Chapter 1132 Books, Plate Armor and the Beginning of Winter Life

After this snowstorm, winter life in the north began.

The heavy ship-shaped coffin was transferred to Rurik's flagship, which led other ships to leave the port.

Each ship cleared away the attached snow and then unfolded all the packed sails. A relatively large fleet assembled off the coast of Tombstone Island, and each ship accompanied the flagship to the depths of the Gulf of Finland.

Even in winter, there are land transportation routes using reindeer sleighs to transport supplies to the eastern world. However, this kind of eastward movement in cold weather is not pleasant, which makes communication between New Roseburg and the West very limited during the winter.

This fleet gathers goods from the north and Sweden. This is the last large-scale transportation of materials to the east this year. When the goods arrive, all the ships will be parked quietly and frozen.

The sea surface has begun to freeze, first on the north and south coasts, and eventually the ice in the middle of the Gulf of Finland is thick enough for people to run wild.

It was also thanks to the wind and snow that had just ended. Although the temperature was cold, the violent sea waves made it difficult for sea ice to accumulate. Now the north wind is still strong, and the fleet is still drifting deep in the ups and downs of the waves.

As long as you ride on the observation post at the top of the mast, you can see the snow-capped scenery on both sides of the Gulf of Finland.

Snow can cover the world, but it can never cover the walls of New Roseburg.

There are white and black intertwined, and the almost ink-colored Neva River is still flowing quietly.

After docking at the port, the fleet quickly began to unload its cargo. These batches of production raw materials from the Western world well met the needs of the capital.

A large number of iron ingots were transported, so that the state-owned blacksmith shop had no worries about production capacity in winter.

A large amount of Glauber's salt is unloaded, and all the cobbler's workshops in the city can "fire up".

A large amount of flax from Sweden, a small amount of kenaf and ship's linen, and a batch of pure wool from Flanders were sold as soon as they were unloaded. The textile industry families in the capital knew what good goods were, and they bought them after inspecting them. Then it was quickly put into production.

The great businessman Gould died, and the people who were most saddened by his death were his family and King Rurik of Rus, an old friend of the deceased.

In the capital, no one cares about the intricately carved boat-shaped coffins. People live their own lives. Life is much better now than before. The rapid rise of the handicraft industry has brought prosperity, and the residents of the capital have more or less asset balances. Only then It was unimaginable in the past.

When they have spare money, they want to spend it. Buying ale has been a pleasure for everyone since ancient times. Considering the need for winter, now is the time when everyone spends money to buy firewood.

The poorer people carry axes and go to distant places to cut wood and then sell it in the two outer markets in the capital.

Those Lapps who raise deer must seize this opportunity. Now that the land is covered with snow, the previously unusable reindeer sleds have a place to be used. They cut down trees in advance when grazing. Human beings are no fools. The bark of various trees was peeled off to make paper. The pine trees were cut into small pieces and stored in advance. The oak trees they found were kept intact in their trunks. They were eventually all loaded onto sleds to form sled teams. The pine wood was sold as firewood, the oak wood was sold to shipbuilding workshops, and the bark was put last. The so-called wait until the Volkhov River and Lake Ladoga were frozen enough to solidify, Lapp The people then transported the prepared bark to Novgorod.

The current firewood trading market is very hot, and the capital has a large population. All families with some financial resources have to build houses with fireplaces and chimneys, which has given rise to a huge winter firewood market.

Ale makes people warm, and the high-altitude ale mixed with some vodka is the most cost-effective. This is a small way for the royal brewery to make money.

No matter what tribe the residents of the capital come from, most of them have one thing in common - they speak Norse.

We are all Vikings, and our habits of eating fish are almost the same.

There are two types of smoked fish jerky, salted and original. When it comes to cost performance, original smoked fish is more popular among the general public. Just like the clay furnace of a charcoal kiln, there are a lot of fresh herring and cod steaks hanging with hemp ropes. They are smoked to dehydrate them as much as possible, and finally become hard fish that tests the bite muscles.

It is also true that many people often eat this kind of long-lasting meat to develop strong cheeks and round heads.

But now everyone has more diversified choices.

Yaslaqi has been expanding her mill and pancake workshop. For her, even if she does not do other businesses, she only relies on buying grain, grinding flour, and selling flour products. The profit of individual pancakes and bread is not high. Gao, she was able to make a steady profit due to her large quantity, and the royal family also relied on her to slowly consume the aged grain in the warehouse.

Traditional families stock up on dried fish and flatbreads in large quantities, and even if they are placed in their own granaries, they will become as hard as wood due to drying. Every family also stores grain. Considering the cost of cooking wheat porridge in winter, and the cold weather makes people lazy, people are more accustomed to having stored grain at their fingertips to eat and drink. Unappetizing? No problem.

The king is back, and a large number of people gather at the dock. They don't want to see the glory of the royal family. After all, what is returning is a larger fleet. A discerning person can tell that there is a lot of storage by looking at the draft of those armed cargo ships.

