For the average Viking warrior in the Great Heathen Army, life had not changed much in the last twenty-four hours. They woke up, they sharpened their axes, they complained about the damp English weather, and they waited for the order to march on York.
But for the "Order of the Builders," it felt like the sky had turned upside down and rained sawdust.
Ragnar sat on a stump near the supply wagons, watching a young thrall struggle to carry three heavy rocks in a wicker basket. The boy was groaning, his back bent double.
"Inefficient," Ragnar muttered, taking a bite of hardtack. "Physics is weeping."
He stood up, wiped the crumbs from his tunic, and walked over. He grabbed a spare wooden crate and a discarded shield boss (the metal bowl in the center of a shield). Within ten minutes, using a sturdy branch as an axle and the shield boss as a crude wheel hub, he had fashioned a monstrosity.
"Put the rocks in here," Ragnar commanded.
The thrall looked at him with terror. "Lord Ragnar? You want me to put the rocks in the box? But the box is heavy too!"
"Just do it."
The boy loaded the rocks. Ragnar tipped the contraption forward onto its single, wood-rimmed wheel and lifted the handles.
"Now push."
The boy pushed. His eyes went wide. The heavy load rolled over the bumpy turf with barely a grunt of effort.
"It... it walks by itself!" the thrall gasped, looking at Ragnar as if he had just turned water into mead.
"It's a wheelbarrow," Ragnar said, patting the boy on the shoulder. "The 'One-Wheeled Chariot of Labor.' Don't make a religion out of it. Just move the rocks."
Leaving the stunned boy to his new toy, Ragnar adjusted his belt—which now held a pouch of charcoal and a roll of vellum—and headed toward the manufacturing zone. He felt good. He felt heroic. He was the Senior Engineer, inspecting his factory floor.
As he got closer to the designated "Assembly Area," the sounds of industry were less rhythmic and more... violent.
Ragnar stepped into the clearing and stopped dead. His smile vanished.
He had expected an assembly line. He had expected the smooth production of trebuchet arms and torsion frames. instead, he saw what could only be described as a heated argument between men holding very sharp tools.
"It is too short!" one carpenter yelled, waving a saw.
"Your eyes are crooked!" another shouted back, holding up a wooden beam. "It is exactly seven hands long!"
"Whose hands? Yours? You have hands like a giant baby!"
Ragnar rubbed his temples. The "factory" was a disaster. Piles of wood lay everywhere, none of them matching. Some beams were thick, some were thin. The joinery looked like it had been chewed by beavers.
Ragnar was about to explode into a lecture on quality control when a shadow fell over him.
"Greetings, High Builder!"
Ragnar turned to see Bjorn. His massive brother was grinning, looking remarkably clean for a man living in a muddy camp. Beside him stood two men Ragnar hadn't formally met yet.
"I would have prepared a feast," Bjorn boomed, "but we are out of pork. So, I brought you recruits instead."
Ragnar frowned, pointing at the chaos behind him. "Bjorn, look at this. It's a mess. I asked for ten identical frames. I have ten frames that look like they are from ten different species of trees."
"Ah, yes," Bjorn waved a dismissive hand. "Growing pains. But forget that for a moment. Look at these two. I am vetting them for the position of 'Master Foremen' in your Order."
Ragnar sighed. He knew he couldn't do everything himself. He needed middle management.
"Who are they?"
Bjorn pushed the first man forward. He was short, wiry, with one eye that seemed permanently squinted and hands that were covered in old scars.
"This is Leif the Squinter," Bjorn introduced proudly. "He used to build coffins in Denmark. He says he never made a coffin that didn't fit the corpse. Very precise."
Ragnar looked at Leif. The man didn't look like a warrior; he looked like a man who judged geometry for a living.
"And this one," Bjorn slapped the back of the second man, a towering brute with arms as thick as tree trunks, "is Arne the Hewer. He claims he can fell an oak tree with three swings. He hates leaves. He hates branches. He just likes smooth wood."
As soon as Bjorn finished, the two men slammed their fists to their chests.
"Foreman Candidate Leif, ready to build!"
"Foreman Candidate Arne, ready to chop!"
Ragnar blinked. The salute was awkward—a mix of a warrior's greeting and something they had probably seen Bjorn do. But their eyes were serious.
"At ease," Ragnar said, instinctively adopting the tone of a site supervisor. He walked up to Leif. "You built coffins?"
"Aye, Lord," Leif rasped. "A tight fit is a good fit. No rattling."
"Good," Ragnar nodded. He turned to Arne. "And you hate leaves?"
"They get in the way of the wood," Arne grumbled. "Messy."
Ragnar suppressed a smile. "Do a good job," he said, patting Arne's arm, which felt like patting a stone pillar. The sight of the lean engineer validating the giant lumberjack was comical, but nobody laughed. The two candidates straightened their spines, pride radiating off them.
