Ch 37: Territory

From Tyne to the mouth of the river downstream, it takes a whole daytime to walk, and Vig estimated at least twenty kilometers.

“Place one every five kilometers, a total of three beacons are needed. Once unfamiliar fleets are spotted, burn ‘wolf smoke’ made from livestock dung during the daytime, and light kindling piles at night.”

For the deployment of garrison personnel, Vig plans to assign four people to each beacon, with three people rotating in eight-hour shifts, and the remaining one serving as redundancy.

“A total of twelve people, plus the costs of building the beacons.” He muttered to himself while riding on horseback, deciding to spread this expenditure among the subordinate manors and villages. This warning system benefits all settlements; there is no reason for the Lord to bear the expenditure alone.

Having made up his mind, Vig had people summon the village heads and gentlemen. Thanks to the reputation he had built last time, no one dared to refuse his invitation anymore.

After a brief discussion, the guests promised to take turns guarding the beacons. Involving their lives, they were not as petty as he had imagined.

“Right, there’s one more thing.”

Vig led people to the riverbank, where three water mills were being built: one for washing wool textiles, one for milling flour, and the last one for cutting timber.

“After shearing the wool, it needs to be combed, woven, and washed. Washing textiles requires workers to tread on them, which is time-consuming and laborious. I plan to build a water-powered laundry; at that time, everyone is welcome to use it.”

Fat Squire Harry asked: “How will you charge?”

“After completion, the fee will be charged according to the specific usage effect, not exceeding five percent at most.”

This ratio refers to the milling fee for flour. Generally, peasants who borrow the Lord’s mill need to pay 5%~8% of the flour each time. Lord Vig is kind-hearted, deciding to set both the milling fee and the washing fee at five percent, barely earning himself some rations.

After a lunch of fish soup and bread, Vig sent these people away and devoted all his energy to building the mills.

From the perspective of technical difficulty, the laundry has the lowest difficulty. The textiles are placed in a trough filled with clean water and bleaching clay, and the water wheel drives a wooden mallet to repeatedly strike them, thus removing the oil from the surface of the textiles.

In contrast, the sawmill has the highest difficulty and costs, especially the core component—the long iron saw. Cadfael said that the processing difficulty of this thing far surpasses imagination and requires his own father to handle it.

“Is that so? Quickly ask him for help, money is not a problem.” Vig instructed the other party to pick a mount from the stable, urging him to go quickly and return quickly, not delaying the construction of the remaining two mills.

Leaving the riverbank, Vig yawned and walked towards the bedroom, but was stopped by the Raven Speaker.

“Sir, I have chosen an open space to build a temple to worship the gods. Can you fund me some money?”

“Not for now.” Vig frowned, raising a thought-provoking question. “I heard that in southern Denmark, the local lords have successively abandoned tradition and converted to the Roman Catholic Church. Why? Go back and think about it slowly; come back to me after you figure it out.”

It proved that the Raven Speaker’s intelligence far surpassed that of ordinary Vikings. After thinking all night, he came to a conclusion—writing.

“Sir, our Runic script is not suitable for long-form writing; it can only be used to convey messages through language. The accuracy depends on the person’s memory. As time goes by, generations of people are born, age, get sick, and die, and the vast majority of experience and wisdom is lost in this way. To handle government affairs more efficiently, the lords tend to rely on missionaries who are proficient in Latin. They rely on them to collect taxes, process paper documents, and record history. Over time, they converted to their gods.”

“That’s right, are there any other answers?”

Finding that the Raven Speaker was no longer speaking, Vig left his seat and paced back and forth in the hall. “Besides the lack of writing, your rituals are too bloody; you slaughter cattle and sheep at every turn, easily scaring children. In the future, remember to change the content of the rituals, eat less hallucinogenic mushrooms, and don’t dress in such a gloomy manner; it should be solemn and simple.”

After rambling on for a long time, until the Raven Speaker promised to accept all suggestions, Vig nodded and allocated him a piece of open space, two pounds of silver in funds, and a booklet filled with characters.

The original Runic script had complex strokes. Vig spent time adjusting it, referring to the letters of the 21st century. Since the Raven Speaker was willing to reform Norse Paganism, Vig passed this writing system on to him.

After more than twenty days of effort, the two finally launched the Runic script 1.0 version and decided to conduct a small-scale application.

“Adults don’t have time to learn; you can recruit a group of children and teach them the Runic script and arithmetic. Save this money; come to me when you run out.”

Vig intended to cultivate talents from scratch. One day, to seize the lands of the Picts in the North (Scotland region), he must have a group of qualified officials to assist in governance.

The Raven Speaker’s matter came to an end, and Vig redirected his energy to the water mills. Cadfael’s father had good skills, and sent four saw blades through someone.

After testing, the efficiency of one saw blade cutting timber is eight times that of manpower. The sawmill can currently accommodate three saw blades. If all are put into production, it is equivalent to twenty-four adult laborers.

“Very good, this is the wages I promised you.”

The three mills were put into operation one after another. Vig called Micham to summarize the accounts: a total of seven pounds of silver. In addition, a large amount of forced labor was used during construction, causing complaints among residents in the surrounding areas. If the cost of labor is included, the total expenditure is estimated to reach fifteen pounds.

“Seven pounds of silver is enough to buy a vast manor; the initial investment of the mills is really too large, and I hope to recoup the investment as soon as possible.”

After a few sighs, Vig patted Cadfael on the shoulder. “Well done, young man, have you considered training a few apprentices to help?”

“What?” Cadfael instinctively wanted to curse, but considering the other party’s identity, he could only hold back his swear words.

Teaching apprentices starves the master; this is common knowledge among the medieval handicraft workers. With the total number of orders unchanged, the more practitioners there are, the less profit each practitioner gets. To prevent disorderly competition, the guilds in various cities introduce measures to strictly limit the number of apprentices recruited.

Looking at Cadfael’s flushed face, Vig quickly reacted, seemingly touching on the man’s core interests.

“That’s right,” he thought to himself, “the orders in one area can only support one blacksmith, cobbler, or barber. If the apprentice graduates, in most cases, the master will give him a set of tools and let him go to another place to find work. If the apprentice insists on staying to compete for business, one of the master and apprentice will definitely go bankrupt.”

In this regard, Vig’s approach was to add money, promising to pay one pound of silver for each apprentice he trained. Faced with the temptation of a large sum of money, Cadfael said that he needed to consider for a while before giving a reply.