High up on the precipice of the eastern ridge, the blizzard howled with a vengeance, but the biting cold was nothing compared to the ice flooding Gyda's veins. Pressing the heavy brass spyglass to her eye, she watched the nightmare unfold in the dark waters of the bay below.
The massive, steam-powered turrets of her namesake, the ironclad Gyda, were not tracking the encroaching fleet of Viking longships as they were supposed to. Instead, the cavernous black muzzles of the heavy naval guns had locked squarely onto the bloody shingle of the shoreline, aiming directly at the desperate, dwindling shield wall where Ragnar fought for his life.
Her breath caught in her throat as her mind raced through the terrible arithmetic of the battlefield. There was absolutely no time to dispatch a runner through the blinding snow, and the heavy brass field cannons anchored on the ridge were far too cumbersome to pivot and fire before the ironclad unleashed its devastating payload.
