The docks Bjorn had made years ago stood a little weathered and worn, their oak timbers getting dark with age and salt. They had served their purpose well enough, but the inevitable truth gnawed at them from within—sea-worms bored through the wood, and rot spread wherever the grain had weakened.
In a few decades, perhaps less, they would need to be torn down and rebuilt. Just as every other harbor in the North would need rebuilding. An endless cycle of construction and decay.
But the time of wooden structures was soon coming to an end.
Bjorn's volcanic ash cement possessed a unique property. Unlike wood that rotted or ordinary stone that crumbled under salt assault, this mixture underwent a chemical reaction with saltwater that actually made it stronger over time.
Now every other Jarl out there is constantly rebuilding rotten wooden piers, just like he had been forced to do before. But now, his new piers would be truly permanent.
Bjorn stood close to the deck, his eyes tracking the craftsmen as they began their preparations for building with cement for the first time in Kattegat and in Scandinavia.
Around him stood Hrafn, the Lord Commander of the King's Guard, with six other men in formation. Not that he needed protection, but formalities mattered when a king oversaw important work.
Ubbe and little Halfdan were with him, Ragnar as well, all watching with varying degrees of curiosity and anticipation. Science looked like magic to kids, so he brought them along.
Gyda was with Athelstan today—she served as his assistant to gain more experience in managing things. Literate she may be, but she was barely seventeen years old. She needed to learn how projects were organized, how men were directed, how supplies were tracked.
Meanwhile, Lagertha was inside their home with Ivar, who was now half a year old, too young yet to be away from his mother for long.
The foundations, piles and breakwater bases were still intact and not undermined by scour, seismic damage, or salt-induced decay. They provided a stable mass beneath the waterline, something that would have taken months of underwater labor to replicate.
Reusing the old structure drastically reduced material transport, underwater work, and construction time. And it was a place that sailors and traders already knew, a location marked on mental maps across the trading routes of the North.
So Bjorn had decided to use the old harbor as a skeleton for the new one. The structure consisted of vertical oak pilings—the legs that descended into the seabed—and horizontal beams that formed the deck above.
First, Bjorn had sent divers down, strong swimmers who could hold their breath long enough to inspect which pilings were still solid. Those that were rotten at the bottom had been braced with new timber, just enough to give them integrity for their final purpose.
Then the carpenters had nailed horizontal planks between the old vertical pilings to create formwork—a wooden mold that would shape the liquid stone. Essentially, they were turning the old pier into a long, hollow wooden box that sat in the water, waiting to be filled.
Now they were at the second step, where the craftsmen had set up a production line along the shore.
First came the lime kilns—huge pits filled with seashells and limestone that had been burned at intense heat for days. The resulting "quicklime" was truly dangerous; it could burn skin on contact, raising blisters and welts in seconds if not handled with care.
"They're starting it. The magic," Ubbe exclaimed, unable to keep the excitement from his voice.
"They are starting the blending, yes." Bjorn responded without turning his gaze from the scene below, though he felt the same anticipation.
The craftsmen began the blending process.
Baskets of quicklime were broken open first, the white stones tumbling into the mixing pit.
Workers wielding iron-shod poles crushed them down with rhythmic strikes until the stones became powder, pale dust rising in the still morning air.
Volcanic ash followed next—dark and fine as soot, a stark contrast to the white quicklime. Then came crushed stone and gravel, shoveled in by the basketful to give the mixture weight and substance.
Only then was seawater poured.
The mass hissed and surged violently. Steam rose in thick clouds that obscured everything, rolling across the harbor like fog. The mixture swelled and churned as if alive, possessed by some ancient fury.
Men stepped back hastily as waves of heat rolled off the pit—the air burned in the throat and stung the eyes, making them water.
Where the slurry splashed onto bare skin, it left angry white welts that would blister by evening, perhaps.
The quicklime was slaking, releasing all the energy that had been baked into it.
When the violence finally settled—the hissing fading to low bubbles, the steam thinning—what remained in the pit was a heavy, grey paste. Hot, dense, and slowly moving like something half-alive. Ready to be carried to the formwork before it could stiffen into uselessness.
Halfdan poked a chunk of dried cement with a stick. "It's hard! Like… like Father's head when Mother is mad!"
Ubbe giggled, nudging his younger brother. "Don't say that too loud, or they'll bury you in the pier!"
Bjorn, watching from nearby, chuckled and began dispensing his usual wisdom.. "Actually, Halfdan, you've stumbled on an important truth. To lead, you must be like this stone. When needed, you flow and fill every space. But once your mind is set, you must be harder than the strongest oak. Do you understand?"
Ubbe turned to his younger brother, squinting as if weighing the question. Then, just as Bjorn expected, Halfdan clenched his small fist and raised his thumb with the most ridiculous grin imaginable, like he'd just solved the riddle of the world.
