General Zhao Feng’s heavy imperial halberdiers poured through the breached wooden barricades.
The outer courtyards of the coastal fortress, typically a bustling economic hub dedicated to the lucrative export of raw wool and salted fish to the Frankish kingdoms, were instantly transford into a slaughterhouse.
The surviving elents of the Tang archery vanguard had been absorbed into the center of this advancing mass, driven forward by the unforgiving discipline of the eastern commanders.
"The outer storehouses!" Ealdred shrieked, "Iron Father, the lower vaults are filled with unminted hacksilver and imported Byzantine silk! The regional treasury is exposed! If the easterners capture those warehouses, the entire territory of Wessex will be castrated for three generations!"
Lord Cynewulf, a prominent regional noble, simply could not accept the abandonnt of his hoarded wealth.
Refusing to retreat behind the inner gates, Cynewulf rallied a retinue of three hundred elite Saxon thegns.
These were heavily armored retainers, n who swore absolute fealty over cups of ad and fought behind traditional kite shields. Driven by a desperate need to reclaim his stolen imports and preserve his feudal dignity, Cynewulf ordered a direct counter-charge against the surging ranks of the Tang halberdiers.
The three hundred Saxon thegns crashed into a wall of ten thousand disciplined eastern polearms.
The heavy Tang halberds chopped downward, easily slicing through chainmail and shattering the wooden shields.
Lord Cynewulf’s desperate bid for glory lasted barely three minutes before his entire retinue was erased from the tiline, their bodies trampled into the mud beneath the boots of the imperial army.
The imdiate eradication of Cynewulf’s veterans triggered a total psychological collapse among the remaining local levies.
The surviving Wessex infantryn, terrified farrs who had only been promised a few Abbasid dirhams for their service, completely abandoned their defensive posts.
They dropped their heavy spears and sprinted in panic toward the towering iron gates of the inner keep.
Ealdred dropped to his knees, "My King! You must order the winches raised! They are our own people! If you leave the gates sealed, the easterners will butcher them! Have rcy!"
Ragnar stared down at the pleading masses.
"If I lift that portcullis for a disorganized mob, the Tang vanguard will breach the inner keep before the gears can lock. The preservation of the primary manufacturing hub supersedes the survival of the agricultural sector. If they wish to avoid the enemy blades, they may utilize the harbor." Ragnar decreed.
Driven to madness by the approaching wall of Tang halberdiers, hundreds of the trapped Saxons took the Iron Father’s advice. They abandoned the sealed gates and sprinted toward the deep waters of the coastal docks.
However, their minds were still poisoned by the greed of the dieval economy. Many of the fleeing levies had looted the outer storehouses during the chaos, stuffing their leather tunics with heavy ingots of raw silver and tightly wound bolts of imported silk. Weighed down by their hoarding and heavy chainmail shirts, the n hurled themselves into the waters of the English Channel.
The results were swift and entirely unforgiving. The heavy tals dragged the soldiers directly to the silted bottom of the harbor. Dozens of n drowned in re monts, their lungs filling with seawater as they refused to let go of their stolen wealth.
The Tang forces easily cornered those who remained on the docks, clearing the stragglers with sweeping strikes of their polearms.
General Zhao Feng rode his armored warhorse through the shattered wooden barricades, entering the outer courtyard of Wessex. The eastern commander surveyed the carnage, noting the panicked drowning of the locals and the sealed iron gates of the inner keep.
A satisfied smile touched his lips. He believed he had successfully breached the periter, driven the barbarians into their final stronghold, and secured the coastal harbor for his incoming supply fleets.
He raised his sword, ordering the entirety of his remaining troops to flood into the captured outer wards and prepare for a traditional siege of the inner walls.
"They have fully committed to the enclosure..." Ragnar noted, turning his attention to Captain Hakon.
"The enemy general operates under the assumption that a stone wall is rely a barrier to climb. He fails to recognize that he has just marched his entire army into a sealed industrial crucible."
Hakon offered a vicious, knowing grin. "The riflen have completed their cooling cycles, Iron Father. The corned powder cartridges are prid. The artillery crews are awaiting your coordinates."
Ragnar stepped up to the edge of the battlents, looking down at the incredibly dense formations of the Tang army currently packed shoulder-to-shoulder in the outer courtyards.
There was absolutely no room for the eastern soldiers to maneuver. They were a highly concentrated target.
"Do not utilize the high-explosive mortar shells." Ragnar commanded,
"I do not wish to inflict structural damage upon my own outer foundations. Switch the heavy field guns to canister shot."
The Viking artilleryn imdiately set to work. They loaded massive canvas cylinders directly into the smoothbore cannons bolted to the inner walls. Each canvas canister was tightly packed with hundreds of jagged iron scraps, discarded ball bearings, and raw lead spheres.
It was the ninth-century equivalent of a chanized shotgun, scaled up to the size of a siege engine!
"Deplete their numbers!" Ragnar ordered.
The Viking riflen leveled their smoothbore matchlocks and unleashed a continuous volley of supersonic lead into the stalled masses.
Simultaneously, the heavy field guns roared to life. Ragnar’s artillery crews had bypassed solid iron cannonballs entirely, loading the smoothbore barrels.
Thousands of pieces of jagged shrapnel tore through the courtyard at velocities that rendered the Tang’s hardened leather and iron scales entirely obsolete. The Pinglu Vanguard was shredded, unable to advance through the caltrops and unable to retreat through their own pushing rear guard.
Desperate to escape the crossfire, hundreds of surviving Tang soldiers dragged their bleeding bodies toward the safety of the courtyard’s grassy edges, attempting to bypass the central mud fields entirely.
This, too, had been anticipated by the Iron Father...
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