Episode 27: Snake

Fox and Badger take a drunken, self-pitying Olmar drinking, and he needles them for serving his father cheaply and never seeming to fight. When he demands they draw their swords, the two flip the table, pin him, and disarm him with ease. Olmar spirals, screaming that he wants to die since he is a nobody, and Fox reframes it: to become a real man, Olmar simply needs a rite of passage, the killing of another person, which will teach him how fragile a body is. Fox already has the perfect victim in mind, someone living right there on the farm.

At dawn Einar hears Thorfinn screaming from a nightmare he cannot remember. Washing at the well, the pair meet Arnheid, who compliments Einar's face and reveals she is not Ketil's daughter but another slave serving as his personal attendant. Fox and Badger arrive, learn the newcomers' situation, and order Thorfinn and Einar to follow. Thorfinn explains the swordsmen are the farm's resident defensive force, its bodyguards.

They are brought before Olmar, who is handed a blade and told to make a clean cut. Einar, enraged, is told their lives belong to their owner to dispose of as he pleases. Olmar hesitates, protesting that the slaves are his father's property and killing them would incur a debt, and Fox mocks him for fearing his father. Einar tackles Olmar and shouts for Thorfinn to run and fetch Ketil, but guards level swords at Thorfinn to keep him still. Thorfinn coldly offers himself to be cut down, reasoning they need only one death and Einar can return to work.

Fox is stunned and offended, saying such talk cheapens the fear of death they trade in. He slices Thorfinn's chest and demands he beg, but Thorfinn does not flinch, asking why anyone should fear dying when nothing good has ever come of his own life. Fox cuts part of his left ear and threatens his eye next. At that moment Snake, the guards' captain, returns from visiting the old man Sverkel, sees Thorfinn's blank composure, and orders Fox to stop. Frozen in fear, Fox is summoned over and punched in the face as Snake turns to Badger for an explanation.

Fox pushes the humiliated Olmar toward a first kill and selects Thorfinn and Einar as the victims. Einar fights back while Thorfinn passively offers his own life, refusing to show fear as Fox mutilates him and takes part of his ear. Arnheid is properly introduced as a fellow slave and Ketil's attendant. The guards' feared leader, Snake, arrives in time to halt the torture and discipline Fox.

Snake aired on January 24, 2023, as the third episode of Season 2, adapting parts of chapters 57 through 59. Youji Satou served as both episode director and storyboard artist. The installment introduces Snake and the old farmer Sverkel, and deepens Thorfinn's numbed, death-indifferent state.