. No chants. No rattling of shields.

Boots struck earth in cadence measured not by drum but by shared training. Steam-piston rams rolled forward on reinforced wagons, their iron-bound frames hissing faintly as pressure valves breathed. Twenty of them. Enough to break any gate that had ever been built—and many things that had not.

Ballista teams moved with the economy of craftsmen who had assembled and disassembled their weapons a hundred times before. Ten heavy engines, each carried in sections, bolts wrapped in oiled cloth, steel tips dull in the morning light.

Villages along the road did not resist.

They simply went quiet.

Windows shuttered. Doors closed. Smoke thinned as fires were damped. The land itself seemed to pull away from the road, leaving the column to pass through fields that suddenly felt too wide, too exposed.

Anders noted everything.

The quality of the soil.

The width of the tracks.

The distance between settlements.

Sancton revealed itself shortly before midday.

It lay open.

That was the first thing Anders understood—not as a thought, but as a certainty that settled into his chest.

No walls.

No ditch.

No palisade.

Wide streets ran between timber halls and clustered homes. Livestock grazed in penned fields near the outskirts. Smoke rose from cookfires. Children ran between buildings, chasing each other with sticks and laughter.

Prosperous.

Complacent.

Unready.

Anders raised his hand again.

The column halted outside bow range.

The men stopped as one.

From the hill overlooking Sancton, the settlement looked peaceful. Alive. Unaware.

A lesser leader might have rushed it.

A raider would have charged.

Anders did neither.

He studied it the way a craftsman studies flawed wood—seeing not what it was, but how it would break.

"Open," he said quietly.

Those nearest heard him. Others did not need to.

Orders flowed down the line without urgency.

Ballista teams began assembling their engines in full view of the town.

Steam rams were unhitched and aligned—not toward a central point, but spread wide, each aimed at a different structure of significance: the largest hall, the storehouses, the gathering square where authority would naturally collect.

The engines vented steam.

Not loudly.

Just enough.

The sound carried.

It was wrong. Alien. A pressure hiss that did not belong to bellows or hearths or beasts.

People in Sancton began to notice.

Movement slowed. Voices faltered. A knot of men gathered near the largest hall—unarmed, uncertain. Someone pointed.

A small group came forward.

Five men. No armor. One carried a staff marked with simple carvings. A speaker, perhaps. A priest. Or simply someone brave enough to walk.

They stopped well short of the engines.

Hands raised.

Anders watched them approach.

He did not move to meet them.

He let the silence stretch.

Let the men behind him finish tightening bolts, aligning frames, setting ranges with quiet precision.

Finally, one of the five called out—words carried by the breeze, nervous but formal. A greeting. A question. An offer to talk.

Anders waited until the steam hissed again.

Then he answered.

"Leave," he said.

The word was not shouted. It was not cruel.

It was final.

Confusion rippled through the group. One man tried again—something about peace, about trade, about not understanding why an army stood at their gates.

Anders raised his hand.

Dropped it.

The signal passed.

The first ballista bolt did not fly into the crowd.

It struck the roof of the largest hall.

The impact shattered timber and sent a spray of splinters skyward. The sound was not like an arrow or even a catapult—it was a deep, crushing report, as if the building itself had been punched by a god.

Screams followed.

The second bolt struck a storehouse.

The third collapsed a corner post, sending the structure sagging inward.

Only then did the rams move.

They did not charge.

They advanced.

Steam pistons drove iron heads forward with relentless force, smashing through walls that had never been meant to resist anything heavier than weather.

The hall fell in seconds.

Not in fire. Not in chaos.

It folded.

People ran.

Some toward the fields. Some toward the woods. Some simply away.

Anders allowed it.

Flight was useful.

Resistance came in pockets—men grabbing spears, forming loose lines, shouting to rally others.

They were brave.

They were irrelevant.

Crossbows snapped.

Bolts struck shields and bodies alike, punching through wood and flesh with equal indifference. The sound of impact was wet and final.

Anders moved forward with the line, visible, unmistakable. He did not rush. He directed.

"Here," he said, pointing.

"Leave that one," he ordered elsewhere.

"Take them alive," in one place.

"Break that," in another.

Leadership was dragged into the open.

A man who might have been a reeve was pulled screaming from beneath a collapsed beam. Another who wore better wool than the rest was seized as he tried to flee with a chest of valuables.

They were not executed immediately.

They were made to watch.

Within an hour, Sancton was finished.

Not destroyed.

Finished.

Smoke rose from controlled burns. Buildings that mattered lay broken. Storehouses were opened, contents catalogued. The dead were left where they fell, eyes wide with shock more than pain.

Anders stood in the center of the settlement, boots muddy, cloak stained with soot.

He did not look triumphant.

He looked satisfied.

"This will be known," he said to no one in particular.

The order was given to mark the town.

A sign was raised where the road entered Sancton—not in words, but in symbol. A broken spear. A shattered shield.

As the survivors fled into the countryside, Anders watched them go.

England would carry the story faster than any messenger.

By nightfall, the army camped amid the ruins.

Anders did not feast.

He stood alone for a moment, looking over the broken town, and then turned his gaze westward.

"Now," he said quietly, "they will listen."

The fires crackled.

The land remembered.

And the terror took shape.