After finishing his proposal for a standing army, Vig looked up from the desk. The noonday sun blazed through the window; sweat beaded on his temples.
"Damn… I forgot something."
He splashed a bit of water on his face, reached beneath the pile of scrolls, and pulled out a small ledger—the combined work of his shamans and fifth-year students.
Using monastery archives and on-site surveys, they had compiled the first rough census of the Central Lowlands.
According to their figures, the Central Lowlands had a population of 160,000. Including the still-untamed northern and southern highlands, all of Scotland held roughly 200,000 souls.
One-third of the farmland belonged to the ducal demesne, worked by tenant farmers and slaves.
As Vig flipped through the settlement data, he finally remembered the thing he'd neglected—the emancipation of slaves.
The lands seized from the old lords and gentry had been redistributed to his new nobles and soldiers, yet there was still some acreage left over. Vig decided to use it to win the loyalty of the slave population, roughly a tenth of the realm.
They were the cheapest to buy and the easiest to keep loyal—people with nothing else to lose.
As for the common farmers—the overwhelming majority—Vig had no intention of stirring them up.
"No taxes this year," he muttered. "Couldn't collect them anyway. Next year they'll pay as usual. The north's still unstable—if they don't revolt, we're fine."
He drafted a proclamation: each freed household would receive twenty acres of farmland—enough to live, if not to prosper.
He stamped it with his seal and ordered the four northern counties to implement it within six months.
Exhausted, he returned to his chamber and slept until dawn.
By early August, Vig made a short trip back to Tyne Town to confront the worsening financial crisis.
"You spent twelve hundred pounds of silver already?" he asked in disbelief.
"That bad?"
Herligev, his wife and steward, spread open the ledgers.
"The front lines burned through everything—supplies, weapons, repairs. Prices keep rising. I've kept the books tight, but at this rate, we'll have only one hundred and fifty pounds left in the treasury. Even with the next round of taxes, it won't last the year. You'll need to borrow at least two hundred pounds more."
Two hundred pounds of silver.
Vig sighed, pulled a fresh sheet of parchment toward him, and began to write.
"To my most beloved Majesty—your most loyal vassal finds himself in temporary difficulty and humbly requests a subsidy of two hundred pounds of silver to overcome it…"
Sealing the first letter, he immediately began another.
"To my dearest friend Theowulf, I regret to say my military expenses have grown beyond expectation…"
Then a third. A fourth. A fifth.
Herligev turned pale as she watched the growing pile of sealed letters.
"Enough! The war's over! Why on earth are you borrowing so much?"
"Why else?" Vig said, pressing a wax seal closed. "To expand the iron mines, drain the marshlands, and open new farmland."
Her jaw dropped as he began a sixth letter:
"To my most beloved brother Gunnar,
I hear you've become Duke of Normandy, and married the granddaughter of Charlemagne—a most joyous occasion! Enclosed is a jeweled necklace as a token of my congratulations.
Normandy, I know, breeds fine horses, while our North produces wool, ale, iron, and tin. Perhaps we might establish a trade agreement between our lands?"
The next morning, six couriers set out in different directions.
One, bearing the jeweled necklace, sailed for Gunnar's stronghold in Caen.
They followed the River Orne upstream, only to find their path blocked by iron chains stretched across the water, with wooden forts on both banks.
(Note: France has two Orne Rivers—one in Normandy flowing north to the Channel, and another near Verdun joining the Moselle. This is the Norman one.)
As the guards raised their bows, the messenger shouted,
"Envoy from the Duke of Tyne Town! I bear a wedding gift for the Duke of Normandy!"
At the guards' order, the boat pulled toward the western bank.
After verifying his identity, a Viking soldier wearing a silver cross muttered under his breath,
"A wedding gift? The man's been married nearly a year. Bit late, isn't it?
And you picked a bad time—our duke isn't in Caen."
"Not in Caen?" the envoy blinked. "Where, then?"
"King Pippin II of Aquitaine declared himself king and rebelled. His Majesty has called the banners. The duke's already marched to the front. You'll have to wait."
Pippin II, grandson of Charlemagne's line, had long chafed under the Treaty of Verdun (843).
Why, he asked, should three uncles wear crowns while he, ruler of vast Aquitaine, went without?
In 845, spurred by ambitious nobles, he raised his own banner, proclaiming himself King of Aquitaine, demanding equal rank with "Charles the Bald," "Lothair," and "Louis the German."
Four years later, the quarrel boiled over. Charles finally resolved to crush his nephew's insolence, summoning a host of half-hearted vassals to war.
They gave him little. Every lord claimed hardship, pleading poverty or famine to avoid sending men.
After the council, Gunnar lingered behind.
"Your Majesty," he said, "we'll never win marching alongside these worms. The longer we drag this out, the more likely outsiders will meddle. Let us make a show of strength—draw their eyes to your main army—while I take a fleet and strike Bordeaux by sea."
Feign weakness to mask strength; strike where least expected.
He remembered, faintly, the words of a certain friend long ago—nonsense at the time, spoken half in jest on their voyage to Constantinople.
Now, in hindsight, they seemed like pearls of wisdom.
He couldn't recall all of them, but the fragments remained.
With the king's blessing, Gunnar launched his fleet under the pretext of "clearing pirates."
He sailed with a hundred Frankish soldiers and eight hundred Vikings aboard twenty-five longships, hugging the coast westward.
At the far tip of Brittany, they turned south and, by early August, entered the mouth of the Garonne River.
"A broad river indeed," Gunnar murmured. "Looks like Bjorn wasn't lying."
He then dispatched forty Frankish soldiers disguised as merchants aboard two ships, one ahead of the other, to slip into Bordeaux by day.
The plan was simple: infiltrate the city, seize the gate towers at night, and open the way for the main force to storm the walls.
As he watched their sails fade upriver, Gunnar forced himself to appear calm. The time for doubt was over; all that remained was to trust his men—and the ghosts of old lessons whispered by a certain northern serpent.
—------------------------------
Pat reon Advance Chapters: patreon.com/YonkoSlayer