Episode 2: Sword

In November of 1002, English soldiers exploit a Viking bathing custom to storm a settlement in Northumbria, cutting down the unarmed raiders and putting the whole village to the torch on royal command. The savagery of that opening frames a far calmer scene in Iceland, where children drill with wooden swords while Thorfinn and Faxi lie sprawled as make-believe corpses. Thorfinn grumbles that he is always slain first and wonders aloud whether Valhalla might admit his mother and sister, drawing a laugh from the returning trader Leif Ericson.

Leif reveals he departs the next day for Norway to swap furs for wine, and before leaving he warns that a warship is bearing down on the island. Thorfinn carries the news to Thors, who is fumbling through a lesson in metalwork. At the docks, white-clad warriors demand an audience with Thors the Troll, and when he steps forward the entire company bows. Their leader Floki, an old comrade from the Norway campaign, requests leave to come ashore.

Inside Thors' home, watched by wide-eyed children, Floki lays out his errand. The English slaughter of Danes in the Danelaw and the killing of Sweyn's sister, Princess Gunhilde, have handed the Danish king a pretext for invasion, and Chief Sigvaldi has summoned the entire Jomsviking fleet back to Jomsborg for a spring campaign. No deserter is exempt. By anchoring a warship off the village, Floki makes plain that refusal would doom the settlement, and Thors quietly grasps how little choice remains to him.

The village boys treat the recruitment as a thrilling adventure, cheering the coming war as Floki offers Thors his own ship and invites the bravest to sail. Only Thors, Thorfinn, and Leif stand apart from the celebration. Alone with Helga and Leif, Thors confesses that he once made his living by killing, grew sick of it, and faked his own death to escape, and that facing his past is now the only way to spare his neighbors.

The domestic strain sharpens when Thorfinn savagely beats two boys during a sparring match and later ransacks the storeroom for a real blade. He uncovers Thors' old Jomsviking chest and seizes the dagger inside, only for his father to grip the naked edge until his own hand bleeds. Thors insists the child has no enemies and no one he is meant to harm, a plea Thorfinn rejects before fleeing into the night. The moment supplies the episode with its title and its quiet thesis on violence.

The closing scene shifts to Streymoy in the Faroe Islands, where drunken Vikings hurl axes at a bound Christian monk for sport. There Floki completes a separate bargain: for one hundred coins plus the captured vessel and its cargo, Askeladd's band will ambush and murder Thors once he sails into their waters, turning the reunion into a death sentence.