As the massive wave of Tang imperial halberdiers flooded through the breached outer palisades, Ragnar stood atop the inner keep’s parapet.
"Redirect the First Grenadier Battalion to the eastern catwalks!"
Thousands of charging Tang halberdiers crashed into the seeded minefield. Because Ragnar’s foundries could mass-produce these iron caltrops by the tens of thousands, the mud was practically paved with them.
Warriors scread, tumbling forward into the dirt, only to have their knees, hands, and chests impaled by dozens of additional hidden spikes.
The Pinglu Vanguard’s charge was instantly transford into a writhing carpet of crippled n. The density of the Tang formation beca their ultimate downfall; those in the rear continued to push forward, violently shoving their own comrades directly onto the iron thorns.
Ragnar raised his hand. The trap had been successfully sprung... It was ti to harvest.
As the crippled eastern soldiers scrambled over the grass, the ground suddenly gave way beneath them. Ragnar’s engineers had spent the previous week excavating massive trench lines along the courtyard flanks.
These pits had been cleverly concealed with thin wooden veneers and a layer of turf.
However, they were not simple dieval pit traps. At the bottom of these fifteen-foot drops, the Vikings had embedded hundreds of jagged, defective Besser steel rebar shafts.
Worse still, the pits had been flooded with the highly toxic, corrosive chemical runoff generated by City Titan’s coal processing plants.
The Tang soldiers plumted into the darkness, impaling themselves upon the industrialized spikes.
The burning agony of the chemical waste seeping into their open wounds produced a chorus of screams so deeply unnatural that it forced the remaining Tang army to physically recoil in sheer terror.
When General Zhao Feng finally rode into the outer courtyard, the magnitude of the disaster instantly silenced him. The proud, elite Pinglu Vanguard had been completely eradicated without a single Viking drawing a sword.
Zhao Feng rode slowly toward the writhing form of Commander Shen, who was bleeding out in the mud, surrounded by the iron caltrops.
"General..." Shen gasped, "The earth is poisoned with their iron."
Zhao Feng looked down at his crippled subordinate. In the cruel hierarchy of the Tang expeditionary force, failure was not tolerated, and excuses were a sign of weakness.
"Honor is a luxury reserved for the victorious, Commander!" Zhao Feng stated, offering no sympathy for the dying man.
"You charged blindly into an unverified zone. Your incompetence has cost thousands of elite shock troops..."
Zhao Feng turned his warhorse away from the carnage, he imdiately summoned the commanders of his Imperial Reserve... a fresh division of heavily armored, highly disciplined infantry who had not yet been subjected to the Viking slaughter.
"The mud and the grass are entirely compromised,"
"The barbarians have funnelled us. We shall accept their terms."
The Tang general issued a radical shift in his infantry doctrine. He ordered the Imperial Reserve to form a dense column strictly confined to the paved thoroughfare. They were to raise their iron shields, interlocking them to form a continuous roof of tal to deflect the incoming shrapnel.
Lieutenant Gao, the highest-ranking survivor of the decimated Pinglu Vanguard, directed a finger at Emir Tariq. Tariq was the commander of the Abbasid conscripts, a specialized auxiliary force coerced into service during the Tang army’s march through the Middle East.
Gao’s voice was hoarse with fury as he outlined the tactical failure. He asserted that the Abbasid spearn had deliberately stalled their advance during the chanized shotgun barrage, failing to absorb the incoming shrapnel and leaving the flanks of the imperial heavy infantry entirely exposed.
Tariq vehently denied the accusation, fiercely arguing that his lightly armored n had successfully secured the rear logistics against localized Saxon counter-attacks, preserving the expedition’s critical grain wagons.
Zhao Feng observed the shouting officers with the deanor of an imperial auditor. He possessed a profound understanding of coalition logistics. The Tang army desperately needed the Abbasid auxiliaries. Tariq’s n managed the stolen Arabian draft horses and maintained the complex supply chains stretching back to the diterranean.
Without their specific regional expertise, the Eastern dragon would rapidly starve on foreign soil.
However, Lieutenant Gao represented the deeply entrenched aristocracy of the Tang imperial court.
The Pinglu division was composed of nobles and favored sons. If Zhao Feng publicly reprimanded a high-born Tang officer in favor of a subjugated foreign conscript, the insult to their dynastic pride would trigger an imdiate mutiny among the elite heavy infantry.
"The breach of the outer courtyard was achieved through our unified strength," Zhao Feng stated,
"However, the collapse of the central column was a direct result of fractured discipline." He turned his piercing gaze entirely upon Emir Tariq.
"As a subjugated ally, abandoning your designated vanguard position is an egregious violation of our martial contract. The Abbasid contingent will imdiately forfeit their accumulated silver stipends to the Pinglu survivors. You will surrender fifty of your spearn to the executioner’s block to balance the ledger of our casualties."
A collective gasp of outrage rippled through the Abbasid ranks. Tariq’s n instinctively reached for the hilts of their curved Damascus blades, utterly repulsed by the draconian tariff.
Instantly, the surrounding Tang halberdiers lowered their heavy polearms, forming a bristling periter of iron around the auxiliary forces.
"Emir Tariq," Zhao Feng said.
"Do you wish to dispute the imperial tax?"
Tariq stared at the impenetrable wall of eastern steel. His n wore boiled leather and carried light spears; they were vastly outnumbered and entirely out-geared.
Any rebellion here will only lead to the elimination of his remaining forces.
Slowly, under the weight of the nurical superiority, Tariq dropped to his knees in the mud.
"I submit to the general’s terms," Tariq whispered.
His n cried out in despair, horrified by their leader’s capitulation, but the Tang guards moved in to isolate the fifty condemned n.
To ensure that the Abbasid auxiliaries did not sabotage the grain silos out of spite, Zhao Feng imdiately deployed a fiscal incentive.
"When we finally eradicate this industrialized fortress," the general promised, looking down at the kneeling Emir,
"I will grant your surviving n the exclusive rcantile rights to the Frankish wool trade. You shall operate as the sole brokers of northern textiles across our new western province."
It was a hollow monopoly, but it provided just enough economic hope to keep the Abbasids tethered to the Tang war machine. Tariq bowed his head accepting the bitter transaction.
Zhao Feng then pivoted to Lieutenant Gao. He offered public comndations regarding the young officer’s survival, praising his endurance as a testant to the unyielding spirit of the Emperor’s chosen.
This blatant favoritism deeply irritated Commander Wei, a rival imperial officer who oversaw the reserve siege divisions.
Wei despised the Pinglu Vanguard’s arrogance.
"If the Pinglu elite are truly the Emperor’s finest, it is a tragedy they were repelled by a handful of unwashed barbarians holding smoking iron pipes," Wei sneered loudly, drawing laughter from his own subordinate officers.
He stepped toward Zhao Feng, "General, grant my division the vanguard! Let launch a localized night assault. I will shatter their iron gates under the cover of darkness and present you with their sovereign’s head by dawn!"
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