A week later, land inspections began in Lundenwic County, with a total of twenty survey teams deployed.
At each settlement, the survey teams' first task was to assemble the residents and, using a standardized questionnaire, record detailed information item by item.
Afterward, the investigators went out into the fields, measuring land with survey ropes and drawing the results into ledgers.
For a long time, farmland among the populace had generally been laid out in long, narrow strips, making measurement relatively straightforward. Naturally, they also encountered plots of irregular shape; in those cases, they could only estimate roughly and arrive at an approximate area.
As Chief Chamberlain, Sebert was assigned to travel between locations to observe the land survey process. Watching his junior classmates laboring away, he was suddenly reminded of events from many years ago.
Back then, Ívarr had been mired in a financial crisis and sought Vig's help, borrowing five students to sort out his accounts. Sebert had been one of them.
After finishing the ledgers, the students went to measure land in the countryside near Dublin, only to be attacked by local gentry. They had escaped by sheer luck, thanks to running fast enough.
Thinking of this, Sebert glanced at the soldiers idling nearby. So far, no attacks had occurred, and both soldiers and investigators were generally lax in their vigilance.
Yet from his own experience, he knew it was only a matter of time before some gentry or freeholding farmers—whose interests were being severely harmed—would lose their heads and resort to assassination or open attack.
"I just hope that when it happens, these soldiers can keep their restraint and not let things spiral out of control."
As time passed, the survey in Lundenwic County concluded smoothly. Each team's report was sent to the cabinet, where clerks recorded and compiled the data into bound parchment volumes.
According to the statistics, Lundenwic County had a permanent population of 61,305 people, spread across 12,020 households.
Of these, townspeople made up 8%. The rest lived across the vast countryside: freeholding farmers accounted for nearly 30%, cottars and bordars for 20%, tenant farmers for 20%, and slaves for 10%.
Afterward, the investigators and soldiers were dispatched northward to Cambridge County to continue this large-scale inspection.
The farther they moved from the royal capital, the colder the public's attitude toward the surveyors became—especially among certain gentry whose losses were severe. These men began to conspire in secret; some even spread word that they intended to drive out that greedy, harsh Viking king.
Tensions steadily escalated until, in late July, someone finally lost patience and ambushed a surveyor with a hidden arrow.
Staring at the corpse lying on the ground, Sebert was furious.
"I've emphasized the dangers of this work countless times—told you not to go off alone. Hardly anyone listened. Now look at this mess. There's nothing but trouble ahead!"
Upon receiving the news, nearby rangers and infantry rushed in as reinforcements. The rangers, seasoned veterans, quickly narrowed down the general area where the attacker was hiding.
A ranger officer came forward to ask for instructions.
"My lord, what should we do?"
Sebert straightened his back in the saddle and gazed at a distant manor surrounded by a wooden palisade. Considering the broader situation, he did not want to let matters escalate; he only wanted a swift resolution.
"Send people to urge them to surrender."
However, several minutes passed. No matter how the soldiers threatened them, the manor gates remained firmly shut, forcing Sebert to make up his mind.
"Loose a volley of arrows at the gate. If they still don't surrender, launch a full assault—but try to take them alive."
At the order, over thirty rangers charged toward the manor, loosing arrows at the gate. Then they felled a small tree, stripped off its branches, and used it as a makeshift battering ram.
"Attack!"
The infantry hoisted the ram and rushed the gate. The rangers dismounted at fifty paces, attempting to suppress any counterattack with their bows.
Thud. Thud.
After more than a dozen heavy blows, the gate burst open. Infantry leveled their spears and stormed inside. The courtyard was in disarray, but there wasn't a single person in sight—only chickens and ducks wandering about.
"Damn it, they all ran! Chase them!"
Sebert ordered the infantry to search the manor while the rangers combed the surrounding area.
Before long, a soldier found a scattering of silver coins in the grass near the rear wall. With too many witnesses present, the soldier had no choice but to hand them over to Sebert.
There were more than two hundred silver pennies, worth roughly one pound. The coins were newly minted, bearing the dragon emblem of the Tyneburg family on the obverse.
Suddenly, Sebert noticed something off about the dragon emblem. He pulled a silver penny from his pocket for comparison and detected several extremely subtle differences.
"These coins were privately minted. Interesting."
At the very start of his reign, Vig had issued an edict strictly forbidding both nobles and commoners from minting coins privately. Examining the workmanship, Sebert judged it acceptable overall—about ninety percent of the quality of official coinage. An ordinary gentry household could never achieve this; it had to come from a noble's workshop.
Staring at the uniformly styled silver pennies, a bold idea suddenly took shape in his mind.
The surveyor's death was, first and foremost, the result of his own poor management. But if the death were instead attributed to a noble plotting rebellion, that would greatly lessen his personal responsibility.
After sitting on the grass and thinking for a long while, Sebert wrote a report, roughly as follows:
A surveyor was attacked and killed. We searched the assailant's estate and discovered a sack of privately minted silver coins. The workmanship is fine, likely from a noble's workshop, and appears to have been used to hire killers. The situation is urgent; we request reinforcements from His Majesty and the cabinet.
Once finished, Sebert summoned a ranger officer.
"Take this report and these coins to Lundenwic. This is a serious matter—do not let anything go wrong."
Two mornings later, Vig received the news.
After reading the report several times, he sensed that something was amiss. He dispatched the mountain infantry battalion to stabilize the situation and ordered the intelligence service to investigate quietly.
West of the City — Intelligence Service Headquarters
Upon receiving the royal order, the director appointed one inspector and two experienced senior agents to command the operation, instructing them to select ten field agents to travel to Cambridge County.
Learning that a murder had occurred and that it might involve a noble, most agents responded in silence. Only one stepped forward voluntarily.
"Blackfish, are you trying to get yourself killed?" someone exclaimed. "Last time you nearly died from an arrow—now you want another one?"
Facing his friend's question, Blackfish offered no explanation.
The previous year, he had been ordered to investigate the silver mines in Nottingham. After finally uncovering some leads, the matter had been brushed aside by his superiors. This time, he was determined to seize the opportunity—using these privately minted coins to track down the silver-mine workers who had fled with stolen funds, and the 'fat man' behind them.
For reasons he could not explain, Blackfish had been dreaming frequently this year—dreams of a short, obese figure with a blurred face. No matter how he called out, the figure never responded, only standing there in silence.
Driven by an unshakable intuition, Blackfish concluded that this "fat man" was none other than Paphis, the long-missing former Lord Steward. He was even convinced that the man had been hiding somewhere in Britannia all along, secretly plotting a rebellion on a massive scale.
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