When it came to materials for cloth armor, Vig recalled that in the Ming Dynasty such armor was usually made with cotton. But cotton required hot, dry climates—conditions Western Europe did not have.
By contrast, flax thrived in cool, damp regions and grew abundantly here. Naturally, he chose linen as the base fabric for his new armor.
After putting it on himself, Vig found the cloth cuirass weighed about twenty jin—roughly ten kilograms. It covered the torso, arms and thighs, while remaining flexible enough to conserve a soldier's stamina.
To test it, he jogged several circuits around the yard behind the smithy, swung Dragon's Breath through the air again and again, then ran several more laps.
A smith handed him a piece of hemp cloth. Vig wiped his forehead, breathing hard.
"Not bad… Its mobility is far better than mail. How's the protection?"
Lúkal pointed toward a wooden post wearing a cuirass of the same design. Vig picked up an ordinary iron sword from a rack and hacked repeatedly—the blade couldn't break through.
Next, he gripped the sword in both hands and drove a full-power thrust into the target. This barely pierced the armor.
He replaced the sword, then took up a bow. At sixty paces he loosed ten arrows.
Fsshh—fsshh!
Six found their mark—a sixty percent hit rate.
According to the Song Dynasty's archery test standard—twelve shots at sixty paces, six or more into the target counted as first class—Vig judged his own performance acceptable.
"All right, that's enough. With my mediocre talent at archery this is fine. There's no point comparing myself with Niels or Barlow."
Closing in to inspect the arrows, he saw none of the six had penetrated. He halved the distance to thirty paces and shot again.
The cloth cuirass still held. Its defensive performance met the expected threshold.
Hammers, axes and spear thrusts, of course, were beyond its limits—and Vig didn't bother testing them. After all, lamellar, scale, mail—none resisted heavy blunt trauma well unless one wore a full plate harness of the Renaissance. Plate required impossible craftsmanship and cost; it had no place in his current plans.
The test complete, Lúkal removed the battered cuirass and shared welcome news.
"Milord, this armor can be repaired. Replace the damaged plates, patch the linen, stitch it like mending clothes. Even in a field camp it can be serviced."
"Excellent—very good." Vig nodded appreciatively, then asked the key question: production time and cost.
Lúkal replied plainly: twenty days to craft a full suit, costing 0.8 pounds of silver.
Vig compared it mentally with Ming Dynasty prices:
"Back then a cloth cuirass cost four taels of silver (~150 grams). Ironworking was far more advanced, so prices were lower. Even so, at 0.8 pounds (~280 grams), our cloth armor is still much cheaper than mail or scale."
In summary, cloth armor's protection, flexibility, and price all met expectations. Vig instructed Lúkal to begin full-scale production.
"Keep this quiet. Assign a secluded courtyard and store all finished armor there."
At present, Vig possessed about a thousand sets of various iron armors—enough for bandit suppression and small conflicts. For the next few years, every cloth cuirass made would be hidden away for future emergencies.
With armor production on track, Vig took his guards to tour the villages of Tyne County. Wheat shoots looked healthy this year, lifting his mood.
After riding north over thirty kilometers, he found a land-reclamation team of two hundred working hard.
The laborers were all war captives—seventy percent Pictish brigands, thirty percent Viking pirates—overseen by thirty soldiers armed with shields and axes.
Their job: dig canals, build windmills to drain swamps, clear brush, then move on.
Afterward, the barracks they left behind served as temporary housing for new settlers. Decommissioned drainage mills would be refitted into windmills for grinding grain under the village chief's control, who paid Tyne Town a yearly usage tax.
There were five such reclamation teams in total, handling the initial clearing. The settlers would take over afterward.
After five years of labor the prisoners would be released somewhere in the Northlands as free farmers—thus Vig had honored his promise.
As Vig surveyed the area on horseback, he saw a young Anglo-Saxon man with pale blond hair.
"Connor—how's recruitment going?"
Connor was the provost of Stirling County, tasked with recruiting agents to infiltrate the northern highlands. Beyond loyal freed slaves, he sought captured petty nobles or retainers who knew local affairs—ideal intelligence advisers.
The youth hurried over with his report.
"Nine are willing to defect, milord. I'm still screening them…"
The two discussed details for quite some time, until a rider interrupted:
"Milord! A villager reports a longship beached on the eastern coast—many drowned bodies around it. The ship carried double-handed axes, swords and bows."
"Pirates?"
Vig led fifty guards to investigate. After a long ride, they crested the final hill before sunset.
Under a gloomy sky the coast churned with ashen surf. A broken Viking longship lay askew on the sand, its dragon prow splintered, hull torn open—crabs crawling in and out.
Twelve corpses littered the shore, swollen pale from seawater. A flock of seabirds pecked at their bloated faces, shrieking as if summoning more of their kind to feast.
Approaching the wreck, Vig saw the dead were oddly dressed: two in bearskins, six in wolveskins, four in deerskins.
All had dark tattoos on their left wrists—clearly members of the same group.
"Berserkers?"
In Vig's understanding, berserkers wore bearskins, loved mead and battle—but they had never formed a structured order.
Unless—
He glanced at a torn scrap of sail nearby. Upon it was painted Halfdan's charred-oak crest.
"Berserkers… organized? I can't believe Halfdan pulled off something like this.
If I'm right, bearskin, wolfskin, deerskin mark different ranks—almost like a Crusader knightly order…"
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