The guard's voice broke through Bjorn's concentration. "The overseer of the drinking hall, my lord."
Bjorn grunted without looking up. The numbers swam before his eyes—10,000 laborers minimum, maybe 20,000. Five years if everything went perfect. Ten if they didn't. He'd read the estimate so many times the ink seemed to blur.
His head hurt.
"My lord?"
"Yes, fine. Send him in."
He heard the door open, then footsteps that made no more sound than necessary.
Bjorn looked up.
Trygve had changed since Borre. The thick and dark beard helped, it made his face ordinary. You could pass him in any market and forget him before you'd walked ten paces.
"My King." The bow was shallow. They both knew the formalities were for the guards outside, not for them. "I hope the day treats you well."
"It treats me to headaches and big numbers." Bjorn gestured at the parchments covering the table. "But you said you had good news. Sit first, though. I want your eyes on something."
Trygve pulled the chair out and sat, his gaze already moving across the scattered documents. Bjorn selected one—the main blueprint—and slid it across the oak surface.
"Tell me what you see."
Trygve unrolled it slowly. His eyes traced the lines, and Bjorn watched his face. Most men couldn't read architectural plans. Trygve wasn't most men.
"This is..." Trygve's voice trailed off. He bent closer. "A temple? My lord, I'm not—I don't know enough about building to—"
"Stop. Just look and tell me what you think. Pretend you're anyone else looking at this."
Trygve studied it for a long moment. Bjorn could see him reading the measurements, understanding the scale. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet. "The gathering is in four winters."
"I know when the gathering is."
"This..." Trygve gestured at the blueprint. "My lord, You are the King of all Norse lands now, but even if you had every freeman working stone, you couldn't finish this in four years."
"I don't need to finish it." Bjorn reached across and tapped the center of the plan. "Just this. The Central Grand Hall."
He watched Trygve's finger follow the dome's outline. 100 meters across. 60 meters to the apex. The numbers were there in neat script along the margins.
"Inside," Bjorn said, "the dome gets painted like the night sky. Stars. We'll embed minerals that glow in the dark and make it look like the Bifrost; the rainbow bridge that connects Midgard, our world to the world of the gods, Asgard. Except the god Heimdall will not be the one guarding it. It's men on huge walls."
Trygve nodded slowly, still studying the plans.
"At the center, a statue. Odin. Twenty meters tall, bronze over a concrete core. Seated on a throne—I'm thinking ivory and amber for that, depending on what we can get." Bjorn pulled another parchment over. "Altars around him. Thor's will have an anvil, a real one, for people to leave their offerings. Freyr gets fertility symbols. Freyja gets a canopy made of falcon feathers."
"Falcon feathers." Trygve looked up. "That's—do you know how many birds that is?"
"I know exactly how many. I've done the calculations." Bjorn pointed to another section. "Stained glass here, and here. Scenes from Ragnarok. The light comes through in reds and golds and—the point is it'll look like the world's ending and being born again every time the sun moves."
Trygve was quiet. So Bjorn continued.
"Then the Nine Sacred Towers, one for each world. Eighty meters tall, brick and concrete, connected by walkways."
"Walkways." Trygve's voice was distant, like he was trying to picture it.
"For processions. Imagine it—priests walking from tower to tower, above everyone's heads, like they're traveling between worlds." Bjorn felt the excitement building in his chest.
"The ritual arena comes last. An amphitheater, three hundred meters across and seats twenty thousand people. The sacrificial altar sits on a stepped pyramid in the center, and we install hydraulic lifts underneath. Powered by water wheels. You put the offering on the altar, pull a lever, and the whole platform rises up like the gods are reaching down to accept it." Bjorn spread his hands. "Can you imagine what that looks like?"
Trygve set the parchment down carefully. "There's more?"
"Pilgrim quarters. Dormitories with proper hearths and sewage systems—concrete channels so disease doesn't spread when you've got thousands of people staying here. Underground vaults for treasures and the old runestones, sealed with bitumen so water can't get in. A healing house with hot springs, dedicated to Eir." Bjorn paused. "And before you ask, yes, I know how to pipe hot water through concrete aqueducts."
The overseer rubbed his face. "The materials. One to two million tons needed of iceland's ash. That's--"
"No, no. That's the total of materials needed for producing the concrete and bricks used in the temple complex. Roughly a third of that is the volcanic ash from Iceland, the rest is local aggregates like sand, gravel and crushed stone, plus clay for firing bricks and lime, which makes up the remaining materials needed."
"Five thousand tons of iron and bronze." Trygve wasn't arguing, just listing. "Gold leaf—you have here one to two tons. Amber and ivory, ten to twenty thousand pounds." He looked up. "The wood and stone you can get, yes. But the rest..."
Bjorn pulled the parchments back toward himself. The disappointment clear on his face.
He'd expected... what? Enthusiasm?
He would have preferred to tell Ragnar or Athelstan, maybe even Ubbe and Halfdan. But they weren't here, each with his own matters.
"May the gods bless this work," Trygve said quietly. "You'll need them."