"Of course I did," he said, proudly, as if Bjorn could possibly doubt it.
Now came the pouring stage.
Thralls formed a living chain, passing heavy buckets reinforced with iron bands from the mixing pits onto the old pier. The boards groaned under the accumulated weight, creaking protests that no one heeded. The wood only needed to last one more day.
To keep the sea from stealing the mixture before it could set, the builders used a hollowed log, lowered carefully over the side until it touched the bottom of the wooden mold beneath the water.
The first pour went deep into the log's opening, and once it began, the log would never be lifted free again—it would be entombed in the stone, a permanent part of the structure.
As the slurry flowed down through the hollow log, it filled the formwork from the bottom upward. The heavy liquid stone drove the seawater ahead of it, forcing the displaced water out at the top in slow, bubbling surges.
Steam drifted across the pier wherever hot cement met cold water, and any splash that reached exposed skin burned on contact, leaving marks.
When the mold was finally full, the old oak pilings lay buried inside the stone, sealed away from air, from rot and from the appetites of sea-worms. The timber ceased to matter anymore. The pier was stone now, though it still wore its wooden skin.
The builders used long, flat boards to screed the surface, dragging them across the top of the wet cement to make it perfectly flat—something no wooden pier had ever been or could ever be. The precision was remarkable to watch.
When they finished, their faces grey with stone dust and their arms trembling from hours of labor, Bjorn began applauding. The sharp sound of his hands meeting carried across the harbor, startling some of the workers.
"Well done," he called out. "Very well done indeed."
The master craftsman who had overseen the mixing and pouring, approached with a respectful nod. His hands were stained grey and there were burn marks on his forearms where splashes had caught him. "Thank you, King Bjorn. But it's true that we merely followed your orders and your ideas. Without your knowledge of the volcanic ash and the quicklime, we would still be replacing rotten wood every generation."
"I wouldn't have done it without you," Bjorn replied firmly, meeting the older man's eyes. "It's a win for Kattegat and the people, then."
He moved down the line, shaking hands with each craftsman, congratulating them on their hard work. He looked each man in the face, spoke words of appreciation, reminded them that the future of building harbors throughout the North was now in their hands.
They would be the masters who taught others this craft, who spread this knowledge to Hedeby and Birka and Dublin and every trading port that wanted to join the new age.
After he conquered them of course.
Bjorn couldn't be more satisfied with this leap forward. But even as he smiled and clasped shoulders, his mind was already turning to the next problem.
Volcanic ash was limited in supply.
He would need to make another expedition to Iceland, bring back ships laden with volcanic ash if he wanted to turn every major trading hub's harbor into one built with volcanic cement. They could work with their current supply for now, but the future demanded more.
"Even though it looks like stone now, it needs time to cure," Bjorn said, addressing the assembled workers. "The reaction with the seawater—the formation of the mineral that makes it strong—that takes time. So let's close the harbor for the next week. Give the stone time to sleep and strengthen."
He turned and began walking back toward shore, Ragnar and Ubbe and Halfdan falling into step beside him. Hrafn and the six King's Guards formed their protective formation around the group, boots echoing on the wooden planking that would soon be irrelevant—just a skeleton buried in eternal stone.
Behind them, the cement continued its slow transformation, drinking salt from the sea, becoming something that would outlast Bjorn.
When Bjorn reached the great hall, he found one of the survey teams waiting for him—one of the hundred teams he had sent out more than a week ago, after the Thing he'd held in Kattegat to announce the land register.
Each team consisted of five men: at least one scribe capable of reading and writing, two armed huskarls for protection, a surveyor to measure the land, and a royal judge—or rather, men training to become royal judges.
He had one hundred teams with one hundred scribes working to register all the lands of his people. His own lands were already finished and recorded, but the rest would take time. More than a year, certainly, perhaps two. The lands he ruled were vast and hard to travel, especially in winter when snow buried the paths and ice made the rivers treacherous.
And that was assuming no problems arose.
Except problems had arisen right at the start.
Bjorn studied the scene before him in the hall. Athelstan sat at one of the long tables, working alongside the other scribes, papers spread before him covered in careful notation. Gyda stood beside him, watching closely.
Bjorn nodded to them in greeting.
"How did it go?" Gyda warmly asked.
"Another step into the future, sister." Bjorn responded then turned his gaze to the team.
"Should i call for a thing?" Athelstan added.
"Let me see what this is about."
The scribe from this particular team was a monk from England, perhaps forty years old, standing nervously beside the table. But Bjorn's attention was drawn to the two men kneeling on the ground before him, their hands bound with rope.
He stepped closer and raised their faces with his hand, forcing them to look at him directly. Both men avoided his eyes. Their faces were swollen and purple—they had clearly taken a beating recently.
