Command Tent, Viking Encampment
Jarl Sigurd, the Keeper of the King's Hoard, paced back and forth, wearing a rut in the dirt floor.
"We are bleeding silver," Sigurd grunted, stopping to glare at Ragnar. "Your little 'Audit Fee' from Jarl Einar was clever, Engineer. It bought us a few days of grain. But the men are doing math."
Ragnar looked up from his slate, where he was currently calculating the tensile strength of the new grappling hooks. "Math is good, Sigurd. It keeps the mind sharp."
"Math is dangerous!" Sigurd roared, slamming his fist into his palm. "The men have calculated that if we take York, the 'Iron Tithe' repayment will bankrupt the King. We promised them double the value of their scrap. That is thousands of pounds of silver. If the York treasury is light... we will have a mutiny before we even celebrate."
Ragnar leaned back. He knew Sigurd was right. The economics of his "Industrial Revolution" were precarious. He had leveraged the army's greed to build the machines, but leverage cuts both ways.
"We need a surplus," Ragnar admitted. "We need a product we can sell immediately, regardless of what is inside York."
He stood up and began to pace, matching Sigurd's rhythm. The King watched them both from his throne, looking bored but attentive, like a cat watching two mice argue over cheese.
"We have wood," Ragnar listed. "We have iron though most of it is currently bolted to the trebuchets. We have manpower."
"We have nothing of value!" Sigurd countered. "Unless you want to sell sand to the Saxons."
Ragnar stopped. He looked at the Leif the Smith, who was dozing in the corner, clutching a piece of his precious "spring steel."
"Iron," Ragnar whispered. "We are thinking like raiders. We steal iron. We don't make it..!"
In the 9th century, iron production was slow. Bog iron was harvested, roasted in small bloomery furnaces, and beaten by hand to remove slag. It was labor-intensive and produced low-quality metal.
But Ragnar knew the secret. The Blast Furnace. "My King," Ragnar turned to Horik. "I have a solution. But it requires one last gamble."
"I am tired of gambles, Builder," Horik sighed. "I want a sure thing."
"This is a sure thing," Ragnar lied confidently. "We are going to build a factory. Right here on the beach."
...
The next morning, Ragnar gathered Leif the Smith and the entire Metallurgy Team which consisted of Leif, three apprentices, and a guy named Toke who just liked fire.
"Listen up," Ragnar announced, standing on an anvil. "We are going to change the world today."
Leif looked skeptical. "Again? I'm still tired from the spring steel."
"This is bigger," Ragnar said. "We are going to build a Blast Furnace."
The men stared at him blankly. "A what?" Toke asked, picking his nose with a soot-stained finger.
"A Bloomer 2.0," Ragnar improvised. "Current method: we heat the ore, we beat the ore, we get a tiny lump of iron. It takes all day. My method: we build a tall chimney. We dump ore and charcoal in the top. We pump air into the bottom lots of air. The heat melts the iron completely. It flows out like water. We catch it in molds."
Leif's one good eye went wide. "Liquid iron? Like... like lava?"
"Exactly," Ragnar nodded. "Cast Iron. We can make pots. We can make arrowheads by the thousands. We can make tools. We don't hammer it; we pour it."
"But... the heat," Leif stammered. "You need the breath of a dragon to melt iron like water."
"Or," Ragnar smiled, "we need a very big bellows and a chemical reaction."
He grabbed a piece of slate. "Who here knows what limestone is?"
Toke raised his hand. "The white rock? It tastes chalky."
"Don't eat it, Toke," Ragnar sighed. "It's a flux. It grabs the impurities. It makes the slag float so the pure iron sinks. We mix it in."
Ragnar began to draw. He sketched a tall, brick chimney. He sketched the tuyeres—the pipes for the air blast. He sketched the charging mechanism.
"We need bricks," Ragnar said. "Clay bricks. Fire-hardened. And we need to build this..." he pointed to the chimney, "...before the sun sets."
Leif looked at the drawing. He looked at Ragnar. Then he looked at Toke.
"Toke," Leif barked. "Go find the white rocks. Don't eat them."
The beach transformed into a construction site.
The "Academy of the Stick" was deployed. Under Bjorn's screaming supervision, the Broken Men mixed clay and sand to make bricks. They built a kiln to fire them rapidly.
"Faster!" Bjorn yelled, carrying two buckets of wet clay. "The King wants his lava!"
Meanwhile, Ragnar worked with Leif on the bellows. Standard hand bellows weren't enough. They needed continuous, high-pressure air.
