Sixty warriors stood silently in the wet grass. It was the silence of professionals assessing their new Lord, Earl Bjorn.
They had all seen him doing... what most men connot comprehend. And they respected his skill as a young warrior. His mind as a 12 year old, however, was another matter.
Bjorn stood before them. He met most of them at eye level. He wore simple leather and wool, the sheathed sword at his hip was his only sign of rank, and the warriors eyes would wander to it from time to time.
He watched them, his gaze was moving from one cluster to the next. He saw the easy camaraderie of Rollo's companions, the one that went with them to the west : Arne, Thorstein, Erik, Kauko..., the rigid pride in Faste Sveidisson's stance, the analytical look in Arnor Egilsson's eyes.
They came from landholding families, so basically neighbors in name, but they were never friends.
And neither liked taking orders from the other.
The others were also all veterans, men whose instincts had been honed over years of raids.
And those instincts were the problem.
Rollo stepped to his side. "They're ready, Bjorn. What's the plan?"
Bjorn gave a short nod and walked to the center of the field. His voice was calm, carrying easily in the air. "Form two lines. Thirty men each. Then face each other."
The command was so simple, so devoid of the usual boasts or promises of glory, that it bred a moment of confusion.
Men exchanged questioning glances. This wasn't a call to arms; it sounded like the beginning of a land survey. But the order was from the Earl, so with a collective shrug of experience, they moved.
Thorstein leaned over to Arne and whispered, "What in Hel's name are we doing?"
"No idea," Arne replied while scratching his beard. "Sounds like he wants us to fight in formation."
Rollo, by unspoken consent, took charge of one line. He stepped forward and pointed to half the men. "You, you, you... come with me. Form up here." He gestured to a spot on the field.
Arnor moved with efficiency as he organized the other. He said nothing to Faste, but the glance they exchanged....
Faste's jaw clenched. He hated the way Arnor organized men in this clean and clever way. A real warrior didn't need precision. He needed courage.
They stood as two solid ranks of leather, iron, and hardened muscle with their shields ready, waiting for the inevitable order to charge. "Line up shoulder to shoulder," he ordered. "Shields up, spears and axes ready."
The two lines faced each other across twenty paces of ground. The warriors held their shields high and gripped their spears, expecting the order to charge.
"Good," Bjorn said. "Rollo, your line will retreat. Arnor, your line will advance. Instead of running, walk."
A few men blinked. One or two glanced at their neighbors as if to confirm they had heard correctly. Practicing a retreat? As the first drill of the day? A warrior near Faste let out a short, incredulous laugh.
Faste spoke up from the back. "Walk? What's the point of walking back in a fight?" This was absurd.
"You'll see," Bjorn replied.
"Forward!" Arnor called, his voice was laced with confusion.
"Back!" Rollo grunted, his brow furrowed in a deep frown. He didn't understand Bjorn's strange play here, but it's Bjorn, he was always strange.
The moment Rollo's line began to step backward, the drill devolved into farce. These men were built to move forward, to crash into an enemy line. Walking backward in unison was an alien concept. Their spacing was wrong; they bumped and jostled, their shield discipline vanished.
A few started laughing at the sheer clumsiness of it, the absurdity of elite warriors stumbling around like drunkards.
Bjorn remained silent, his expression was unreadable as he watched their formation crumble. He let the chaotic shuffle continue until they had covered half the field.
"Stop," he commanded. The two lines halted, the men in Rollo's group were shaking their heads and grinning.
"Again," Bjorn said in a flat tone.
And the amusement began to drain from their faces.
He made them do it again. And again. The work was tedious, irritating. The sun climbed, and sweat began to mix with the morning dew on their tunics. An hour passed, filled with the drudgery of walking backward across a field. The mood curdled from confusion to a grim frustration.
"This is a waste of time!" Faste called out as his patience finally snapped. "We should be practicing our swings, not learning to walk away from a fight."
Bjorn met his gaze. "You think a retreat is walking away from a fight?"
"Yes," Faste said. "Real warriors don't retreat. They charge forward and break the enemy."
He gestured for the lines to reset. "Let's find out then." A new sharpness entered his voice. "We fight... now."
A murmur of approval and relief ran through the ranks. This they understood.
"Faste," Bjorn called. "You command Arnor's line. Your job is to break Rollo's line. Use any tactics you want."
Faste's eyes lit up and he smirked towards Arnor. Then he grabbed his axe and moved to the front of his line. "Now we're talking. Form up behind me, boys. We're going to crush them."
The warriors in Faste's line raised their shields and readied their weapons. Their movements were confident and precise, for this was what they had trained for their entire lives.
Bjorn raised a horn to his lips. And the blast echoed across the field.
"Charge!" Faste roared, and his line surged forward with a guttural howl.
The collision was a thunderclap of wood and iron. The impact was brutal, exactly the kind of fighting these men were made for.
Faste's line, driven by his aggressive leadership, slammed into Rollo's men and tried to push them back.
They had the momentum for a while. But after a while they were being pushed back.