Then Bjorn studied the third man standing nervously beside the bound pair. From his clothing, he was clearly not part of the survey team.
A farmer, by the look of him.
Bjorn looked at the team leader. "What happened to these two?"
The huskarl stepped forward. "These are farmers, King Bjorn. A father and his son. We were conducting a land registration on a boundary disputed between their two properties." He pointed first to the standing farmer, then to the bound men on the ground. "Before we did the survey, this man on the ground claimed he has plowed his land following the slope where the grass changes. He says he's been doing it for twenty years uninterrupted, and no one ever stopped him. So he says, the land is his by right of use."
He pointed to the standing man. "And this farmer's father once placed a boundary stone to mark his land. But that stone was buried over time, partly covered by soil. And it had shifted slightly. When we measured straight from the stone as ordered, we chose the stone because it's a physical marker, something we could measure from. And the farmer didn't like our decision. He said we cheated him out of land that was rightfully his." The huskarl paused. "He attacked the scribe, my lord. We did our duty defended him and restrained the attacker. Then his son came and tried to attack us as well, and we had to defend the team again."
Bjorn sighed and settled into his seat, leaning forward. "What did he attack you with? Did he have a weapon?"
"No, my lord, just with his hands. Fists. They were restrained immediately after the attack," the scribe responded.
"What about the beating?" Bjorn gestured to their swollen faces.
One of the huskarls stepped forward. "They resisted restraint, King Bjorn. Blows were exchanged in the struggle. But no weapons were drawn by either side."
Bjorn hummed thoughtfully, then turned his attention fully to the bound farmers. "Before we continue... untie them first."
The huskarls moved to comply, loosening the ropes. The son glared at them as he helped his father stand, rubbing at the marks the bindings had left on their wrists.
"Before today," Bjorn asked, his voice carrying across the hall, "did either of you ever bring this land dispute to the Thing? Did you ever formally contest the boundary?"
Both parties—the standing farmer and the father-son pair—shook their heads.
"We never saw the need to do so, my lord," the young man said, his voice tight with barely controlled anger. "Everyone knew where the land ended. It's been that way since my grandfather's time."
Bjorn leaned back, considering. He had never truly thought anyone would attack the survey teams. He had assumed that two armed huskarls would be sufficient protection, that his reputation and prestige would be enough to deter people from such rash actions. He had not created a law for situations like this because he had not anticipated them.
That had been a mistake.
Ragnar stood to the side, watching in silence. Athelstan continued his work at the table, though Bjorn could see him listening carefully. Gyda watched everything with keen attention, learning. Hrafn stood in his customary position near the door, expressionless.
Bjorn looked at the father and son, measuring them. "You will not be punished for rebellion," he said finally. "I believe you were acting out of genuine belief that you had been wronged, not out of defiance of my rule. Am I wrong?"
Both men shook their heads quickly, nervously. Rebellion meant certain death, and they knew it. Farmers were not as brave as the raiders who went to sea and foreign shores—some of those raiders couldn't even swim, yet they sailed anyway for the sake of treasure and the thrill of conquering other men.
These were men of soil and seasons, not steel and salt.
"However," Bjorn continued, his voice hardening slightly, "you will both be fined for attacking my trusted men." 'I must set an example in case situations like this arise in the future.'
The father opened his mouth as if to protest, then closed it, nodding reluctantly.
"Now, regarding the land dispute itself—the measured boundary stands." Bjorn's tone left no room for argument. Survey authority had to appear absolute, or the entire system would crumble into chaos.
"My lord..." both father and son began.
Bjorn raised his hand, cutting them off. "You will share access to that disputed piece of land for one season only. After that, the boundary as measured is final."
He gave them the signal to leave. The farmers bowed awkwardly and departed, the standing farmer following them out with a satisfied expression that Bjorn found distasteful but understandable.
"You were lenient with them, my King. A man who raises a hand to a Royal Scribe raises a hand to you." Hrafn said quietly, as they watched the farmers leave.
"If I kill every farmer who gets angry over a piece of dirt, Hrafn, I will soon be a King of empty fields. These men don't hate me; they fear the future. A scribe with a piece of parchment is more terrifying to them now than a raider with an axe."
"Fear is a better shield than mercy."
"Yes. Yes. I know, fear is a better shield than merci. But mercy is for the people. Fear and the axe are for the Jarls. No wait, it should be fear and the sword for the Jarls." Bjorn started laughing at his own joke.
Hrafn stood shaking his head.
When they were gone, Bjorn turned to the scribes. "From this day forward, let it be known: land not disputed before measurement cannot be disputed after. Any man who wishes to contest a boundary must bring it to the Thing before the survey teams arrive, or accept the measurement as final."
