Erik sat on a wooden crate, staring at his plate in disbelief. Beside him, Sven was practically inhaling a loaf of bread, crumbs exploding from his beard like sawdust.
"It's soft," Sven mumbled with his mouth full, tears of joy welling in his eyes. "The bread is soft, Erik. It doesn't crunch like gravel.."
"It's the Second Ration," Erik whispered, looking around as if he expected someone to snatch the food away. "Ragnar said the Builders eat second, right after the Kingsguard."
For a "Broken" man, this was unheard of. Usually, Erik ate what the dogs left behind. Now, he was wiping grease off his chin. Through the shared trauma of being the camp's outcasts, Erik and Sven had formed a bond stronger than cheap iron.
Sven, a man who had once tried to milk a bull because he "thought it looked lonely," was a simple soul. He had been relegated to the broken squad because he was too easily distracted by shiny objects to hold a shield wall. But he could lift an ox.
"Do you think we get honey later?" Sven asked, hopeful.
Suddenly, a roar shook the tent flaps.
"MOVE YOUR ASSES, SAWDUST BRAINS! THE LOGS ARE WAITING!"
It was Headmaster Bjorn. The peaceful chewing stopped instantly. Every Builder in the tent one-legged, one-eyed, or just plain old scrambled to their feet. They grabbed their walking sticks and crutches, abandoning the half-eaten pork, and hobbled as fast as they could toward the Academy grounds.
Bjorn stood before the line of sixty recruits. He was wearing a tunic with the sleeves ripped off, revealing arms that looked like braided steel cables.
"Line up!" Bjorn bellowed. "Shoulder to shoulder! If your neighbor smells bad, hold your breath!"
Erik shuffled into line next to Sven. He leaned on his stick, his bad leg throbbing slightly from the run.
"Today," Bjorn announced, pacing back and forth like a caged tiger, "We learn to lift. You think lifting is easy? You think you just grab and pull?"
He stopped in front of a scrawny recruit named Leif the Lesser (to distinguish him from the Smith and the Foreman).
"Pick up that stone," Bjorn ordered, pointing to a fifty-pound rock.
Leif bent over at the waist, legs straight, and yanked the rock up with a grunt.
"WRONG!" Bjorn screamed, slapping the rock out of Leif's hands. "You lift with your back like a bowing servant! Do you want your spine to snap like a dry twig?"
Bjorn turned to the group.
"We do not lift with the back! We lift with the Triangle!"
He dropped into a perfect squat. Heels flat. Knees out. Back straight.
"The Triangle is the strongest shape!" Bjorn yelled. "Assume the position! Hold it!"
Erik gritted his teeth. He planted his feet. He lowered his hips.
This was agony. His bad leg trembled. The muscles around his twisted knee screamed. He wanted to stand up. He wanted to lean on his stick.
"Hold it!" Bjorn shouted, walking down the line. "If you stand up, you are telling me you want to go back to scrubbing the latrines!"
Five minutes passed. It felt like five years.
Next to Erik, a man with a scarred face groaned and collapsed, his legs giving out.
Bjorn was on him instantly.
"GET UP!" Bjorn roared, looming over the man. "Did the wall fall? No! Did the battle end? No! The wood does not care if you are tired! The wood is heavy!"
"I... I can't," the man wheezed.
"Then leave!" Bjorn pointed to the camp exit. "Go! Go tell the King you are useless! Go eat the fish guts with the thralls!"
The man hesitated. He looked at the exit. Then he looked at the trebuchets towering in the distance. He looked at the pork grease still on his hands.
He gritted his teeth, grabbed his knee, and forced himself back into the squat.
"Good!" Bjorn nodded, satisfied. "Pain is just weakness leaving the body! STAY LOW!"
"Sir, yes sir!" the recruits shouted, their voices cracking.
Erik's leg was on fire. He was sweating cold fear. I can't do this, he thought. I'm a cripple. I belong in the potato pile.
Then he looked at Sven. Sven was squatting perfectly, humming a little tune, seemingly oblivious to the pain because his legs were tree trunks. Sven looked at Erik and winked.