It was then that Bjorn's voice cut through the clamor. "Faste's line! Retreat! Now!"
The command came out of nowhere.
Faste's jaw clenched. Retreating in front of the men felt like cowardice, no matter what Bjorn said. He'd rather die on his feet than step backward like a beaten thrall. "No! We can win. Drive them back!" he bellowed to his men.
"Retreat!" Bjorn repeated. "That's an order!"
His order, born of a lifetime of battle sense, collided with the Earl's.
Faste's warriors heard two different commands. Some tried to keep pushing forward, following their battle commander. Others hesitated, remembering they were supposed to obey their Earl.
"Drive them back!" Faste bellowed to his men, ignoring Bjorn's order.
"But the Earl said to retreat," one warrior called out.
"Ignore him! Keep fighting!" Faste replied.
The line fractured. Warriors in the middle tried to retreat, stepping backward clumsily. Warriors on the flanks kept pushing forward. The formation collapsed from within as men worked against each other.
"Now, Rollo!" Bjorn shouted.
Rollo and his men surged forward as one solid unit. They smashed into the disorganized mass of Faste's warriors, who were too busy fighting each other to mount a defense.
The result was a slaughter. Faste's men were bowled over, flanked, and overwhelmed. Rollo's warriors pressed their advantage, using blunted weapons to "kill" their opponents.
Faste himself, caught between a man trying to retreat and another still pushing forward, was easily surrounded. Three spear points pressed against his throat.
"Dead," Rollo announced.
The field fell silent. The victorious warriors stood over their defeated opponents. There was no celebration, only the sound of heavy breathing and the understanding of what had just happened.
Bjorn walked into the center of the field. He stopped in front of Faste, whose face was red with humiliation.
"Your instincts told you to push forward," Bjorn said with his voice carrying to every man on the field. "Those same instincts got your men killed. We practiced the retreat so you would have another option. One that would have saved you."
Faste looked around at his scattered, defeated warriors. The truth was undeniable.
"Again," Bjorn commanded. "Arnor, you take command of a line. Faste, you watch. Learn the difference between a warrior's pride and a commander's duty. The duty is to keep your men alive."
For the rest of the day, they drilled. They charged, clashed, and retreated. Bjorn was relentless, stopping to correct every mistake.
"You're holding your shield wrong," he told a warrior, physically adjusting the man's grip. "It's not your shield. It belongs to the line. It protects the man to your left. His protects you. You live and die as one body, or you die as scattered parts."
They were nowhere near ready to his ideal army. But the cracks had begun to close. For the first time, they were moving toward becoming a single weapon.
By late afternoon, they were exhausted. Their muscles ached, but their movements were a little synchronized.
"Enough," Bjorn called. "Get some water and rest. Then we move to the next drill."
The men broke formation and headed for the water barrels. They talked quietly about the drills as they drank.
Rollo came to stand with Bjorn. "Your methods are strange, but I cannot argue with the results. This is a different way of thinking about war."
"It is a different way of thinking about winning," Bjorn corrected him. Inside his mind, he thought, 'Because I hate losing.'
After the rest, Bjorn divided the sixty warriors into two groups of thirty again. "Shield wall drill," he announced. "Uncle, you take thirty. I'll take the other thirty."
The men formed up with shields overlapping and spears protruding between them. It was a formation they all knew, but Bjorn had observed weaknesses in their execution.
"Your spacing is uneven," he called out. "Gaps open between shields. Watch." He demonstrated how each shield should cover not just the warrior holding it, but also part of his neighbor's body.
They practiced the shield overlap repeatedly. Bjorn mixed the groups and ran the drill again. Each time, he pointed out flaws, made corrections, demonstrated better techniques.
"Thorstein, your shield is too high. Erik, move closer to Kauko. Arne, keep your spear level with the others."
The sun was beginning to set when Bjorn finally called an end to the training. The warriors were exhausted, their clothes soaked with sweat, but there was a different quality to their movements now. A little more unified.
"Tomorrow we do it again," Bjorn announced. "And the day after that. We must be prepared for the raid to England."
Some of the men groaned, but others nodded approvingly. They had felt the difference in their own performance.
"Now," Bjorn said, "you're all invited to the great hall. Food, drink, and rest. You've earned it."
The warriors began to disperse, but their tired backward glances held no trace of skepticism. They were looking at their commander, and for the first time, they were beginning to understand what that meant.
The foundation was laid.
For this generation at least.
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Back at the longhouse, Bjorn pushed through the heavy wooden door and found his family gathered around the central hearth. The flames cast shadows across their faces as they talked in low voices. Ragnar sat on a bench with Lagertha and Gyda beside him, while Athelstan stood nearby, holding a piece of parchment.
Bjorn walked over and took a seat on the opposite bench. He looked directly at Ragnar and Athelstan. "How did it go with the blacksmiths? Did they understand everything?"
Ragnar nodded, setting down his drinking horn. "We took the parchments to all Five smiths in Kattegat. Orm understood immediately. He's already started working on the iron bands for the spear shafts. Says he can reinforce twenty spears by tomorrow evening."
