In the days that followed, Barnett led his Viking army on raids far and wide. Because the system sprite had assigned him the task of conquering every Viking tribe within a two-hundred-kilometer radius, Barnett was for the time being unable to strike at any alien peoples and could only turn first against his own kinsmen. Barnett felt no real moral burden about this—after all, in this era, on this continent, the law of the jungle reigned, and internecine strife among kinsfolk was playing out in many places across the land. Of course, more recently, after Barnett saw the wealth and people plundered from five conquered tribes, he found himself increasingly interested in this kind of fratricidal warfare. In fact, Barnett—formerly a resident of North America in his previous life—was not, by blood, a kinsman of the Vikings at all.
With money, everything became easy. Having tasted the sweet spoils of war, the Viking warriors under his command yearned each day to conquer yet another tribe. And since the system's "bug" guaranteed Barnett half of all plunder, he never worried about how to dispose of the loot. Any unusable items—gold and silver vessels, works of art, jewelry—Barnett funneled into the system's trading interface and converted into gold coins. Coupled with the coin plundered in battle, Barnett found himself drawing in five thousand gold coins every five days—an absolute upstart millionaire.
Indeed, to make one's fortune, there is no substitute for plunder. It was infinitely easier than slaving away to earn coin by honest labor—and here, looting was perfectly legal: so long as you had the strength, you could seize and plunder to your heart's content. Just splendid.
Once Barnett no longer fretted about money, the town's basic civilian infrastructure—inns, breweries, stables and carriage shops, pottery workshops, shipyards, gravel roads, and so forth—began gradually to take shape. Small coastal fisheries and fishing vessels also came into being bit by bit.
Barnett also began to expand his army's ranks. After all, many battles lay ahead; warfare always exacts a price in blood, and in these recent raids Barnett had already lost over a dozen Viking warriors. Thus, he recruited two companies of crossbow militia from among the townsfolk to make up for his deficiencies in long-range firepower. After all, picking off an enemy from afar is far preferable to grappling in close quarters.
The newly enlisted crossbowmen—armed with hand-held crossbows—were of middling training, morale, and discipline; their only armor was light leather, and their sole melee weapon was a dagger. Yet as the most powerful ranged weapon of the medieval era, the crossbow's lethality was unmatched. Two companies totaling two hundred crossbowmen would serve as Barnett's main long-range attack force for the time being—training would improve their effectiveness later.
In addition, Barnett enlisted two companies of light patrol cavalry to make up for his army's lack of mobility. In prior raids, many of his enemies, seeing the might of Barnett's forces and realizing they could not stand, fled into the depths of the Black Forest. Sending the main host into that labyrinth of trees to hunt them down would have been ill-advised.
His guard cavalry, clad in heavy armor like moving tanks—though faster than infantry—still tired their horses quickly and were unsuitable for long pursuit. His axe-armed cavalry were certainly swift enough, but these warriors preferred to chase down a foe, cleave with a single axe blow, then braid the fallen man's hair into a rope to tie the head to their belts. Damn those axe-riders—they failed to see that every foe was a source of more gold!
After these raids, the population of Barnett's small town had only grown by roughly fifteen hundred souls. Because he still needed to keep enough people working agriculture, fishing, and hunting to feed everyone, the net gain beyond those essential occupations was barely five hundred new settlers. With more refugees streaming in, Byade's population reached 2,800—still a long way from the 5,000 needed to upgrade to a large town!
Therefore, to maximize the number of prisoners taken after each victory, a light cavalry unit became all the more necessary. Armed with round shields and short spears, a few with lassoes, wearing leather armor—the patrol cavalry were genuine light horse. Their combat power was modest, their morale somewhat low, but their speed was brisk, and a sweep of a spear could bruise a captive into compliance before they dutifully followed Barnett home.
Thus, two companies of patrol cavalry—one hundred men—and two hundred crossbow militia brought Byade's total military strength to fifteen hundred troops. Such a force now ranked among the most powerful of the surrounding tribes.
The day after completing this expansion, Barnett left one company of his axe cavalry in Byade as a garrison force. He also recruited a company of two hundred town guards to maintain order, patrol the streets, deter crime, and enhance his prestige as lord.
With these arrangements made, Barnett once more led his troops forth on a grand raid against other Viking tribes.
This time, however, there was a slight difference. Because of his performance in recent battles, Barnett's actions had earned him a negative trait—"cowardice," lowering his army's morale by one. For some reason, his sense of danger had sharpened accordingly: the patrol cavalry he sent out to scout vanished from the holographic map… Was it a map glitch? Or had those patrols been wiped out? Barnett could not help but grow wary.