"SIR, YES, SIR!" they shouted, mimicking the phrase Ragnar had accidentally taught Bjorn yesterday.
Ragnar nodded to Bjorn. "Brother, bring a keg of ale to my tent. We need to talk. Alone."
The two new foremen saluted again and marched off toward the pile of mismatched wood, barking orders at the other workers.
Five minutes later, inside Ragnar's tent, the atmosphere was less celebratory.
Ragnar poured two horns of ale the cheap, watery stuff they had raided from the village and sat down on a crate.
"Why is it a disaster out there, Bjorn?" Ragnar asked, skipping the pleasantries. "Where is the precision? Where is the uniformity? How are we going to siege York if our machines fall apart because the joints are loose?"
"Precision?" Bjorn looked confused, wiping foam from his mustache. "Ragnar, the men are working hard. They are chopping wood. They are tying ropes. What is the problem?"
"The problem," Ragnar leaned forward, "is that 'seven hands' means nothing! I told the carpenter to cut a beam ten feet long. He cut it ten of his feet long. Then another man cut the crossbeam ten of his feet long. The first man is short; the second man is tall. Now we have a trapezoid instead of a square!"
Bjorn blinked. He took a long drink of ale. "So... we should only hire men with the same size feet?"
Ragnar stared at him. Then he slapped his own forehead. The sound echoed in the tent.
"Idiot," Ragnar whispered to himself. "I'm an idiot. A gun needs bullets. An industry needs a standard."
He had been so focused on the complex designs of the trebuchet and the chemical composition of the torsion springs that he had forgotten the most fundamental building block of civilization: Standardization.
In the 21st century, a meter was a meter. In 865 AD, a "foot" was literally a foot. A "yard" was the length of a belt. It was chaos.
"Get a hold of yourself," Ragnar internalized. "You can't blame them for not knowing the ISO metric system."
His frustration cooled. He looked at Bjorn, who was looking at him with concern, probably wondering if the "spirits" were angry again.
"Bjorn," Ragnar said calmly. "The problem isn't the men. It's the math. They are measuring with their bodies. Bodies are different."
"That is true," Bjorn agreed sagely. "Starkad has very short legs. He is terrible at measuring depth."
"We need a Ruler," Ragnar said.
"We have a ruler," Bjorn pointed to the royal tent outside. "King Horik."
"No," Ragnar shook his head, a grin starting to form. "Not a King. A Ruler. A stick that never changes."
He stood up, excitement flooding back.
"Bjorn, gather the foremen. Leif, Arne, all of them. In one hour, I am holding a Council of the Stick."
"A Council of... the Stick?" Bjorn asked, looking at his brother as if he had finally cracked.
"Yes," Ragnar grabbed a piece of straight, seasoned oak from his firewood pile. He pulled out his dagger. "I am going to solve our problems with this."
He carefully marked the wood. He didn't have a modern ruler, so he used his own forearm—from elbow to fingertip—as the base unit. The "Cubit." It wasn't perfect, but it was his.
He carved a deep notch. Then he divided that space into two. Then four. Then eight.
"This," Ragnar held up the piece of wood, "is the Ragnar Unit. From this day forth, no man uses his feet. No man uses his hands. They use this."
Bjorn squinted at the piece of firewood. "It's... a stick."
"It's the future, brother," Ragnar said, pouring himself more ale. "It's the first step to mass production. If everyone cuts wood to match this stick, every machine will be identical. Parts will be interchangeable. If a wheel breaks, we can swap it with another wheel without resizing the axle."
Bjorn's eyes lit up. He didn't understand the math, but he understood the result. "Like arrows? Every arrow fits the bow?"
"Exactly like arrows," Ragnar nodded. "But for everything."
Bjorn chugged the rest of his ale and stood up. "I will get the men. I will tell them the Stick Council is in session."
"And Bjorn?"
"Yes?"
"Tell Leif to bring his saw. We're going to make a lot of copies."
Bjorn saluted—a sharp, crisp motion that was becoming less awkward and more terrifyingly disciplined—and ducked out of the tent.
Ragnar looked at the "Ragnar Unit" in his hand. It was just a piece of wood with scratches on it. But to his engineer's eye, it was more powerful than the Valkyrie's Sting.
He called for his personal attendant, a young boy named Ivar (not the Boneless, just a regular Ivar).
"Ivar," Ragnar said, feeling the weight of leadership. "Schedule a meeting with the King for tomorrow morning. Tell him... tell him the Builders are ready to present the Master Plan."
The boy bowed and scrambled out.
Ragnar sat back, tracing the notches on the wood. The chaotic training, the mismatched lumber, the confusion it all ended today.
History will know this moment, Ragnar thought with a wry smile, as the day the Vikings discovered the Tape Measure.