novelraw Chapter 292: Land
Chapter 292: Land
In early October, Leonard traveled to Londinium to admit his lax oversight in personnel management. Wigg did not dwell on the matter. He exiled Leonard's steward and workshop manager, and demanded compensation for the investors' losses. With that, the entire ordeal came to a rather anti-climactic end.
For the better part of the following month, Wigg dedicated all his energy to dealing with the nobles arriving from various regions for audiences. He listened to their demands and mediated their disputes. At night, he hosted grand banquets, allowing the gathered lords to eat and drink to their hearts' content.
On the fifteenth of October, a battered sailing ship docked at the River Thames pier. The captain excitedly rushed to the Royal Palace and delivered a letter from Bjorn Ironside to Wigg.
"Your Majesty, the expedition was a success! We have discovered an incredibly vast new continent."
Wigg leaned forward slightly in his seat, examining the animal furs the crew presented. When they brought out the local crops, he rose from the throne and walked over, his fingers brushing against items that existed deep within his memories: corn, climbing beans, and pumpkins.
Noticing the King's strong interest in the exotic crops, the captain hurriedly explained.
"These are the main crops of the locals, and they plant them together in a method they call the 'Three Sisters'. This corn here grows the tallest, these beans climb its stalks to grow, and this pumpkin stays lowest to the ground. The men and I had a taste, and the flavor is quite good."
Subsequently, the captain, whose name was Toril, unrolled a nautical chart and recounted the entire expedition.
In March of this year, Bjorn once again led a new sailing ship out of Greenland. Aided by five days of continuous northern winds, the vessel unexpectedly arrived at an unfamiliar land teeming with lush vegetation. Bjorn named it Vinland.
Since Greenland lacked timber, Bjorn established a logging camp there to serve as a future wood supply. During his stay, he had a chance encounter with the indigenous people.Keeping in mind the painful lessons learned during his first landing on Greenland, Bjorn adopted a much more cautious approach this time. Rather than rushing to interact with the locals, he ordered his crew to prioritize building fences and digging trenches.
Once the defensive structures were complete, Bjorn gradually initiated contact with the indigenous people, using small knives and strong spirits to purchase grain from them.
In May, taking advantage of favorable winds, he returned to Greenland, regrouped with his remaining two two-masted brigantines, and transported two hundred settlers back to Vinland.
Bjorn planned to establish a permanent settlement there. Thanks to Vinland's lower latitude, the winter climate was far less severe than Greenland's. Moreover, the local freshwater bodies were teeming with beavers. The Vikings only needed to offer spirits and knives to purchase massive quantities of beaver pelts from the natives.
To develop this new enterprise, Bjorn remained in Vinland for the winter, dispatching his most trusted aide back to Britain to sell the furs, purchase more new sailing ships, and gather additional supplies.
As news of the new continent gradually spread, the stock price of the West Sea Fur Company skyrocketed. Its market value doubled in just five days, reaching an astonishing fifty thousand pounds, and it was still climbing.
In late October, an unexpected visitor requested an audience.
"Salomon?"
Prompted by his attendants, Wigg recalled his past in Brittany. Back then, Ragnar had dispatched him to lead several thousand men to western Francia to incite a Breton rebellion.
Later, after Wigg breached Rennes, the largest local settlement, he handpicked a noble named Salomon to serve as the leader of the rebel army. Years had passed, and Wigg never expected the man to still be alive.
Looking at the elderly man, who was well past fifty, and the dozen or so emaciated followers behind him, Wigg sighed. Since it was nearing noon, he simply had the servants bring out a long table and invited the group of Bretons to dine in the grand hall.
"Thank you for your generosity, Your Majesty," Salomon said, impatiently taking a seat. Forgoing the silver cutlery, he grabbed a piece of scalding hot wild boar meat with his bare hands, the grease dripping through his fingers. He tore into the meat with his teeth, the loud and frantic sounds of his chewing echoing through the solemn and dignified hall.
Sucking the grease from his fingers, he snatched up a rack of roasted venison ribs. After gnawing the meat clean, he snapped the bones in half to suck out the marrow inside.
"Pour me another glass of this sweet wine!" He chugged the drink noisily, let out a resounding burp, and demanded, "Bring me more."
After downing two large mugs of sugarcane rum back-to-back, Salomon reached for the lamprey pie. Chewing vigorously, he mumbled incoherently, "Pepper... haha! It has been seven whole years. I had completely forgotten the taste of this spice."
His followers possessed equally atrocious table manners, actively fighting each other over the food on their plates. The surrounding royal court servants maintained their composure, bringing out new dishes and clearing away empty plates like a flowing stream. However, the slight downward twitch of their lips silently betrayed their disdain and contempt.
Wigg sat upright on his throne. He was well accustomed to such scenes. His face showed neither anger nor pity; there was only a serene calmness, much like a marble statue.
Once thoroughly fed and watered, Salomon tearfully recounted his experiences over the past few years. Ever since the great Viking army was defeated and retreated, Charles the Bald had freed up his forces to recapture Brittany. Salomon was forced to flee back into the mountains to seek refuge.
For the next seven years, he barely managed to survive on the charity of the local gentry. During that time, he did not instigate a single rebellion, narrowly evading the searches of the Frankish nobility.
Last year, two of Salomon's friends died of illness one after another. Having lost his source of livelihood, he had no choice but to lead his relatives across the sea to the north, seeking Wigg's assistance.
"I understand. Once the meal is finished, someone will come to ask you for detailed information about the local situation. Later on, I will dispatch my own people to Brittany to conduct a field investigation."
Wigg made no concrete promises, nor would he proactively attack the foremost power in Western Europe over such a trivial matter. At the end of the day, he and Ragnar were cut from a different cloth.
Hearing his host's response, Salomon looked visibly disappointed. To avoid the awkwardness, he changed the subject to the widely circulating rumors of the new continent. "If we cannot overthrow the tyranny of the Franks, we might as well migrate and settle in the new continent."
"No, that idea is entirely impractical."
Drawing upon the experiences of Bjorn and the others, Wigg urged Salomon to abandon such unrealistic thoughts.
Currently, the route Bjorn had charted out was as follows: A two-masted brigantine would depart from Londinium, sail north along the coastline, pass through the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland, before heading south to Vinland. The entire voyage took two to three months. Furthermore, the number of immigrants that could be carried on such a long-distance voyage was quite small, estimated at only sixty to eighty people. The efficiency was abysmally low.
In Wigg's mind, a more reasonable approach for traveling from Europe to the New World during the Age of Discovery would be to sail south and cross the ocean using the trade winds and the North Equatorial Current.
However, this southern route had yet to be developed. For the foreseeable future, Bjorn had no choice but to endure the treacherous conditions of the northern route. He would have to migrate his settlers in small, agonizingly slow batches, much like ants moving their colony, to gradually build up his Fur Company.
After a long silence, Wigg delivered his conclusion. "For our generation, the development of the new continent is destined to remain a distant endeavor. It is a task that must be left for our descendants to handle."