Building a Viking Empire with Modern Industry-Chapter 42: Unemployed Army

Old Grim had left, taking his knife and his common sense with him. Following his departure, a few other Jarls men who remembered the sound of the Torsion Spikes shredding the York gate exchanged nervous glances.

"My wife... she likes the new paper," one Jarl muttered, shifting his weight. "She says it is good for lighting fires."

"And my son," another whispered. "He is learning to count. He counted my cows yesterday. I have three more than I thought."

They looked at Einar, who was standing by the fire pit with the manic energy of a man betting his life on a pair of deuces. They looked at the Saxon priest, Wilfrid, who smelled of foreign incense and treachery.

They decided they had left the oven on. Without a word, six more Jarls turned and slipped into the darkness, following Grim’s path away from the treason.

Einar saw them go. He didn’t stop them. He didn’t even blink.

"Let the sheep go," Einar sneered, kicking a log into the fire. "When the wolf comes, the sheep always run. We do not need cowards who are afraid of a ledger."

He turned to the remaining conspirators about forty hardcore traditionalists. These were the men who missed the good old days when "literacy" meant reading the entrails of a goat.

"Alright, brothers," Einar began, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial growl. "The plan is simple. The Builder sleeps. His ’Security’ is looking at the walls, not the floor."

He gestured to Father Wilfrid.

The priest stepped forward, his hood casting a shadow over his face. "My sources confirm," Wilfrid said smoothly, "that the sewer grate in the scullery is unguarded. Our elite team is already in position. By now, they should be cutting the throat of the man who makes the rules."

"If the Gods favor us," Einar added, gripping his axe, "we won’t even have to fight the Huscarls. We will just walk in and take the keys to the city."

The Jarls grinned. They liked the sound of that. Easy. Bloody. Traditional.

They waited. They watched the distant silhouette of the Governor’s Palace against the night sky. They waited for the signal a torch waved three times from the balcony, signaling that the Director was dead.

Time stretched. Minutes felt like hours.

Then, a light appeared. But it wasn’t a torch.

A single red flare shot up from the palace balcony. It arced high into the sky, exploding in a shower of crimson sparks that illuminated the city walls like a blood-soaked dawn.

The Jarls froze. Their grins vanished.

"That... is not a torch," Jarl Sigurd whispered, his face turning the color of old porridge.

"It is a chemical flare," another Jarl gasped. "Ragnar’s signal. It means ’Enemy Detected’."

Panic rippled through the Longhouse.

"He knows!"

"The sewer team failed!"

"The Machine sees us!"

The men who had been shouting for blood a moment ago now looked like they wanted to hide under the benches. The comfortable lie hat they could kill the future with a single knife in the dark had shattered. Now, they faced the reality of fighting an industrialized army that had standardized ammunition.

Father Wilfrid, seeing the red flare, frowned. He had paid good gold for those Mercian assassins. "Incompetent," he muttered. "They probably tripped over a mop."

Einar looked at the terrified Jarls. He saw them wavering, ready to run back to Ragnar and beg for a job in the latrine corps.

Einar laughed. It was a loud, barking sound that echoed off the timber walls.

"Why are you shaking?" Einar mocked. "Did you think the Builder would just roll over?? Of course he knows! He is a sorcerer!"

"But the surprise is gone!" Sigurd cried. "He will wake the Huscarls! He will load the God Hammer!"

"Let him load it," Einar spat. "It takes ten men to load that machine. It takes two minutes to reload a Torsion Spike."

Einar walked to the center of the room.

"You think I bet everything on a few rats in a sewer? No."

He turned to his assistant a scarred warrior named Hakon. "Open the barn."

Hakon grinned. He ran to the large double doors at the far end of the Longhouse and threw them open. The Jarls stared into the darkness.

At first, they saw nothing. Then, they heard it.

And the smell. It was the smell of unwashed bodies, stale mead, and raw violence. Hundreds of men stepped into the firelight.

hey wore wolf skins, bear pelts, and rags. Their hair was matted. Their eyes were wild. Some chewed on their shields. Others were sharpening their teeth with files.

The Jarls gasped.

"The Wolf-Skins!"

"The Outcasts!"

These were the men Ragnar had rejected. The berserkers who failed the "Psychological Evaluation." The drunkards who couldn’t stand in a straight line. The warriors who refused to learn the alphabet because they thought letters stole your soul.

There were nearly a thousand of them.

"How?" Sigurd stammered. "How did you feed them? How did you hide them?"

Einar pointed to the chest of Mercian gold.

