Chapter 301: Cannons on the Wall
Bjorn choked on his own breath, "Eight hundred?"
"Erik, the entire local population of Calais is roughly three thousand people! Do you realize what you’ve done? Taking in eight hundred terrified prisoners is a massive number compared to the citizens already living here!"
"They are perfectly fine!" Erik defended himself, "We haven’t harmed them. They are safely locked away. Come, I will show you!"
Without waiting for an answer, Erik turned and marched quickly down the stairs.
Eventually, Erik led Bjorn to a courtyard located near the old city barracks. Dozens of fierce Northern warriors stood guard around the perimeter.
"Open the gates!" Erik ordered the guards.
The courtyard was massive, but it was crowded. Eight hundred people... men, women, and teenagers were huddled together in groups on the cold stone floor.
When Bjorn, with his facial scars, stepped into the courtyard, a ripple of terror swept through the prisoners.
Mothers pulled their children closer. Young men glared at Bjorn with a mixture of hatred and fear, clutching the dirt as if wishing it were a sword.
"You see?" Erik smiled, pointing at the crowd. "They are safe. We feed them the grain we took from their own barns, and during the day, we make them dig trenches. A very fair trade!"
Bjorn stepped away from Erik and walked slowly toward the center of the courtyard.
"I know you’re terrified," Bjorn said. "Tomorrow, or perhaps the day after, the greatest army this continent has ever seen will march upon this city."
"Tens of thousands of Frankish and Germanic knights will come here to crush us. But let me tell you the truth... they do not care about you. If they breach these walls, their heavy horses will trample this city into dust. They will not ask if you are a Northern soldier or a Frankish farmer. You will all be swept away in their blind fury."
Bjorn stopped in the center of the courtyard. "Erik, cut their ropes."
Erik blinked, "Bjorn, are you mad? There are eight hundred of them! If they riot..."
"They will not riot!" Bjorn looked directly at the farmers.
For a long moment, nobody moved. The tension in the air was thicker than a brick wall.
Then, slowly, a young farmer stood up.
"...if we work for you," the young man asked, "Will the Iron King truly protect us from the knights?"
"My friend," Bjorn chuckled, "By the time the Iron King is finished with them... there won’t be any knights left to fear."
...
For the first time in what felt like weeks, Bjorn had fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep.
The exhaustion of crossing the sea, the stress of hiding the black powder, and the weight of freeing eight hundred Frankish prisoners had finally caught up with him.
The door of Bjorn’s room exploded open.
"Commander! Commander Bjorn! Wake up!"
Bjorn’s eyes snapped open. He rolled out of the bed, his hand gripping the hilt of a heavy iron dagger resting on the bedside table.
Standing in the doorway, panting heavily and completely out of breath, was Halvar, Bjorn’s left-hand marshal.
"Halvar, what in the name of the Gods is wrong?" Bjorn growled, quickly tossing the dagger aside and grabbing his armor from a chair.
"Did the prisoners riot? Did someone drop a torch near the powder crates?"
"No, Commander! The prisoners are hauling supplies just like they promised," Halvar gasped, pointing a finger toward the window.
"It is the south! You need to come to the walls immediately! You have to see this to believe it!"
Bjorn quickly strapped his chest plate over his broad shoulders, grabbed his broadsword, and sprinted out of the room.
He flew up the steep stone steps leading to the southern battlements, taking them three at a time.
As he reached the top of the towering wall, he found King Erik already standing there.
"Erik?" Bjorn asked, "What is it?"
"Look," Erik whispered.
Bjorn stepped up to the edge and looked out over the southern plains.
The five hundred arrogant French vanguard knights from yesterday were no longer camping alone. In fact, their colorful silk tents had been entirely swallowed up by a unimaginable ocean of metal and flesh.
The Holy Order had arrived...
For as far as the eye could see, stretching all the way to the distant hills, the earth was completely covered by the grand army of the Frankish and Germanic empires.
There were tens of thousands of men standing in formation. Bjorn saw massive blocks of foot soldiers holding sharp spears. He saw thousands of swordsmen carrying heavy iron shields painted with crosses and royal crests. He saw endless lines of archers, stringing their longbows and checking their quivers.
