Episode 44: Pain

The Jomsvikings dismantle Ketil's line without breaking stride. When a blade nearly finishes the maimed Badger, Snake intervenes and calls the retreat, enraging Ketil, who insists the debts stay unpaid; his own men no longer believe he will live to enforce anything. In the chaos Thorgil bursts from the surf and lunges at Canute, whose parry very nearly shatters under the blow. The ambush unravels only when Wulf hurls his sword through Thorgil's wrist and grapples him down, absorbing a gouged-out eye without flinching until the assassin is driven back into the sea.

Arnheid stirs awake to the sound of battle, mistaking it for the raid that once destroyed her village. Told she is free now and welcome to start over, she gently declines, saying her husband and children are already waiting for her elsewhere. She thanks Einar and Thorfinn, then stops breathing. Thorfinn works to revive her while Einar pours out a desperate confession of love, but the two are finally forced to let her go.

Cradling Arnheid's head, Thorfinn speaks to her of Vinland, a distant country free of suffering where she might have built something peaceful. When Snake arrives carrying the still-living Ketil, Einar's grief flares into murderous rage, and Thorfinn is forced to strike him back to his senses, warning that killing the landowner will never quiet the fire inside him. Having once walked that same ruinous road himself, he refuses to watch his friend follow it.

After they bury her, Thorfinn resolves to confront Canute directly, hoping to end the bloodshed before more die. Leif would rather simply sail home to Iceland, yet he agrees to keep the ship ready, and Thorfinn now takes pride in the ancestors who once fled war to settle that island, a heritage he had long dismissed as cowardly.

Broadcast May 23, 2023, this is the forty-fourth overall episode and the twentieth of the season, animated by MAPPA under episode director Kouki Aoshima with Ikurou Morimoto on storyboard. It draws from chapters 92 and 93 plus an anime-original scene. Notably, the manga has Leif depart and Thorfinn resolve to turn back only after reaching the boat, whereas the adaptation keeps Leif present and stages an original graveside conversation between the two instead.