Ragnar was vibrating with energy. It was a strange sensation for a man who usually preferred the quiet solitude of a drafting table, but today was significant. Today was the inaugural tournament of the "Siege Ball" League.
He walked briskly through the camp, the morning mist swirling around his boots. The atmosphere had shifted. The sullen, waiting-to-die vibe of the "Broken Men" had evaporated, replaced by a nervous, electric anticipation. He saw men tightening the straps on their padded leather vests the same ones designed to protect them from the recoil of the Torsion Spikes, now repurposed as sports gear.
He was halfway to the makeshift arena on the beach when a breathless shout stopped him.
"Lord Builder! Lord Builder!"
Ragnar turned to see a scout, mud-splattered and panting, running from the northern perimeter. It was young Ivar (the messenger, not the Boneless).
"What is it, Ivar?" Ragnar asked, trying to hide his impatience. "Unless the Saxons have dragons, I am busy."
"Not Saxons, Lord," Ivar wheezed, bending over to catch his breath. "Rocks. The black rocks. Starkad's wagon has returned from the North."
Ragnar froze. The game was forgotten instantly.
Sea Coal.
The charcoal for the Blast Furnace was eating the local forest alive. It was inefficient and low-yield. But coal... coal was the fuel of the Industrial Revolution. With coal, he could achieve temperatures high enough to not just cast iron, but to refine it. With coal, he could make steel—real, tempered steel—at scale.
"Are they wet?" Ragnar asked intensely. "Do they crumble?"
"They are black as night and heavy as sin," Ivar reported. "Starkad tried to burn one. It smelled like sulfur and burned for an hour."
"Beautiful," Ragnar whispered. "Toxic, sulfurous, beautiful energy density."
He looked toward the beach where the crowds were gathering for the game. He desperately wanted to see his "logistics simulator" in action, but the Blast Furnace was the heart of the empire.
"Tell Bjorn he is in charge of the games," Ragnar ordered, pivoting on his heel. "I must go to the Dragon's Gut. Send the wagon directly to the foundry. And tell Leif to get the bellows ready—we're going to melt the world today."
Ragnar sprinted off toward the smoke of the foundry, his mind already racing with carbon ratios.
Although Ragnar didn't make it to the sidelines, the tournament proceeded with the unstoppable momentum of a landslide.
Upon hearing that the "Director" was busy making "magic fire," the Builders didn't despair. instead, they grew more determined. They wanted to show that the Academy could function without the master holding their hand.
The arena was a rectangle of churned sand, marked by the Ragnar Unit sticks. The entire Builder's Corps nearly four hundred men surrounded the pitch, cheering, betting scraps of food, and banging their crutches against empty barrels.
In the center circle, two men were grappling.
It was the warm-up event: The Circle.
One was a burly, one-armed veteran named Torstein. The other was Erik the Lame, the young tactician who had impressed Gyda.
"Hold your ground!" Bjorn roared, acting as the referee. "Do not lean! Use the hips!"
Torstein was stronger, but Erik was lower. Erik had taken Bjorn's lessons on the "Squat" and the "Triangle" to heart. He planted his good leg and his bad leg wide, lowering his center of gravity until he was basically a pyramid of stubbornness.
Torstein pushed. Erik didn't budge.
"Leverage!" Erik grunted, twisting his hips. He waited for Torstein to overcommit, to lean just an inch too far forward.
Erik pulled. Torstein, expecting a push, stumbled forward. Erik swept his leg.
Torstein hit the sand.
"Winner: Erik!" Bjorn bellowed, raising Erik's hand. "Brain beats brawn! Next!"
The crowd roared. Erik limped back to his squad, grinning. He wasn't the potato peeler anymore. He was a gladiator of physics.
The sun climbed higher. It was time for the main event.
"Form up!" Bjorn shouted. "Team Red! Team Blue!"
The Colonel of the Red Team was Starkad the Raider. He believed in brute force. His strategy was simple: "Run forward. Smash."
The Colonel of the Blue Team was Erik. His strategy was... different.
Ragnar had instituted a rule: The Squad Leaders (Coaches) could not play. They had to direct. This was to train command skills.
Erik gathered his team—ten men in padded leather armor. Among them was Sven the Strong (the tank) and Leif the Lesser (the runner).
"Listen," Erik whispered, drawing a diagram in the sand. "Starkad will come in a straight line. He will form a heavy wedge. If we meet them head-on, we lose. They are heavier."
"So we die?" Sven asked, clutching the lumpy leather ball.
"No," Erik tapped the sand. "We are the water. When they push, we don't push back. We step aside. We open the door."
Sven looked confused. "We let them through?"
"We let them stumble," Erik corrected. "And then we flank. Sven, you hold the ball. Do not run until I scream 'Hammer'."
The game began.
Team Red started with the ball. Starkad screamed, "WEDGE!"
