With the outward trade to Mercia secretly underway, Ragnar finally had a moment to breathe. Or so he thought.
He rose early, the English mist clinging to the camp like a wet wool blanket. He decided to take a walk through the "Crafting Grounds" to judge the spirit of his growing power.
On his way, he noticed the subtle changes. It wasn't just the smoke from the Dragon's Hearth. It was the rhythm. He saw a group of thralls moving crates of salted fish. Usually, this would be a chaotic, back-breaking affair. Today, they were using three of his "One-Wheeled Chariots" (wheelbarrows). They moved in a line, swift and silent.
Further down, he saw a woman using one of the rejected poured-iron pans to hammer a tent peg into the frozen ground.
"It works as a hammer too~" Ragnar mused, smiling. "Two paths for one tool."
His new ways were spreading beyond the slate drafts. The "Ragnar Measure" sticks were being used by the cooks to measure dough. The camp was becoming... ordered.
But as he approached the Master's Yard of the Stick, the smile faded.
He expected to hear the rhythmic chanting of reckoning lore or the synchronized grunts of the "Deep Bend." instead, he heard shouting. Angry, guttural shouting.
"I said the longest side is the true measure, you one-eyed goat!"
"And I said I will beat you with the true measure if you don't move your foot!"
Ragnar rounded the dune to find the Yard in disarray. The "Broken Men" weren't building. They were shoving each other. Two men one with a wooden leg and one with a missing ear were wrestling in the mud, while the others cheered them on with desperate, restless energy.
Bjorn stood on a crate, yelling for order, but he looked like a minor lord trying to control a riot in a thrall pen.
"Stop!" Bjorn roared, grabbing two men by their collars and pulling them apart. "No fighting in the Yard! Blood is for the shield wall!"
"We are the shield wall!" the one-eared man shouted back, spitting blood. "We are Vikings, Bjorn! Not tally-keepers!"
Ragnar stepped into the circle. The presence of the "Master Builder" silenced the crowd, though the blood-lust remained thick enough to cut with a knife.
"Yard Master Bjorn," Ragnar said calmly. "Walk with me."
They walked to the edge of the water, away from the angry apprentices. Bjorn looked defeated. He slumped his massive shoulders.
"You've done well, Bjorn," Ragnar started, trying to be encouraging. "The men know their numbers. The lifting form is perfect."
Bjorn sighed, kicking a pebble into the ocean. "Thank you, Brother. But... there is a rot."
"I saw the rot," Ragnar said. "They are fighting."
"They are restless, Ragnar," Bjorn admitted, gritting his teeth. "You took their axes and gave them sticks. You took their glory and gave them the knowledge of shapes. They are grateful to have worth, yes. But they are men who used to live for the clash of steel. Now they just measure angles. The battle-fury is gone. They are like wolves kept on a chain; eventually, they bite the iron."
Bjorn looked at Ragnar with pleading eyes. "Can we reduce the reckoning? Can we let them hit something? Just a little bit?"
Ragnar frowned. "If they stop the reckoning, the machines break. If the machines break, we die."
"But if they kill each other from restless fury," Bjorn countered, "we also die."
Ragnar realized his error. He had treated the men like parts of a machine inputs and outputs. He had forgotten the heart of the man. Specifically, the Viking heart. These men needed aggression. They needed the clash. They needed a way to prove they were still warriors, even if they limped.
"You speak true words," Ragnar said slowly. "I neglected their spirit. I looked to the wood and iron and forgot the mind."
"The mind?" Bjorn asked. "Is that a type of tunic?"
"Never mind," Ragnar rubbed his chin. "We need a proving-game."
Ragnar sat on a piece of driftwood, watching a group of children playing near the shoreline. They were playing a crude version of "King of the Hill," pushing each other off a large rock. It was violent, simple, and they were laughing hysterically.
Brotherhood dynamics, Ragnar thought. Shield-wall bonds. Physical struggle without the death-blow.
He needed to introduce a sport. But it couldn't be just any sport. He couldn't introduce foot-ball Vikings would just kick each other instead of the ball. He couldn't introduce bat-and-ball it was too slow, and Bjorn would definitely eat the wooden pegs.
He needed something that demanded strength, the fulcrum, and holding the line. Something that rewarded the specific strengths of the "Broken Men" their upper body strength and their low centers of weight.
Two sports came to mind...
The Game of the Scrum. The father of outlander's ball-games.
The Tagging Circle. An ancient game of tagging and wrestling, requiring immense breath control and shield-brother bonds.
"The Scrum," Ragnar muttered. "But altered. We don't have green fields; we have sand. And we can't have too much running, or the men with bad legs will be left behind."
He pulled out his slate and began to sketch. The Boar Snout. That was the key. A test of pure pushing power.
"Bjorn!" Ragnar called out. "Get Gyda. And get the leather worker. We're making a ball."
An turn of the glass later, inside the Command Tent, Ragnar unveiled his creation.
It wasn't a perfect oval. It was a lumpy, leather sack stuffed tightly with wool and sawdust. It looked like a heavy, sad root.
