Episode 46: The King of Rebellion

Thorfinn begins taking Drott's punches, and the watching soldiers soon grow restless as the champion barely seems to land anything. Wulf recognizes the trick: the young man rolls his neck and hips at the moment of impact to bleed off the force. Snake and Olmar arrive to surrender and try to halt the spectacle, but their shout distracts Thorfinn, and the thirty-second blow finally strikes clean and hurls him back. Rising anyway, he tells Snake that swords answered swords the instant this war began, and that no one truly exhausted the path of words. He goads Drott to hit faster, endures all one hundred strikes, and leaves the exhausted guard kneeling in awe and begging Wulf to grant him his audience.

Asked why he never fought back when beating Drott would have proven his old rank, Thorfinn calls the question absurd: he came to negotiate peace and holds no hatred for men he has only just met. He insists the whole quarrel could have been settled over a board game rather than blood, declaring flatly that he has no enemies. Wulf, half amused and half impressed, clears a path to the king.

Brought before Canute, Thorfinn apologizes for the scar he once left on the royal face, and Wulf realizes he is speaking to Thorfinn Karlsefni, the warrior once evenly matched against Thorkell. Thorfinn asks the king to withdraw from the farm, but Canute refuses, blaming Ketil for a fight already paid for in over a hundred lives.

Pressed on whether he still dreams of an earthly paradise, Canute stretches his hand toward the water and commands the waves to still. Nothing obeys. He explains that only God can halt the tide, and that building heaven on earth is therefore an act of rebellion against God himself. He means to gather and rule all Vikings, the very authors of the world's cruelty, and marshal humanity's full strength against the divine order. When Einar rages that Canute simply murders the useless and spares the useful, the king accepts the hatred without apology, then asks whether Thorfinn intends to kill him, since nothing short of that will make him stop.

Airing June 6, 2023, this is the forty-sixth overall episode and the twenty-second of the season, produced by MAPPA. Youji Satou directed with Shingo Uchida on storyboard, adapting chapters 96 and 97. The installment centers almost entirely on the beating Thorfinn endures and his subsequent debate with the king.