"Alright, don't despair," Baldur said after thinking about the matter for a moment. "It all could be solved with more people working for us."
"There is no problem if we get more; it would only mean more mouths to feed, pay, and control. The problem is getting people who would be willing to make the pact, hehe."
"We need to look for desperados or people looking for a better life." Gunic rolled his eyes and said. "We can promote the generous silver we pay for them if they are willing to come to this place to work and live."
"It is a generous deal that is difficult to pass out; we provide housing, food, protection, and good coin. They only need to give their soul in a deal with a man who is like Loki in some things." Gunic smiled, showing all his white teeth.
"Yes, everything is good and all." Baldur thought. "But there is only a little problem with that. We have a lot of people already here. We are more than just a simple farm with all the people living in the land of my family and the great things we are doing."
"It is bound to alarm the big fish over our heads with all the noise we are making here."
"We are near the end of the year. How much did we make only this year?"
"Well, let me think for a moment," Gunic said as he stood and looked around the desk before grabbing a wooden table from it. He looked for a while as he started talking.
"With all the fertile land expanded and reclaimed, using the new methods to sow and till the land, the production of crops increased dramatically, from the 120 acres of farmable land to the current 200. It could be expanded a little bit more, but we are already at the limit of what your family owns; it is not worth continuing for a dozen more acres."
"From these lands we farm mostly rye and barley, along with some parts of wheat, oats, and other crops that are not worth entering in the calculation, as they are not the main business."
"Between rye and barley, that is the bulk of the operation we harvest around 80 carts worth of grain. This translates directly into a base value of 5160 ounces of silver. Of course, this is the base value of those grains, but as we need to pay the earl a part of these grains for his winter reserve in Kattegat, and also to your tenants who farm the land, we are left with 65 carts at the disposition of your family."
"From the left, we follow what you said, we leave 15 carts worth of grain well stored in the winter reserves to be used for the almost 150 people of this place and your family, and then we make business with the rest."
"From those 50 carts, 10 carts of raw grain are sold as they are, 20 carts are destined to be processed and sold as flour, and from the remaining twenty that are left, ten carts of rye and ten carts of barley are to be brewed into ale leaving us with a production of 676 barrels of ale of rye and barley combined."
"All in all, the value of selling everything we obtain from the raw grain amounts to 645,1 ounces of silver, from the flour of barley and rye totals to 1290 ounces of silver, and from the 676 barrels of ale is around 3270 ounces of silver."
"With a total value of around 5205 ounces of silver or 433,75 pounds of it."
Gunic finished as he left the wooden table in the desk and wetted his dry tongue with the mead after talking for a while.
*Loud whistle* Baldur whistled at the mention of all the data that produces the lands of his family and this place.
'We are over a latent landmine that could explode at any moment. It is a fucking lot of wealth these numbers. We are worth raiding."
'Thankfully, this isn't well-known to anybody. And if someone has already looked at us, they must be seeing just the tip of it.'
Gunic hesitated for a moment before biting his teeth and speaking his mind. "We are in grave danger, my lord."
"We don't currently have all the production converted into silver, but that's only a matter of time. We're selling them off to various buyers—some have already shown interest in what we offer. Your reputation, and that of your family, as grain farmers is well-established. While you've always been farmers, the scale has grown dramatically in recent years, thanks to both the increased number of workers tending the land, reclaiming virgin land, and the adoption of new farming methods."
"This expansion hasn't gone unnoticed. The earl himself took note, demanding more grain for his winter reserves. Additionally, you've built a name for trading mead, and the past year's shift into brewing ale—rather than selling all the grain—has caught the attention of rival brewer families. Your ale is superior in quality and price, and we've since expanded production capacity even further."
"The numbers don't lie, my lord. It's a fortune, even after sinking every coin into expanding this place, with people, new facilities, housing, and inventions for the business. You've got enough now to make men reckless. Enough to draw attacks."
"Yes, you are right. But you haven't seen everything." Baldur sipped calmly, already having considered all these things long ago. "Do you have the recorded details from the furnace working production?"