And behind them, sitting upon warhorses draped in chainmail, was the heavy cavalry. Thousands upon thousands of knights.
Lumbering slowly across the grassy plains, pulled by massive teams of oxen, were the siege engines. The frames were completely covered in wet animal hides to protect them from flaming arrows.
Behind the rams rolled the covered mobile siege towers. They were gigantic wooden structures built on massive wheels, standing even taller than the stone walls of Calais.
Inside these wooden monsters, hundreds of enemy soldiers were waiting to be dropped directly onto the battlements.
And finally, positioned at the back of the massive army, Bjorn saw the traction trebuchets.
"By the Gods," Bjorn murmured. "The Pope truly did not spare a single silver coin. They brought everything they have."
"It is beautiful, isn’t it?" Erik finally spoke. "I have never seen so many men gathered in one place! The bards are going to sing about this day for a thousand years!"
.....
Bjorn looked at Erik and couldn’t help but chuckle.
"Are we ready?" Bjorn asked, turning his attention away from the horizon and looking down at his own forces on the walls.
"We are more than ready," Erik cheered, slapping Bjorn on the shoulder. He pointed to the center of the reinforced battlements.
"When we captured this city, Ragnar gave me very specific instructions. He told me that when the grand army finally arrived, I was to take all ten of the field artillery cannons we brought on the ships and set them up right here on the walls!"
Bjorn followed Erik’s finger. Resting behind the stone parapets were ten massive, beautiful beasts made of polished brass and iron.
Bjorn turned his attention to his left-hand marshal, "Halvar! Shake the fear out of your boots! Look at me!"
"I want the musketeers on the walls immediately," Bjorn commanded, "Line them up between the ten cannons. Two full ranks. When the first rank fires, they step back to reload, and the second rank steps forward. I want a continuous storm of lead pouring down on that army. With the height advantage of these walls, the musketeers can kill lots of the army before they even reach the moat."
"Yes, Commander!" Halvar shouted. He rushed down the steps, blowing his whistle to organize the three thousand musketeers.
Erik drew his heavy iron axe, "And what about the rest of the men, Bjorn? I have three thousand fierce warriors vibrating with excitement down in the city. And you brought a thousand pikemen. Should I bring them up to the walls to fight off the siege towers?"
Bjorn looked back at the shattered remains of the main city gates. The Frankish commanders would undoubtedly see it as the easiest path into the city and direct their massive battering rams and heavy infantry straight toward it.
"No," Bjorn said, "Do not crowd the walls. The muskets and the cannons need clear space to operate. I want you to take all of the pikemen, and make the warriors stand completely still by the wall doors."
Erik’s eyes lit up. "A chokepoint!"
"Exactly," Bjorn smiled wickedly. "If any of their knights or foot soldiers manage to survive the rain of musket fire and actually step foot inside Calais, they will run directly into a wall of fifteen-foot steel pikes."
"And while the pikes hold them in place," Erik laughed, swinging his axe, "my warriors will chop them to pieces from the sides!"
Down below, three thousand musketeers marched up the stone stairs. They took their positions along the battlements, resting their long iron barrels on the stone ledges, blowing on their slow matches, and checking their flint levers.
Down in the courtyard behind the shattered gates, Erik’s three thousand wild warriors let out a deafening war cry, banging their axes against their wooden shields.
In front of them, the thousand disciplined pikemen lowered their massive fifteen-foot steel spearsy.
Bjorn stood at the center of the wall, flanked by five field artillery cannons on his left and five on his right.
Suddenly, a deep horn blew from the center of the Frankish army.
The massive blocks of spearmen began to march forward. The wooden wheels of the massive siege towers groaned loudly as the oxen pulled them toward the walls. The knights drew their longswords.
Bjorn reached down and gently patted the cold brass barrel of the nearest field artillery cannon.
A young Viking gunner was standing by the fuse, holding a burning torch, waiting for the signal.
"Cannons!" Bjorn roared, "Fire!"