Chapter 100: Homecoming

Landing in Iceland during the winter of 1018, Thorfinn sets foot home for the first time since fleeing at six. Einar grumbles about the biting cold and stunted daylight of a land seemingly unfit for crops, and Leif explains that the short days belong to winter, that only patches of the island can raise wheat, and that villages like Thorfinn's turned to shared fishing where grazing ground ran thin. Thorfinn, caught off guard by this, admits he was too young to grasp such things when he lived there. Trying to tally the years since he left, he is jolted to realize he no longer knows his own age, and as the settlement comes into view he grows anxious about what face to show his mother and sister.

The men who meet the boat fail to place Thorfinn and doubt Ylva ever had a brother. Ylva herself, mid-haggle with a Norwegian trader, kicks away his attempt at an embrace and insists her brother died as a small boy, dismissing Leif's account of meeting a grown Thorfinn in York as a comforting lie he invented for her and Helga. Downcast, Thorfinn is urged to see his mother; Bug-Eyes, envious of a friend who still has a living parent, jokes about playing the good son himself. When the group reaches Helga, she walks straight past Bug-Eyes' clowning, takes Thorfinn's face in her hands, and weeps that he carries the very eyes of Thors. He grips her hands and apologizes through tears for being a wretched son, and she welcomes him home while the others weep at the sight.

Later Ari rushes in overjoyed and reunites with the grown Thorfinn, and Helga insists that Einar, as Thorfinn's brother, is now her son and belongs under her roof. Ylva returns still certain of a con, throttling and striking Thorfinn while demanding to know why he stayed away if he was alive, and whether he grasps how deeply their mother mourned him. The chapter caps Volume 14 and launches the series' third arc, the Eastern Expedition. It released December 25, 2013, across twenty-eight pages, carries the Japanese title Kikyo, and closes with supplemental pages including a map of Thorfinn's travels.