Viking: Master of the Icy Sea

Chapter 182: An Inevitable Fate

Following the audience, Wigg noticed the tense atmosphere in Londinium. Rumors were running rampant among the common folk that the royal family was defaulting on its debts. The markets were steadily declining, and some foreign merchants had even chosen to pack their bags and flee.

'Poor Gorm. I wonder how much longer he can hold on.'

Upon his return to Teyne, Wigg continued to pour his energy into agriculture. He toured the villages across his counties, inspecting the rollout of clover, turnips, and threshing machines.

After his inspections, he received word that the royal court had ordered an increase in the agricultural tax within the King's direct territories. Additionally, the national wool export tax rate had been hiked to forty-five percent.

'Is this really necessary?'

Wigg had introduced the new crop varieties primarily to expand the sheep flocks and profit from the wool trade. Faced with this unprecedented tax rate, he anticipated that the Flemish merchants would now lean toward importing wool from West Francia. In the long run, this would severely cripple the Kingdom of Britain's livestock industry.

In December, he tallied the accounts for the entire year. His total income had risen to three thousand two hundred pounds. However, over the past two years, the growth rates across brewing, textiles, shipbuilding, iron smelting, and the agricultural tax had slowed down, seemingly hitting a bottleneck.

'Fortunately, I rolled out those agricultural reforms. The growth rate should pick up over the next two years.'

Overall expenses had grown slowly, reaching one thousand nine hundred pounds. Wigg did not purchase warhorses from Normandy; instead, he funneled his surplus funds into the production of brigandine armor.

By now, royal authority in West Francia was growing increasingly stable. Charles the Bald had enacted a warhorse embargo, and Gunnar dared not defy the order, completely severing the large-scale trade of warhorses. Only the Brittany Region still saw sporadic warhorse smuggling, but the price had surged to five and a half pounds per horse. The cost-effectiveness was simply too low, so Wigg abandoned the idea entirely.In terms of population, the situation in Northern Europe had stabilized this year, causing the influx of immigrants to drop to four thousand. Factoring in the natural population growth across the six counties, the total number of residents reached two hundred and eighty thousand.

After balancing the ledgers, Wigg draped his thick wool cloak over his shoulders and headed out to inspect the military stud farm on the western outskirts of Teyne Town.

Through steady breeding, the number of horses at the military stud farm had reached four hundred and fifty. Excluding pregnant mares and foals in training, they could provide two hundred and eighty warhorses in times of conflict—roughly seventy percent of the total.

A light snow was drifting down from the sky as Wigg stepped onto the frozen mud of the military stud farm. Not far away, a blacksmith was busy nailing horseshoes; the rhythmic clanging and the heavy snorts of the horses pierced the biting wind.

Rows of stone stables lined the southern end of the farm. Wigg pushed open the main doors, and a pungent mixture of hay, oats, and horse manure immediately hit him.

A tallow lamp hung from the stable ceiling, while the floor was covered in a thick layer of hay and wood shavings to absorb urine and prevent it from freezing over.

Flanking the aisle were rows of oak stalls, each housing a robust warhorse draped in a coarse linen blanket. The horses' exhaled breaths condensed into plumes of white mist in the freezing air.

Snort, snort.

Wigg lifted the horse blanket off one of the warhorses. Its coat was thick and dense, gleaming with natural oils. By convention, it was ill-advised to shear them in the winter, as their coats protected them from frostbite.

Just then, two grooms walked by pushing a cart loaded with four large barrels of warm water mixed with a small amount of honey and salt.

After drinking its fill, the warhorse lowered its head into the trough, contentedly munching on the oats and forage. To withstand the bitter cold, their winter food intake was roughly thirty percent more than in summer.

Suddenly, a shrill neigh echoed from the adjacent stable. Wigg hurried over to investigate and found a mare in labor. Three grooms were sweating profusely as they scrambled to deliver the foal, blood soaking the hay on the ground.

"How many foals can we breed each year?" Wigg asked the stud farm manager beside him.

