Ragnar stared at the steel tube, a profound sense of displacement washing over him.
In another life, in the history he remembered from his old world, he knew exactly what was supposed to be happening in the ninth century. Right about now, the Great Heathen Army should have been carving a bloody path through Northumbria and East Anglia. They should have been forcing Alfred the Great of Wessex to his knees, eventually partitioning England to create the Danelaw.
His people should have been settling Dublin, turning it into the first great trading town of the Isles. They were meant to be colonizing the frozen shores of Iceland and the Faroe Islands. They were supposed to be the terror of the Mediterranean, raiding Spain, North Africa, and trading all the way to the gilded gates of Constantinople.
That was the timeline. But Ragnar's reincarnation had smashed that script to pieces with a sledgehammer of industrialization.
