The Road Home

Thorfinn narrowly evades Snake's strikes and marvels that no one has ever been faster, while Snake is equally stunned that an unarmed slave keeps slipping his blade. Thorfinn lands a punch but takes a shallow cut across the face, and each man wonders how the other came to this farm, one a guard, one a slave. A sudden kick shifts Thorfinn aside and leaves the cart with Gardar exposed behind Snake. Arnheid pleads for his life and Sverkel offers to sell his farm in recompense, but Snake refuses, explaining that his disgraced men, forced to hide even their real names, still matter, and that a life can only be paid with a life. When neither Thorfinn nor Arnheid will claim Gardar is worth more than five men, Snake turns and stabs him.

Warning that avenging Gardar will bring punishment, Snake is suddenly seized by the fugitive, who rises from the cart and chokes him even as Snake drives his blade into Gardar's leg. Arnheid's voice reaches Gardar, telling him it is enough and time to go home, and he releases the unconscious Snake. Learning his son Hjalti is with his brother in Birka, Gardar borrows the cart from Sverkel, thanks him by name, and sets off with Arnheid despite his mortal wound. On the road he grows cold and slips through memories, his son's birth and first steps, the diapers he changed, the beatings he suffered as a slave. He asks the boy's age, guessing eight or nine, and Arnheid gently corrects him to six, drawing his sorrow that he missed the sweetest years. Imagining Hjalti as a mischief-maker who lights horses' tails on fire like he once did, and vowing to forbid any viking adventure, Gardar rests his head on Arnheid's lap. In a final vision he returns home, embraces his six-year-old son, and with his last breath says he is home. Arnheid cradles his body, welcoming him back through tears as Snake's men approach.

Thorfinn fights Snake barehanded and cannot land a decisive blow before Snake stabs the captured Gardar. Gardar briefly revives to nearly strangle Snake before Arnheid calms him. Mortally wounded, Gardar leaves with Arnheid on Sverkel's cart, reliving memories of his son Hjalti. He dies during the journey, believing in a final vision that he has returned home to his family, and Arnheid holds his body as pursuers close in.

Broadcast May 2, 2023, this is the forty-first episode overall and the seventeenth of the second season under MAPPA. It adapts chapter 86 along with original material. Shingo Uchida and Yoho Ishikawa handled episode direction, with storyboards by Atsushi Kobayashi. The title refers to Gardar's final journey, a return home realized only in the dream that carries him to his death.