Chapter 67: The Blood Eagle Ritual

As several hesitant Curonian soldiers were executed by the local lord, arrows began to fall intermittently toward the slaves, some landing harmlessly on the ground.

Driven forward by the Viking warriors, the captives screamed and collapsed one by one. The enemy's morale gradually waned, as they could not bear to witness such a brutal scene.

Slaves outside the town attempted to flee the carnage, but suffered heavy casualties.

Margaret quickly issued an order for the warriors to cut down a portion of the slaves while driving the rest back, forcing them to climb the scaling ladders.

However, as time went on, a fierce resentment began to swell among the enemy troops, who wished they could tear Margaret and her followers apart with their bare hands. Yet, fear predominated.

On the ramparts, the enemy unleashed their arrows, forming an increasingly dense rain of projectiles under which the slaves continually fell.

Those who feigned death were trampled to death by passing Viking warriors, and anyone blocking the path was summarily slain.

Mantlets were placed a mere ten meters from the town, bristling with arrows, providing cover for the shield-bearing Viking warriors charging ahead.

The warriors took shelter behind the mantlets, using bows, arrows, and javelins to seize opportunities to counterattack the Curonians exposing themselves on the battlements.

Makeshift scaling ladders were hoisted against the walls, and Viking warriors began to climb, dragging the enemy down from the battlements. The archers behind the mantlets also returned fire against the enemy soldiers atop the walls.

Bodies continuously plummeted from the ramparts, some crashing onto the erected scaling ladders, others plunging down alongside the Viking warriors. The battle was exceptionally fierce and bloody.

Being northerners, the physical advantage of the tall Viking warriors became fully apparent.

Among the Curonians, whose height reached only up to the Vikings' necks, the northerners dispatched their enemies one by one with axes and spears.

"All archers and crossbowmen forward, take the ramparts!" Margaret ordered immediately upon seeing that the Viking warriors had swarmed onto the walls.

These elite archers, carefully selected from ordinary warriors, stood an imposing one meter ninety tall and possessed robust physiques. They discarded their bows and crossbows, drew their longswords, and gripped their shields as they scaled the walls.

Any enemy who mistook them for mere archers and attempted close combat for an easy kill would soon discover with horror that these hand-picked archers possessed combat capabilities surpassing even ordinary infantry, capable of crushing a windpipe with a single hand.

Conversely, ordinary warriors, little better than cannon fodder, were far easier to handle.

Once they mounted the walls, relying on their formidable physiques, they invariably chopped down enemies shield and all with a single axe blow, rapidly seizing control of the ramparts.

Under the three-pronged assault, the walls were captured by the warriors one after another. Enemy morale collapsed, and they began to rout. Most of the enemy forces were slain on the battlements, with only a handful managing to retreat into the residential quarters.

The Viking warriors charged into the residential district, cutting down any armed enemy in sight. Corpses littered their path, drawing large flocks of raiders darkening the sky.

Margaret ordered the warriors who had secured the various city sectors to cease the slaughter and was the first to enter the town alongside the lords.

Priests hurried to tend to their own wounded while putting struggling enemies out of their misery, extinguishing any lingering hope of survival.

Everywhere the eye could see, corpses choked the roads in a harrowing spectacle. Margaret frowned at the bodies strewn across the ground, feeling a deep sense of waste.

She realized that combat could no longer be waged in this manner. If this trend continued, she would struggle to accumulate the massive slave base needed to convert into subjects to sustain her rule.

Regrettably, due to the language barrier, she could not effectively integrate these captives into her ruling system and put them to use.

Margaret planned that in the days to come, all male slaves would earn their freedom and become freemen by turning in enemy heads.

Only by slaying enemies and severing their heads in subsequent wars could the slaves become "one of us." This meant they could only attain freedom after killing an enemy and securing a head.

Although using ears as a substitute was a consideration, Margaret feared the slaves might indiscriminately hack off the indistinguishable ears of their own people just to make up numbers, so head-counts must remain the sole metric initially.

Through this method, she could utilize the slaves for warfare while placating them, rapidly converting them into territorial population.

