The order from Ragnar had been clear: "Make paper. Make it cheap. Make it now."
Inside the leaky shed designated as the "Research Lab," the three captured monks Brothers Osric, Bede, and Athelstan stared at the bubbling vats of wood pulp with a mix of religious fervor and sheer panic. They were men of the cloth, used to copying scripture in quiet scriptoriums, not boiling old rags in a Viking war camp.
"The Director says we need to increase output," Osric muttered, stirring a vat of grey sludge. "He says the current rate of 'one sheet every ten minutes' is an insult to industry."
"He also said he'd feed us to the pigs if we didn't improve," Bede whimpered, checking the consistency of the pulp. "I don't like pigs, Brother. They look at you like they know things."
The third monk, Athelstan, was the youngest. Unlike his terrified brothers, he had a dangerous glint in his eye. He was the one who had suggested adding animal glue to the mix yesterday.
"We are doing it wrong," Athelstan announced, dropping a handful of birch bark into the grinder. "We are trying to mash the wood by hand. It takes too long. My arms feel like jelly."
"The Director mentioned 'mechanization'," Osric said, scratching his bald spot. "He talked about water wheels. But we are in a shed. There is no river here."
"There is the stream near the foundry," Athelstan pointed out. "And there is the Wheel."
"The Toke Wheel?" Bede gasped. "The one they use for the bellows? We can't use that! The Director of Iron, Leif, guards it with a hammer!"
"We don't need that wheel," Athelstan grinned, picking up a sketch Ragnar had left behind. "We need to build our own. But smaller. And we don't need a man to run it. We need... a donkey."
Osric and Bede looked at each other. They looked at the diagram. It showed a vertical axle turned by a beast of burden, engaging with a horizontal gear that drove a series of heavy wooden hammers.
"If we build this," Athelstan whispered, "the hammers will pound the rags and wood twenty times a minute. We won't need to stir. We won't need to mash. The donkey does the work."
"But we don't have a donkey," Osric pointed out.
"The Weasel has a donkey," Athelstan said. "I saw him trying to sell it to a camp follower for three turnips."
Ten minutes later, the three monks stood nervously in front of Aethelwulf "The Weasel," the newly appointed Head of Export. He was sitting on a crate of iron skillets, eating a stolen apple.
"You want my donkey?" Aethelwulf asked, chewing loudly. "Her name is Matilda. She has a bad attitude and she bites."
"We need her for science," Athelstan said bravely. "We need rotational torque."
"I don't know what torque is," Aethelwulf said, "but Matilda is expensive. She is a strategic asset."
"The Director Ragnar authorized us to requisition resources," Osric lied, sweating profusely.
Aethelwulf narrowed his eyes. "Did he now? And what is the Director offering?"
"Paper," Athelstan said quickly. "We will give you the first batch of the new High-Grade paper. Five hundred sheets. You can sell it to the scribes in York for a fortune."
Aethelwulf stopped chewing. He did the math. A donkey was worth maybe two silver pieces. Five hundred sheets of paper, if sold to desperate clerks, could fetch fifty.
"Matilda likes carrots," Aethelwulf said, hopping off the crate. "And she hates Mondays. Take her."
By midday, the shed had been transformed.
Using spare timber from the shipyard and a few iron axles Leif had begrudgingly cast for them (after they bribed him with a promise of 'documentation for his legacy'), the monks had built a contraption.
Matilda the Donkey was harnessed to a central pole. As she walked in a circle (chasing a carrot on a stick), she turned a large wooden gear. The gear's teeth caught on a horizontal shaft, lifting heavy wooden hammers and dropping them into the vats of pulp.
The rhythmic pounding echoed through the camp.
"It works!" Bede shouted, dancing a little jig. "Look at the pulp! It's turning into mush in minutes!"
"Now the pressing," Athelstan commanded. "Osric, get the frames!"
Usually, pressing the water out of the paper sheets took hours of placing heavy stones on top of the stack. But Athelstan had another idea. He had raided the kitchen.
He produced a massive screw-press used for making cheese.