Gunic glanced around for a second before grabbing another wooden table. He gave it a quick once-over before passing it to Baldur.
Baldur took a brief peek and smiled in approval, praising him. "Gunic, I have to say, your mind is a blessing. By now, you write and understand English as well as I'd hoped."
"It was all thanks to your guidance, my lord," Gunic replied. "I wouldn't be here without your teachings. Truly, this collection of letters that makes up what you call the Latin alphabet, and combining them to form English words as you say, forming a whole new language different from our tongue we speak in these lands, it is...a really marvelous thing."
"I found it extremely hard that people from lands far away in the south of our place could create this collection of letters that could be used to design a language. It is like they were designed and created by some Gods to be such an illustrious thing."
"After all, these Latin letters look and are so much different from our runes. How I wish I could write and understand our runes now. Knowing these Latin letters only shows how impressive our runes made by our Gods must be."
"A marvelous thing indeed," he repeated again with a sigh.
"Mhm. That's true." Baldur nodded, his gaze shifting to the recorded reports. He and Gunic don't know how to read or write runes. His family also couldn't; at most, they understood somewhat their meaning. We are what is known in modern terms as 'analphabets' or 'illiterates'.
'Well, there is nothing to do, after all, we are farmers.'
So, all he could do was use English. He taught him the Latin alphabet, and after that, English to Gunic, who surprisingly absorbed the knowledge easily.
'As I'm illiterate, I don't know if there is any runic alphabet somewhere that is equivalent to the Latin alphabet to learn how to write with runes.' They are like hieroglyphs to him at the moment.
"Still, I want to learn someday how to read and write in runes. Our runes, passed down by the Gods, can't be lost in the face of this Latin alphabet. The loss of this knowledge is leaving aside our roots."
"Someday, I will catch someone from Uppsala who can write and read them. They must surely be able to do so."
Gunic listened and nodded. As he doesn't know how to read and write runes, he couldn't compare these Latin letters to their runes in how different their use would be. Seeing that Baldur focused on reading on the wooden table, he stayed quiet.
As he read, his expression shifted: first a blossoming smile, then a furrowed brow, worry flickering between his eyes.
"We indeed need more warriors; those twenty we currently have protecting this place can easily disuade bandits and little groups with bad intentions, but not the powerful or large groups." Baldur sighed exasperatedly. "Have you thought what these records say?"
"If the harvest from this land was worth killing for, then these smelting furnace technologies are worth waging war over."
"We have two ore furnaces for smelting the raw ores into wrought iron and then one more advanced for processing that wrought iron into steel."
"According to these records, an ore furnace can smelt half a cart of ores every two days, yielding almost half of the ore used in wrought iron. And then the crucible furnace takes 45 pounds of wrought iron per batch every two days to make almost 34 pounds of good steel."
"If we guide by the price values of Kattegat for these things, every 2,2 pounds of iron wrought his value is of 25 grams of silver, and the good steel would only cost more, four or five times more."
"That's a fuckton of silver! The ore for them is worth pennies compared to the iron ready to be worked. A whole cart of wrought iron value is around 806 ounces of silver, and we can produce four whole carts as we are per month! We are already almost on par with just the iron with the grain numbers produced by the land. And if we use a cart and a half of this wrought iron into the crucible furnace."
Baldur panted with a ragged, excited breath. "Fuck!"
Gunic was also holding his breath after hearing the whole matter of these three furnaces from Baldur. He quickly spoke:
"My Lord, with your capabilities and blessing, it shouldn't be a trouble to field quickly a small army of mercenaries. We can send people to every corner of Sweden and Norway, inviting people. You have the coin and food to maintain it indefinitely."
"Less not talk about their loyalty as they can't run away from your wishes, my lord, if every mercenary needs to make the pact if they wish to be hired." Gunic touched his wrist where his raven tattoo was. "Even if someone hates you at first, with the good life you give to anyone who serves you, they would lick your boots and kiss the land where you walk in gratefulness."
"Well, it's not like they can do anything about it, even if they wanted to. Unless they want to die in record time." He shrugged.