Chapter 435: The Steam Chariot
January 31, 871 AD.
Nearly five days had passed since King Ragnar’s fleet first anchored in the bay of Norway.
The promised abslute slaughter by the river had indeed happened, but war was rarely as simple or clean as a perfect plan drawn on a piece of smooth parchment.
The Frankish vanguard had been ambushed in the dead of night, and Commander Sigurd’s elite repeating rifles had shredded their outer camps.
However, Lord Lothair was not a stupid man.
The southern commander had rallied his surviving knights, abandoning the exposed riverbank.
He ordered his vanguard to retreat back toward the forest edge and the safety of the eastern beach.
It was a bloody fighting retreat that lasted for days, turning the Norwegian mud into a graveyard.
Thus, the grand war tent of the Iron Kingdom was filled with a tense atmosphere.
Richard stood near the large wooden map table, his tailored coat ruined by mud and dried blood.
He looked across the table at King Erik, the three foreign marshals, and King Ragnar, who was cleaning the steel mechanism of his rifle with an oily rag.
"The spies just returned from the southern beach, King Ragnar." Richard reported quietly, placing a small parchment onto the table. "The news is... frustrating."
"Spit it out, Richard," Domnall the Scot grunted. "Did Lothair finally freeze to death, or is the stubborn bastard still breathing our air?"
"He is entirely breathing, Marshal," Richard sighed heavily. "The ambush dealt them a defeat. We killed thousands of their infantry in the dark. But... they didn’t break. Lothair pulled his remaining forces back to the beach, and they set up a fortified trench line."
"How are they still holding on?!" Erik roared. "They have been sitting in the snow for five days! They should be starving to death by now!"
"They aren’t starving anymore, King Erik," Richard corrected, tracing a line from the southern ocean to the Norwegian beach on the map.
"...our scouts spotted deep-hulled transport ships anchoring near their camp early this morning.
Rations of salted meat, fresh grain, and heavy winter sails are coming to the Frankish vanguard directly from Denmark.
King Horik must be emptying his own storehouses to keep Lothair’s army alive.
If they are getting resupplied by sea, we lose the advantage of the winter freeze.
That is not the worst part, while we were busy pushing them back, Lothair used his engineers.
Surprisingly... they managed to dig their heavy bronze cannons out of the forest marsh. They hauled them back to the beach using wooden sleds. They have artillery cover again."
King Erik leaned over the table. "I lost two thousand and one hundred men...
Two thousand and one hundred of my best Icelandic and Norwegian fighters... either killed in the mud or taken prisoner by those southern dogs during the skirmishes.
All of that blood, and Lothair is still sitting on my beach with his cannons?"
Ragnar finally stopped wiping his rifle.
He calmly set the oily rag down and picked up the weapon.
"Lothair is a brilliant general." Ragnar said, his eyes locking onto the furious giant. "You don’t get to command thirty thousand of Emperor Louis’s best men by giving up when your boots get a little wet. I expected him to dig his bronze pigs out. I expected Denmark to send food. That is why I told Richard to bring the secret off the flagship."
After hearing such words, the three marshals shifted their attention to the Iron King.
For the last five days, that terrifying object hidden under the black canvas tarp had been sitting quietly behind their infantry lines.
The twelve draft horses needed to pull it had been kept well-fed, and a dozen heavily armed guards had refused to let anyone near it.
"Is it finally time, King Ragnar?" Eadberht asked, his Anglo-Saxon eyes wide with curiosity. "Are we going to unleash whatever is hiding under that tarp?"
Ragnar nodded, slinging the repeating rifle over his shoulder. "Lothair wants to sit on the beach behind a trench and point his bronze cannons at us? Fine."
Ragnar marched out of the command tent.
Richard, Erik, and the three marshals quickly followed right behind him.
Outside, the twelve thousand soldiers of the Iron Kingdom’s army were already formed up in their lines.
The wind whipped across the plains, but not a single man broke formation.
Ragnar walked entirely up to the beast, ignoring the whispers of the local Jarls and the murmurs of the infantry.
He grabbed the chains securing the canvas and yanked them loose.
"Pull it off!" Ragnar roared to the quartermasters.
The men grabbed the edges of the tarp and pulled hard.
The people of Norway gasped... thousands of hardened warriors, men who had seen bloody clan wars and ironclads, took a step back.
Sitting on the carriage was a primitive mechanical beast.
The wooden frame of the carriage was plated in iron armor, protecting the wheels and the internal gears.
Mounted on the back was a primitive steam engine... a smoking iron boiler with brass pipes that hissed angrily, leaking small puffs of white steam into the air.
But the most mind-bending part of the invention was sitting right in the center.
Instead of a single cannon pointing straight forward, there was a rotating circular iron platform.
And resting on top of that platform were three deadly steel cannons.
"What in the hell is that?" Domnall the Scot whispered.
"It’s a turret." Ragnar grinned, patting the iron plating of the carriage. "The steam engine in the back provides enough mechanical pressure to turn the heavy gears beneath it."
Richard stepped forward. He looked at the three steel cannons resting on the rotating circle.
"You... you can aim it?" Richard breathed out, amazed. "Without having to move the carriage? You can just turn the platform and look anywhere on the battlefield?"
"..." Ragnar nodded. "Lothair’s bronze cannons are fixed. If he wants to aim at a new target, his engineers have to lift and drag the carts in the mud. But this? The men sitting inside this box just pull a lever, the steam engine grinds the gears, and these three steel cannons can rotate a full circle."
King Erik slowly walked up to the monster, forgetting his earlier rage over the lost men.
"It’s a chariot..." Erik whispered. "A chariot made of fire, steam, and iron."
The whispers instantly spread through the twelve thousand men.
The local Norwegians didn’t understand the complex steam pressure or the high-grade steel casting, but they absolutely understood power.
The name caught fire in the wind, passing from soldier to soldier until it became an undeniable truth.
The Steam Chariot.
"Load the boiler with coal!" Ragnar commanded. "Ignite the furnace!"
The engineers scrambled onto the back of the carriage.
They shoveled coal into the roaring firebox. Within seconds, the steam engine began to chug and hiss.
The iron gears underneath the rotating turret groaned.
CHUG... HISS... GRIND!
The platform on top slowly, rotated to the right, aiming the three deadly steel cannons toward the southern forest where the Frankish vanguard was hiding.