I built a manor in the Middle Ages

Chapter 90 Shield (Part )

In the afternoon, Ryan and his men pushed three rafts upstream. After seeing George's wound and learning the cause, One-Eyed Gil couldn't help but laugh.

"Dude, you've traveled all over the place, haven't you? How could you get bit by a snake?"

“Everyone makes mistakes.”

George covered his swollen calf, and sighed with lingering fear: "I often steal horses, but I was caught by adults."

"Well, don't make fun of George. Fortunately, God bless you, otherwise George's leg might not be saved."

After discovering that George had a tracking skill comparable to that of little Charles, Luc's attitude towards him improved slightly. If I were to answer the question of what the Middle Ages lacked most, the answer would be talent.

Food, housing, clothing, everything is inseparable from human wisdom, and talent is the foundation of all development.

Being able to track and explore the way is a skill that is neither small nor insignificant. Combined with the thief talent, it can barely be considered half a talent.

He directed everyone to work together to transport the wild boar carcass to the raft, then asked Hans and Jill to carry the piglets, and George replaced Jill's position on the raft, and they rushed back to the mountains by both water and land.

The slaughter of wild boars cannot be left overnight. In the evening, bonfires are lit around the area and the slaughter is carried out again.

Luc's butchering skills have improved visibly. This time, there will be no celebration party for the wild boar. Instead, all of the wild boar will be smoked and air-dried so that they can be stored and eaten slowly. As for the internal organs, Luc chooses to eat most of them himself.

The pig heart and liver should be kept. As for the pig intestines and blood, I'm sorry, although Luc has thought about it, in the original owner's memory, it seems that eating blood is not allowed.
What a pity for the blood sausage.

Luc and Old Eck tore off all the pigskins that were full of holes. Pigskins were not suitable for making clothes, but Luc would have other great uses for them.

There were two pairs of wild boar tusks. Luc planned to make the boar's tusks into ornaments, while the sow's tusks were given to old Eck.

"The first house will be built in a few days. It will be yours. With these fangs, your house will be a little brighter."

As Luc's designated steward, Old Eike needs to coordinate the accounts of his territory, so naturally he needs certain lighting equipment at night.

But it is not used yet.

If we look closely at Luc's estate, we can find that it is not a complete unit in essence. On the one hand, the necessary public facilities are incomplete and it cannot be truly self-sufficient. On the other hand, the most basic rules and regulations such as tax laws have not yet been formed.

After all, everyone is struggling to survive now, and Luc has basically acquiesced to everyone picking food in the entire forest. He has not yet obtained any financial income from his subjects, but handing over a portion of the food he picked is essentially an old-fashioned way of paying taxes.

Picking food is a big deal. Luke specifically instructed that except for major projects like building houses, repairing river embankments, and autumn plowing, at least six people should be divided into two groups to go to the mountains to find food. The wild fruits and vegetables collected by the six people every day can be eaten with wheat paste for about three days. Excluding the occasional rainy days, the excess can be dried and shredded, and slowly accumulated. Combined with goat pork, it will not be a problem to survive this winter.

Fish was the closest meat to the wooden house. After a day of physical labor, being able to eat a few bites of fish in the wheat paste became the happiest moment of the day for the serfs.

Of course, most fish is still made into salted fish: after being gutted and scaled, it's marinated in a small amount of salt water and then hung to dry. When ready to eat, the fish is soaked to soften it, and the salt water is filtered and processed before being eaten again.
This is also the hardship caused by insufficient salt.

Yes, Luc was once again short of salt. Luc knew the location of the salt mine, but he couldn't spare the manpower to concentrate on mining, and the few people he had were unable to mine anything.

Therefore, most of the salt consumed by the serfs returned to the stage of extracting salt from burning wood ash.

All the food will be collected and stored together before being distributed evenly. Interestingly, Old Ek is also illiterate, and he still uses numerical units that are similar to talismans and were inherited from somewhere unknown.

Luc took a special look and found that they were not Roman numerals.

After much deliberation, one evening, Luc called old Eck into the wooden house and mysteriously told him the Arabic numerals, which had not yet been widely spread in Europe, in an extremely religious way. The simple and easy-to-understand numbers immediately amazed old Eck.

From then on, Old Eike became the second person after Ryan to gradually believe that Luc was blessed by God. Why did they say that he was not possessed by the devil? Well, after arriving in the forest, Old Eike also accompanied Luc to the monastery to deliver white paper. How could someone possessed by the devil enter the monastery?
After the pork was cut into pieces, more than ten people smoked some that needed to be smoked, and hung some that needed to be hung, while Luke found Ryan carrying the pig skin.

Luc plans to make all these pig skins into leather shields!
The shield is the only two weapons and equipment that Luc can currently make. The other is the javelin, but most cone stone javelins are disposable weapons. When hunting wild boars, most of the javelins that Ryan had worked so hard to sharpen were broken, leaving only four or five.

But there is no such worry for the shield.

Ordinary wooden shields can protect against swords and knives, but it is difficult to resist attacks from axes and chisels. Covering it with leather will provide stronger defense. For example, the wooden shield I made for Old Ek when we were suppressing bandits before would probably fall apart after being hit by a blunt weapon.

Ryan's carpentry skills have improved by leaps and bounds, just like Luc's butchering skills. It's no problem to let him make the shield, but there are many types of shields, so you need to consider it carefully.

After arranging the existing small round shields and broad shields, Luc began to plan the number and types of shields with reference to the people in the mountains.

The small round shield is a typical Germanic shield with a small area. It is carried on the back or hung at the waist during combat. It can be quickly removed and used for close combat. It is very flexible, but correspondingly, the protection range is not large. It is mainly used for fighting for life rather than defense, and it is a test of the combination with swordsmanship.

The broad shield, which could cover most of the body, was more suitable for crossbowmen. During combat, the broad shield would be held upright in front of the crossbowmen, who would half-crouch behind the shield, using it as cover to fire and hide. Luc had no crossbowmen, not even a crossbow, and now the broad shield was mainly used in conjunction with his single long-handled blade.

In addition to these two types, Luc also considered two other types of shields: Viking round shield and kite-shaped shield!
After several months of riding, Luc was already able to perform a simple horse charge. Occasionally, when he used his knight's sword to quickly chop at a human-shaped target made of straw in the mountains, although he would always miss the target, he had at least figured out a series of reasons for his failure. He believed that he would be able to actually ride and chop at a straw pile soon. Once he had mastered the swordsmanship, Luc would try a real lance charge.

Luc never forgot the scene when Henry charged with the wooden spear. Even though he was wearing chain mail, he had to avoid the sharp edge. This high-end signature fighting skill of the knights was something that Luc had to master, whether for the purpose of improving his military strength or better integrating into the knight class.

Correspondingly, Luc also discovered the limitations of the small round shield when riding and swordsmanship.

Since the Germanic Shield was purely for close combat, it naturally could not be used in riding. Luc experimented with it on horseback, placing the shield on his chest and discovered that it could only protect his heart, leaving his shoulders, abdomen, and thighs exposed. Once he charged with a spear, the degree of danger would greatly increase.

Naturally, Luc thought of the kite-shaped shield.

The kite-shaped shield is also called the kite-shaped shield. It has a round upper part and a conical lower part. While increasing its area, it does not reduce its flexibility by blocking the saddle like a broad shield or a Viking disc.

After telling Ryan about his idea, the two began to think about how to create a kite-shaped shield.

(End of this chapter)