People with spare money hope that the fleet will bring back some new tricks. No, good things are already there.

The good news quickly spread throughout the capital—ten barrels of wine were in desperate need of sale.

The wealthy households in the city quickly rushed to the Harvest Square in the inner city, where Blue Fox sent people to set up a market.

The wine he returned was neither much nor too little, and some of the wine needed further fermentation and was not worth selling. Even if the subsequent wine can be sold, there is no need to sell it.

Blue Fox is a good person. Since he has accepted the king's favor, there is no problem in giving part of the wine to the royal family as a tribute.

He only sold ten barrels and marked a higher price. Those wealthy households would not buy it. As a businessman, he estimated that some of those guys must have paid a high price to buy it for the sake of face.

Rurik does not care about the business practices of Blue Fox and Red Fox in the capital. He has many things to do. At present, the most important thing is to complete Gould's last funeral.

Look! In an open space in Harvest Square, the well-dressed cavalry were gathering.

A sleigh pulled by four horses seemed to be transporting a ship. No! That's not a boat, it's a coffin.

Who died? Who is qualified to make the king attend his funeral?

In an instant, there were rumors all over the city, and some bold guys even said nervously: "It is very likely that the old King Otto has passed away."

Otto is indeed old, so he won’t die suddenly, right? In the past few years, we only know that he is aging badly, and there is no bad news such as illness. The old king has been staying in the warm Novgorod to take care of his old age. He is afraid that even if he dies, he will be buried by the lake.

Until, official news pointed out that it was Gould, a great Russian businessman whose ancestral home was the Angkras tribe.

That fat old guy like a seal? So it was him who died? If he is dead, what does it have to do with me?

Not many residents of the capital were willing to go to the south of the city cemetery to watch the funeral. However, there were more than a dozen small business traders from the Melalen tribe. Considering that they had too much business dealings with the Gould family, they went to see the old man off on his last journey. .

The king brought all his wives, concubines, and children living in the capital to participate, the high priest Rumia brought almost the entire priest team, and Noren and her newly trained musicians.

The musicians used wooden flutes, bone flutes, horns, and leather drums to create a solemn ensemble. The long and heart-piercing music seemed to guide the undead in the direction to Asgard.

The high priest led the entire team, all of them women, and led the way, followed by the Ross cavalry who lined up and held flags.

The royal family walked beside the boat-shaped coffin on foot, and Rurik had to walk close to it to show respect for the old guy.

For this reason, the blue fox and red fox of the Gould family, with their entourage, followed the royal family slowly to the cemetery while thanking them.

A stone tablet has been carved, which is the bust of old guy Gould. Unfortunately, the Swedish carving industry at that time was not technologically advanced. They could not carve a piece of marble into an almost life-like statue like those in Eastern Rome. They tried their best to reflect Gould's fat fish-like head and half-length body. The carving of the stone statue was completed on schedule. The inscription on the stone tablet is spelled out in runes and Latin letters, briefly describing Gould's life.

Gravediggers dug a deep pit and filled it to become a grave. The grave was then piled with a large number of stones, and finally a layer of cement was placed on the lake.

The stone tablet is placed in front of the tomb, making this tomb unique in the cemetery.

While Rurik was inspecting the north and even taking shelter from the snow on Tombstone Island, the matters he had arranged in the capital were proceeding in an orderly manner.

The top scribe, El Laji, was eager to report the good news to the king that the event had come true. Her happy smile said it all.

After handling Gould's last funeral, Rurik rested for another day and went straight to the Royal Printing Office in the city where he ordered.

To this end, Ella has brought her own gifts and is waiting for the king's arrival.

Without any courtesy or greetings, Rurik asked his entourage to wait outside. He had learned that the "Russaka" he ordered to be printed had begun printing, and he came here to see the finished product to confirm that the news was true.

"Where are the books? Where are they?" Rurik's intrusion shocked the printing workers and stopped their work.

Ella was holding a bound book with an oak board cover.

"That's it." She handed it to Rurik's hand with a smile.

Looking at this book, I have to say that its binding is very interesting.

The production cost of the lever press printing press is very low. The key lies in the huge amount of lead movable type. The current printing industry is busy mass-producing this. The assembly array of movable lead type has been proofread, and the movable types are lightly glued with pine glue. Each version corresponds to a page, so all the pages needed for the entire Ross Saga are gathered here.

Ella had to recruit a lot of workers. Now the two heads of the printing bureau are objectively responsible for all operations, and Ella's presence is more of a supervision.

Because the paper produced is thicker, each page is hard, and due to technical reasons, only one side can be printed. Even if the text in the pages is arranged as densely as possible, the "Rossaka" book with not much content actually becomes Very thick.

Thickness has a great advantage, that is, it makes readers feel that it is heavy, sturdy and durable.

The essence of a lever printing press is a manual press made of wood. After the pages of the book to be bound are arranged, the front and rear oak board covers are pressed hard by the press, and then a bow drill with a small drill bit is drilled out. hole for threading.

