Viking: Master of the Icy Sea

Chapter 268: Overwhelming Advantage

Assembly complete, the soldiers turned the ratchet at the rear of the ballista. It let out a teeth-grating "click-clack" as it drew back the bowstring inch by inch. They then hefted a thick, heavy arrow into the groove.

The captain manned the ballista, taking aim at the watchtower to the left of the main gate. He struck the release mechanism with a wooden mallet. The massive projectile struck true, punching right through the wooden planks and skewering the archer hiding behind them.

At the same time, another ballista took aim at the right watchtower. Terrified, the archers stationed there scrambled frantically down their long ladders.

Under the covering fire of the ballistae and two hundred archers, ten shield-bearing soldiers charged the main gate. They hurled their fire pots with all their might. With a chorus of sharp crashes, the clay vessels shattered against the wood. Viscous, flammable oil sludged down the doors, staining the surrounding earth pitch-black.

"Loose!"

Bracken ordered the longbowmen to unleash a concentrated volley of fire arrows. The oak doors of the palisade instantly caught alight. Orange-red flames licked hungrily at the wooden planks, crackling and popping. A few defenders attempted to douse the blaze by pouring water from atop the palisade, but they were met with a deadly hail of shafts from the marksmen below, instantly turning them into pincushions.

Before long, the flaming double doors came crashing down. Behind the breached entrance, the rebel army had hastily barricaded the path with several wooden handcarts. Just beyond that obstacle stood a shield wall formed by over a hundred militiamen.

A moment later, the two ballistae fired in rapid succession. The heavy bolts tore straight through the wooden planks of the handcarts without losing an ounce of momentum, sequentially piercing the bodies of four soldiers in a gruesome line.

"Well, it seems this contraption is perfect for shattering infantry shield walls." Bracken stroked his chin thoughtfully. He signaled his foot soldiers to hold their ground and ordered the ballista crews to keep firing.

Enduring a second devastating volley, the rebel army's shield wall completely collapsed. Bracken swung his arm forward, ordering the mountain infantry company and the spearmen to launch a full assault, while the archers and the conscripted militia were ordered to stand by.As the company's clerk handling documents, Fridleif was exempt from front-line combat. His duty was to assist the embedded shaman in treating the conscripted militia wounded by enemy arrows.

"Hold his limbs down. Don't let him thrash around."

The shaman grabbed a waterskin filled with strong liquor and poured a hefty swig down the injured man's throat. He then shoved a wad of cloth into the soldier's mouth as a gag before splashing the remaining alcohol directly onto the open wound to cleanse it.

Next, the shaman took a small scalpel and sliced open the flesh around the injury. He extracted a jagged bone arrowhead with a wet squelch. After double-checking the cavity to ensure no dirty fragments of cloth were left behind, he flushed the wound with liquor once more and pulled out a needle and thread to stitch it shut.

"These filthy bone arrowheads are the absolute worst," the shaman muttered. "Let's just hope this poor bastard pulls through."

Having voiced his complaints, the shaman instructed Fridleif to log the soldier's details into the medical ledger. He then slumped back onto the ground, staring blankly ahead as he waited for the next casualty to be hauled off the battlefield.

Before long, the surviving remnants of the rebel army fled the palisade. Unwilling to let them escape so easily, Bracken dispatched the mountain infantry company in pursuit. The rest of the troops were ordered to rest and begin repairing the defensive structures, securing the settlement as a staging ground for future operations.

Around noon, Fridleif scrubbed his hands clean and pulled out his ration of hardtack, gnawing on it in small bites. Witnessing such grisly carnage all morning had thoroughly ruined his appetite. He barely managed to force down half the biscuit before giving up and joining his comrades in the shade to rest.

Suddenly, the faint, shrill trill of a whistle drifted down from the northern hills, followed immediately by three thick plumes of black smoke rising into the sky.

"An ambush! And they're facing more than triple their numbers!"

Recalling the signal codes he had learned in his classes, Fridleif instantly recognized the danger and scrambled to adjust his gear. A moment later, alarm whistles shrieked throughout the palisade. Bracken frantically mobilized two spear companies and a ranged company, ordering them to reinforce their ambushed comrades at maximum speed.

"Bloody hell, since when do these rebels know how to set an ambush?"

The embedded shaman cursed up a storm as he grabbed his shield and short sword, falling into the marching column right alongside Fridleif.

Sprinting up the rugged mountain trails, Fridleif felt his legs growing heavier with every step. When he finally forced his exhausted body to the battlefield, he was stunned to find that the mountain infantry company was in far less danger than he had feared.

