Chapter 451: Mythological Demon!
Perched precariously atop a steep, rocky promontory overlooking the churning grey sea was the newly reinforced coastal redoubt of Fort Dunseverick.
Within the mortar-bound stone walls of this mountain stronghold sat a modest, dimly lit church.
It was a place of desperate sanctuary in a land that had known nothing but the bloody churn of tribal warfare for centuries...
On this particular morning, the wooden pews were packed to the brim with exhausted peasants, local merchants, and heavily armed militiamen.
At the altar stood an elderly, frail priest, his hands clasped tightly together as he led the congregation in a fervent, tear-streaked prayer.
This was the genuine pleading of a populace that had been bled dry.
For decades, the Irish tribes had slaughtered one another over petty territorial disputes, only to be subsequently ravaged by the brutal, seafaring raids of traditional Viking longships.
"O merciful Creator,"
"Deliver us from the endless cycles of slaughter.
Shield our sons from the spear, and our daughters from the fires of the raiders.
Grant this fractured land the peace it so desperately craves.
Let the soil drink water, not the blood of our kin. No more wars, O Lord. We beg of you... no more wars."
The congregation murmured a unified, tearful "Amen."
They desired nothing more than to tend their fields, raise their livestock, and live out their meager lifespans without the constant, looming threat of a violent death...
However, they were unaware that their localized suffering was merely a byproduct of a much larger shift occurring across the island.
Over the past several months, the infamous warlord known as Ivar the Boneless had restructured the political and logistical foundation of Ulster.
Having declared himself the "Prime Minister" of a centralized Irish state, Ivar had forcibly dragged the tribal chieftains into a crude imitation of modern governance.
Recognizing the inherent vulnerability of coastal settlements to naval blockades, Ivar had made a calculated, albeit brutal, logistical decision.
He had dismantled the traditional, centralized docks of the main city.
In their place, he had decentralized the region’s naval infrastructure, establishing a network of heavily fortified, elevated military docks along the coastal mountains, of which Fort Dunseverick was the primary hub.
By moving the docks out of the vulnerable city centers and placing them on defensible, elevated peninsulas, Ivar had essentially nullified the threat of traditional Viking raids.
To manage the massive logistical hurdle of transporting goods and armaments from these remote mountain forts inland to the population centers, Ivar’s crude engineers had designed a system of heavy, reinforced wooden carts.
These carts operated on grooved, timber-paved tracks, pulled by teams of massive draft horses... a localized attempt at establishing a continuous supply chain.
Ivar’s reforms were brutally effective, but they had required exorbitant taxation and forced labor, pushing the peasantry to the absolute brink of starvation and despair.
Thus, the people prayed.
They prayed for peace, oblivious to the fact that their warlord’s attempts at modernization had drawn the ire of a sovereign who possessed a monopoly on the future.
Just as the old priest lowered his head to conclude the morning liturgy, a sound completely alien to the medieval world pierced the sanctity of the church...
It did not sound like the familiar, terrifying blast of a carved horn, nor was it the rhythmic, wooden thumping of oars striking the water.
It was a prolonged, deafening, and entirely mechanical shriek.
The high-pitched squeal of highly pressurized steam releasing through brass valves echoed across the mountainside, a sound so unnatural and piercing that several peasants covered their ears, believing it to be the wail of a mythological demon.
This was immediately followed by a deep thudding that seemed to vibrate through the very bedrock of the mountain.
Thump. Thump. Thump!
It was the churning of heavy steel pistons operating at maximum capacity.
The congregation froze in a state of absolute, paralyzing confusion.
The local militia commander, a battle-hardened veteran wearing a thick, boiled-leather cuirass, instinctively drew his broadsword.
"What manner of beast makes such a sound?" the commander demanded.
Abandoning the sanctuary of the church, the commander, followed closely by the panicked priest and the terrified congregation, rushed out into the biting winds of the fort’s central courtyard.
They scrambled up the stone steps to the elevated ramparts. Because Fort Dunseverick was situated atop a coastal mountain, its battlements provided an unparalleled, panoramic vantage point of the entire northern sea.
As the local populace peered over the thick stone parapets, their medieval minds completely fractured at the sheer logistical impossibility of the sight unfolding before them.
Approaching their shores was not a fleet of wooden longships, nor was it a traditional armada of wind-dependent cogs.
Cutting through the choppy waves of the Atlantic was a sprawling, mechanized armada of Iron Kingdom ironclads!
The riveted steel hulls of the warships gleamed menacingly beneath the overcast sky, impervious to the turbulent waters.
Towering above the decks were colossal, iron-wrought smokestacks, belching suffocating plumes of black coal smoke that literally blotted out the morning sun.
The Irish peasants fell to their knees upon the stone ramparts, weeping openly.
Their prayers for peace had been answered with the arrival of apocalypse... Did they pray the wrong way? Or did this Christian God abandon them?
To a populace whose entire technological framework revolved around plows and iron horseshoes, the ironclads did not look like ships; they looked like floating, fire-breathing fortresses forged by an angry god.
The militia commander’s broadsword slipped from his trembling grip, clattering loudly against the floor.
He stared blankly at the massive, rifled steel cannons protruding from the heavily armored gun decks of the approaching warships.
He had heard the localized rumors, suppressed by Ivar’s nascent bureaucracy, of a massive, unstoppable empire across the eastern sea...
He had heard the drunken whispers of merchants who spoke of a sovereign who wielded weapons of smoke and thunder.
He had dismissed them as the exaggerated myths of fearful men.
Now, the myth was dropping anchor in his harbor.
"They are not stopping at the old city docks," one of the merchants stammered. "They are steering directly for the fort... for the new supply tracks!"
The commander’s breath hitched in his throat.
On the decks, through the black smoke, the commander could see the formations of musketeers locking their bayonets into place.
The Iron Kingdom was invading them...