Bjorn stared at the plans. 'There is nothing impossible to he who tries.' He believed it. No he lived by it.
"Right." He rolled the parchments up and set them aside. "What did you actually come here for? You said good news."
Trygve reached into his cloak without a word. His hand emerged holding something that caught the light and threw it back.
Bjorn's disappointment vanished.
The stone sat on the table between them, rough and dark on one side, gleaming silver on the other. Bjorn reached for it, then stopped himself. Looked at Trygve.
"One of my men found it three days ago," Trygve said. "It's exactly like you described."
Bjorn picked it up. The weight was right. The color was right. He closed his fist around it and squeezed.
The stone cracked. Then shattered.
Silver dust and small nuggets spilled across his palm and onto the table. Pure silver, unmistakable.
Trygve was watching him but didn't ask. Good man. Bjorn set the fragments down carefully, then brushed the dust into a small pile with his finger.
"Do you know what alluvial metal is?" he asked.
"No, my lord."
"It's metal you find in rivers. Washed down from upstream, deposited in the bed or on the banks." Bjorn picked up one of the larger nuggets. "Gold's the most common. Sometimes platinum, tin, copper. Diamonds too, though those aren't metal."
"But silver..." Bjorn turned the nugget over. "Silver's rare in alluvial deposits. Less dense than gold. Doesn't survive the journey as well, and doesn't concentrate in the sediment." He looked up at Trygve. "So when you find silver in a riverbed, it means one thing."
Understanding dawned on Trygve's face. "A source."
"A mine. Close to where this was found." Bjorn set the nugget down. "Where was it?"
"The Numedalslågen river valley. My man was checking the shallows for something else and saw it gleaming."
Bjorn laughed, a short bitter sound. He couldn't help it. "So close. All this time and it was right there."
"How large do you think the mine is?"
"No way to know until we dig." Bjorn looked at the silver scattered across his table. "Could be a single vein, could be enough to drown in it. Do you have men free to investigate?"
Trygve scratched his beard, thinking. "Not many. Some are watching the jarls like you asked. The others I sent to the Danes."
"The Danes? What's happening there?"
"Trouble between their two kings and the Franks. My sources say it's getting serious." Trygve paused. "I sent them before the seas started turning. With winter coming, they'll either make it back before the storms or we won't hear from them until spring."
Bjorn drummed his fingers on the table. "Well, whatever war they're brewing will freeze over soon enough. The silver won't. So we'll make this our priority."
"The wisest choice, my lord." Trygve stood, but Bjorn spoke before he could turn.
"You understand why I had to do it, don't you?"
Trygve stopped. They both knew what Bjorn meant, not the silver or the temple. The other thing. Of why Bjorn named another man the head of his spy intelligence network. Or so he showed to the world.
"A spymaster everyone knows is no true spymaster," Trygve said, "Merely a man with secrets."
"Spoken like a true spymaster. Your brother?" Bjorn gave him a knowing smile.
"He did. He's in the Danes' lands now." A faint smile.
Trygve bowed properly this time, not the shallow dip from before and left.
Bjorn sat alone with his plans and his silver. He picked up one of the nuggets and held it to the torch.
The metal gleamed.
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Bjorn sent out two teams before the sun was properly up. Each to meet with local guides—fishers who knew where the river pooled, hunters who'd walked every ridge, shepherds who'd seen their flocks graze along the highlands.
The first team would follow the Numedalslågen directly, checking the bends and shallows, anywhere the current slowed and sediment might gather.
The second would climb into the hills above, looking for exposed rock faces, old diggings, veins of ore catching the light.
He wanted that mine found before winter locked the land away.
It was early September now. His northern campaign had ended less than a month ago; a push that brought the remaining coastal kingdom in the North under his banner.
Only one inland holdout remained, the same minor king who refused him before. A king with thirty warriors and jarls commanding even less. Hardly worth the effort of marching on them anymore.
All he needed to do was support another influential figure to become the new king of that inland kingdom, and he would finally be the king of all Norway.
The harvest was mostly in, at least here in the south. Further north, in the mountains, they'd be cutting grain well into October. Another month, maybe six weeks, before the real cold came. Enough time to locate the mine, perhaps. But the actual digging? That would wait for spring.
Bjorn settled into his seat of power and tried to focus on the work at hand.
Athelstan sat at the big table, bent over a paper with that monk's concentration he never quite lost. Gyda moved between him and the other scribes, her voice low as she helped calculate harvest yields. The scratch of quills on vellum, the whisper of numbers being tallied—it should have been soothing.
Instead, Bjorn's mind wandered to the castle.
He wanted to add something. A tree, but not just any tree. Something ancient and gnarled, that looked like it had been there since the gods walked the earth.
Yggdrasil.
The psychological weight of it when warriors and visitors seeing that tree and understanding immediately that this place, this hall, was rooted in something older and deeper than themselves.
But where do you find a tree like that?
Only one person would know.
"Send word for the seer," Bjorn said to the guard by the door. Then he remembered the whispers that had reached him about the lawspeaker, that Bjorn had no respect for the elderly. "And send a carriage. He's too old to walk that far. Lest they say again I have no respect for the elder people."