The mountain infantry company had deployed into a hollow square formation. Shield-and-axe infantry alongside spearmen formed an impenetrable outer perimeter, while more than thirty longbowmen and a handful of wounded soldiers were safely tucked in the center. Dozens of corpses littered the ground surrounding the square, the vast majority clad in the ragged garments of the rebel army. Roughly two hundred paces away, a mob of over four hundred rebels sat resting on the ground. Their equipment was a crude, mismatched hodgepodge: everything from shields to wooden spears, slings, and basic bows and arrows.

"Charge!"

Fearing the rebels might slip away, the battalion commander did not even bother waiting for a proper formation to set. He blew his brass whistle sharply, ordering the spearmen to launch a brutal spear charge, squad by squad.

Seeing a massive wave of heavily armed Vikings cresting the hill, the rebels broke and scattered in a chaotic retreat. The mountain infantry company instantly dissolved their defensive square. The five duck-and-drake formation squads that were still relatively fresh joined the pursuit, while the exhausted remainder sat down right where they were to catch their breath.

"Where is the shaman? Get over here, now!"

Fridleif hurried over to assist with the triage. Once the worst of the bleeding had been stopped, the company commander shoved a ledger into his hands, ordering him to tally the kill count and log the names of the dead.

Astoundingly, despite deploying triple the numbers in a surprise ambush, the rebel army had completely failed to break the mountain infantry company. The kill-to-death ratio sat at a staggering 2.8 to 1. Not even two rebels dying could manage to take down a single mountain infantryman.

By three in the afternoon, the bulk of the rebel army had been thoroughly routed, and lines of prisoners were marched back to the captured palisade. Interrogations revealed their original objective: they had intended to reinforce the palisade's garrison. However, the Vikings' staggering march speed and ruthless siege efficiency had completely blindsided them. Forced to improvise, the would-be reinforcements had hastily set up an ambush along the road. Predictably, their glaring disadvantages in both equipment and tactics led to a miserable failure.

"Their combat strength is utterly pathetic, yet they somehow managed to beat Imon into a steady retreat. Hah! Just how utterly useless are Imon's men?"

Bracken scoffed, ruthlessly mocking Imon's incompetence before sitting down to draft a detailed combat report.

Two days later, in the great hall of the castle in Athlone.

Having received Bracken's combat report, Wigg plucked a small black circular token from a box and pinned it onto the sprawling tactical map. A glance across the parchment revealed that the western mountainous region of Ireland was absolutely littered with these dense clusters of black pins. Each one represented another stronghold successfully conquered by his forces.

Judging by their current pace, his expeditionary army would reach the western coastline in just two days, effectively concluding their sweeping subjugation campaign.

He stretched his stiff back and shot a glance at the frantically busy aides working nearby. "Is the report still not finished?"

The Chief Attendant Official, Seaxburh Stormwind, looked up from his messy desk. "Your Majesty, we need just one more hour."

Nodding at the delay, Wigg strolled out to the castle's rear garden. He ate a simple lunch in the fresh air, rested with his eyes closed for half an hour, and then returned to the great hall, where a finalized investigation report was promptly handed to him.

This thick stack of documents was the culmination of days of grueling labor by his staff. By cross-referencing intelligence provided by Imon, confessions wrung from prisoners of war, and hard field data gathered by the army, they had managed to map out a highly accurate estimate of the population distribution west of the River Shannon.

With the war nearing its end, Wigg was already planning to construct a sprawling network of wooden forts across the newly conquered territories. From the rolling plains to the undulating hills, all the way through the craggy western mountains and right up to the western coastline—he intended to choke off every inch of the land, leaving the rebels absolutely zero room to breathe, let alone rebuild.

"Also, draft a missive to Londinium," Wigg ordered. "Tell the Ministry of the Army and the Ministry of the Navy to forward the finalized records of military merits at once."

"At once, Your Majesty."

By noon the following day, Wigg received an urgent military dispatch. Bracken reported that he had cornered the rebel chieftain, Svein, deep in the mountains. The besieged leader, holed up with the last of his tattered forces in a palisade known as Rhysses, was now officially pleading for a chance to surrender and pledge fealty.

"That is it?"

Wigg could not be bothered to waste his breath negotiating with some upstart rebel leader. Strolling back to the map table, he quickly ordered Butcherbird—whose forces were currently closest to Bracken's position—to dispatch heavy reinforcements immediately. By whatever means necessary, this lingering rebel plague was to be exterminated without mercy.