"Water power," Ragnar muttered, looking at the small stream that ran into the ocean nearby. "We need a water wheel."
"We don't have time to build a wheel!" Leif argued. "The tide is coming in!"
"Then we use manpower," Ragnar decided. "We build a treadmill."
"A what?"
"A giant hamster wheel," Ragnar explained. "We put Toke inside it. He runs. The wheel turns. The bellows pump. Continuous air."
Two hours later, a crude, oversized wooden wheel stood next to the rising brick chimney. Toke was inside, looking confused but happy to be involved.
"Run, Toke!" Ragnar commanded.
Toke ran. The wheel spun. The complex system of cranks and levers (which Ragnar had hastily assembled using spare trebuchet parts) groaned, but the massive bellows began to heave.
"Charge it!" Ragnar yelled.
Leif and his apprentices climbed the ladder to the top of the chimney. They dumped baskets of crushed bog iron, charcoal, and limestone into the inferno.
Now, they waited.
King Horik arrived with his entourage. He looked at the smoking brick tower and the man running inside a giant wheel.
"Ragnar," the King said, shielding his eyes from the heat. "Why is Toke a squirrel?"
"He is the engine, my King," Ragnar said, wiping sweat from his brow. "He is powering the blast."
"And this... chimney... will give us silver?"
"It will give us Cast Iron," Ragnar promised. "Which we can trade for silver. Or kill Saxons with."
Time passed. Toke got tired and was swapped out for another warrior. The furnace roared. The bricks glowed red hot.
"It's time," Ragnar said, checking the color of the flame. "Tap it."
Leif took a long iron rod and smashed the clay plug at the bottom of the furnace.
For a second, nothing happened.
Then, a stream of blindingly bright, orange liquid shot out.
"It bleeds fire!" Jarl Sigurd gasped, stepping back.
The liquid iron flowed into the sand channels Ragnar had prepared. It filled the molds simple shapes for arrowheads and axe heads.
"By the Gods," Leif whispered, watching the flow. "It's beautiful."
Ragnar watched the molds fill. "That," he said to the King, "is mass production. We just made five hundred arrowheads in ten minutes. It would take a smith a week to hammer those."
King Horik stared at the cooling metal. He walked over and poked a solidified arrowhead with his boot. It was rough, brittle cast iron not good for swords, but perfect for things that just needed to be hard and heavy.
"We can make pots?" the King asked.
"Thousands," Ragnar nodded.
"We can make... armor plates?"
"If we cast them thick enough," Ragnar agreed.
The King looked at Jarl Sigurd. "Sigurd, how much is an iron pot worth in Frankia?"
"Two silver pieces," Sigurd calculated, his eyes widening. "And we can make... how many?"
"As long as Toke runs," Ragnar pointed to the wheel, "and we have ore, we can make them forever."
Sigurd's face changed. The worry about the treasury vanished, replaced by the greedy calculation of a merchant prince.
"We are rich," Sigurd whispered. "We are richer than raiders!"
Ragnar turned to Leif. "Leif," Ragnar said formally. "You are now the Director of the Royal Foundry."
Leif stood up straighter, puffing out his soot-covered chest. "Director Leif. I like it. Does it come with extra meat?"
"Yes," Ragnar laughed. "And Toke gets extra ale."
"Toke likes ale!" Toke shouted from inside the wheel.
Ragnar looked at the factory he had built on a muddy English beach. A blast furnace. A treadmill. A production line.
He had solved the financial crisis not with gold, but with industry.
"My King," Ragnar said. "The debt is covered. The men will get their silver. Now... can we take York?"
King Horik looked at the pile of fresh, cooling iron. He picked up a cast iron arrowhead. It was still warm.
"We don't just take York, Ragnar," the King said, his eyes reflecting the orange glow of the furnace. "We take everything. We have the fire of the gods in a brick box."
He turned to the army. "Sharpen your new arrows!" Horik roared. "Tonight we feast! Tomorrow we conquer!"
As the men cheered, Ragnar collapsed onto a crate. He was exhausted. His brain felt like melted cheese. But he had done it.
He looked at Gyda, who was standing quietly by the molds, inspecting the quality.
"It's brittle," she noted, tapping a piece. "It will shatter if it hits stone."
"It's cast iron," Ragnar explained. "High carbon. We can refine it later into steel. But for now... it's good enough for commerce."
"Good enough," she agreed. She looked at him. "You keep pulling rabbits out of hats, Engineer. Eventually, you will run out of rabbits."
"Then I'll invent a rabbit-making machine," Ragnar grinned.
Gyda laughed. It was a genuine sound.