Ten heavy Vikings locked arms, surrounding their ball carrier. They lowered their heads and charged like a human battering ram. It was terrifying. It was a wall of meat moving at speed.
"Hold!" Erik shouted from the sidelines. "Wait... Wait..."
The Blue team stood in a loose line, looking terrified. The Red Wedge thundered closer. Ten meters. Five meters.
"OPEN!" Erik screamed.
Suddenly, the center of the Blue line split. Two men jumped left, two men jumped right.
The Red Wedge, expecting a collision, hit nothing but air. The momentum carried them forward, stumbling, their formation loosening as they tried to regain balance in the deep sand.
"HAMMER!" Erik yelled.
The Blue defenders, who had stepped aside, now crashed into the sides of the disorganized Red Wedge.
It was a textbook flank. The Red formation shattered. The ball carrier was exposed.
Sven the Strong, who had been waiting in the backfield, roared. He didn't have the ball this time—he was on defense. He launched himself at the Red carrier.
It was a tackle that would have made a modern linebacker weep with joy. The ball popped loose.
"Loose ball!" Bjorn screamed, vibrating with excitement. "Chaos! I love it!"
Leif the Lesser, the scrawny former thief, scooped up the leather potato.
"Run, Leif!" Erik commanded. "Run the curve!"
Leif didn't run straight. He ran a wide arc toward the sideline, using the confusion in the center to gain distance.
Starkad was screaming at his men to get up, but they were a tangle of limbs and padded vests.
Leif crossed the line. He slammed the ball into the sand.
"POINT BLUE!" Bjorn signaled, jumping in the air.
The Blue team erupted. They hugged Erik. They hugged Sven. They hugged Leif.
Half-Time Analysis
The teams separated, panting, steam rising from their bodies.
Bjorn walked over to Starkad, who was spitting sand and looking furious.
"You lost because you are a stone," Bjorn critiqued loudly. "Stones are hard, but they are stupid. Erik is water. Water goes around the stone."
Bjorn then marched to the Blue huddle.
"Good flank," Bjorn nodded at Erik. "But your line was sloppy on the impact. If Red had recovered faster, Sven would be eating sand. Tighten the formation!"
"Yes, Headmaster," Erik panted, his eyes bright.
Bjorn looked at the men. They were bruised. They were dirty. But their eyes were focused. They weren't thinking about their missing legs or their lost glory. They were thinking about tactics. They were communicating.
"One, two, one, two!"
From the edge of the arena, the spectators started chanting the cadence.
The second half began.
This time, Red adapted. Starkad stopped the charge. He ordered a slow push—a Scrum.
The two teams locked together in the center of the field. Twenty men pushing against twenty men.
"Dig!" Erik yelled. "Use the Triangle! Heels down!"
The Blue team dropped into low squats, their backs straight, driving up into the Red team.
It was a stalemate. A war of inches.
Bjorn watched closely. He saw Sven the Strong's foot slip. He saw Leif bracing his shoulder against Sven's hip to support him.
Support, Bjorn thought. They are learning to be a keel.
Ragnar had told him that Rugby was about "Dynamic Force Distribution." Bjorn didn't know those words, but he saw the reality. The men were instinctively finding the weak points and reinforcing them.
Suddenly, the Red line buckled. Not because they were weak, but because they got tired. Their backs bent. Their leverage failed.
"DRIVE!" Erik screamed.
Blue surged. They pushed the entire Red team back three meters. Four meters.
Sven, holding the ball at the back of the scrum, laughed. He wasn't running. He was being carried by his brothers.
They crossed the line as a single, unstoppable unit.
"GAME OVER!" Bjorn blew the whistle. "BLUE WINS!"
The sun was setting as the teams collapsed onto the sand. There was no animosity. The Red players helped the Blue players up. They compared bruises. They re-enacted the tackles.
Bjorn stood in the center.
"You are ugly!" Bjorn shouted. "You are slow! You smell like wet dogs!"
The men laughed.
"But today," Bjorn grinned, "you were a Wall. You were a Hammer. And you were a Team."
He pointed toward the foundry, where black smoke was now billowing thick and dark into the sky—a sign that Ragnar's coal experiment was working.
"The Director makes the iron," Bjorn said. "But we are the steel. Tomorrow, we move the God Hammer. Tomorrow, we use these legs to drag the machines to the walls of York. Are you ready?"
"WE ARE READY!" the Builder's Corps roared.
Erik wiped sweat from his forehead. He looked at his "Ragnar Unit" stick lying in the sand. He picked it up.
He realized that he hadn't thought about his limp for two hours.
"Good game, Starkad," Erik said, extending a hand to the defeated captain.
Starkad, the brute, looked at the small tactician. He gripped Erik's forearm.
"Next time," Starkad grunted, "I will be water. And I will drown you."
"I look forward to it," Erik smiled.