"We stack the wet sheets between felt," Athelstan explained. "We put them in the cheese press. We crank it down. The water squeezes out instantly."
They worked like men possessed. The donkey walked. The hammers pounded. The cheese press squeaked. By the time the sun began to dip, they had produced a stack of paper that stood two feet high. It wasn't the grey, rough stuff from yesterday.
It was white (thanks to the lime), smooth (thanks to the hammers), and uniform.
"It's beautiful," Osric wept, touching the top sheet. "It's smoother than vellum. The Lord has truly blessed us."
"The Lord and Matilda," Athelstan corrected, feeding the donkey a carrot.
Ragnar was in the middle of a "Squat Drill" session with the new recruits when Gyda approached him.
"Director," she said, her voice holding a hint of amusement. "The monks want you."
"Did they burn down the shed?" Ragnar asked, wiping sweat from his face.
"No. They say they have 'revolutionized the industry'."
Ragnar raised an eyebrow. He followed Gyda to the riverside shed.
When he entered, he stopped dead.
He saw the donkey walking in circles. He saw the automated hammers pounding the pulp. He saw the cheese press squeezing out water.
And he saw three monks standing proudly next to a stack of paper that looked like it belonged in a modern stationery store.
"Long live the Builder!" the monks shouted in unison.
Ragnar walked over to the stack. He picked up a sheet. He held it to the light. No lumps. No bark. Just clean, fibrous structure.
"Who built the Trip Hammer?" Ragnar asked, looking at the machinery.
"Brother Athelstan, my Lord," Osric said, pushing the young monk forward. "He stole the donkey."
Ragnar looked at Athelstan. He saw the spark of engineering in the monk's eyes.
"You stole a donkey to build a cam-shaft drive?" Ragnar asked.
"Ideally, we would use water power, Lord," Athelstan said, nervousness replaced by technical pride. "But the stream is too far. The donkey provides consistent torque."
Ragnar laughed. It was a genuine, delighted laugh.
"Torque," Ragnar repeated. "A monk talking about torque in the 9th century. I love it."
He turned to Gyda.
"This is it. This is the medium of the empire. We can print orders. We can print maps. We can print money."
"Money?" Gyda asked sharply.
"Promissory notes," Ragnar corrected. "Paper money. Backed by the King's hoard. It's lighter than silver."
He looked at Athelstan. "Brother, you are no longer a scribe. You are the Chief Engineer of the Paper Mill. You get a salary. And Matilda gets a pension."
"Thank you, Lord!" Athelstan beamed.
"Now," Ragnar said, his mind already racing to the next step. "We have the paper. We have the iron. We have the army. But we still have one problem."
"What problem?" Gyda asked. "We seem to be solving everything."
"Communication," Ragnar said. "I can write an order on this paper, but if I send a runner to the front line, it takes ten minutes. In a siege, ten minutes is a lifetime."
He looked at the high dunes surrounding the camp.
"I need a way to talk to the army instantly. Without shouting."
"Flags?" Gyda suggested.
"Semaphores," Ragnar nodded. "Optical telegraphy. We need to standardize a code. Red flag means 'Attack'. Blue flag means 'Hold'. Two flags crossed means 'The King is hungry'."
He grabbed a fresh sheet of the new paper and a stick of charcoal.
"Athelstan, I need you to draw. We are going to write the first 'Field Manual of Signals'."
The monks gathered around. For the first time, they weren't copying ancient texts. They were writing something new.
Ragnar sketched rapidly.
"This is the Code," he said. "Simple patterns. Visible from a mile away."
As he drew, he felt the momentum of history shifting. He wasn't just building weapons anymore. He was building the nervous system of an army.
"Vinod... I mean, Gyda," Ragnar said, handing her the first page. "Take this to Bjorn. Tell him the Academy has a new class tomorrow: 'Flag Waving 101'."
Gyda took the paper. She looked at the donkey, the monks, and the pile of white sheets.
"You build a strange world, Ragnar," she said softly. "But I think I like living in it."
"It gets better," Ragnar promised. "Wait until I invent the printing press."
"The what?"
"Never mind. One revolution at a time."