Time did not weaken the Giant, but it changed his geometry.
At thirty-seven years old, Bilal stood in the forge, holding a glowing steel bar over the anvil. When he was twenty, his body had been sharp—veins mapping his forearms, abdominal muscles cut like chiseled rock, his body fat low from the anxiety of pure survival.
But seventeen years of eating the "Giant's Diet"—gallons of whole milk, fatty salmon, thick cuts of beef, and pure butter—had transformed him.
He no longer looked like an athlete built for a modern stage. He looked like a force of nature. A thick layer of healthy, dense fat now covered his massive frame.
His neck was indistinguishable from his traps; his chest and stomach formed a solid, unyielding barrel of power. He was 105 kilograms of functional, brutal strength.
He had lost the sharp edges of a youth, but he had gained the terrifying, grounded mass of a Silverback Gorilla.
To the Vikings, this "soft muscle" was the ultimate intimidation. It proved he was impervious to the freezing winters that withered other men.
But as Bilal hammered the steel, his mind was not on his physique. It was on the festering hatred brewing outside his walls.
Axiomra was no longer a secret. It was a thriving city-state, and Bilal was officially the most hated man in the Norse nobility.
The hatred was not born of war, but of economics and culture. In traditional Viking society, a Jarl's power came from thralls (slaves) and women who were treated as property.
Bilal had instituted the "Yellow Paper" laws. He paid his workers in silver. He established the "Mother's Shield"—a ministry run by Astrid that gave women the right to own property and protected them from domestic violence.
The rival Jarls watched in horror as their best blacksmiths, their smartest farmers, and their brightest women fled their muddy villages in the dead of night, seeking the safety of the Green Tunic.
"The Giant is breaking the natural order," the Jarls whispered in their smoky halls. "He gives gold to dirt-diggers and lets women speak in the council. He is a cancer on the North."
They hated him because he proved that their cruelty was a choice, not a necessity.
But Bilal's modern laws were about to be tested by the ugliest reality of the 11th century.
CHAPTER 23: The Guest Right and the Spin Kick
It happened during the week of the Autumn Trade Fair.
Axiomra's Guest House was overflowing with foreign merchants. Among them was a delegation from Sweden, led by a minor, arrogant noble named Sigurd.
Sigurd was young, draped in fine furs, and accustomed to taking whatever he wanted in the harsh lands of the North.
Bilal was in his office, reviewing the ledgers with Runa, when a scream tore through the evening air. It was high, piercing, and filled with absolute terror.
It came from the servant quarters.
Bilal dropped his charcoal pen. The sheer mass of his body moved with a terrifying, silent speed. He burst through the heavy oak doors of the Great Hall and sprinted across the stone plaza.
He found the source of the scream behind the weavers' hall.
Sigurd, the Swedish noble, had a young girl pinned against the stone wall. She was perhaps fourteen, the daughter of one of Bilal's original seventy veterans.
Sigurd's hand was clamped over her mouth, his other hand violently tearing at the wool of her tunic.
Two of Sigurd's bodyguards stood nearby, laughing, watching the doorway to ensure they weren't interrupted.
They did not expect a mountain to crash through the door.
Bilal did not yell. He did not ask questions. The rage that flooded his veins was not hot and loud; it was absolute, freezing absolute zero.
He grabbed the two laughing bodyguards by the backs of their necks. With a sickening crunch of cartilage, he smashed their armored heads together.
They dropped to the stone floor, unconscious or dead, before they even realized they were under attack.
Sigurd spun around, dropping the girl. His arrogant smirk vanished, replaced by pale, wide-eyed terror as he looked up at the 181cm Giant blocking the only exit.
"She is a thrall!" Sigurd stammered, his hand dropping to the hilt of his sword. "I am a Noble of the Swedish Crown! I claim the Guest Right!"
"There are no thralls in Axiomra," Bilal's voice was a guttural, demonic whisper that vibrated in the small alleyway.
Sigurd panicked. He drew his sword and lunged.
To a normal man, Sigurd's strike would have been fast. To Bilal, who had spent twenty years perfecting the biomechanics of modern kickboxing, the Swede moved like he was underwater.
Bilal slipped the sword thrust with a subtle tilt of his torso. He planted his left foot on the stone, his massive, thick-waisted body rotating with explosive, terrifying torque.
He didn't punch. He launched a spinning heel kick.
It was a technique no Viking had ever seen. The heel of Bilal's heavy leather boot struck Sigurd squarely under the jawline with the force of a swinging anvil.
SNAP.
The sound of Sigurd's cervical vertebrae shattering echoed off the stone walls.
The Swedish noble didn't even scream. His body spun in the air from the sheer kinetic force, landing in a crumpled, lifeless heap in the mud. His neck was broken at a horrific, unnatural angle.
The alley was dead silent, save for the sobbing of the young girl.
Bilal stood over the corpse, his chest heaving. The adrenaline was roaring in his ears.
He looked down at the dead man, and the modern student inside him whispered: You just killed a foreign diplomat. You just started a war.
But the Warlord of Axiomra silenced the student. He turned to the girl, his face softening instantly.
He knelt down, took off his heavy cloak, and wrapped it around her trembling shoulders. He gently patted her head.
"You are safe," Bilal said softly. "Go to Queen Astrid. Tell her the Giant sent you."
Within an hour, the Swedish merchants were rounded up and brought to the plaza. Bilal stood before them.
He held up a piece of Rag Paper. On it was written Sigurd's name, the time of the crime, and the exact nature of the assault.
"Take his body," Bilal commanded the trembling Swedes, pointing to the corpse. "But leave the head. It stays on the wall."
"He was a noble!" one of the Swedes cried out in terror. "His father will demand blood money!"
"Tell his father," Bilal roared, his voice echoing across the entire city, "that what he did on this land is a death sentence! The Law of the Green Tunic does not care about crowns!"
"Tell him to come for his blood money, and I will add his head to the spike!"