"And the others?"
"Solveig questioned why we needed to heat the blades to that exact color you wrote down. I told him to trust the process. He's sharpening axes now, following your instructions about the...' quenching technique'." Ragnar scratched his beard. "Liv and Gunnar are working together on the shield reinforcements. They've got enough iron for rim reinforcement on thirty shields."
Bjorn frowned. "That's not enough. We need all sixty shields reinforced."
"I know. But Sven's forge ran out of iron yesterday. He's melting down old tools and broken weapons to make more." Ragnar leaned forward. "The smiths are working through the night. They understand this is important."
Lagertha spoke up from beside Ragnar. "The carpenters finished twenty shields today. They're using the wooden dowels and better grip placement like you showed them. Magnus says the balance feels different and better."
"Good." Bjorn rubbed his hands together, feeling the calluses from handling weapons all day.
"What about the training tomorrow?" Ragnar asked. "Will you continue the shield wall drills?"
Bjorn nodded. "We'll do shield walls in the morning, then move to svínfylking (Wedge formation). I need to practice with them to be the point man. We need to coordinate it properly."
"The men were talking about today's training," Lagertha said. "They're not used to your methods, but they respect what you're trying to teach them after seeing the results."
"I want them to stop thinking like individual warriors and start thinking like a unit." Bjorn stood up and walked to the fire, holding his hands out to warm them. "Sixty men who fight as one can defeat a lot more who fight as individuals."
Ragnar joined him by the fire. "The blacksmiths asked me something else. They wanted to know if you've ever seen these techniques somewhere before." He grinned. "Curious lot, aren't they?" Then he turned and pointed toward Lagertha and the rest. "Though I can't say we're not very curious ourselves."
Bjorn smiled. "And what did you tell them?"
Ragnar grinned mischievously. "Isn't it obvious? We are the descendants of Odin after all."
Bjorn laughed and paused for a while, staring at the fire. Then his expression turned serious. "We're most likely raiding defenseless monasteries this time again. Building fortifications in such a short period of time is impossible for them. But they will be alert for sure. They might station scouts or informants along the coast to warn of approaching ships. So a fight is to be expected. That's why we'll need every advantage we can get."
Ragnar said jokingly, "Are you afraid to lead the men into battle? If so, I can do it. Odin's watching, and I just don't want him laughing at your stumbles."
Bjorn turned to look at him, a slow smile spreading across his face. "Afraid? Father, I'm not afraid of leading men into battle. I'm afraid of leading them badly." He paused, then added with mock seriousness, "Besides, if Odin wanted entertainment, he'd watch you trying to remember which end of a spear is sharp after three horns of ale."
Ragnar burst into laughter, slapping his knee. "Three horns? I can barely find my own boots after one!"
Lagertha shook her head, smiling despite herself. "You're both children."
"Maybe," Bjorn said, his tone becoming more serious but still warm, "but I know something important. The difference between a good warrior and a good leader is that a warrior thinks about how to win. A leader thinks about how to make sure his men live to fight another day."
Ragnar nodded, his expression growing thoughtful. "Your grandfather used to say something similar. 'Dead heroes win no battles.'"
"Smart man," Bjorn replied. "Though I'm sure he never had to deal with warriors who thought walking backward was beneath them."
"Give them time," Ragnar leaned and said. "They'll understand. And if they don't, well... you can always threaten to make them practice dancing next."
Bjorn laughed. "Don't give me ideas. I might actually try that."
"Please don't," Lagertha interjected. "I'd rather not have to explain to their wives why their husbands are limping from dance practice."
Lagertha caught Ragnar's eye and gave him a meaningful look. She nodded slightly toward Bjorn and Gyda.
Ragnar understood it was time. He looked at Bjorn and Gyda. "Bjorn, Gyda. Your mother and I have something to announce."
Bjorn looked at Ragnar and then at Lagertha. All he could see was joy in their eyes. "Well, you both look happy. Now I'm curious about it."
Ragnar smiled widely. "You will have a brother soon."
Gyda's eyes widened in surprise. "Really? Mother, you're going to have a baby?"
"Yes, little one," Lagertha said, reaching out to touch Gyda's cheek. "You're going to be a big sister."
"When?" Gyda asked excitedly. "Can I help take care of him?"
"Of course you can," Lagertha replied. "And it won't be for several months yet."
Bjorn looked confused. "What?" Then he turned to look at Lagertha directly.
Lagertha nodded. "I am with child."
Bjorn's hand drifted to his chest, where something inside him sank. 'A brother, huh.'
He remembered. In the life he knew, that child had never drawn breath.
He carefully forced a smile. "That's… excellent news. How far along?"
"Two months, maybe three," Lagertha replied. "The seer was certain it's a boy."
Now it was Bjorn's turn to be surprised. "The seer?"
"The seer confirmed it. He also said..." She paused, looking at Ragnar. "He said I will give Ragnar many more sons."
Bjorn just stared at her. "He said what?"
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