The guard left. Bjorn tried to return to his own thoughts, but noise erupted from the sleeping quarters—a baby's wail, high and insistent, cutting through the quiet work.
He pushed back from his chair.
The sleeping area was toward the rear of the great hall, separated by heavy curtains. Inside, good mattresses lined the walls.
Lagertha stood near the center, holding Ivar against her shoulder, bouncing slightly in that universal motion mothers used. The baby wasn't having it. His face was red, mouth open, screaming like someone had stabbed him.
Siggy hovered nearby, hands half-raised, looking helpless.
"Let me try," Bjorn said.
Lagertha turned, relief clear on her face. She passed Ivar over. "I think he in pain, and i can't help him."
The baby was unsurprisingly light. Bjorn adjusted his grip, supporting the head, and looked down into that beautiful serpent eye.
Ivar's cries stuttered, then faded.
Within moments he was quiet, one tiny fist reaching up toward Bjorn's hair.
"He likes you and your silver hair," Siggy said. "That's why he always stops crying when you hold him."
"You think so?" Bjorn glanced at her, couldn't help smiling.
He wondered sometimes if Siggy had sent her daughter after Athelstan or if the girl had done it herself. Either way, the monk had taken the bait.
Not that Bjorn blamed him, Athelstan needed something human to hold onto after what happened with the thief.
That business still sat poorly with Bjorn.
He'd known about the theft almost immediately. One of Athelstan's scribes, some wretch who'd been caught stealing from the storehouse. Bjorn had waited, watching to see what his friend would do. Would he help the man escape? Forgive him? Make excuses?
Athelstan had done the right thing. Turned the thief in himself.
That mattered. Loyalty mattered. Athelstan was his friend, truly, but the reality was simple: the empire Bjorn was building had to come first. Before friendship, mercy and everything.
Ivar giggled, his small fingers tangling in Bjorn's silver hair.
"Want a song?" Bjorn asked the baby, already walking back toward his seat. "Is that what you need? Alright."
He settled into his chair with Ivar cradled against his chest, feeling the tiny heartbeat through the blankets. The words came easily, he'd written them himself after the battle of Kaupang, had the skalds sing it until every man, woman and child knew it by heart.
And who are you, the proud lords said,
that fire must answer your call.
Only a man, with a different hair,
that's all the truth we know.
They laughed at his small fleet of oars,
and so he spoke, and so he spoke, to the Æsir of old,
and the sea began to burn,
and their legends were told.
So sing it low on stormy nights,
when the tide is black and cold:
"The sea will burn, the sea will burn,
if Bjorn's name is told."
And who are you, the proud lords said,
that fire must answer your call.
Only a man, with a different hair,
and he will leave you bare.
The memory came back as he finished the song. Fire spreading across the water, enemy ships catching like kindling, men screaming as they burned or drowned.
He'd won that day by doing something no one expected, and the song made sure no one would forget it.
Ivar's breathing had evened out, his face slack with sleep.
He sat there for a moment, looking down at the sleeping child.
"You like my music, don't you?" Bjorn murmured.
Ivar didn't answer, just slept on, his small chest rising and falling.
From across the hall, Athelstan glanced over, then quickly returned to his work. Gyda smiled but said nothing. The scribes kept scratching away at their parchments.
Bjorn leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, just for a moment. The baby's weight was warm against him.
So much to do. Always so much to do.
But right now, for just a few minutes, he could sit here holding his brother and let the world wait.
After a long time, the tap of a cane on wood pulled him back.
Bjorn opened his eyes. He had heard the door and the footsteps. Then the seer was there—dark robes pooling on the floor, that ruined face tilted as if seeing things beyond the hall's walls.
"Athelstan," Bjorn said, not looking away from the seer. "Take the scribes to the drinking hall. Tell the overseer the drinks are on me."
He heard movement behind him, the scrape of benches, footsteps passing. Athelstan's shadow crossed his peripheral vision but Bjorn kept his eyes on the seer. The old man hadn't moved or spoken. He just stood there with both hands on his cane, waiting.
"Gyda."
A pause. He could feel her still there, wanting to stay, to listen.
"Go."
She made a small sound; frustration, maybe disappointment, then her footsteps retreated toward the sleeping quarters. The curtain rustled as she slipped through to where Lagertha and Siggy were.
The hall felt larger now, emptier. Just Bjorn in his chair with Ivar sleeping against his chest, and the seer standing in front of him.
"It's been a long time since we spoke, old man" Bjorn said, his voice low.
The seer's mouth moved. "Mmm. Not since the day Uppsala turned to ash."
'Since I burned it,' Bjorn thought.
The Seer's blackened lips curled into a smile, as if he'd heard the thought screaming in Bjorn's mind. "Whatever hand held the torch to the house of the gods," the old man hissed, "it was only the breath that fanned a flame the All-Father had already lit. The fire belonged to Odin."
Bjorn let out a short scoff.
"So, Tell me, Victorious one," the Seer hissed. "What is it you wish to know?"