A day later, news of the capture of Edinburgh reached Stirling, and Whig was in high spirits.
On 10 July, Shrike's 1,000-strong reinforcements arrived, swelling to 4,500 men, armed with numerous shield wagons, ladders and fifteen small trebuchets.
The next morning, the full assault began. The trebuchets hurled canisters of kerosene in twenty volleys, causing much of Stirling's north wall to burst into flames. The soldiers behind the battlements spontaneously retreated.
Seizing the opportunity, many of the Vikings advanced slowly, pushing aside shields and throwing sacks of earth into the ditch behind the wall, eventually creating more than a dozen passages.
Seeing this, Whig waved a red flag, and the towers in front of his column began to move. Since Stirling's walls were only five meters high, the towers were much easier to build, which greatly accelerated the movement.
As time passed, the flames gradually died down, and the defenders climbed the wall again, firing from behind the ruined battlements.
To cover the tower's advance, eight hundred crossbowmen were drawn up in three ranks in the open. The first rank consisted of armored crossbowmen stationed only fifty meters from the wall. Their arrows were accurate and deadly.
The second rank consisted of ordinary light crossbowmen, protected by a massive wooden shield, who repeated the process of drawing the bowstring, aiming, and pulling the trigger over and over again.
The last rank was made up of Welsh archers, who had the fastest and longest range, firing a continuous barrage across the wall.
With the suppression provided by the crossbowmen, the infantry had pinned the tower against the wall. With a deafening crash, the tower's shields fell, and the armored warriors inside rushed up to engage the defenders in fierce combat.
From Wyg's perspective, his heavy infantry had a distinct advantage, making short work of the surrounding enemy ranks. The only area where trouble arose was the gate.
"Duncan is the commander of these Indigo Raiders?"
"It looks that way," Yoren demanded, vowing to personally behead the enemy, lest he be eclipsed by the newly ascended Thorgar.
"That's not necessary,"
Vig shook his head. He sent a messenger to the crossbowmen at the front, ordering them to concentrate on Duncan's hundreds of elite warriors.
After a few volleys, a section of Duncan's wall was riddled with arrows, and the Indigo Raiders suffered heavy losses. Even Duncan himself was wounded in the shoulder by a heavy crossbow. A large number of Vikings rushed forward and killed him.
With the fall of the lord and his elite, Stirling's fall was inevitable. Vig yawned and sat down on the grass to sort through the official documents.
According to a letter from Tain, another thousand raiders had recently arrived. In it, Geligiv relayed the chieftains' complaints:
West Francia is no longer fit for plunder. To win the favor of the Franks, Gunnar even sent soldiers to build forts on Jersey and Guernsey in the Channel Islands to prevent the pirates from resting and getting fresh water. It was simply not a suitable place to live.
The robbers had nowhere to go but to the English and West Francia. Coincidentally, the "Serpent of the North" was conducting a large-scale campaign, so they flocked here to earn some money.
Taking out pen and paper, Wig wrote a reply, demanding a new shipment of grain and cargo.
Moreover, after two major battles, the armored cavalry suffered few losses, but lost sixty-five warhorses. According to the mercenary agreement, if the cavalry lost a horse in battle, Tyneburg was obliged to provide it with a replacement of high-quality warhorses free of charge.
"There are only one hundred and sixty Frankish warhorses at the horse ranch west of the city, and sixty-five of them have been lost without warning. War is a waste of money."
However, Vig kept his promise. There was no need to ruin his long-standing reputation for such a small gain.
After two hours of sorting through the accumulated correspondence, he looked up to see groups of dejected Pictish captives emerging from the city gates and squatting in the open, awaiting the victor's decision.
"After a month of toil, it is finally over."
Vig stretched lazily, leaving the rest of his affairs to his subordinates. He found a local guide and asked him to lead him to the iron ore deposits to the north.
Beyond the River Forth, the northern bank was a vast expanse of rolling hills rich in reddish-brown, shallow-lying hematite (Fe₂Os). Led by a miner, the party arrived at a nearby mining area.
"Sir, I work here,"
Miner Kaiso pointed to a pile of stone hammers and wooden pry bars, explaining the process of mining iron ore.
Miners first locate veins of ore by observing rusty-red rock on the surface or iron sand in streams. The ore is divided into hematite and bog iron, which is mined at the edge of the bog.
Bog iron produces lower-quality iron with less durability, so miners usually prefer hematite. After
the mining area has been demarcated, miners extract the ore from open pits, crushing it with heavy stone hammers to remove impurities.
The next step is smelting. Miners use clay and rocks to build a cylindrical furnace one meter high, with a feed hole at the top and vents at the bottom.
Caesar the miner described the abandoned, broken cylindrical furnaces. "Lay the charcoal and iron ore in layers, three pieces of charcoal for each piece of ore. Then light the charcoal and blow air through the holes at the bottom with leather bellows. This will last all day."
Vig asked the most important question: "What is the production volume?"
Caesar looked around and finally pulled a rusty iron ingot out of the storeroom. "About this size."
Having weighed the ingot – about ten kilograms – Vig scratched his head, dissatisfied with the volume of production.
Remembering Caesar's description of the production process, he decided to improve it, increasing both the efficiency and the quality of the ingots.
As for the process of crushing the ore, he designed a hydraulic ore crusher. In simple terms, a water wheel was driven by water to raise a forge hammer, which then fell heavily, crushing the ore into small pieces and reducing the burden on the miners.
"Look, these are the plans for an ore crusher. I plan to build one on the banks of the River Forth. I also plan a water blower. "It will provide a more powerful wind than a hand-operated leather bellows, and the size of the blast furnace will also be increased,"
Wig enthusiastically explained as he appointed this clever and successful miner as the master of the Stirling Iron Mine.
"Work hard, and from now on I will protect you. If you need help, just call me."
To fuel the miners' enthusiasm, Wig pardoned some of them, converting them into paid workers and providing bonuses such as wine and silver, depending on their productivity.
He spent several days surveying the surrounding mining areas and commissioned the construction of a water-powered workshop on the banks of the River Forth, deciding to turn the area into a major smelting base.
A week later, a thousand raiders arrived from the Tyne, bringing the Viking army at Stirling to over 5,000 men.
Leaving a few hundred men to garrison Stirling, Whig led 4,500 men to Glasgow on the west coast to capture that last major settlement.