He gestured to Athelstan. "Write that into the stone at the Thing where all the other laws are carved. Let's make it permanent."
Athelstan nodded and began making notes immediately.
This incident had taught Bjorn something valuable, though the lesson came with a bitter taste.
He had low trust in inexperienced people for good reason—at the end of the day, these men weren't just doing their jobs, they were representing his reputation.
Every small mistake, every perceived injustice, every moment of poor judgment would eventually erode his authority.
Small mistakes accumulated. One error here, another there, until people couldn't trust his men, and eventually couldn't trust him.
But this small dispute had also established something crucial: survey measurements were now superior to memory. Records were better than witnesses. And physical evidence trumped tradition.
Bjorn thought this would be the end of his troubles after he sent that particular survey team back to continue their work.
He was wrong.
Days later, after the planting season had begun in earnest, another problem reached him. This time it involved one of the inland Jarls—a man of some power and influence who controlled several hills around his longhouse.
So Bjorn once again had to mediate, this time in another Thing held in Kattegat. The Jarl arrived with warriors at his back—not as a threat, but as a show of status. The farmers came in their working clothes, nervous but determined.
The Jarl argued first, his voice carrying the weight of authority. "The lines your survey teams have drawn ignore generations of occupation and protection, King Bjorn. My father held these hills. My grandfather before him. I raise men from the farms below them. I keep them safe from raiders and thieves. The land is mine not because of some stone marker or measurement, but because I hold it and defend it."
The farmers stepped forward next, their spokesman—an older man with weathered hands—speaking carefully. "We have plowed the lower slopes, grazed our sheep on the hills, and maintained the land for generations as well, my lord. Our fathers paid no tribute for that grazing. It was simply ours to use. The Jarl never stopped us and never claimed payment. By the old customs, that makes the land as much ours as his."
Voices began to rise as supporters on both sides added their own arguments.
The Jarl maintained his composure, standing with arms crossed, watching Bjorn. The surveyors stood quietly to the side, and the scribes recorded everything that was said, their quills scratching across parchment. The men training to become royal judges stood close to Bjorn, listening and learning.
By writing down everything that happened at the Thing, these cases would serve as training materials for future judges. Nothing beat life experience, but recorded cases were the next best thing.
Bjorn listened to all the arguments, asked clarifying questions, and then sat in silence for a long moment, thinking.
"The measurement stands," he finally said, and saw the farmers' faces brighten while the Jarl's expression darkened. "However," Bjorn continued before either side could react, "the Jarl will retain certain privileges over the disputed land. He may appoint who grazes the hills during the summer months. His protection tax obligation to me will be slightly reduced as compensation for the lost space he claims."
The Jarl nodded slowly, seeing some justice in this.
"And the farmers will retain partial use of the hills for winter grazing," Bjorn concluded.
The farmers' expressions showed they were not entirely pleased—they had wanted full rights—but they nodded acceptance. The Jarl looked similarly dissatisfied, but he too accepted the judgment.
Such was justice. Rarely did it please everyone completely.
These were merely some of the cases where both parties had legitimate claims, where tradition conflicted with measurement and where memory fought against records.
The land survey had become an anchor around Bjorn's neck, stopping him from going anywhere else, preventing him from raiding. He spent his time traveling to other settlements to show his face and to resolve disputes when problems arose, to remind the new people that he was their king and that his judgments were final.
He also oversaw the continuation of his great castle, though it was still years away from completion. The main problem was the lack of skilled masons—he only had forty trained men, and the work demanded more.
He could recruit more laborers, train more workers, speed up the construction. But Bjorn had to be very careful about expanding everything at once without limit.
He had to pay the workers in silver and food, and he did not have an unlimited supply of either. Every decision to expand one project meant pulling resources from another.
Amidst all the emerging troubles that required his mediation, all the headaches and disputes and fine judgments, Bjorn finally received some good news after weeks of grinding administrative work.
Some jarls from the North had chosen to follow him in his vision of uniting the lands into a single kingdom.
But others had refused. Bjorn sent messengers once more, summoning them to accept his rule and acknowledge his status as the voice of the gods.
This would be their last chance to speak.
Bjorn was genuinely surprised when a Jarl from Värmland visited him one day and swore loyalty seemingly out of nowhere, standing before him in the great hall and pledging his warriors and his lands to Bjorn's rule.
The reason became clear soon enough. This Jarl had discovered iron-rich land within his territory—valuable deposits that could be mined and worked into weapons and tools. But he could not protect those lands himself from the other Jarls who would inevitably come seeking to take the iron by force.
So he had made a decision: invite Bjorn to protect him, swear loyalty in exchange for security, and offer Bjorn a portion of the riches from the mines.
It seems Varmland does, after all, possess weapons of mass destruction.