"Like a frog, Erik," Sven whispered. "Be the frog."
Be the frog, Erik told himself. Don't be the potato.
He clenched his fists. He thought of his father, who had died in a shield wall calling Erik "The Runt." He pushed the pain into a little box in his mind and locked it. He held the squat.
Bjorn stopped in front of Erik. He looked at the trembling leg. He looked at the sweat dripping off Erik's nose. He didn't yell.
He gave a barely perceptible nod of approval.
"Recover!" Bjorn shouted.
The recruits collapsed into the sand, gasping for air.
"Water break!" Bjorn announced. "Ten minutes. Then we learn 'The Pivot'."
As Erik lay in the sand, massaging his knee, he realized something strange. He didn't want to leave. He hated the pain, but for the first time in his life, he was part of a unit. He wasn't the "Lame One." He was just another exhausted Builder.
The sun had set, painting the English sky in dark violets. The physical torture was over. The intellectual torture was about to begin.
The Builders sat on logs arranged in a semi-circle around a large bonfire. Their muscles ached, but their bellies were full again.
From the royal tent, Princess Gyda emerged. She held a slate and a piece of chalk. She wore a simple wool dress, but she carried herself with more authority than any Jarl.
"Good evening, Builders," she said. Her voice was calm, a soothing balm after Bjorn's shouting.
"Tonight, we do not lift," she said. "Tonight, we see."
She held up the Ragnar Unit the notched stick.
"This is Truth."
She drew a line on the slate. It was crooked. Wobbly.
"Is this a line?" she asked.
"Yes," Sven shouted happily. "It goes from there to there!"
"No," Gyda said softly. "This is chaos."
She used a straight-edge to draw a perfect, crisp line next to it.
"This," she tapped the new line, "is Order. This is Strength. If you cut a beam like the first line, the machine wobbles. If the machine wobbles, the stone misses the wall. If the stone misses, the Saxons laugh. If the Saxons laugh, we die."
She looked around the circle of firelit faces.
"So, I ask you... what is a straight line?"
A one-eyed man raised his hand. "It is the horizon, Princess."
"Poetic," Gyda nodded. "But the horizon curves."
"It is a spear shaft!" another shouted.
"Spears bend," she countered.
She looked at Erik. He was sitting quietly, rubbing his notches on his own stick.
"You," Gyda pointed. "Erik. What is a straight line?"
Erik stood up slowly, leaning on his stick. The fire crackled.
"A straight line," Erik said, his voice trembling slightly, "is... precision. It is doing exactly what you mean to do, without wasting space."
Gyda raised an eyebrow. The corner of her mouth twitched upward.
"Precision," she repeated. "I like that."
She turned to the group. "We humans are messy. We are crooked. We limp. We break."
She paused, letting the words sink in. Every man there knew what it meant to be broken.
"But," she continued, her eyes shining in the firelight, "with this stick, and with your mind, you can create perfection. You can build something that is straighter than nature intended. You can force the world to make sense."
She held up the slate. "Math is the weapon of the weak against the strong. A giant can throw a rock, but a mathematician can throw a rock three times as far and hit a fly on a nose."
"Now," Gyda erased the slate. "Who can count to ten?"
Half the hands went up. The other half looked ashamed.
"Good," Gyda smiled. "By tomorrow night, all of you will count to one hundred. And you will learn the difference between a 'span' and a 'cubit'."
"Lesson one," she drew a symbol. "This is the number One..."
As the lesson went on, Erik sat mesmerized. He wasn't just learning numbers. He was learning a secret language. A language that Ragnar used to build ships that didn't sink. A language that Gyda used to kill men with a bronze tube.
For years, Erik had been told his worth was in his sword arm. Since he couldn't swing a sword well, he was worthless.
But here, by the fire, holding his Ragnar Unit, he realized the world was bigger than swords.
"Sven," Erik whispered to his friend, who was struggling to draw a number '2' in the dirt.
"Yeah?" Sven stuck his tongue out in concentration.
"I think we're going to be dangerous."
Sven looked at his crooked '2'. "I'm going to be dangerous to the dirt."