Episode 22: Lone Wolf

Thorfinn squares off against Askeladd but senses something off in his opponent. Watching alongside Canute, Thorkell wagers Askeladd will win on the strength of his aura, and grows testy when Canute reasons that a man who beat Thorkell should logically be the strongest of the three. Askeladd goads Thorfinn into attacking, catches his hands with ease, and beats him down while noting that the boy never grasps why every clash ends this way. Thorkell recognizes it is no true duel; Askeladd reads Thorfinn's habits completely. Once Thorfinn passes out, Canute calls the match and tells him to try again only after his arm heals.

Askeladd explains the boy's flaw: he thinks clearly while calm, but the moment his temper flares his eyes betray his target and his mind shuts off. He despises this in all Norse fighters, who shout and swing without discipline or grace. The first man Askeladd ever killed, he reveals, was his own father, and he offers to teach Thorfinn how to kill a man you hate.

His mother was a slave, and from his earliest memory Askeladd toiled in the forge and the stables, forever smeared with ash, coal, and dung, which earned him the name meaning covered in ash. His father Olaf, born to a powerful Jutland family, loved women, drink, and killing. Askeladd's mother, once a favored slave, was treated like an animal after she fell ill; she filled his head with tales of Artorius, an ancestral hero she believed would return from a paradise across the sea to free her. When Askeladd was eleven, her mind broke, and she wandered out and mistook Olaf for that hero. As Olaf drew his sword, the boy seized a blade for the first time and struck, the weapon feeling natural in his grip. Olaf overpowered him but recognized his own son and, seeing promise, let him live in the hall.

Askeladd bided his time, training hard, staying respectful, winning acceptance as Olaf's son over two years, then killed him in his sleep. He used a blade belonging to an elder half-brother Olaf disliked, so the family hanged that brother for the murder while Askeladd inherited the estate. A decade on, Thorfinn still cannot kill him, which Askeladd calls proof of the boy's foolishness. When Thorfinn again vows to end him, Askeladd walks off, likening him to a dog chasing scraps, and Thorfinn lacks the strength to follow. Carrying Bjorn's body to bury it, Askeladd tells Canute that the prince is the one truly suited to be king.

Thorfinn loses another lopsided fight, his temper making him readable to Askeladd. Askeladd delivers his full backstory: raised as the son of a slave mother, driven to kill his father Olaf after two years of feigned loyalty, and framing an elder half-brother for the deed. He tells Thorfinn their duels were never real contests. Afterward, Askeladd affirms to Canute that the prince, not himself, is the rightful candidate for kingship.

Lone Wolf premiered on December 15, 2019, adapting chapters 46 and 47. Yasuo Ejima directed the episode from Tetsuo Ichimura's storyboard, with scripts by Hiroshi Seko and Kenta Ihara. The installment marks the first full look at Olaf and Askeladd's mother Lydia. Dark Crow opens and Drown closes the episode.