Building a Viking Empire with Modern Industry

Chapter 366: Survival, betrayal, and family

Aed stared at the trembling man, realizing that the traitor who killed little Lorcan was standing right inside his bedroom. But what was even more terrifying, Aed realized the man hadn’t come to finish the job.

Cormac looked like a man who had just realized the catastrophic scale of the conspiracy he had been bribed to join.

"Cormac..." Aed asked, his voice tight and low. "You look like a man who has seen a ghost. Or perhaps... like a man who just realized his new friends are completely insane."

Cormac let out a miserable whimper, dropping the silver tray to clatter loudly against the stone floor.

He collapsed to his knees at the foot of the royal bed, hiding his face in his hands.

"I am so sorry, my King!" Cormac wept, breaking down under the crushing weight of his guilt. "They gave me so much gold... They said it was just a sleeping powder. I didn’t know the boy would drink it... I didn’t know he would die!"

Aed forced himself to sit up slightly, ignoring the burning pain in his stomach.

"Who paid you, Cormac?" Aed demanded.

"The Northmen..!" Cormac cried, "A massive man with scars all over his face... He paid me to poison the wine, and he paid me to open the old smugglers’ tunnel in the wine cellar!"

Then, Cormac looked up.

"Wine barrels, my King..." Cormac gasped, "They are rolling dozens of heavy wine barrels beneath the main support pillars of this castle. But... but when one of them cracked by accident... there was no wine inside."

"What was it?" Aed demanded.

"Black dirt, my King," Cormac whispered, "Just heavy, foul-smelling black dirt. And they are stacking a hundred barrels of it right beneath our feet."

"A hundred barrels?" Aed repeated.

The High King of Ireland stared at Cormac, the weeping Master of the Cellars, completely unable to process the scale of the betrayal.

One hundred barrels of explosive black dirt, packed tightly directly beneath the floor he was sleeping on... It was enough firepower to blow the royal fortress into the sky, taking half of Dublin with it.

Before Aed could even ask about the length of the fuses, a voice rang out from the corridor.

"Father!" Maeve cried out.

Aedh’s daughter rushed entirely past her older brother, dropping to her knees beside the bed and throwing her arms carefully around Aedh’s neck.

"Oh, my little wildcat..." Aedh smiled, overwhelmed with joy as he awkwardly patted her back. "I am alright. The fever broke."

"You look like a walking skeleton..." Maeve scolded him, pulling back to wipe her eyes. "When the healers told us you were finally waking up, I almost didn’t believe them!"

"We dropped everything, Father," Conor said, stepping closer, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword. "I locked down the entire city. The tournament is canceled. The trade ports are closed. I pulled every single guard from the outer walls and stationed them entirely inside the inner keep to protect you... Nobody is getting in or out of this castle."

Even so, Aedh didn’t look pleased. He frowned, looking at his fiercely protective son.

"You pulled the outer guards inward?" Aedh asked, "Conor... if you leave the outer walls empty, you leave the city vulnerable. Who is running the kingdom while I am sweating in this bed?"

"Who cares about the kingdom?!" Conor barked, crossing his arms. "If you died, the kingdom would burn anyway! Your health is priority number one, old man. We aren’t leaving your side until we find the bastard who poisoned you!"

"And we already found the rat who helped them!" a young, cheerful voice echoed from the hallway.

Aedh looked up as his second son, Declan, walked into the room. But Declan wasn’t alone.

Trailing right behind him was a chaotic flock of children. There were easily a dozen young boys and girls - Aedh’s grandchildren and royal nephews - all pushing each other playfully as they flooded into the King’s bedchamber.

The youngest ones were waving little wooden swords, entirely oblivious to the serious tension in the room.

"Grandpa Aedh!" a little boy cheered, running up and grabbing the edge of the heavy wool blankets. "Are you going to get up and fight the bad guys now?"

Aedh was completely stunned. His entire family, the absolute core of his bloodline, had gathered in this single room.

It was a heartwarming sight that made his chest swell with immense pride. He had built this massive family from nothing.

But as he looked at the children, his eyes slowly drifted down to Cormac, the Cellar Master, who was sobbing on the floor.th.

"Damnit..." Aedh breathed out, a look of terror crossing his face for the first time in his entire life.

Before Aedh could even scream the order to evacuate, a strange, faint sound echoed through the stone floorboards beneath their boots.

Hsssssssss It sounded exactly like a massive, angry snake.

"Father... What is that smell?" Maeve asked.

"Domnall... Conor!" Aedh roared, "Grab me, haul me up and run! Run right fucking now!"

After hearing such words, Conor and Domnall didn’t ask a single question, when their King screamed with that level of terror, they moved entirely on instinct.

Domnall lunged forward, grabbing Aedh’s right arm, while Conor grabbed his left.

Together, the two men hoisted the frail King entirely out of the bed, throwing his arms over their broad shoulders.

"Maeve! Declan! Grab the children!" Aedh yelled, his legs dragging across the floor as his son and his guard captain carried him toward the door. "Don’t pack anything... Don’t look back! Just run for the courtyard!"