Margaret and her party arrived outside the enemy lord's hall. Confronted by the heavily bolted doors, her brow furrowed deeply.

"Burn them out!" Margaret decided against risking her soldiers by storming into the building, as a large number of enemies might be lurking inside.

As the fires were kindled and thick smoke billowed upward, the doors were finally thrown open. Many enemy soldiers, unable to endure the choking smoke, emerged to kneel in surrender, uttering words she could not understand.

However, Margaret found no sign of anyone resembling the local lord. She surmised that the lord might have changed clothes and blended into the crowd, or perhaps fled.

"Has he escaped?" she sighed. "Go drag someone who speaks our language here to tell us where their lord has gone!"

A captive was dragged out. The warriors grabbed her by the hair, dragged her before Margaret, and kicked her down to her knees.

A longsword pressed against her neck, breaking the skin. The warrior looked to Margaret, awaiting instructions.

Margaret paid no heed to the captive; she only felt that the blood clinging to the soles of her shoes made walking heavily upon the flagstones sticky and cumbersome.

She lifted her foot and scraped the sole against the garments of a nearby corpse: "Where is your lord?"

"The lord has fled!" the captive stammered, trembling.

"Fled where?"

"He fled on horseback with the lady, the young master, and several riders!" the captive answered honestly under the blade's edge.

"Let her go!" Margaret commanded. The soldiers released the woman, leaving her trembling on the ground.

"Why do you speak our language?"

"My father came from the north. His foot was broken, and he was abandoned. My mother took him in! He taught me this!"

"Are you willing to serve us?" Margaret extended the toe of her shoe from beneath her skirt, her gaze conveying a silent prompt.

"Yes, my lord! I am willing!" The woman crawled forward and kissed her shoe.

"Protect her well!" Margaret instructed her soldiers. "Furthermore, find more people who speak our language and make them interpreters!"

"Gather all the loot in this town, confiscate the grain from every resident's home, and imprison the male and female captives separately.

"Select a batch of the most attractive women and reward them to the bravest warriors!

"Keep the males under guarded supervision in batches, making them choose their own leaders to manage and mutually supervise one another—if one flees, the entire squad is slaughtered.

"Tell them they will accompany us to conquer other territories, and as long as they hand over a single head, they can choose to free themselves or their families from slave status and join us!" Margaret instructed the lords, a dangerous glint flashing in her eyes.

At that moment, the sound of hooves echoed: "Your Majesty, we have captured someone claiming to be a chieftain. Do you wish to see him?"

Margaret shook her head and replied coldly, "Bring him over. In front of all the captives, perform the blood eagle ritual upon him as a sacrifice to Odin, to avenge our fallen soldiers. Kill everyone related to him by blood! Leave no enemies behind for us!"

The blood eagle was an extremely cruel method of execution, typically reserved for punishing traitors or enemies.

The ritual involved hoisting the victim into the air, then using blades or other tools to sever the ribs from the spine one by one, exposing the internal organs.

Subsequently, the executioner would extract the victim's lungs and stretch the ribs outward into the shape of wings, making the victim resemble an eagle spreading its wings.

Margaret needed to use the most brutal sacrificial ritual to show all the captives that this was the consequence of defying her. Let them ponder the fallout before launching any uprisings.

"Spare me! Spare me! I beg you to spare me, I am willing to give you everything!" The lord's humble plea reached Margaret's ears.

Translated by the woman at her side, Margaret did not reply, but instead looked to the priests of Odin: "Begin!"

Before the terrified gazes of all the captives, the once lofty local lord was forced to swallow a bowl of draught, hung beneath the eaves, and subjected to the mumbling priests standing behind him who operated with axes upon his back, drawing endless shrieks of terror from his lips.

Meanwhile, news that an unprecedentedly massive Viking army had landed and captured a coastal town spread wildly across neighboring domains, instilling profound panic among all Curonian lords.

Under the summons of a highly prestigious lord, all nearby Curonian lords marshaled their troops to gather for his banquet, conspiring to deal with Margaret and these brutal uninvited guests.