Chapter 441: Praying to Not Exist
The Frankish and Danish combined army, now numbering a staggering 38,000 thousand men with their recent maritime reinforcements, froze.
Down in the trenches, the proud knights of Emperor Louis, the hardened musketeers, and the fierce Danish mercenaries stopped fighting.
Lord Lothair stood behind his wooden barricade, his southern armor covered in a layer of mud and the fresh blood of his own personal guard.
His tactical genius, the brilliant, adaptable mind that had elevated him to First Marshal before the age of forty, shut down.
He was looking at impossibility...
Breaching the morning mist, dwarfing the traditional wooden longships of the Danish fleet, were the three ironclads.
"What the hell is this...?"Lothair whispered.
However, the ironclads did not arrive just to put on a grand display... they were floating fortresses of industrialized death, designed by Ragnar’s sovereign intellect to dominate the seas.
On the bridge of the lead ironclad, the veteran captain... who had completely ignored Ragnar’s prior orders to remain in port raised a brass speaking trumpet to his lips.
"Port side batteries!" the captain roared, his voice echoing over the chugging of the steam boiler.
"Target the Danish transport fleet!"
"Range, four hundred paces! Fire at will!"
Deep within the steel bowels of the warship, highly trained artillerymen moved with precision.
They operated rifled steel naval guns mounted on complex rotating gears. They slammed thick cloth bags of refined black powder into the breeches, followed by conical high-explosive shells.
The sheer force of the ironclads’ broadside shattered the morning air... the steel warships slightly shifted in the water from the intense recoil, sending a suffocating cloud of black powder and coal smoke rolling across the waves.
Out in the waters of the bay, the destruction was absolute.
The steel shells did not just punch holes in the Danish vessels; they exploded upon impact. A pristine, centuries-old Viking longship was instantly vaporized in a fireball of splintered oak and burning pitch.
The explosion was so devastating that it caught the two transport cogs anchored right next to it, tearing their wooden hulls entirely in half!
The three Ironclads unleashed a hail of fire. The deafening roar of their cannons echoed incessantly, creating a catastrophic symphony of carnage that made everyone press their ears tightly to their ears.
In a matter of mere minutes, nearly 39 Viking ships were destroyed...
The burning wreckage of King Horik’s proud mercenary fleet littered the ocean. Hundreds of Danish soldiers, heavily weighed down by their chainmail and winter furs, were thrown into the icy depths.
Those who managed to survive the initial concussive blasts abandoned their sinking, burning ships.
They jumped into the water, swimming toward the shores of the beach, coughing up seawater and blood.
How? How could an entire naval fleet, a massive armada that had terrorized the coasts of Europe for decades, be obliterated in just a few minutes?
No one on that muddy beach could answer... to the feudal minds of the 38,000 men witnessing the slaughter, this was not a battle of men. This was the absolute wrath of angry gods. In fact, as the Frankish musketeers and the surviving knights looked at the smoking ironclads, many of them simply dropped their weapons into the mud.
They fell to their knees.
Some prayed to the Christian God, while the Danes prayed to Odin and Thor.
But deep down, their prayers were all entirely identical... they didn’t pray for victory, and they didn’t pray for salvation.
They just closed their eyes and prayed to not exist.
They wished the earth would open up and swallow them whole so they wouldn’t have to face these mechanical demons.
"They are destroying the fleet..." a Frankish officer sobbed, pulling off his helmet and falling to the dirt. "We are trapped!!"
While the sheer terror of the ironclads broke the enemy’s spirit, the ground forces of the Iron Kingdom showed no mercy.
"Do not stop firing!" Marshal Domnall the Scot roared, his claymore resting on his shoulder as he rode his horse behind the infantry blocks.
"They are broken!"
"Push the blocks forward!"
"Bleed them into the mud!"
The 8,000 riflemen, formed in their tight, Napoleon-style blocks, maintained their discipline.
They raised their repeating rifles, aiming down into the trenches, and unleashed devastating, concentrated volleys of lead.
On the flanks, the six Steam Chariots continued their work... the rotating iron turrets spun effortlessly, firing their three steel cannons point-blank into the routing clusters of Lothair’s heavy cavalry.
The once-proud knights of the southern empire were being butchered, their horses and shiny armor useless against high-grade industrial steel.
The 38,000 men of the combined Frankish and Danish army were trapped in a muddy vice. To their front and sides, the Steam Chariots and the thousands of northern riflemen were closing the distance, turning the beach into a localized slaughterhouse.
And to their rear, the three ironclads were slowly, churning through the burning wreckage of the fleet, pushing closer and closer to the shoreline...
It was only a matter of time. Everyone on the battlefield knew it.
Once those steel warships navigated through the shallow sandbars and brought their naval guns into direct range of the land, they wouldn’t just be shooting at wooden ships anymore.
They would aim those devastating shells into the concentrated masses of the Frankish infantry.
It would erase Lothair’s entire army from the pages of history.
From his commanding position atop the lead Steam Chariot, Ragnar watched the devastation unfold with entirely cold eyes.
"They are broken, King Ragnar," Richard breathed out, standing near the chugging boiler.
The southern scholar’s hands were shaking as he tightly gripped his parchment. He had studied every great military mind in human history, but he had never witnessed a systemic annihilation like this.
"Lord Lothair’s lines have collapsed. They are surrendering to the mud."
"I didn’t come here to fight a war, Richard." Ragnar murmured.
After hearing such words, Richard swallowed hard. "Then what did you come here to do, my King?"
"..." Ragnar didn’t reply and slowly turned his gaze back to the vast Frankish army floundering helplessly in the mud.
He saw the Danish reinforcements swimming to the shore, only to be immediately gunned down by the disciplined volleys of his riflemen.
He reached down to his hip and gripped the hilt of his broadsword. With a smooth, practiced motion, he drew the blade from its scabbard.
Ragnar raised his sword high into the air, pointing it at the heart of the breaking enemy lines.
"All forces!" Ragnar roared. "Final march! Crush them all!"
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A/N:
Rule #4: If a guy in full steel armor tells you the sun rises from the west, just agree and keep moving so you don’t look like an argument worth winning.