Chapter 439: The Ironclads
The iron ball tore through the morning air, screaming like a dying beast before it slammed into the beach.
A geyser of dirt, shattered wood, and broken bodies erupted from the center of the Frankish trenches.
"Push the lines forward!" Marshal Domnall roared, his claymore raised high as he rode his shaggy horse behind the infantry blocks.
"Keep the push-cannons rolling!"
"Do not let the wheels sink into the mud!"
Long lines of lightweight steel cannons were shoved forward by the sweating artillerymen.
Right beside them, tight lines of riflemen raised their repeating weapons, while lines of infantry kept their steel pikes angled outward to repel any sudden cavalry charge.
They were trying to go around the craters, keeping their Napoleon-style block formations completely intact.
However, standing on the high ramparts of his beach camp, the Frankish commander ignored the chaos erupting around him.
He just raised his own sword, pointing it at the slowly advancing blocks of northern steel.
"Return fire!" Lothair screamed at the top of his lungs.
"Cannons, aim for their dense squares!"
"Musketeers, keep your loose formations and bleed them dry!"
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The heavy Frankish bronze cannons, which had been dragged out of the marsh just days prior, roared back to life.
Though Ragnar’s block formations were tactically brilliant for defense, packing a thousand men into a tight square turned them into an unmissable target for heavy artillery.
A bronze cannonball skipped across the freezing mud, smashing into the front line of Eadberht’s infantry block.
The sheer force of the impact tore through the iron-plated armor of the shield men.
Dozens of trained northern soldiers were crushed, their broken bodies thrown into the air in a spray of bright crimson.
"Hold the line, damn it!" Eadberht screamed, his horse panicking from the smell of fresh blood.
"Close the gaps!"
"...keep marching!"
People were dying from both sides in staggering numbers.
The Iron Kingdom’s repeating rifles cracked, sending hundreds of lead balls whistling down into the trenches.
But because Lothair had ordered his musketeers to spread out in thin, light skirmish lines, the devastating northern volleys were only hitting a handful of men at a time.
The Frankish musketeers would pop up from the muddy ditches, fire their primitive, single-shot weapons, and quickly duck back down.
"They are chewing up our front lines, King Ragnar!" Richard yelled, grabbing the brass railing of the Steam Chariot to keep his balance as the machine chugged forward.
"Lothair’s loose lines are countering our concentrated fire!"
Ragnar gritted his teeth, his eyes scanning the battlefield.
He watched another bronze cannonball shatter a wooden push-cannon, killing three of his engineers instantly.
War was never perfectly clean, and watching his own men bleed in the mud sent a hot spike of pure fury straight into his chest...
"The stubborn bastard is trying to turn this into a war of attrition." Ragnar grunted, racking the heavy lever of his own repeating rifle.
He aimed down the sights and fired, dropping a Frankish officer who was foolish enough to stand on a barricade.
Richard pulled out his parchment. "Do we halt the blocks? If we keep marching straight into their bronze cannons, we will lose thousands of men before we even reach their trenches!"
"We don’t halt for anyone!" Ragnar barked.
The center was too heavily fortified. Lothair wanted them to march straight into the meat grinder.
Ragnar turned around and kicked the hatch of the Steam Chariot’s boiler room.
"Engineer!" Ragnar roared over the hissing steam.
"Change your angle!"
"Break away from the center blocks!"
The lead engineer popped his head out of the hatch, covered in coal dust.
"Where to, my King?!"
"Tell the drivers of the other five chariots to split up!" Ragnar commanded, pointing his finger toward the far edges of the beach.
"I want you to go with the infantry on the outer flanks!"
"Roll around their scattered lines and kill them from the sides!"
".....?"
"Right away, King Ragnar!"
The Steam Chariot jerked to the right. The steam engine chugged harder, pushing the beast toward the western flank of the Frankish camp.
Thus, the mobility of Ragnar’s invention changed the flow of the battle.
Lothair’s men had spread out to avoid the frontal volleys, but they lacked any heavy defenses on their sides.
As the Steam Chariot rolled alongside Wulfhere’s infantry block, the turret on top slowly rotated, aiming its three cannons down the length of the Frankish trenches.
"Fire the turret!" Ragnar screamed.
The three cannons fired in unison... because they were now firing from the side, the steel balls didn’t just hit the dirt; they swept straight down the open trenches, tearing through dozens of Frankish musketeers like a hot knife slicing through soft butter.
The loose skirmish lines that had brilliantly protected them from frontal fire were useless when a rolling fortress was shooting them from the side.
"It’s working, my King!" Richard cheered, a wild grin breaking across his face.
"The flanks are entirely crumbling!"
"...If we keep this pressure up, Lothair will be forced to pull his men back to the shoreline!"
Though the land battle was finally tilting heavily in the Iron Kingdom’s favor, Ragnar hadn’t forgotten the final, fatal piece of his grand trap.
He leaned against the iron boiler and pulled his brass spyglass from his belt.
He needed to check the timing...
He had ordered twenty quiet, traditional wooden ships — fitted with light steel cannons — to silently navigate the deep river and the open sea to hit Lothair from the rear.
If those ships arrived right now, the Frankish vanguard would be wiped off the face of the earth.
Ragnar brought the tube to his eye, ignoring the smoke and chaos of the battlefield around him.
He scanned the distant horizon of the ocean, and then slowly shifted the glass toward the mouth of the wide eastern river.
"Come on, you slow bastards..." Ragnar muttered to himself. "Where are the wooden ships?"
He finally spotted them.
Cutting through the water were the twenty longships and deep-hulled cogs he had ordered.
They were in position, their sails full of the biting winter wind.
But he didn’t just see the quiet wooden ships.
Sailing behind them, tearing through the deep water of the ocean and the wide river, were m towering silhouettes entirely plated in thick, dark steel.
They were spewing clouds of black coal smoke into the gray sky, their steam engines churning the freezing water into angry white foam.
They were his ironclads.
Not just one or two...
A squadron of the warships was bearing down on the Frankish beach, ignoring the stealthy, quiet approach he had meticulously planned.
"Hmm?" Ragnar whispered, slowly lowering the spyglass from his eye.
Richard noticed the sudden shift in the King’s demeanor. "King Ragnar?"
"The wooden ships are there," Ragnar muttered quietly. "But they aren’t alone."
"Not alone?" Richard blinked, confused. "Did King Horik send more Danish reinforcements to the beach?"
"No," Ragnar answered, staring out at the black smoke rising over the ocean horizon. "Those are my ironclads. The heavy destroyers."
Richard’s eyes went wide. "Your ironclads? But... you explicitly ordered the reserve captains to leave them at the port."
"I know exactly what I ordered, Richard." Ragnar gritted his teeth.
----
A/N:
Rule #2: Perfect tactical plans only last until your own captains decide that heavy steel warships look too cool to leave behind in the port.