Vikings: Lords of the Ice Sea

Chapter 123 Mining Area (1)

Spring of 850.

As temperatures gradually rise, the northern Stirling mines are operating at full capacity. To meet the lord's production requirements, mine manager Kaiser decides to recruit more miners to work on iron ore production.

Currently, the iron ore mine employs 400 people, 100 freed slaves, 50 Vikings, and 250 prisoners of war.

The first two tasks required paying wages and bonuses. In an effort to cut costs, Kaiser repeatedly requested more prisoners of war, but was refused. Left with no other option, he had to spend money to recruit former freed slaves to personally accompany the new employees on tours of the mines.

"Look, this is our mining area."

Kaiser and thirty new employees arrived at the mine. The land was reddish-brown, gleaming like rust in the morning sun. A group of workers were burning firewood on the ground and then splashing it with a large handful of cold water.

Sizzle~
Large plumes of white steam rose up, causing the temperature of the surface ore to drop sharply, resulting in numerous cracks due to thermal expansion and contraction. Subsequently, workers inserted wedges along the cracks and repeatedly struck the ore with wooden mallets until pieces of reddish-brown ore crumbled.

Workers would pick up the ore and put it into baskets, then carry them down the mountain, dump them into heavy-duty wagons, and transport them several miles away for smelting.

Following the heavily loaded wagons, Kaiser and his new employees traveled for a full two hours to reach the north bank of the Forth River.

After six months, this place has been transformed into a large iron smelting base, with moats and stockade walls forming the outermost perimeter. Passing through the gate of the stockade wall, the northernmost side is the barracks, the east and west sides are warehouses, and numerous workshops are distributed along the riverbank.

First, there's the water-powered sawmill. Timber felled upstream is transported here, cut into small pieces, and then sent to the charcoal workshop to be made into charcoal for use in iron smelting.

“Sometimes we would sell the leftover charcoal to Stirling across the river. The charcoal you get at the market actually comes from the charcoal workshops.”

Kaiser led the new employees on a tour, and then showed them the hydraulic ore crusher.

Here, a group of workers are moving ore from horse-drawn carts and feeding it into several grooves.

As the water flows and the waterwheel rotates continuously, it gradually lifts the forging hammer to its highest point, at which point it is released.

Bang!
Under the influence of gravity, a hammer weighing hundreds of kilograms crashes down on the ore in the groove, then rises and falls again, repeating the process several times until the ore in the groove is broken into small pieces.

Workers use brooms to sweep the slag into the inclined wooden trough below, pick out the larger pieces of ore and throw them back into the trough, and pour the remaining slag into wooden baskets to be transported to the next process.

Seeing this, Kesso couldn't help but let out a long sigh. "Back then, we needed to smash the ore with sledgehammers, which was the most grueling step. You're lucky to have avoided that hassle."

Next, the workers in the next process put crushed ore and charcoal into a large iron furnace that is two people tall, lit the flames, and a water-powered blower not far away started to operate, continuously supplying air into the furnace.
"Iron smelting takes a long time, I'm not going to look at it anymore."

Kaiser led the new employees into the warehouse, pointing to the piles of pig iron ingots on the ground. "These are iron ingots produced by the blast furnace and transported to Tyneburg by ships. Pig iron has a high carbon content and poor toughness, so blacksmiths need to repeatedly forge it into wrought iron, which is used to make farm tools, weapons, and armor. It is said that there are more than twenty blacksmiths there, and if you include their apprentices, the number of practitioners exceeds sixty."

Yawning, Kaiser glanced at the blazing sun high in the sky and let the new employees into the cafeteria for a meal. The menu was limited: fried fish, stewed fish, pan-fried fish, vegetable soup, and black bread.

"That's all. Dinner will be served with a small amount of beer, white bread every five days, and lamb once a month. You can eat as much as you like."

Kaiser sipped his fish soup, and after the new employees wolfed down their food, he began assigning tasks. Less than a third of the new employees remained at the iron smelting camp; the rest were thrown into mining and transportation. After dismissing the new employees, he casually flipped through the roster, feeling that transportation in the mining area consumed too much cost, especially the twenty draft horses responsible for pulling the carts, which consumed a large amount of oats every day; one horse could eat the food of eight miners.

"Alas, horses, grooms, and workers carrying ore up the mountain are all transportation costs. Now that the Duke is urging me to increase production, I'm afraid I'll have to increase the number of draft horses."

In a daze, Caesar recalled a strange facility the Duke had mentioned—a rail wagon, with two parallel wooden tracks laid on the ground, on which mine carts were placed, and two draft horses were enough to pull more iron ore.

"Forget it, we don't have enough manpower at the camp. We'll consider trying again later."

Kaiser returned to his office and was about to lie down for a nap when he heard a piercing wail outside.

He rushed out of the house and followed the screams into the water-powered sawmill, where he found a worker with a deathly pale face and a long, bright red blood dripping from his left arm where a hacksaw had cut it open.

"Damn it, how many times have I told you to be careful?"

At Kaiser's command, two workers carried the wounded man on a door panel and transported him by small boat to Stirling on the south bank of the Forth River.

Upon entering the town, the group hurried to the Temple of North in the city center. The temple was a wooden structure with a towering, sloping black roof, and the pillars under the eaves were carved with statues of the Aesir gods, namely Odin, Thor, and Baldr.

"Come in with me, and don't make a sound."

Passing through the gate, thirty benches were placed in the main hall, where a few residents were listening to the shaman's prayers.

Kaiser did not disturb them, and had the miners carry the wounded man to the right. After walking several dozen steps, they arrived at an unremarkable-looking house. Inside sat a young female shaman who was yawning constantly. She was wearing a white coat and had a young face, looking only sixteen or seventeen years old.

"It's you again? Something goes wrong in the mining area every few days, as if this hospital was set up specifically for your mining area."

The female shaman rubbed her eyes and gestured for the people to lift the wounded man onto the wooden table.

After washing her hands, she forced the wounded man to drink half a jug of beer, then stuffed a rag into his mouth and ordered Caesar and the other two miners to hold him down.

"Use more force, don't let this person move around."

After rinsing the wound with clean water, the female shaman began to stitch it up with needle and thread. Under the intense pain, the veins on the wounded man's forehead bulged, like a river fish struggling and writhing on a chopping board.

Woo~
As time went on, his strength gradually diminished, and his struggles became less and less intense until the surgery was over.

"Let him rest during this time, and keep his wound dry." The female shaman wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, wrote the wounded man's name and information in a booklet, and at the end, she gestured for Keso to sign it as the basis for monthly settlement.

“Wait,” Kaiser said, indicating that two other miners in the camp had fevers and requesting that they be given medicine.

“Understood,” the female shaman walked to the stove on the right, brewed some willow bark medicine, put it into a pottery jar, and handed it to the other party.

(End of this chapter)