Building a Viking Empire with Modern Industry-Chapter 266: No Need To Negotiate

Days melted into weeks, and weeks bled into months. Exactly sixty days had passed.

Now, entering the third year since Ragnar had first stepped onto English soil, the map of Britannia had been entirely redrawn. The Iron Empire now possessed total sovereignty over 80% of the primary landmass.

The sprawling farmlands of Wessex, Mercia, and Northumbria were currently being overlaid with iron rails.

Only the rugged, mountainous fringes of Scotland and Wales remained outside his direct control.

As for the island of Ireland to the west, it required no military subjugation. The alliance forged through the marriage contract between his brother, Vanguard Commander Bjorn, and the Irish leadership had seamlessly integrated their territories into his economic sphere.

Ragnar unrolled a secondary map, this one detailing the shifting borders of the Middle East.

A freshly decrypted telegraph, routed through his network of Mediterranean deep-cover operatives, lay beside it. It contained the latest after-action reports from Bjorn.

The Vanguard Commander had executed his mandate. Utilizing his artillery platforms and coordinating with thousands of local Arab knights, Bjorn had protected the Abbasid frontier cities.

Bjorn has pushed the boundaries outward in an extraordinary way, culminating in the successful siege and capture of the heavily fortified city of Samarra.

Bjorn was now resting his troops within its walls, establishing a new centralized command node.

However, every action in warfare provoked an equal, often asymmetrical reaction.

King Basil I of the Byzantine Empire had been greatly disturbed by the loss of Samarra. Recognizing that charging headlong into Viking fragmentation grenades was strategic suicide, the Byzantine Emperor had altered his doctrine.

He was currently massing tens of thousands of conscripts, utilizing his vast demographic superiority to slowly encircle Bjorn’s extended borders.

The situation for the Vanguard was becoming precarious. Bjorn possessed unparalleled firepower, but his ammunition supply chain stretched across a continent, and his manpower was capped.

A prolonged siege by Basil’s forces will inevitably wear down Bjorn’s army.

A localized military victory cannot be sustained without a secure logistical tether. Therefore, a political solution is needed to complete the gains.

Ragnar pulled a sheet of parchment toward him. He dipped his pen into the inkwell and began drafting a set of strict directives.

He ordered Bjorn to immediately halt all offensive maneuvers and initiate diplomatic channels with Constantinople. The most likely, and entirely optimal, outcome was the signing of a formalized non-aggression and peace treaty.

By offering King Basil a temporary cessation of hostilities, Ragnar would lock down the newly expanded borders. The Byzantines would believe they had successfully contained the Iron Empire through deterrence, while in reality, Ragnar needed only a five-year period of peace to develop his army and his kingdom.

With those tasks handled, Ragnar set the Levantine dispatch aside and turned his attention to a far more volatile variable: the Iberian Peninsula.

Lord Hakon entered the study. He carried a leather-bound dossier.

"Iron Father. The latest intelligence network reports from Al-Andalus have arrived..."

"It has been two months since the Supreme Emir Badr ibn Ayyash captured General Zhao Feng and the Tang naval high command on the beaches of Zaragoza," Hakon began.

"During these sixty days, the prisoners were transported to the dungeons of Madrid. The Arab interrogators were... intensely thorough."

Ragnar nodded slightly. "And what did the Easterners confess?"

"They intended to crush our island to subjugate the remainder of the known world. General Zhao Feng’s fifty thousand men in Zaragoza were meant to be the anvil upon which we were shattered." Hakon replied.

The Tang Dynasty had possessed a grand, ambitious vision, but their execution was deeply flawed by an overreliance on archaic infantry tactics.

"...Which brings us to the current status of Strategist Sun and the remaining fifty thousand Tang soldiers entrenched within Zaragoza."

"Strategist Sun has not budged from his fortified position within the city walls for the entire two-month period. The Tang forces have been reduced to executing localized raids on the surrounding villages merely to secure basic potable water, food, and supplies."

"And the Andalusian response?"

"Overwhelming..." Hakon stated. "Over the past sixty days, a massive coalition has assembled. More than twenty thousand elite Arab knights, drawn from every corner of Andalusia, have completely encircled Zaragoza. They have choked off all physical access to the city!"

Fifty thousand men needed enormous quantities of provisions daily. Enclosed within a medieval stone wall, and surrounded by light and heavy cavalry, the Tang army was doomed.

They were trapped in a cage of their own making, once again without realizing it.

"However, Emir Badr does not need to breach the walls with infantry..."

While Ragnar formulated his domestic policies in the quiet safety of City Titan, thousands of miles to the south, the theoretical mathematics of siege warfare were transitioning into a brutal reality.

The sun hung low over the arid, sprawling plains surrounding Zaragoza, casting bloody shadows across the massive Andalusian encampment. The twenty thousand Arab knights sat atop their armored warhorses, forming an impenetrable perimeter of Damascus steel and chainmail around the besieged city. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

They were the ultimate barrier, ensuring that not a single Tang soldier could escape the impending slaughter.

Behind the lines of cavalry, the true instruments of eradication had been painstakingly assembled over the past two months. Hundreds of massive, heavy-timbered trebuchets and torsion catapults stood in perfect rows.

The engineers of the Emirate had worked tirelessly, importing highly flammable naphtha, pitch, and crude oil from the eastern deserts.

Within the high stone walls of Zaragoza, Strategist Sun stood upon the central keep, staring down at the assembled host. For sixty days, he had maintained absolute discipline over his fifty thousand starving men, desperately hoping for a relief force from the sea that would never arrive.

He watched the Andalusian crews expertly winding the winch ropes of the catapults.

"Light the payloads!" a distant command echoed from the Andalusian lines.

A thousand torches were pressed to the naphtha-filled heavy clay pots resting in the leather slings of the siege engines. The perimeter of Zaragoza was suddenly illuminated by a continuous ring of orange fire.

"Release!"

The massive counterweights dropped.

The sky above Zaragoza was instantly choked by a massive swarm of flaming projectiles. The endless barrage had begun.

The heavy ceramic pots smashed against the stone walls, the wooden rooftops, and the tightly packed courtyards of the Tang infantry. Upon impact, the brittle clay shattered, spraying liquid fire across everything in a ten-yard radius.

Screams of agony erupted from within the city as the elite Tang shock troops were engulfed in unquenchable flames. The fire adhered to their armor, their skin, and their wooden halberds.

The highly disciplined formations instantly dissolved into burning mobs, trapped within the confines of the citadel...