"Slow the march! Stay vigilant! Crossbows—ready! Where are the patrol cavalry? Why have they not returned?!" After this command, the entire Viking host sensed something amiss. Warriors tensed and scanned their surroundings. The crossbowmen set their bolts, primed to fire at Barnett's order.
The forests of Norway were legendary in later centuries; the Vikings followed game trails, but the canopy was so dense that beyond ten meters one could see nothing. After nearly three minutes of tense watch, Barnett muttered, "Damn it." He then recalled the monocular telescope in his kit—a piece of tech centuries ahead of its time, now perfect for the job.
He withdrew the brass-cased telescope, closed his right eye, brought it to his left eye, and slowly rotated it.
Through the telescope, Barnett spied several patrol cavalrymen and their mounts lying strewn on the ground in the distance.
"Damn it," he swore. An ambush. Scanning left and right, he estimated the enemy numbered over two thousand. More than half held only staves, pitchforks, or logging axes—tools rather than weapons—with no protective armor. Yet in the chaos of melee, harpoons, hunting bows, or logging axes could still kill.
"Looks like I've provoked a general uprising," Barnett mused.
Seeing the enemy's numbers, it was clear this was not the work of a single tribe but of several united. The five tribes he'd wiped out earlier had had survivors flee to neighboring tribes, spreading tales of Barnett's vast army. Confronted with such a threat, even bitter rivals knew they had to band together.
"What do we do? Their numbers exceed the rumors—and their armor, it gleams like ghostly phantoms! Shall we really fight these bastards?" whispered the warlords of the seven allied tribes.
At that moment, Barnett, mindful of the enemy's strength and the potential bloodshed, held his hand.
Hearing is unreliable, seeing is believing. Previously, those seven tribes had heard exaggerated tales from survivors: all decked in full mail and hardened leather, equipped with cavalry and monstrous knight-like riders in shining armor. They'd dismissed those stories as impossible. After all, no tribe in the vicinity could field such might.
No wonder they'd doubted the rumors—Barnett was a "traverser" with a system sprite's aid, after all, and had risen from nothing to the leader of a large tribe in short order.
Thus, when these tribesmen saw Barnett's soldiers with their own eyes today, their opinions changed utterly.
"And look—you see those crossbowmen! Hundreds of bolts, damn it! They've halted—they've spotted us! This ambush is pointless! If we clash with those bastards, we don't stand a chance!" one tribal leader hissed.
No sooner had he spoken than an axe swung down, cleaving off his head.
"Bastard, what are you doing? Why have you killed our leader?" his stunned guards cried out.
Instinctively they surged forward to avenge him, but before they could take a step, they were cowed by the fierce presence of the man who had spoken.
"I said united, so we unite. I said war, so we war. Since the ambush is meaningless, we will fight them with steel and blood. Cowards have no place among Viking warriors! Better to die by my axe than in the enemy's hands," barked the man in heavy mail, wielding a double-bladed battle-axe far larger than most. His long hair was the color of fresh blood, his beard blood-red, his eyes veined with crimson—driven by the lust for slaughter.
This was a berserker, a true Norse Viking berserker—the apex of Viking elite warriors. Merely a glimpse would chill one to the bone.
Norse Viking berserkers were not mindless killers. They embodied the perfect union of cold steel and fervid passion. For a Viking warrior to earn the title of berserker, he must achieve this feat:
In this era, Viking raiders were feared across the seas, surpassing later Caribbean buccaneers a thousandfold in ferocity. A simple example: when two dragon-headed longships, each independent and from different tribes, met at sea, they did not swarm one another with numbers. Instead, they drew alongside, lashed their vessels together, and each side sent forth a single warrior for single combat aboard the enemy's deck. When one fell, another from his side stepped up. This duel of death continued until one ship's warriors were all slain—only then did the bloody contest end.
A Viking berserker was born in such a crucible: the first to board, who then single-handedly slew dozens of enemy warriors in one-on-one combat. Anyone who could achieve this was anointed a berserker and showered with boundless honor.
Yet few could ever claim that title. While a Viking might slay entire bands of less formidable foes—Gauls, Celts, Germans, Romans—the true test was against fellow Norsemen of equal strength.
Vikings were the strongest, fiercest warriors in all Europe. Among them, the super-Vikings—the berserkers—alone would bear the name and its lofty honors.