"Gold feeds a lot of hungry mouths," Einar said. "While Ragnar was building schools, I was building an army of the unemployed."

He walked up to the leader of the berserkers a giant man named Leif the Loud.

"These men hate the Ledger," Einar announced. "They hate the Audit. They hate that they cannot rape and pillage as they please. They are hungry for the Old Ways."

Einar turned back to the trembling nobles.

"I am not the only one," Einar said. "Look to the East."

From the tree line, another group emerged. They were Saxon mercenaries spears for hire, paid for by Father Wilfrid’s endless supply of silver. Another five hundred men.

The Jarls without a secret army exchanged horrified glances.

"You... you brought Saxons?" Sigurd asked.

"I brought soldiers," Einar corrected. "Soldiers who want Ragnar dead."

Einar looked at his gathered force. Nearly two thousand men. It was a mob, yes. But a mob with axes is a terrifying thing, especially against a city that was asleep.

"Gentlemen," Einar shouted, raising his arms. "The element of surprise is gone. But the element of overwhelming violence is just beginning."

He kicked the chest of gold over, spilling coins onto the dirt floor.

"Take it!" Einar roared. "Take the gold! And when we take the city, you can take whatever you want! No quotas! No taxes! No forms to fill out!"

The Berserkers howled. The mercenaries cheered. The Jarls, seeing the sheer mass of muscle on their side, felt their courage return. Greed is a powerful motivator, second only to the fear of math.

"We take the city!" Sigurd shouted, grabbing a handful of coins. "We burn the school!"

"We smash the furnace!" another yelled.

Einar smiled. It was the smile of a man who had just initiated a hostile takeover.

"Tonight," Einar bellowed, "we cancel the industrial revolution!"

Meanwhile, on the road to York...

Leif the Lesser was running.

His lungs burned. His legs, strong from the rugby scrum, pumped like pistons. But he was tired. He had seen the red flare go up over the city.

"He knows," Leif panted. "The Director knows."

But Leif knew something the Director didn’t. Ragnar thought he was fighting a few assassins. He didn’t know about the army of Berserkers coming out of the woods.

Leif crested a hill. He saw the city gates in the distance. They were closed.

"Open up!" Leif screamed, waving his arms. "Open the gate!"

But the guards on the wall members of the new ’Night Watch’ didn’t open. They had strict orders: Code Red. Nobody in or out.

"Identify!" a voice boomed from the wall. It was Bjorn.

"It’s Leif!" Leif yelled. "Leif the Lesser! From the Audit Department!"

"Do you have the password?" Bjorn shouted back.

"The password is ’Efficiency’!" Leif screamed. "Let me in, you giant oaf! Einar has an army! A real army! He has the Wolf-Skins!"

The gate didn’t open. But a basket was lowered on a rope.

"Get in," Bjorn ordered. "And bring your report."

Leif scrambled into the basket. As he was hauled up the stone wall, he looked back at the tree line.

He saw the torches. Hundreds of them. Moving like a river of fire toward the city.

The mob was coming.

...

Inside the Praetorium

Ragnar stood on the balcony, looking at the approaching lights. Gyda stood beside him, checking the tension on her crossbow.

"That is a lot of torches," Ragnar noted calmly. "More than I calculated for a simple assassination attempt."

"Einar has liquidated his assets," Gyda said, doing the mental math. "He must have hired every outcast in Northumbria."

"Brute force," Ragnar sighed.

He turned to Bjorn, who had just hauled a breathless Leif onto the balcony.

"Report," Ragnar said to the panting thief.

"Two thousand," Leif wheezed. "Maybe more. Berserkers. Mercenaries. And they are drunk on gold and rage. They want to burn the factory."

Ragnar nodded. He looked at his own forces. The Industrial Corps was awake, but they were engineers and craftsmen. They had the weapons, but did they have the will to fight a horde of frothing madmen?

"General Bjorn," Ragnar said. "Activate the Public Address System."

"The megaphone?" Bjorn asked.

"No," Ragnar said. "The Big One."

He pointed to the church tower, where he had installed a massive bronze bell and a series of acoustic funnels.

"Wake the city," Ragnar ordered. "And tell the Huscarls... tell them their pension is under attack."

Ragnar looked at the oncoming horde.

"They want the Old Ways?" Ragnar whispered, touching the steel ring on his finger. "Fine. We will show them exactly why the Old Ways went extinct."

He turned to Gyda. "Load the canister shot," he said. "The Scatter-Bolts. We are aiming for crowd control."

Gyda smiled. "I love crowd control."