Building a Viking Empire with Modern Industry-Chapter 95: The Devil sits in Nottingham!

With the audit having officially begun, Ragnar rapidly cranked the lever of his "Type-2" repeating crossbow before taking another shot at the oncoming attackers; his bolt struck through the boiled leather jerkin of an oncoming levy, pinning the man to the wooden ladder he was attempting to raise.

Right after doing so, a crude javelin was hurled from below and glanced off his munitions-grade pauldrons; if it were just a few inches higher, it would have scratched the paint job.

Ragnar quickly took cover behind the crenellations as he began to cycle the magazine again.

"Reloading!" Ragnar announced, his voice muffled by his visor. "Keep the production line moving!"

His "Range Department" was operating under the standing order of saturation fire, and as such, the firing sequence was a continuous, rhythmic hum, as Torsion Spikes thwumped at different intervals, and the "Typewriters" followed suit.

Eventually, a mob of levies made it to the base of the walls, where they believed they were safe from the long-range ballistae.

The defenders began pointing their crossbows through the murder holes and unloading their steel bolts onto the poor souls below.

Now that the enemy was directly below the defenders, the hundreds of employees who wielded the "Type-2," which was gravity-fed and thus had a rapid rate of fire, were able to engage the enemy from the safety of the stone catwalks.

The screams of the enemy filled the air as they were dismantled by mechanics and physics alike.

Despite the devastating fire which was rained down upon them, some ladders eventually made their way into a position where the defenders closest to them drew their falchions and severed the fingers of the levies who scaled them.

"Unsafe work environment!" a Corporal shouted, kicking a ladder away from the wall.

The ladder teetered and fell backward, crashing into the dense mob below with a sickening crunch of timber and bone.

Surrounded by the dead and the dying, the defenders rapidly fired their crossbows as quickly as they could, each soldier getting off roughly ten shots a minute into the pool of humanity below.

Without any way to defend themselves against the plunging fire, it had become a turkey shoot or rather, a liquidation sale.

The defenders stayed behind the cover of the stone merlons and fired into the mob of peasants and Thanes who kept pressing forward, driven by the whip of their commanders and the fear of the "Viking Fire."

With over 800 infantry firing 10 rounds per minute, the defending forces could theoretically output 8,000 bolts per minute onto the forces below, who numbered roughly 12,000 in total.

Though not every bolt hit a vital organ, it took only a matter of minutes before a moat of corpses had filled below the Castle’s walls.

The level of chaos and carnage wrought upon the Mercian Coalition in such a short time span was unimaginable to the medieval mind.

The Earls and Thanes were terrified by the relentless, buzzing weapons Ragnar’s forces wielded and had already fled to the edges of the battlefield, near the tree line; their armies were nearly annihilated.

Even the heavily armored housecarls could not resist the kinetic energy of the Torsion Spikes.

These noblemen were the remnants of the old order—men who believed war was about shouting and shoving.

They came to the conclusion that Ragnar’s "Industry" was fated to end in an overwhelming monopoly.

Witnessing death descend upon the battlefield like rain, they finally realized the reason why Ragnar was called the "Director"; he didn’t fight battles. He managed them.

Without realizing they were still within the effective range of the heavy artillery, the commanders gathered what remained of their retinue and began to discuss among themselves how to proceed.

The Earl of Derby, a man in his forties dressed in gilded mail, lifted his noseguard helm and spoke with a voice filled with superstitious dread.

"What foul sorcery has the Viking conjured? It spits death without pausing for breath! It must be true that he has enslaved the dwarves of the underworld! How can we, mere men of God, defeat a machine that never sleeps?"

The Thanes who had gathered had not gotten a good view of just exactly how their armies were so quickly processed and saw the blood of their men water the grass.

It was as if Ragnar had replaced his soldiers with automatons.

Another Thane agreed with the Earl and added his own panic.

"We must flee quickly, to the churches! We must pray for deliverance from this Iron Curse! The Devil sits in Nottingham!"

However, before they could flee in haste, Ragnar, watching from the gatehouse tower, signaled the heavy weapons team.

"Target the Board of Directors," Ragnar ordered, pointing to the cluster of expensive horses and shiny banners.

"Range is 800 yards, Director," the lead engineer reported, cranking the massive winch of the ’Big Bertha’ Torsion Spike. "Windage is two degrees east."

"Send the severance package," Ragnar said cold.

The massive steel arms of the Torsion Spike released.

A canister shot - a hollow log filled with jagged scrap metal and glass - arced through the air.

It landed directly in the center of the gathering of nobles.

The canister shattered on impact, turning the scrap metal into a cloud of high-velocity shrapnel.

The Earl of Derby and his retinue were torn asunder in a spray of red mist and gold leaf.

Ragnar smiled wickedly as he gazed through his telescope. In under an hour, the hostile takeover attempt had been blocked, and the competition was liquidated; the commanders were all dead, many of whom were the last resistance in the Midlands.

This overwhelming bloodbath would allow Ragnar to place a Regional Manager within Derby and move onto the depleted earldoms that refused to sign the contract.

General Bjorn quickly approached Ragnar and asked what he wanted to do with the remaining peasant levies still huddled in the mud, all of whom were completely shell-shocked after witnessing the deaths of their lords and comrades in such a short period of time.

"Director, what shall we do with the remaining human resources? They are broken."

Ragnar’s lips curved into a wicked, capitalist grin as he gave his final command in defense of the Nottingham branch.

"Open the gates. Send out the Mobile Strike Wing. Chase them down."

Bjorn looked surprised. "You want to kill them all?"

"No," Ragnar corrected, holstering his crossbow. "I want to capture them. We have a railway to build, and I need cheap labor. But if they run... process them."

Seeing that Ragnar had decided to acquire the workforce by force, Bjorn merely sighed as he saluted by pounding his fist on his breastplate.

"It will be done, Director."

After Ragnar’s orders were given to the Mobile Strike Wing—light cavalry equipped with repeating crossbows and nets—the roughly 500 riders mounted their horses before they rode out to round up the thousands of men who had already begun to rout.

The cavalry quickly caught up to the fleeing footmen.

Those who surrendered were banded together in chain gangs. Those who fought were cut down like wheat to the scythe. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

Not a single noble had made it out of the battle alive, and Ragnar once more displayed the lengths he would go to ensure his overwhelming market dominance.

The more Ragnar could prolong the spread of accurate information about his "Typewriters," the longer he could maintain his technological advantage over the South.

"Bjorn," Ragnar said, watching the prisoners being marched back to the castle. "Draft a letter to Princess Judith."

"The Regent of Wessex?"

"Yes," Ragnar nodded, wiping soot from his visor. "Tell her that the Midlands have been successfully restructured. And tell her... I’m coming to Winchester to renegotiate our trade deal. In person."

While this acquisition was concluding, another crisis was developing back at the Headquarters.

While Ragnar was crushing his enemies in the field, Earl Godwin’s raiding party had fully encircled the factory at City Titan.