"Come here, you little brats!" Declan shouted, scooping up two of the youngest toddlers under his armored arms.

Maeve pushed the older teenagers toward the hallway, "Move! Quickly! Do not stop running!"

They all burst out of the royal bedchamber, completely abandoning the weeping Cellar Master on the floor.

The royal family sprinted down the wide corridors of the upper keep.

However, as they reached the top of the main spiral staircase, something entirely horrifying made Aedh’s blood run even colder.

Hsssssssss...

The sound wasn’t fading away... It was getting significantly louder.

Aedh turned his head, looking at the walls of the staircase.

The aggressive sputtering of the burning fuses wasn’t just coming from the royal bedchamber above them anymore. It was completely everywhere...

Though they were sprinting as fast as the heavy armor and the children would allow, the terror of the hissing sound was unbearable.

It was like a massive, invisible nest of angry snakes was slithering through the very bones of the castle, entirely surrounding them. Every single floor they passed, the hissing was there.

They finally reached the ground floor of the inner keep, bursting through the double doors and out into the pouring rain of the main courtyard.

Domnall and Conor dragged the King through the mud, finally stopping in the center of the yard.

Maeve and Ronan rushed out right behind them, counting the heads of the children.

"Praise the gods." Ronan cheered, wiping the rain from his eyes.

"Bring the horses." Conor roared at the stable guards, waving his hand. "We ride out of the city right now!"

Even so, Aedh couldn’t share their relief. He hung heavily between his son and his captain, panting wildly.

The hissing sound had entirely stopped.

"Did the rain put the fires out?" Maeve asked, hugging a shivering little girl tightly to her chest.

Suddenly, the doors of the servant’s quarters on the eastern side of the courtyard violently burst open.

Three young maids, covered in black soot and bleeding from their foreheads, came sprinting out into the mud. They were screaming, waving their arms wildly.

"My King! Lord Conor!" the lead maid shrieked, tripping in the mud and falling hard onto her knees.

Maeve rushed forward, pulling the girl up. "What is it? What happened inside?!"

"The rooms... the rooms are entirely gone!" the maid sobbed, pointing a finger back toward the eastern wing of the castle. "We were in the kitchens... and the entire floor just exploded into fire. The ceiling collapsed! Everyone is dead in there!"

Before the maid could even finish her sentence, a deafening explosion ripped through the eastern wing.

The royal family screamed, covering their ears as the sheer shockwave knocked the closest guards directly off their feet.

A massive fireball of bright orange and red punched through the walls, shattering the glass windows and sending chunks of stone shrapnel flying across the courtyard.

"Damnit!" Domnall cursed, using his armored body to shield the King.

The entire eastern wing of the ancient Irish fortress crumbled inward, collapsing into a pile of smoking rubble.

"Don’t just stand there!" Aedh roared, "The eastern wing was just the beginning... The whole fucking keep is coming down! Get to the main gates!"

Conor and Domnall hauled the King forward, splashing through the mud. Maeve and her brothers dragged the children, running for their lives toward the gates that separated the inner courtyard from the safety of the outer city streets.

"Open the gates!" Conor roared at the two armored gatekeepers standing in the rain.

The two guards grabbed the turn wheel, throwing their body weight into it.

The iron chains groaned loudly, and the gates slowly began to creak open, revealing the streets of Dublin waiting on the other side.

"We are going to make it..." Ronan cheered, running ahead with his drawn sword to secure the street.

However, the soot-covered maid who had escaped the kitchens suddenly grabbed Maeve’s arm, her eyes wide.

"Wait!" the maid screamed, pointing a hand toward the gates. "The cellar master... Cormac told the cooks to stack the biggest wine barrels under the gatehouse!"

Maeve turned around, looking at her older brother.

"Conor, stop!" Maeve shrieked at the top of her lungs.

Conor paused, still holding his father’s arm, and looked back at his sister. "What do you mean? The gates are open!"

"The maid said Cormac stacked the barrels under the gatehouse!" Maeve cried out.

"What do you mean the main gate is—" Conor started to yell.

KA-BOOM! The explosion was entirely apocalyptic.

It was ten times larger than the blast that had destroyed the eastern wing.

The entire stone foundation beneath the massive gatehouse erupted in a blinding flash of white-hot fire.

The archway instantly shattered into a million pieces, raining a devastating shower of boulders downward.

The shockwave hit the royal family like a wall of solid iron, throwing Conor, Domnall, and the King backward into the mud.

Aedh slowly forced his eyes open, wiping the bloody mud from his face.

He looked toward the front of the courtyard.

The gates were gone... The stone archway had entirely collapsed!

The main gate was crushed, blocking their only exit with a mountain of burning rubble.

They were trapped inside a courtyard, surrounded by a castle that was exploding piece by piece.

And as the black smoke slowly began to clear from the crushed gatehouse, Aedh saw the dark silhouettes of armed men climbing slowly over the burning rocks.