Building a Viking Empire with Modern Industry-Chapter 252: A Professional Army

Ragnar pulled out his spyglass, analyzing the enemy’s movements. He had fully expected a proud medieval army with such an overwhelming numerical advantage to simply charge the walls. A normal medieval commander with fifty thousand men facing a single coastal town would order a massive rush, relying entirely on the sheer weight of bodies to overwhelm the defenders.

"They are actually digging in," Ragnar murmured to himself, a smile of genuine respect crossing his face. "They outnumber us almost ten to one, and they are still building proper siege lines. Now that is a professional army."

The Tang commanders, General Zhao Feng and Strategist Sun, were not arrogant fools. They knew that sieging a fortified city required patience. Their battle plan was a masterful, terrifying blend of engineering, heavy projectile artillery, and increasingly, early chemical warfare designed specifically to combat well-fortified opponents.

Instead of throwing their men at the stone walls to die uselessly, the Tang engineers were currently constructing massive traction trebuchets right on the beach. Unlike counterweight trebuchets, these enormous wooden war machines relied on teams of dozens of men pulling ropes simultaneously to hurl heavy stones and fiery projectiles high into the air.

Their primary goal was to completely destroy the battlements, smash the wooden gates, and crush the internal structures of the city before a single infantryman ever drew his sword. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

Furthermore, they were preparing their most terrifying secret weapons: initial forms of gunpowder and early chemical warfare. They had woven baskets filled with toxic, choking herbs and primitive, highly volatile black powder designed to set fire to fortifications and suffocate the defenders.

They were doing all of this just to siege a single coastal city like Wessex. And they were doing it with an army of 50,000 me.! This incredible level of caution and tactical discipline showed exactly how smart and methodical the eastern dragon truly was. They left absolutely nothing to chance.

Lowering his spyglass, Ragnar turned around to look at his own forces.

"How are the men holding up, Captain?" Ragnar asked smoothly, stepping up to a towering Viking Grenadier who was casually chewing on a piece of dried meat.

The Captain grinned, revealing a missing front tooth. "We are perfectly fine, Iron Father. The local Wessex boys are shaking in their boots a bit, but we told them to just keep their heads down and let our smoke-sticks do the talking. We will protect them."

Ragnar patted the Captain firmly on his steel-plated shoulder. That was exactly what he wanted to hear.

"Just hold your fire until the mortars soften them up..." Ragnar instructed.

Standing a few paces behind Ragnar was Ealdredx.

"They are building massive wooden towers on the beach. They are going to crush the city!"

"Ealdred, my friend, you are looking at the numbers all wrong," Ragnar said gently.

"In the old days, yes, fifty thousand men would easily crush five thousand. But industry changes the math. A single mortar shell fired from that tower over there can do more damage in one second than a thousand men with swords can do in an hour."

Suddenly, a loud, rhythmic chanting echoed from the beaches.

Heave! Heave! Heave!

Ragnar spun around, his sharp eyes locking onto the Tang siege lines.

The eastern army had officially begun their attack.

Down on the sand, hundreds of shirtless Tang engineers were pulling down on the hemp ropes of their massive traction trebuchets. The long wooden throwing arms bent backward.

"Here it comes," Ragnar said.

"Brace yourselves!"

With a shout, the Tang engineers released the ropes.

The wooden arms of the trebuchets snapped forward.

High into the morning sky soared dozens of massive, flaming projectiles. The Tang army had loaded their trebuchets with heavy clay pots filled with primitive incendiaries and early gunpowder mixtures.

The pots arced beautifully through the air, trailing streams of black smoke and bright orange fire as they plummeted directly toward the stone walls of Wessex.

"Incoming!" shouted the Viking Captain, dropping to one knee and raising his shield.

The flaming pots slammed into the stone battlements and the wooden rooftops of the city just behind the walls!

The clay pots shattered on impact, violently spreading sticky, burning chemicals and producing loud, concussive bangs from the primitive black powder.

Thick, toxic yellow smoke immediately began to billow across the ramparts, carrying the sharp, choking scent of sulfur and burning pitch.

The traditional Wessex infantrymen down in the courtyard cried out in shock and fear as flaming debris rained down near their shield walls. The Tang army’s opening move was an absolute masterpiece of psychological and chemical terror, designed to break the defenders’ morale before the siege towers even moved an inch.

