The tournament consisted of three events. The first event was the joust, where men on horses hit each other with wooden poles. The second event was the archery contest. The third event was the ground melee, where men hit each other with iron swords until one man gave up.

Ragnar looked to his left.

"How is the list looking, Louis?" Ragnar asked over the loud cheering of the crowd.

Louis sighed heavily. He crossed out another name on his paper. "These knights are completely stupid. I just watched Sir Thomas of Kent charge his horse directly into a mud puddle because he refused to change his straight-line trajectory. He fell off his horse and broke his arm. I have crossed out one hundred and forty names already."

Ragnar chuckled. "Do not worry, we only need to find one or two smart men today to make this trip worth our time."

The man in the yellow tunic walked to the center of the grass field. He blew his brass horn.

"The jousting is finished!" the man shouted loudly. "We will now begin the archery contest! All fifty longbowmen, step up to the white line!"

Fifty men walked onto the grass. They were not wealthy nobles. Most of them were commoners or minor land owners.

The targets were wooden circles placed exactly one hundred yards away.

The men fired their arrows. Forty-nine of the longbowmen missed the exact center of the wooden targets.

The wind was blowing at exactly twelve miles per hour from the east, which pushed their arrows to the left. Most of the men were just guessing where to aim.

But then, one young man stepped up to the white line.

The young man was about twenty years old. He was tall and skinny.

He pulled a small piece of cloth from his pocket and tied it to the top of his wooden bow. He watched how the cloth blew in the wind.

Then, he looked at the wooden target. He took a deep breath, raised his bow, and tilted it exactly three degrees to the right to compensate for the wind resistance.

He let the arrow go. It flew through the air and hit the exact dead center of the wooden target.

The crowd cheered. The young man quickly pulled a second arrow, adjusted his angle by one millimeter because the wind had slowed down slightly, and fired again.

Dead center. He fired a third time. Dead center.

Louis the Stammerer stood up from his bench. "Ragnar... Did you see that?"

"I saw it." Ragnar said, a large smile spreading across his face. "Write his name down, Louis."

The man in the yellow tunic blew the brass horn again. "The archery is finished! We will now begin the final event! The ground melee! The winner of this fight will be declared the champion of the tournament!"

The remaining knights who had not broken their bones in the jousting walked onto the field holding iron swords and wooden shields.

To everyone’s surprise, the skinny young man with the longbow also walked onto the field.

He left his bow behind and picked up a simple wooden staff. It was just a thick stick of wood, exactly six feet long...

It was completely ridiculous for a skinny man with a wooden stick to fight huge knights covered in steel plates.

A massive knight named Sir William charged directly at the skinny young man. He swung a heavy iron sword aimed right at the young man’s head.

As the heavy knight swung, his center of gravity shifted entirely to his right foot.

The young man stepped to the side at the last second. He used his wooden staff as a lever. He shoved the wooden pole directly between Sir William’s legs and applied fifty pounds of force to the back of the knight’s knee.

Because Sir William was moving too fast and wearing heavy steel, he could not stop his own momentum. The knight tripped over the wooden staff and crashed face-first into the dirt.

The young man quickly pressed the tip of his wooden staff against the back of Sir William’s neck.

Sir William hit the ground with his hand, signaling that he surrendered.

The crowd erupted into massive cheering. The skinny young man had just defeated the biggest knight on the field in exactly four seconds without using a sharp weapon!

Over the next twenty minutes, the young man repeated this exact process.

Finally, the skinny young man was the only person left standing on the grass field.

"Hakon," Ragnar commanded. "Go down to the field and bring that young man to this stand immediately."

The young man stepped onto the stand. He bowed deeply before Ragnar. He was sweating, and his brown linen tunic was covered in dirt.

"What is your name?" Ragnar asked directly, holding Magnus on his lap.

"My name is Cedric, Your Majesty,"

Cedric looked up. "I am the third son of Baron Edgar, Your Majesty."

"Cedric," Ragnar declared. "You have won the one thousand silver coins. But more importantly, you have won the job. Starting today, you are the Junior Minister of Logistics for the Iron Kingdom!"

Cedric’s eyes widened. He fell to his knees on the floor. "Thank you, Your Majesty. I swear I will not fail you."

Magnus clapped his hands and giggled at the man kneeling on the floor.

...

Three hours later, within the halls of Wessex Palace.

Louis the Stammerer was packing twenty paper blueprints into his leather bag. Cedric, the newly appointed Junior Minister of Logistics, was writing numbers in a bound paper ledger using a piece of black charcoal.

Ragnar looked at his son, and then he looked at the paper blueprints and the ledger.

"We are not going back to City Titan today~" Ragnar mused. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

Louis stopped packing his leather bag. "What do you mean?"

"The production schedule can wait..." Ragnar replied. "I have to go hunt for the first time!"

Cedric dropped his piece of black charcoal on the floor. "Hunt for the first time, Your Majesty? You are a Viking King. I assumed you spent your entire youth hunting wild animals in the snowy forests of the North."

"True enough," Ragnar explained, "But I have not hunted since I became the Iron King."