"This," Ragnar announced to Bjorn and Princess Gyda, "is the Wall-Breaker's Ball."
Bjorn poked it. "It does not look dangerous. Does it hold fire?"
"No," Ragnar said. "But the proving might."
He drew a marked field on the slate.
"The rules are simple. Two war-bands. Ten men each. The aim is to carry this ball across the enemy's marks."
"So we run?" Bjorn asked.
"No," Ragnar corrected. "Running is allowed, but the Shield-Knot is praised. You cannot pass the ball forward, only backward. To move forward, you must form a wedge. You must push. It is a shield wall without shields."
He looked at Gyda. "Princess, I need you to sew colored bands. Blood-red for one band, Sea-blue for the other. We cannot have them breaking their own brothers in the confusion."
"And the armor?" Gyda asked, looking at the rough sketch. "If they strike each other on the frozen sand, they will break the bones they have left."
"We use the padded jackets," Ragnar decided. "The ones we made for the Twisted Sinew Springs. Leather and wool. No metal. Metal cuts."
"Why not just let them fight with wooden swords?" Bjorn asked, still confused by the ball concept.
"Because swords test one man's arm," Ragnar explained. "This game tests the chain of supply. It tests the power to move a heavy burden through resistance as a single beast. It teaches them that the man next to you is more important than the man in front of you."
Bjorn's eyes lit up. "Like the great push? Like when we heave the longship into the water?"
"Exactly," Ragnar grinned. "But with a tally of honor."
Ragnar also decided to introduce a second trial for the evenings—something to sharpen their reflexes without moving their feet.
"And for the men who cannot run at all," Ragnar added, "we will play The Ring of Iron."
He described a modified version of wrestling mixed with arm wrestling. Two men sit or kneel inside a small rope circle. The goal is to push the other man out or make his hand touch the earth.
"It is pure use of the fulcrum," Ragnar said. "The law of weights in the flesh."
By the afternoon, the Yard grounds had been transformed. Ragnar had marked out a field in the sand using the "Ragnar Measure" sticks.
The "Broken Men" gathered, looking doubtful. They wore padded leather vests that made them look slightly puffy.
"What is this?" Sven asked, holding the lumpy leather ball. "Is it a pillow?"
"It is the enemy!" Ragnar shouted from the side marks. "Listen well!"
He explained the rules. No biting. No eye-gouging. No weapons. You move the ball to the marks. If you are brought down, you must release the ball.
"Band of Red!" Ragnar pointed to Bjorn's squad. "Band of Blue!" He pointed to Sven's squad.
"Begin!"
At first, it was chaos. Sven grabbed the ball and just stood there. Bjorn roared and tackled him. They both fell into the sand, laughing.
But then, battle-sense took over.
"Form the line!" a one-legged veteran on the Blue Band shouted. "Boar Snout formation!"
The Blue Band locked arms. They put the ball carrier in the center. They lowered their heads—using the perfect deep bend form they had practiced for days—and drove forward.
"Hold the line!" Bjorn screamed to the Red Band. "Brace! Low center of weight!"
They pushed. They grunted. Steam rose from their bodies in the cold air.
"Push!" Ragnar yelled, watching the shapes of the scrum. "Lower your hips, Leif! Use the triangle!"
Leif the Smith, buried somewhere in the Red knot, dropped his hips and drove his legs. The Red line surged forward a hand's span.
The men on the side marks started cheering.
"Heave! Heave! Heave!"
Sven broke free from the knot, clutching the ball. He couldn't run fast, but he rumbled like a boulder. He stiff-armed a Red defender, sending him flying into the sand.
"Go, Sven! Go!"
Sven dove across the line, face-planting into the mud.
"Honor for Blue!" Ragnar blew a whistle he had carved from a bone.
Sven stood up, sand covering his face, grinning like a madman. He raised the ball in triumph. The Blue band swarmed him, hugging and slapping his back.
Bjorn stood up, wiping mud from his eye. He wasn't angry. He was panting, his eyes shining with life.
"Again!" Bjorn roared. "That was the Norns' favor! Rebuild the line!"
Princess Gyda stood next to Ragnar, watching the muddy clash.
"They are joyful," she observed, surprised. "They are bruising each other, and they are joyful."
"Men need a true path," Ragnar said softly. "And sometimes, that true path is just to push a heavy thing past another heavy thing."
As the sun began to set, the clash continued under the light of torches. The "Wall-Breaker's Ball" matches became the highest joy of the day. The fights in the halls stopped. The dark moods vanished. The "Broken Men" walked taller, proud of their bruises.
Ragnar looked at his army. They were hardened. They were ordered. And now, they were a brotherhood.
"Soon," Ragnar said to Bjorn, who was limping off the field with a massive smile, "we teach them the 'Storm-Strike'."
"Storm-Strike," Bjorn tested the word. "Does it mean 'Smash'?"
"It means 'War of Lightning'," Ragnar said. "But yes, smash works too."