Ragnar stood tall amidst the choking smoke, coughing once but keeping his brilliant blue eyes fixed firmly on the enemy. The Tang army was incredibly smart, but they had just made their first and final mistake: they had revealed their exact firing positions.

"Mortar teams!" Ragnar roared.

"Target the trebuchet lines on the beach! Show them what true firepower looks like! Fire!"

Up in the stone watchtowers, the Viking engineers grinned wickedly. They touched their smoldering matches to the touchholes of the heavy iron mortars.

The deep concussions of the mortars firing shook the very foundations of the city walls.

Ealdred had watched flaming chemical pots fall from the sky like the wrath of angry gods. He had smelled the toxic smoke burning his lungs. And now, the very towers of his beloved city were exploding with deafening roars that made his ears ring and his vision blur.

The sheer sensory overload of industrialized warfare clashing with medieval siege tactics completely shattered his fragile nerves.

"The walls are exploding! The sky is on fire! We are all going to burn!" Ealdred shrieked.

He dropped his beloved tax ledgers right there on the stone floor, the parchment pages scattering into the toxic yellow smoke.

"I must get help! I must find the King of Mercia! I must warn City Titan! We need more men! Help! Help us all!"

Ragnar watched the yellow smoke drift across the stone battlements of Wessex. The Tang army had launched their primitive chemical pots, hoping to choke the defenders.

"Hold steady!" Ragnar shouted cheerfully.

"Let the smoke clear! The machines will do the heavy lifting!"

Up in the reinforced stone watchtowers, the Viking engineers had just touched their smoldering matches to the touchholes of twenty heavy iron mortars.

High into the morning sky, twenty heavy iron shells arced gracefully over the battlefield. They were entirely invisible to the naked eye at that speed, looking only like brief, blurry streaks against the clouds.

Inside those cast-iron shells was Ragnar’s hyper-purified, corned black powder, attached to meticulously measured timed fuses.

Down on the sandy beach, the Tang engineers were busy cheering. They had just launched their first successful volley of incendiary pots and were eagerly pulling the ropes of their massive wooden traction trebuchets to load the next round. They were incredibly proud of their siege engines.

The Viking mortar shells plummeted downward.

The resulting explosions were beyond anything the medieval world had ever witnessed. It was a display of pure industrial power. The sandy beach erupted into twenty overlapping pillars of black smoke, orange fire, and pulverized earth.

The fragmentation shells detonated with absolute mathematical precision. The cast-iron casings shattered instantly, projecting thousands of jagged, razor-sharp pieces of shrapnel outward at supersonic speeds.

The massive wooden traction trebuchets were completely obliterated. Huge wooden wheels were blown into thousands of burning splinters that rained down on the surrounding troops.

Down on the beach, the scene was one of complete and utter pandemonium. The proud Tang expeditionary force was instantly thrown into absolute chaos.

General Zhao Feng was thrown backward from the sheer concussive shockwave of an explosion that hit just fifty yards from his command tent.

He hit the sand hard, his ears ringing. He scrambled to his feet,

He looked around and felt his heart plummet directly into his stomach.

Where his massive wooden trebuchets had stood just seconds ago, there were now only smoking, cratered holes in the sand.

Hundreds of his elite engineers and frontline infantry were simply gone, replaced by moaning, wounded men staggering through the black smoke.

"What was that?!" Zhao Feng shrieked.

"What kind of weapon strikes from the sky with such invisible fury?!"

Strategist Sun, usually the calmest man in the army, was trembling.

"General!" Strategist Sun gasped. "Their range... it is entirely impossible! They hit our rear siege lines without ever leaving their walls! If we stay clustered on this beach, they will slaughter us all without a single sword crossing!"

"They use explosive fire from afar!" Zhao Feng roared to his surviving officers. "Spread the men out! Do not bunch up! We will charge the walls directly! Their fire-throwers cannot hit us if we are right underneath their stone gates! Sound the drums! All infantry, charge!"

The massive war drums of the Tang army began to beat a rapid rhythm.

Despite the horrific shock of the mortar strike, the eastern soldiers demonstrated why they were considered the most elite force in the world. They quickly reformed their lines. Tens of thousands of heavily armored infantrymen, carrying ladders, grappling hooks, and curved swords, let out a terrifying battle cry and surged forward across the grassy plains toward the walls of Wessex.