The manager pulled out a thick register detailing the birth dates and lineages of every horse. Flipping to a specific page, he replied respectfully, "Last year, a total of one hundred and two foals were born, and seventy survived."

'A survival rate of nearly seventy percent?' Wigg felt a twinge of helplessness. This figure was on par with the stud farms of other nobles. Without antibiotics, this was the absolute best they could manage.

Exhaling a cloud of white breath into the freezing air, he left the stable. In the distant paddock, over a dozen cavalrymen were galloping through the snow. The horses' hooves were wrapped in thick, anti-slip linen, kicking up a mist of fine snow as they rode and leaving behind a trail of shallow prints.

As the number of horses increased, the operating costs of the military stud farm rose with it. Last year's expenses, when converted to silver, amounted to two hundred and thirty pounds. Wigg meticulously reviewed the ledgers, and after confirming everything was in order, he returned to the castle.

In February, another piece of news arrived from Londinium: the King had adopted Hrolf's suggestion to "borrow" money from all the monasteries across the kingdom.

When the former Prime Minister, Pascal, was still in office, he had urged the King to protect the domestic monasteries. Unfortunately, his influence had vanished since his departure. The King was truly destitute and had been forced into this desperate measure.

However, the number of peasants willing to voluntarily pay tithes had been dwindling in recent years, leaving the monasteries struggling to make ends meet. The tax collectors tallied the "loans" gathered from various regions, barely scraping together just over seven thousand pounds.

Even after obtaining this lump-sum income, the King did not rush into any decisions. Tossing and turning in bed, he felt that living a life of penny-pinching to pay off debts was utterly meaningless.

'Is the rest of my life destined to be spent tethered to these debts?'

Staring at the flickering candlelight, Ragnar resolved to launch an unprecedented raid to break free from his predicament.

Braving the biting blizzards, royal messengers galloped to the fiefs of numerous nobles, ordering them to assemble their forces and arrive in Londinium by the twentieth of April.

War had finally arrived.

It felt like an inevitable fate, dragging the entirety of Britain and Northern Europe into the fray. Even those far away in Northern Europe—Erik Jr., Niels, Oleg, and Halfdan Whiteshirt—received the call to muster.

Thanks to the martial traditions of the Vikings, the nobles responded in droves. The Isle of Britain transformed into a massive military camp. Anxious villagers set aside their farming tools and followed their commanders to practice the brutal art of killing.

When the spring flowers bloomed and the ice thawed, Wigg led his fully trained force of over two thousand men southward. Before his departure, his older sister Breda grabbed his arm, making him swear to protect her only son, Leif, at all costs.

Leif was sixteen this year, making him an adult according to Viking custom. Having grown up listening to tales of his uncle's glorious exploits, he had clamored relentlessly to join this unprecedented expedition.

"Mom, just go back already. This is too embarrassing; everyone is watching."

Shaking off his tearful mother, Leif excitedly followed the troops across the pontoon bridge. Right now, his eyes were filled with nothing but visions of glory; he completely failed to grasp just how dangerous this war truly was.

"Hmm, it looks like almost everyone has arrived."

Ascending the battlements of Londinium, Ragnar gazed out at the rolling sea of tents in the northern suburbs and the banners billowing in the wind. The gloom in his heart instantly vanished. "Let the so-called merchants, finances, and debts roll as far away as possible. I am destined to be a conqueror."

Suddenly, another army approached from the north. Their ranks were neat and their formations tight. The riders at the vanguard hoisted a black snake banner. "It's Wigg's army!"

Ragnar rode out of the city to welcome him. Seeing that this force of two thousand six hundred men boasted an armor rate of fifty percent, his mood grew even brighter. He smiled and greeted his vassal, "Hey, you finally made it. Who is the young man trailing behind you? Your son?"

"My nephew. He's tagging along to help out with odd jobs."

Wigg dismounted and signaled for his troops to settle into their prearranged camp. He then headed straight for the Royal Palace to discuss military affairs.