Glued binding seems simple, but in fact it requires higher skills. Drilling holes and installing wires is the best cost-effective solution that Ross can achieve. The pure paper binding should be firm, and the oak board cover should be installed, and the hemp rope should be loose to facilitate readers to flip through.

Rurik immediately looked through it and found that the situation was better than he thought. The paper, whose main raw material is birch bark, absorbs ink just right. Although the overall printing quality is a bit lacking, since the entire text is composed of letters that represent sounds, it does not affect it at all.

"This is the Norse version of the Latin alphabet, very good. You did a very good job."

After hearing what the king said, everyone who was a little nervous finally breathed a sigh of relief, and some even jumped with joy.

"We will continue to work hard. The paper that this winter will bring will be exhausted." Ella said with a smile. The implication of this is that Rurik will continue to supply paper and ink stably.

Rurik could hear her appeal: "Very good. You continue to do it and don't have to worry about printing materials. I ask you to go all out to print before Hanukkah. Just to give us current needs, you must first print fifty additional runes. version.”

"Huh?" For a moment, Ella frowned in confusion: "Now that the stall has been rolled out, we are working hard to make the Latin alphabet version. We need to change the version now, and the work needs to be adjusted."

"Worried about wasting efficiency? I understand. Don't worry, you will change to the printed version in December. Listen, there are too many people using traditional letters in the capital. The rune version is suitable for sale here, and the Latin version is shipped to Novo Fugorod, haha ​​this book will serve as a teaching material for children."

If the king stayed at the printing office for a long time, the workers would be nervous and distracted from their work, which would easily lead to mistakes.

After Rurik confirmed that their work was effective, he ordered all workers to be rewarded with ten silver coins and withdrew.

If there were no lead movable type, everything would be out of the question. Facts have proved that those movable types were carved very well. If anyone is to decide who deserves the reward the most, it is his huge team of blacksmiths who deserve the reward the most.

Give them money? No, maybe that's too cheesy.

These young blacksmiths all had slave origins, and at least being the king's slaves was a good thing. Rurik knew very well what his men needed. They needed the status of royal servants, and they also wanted to use this status to gain social status benefits.

The burly Kamni led his children to kneel down and salute the king. He then reported that he had completed the urgent task on time and started busy with ordnance manufacturing.

Look at Camne! Since the small furnace matrix of the state-owned blacksmith shop received a large number of iron ingots, they have sufficient production raw materials and can be busy throughout the winter. Kamnier took action himself. He went into battle shirtless, with imitation ironing clothes made of thick leather hanging on his chest and belly. The dense hair on his arms had long been permed, and he was covered in sweat. His wet hair forced him to twist it into linen. A rope was wrapped around his head to stop the sweat from stinging his eyes.

The pig iron ingots were smashed into small pieces and stir-fried with the heat of the high-temperature small stove created by the ancient wind machine. If the processing continues, the high-carbon pig iron ingot will eventually turn into a lump of almost carbon-free wrought iron.

This is not the case for blacksmiths. Although they were young, they engaged in this work when they were children. Now they are over twenty years old and work almost all year round, and their technical level is very high.

Carbon steel bars are the most common semi-finished products. They can be further processed into steel swords, steel arms for crossbows, ribs for iron helmets, and iron pieces cut into scales.

But now Rurik longs for plate armor.

The state-owned blacksmith shop is in full swing, and they are actively producing and improving the war weapons necessary for the king in the future.

Blacksmithing is not a job that only the royal family can do. Although Rurik has achieved a monopoly, this monopoly does not come from "people will behead if they dare to sell", but relies on quantity and quality to crush small private workshops.

To be fair, the production of tools such as nails and small forks does not require the involvement of state-run institutions. The latter's main income-generating products are weapons and tools shared by soldiers and peasants.

There are enough iron ingots in the capital now, and there is no harm in selling them to some small workshops. Because Rurik was sure that when he would send people to the north next spring, more iron ingots would arrive.

Rossburg, Novorosberg, Ellenborg, and Novgorod are four production-oriented cities in Ross, and each city has residents who are engaged in high value-added jobs who are divorced from agricultural life.

In a sense, Rus has heavy industry and numerous handicraft industries, and their prosperity is based on a stable supply of food.

Now that all the granaries in the capital are full, some grain transport ships can only be parked at the moorings and become maritime warehouses.

In the final analysis, sufficient food supply supports Rurik's steel industry. Now the time is ripe for the blacksmith shop to try to produce integral plate armor made of wrought iron, thereby replacing the troublesome scale armor that is troublesome to load and unload, and becoming cost-effective when combined with chain armor. Better armor combination.

After all, once the main force of the Russian army formally intervenes in the Frankish Civil War in the future, the army must have a higher armor coverage rate than the Frankish army! And use Ross's smelting to make higher quality armor.

The pig iron ingots began to be slowly burned into pig iron ingots, then hammered into iron sheets, and then molded to match the upper body of a strong adult man. Technically, this was not a problem. Kamne had already allocated manpower to start the work...

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