Storm

Arnheid reaches the guests' lodgings just as Snake leaves in irritation, and a reluctant guard lets her tend Gardar's wounds after Snake departs to see the mistress. Bound and bleeding, Gardar begs her to free him so they can go home, swearing he was wrong and will never again abandon her and Hjalti. Arnheid weeps and apologizes, confusing him since he feels he should be the one seeking pardon. When rain drives the other men inside and the last guard tells her to go, Gardar lunges and tears out the man's throat with his teeth, then urges her to take his knife and cut him loose. As she freezes, the others rush out to find their comrade dead and Gardar already gone.

Returning to the corpses, Snake curses his men for lowering their guard and notes grease on a blade that shows they did wound the fugitive before the rain washed the blood away. Reasoning that an injured man without a horse cannot be far, he leads a search. At daybreak Thorfinn and Einar, both sleepless, talk over Thorfinn's idea of ending war and slavery. Thorfinn explains that war breeds slaves from the defeated, so fewer wars would mean fewer slaves, yet Norse culture prizes battle and teaches boys to fight from childhood. Rather than shoulder more dead, he wants at minimum to found one village where swords are unnecessary. Einar counters that vikings will always come and force them to fight, suggesting they would need to flee to the ends of the earth. Thorfinn then recalls a distant land far west beyond the sea, unknown to slave traders, that the sailor Leif once described to him as a child, though he admits its exact location is lost and the journey would be hard. Moments later Fox and other men descend to ransack their shed, and Thorfinn understands that Gardar has broken free.

Arnheid reaches the captive Gardar for an emotional reunion and confession. Gardar kills his guard by biting through his throat and escapes the lodge, wounded, into the rain. Snake resumes the manhunt after finding his slain men. Thorfinn lays out his philosophy that reducing war would reduce slavery and voices his aspiration to build a peaceful village, first recalling the far western land beyond the sea that Leif told him about, planting the seed of Vinland.

Airing April 18, 2023, this is the thirty-ninth episode overall and the fifteenth of the second season under MAPPA. It adapts chapters 82 and 83 with the opening of chapter 84. Tokio Igarashi directed, with storyboards by Shingo Uchida. The title captures both the literal downpour cloaking Gardar's escape and the mounting turmoil about to break over the farm.