svetikya Chapter 380: The Guilt
Chapter 380: The Guilt
The Great Hall was finally quiet, the doors shut firmly behind Ragnar as he stepped into the corridor.
Though the noise of the feast and the frantic translating of the Persian math scrolls had faded, the inside of Ragnar’s mind was completely roaring.
The reality of the Frankish musket had changed the entire board...
He had officially dragged the brutal 9th century into the age of gunpowder!
Ragnar didn’t bother lighting another lamp. He walked straight over to the table in the center of the room.
Spread across the table was a highly detailed map of the known world...
Norway, Scotland, Denmark, Northumbria, Wales, Brittany, Francia, Bohemia, L. Burgundy, Navarre, Córdoba, Kievan Rus... even Byzantia and the Abbasid Caliphate.
Before tonight, all of them were trivial kingdoms without gunpowder...
They were just men fighting in the mud with sharp pieces of iron...
But saying that all the world will have those weapons in some years? Well, that means Ragnar will bear the guilt for every person who has been killed and will be killed, millions of them, and perhaps billions in the years to come.
He closed his eyes, letting out a long, shaky breath.
Just the thinking of it can tremble men... He had brought a plague of modern violence to a medieval world.
The crushing weight of that responsibility pressed down on his broad shoulders like a mountain of lead.
Because of his modern knowledge, the bloody wars of the future wouldn’t be fought with hundreds of casualties... they would be fought with hundreds of thousands.
"...what the have I done?"
"You survived, Ragnar."
Ragnar opened his eyes and slowly turned his head.
Gyda was standing quietly in the doorway. She had followed him from the Great Hall, leaving baby Floki with the nurses.
She looked incredibly beautiful in the dim light, her hair contrasting the dark shadows of the study.
She walked up to him, gently placing a soft hand on his tense arm.
"I know what you are thinking," Gyda said, looking down at the map. "You are blaming yourself for the Frankish muskets. You think this is all your fault."
After hearing such words, Ragnar let out a bitter laugh. "It is my fault, Gyda. I brought the explosive powder into this world. I gave them the blueprint to slaughter each other on a massive scale."
"You built the powder to protect your family," Gyda corrected firmly, her eyes locking onto his. "You built the walls to keep us safe. If they want to steal your ideas and use them to burn the world... that is his sin. Not yours."
Ragnar looked at her, feeling a deep warmth fighting against the cold dread in his chest.
She always knew how to ground him...
"Even so," Ragnar sighed, looking back down at the map. "The secret is entirely out. The Franks have an alliance with Bohemia and the Magyars. They think they can completely match us now."
"Can they?" Gyda asked, tilting her head with genuine curiosity.
However, instead of looking panicked, a slow, dark, highly dangerous grin entirely spread across Ragnar’s scarred face.
The heavy guilt was still there, yes. But the Iron King was not a man who ever accepted defeat.
"No," Ragnar chuckled, the confidence of a modern engineer returning to his voice. "They absolutely cannot..."
Ragnar leaned over the map, pointing a finger at the capital of Francia.
"Who knows? Maybe the kings see that Ragnar is a lucky guy who found a way to make explosive weapons and cannot invent much more strong weapons," Ragnar smiled, his eyes flashing with a thrilling light.
"They probably think I just dug up some magical black dirt by pure accident. They think a primitive, slow-loading musket makes us equals."
Gyda smiled slightly, "But they are wrong?"
"They are utterly wrong," Ragnar laughed loudly, "They think gunpowder is the peak of my knowledge... but in fact, cannons are an easy example of upgrading... upgrading cannons while you are a wealthy man who has much free time could be easy."
Gyda raised an eyebrow. "Upgrading cannons? Ragnar, our shore cannons already completely blow wooden ships to splinters. How do you upgrade something that massive?"
"Oh, my sweet Queen..." Ragnar winked, "A round iron cannonball is just brute force. It is incredibly stupid. It just smashes into things. But what if the cannonball isn’t round? What if it is shaped like a heavy steel cone, entirely completely packed with even more explosive powder on the inside?"
Ragnar quickly sketched a modern artillery shell on the corner of the map.
He drew the brass casing, the aerodynamic steel tip, and the percussion fuse.
"...when I fire an upgraded explosive shell from a rifled artillery cannon... it doesn’t just hit the Magyar cavalry. It burrows directly into the mud beneath their horses and detonates like a massive volcano. It will entirely vaporize a fifty-foot radius in a single second."
Gyda stared at the sketch, her breath hitching slightly.
***
The port city of Calais.
Three days passed in a blur of muddy boots, freezing rain, and screaming merchants.
Sitting right on the highly volatile border of Francia, Calais was the newly captured gateway to the Iron Kingdom’s southern trade.
And ruling it was turning out to be a nightmare...
Bjorn Ulfsson, the fierce, battle-hardened brother of the Iron King, was currently sitting behind a desk.
He was staring angrily at a massive pile of trade manifests, his fingers covered in black ink.
"I swear to the gods..." Bjorn muttered, "If one more Frankish merchant complains to me about the new harbor taxes, I am going to throw them into the ocean."
Standing near the blazing hearth, entirely amused by his commander’s misery, was Hakon.
Hakon was a giant of a man, a veteran warrior who had fought beside Bjorn since the very first days of their arrival in England.
Though the city was chaotic and packed with thousands of angry foreigners, Bjorn really had done an incredible job.
In just a few months, he had transformed the muddy, undefended town into a heavily fortified trading hub.
Massive concrete walls were currently being poured, and heavy shore cannons were already mounted on the piers!
Before Bjorn could complain about the salt taxes again, the door of his office was pushed open.
A young naval scout stepped inside, his dark uniform soaked from the ocean spray. He was holding a sealed leather tube.