Building a Viking Empire with Modern Industry

"Lord Lothair..." a nervous infantry captain whispered, riding up slowly beside him.

"Should I order the musket men to form a line and shoot him? "

Lothair looked through the clearing smoke.

The man in the tailored coat hadn’t even flinched during the explosions.

"...."

"But what next? We shoot him, he dies. Does his death magically remove the bombs from the gravel?"

The captain swallowed hard, shaking his head. "No, my Lord."

"...." Lothair sighed heavily. "He is just a piece of bait. Killing him changes absolutely nothing about our current problem."

Though the urge to cut the smug general down was incredibly strong, Lothair forced himself to remain cold.

"Then what do we do, Commander?" the captain asked, looking at the dense forests bordering the wide road.

"Do we go through another way? We can turn the carts around and try to march through the trees again."

Lothair narrowed his sharp eyes, scanning the tree line.

"Are all the ways like that?" Lothair asked quietly, entirely to himself.

He turned to the captain. "Think about it, boy. If they spent the time to bury explosives under a perfectly smooth road, what do you think they did to the narrow hunting trails hidden in the dark woods? If we step off this gravel, we could be walking into a invisible minefield made of tripwires and exploding tree stumps. The road is a trap, yes, but at least we can see the road."

After hearing such words, the captain went pale. "Then we are entirely trapped. We cannot move forward, and we cannot go around."

"We are not trapped," Lothair growled. He turned his horse around to face the artillery train waiting behind the vanguard.

"The only way is using the artillery." Lothair declared.

The engineers standing near the carts blinked in confusion.

"Bring the bronze cannons forward!" Lothair roared, drawing his sword and pointing it at the explosive road.

"All fifty of them! Unhitch the horses and line the heavy barrels up right at the edge of the tree line!"

"My Lord?" the master engineer stammered, stepping forward. "But... we cannot even see the Viking defenses yet! The port is still miles away! What are we shooting at?"

"We are shooting at the fucking dirt!" Lothair screamed. "If stepping on the gravel makes it explode, then dropping a solid iron ball on it will do the exact same thing! We are going to bombard the road!"

Thus, the absolute ruthlessness of the Frankish commander shone through the panic.

He had quickly figured out how to beat King Erik’s invisible death trap without sacrificing a single one of his men.

"Move them up!" the engineers yelled, whipping the draft horses.

The fifty heavy bronze cannons were slowly dragged out of the forest and lined up along the edge of the cleared valley.

They were spaced tightly together, their muzzles pointed down the long stretch of crushed gravel.

Out in the mud, Marshal Gauzlin was still lying flat on his stomach, shivering uncontrollably.

"Gauzlin!" Lothair shouted, riding close to the edge of the danger zone.

"Listen to me! When the cannons fire, the shockwaves are going to trigger everything around you.

The second the smoke clears, you get up and run back to us! Do you understand me?!"

"Y-Yes!" Gauzlin sobbed loudly, pressing his hands over his ringing ears. "Just get me out of here!"

Lothair turned back to the artillery line. The men were pouring the black powder down the bronze barrels, packing it tightly with long wooden rams.

They loaded the heavy, solid iron balls, angling the wooden carriages downward so the projectiles would bounce and skip violently across the flat gravel surface.

"Is the powder packed?!" Lothair demanded.

"We are fully loaded, Lord Lothair!" the master engineer saluted, holding a burning torch.

"All fifty guns are primed and ready!"

Lothair turned his horse around, looking down the valley at the man sitting at the table.

The man had finally stopped drinking his wine.

He was sitting up perfectly straight in his chair, staring at the long line of bronze cannons.

Lothair smiled.

He raised his heavy broadsword high into the air.

"Fire the volley!" Lothair roared.

The edge of the forest erupted in a blinding flash of orange fire and thick, choking black smoke.

Fifty heavy bronze cannons roared at the exact same time, their recoil entirely shaking the frozen ground beneath Lothair’s horse.

It was a magnificent display of raw power... fifty solid iron balls flew out of the barrels, hitting the crushed gravel road with crushing force.

And Lothair’s theory proved right.

The heavy iron balls slammed into the dirt, skipping forward and smashing into the hidden metal triggers.

The entire valley instantly turned into an explosive hellscape.

KRA-BOOM! CRASH!

Secondary explosions ripped through the road as the hidden mines were detonated by the artillery fire.

Massive geysers of fire, rocks, and black smoke shot high into the air, creating a chain reaction that tore the gravel road to pieces.

"It’s working!" the Frankish infantry cheered wildly, pumping their fists in the air as they watched the trap being destroyed by their own guns.

The earth shuddered. Gauzlin screamed as the explosions tore up the ground just a few feet away from him, covering his armor in showers of hot dirt and splinters.

When the deafening noise finally stopped, the valley was unrecognizable... the smooth road was entirely gone, replaced by a smoking wasteland of blasted earth and burning rocks.

"Gauzlin, run!" Lothair shouted.

The Marshal scrambled to his feet, slipping in the loose dirt, and sprinted back toward the safety of the Frankish lines as fast as his heavy armor would allow.

He collapsed entirely near Lothair’s horse, panting and coughing up black smoke.

He slowly raised his spyglass to his eye, looking through the settling dust toward the center of the valley.

The wooden table was gone, splintered into a thousand tiny pieces by the flying shrapnel and iron balls. The silver cups were crushed.

But the man...

The man in the tailored coat wasn’t dead... he was standing still just behind a crater, unharmed, dusting the dirt off his sleeves.

He looked unbothered by the fact that fifty heavy cannons had just destroyed the entire world around him...

The man slowly looked up, meeting Lothair’s gaze across the smoky distance.

He actually looked pleased... he raised his hand and gave the Frankish commander a slow wave.

"Why is he waving at me?" Lothair whispered to himself, a sweat breaking out on his forehead.

And then, the realization hit him.

If the man had survived the artillery barrage so easily, it meant he knew exactly where it was safe to stand.

"Lord Lothair!" the master engineer suddenly screamed, "The wheels! Look at the wheels!"

Lothair snapped his head down. Because they had rushed to line the heavy cannons up right at the edge of the tree line, the recoil of the fifty guns firing at once had pushed the carts violently backward into the unpaved mud of the forest floor.

"What about the wheels?!" Lothair demanded.

"They are sinking, my Lord!" the engineer cried out, trying to pull a spoke out of the dirt.

"The recoil pushed them into a hidden marsh! The cannons are stuck in the mud!"

They had destroyed the bombed road... but they had immobilized their own weapons in the process.

Did the man in the valley force them to fire their cannons from a spot where the ground was too soft to withstand the recoil?

Lothair slowly looked back out at the smiling man in the distance.

If this nameless general had just outsmarted an entire Frankish army without firing a single shot... what was waiting for them when they finally reached the port?