To understand the Viking Age, one must understand the mud.
In the 11th century, mud was not just wet dirt; it was the great equalizer. It coated the boots of Kings and thralls alike.
It carried the feces of pigs, the rot of discarded food, and the invisible, microscopic eggs of intestinal parasites that stunted the growth of an entire continent.
Bilal despised the mud. And so, he eradicated it.
With the volcanic ash secured and the Roman cement curing perfectly, Bilal ordered the complete paving of Axiomra's inner citadel.
Massive, flat stone slabs were laid down over the earth, sealing the filth away forever. Underneath, the heat from the forge and the bakeries vented through subterranean channels.
When the first winter snow fell in late 1017 AD, the flakes hissed and melted the moment they touched the central plaza.
Axiomra became a city of clean, warm stone.
But Bilal's obsession with selective engineering did not stop at architecture. He stood by the wooden fences of the outer pastures, watching the morning mist roll off the backs of his cattle.
For seventeen years, he had applied the brutal logic of selective genetics. He kept only the most massive, fast-growing bulls and castrated the rest.
He fed them turnips and oats through the freezing winters while the cattle of rival Jarls starved into walking skeletons.
The result was a herd of "Super Cows"—behemoths that produced double the milk and triple the beef of normal Scandinavian livestock. They were a biological marvel.
But as he watched one of the milkmaids, a young orphan named Elin, stroking the udder of a massive brown cow, his sharp eyes caught something troubling.
Elin's hands were covered in strange, weeping sores.
Bilal leaped over the wooden fence, his 105kg frame landing with a heavy thud. He grabbed the terrified girl's hands, inspecting the blisters.
He checked the cow's udder. It was covered in the exact same weeping pocks.
Cowpox.
A cold sweat broke out across Bilal's back. In 2026, he had read the history books.
He knew a terrifying truth that modern archaeologists had only recently discovered: the Variola virus—Smallpox—was already ravaging Viking Age Scandinavia.
It was a horrific, agonizing killer that wiped out thirty percent of its victims and left the survivors covered in disfiguring scars. The "Red Death" was the true terror of the North.
But Bilal also knew the cheat code. He remembered the name Edward Jenner, the 18th-century doctor who realized that milkmaids who caught the mild Cowpox virus never caught the deadly Smallpox. Nature had provided a biological shield.
"Elin," Bilal said, his voice urgent but calm. "Does it hurt?"
"Only a little, Jarl," she whispered, terrified she had angered him. "A small fever yesterday. It is passing."
Bilal let out a breath of pure relief. The vaccine.
He immediately called for his wife, Astrid, and his daughter, Runa. He ordered the entire city to assemble in the warm stone courtyard.
He sterilized a thin, razor-sharp steel scalpel in boiling water.
When the people gathered, Bilal stood before them. He didn't explain antibodies or T-cells; they wouldn't understand. He spoke their language.
"The Red Death walks the forests of Norway," Bilal's voice echoed off the stone walls. "It steals the breath of children and scars the faces of warriors. But today, we lock the gates against it."
He took the sterilized blade. He dipped the tip into the fluid of the cowpox blister on the animal.
Then, without flinching, he sliced a shallow, one-inch scratch into his own left shoulder, rubbing the fluid into his blood.
The crowd gasped.
"I take the sickness of the beast to forge a shield inside my blood!" Bilal declared. He handed the blade to Astrid. "Do it."
Astrid did not hesitate. She sterilized the blade in the boiling water and scratched her own arm. Runa was next. Then Torik.
Over the next two days, Bilal systematically inoculated all one hundred orphans and his seventy elite soldiers.
For three days, the city suffered a mild fever. And then, it passed. They were left with a small, circular scar on their shoulders.
It was the mark of the Giant. Unbeknownst to them, Bilal had just rendered his entire civilization biologically invincible to the greatest mass murderer in human history.