Vikings: Lords of the Ice Sea

Chapter 58 Armory
"Ivar is too reckless. How can he just say such things so casually?"

Vig sighed for a long time, then led the messenger to the storeroom, pointing to the pile of newly completed feathered arrows, round shields, and purple bows, "They're all here."

"Thank you for your generosity. Wait a minute, why are these arrows without arrowheads?"

Vig spread his hands in a helpless expression. "There's a shortage of iron production capacity. There are only five blacksmiths in total, and including their apprentices, there are only a dozen or so. This is the only way. Take it back to Dufilin and let your master process it himself."

Three hundred purple-robed bows, one thousand round shields, one thousand sets of light gray clothing, and fifteen thousand feathered arrows, one-third of which had no arrowheads.

This is Tyneburg's entire inventory, originally intended for sale to the Lord of Bergen. Considering that this fellow hasn't settled his final payment from last time, Vig decided to leave him hanging for a while, making up the outstanding amount before proceeding with further cooperation.

After inspecting the goods, the envoy left satisfied, claiming he would return in the second half of the year to inquire whether Vig needed slaves as payment.

"Slaves? With refugees constantly pouring into Northern Europe, I don't need these men of questionable loyalty. If Ivar can't pay in gold and silver, let him settle with scrolls—anything but theological books. However,"

Vig changed the subject abruptly, "Bjorn is colonizing a deserted island and might be willing to buy slaves; the legendary navigator has plenty of money."

Upon hearing news of Bjorn, the messenger nodded in satisfaction. This man possessed a fortune of over a hundred pounds of silver, enough to purchase nearly three hundred male and female slaves. "Thank you for your support, sir. See you again in a while."

In July, a disheveled Bjorn arrived at the docks of Tyne Town with a ship full of volcanic ash. Judging from his appearance, he must have been suffering a lot recently.

"Here you go, the volcanic ash you wanted."

According to the agreed price, Vig paid for a batch of grain and six sheep, and sold a longship to the other party for ten pounds of silver.

With the volcanic ash in hand, Vig mixed concrete according to the recipe he remembered. To be on the safe side, he didn't plan to use it to build the main castle, but rather to use it to construct a small section of the inner wall, so that it would be easy to fix if something went wrong.

Bjorn watched from the sidelines with his arms crossed, marveling: "You've spent a fortune building Roman hydraulic workshops, buying Latin books, and now you're using their concrete. If you keep going like this, one day you'll become a true Roman."

“This is not a bad thing.” After finishing the preparation, Vig stretched. “As times change, we must absorb the strengths of other civilizations and discard some outdated traditions, otherwise we will only gradually decay and perish.”

“But how do we determine which traditions should be preserved and which should be discarded?” Bjorn raised a thought-provoking question, and the room fell silent for a moment.

Having purchased a hundred slaves from Derwent, Björn led two longships back to Iceland. Wieg, watching the sails disappear into the distance on the river, turned and left the dock. Suddenly remembering that he hadn't paid attention to education for a long time, he impulsively went to inspect a school.

Two years ago, the Raven Whisperers came from Northern Europe to seek refuge in Týnburg. Vig collaborated with them to cobble together a new runic script suitable for writing. Afterward, Vig funded the Raven Whisperers to build a temple and provided them with three sets of simplified textbooks: "Basic Runic," "Elementary Mathematics," and "Elementary Natural Science," so that the Raven Whisperers could teach a group of orphans to read in their spare time.

Thanks to Vig and the Raven Whisperer's reputation, shamans would come to him every now and then. Vig would conduct an interview as soon as possible to confirm that the person's character was worthy of being trained, and then send him to the temple for short-term training. After he had learned a little, he would send him to the school to be a teacher.

Currently, the number of orphans adopted has reached 150, divided into three grades and six classes, with 16 teachers, which is barely enough to keep the business running.

According to the plan, primary school would only last five years, and only a quarter or even fewer of the students would advance to secondary school, with the rest having to fend for themselves. Of course, if they managed to conquer the north, those who were eliminated could become low-level administrative officials such as tax collectors, clerks, or workshop supervisors.

"School started in 844, and it is now the summer of 846. The first batch of students will graduate in three years. Once I conquer the Pict region, I will establish a feasible civil service system to handle government affairs, instead of messing things up like Ivar did."

Now, Vig regards Ivar as a prime example of what not to do. This guy is mired in the Irish quagmire, barely managing to subdue one noble family when another rebellious force rises up, keeping him constantly on the move with almost no time to catch his breath.

As for the former Derwent territory, Ivar's only requirement was the payment of taxes; everything else was left to the gentry and village chiefs to manage as they pleased, effectively rendering it "abandoned." The number of independent farmers within the territory steadily shrank, while the estates owned by the gentry expanded rapidly. Over time, Ivar's power was eroded and divided by the gentry, ultimately reducing him to a ruler in name only.

"Occupying a region is just the beginning; without effective governance, it will all be for nothing in the end."

Upon arriving at the school, Vig observed the children's learning through the window. Due to the teacher's low level of competence, he could only mechanically recite the textbook content on the podium, as if he were reciting some kind of mysterious scripture.

Listening to the children's inattentive chanting, Vig instinctively doubted the effectiveness of this teaching method. He desperately wanted to shoo away the middle-aged female shaman on the platform and explain this part of the knowledge himself, but in the end, he restrained himself.

As a lord, Vig couldn't micromanage every single matter; he could only delegate authority to his subordinates, focusing his main energy on decision-making and macro-level planning. Even if he personally taught this lesson, what about the subsequent courses?
He sighed all the way to the ravens' office, asked for the recent teaching syllabus, and carefully read through it.

“Come here,” Vig summoned all the shamans and announced that an exam would be held soon, after which the students would have a two-month break, during which he would organize intensive shaman training.

"As a teacher, you should at least be familiar with the curriculum for grades one through three. With an annual expenditure of fifteen pounds of silver, you should at least produce some decent results. Don't make things difficult for me!"

Vig spent an entire day creating a test for each of the three grades, and the results were disastrous. Only five students passed all three subjects.

"Phew, this guy named Seibert Storm is not bad. Although he is a bit unbalanced in his subjects, he can get 85 points in math, which is quite rare."

Because some students and teachers had similar names, Vig asked them to choose their own surnames to differentiate them. They ultimately selected common words such as Fury Wind, Ice Rain, Wildfire, and Fjord. Throughout the entire roster, the surname Fury Wind accounted for more than half the students.

(End of this chapter)