Wood cracked against wood somewhere to Erik’s left, hollow and sharp enough that his hands flinched before his mind placed the sound as practice, not violence.
He stood at the edge of the packed dirt and made himself watch men trading blows with blunted weapons, a rack of shields leaning against the longhouse wall, round, painted, dented.
The kind of thing that stopped an axe or didn’t.
Ragnar had sent him here.
No explanation.
Just a hand on Erik’s shoulder and a nod toward the yard.
The first test.
A young man separated from the others and walked toward Erik.
Mid-twenties.
Loose gait.
Scarred knuckles.
He carried a shield like it weighed nothing.
“You’re the builder.” Not a question.
“Erik.”
“Aldric.” He tilted his head toward the shields.
“Ragnar says you need to learn how not to die.”
Erik’s throat was dry.
“That’s the idea.”
Aldric grinned.
Easy.
The first real smile anyone in Kattegat had aimed at him.
“Good. Grab a shield.”
Erik picked one.
Heavier than it looked.
The grip was worn smooth by other hands, and the wood was split along one edge repaired, still functional.
He slid his arm through the leather straps.
The weight pulled at his shoulder.
Aldric watched.
“You’ve never held one.”
“No.”
“Honest.” Aldric picked up a blunted practice sword.
“I like that.”
He showed Erik the stance.
Feet shoulder-width.
Knees bent.
Shield up, angled.
“The shield isn’t armor. It’s a wall. You’re part of the wall. If you break, the man beside you dies.”
Erik copied the stance.
His legs shook.
“Good enough.” Aldric stepped back.
“Block this.”
He swung.
Erik tried to raise the shield.
Too slow.
The practice sword cracked against the rim and jarred his whole arm.
The shield twisted.
Erik stumbled.
Aldric lowered the sword.
“Again.”
Erik reset.
Aldric swung.
Erik blocked late.
The impact rang up his forearm.
“Again.”
Third swing.
Erik’s shield was half an inch too low.
The sword clipped the top edge.
Fourth swing.
Erik’s feet were wrong.
He took the hit square and the shield slammed into his own chest.
He stopped.
Didn’t laugh.
Walked over and adjusted Erik’s grip without a word two fingers higher, thumb hooked through the strap and stepped back.
“Now you know what wrong feels like. Try it right.”
Fifth swing.
Erik blocked it.
Barely.
Aldric nodded.
“Better.”
They drilled.
Aldric called the angle high, low, center and Erik tried to meet it.
Most of the time he failed.
Aldric didn’t comment on the failures.
He commented on the attempts.
“Feet.”
“Angle.”
“Faster.”
Erik’s arms burned.
His shoulder was going numb.
Sweat ran into his eyes.
The practice yard tilted, and for a second he was back under the scaffold the weight crushing down, the rebar through his spine, twelve seconds pinned.
He blinked.
The yard snapped back.
Aldric was watching.
“You good?”
Erik’s hands were shaking.
He tightened his grip on the shield.
“Again.”
The grin came back.
“You don’t quit. I like that too.”
They kept going.
Somewhere behind Erik, a boy was watching.
He could feel the eyes on his back the particular weight of being measured and found wanting.
Erik didn’t turn.
He kept his focus on Aldric’s sword.
Block.
Fail.
Reset.
Block.
Fail.
Reset.
Block.
Hold.
Aldric stepped back.
“Good. You held that one.”
Erik’s legs were shaking now.
He leaned against the practice post, breathing hard, and for a long moment the only sound was his own ragged inhale and the distant clang of someone else’s drill carrying across the yard like a bell struck underwater.
The shield hung from his arm like it had fused to the bone.
Aldric crouched in front of him.
“You’re strong enough. Your body just doesn’t know what to do yet.”
“How long does it take?”
“To not die in a shield wall?” Aldric shrugged.
“Depends. Some men never learn. They freeze, or they run, or they do something stupid and get the man beside them killed.”
Erik looked at the shield.
The wood was old.
Dozens of men had held it before him.
Some of them were probably dead.
“What about you?” Erik asked.
“I learned fast.” Aldric’s grin slipped.
Just for a second.
“Had to. My brother didn’t.”
Erik didn’t ask.
The silence said enough.
Aldric stood.
“One more. Then we’re done.”
Erik pushed off the post.
His legs didn’t want to hold him.
He raised the shield anyway.
Aldric swung hard.
Erik met it.
The impact drove him back a step, but the block held.
His arm screamed.
He didn’t lower the shield.
Aldric lowered the sword.
Erik let the shield drop.
His arm felt like it was on fire.
Aldric clapped him on the shoulder.
“Same time tomorrow.”
“You’re not done with me?”
“You said ‘again.'” Aldric’s grin was back.
Full force.
“That means you’re worth my time.”
Erik nodded.
He didn’t trust his voice.
He walked back toward the other warriors.
Erik stayed by the post, catching his breath.
His hands were still shaking.
The scaffold-stillness was trying to creep in that twelve-second freeze where his body remembered what it felt like to be crushed.
He counted to ten.
The stillness passed.
When he looked up, the boy was gone.
Bjorn.
Ragnar’s son.
The one who’d stared at Erik’s eyes in the longhouse and decided something was wrong.
Erik scanned the yard.
No sign of him.
He’d left before the session ended.
The boy had been waiting for Erik to break.
To quit.
To prove that whatever Bjorn had seen in Erik’s face was weakness, not otherness.
Erik hadn’t broken.
That wouldn’t satisfy the boy.
It would make him look harder.
Erik picked up the shield and walked it back to the rack.
His arm was numb from shoulder to wrist.
He could still feel the impact of every swing Aldric had thrown not the pain, exactly, but the ghost of it, stamped into his muscles the same as the drowned thrall’s face was burned behind his eyes, indelible, everything indelible now.
He wondered if the body held its bruises the same way the mind held its dead.
If muscle memory was just another kind of scar.
Aldric was laughing with the other warriors.
One of them said something Erik couldn’t hear, and he shook his head, still grinning.
He glanced back at Erik.
A nod.
Small.
Acknowledging.
Erik lifted his chin.
A small thing, returned.
The first friendship in Kattegat.
He hadn’t expected it to feel like this like being seen as a man instead of a phenomenon.
Like being worth someone’s time.
He walked back to the longhouse.
His legs were steadier now.
The shield-weight was gone, but he could still feel the ghost of it on his arm strap gouging his forearm, rim pressing hard against his knuckles.
Tomorrow he’d do it again.
And the day after that.
Until the body learned what the mind couldn’t teach it how to stand in a wall of men and not break when the axes came.
Inside the longhouse, Lagertha was sharpening a blade.
She looked up as Erik passed.
Her eyes tracked him the same assessing look she’d given him at the dock, at the Seer’s hut, every time she’d decided he was worth watching.
She didn’t speak.
Erik sat down in his corner.
Put his back to the wall.
His arm throbbed.
The muscles were going to be useless tomorrow.
Somewhere in the longhouse, a child laughed.
Not Bjorn.
Someone younger.
Erik closed his eyes.
The practice yard was still there behind his eyelids Aldric’s grin, the crack of wood on wood, the boy’s eyes on his back.
He’d held the shield.
Tomorrow, he’d hold it longer.