Vikings: Lords of the Ice Sea

Chapter 38 Books
With the three workshops in operation, Vig enjoyed a long-awaited period of peace and quiet, spending his days riding horses around and hunting wild game to improve his meals.

huh~
The arrow whistled through the grass, eliciting an angry roar. Instantly, a dark brown wild boar appeared in their sight. As it circled in place, Vig fired another arrow at its neck, but it missed slightly and the arrow pierced the boar's hindquarters.

Realizing the attack came from humans nearby, the boar charged straight at them with its massive body. Vig fired another arrow along the way, hitting the boar in the forehead, but the arrowhead was blocked by the hard skull and only pierced a layer of skin.

"What a ferocious beast."

He sighed, and seeing this, the six shield guards who were following him threw out their iron axes and picked up their spears to gather around their lord.

After being struck by multiple iron axes in succession, the wild boar was momentarily disoriented, shaking its head and inadvertently slowing down. Sensing danger from the six sharp, cold spearheads, it circled the crowd for a while, only to be struck by another arrow.

This time, Vig hit the wild boar precisely on the right side of its neck, and bright red, foul-smelling blood spurted out along the arrow's groove, while its tail feathers trembled with the boar's final struggle.

After a long while, the massive, heavy body crashed to the ground. Two shield guards stabbed its abdomen with spears to confirm that the prey was dead, then pulled out daggers from their waists and cut the body.

Roughly estimated, this wild boar weighed about 400 pounds, with sharp, spear-like tusks, and was larger than most of its kind. Vigé indicated to the shield guards that the head should be preserved; after processing, it could be hung in the hall as a decoration.

After a long time, the Shield Guards cut it into four parts, which were then carried back to Tyneburg by four horses.

Capturing this prey meant he wouldn't have to eat fish for the next few days, and Vig was in high spirits, whistling a light and melodious tune all the way until he saw several well-dressed men and women standing in front of his house.

squire?

If someone comes to see me on their own initiative, it's definitely not for anything good!
He dismounted and walked straight into the lord's hall. Before he could even sit down, a woman cried out for him to uphold justice.

"Speak, what is the basis for your grievance?" Vig yawned, resting his hands on the armrests of his chair, casually surveying the group of visitors.

The woman who was crying was over forty years old, with a thin face and occasional coughs. Her two children followed behind her.

On the other side, two men who looked like father and son were holding a document filled with Anglo-language writing.

During the argument, Vig came to a general understanding of the cause of the dispute. The father and son insisted that the woman's husband owed three pounds of silver and was now unable to repay it, demanding that she use her land to settle the debt.

In response, the woman said she knew nothing about the debt and refused to repay it.

Vig: "Three pounds of silver is no small sum. There should have been witnesses at the time. Where are they?"

The woman replied, "I went south to defend the emperor last year and died in battle."

With the debtor and witness dead, Vig was greatly troubled. He looked at Micham beside him and asked him to carefully examine the deed.

"Date, location, witnesses, amount."

Half a minute later, Micham sighed regretfully, finding no errors or omissions.

This is troublesome. Vig unconsciously tapped the armrest of his chair with his right index finger. "Her husband owes three pounds of silver. What exactly does he plan to do with it?" Father and son said in unison, "Buy books from the Roman era. It seems he intends to study heretical doctrines."

Books? Viggo immediately perked up. "What kind?"

The father and son looked at each other, "Uh, we don't know Latin."

The woman also looked puzzled, claiming she had never seen such tattered books before. At that moment, someone behind her whispered a few Latin words, then quickly fell silent.

"Who's speaking?" Vig looked around and found the voice coming from the girl behind the woman. "What did you just say?"

Noticing that the lord was sitting slightly forward, with sharp eyes and his left hand gripping the hilt of his sword, as if a wild beast was about to pounce on its prey, the girl turned pale and quickly waved her hand to indicate that it had nothing to do with her.

“Ahem, sir,” Micham coughed, “if I heard correctly, she was just saying ‘Commentarii de Bello Gallico,’ which translates to ‘The Gallic Wars’ in Anglo-Chinese.”

Upon hearing this, the father and son were overjoyed. "Yes, we did hear him mention the word 'Gaul'. Haha, his daughter admitted it."

At this point, the woman realized her excuses had been exposed. Enraged, she tore at her daughter's dark chestnut hair, yelling, "Damn you, Harriet, it's all your fault for letting it slip! How did I warn you before we left? I should have sold you to the slave traders!"

"It hurts, it hurts, it hurts!" the daughter cried out in a panic, as the woman chased after her, running around the hall and making a racket that annoyed Vig.

At this moment, Micham leaned down and whispered in his ear, “Sir, what’s circulating in the market these days are mostly theological texts. Books like the Gallic Wars are very rare. Why not buy them at a low price?”

"That seems to make sense; let's use it as a textbook for learning Latin."

Knowledge is priceless. After a moment's thought, Vig spoke up: "Hey, Helif, what exactly are the books your father left behind? Name them, and maybe I'll pay to buy them."

“Sir, my name is Harriet,” the girl instinctively retorted, only to be grabbed by the ear and yelled by her mother, “Speak!”

Then, the other party uttered a series of Latin words, which, after being translated by Micham, roughly looked like this:
Fragments of the Gallic Wars, On the Orator, On the Republic, On the Constellations and Fate, Travels in Andalusia, and Natural Rituals of the Caledonians.
Mitcham struggled to control his emotions. "Sir, the total value far exceeds three pounds of silver. Buy it quickly, and you can make a fortune by reselling it to booksellers in the South."

Can this really make money?
That makes sense, after all, the first book was written by Caesar, and the second and third by Cicero. Just the names of these two authors are enough to attract booksellers.

Vig cleared his throat. "Very well, since you are unable to repay your debts, I will buy this pile of rubbish for three pounds of silver. Bring the books over another day, and if the contents are correct, I will then pay your creditors."

“No, it’s too cheap! This is my father’s life’s work; he spent decades in the wool business accumulating these books. Ugh…” Harrietiff vehemently objected, but unfortunately, she had no say in the matter. Fearing that the lord might change his mind, the woman quickly covered her daughter’s mouth and immediately announced that she accepted the deal.

After treating his guests to a meal of wild boar meat, Vig returned to his bedroom with a satisfied burp, marveling at the exorbitant cost of medieval knowledge.

Three pounds of silver was worth twenty-four oxen, or a small estate of over two hundred acres, and that was a bargain. Books were so expensive; no wonder knowledge had always been monopolized by the church.

(End of this chapter)