Viking: Master of the Icy Sea

Chapter 241: Investigation Report

A week later, Lundinium County launched its land survey operation, dispatching a total of twenty investigation teams.

Upon arriving at each settlement, the investigation teams' first priority was to gather the residents and meticulously record their information using a standardized questionnaire.

Following that, the investigators headed into the fields with measuring ropes to calculate the acreage, charting the results into a detailed atlas.

For a long time, civilian farmland had generally been cultivated in long, narrow strips, making measurement relatively straightforward. Naturally, they also encountered irregularly shaped plots, which could only be roughly estimated to produce an approximate area.

As the Chief Attendant Official, Seybert was assigned to travel across the regions to oversee the land survey operations. Watching the toiling backs of his junior alumni, his thoughts drifted back to events from many years ago.

Back then, Ivar the Boneless was mired in a severe financial crisis. He had sought Wigg's aid, borrowing five students to help audit his account books. Seybert had been one of them.

After sorting out the account books, the students had been measuring land in the countryside near Dyfflin when they were ambushed by the local gentry. They had only narrowly escaped with their lives because they ran fast enough.

Recalling that close call, Seybert glanced at the idle soldiers nearby. Not a single attack had occurred so far, leading to a general lack of vigilance among both the guards and the investigators.

However, based on his own bitter experience, he knew that sooner or later, some hotheaded gentry or free farmers whose interests were threatened would resort to assassination or even blatant, open assault.

"I just hope that when the time comes, these soldiers can maintain their restraint and not let the situation escalate."As time passed, the survey of Lundinium County concluded smoothly. The reports from the various investigation teams were dispatched to the Cabinet, where clerks recorded, organized, and ultimately compiled them into a parchment ledger.

According to the statistics, Lundinium County had a permanent resident population of sixty-one thousand, three hundred and five people, comprising twelve thousand and twenty households.

Of those, citizens made up eight percent. The remaining population was spread across the vast countryside: free farmers accounted for nearly thirty percent, cottagers made up twenty percent, tenant farmers constituted another twenty percent, and slaves comprised ten percent.

Following that, the investigators and soldiers were deployed north to Cambridgeshire to continue this massive surveying campaign.

The farther they traveled from the royal capital, the colder the populace's attitude toward the investigators grew. This was especially true for certain gentry whose interests had been severely compromised. They began conspiring in secret, with some even spreading rumors about driving out that greedy, draconian Viking King.

The conflicts intensified until late July, when someone finally lost their patience and ambushed the investigators with hidden arrows.

Staring at the corpses sprawled on the ground, Seybert was consumed by fury. "I emphasized the dangers of this job countless times! I told you not to wander off alone, but hardly anyone listened to me. Now look at this mess! We are going to have endless trouble from here on out!"

Upon receiving the news, nearby rangers and infantrymen rushed over as reinforcements. The highly experienced rangers swiftly locked onto the general area where the murderers were hiding.

A ranger officer approached to ask for instructions. "My lord, what should we do?"

Seybert straightened his back in the saddle, gazing into the distance at a manor surrounded by a wooden palisade. Considering the broader situation, he did not want to escalate the conflict; he only sought a swift resolution. "Send someone to persuade them to surrender."

However, several minutes passed. No matter how much the soldiers threatened them, the manor's gates remained tightly shut, forcing Seybert to make a hard decision.

"Fire a volley of arrows at the gate. If they still refuse to surrender, launch a full assault. Try to take them alive."

Upon receiving the command, over thirty rangers roared as they charged toward the manor, unleashing a looping volley of feathered arrows at the gate. Afterward, they chopped down a small tree, stripping away its branches and leaves to use as a makeshift battering ram.

"Attack!"

The infantry hoisted the battering ram and charged at the gate, while the rangers dismounted and advanced on foot to a distance of fifty meters, attempting to suppress the enemy's counterattacks with their horsebows.

Boom! Boom!

After ramming it continuously over a dozen times, the massive gate crashed open. The infantry charged into the manor with their spears raised, only to find the courtyard in complete disarray. Not a single person was in sight; there was merely a flock of chickens and ducks wandering aimlessly. "Fuck, they all ran away! Go after them!"

Seybert deployed the infantry to search the interior of the manor while tasking the rangers with scouring the surrounding area.

Before long, a soldier discovered a scatter of silver coins hidden in the tall grass near the back wall. Because there were far too many witnesses, the soldier had no choice but to hand them over to Seybert.

There were over two hundred silver coins in total, equating to roughly one pound. The silver looked brand new, and the obverse side was stamped with the dragon crest of the Tynemouth family.

Suddenly, Seybert noticed something off about the dragon crest. He fished a genuine silver penny out of his pocket to compare the two, quickly detecting several incredibly subtle discrepancies.

"These coins are counterfeits. How interesting."

As early as the beginning of his reign, Wigg had issued a decree strictly forbidding the kingdom's nobles and commoners from privately minting currency. Seybert carefully inspected the craftsmanship of the fake coins. Overall, they were passable, possessing roughly ninety percent of the quality of a genuine silver coin. The ordinary gentry could never achieve this level of precision; these had to have come from a noble's workshop.

Staring intently at these uniformly designed silver pennies, a bold idea suddenly sprouted in his mind.

The primary reason the investigators had been murdered by the gentry was his own poor management. However, if he were to blame their deaths on a noble plotting a rebellion, it would greatly alleviate his own responsibility.

After sitting on the grass and pondering for a long time, he penned a report. The general idea was as follows:

Our investigators were ambushed. Upon searching the attackers' manor, we discovered a bag of counterfeit silver coins. The coins are excellently crafted and likely originated from a noble's workshop, used by said noble to hire assassins. The situation is dire, and I urgently request the King and the Cabinet to dispatch reinforcements.

Once he finished writing, Seybert gestured for a ranger officer to approach. "Deliver this report and the silver coins to Londinium. This is a matter of grave importance; make absolutely certain nothing goes wrong."

Early in the morning two days later, Wigg received the report.

After reading the document multiple times, he noticed numerous suspicious points surrounding the incident. As a result, he dispatched the Mountain Infantry Battalions to stabilize the situation while ordering the intelligence agency to conduct a covert investigation.

In the western part of the city, at the headquarters of the intelligence agency.

Upon receiving the royal decree, the director appointed an Inspector and two highly experienced Detectives to take command, allowing them to select ten agents to head to Cambridgeshire.

Knowing that a murder had occurred in the region and that it seemingly implicated a certain noble, most of the agents responded with silence. Only one person volunteered for the job.

"Blackfish, do you have a death wish? You nearly died from an arrow last time, and now you want to catch another one?"

Faced with his close friend's questioning, Blackfish offered no elaborate explanation.

Last year, he had been ordered to investigate the silver mines in Nottingham. He had worked tirelessly to dig up a sliver of a lead, only to have his superiors completely ignore it. This time, he was determined to seize the opportunity. Through this batch of counterfeit silver coins, he would root out the mine workers who had absconded with the funds, as well as the fat man pulling their strings from the shadows.

For some inexplicable reason, Blackfish had been dreaming constantly this year. He dreamt of a short, fat silhouette with a blurred face. No matter how loudly he called out, the pudgy figure remained entirely unresponsive, merely standing there in absolute silence.

Guided by an uncanny premonition, Blackfish deduced that this fat man was the long-missing Palace Steward, Paffis. He was even entirely convinced that the man had been lurking within Britain this whole time, secretly orchestrating an incredibly massive rebellion.