Building a Viking Empire with Modern Industry-Chapter 233: In the Capital

City Titan, Ragnar’s private solar

While Ragnar enjoyed this brief slice of domestic tranquility, the doors of his chamber swung open.

Gyda stepped into the room. In her hand, she held a tightly rolled parchment bearing the wax seal of the Vanguard Fleet.

"A raven just arrived from the northern blockade, bjorn sends his regards from the Scottish lochs. The Tang mutiny has reached its boiling point. Bjorn formally requests permission to accept Jiedushi Shen’s head, end the siege, and initiate the mass transport of the forty thousand survivors southward to the capital."

Ragnar set the steel gear down upon his desk.

He unrolled the parchment.

He looked up at Gyda. He reached out, catching her by the waist and pulling her effortlessly onto his lap. She gasped softly but settled against his chest.

"You will draft a response to my brother immediately, my dear," Ragnar instructed,

"You will tell Bjorn that his request to end the siege is outright denied."

Gyda’s eyes widened slightly in surprise. "Denied? Ragnar, they are eating diseased horses. If we delay their surrender much longer, we risk losing the very labor force we orchestrated this entire bombardment to acquire..."

"An infected labor force is an apocalyptic threat," Ragnar corrected smoothly, "They will sit in the freezing Scottish mud and starve for another week. We do not swallow the dragon whole until we have built a stomach capable of digesting it."

Before Gyda could fully process the sheer pragmatism of his decision, the doors opened once more. Commander Leofric entered, accompanied by Chief Engineer Ludwig, a bespectacled Saxon possessing a brilliant mind.

"You summoned us, my King?" Leofric asked, bowing his head respectfully.

"I did," Ragnar replied, "The eastern army in Scotland is on the verge of total capitulation. However, I have ordered the siege to continue. We have exactly seven days to prepare City Titan for a human flood that will quintuple our population."

Leofric’s gruff face paled, "My King, the city cannot house them. The English citizens will panic at the sight of an eastern horde."

"They will not enter the city," Ragnar stated,

"Leofric, you will mobilize every available lumberjack and carpenter in the district. I want the vast pine forests to the west of the city completely cleared by tomorrow evening. You will use the felled timber to construct a massive, isolated quarantine camp... It must be surrounded by a double-layered palisade and overlooked by elevated watchtowers. Every Tang soldier will be stripped, washed, and contained within this perimeter for a full month before they are permitted anywhere near my foundries."

"Clearing the western forest and erecting a palisade of that magnitude will require thousands of laborers working around the clock..." Leofric noted.

"Then pay them double," Ragnar said. "We are a wealthy empire now. Spend the silver."

"Ludwig, confining forty thousand men behind a wooden wall solves the issue of containment, but it creates two massive engineering dilemmas, first, we must feed them. Second, we must manage their waste. If we fail at either, the quarantine camp will become a grave."

"I... I can design standard field kitchens, Iron Father," Ludwig stammered slightly. "We can dig fire pits and assign cooking details."

"Forty thousand men require over eighty thousand pounds of grain and gruel per day. Individual fire pits will consume too much firewood, risk burning down the palisades, and require far too much manual labor..." Ragnar countered immediately.

Ragnar gently set Gyda aside, rising from his chair. He walked over to his drafting table, unrolling a blank sheet of vellum.

He picked up a charcoal stick,

"We will cast enormous, double-walled iron kettles. Instead of lighting fires directly beneath them, you will pipe high-pressure steam from our nearby coal boilers directly into the jackets of these vats. The latent heat of the steam will bring hundreds of gallons of water, oats, and salted fish scraps to a rolling boil simultaneously, without a single open flame inside the camp."

Ludwig stepped closer, "Steam-jacketed kettles... My King, the caloric output would be astronomical. A dozen men operating the valves could feed tens of thousands in a matter of hours."

"It is cheap, and it maximizes our coal surplus while minimizing our labor expenditures." Ragnar said.

"The second issue is sanitation, If they are allowed to defecate near their sleeping quarters or near the camp’s water supply, cholera will eradicate them faster than our mortar shells did. I will not allow my newly acquired labor force to die of soiled water."

"You will excavate a massive, centralized sewage network entirely separate from the main camp," Ragnar ordered.

"Deep-trench latrines, lined with non-porous clay. The trenches must be angled downward, utilizing gravity to channel the waste away from the local water table and out toward the sea."

Ludwig furiously scribbled notes into his ledger, "The sheer volume of waste will still breed immense bacterial colonies and attract vermin."

"Which is why you will also requisition the entirety of our quicklime reserves," Ragnar deduced seamlessly,

"Every watch rotation, the guards will mandate that thick layers of slaked lime are shoveled directly over the fresh waste in the trenches. The chemical reaction will incinerate the bacteria, neutralize the stench, and prevent the spread of disease vectors... The camp must remain surgically clean."

The chief engineer bowed, "It is a monumental undertaking, Iron Father."

"Do not sleep until the blueprints are finalized, Ludwig," Ragnar warned.

The two men hurried from the solar, instantly launching into a sprint to mobilize the city’s vast industrial resources.

The sound of shouting foremen and the distant ringing of warning bells soon echoed up from the lower districts as the massive deforestation and construction efforts commenced.

Ragnar returned to his desk, picking up his mug of coffee. It had gone lukewarm during the intense strategic briefing, but he drank it regardless, savoring the bitter taste of progress.

"Your brother will be furious that he has to sit in the freezing Scottish rain for another week," Gyda murmured, resting her hands over his.