Chapter 11: Cage

The timber and stone shoved down by Askeladd's raiders, including support beams torn from the village houses, crash onto Thors's ship, Leif's knarr and the water around them. Thors shields Thorfinn, and though no one is hurt and the boats hold, the wreckage piles up to block the inlet's exit and pen the party in. Thors orders everyone to cover their heads with their shields and watch for arrows, warning that the real snare lies deeper inside the inlet and that the attackers are already coming.

Two longships bring Askeladd's men nearer. When Magni wonders whether surrender might spare them, Ari counters that they face a kill-or-be-killed fight with no safe way out, only death or a slaver's chains, yet Thors cuts off the boy's talk of slaughter and warns that these are hardened veterans far beyond him. Drawing his own blade, Thors hands his short sword to Thorfinn with the strict order to use it only in true necessity, purely to guard himself. Aboard one ship Bjorn counts the party at twelve men and a single child, gnaws a mushroom to his comrades' alarm, and calls across to Askeladd for leave to test Thors rather than swarm the target at once. Askeladd agrees, remarking that Thors seems to have the same idea; Thors then leaps aboard Bjorn's ship, stunning both crews, and is set upon by five men whom he subdues barehanded without wounding a single one.

Released July 20, 2005, the twenty-page chapter continues the sequence in Volume 2 and feeds the third anime episode. Its Japanese title reads Ori. The featured cast spans Leif, Ari, Thors, Thorfinn, Magni, Askeladd, Bjorn and others of the raiding crew.