Vikings: Lords of the Ice Sea

Chapter 115 Iron Ore
A day later, news of the capture of Edinburgh reached Stirling, and Vig was in high spirits.

On July 10, the 1,000 reinforcements sent by the Shrike arrived, expanding the siege force to 4,500, with a large number of shield carts, ladders, and 15 small catapults.

The next morning, the general offensive officially began. Catapults continuously hurled oil canisters for a full twenty rounds, and a large area of ​​the northern wall of Stirling was ablaze. The soldiers who were originally stationed behind the battlements spontaneously withdrew.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, many Vikings slowly advanced with shield carts, throwing sandbags into the moat outside the walls, eventually filling in more than a dozen passable roads.

Seeing this, Vig waved a red flag, and the tower at the front of the group began to move. Since Stirling's walls were only five meters high, the tower's construction difficulty was greatly reduced, and its movement speed was also much faster.

As time passed, the flames gradually died down, and the defenders climbed back onto the walls, standing behind the broken battlements and firing at the enemy.

To cover the advance of the tower, eight hundred crossbowmen stood in three rows on the open ground. The front row consisted of armored crossbowmen who were only fifty meters away from the wall, and their crossbow bolts were accurate and deadly.

The second row consisted of ordinary light crossbowmen who, under the cover of a giant wooden shield, repeatedly went through the process of cocking the crossbow, aiming, and pulling the trigger.

The last row consisted of Welsh longbowmen, who had the fastest rate of fire and the longest range, and they provided covering fire on the wall.

Thanks to the suppression from the archers, a large number of infantrymen pushed the tower closer to the wall. With a loud bang, the tower's panels crashed down, and the armored soldiers hiding inside rushed up the wall and engaged in fierce fighting with the defenders.

From Vig's perspective, his heavy infantry held a clear advantage, quickly clearing out the surrounding enemies, except for the city gate area where they suffered setbacks.

"Was Duncan the commander of that group of Indigo Raiders?"

“It seems to be him,” Yoren said. The next moment, he asked to fight, vowing to personally cut off the other’s head so that the newly rising Torga would not steal the spotlight.

"That's not necessary."

Vig shook his head and sent someone to inform the archers at the front to focus their fire on the hundreds of elite soldiers led by Duncan.

After several volleys, the section of the stockade where Duncan was located was riddled with arrows. The Indigo Raiders suffered heavy casualties, and Duncan himself was hit in the shoulder by a heavy crossbow bolt. A large number of Viking soldiers rushed up and hacked him to death.

With the lord and his elite troops dead, the fall of Stirling was inevitable. Vig yawned and sat on the grass to process official documents.

According to a letter from Tyneburg, another thousand raiders have recently arrived. In the letter, Herigif relayed the chieftains' complaints:
West Frankish territory was no longer suitable for plundering. In an attempt to appease the Franks, Gunnar even sent soldiers to build fortresses on Jersey and Guernsey in the Channel Islands to prevent passing pirates from resting and obtaining fresh water, leaving them no way to survive.

Aside from the Anglo-Saxon states and West Francia, the raiders had nowhere else to go, and since the Serpent of the North was waging a major campaign, they flocked over to make a quick buck.

Taking out paper and pen, Vig wrote a reply, urging for a new batch of grain and supplies.

Furthermore, after two major battles, the cavalry, clad in iron armor, suffered relatively few casualties, but lost sixty-five warhorses. According to the employment agreement, if a cavalryman lost his mount during the war, Tyneburg was obligated to provide a new, high-quality warhorse free of charge.

"The West City Military Horse Farm has a total of 160 Frankish warhorses, and 65 of them have been lost in the blink of an eye. Sigh, war is simply burning money."

Even so, Viggo kept his promise, seeing no need to ruin his reputation built up over many years for such a small gain.

After spending two hours processing the backlog of letters, he looked up and saw rows of dejected Pickett prisoners walking out of the city gates and squatting in the open ground, awaiting the victors' decision on their fate.

"After more than a month of busy work, it's finally over." Vig stretched and left the remaining tasks to his subordinates. He then found a local guide and asked him to lead the way to the iron ore region to the north.

Crossing the Forth River, the north bank is a vast expanse of rolling mountains containing shallow layers of reddish-brown hematite (FeO). Led by a miner, the group arrived at a nearby mining area.

"Sir, this is where I work."

Miner Keso pointed to a pile of stone hammers and wooden crowbars, explaining the iron ore mining process.

First, miners search for veins by observing the rust-colored rock layers on the surface or the iron sand in streams, dividing them into hematite and swamp iron ore at the edge of swamps.

Among them, the iron produced from swamp iron ore is of very poor quality and has low toughness. Under normal circumstances, mine owners prefer to mine hematite.

Mining areas were designated, and miners used open-pit mining to break up the ore with heavy stone hammers and remove some impurities.

The next step is smelting. Miners use clay and stones to build a cylindrical furnace that is as tall as a person, with an opening at the top for feeding and a ventilation opening at the bottom.

Miner Kaiso described the abandoned, broken cylindrical furnaces: "They laid out layers of charcoal and iron ore, three pieces of charcoal for one piece of iron ore, then ignited the charcoal and blew air in through the bottom vents via leather bellows, which lasted all day."

Vig asked the most important question, "What about production?"

Kaiser looked around and finally pulled out a rusty iron ingot from the warehouse, “about the same size as this.”

Weighing the iron ingots, which weighed about ten kilograms, Vig scratched his head, clearly dissatisfied with the yield.

Recalling the production process that Keso had mentioned, he decided to improve it, increasing production efficiency and the quality of iron ingots.

Regarding the ore crushing process, he designed a hydraulic ore crusher. In short, it uses water power to drive a water turbine to raise the forging hammer, which then falls heavily to crush the ore into small pieces, reducing the workload of miners.

"Look, these are the blueprints for the ore crusher. I plan to build it on the banks of the River Forth. In addition, I also intend to build a water-powered blower. Compared to manually pulling leather bellows, it will provide more powerful airflow, and the size of the blast furnace can also be increased appropriately."

Vig explained it to him with great interest and appointed the quick-witted and lucky miner as the manager of the Stirling Iron Mine.

"Work hard, and I'll protect you from now on. If you encounter any trouble, just call my name."

To boost the enthusiasm of the original miners, Vig pardoned them and made them wage laborers, giving them extra rewards such as wine and silver coins based on their output.

He spent several days visiting the surrounding mining areas and had a hydraulic workshop built on the banks of the Forth River, determined to develop it into a large iron smelting base.

Another week later, a thousand raiders who had set out from Tyneburg arrived, bringing Stirling's Viking army to over five thousand.

Leaving several hundred men to garrison Stirling, Vig led four thousand five hundred men to Glasgow on the west coast to capture the last major settlement.

(End of this chapter)