Chapter 15: A True Warrior

Having bested his opponent in single combat, Thors keeps his blade fixed on the beaten Askeladd and holds him to the oath sworn before Odin: the loser yields, takes his warriors, and leaves. Askeladd's raiders can barely accept that their leader has fallen. Instead of dwelling on defeat, Askeladd probes the man across from him, marveling that a fighter of such caliber buried himself in Iceland for fifteen years, and asking whether Thors counts those years as waste.

Thors answers that he leans on a sword only because he remains flawed, and that one who is truly complete would need no blade at all. The remark baffles the watching Thorfinn, who turns to Ari for its meaning; Ari can only guess it points to Thors's power to kill with empty hands. Sensing something rare in the man, Askeladd offers him command of the whole band, stunning both crews, then laughs the proposal off as a jest when nothing but silence answers.

The standoff turns when Bjorn, shaken loose from the berserker mushroom's grip, springs onto Thors's ship and seizes Thorfinn by the hair. Pressing a short sword to the boy's throat, he warns that a single move will cost the child his head and orders Thors to throw down his weapon.

Thors brands Askeladd a bastard as Thorfinn cries out for his father. Askeladd only laughs, mocking any expectation that his men would behave as gentlemen bound by a duel's rules, and admitting he indulged the whole ritual merely to study the famed Troll of Jom. When Thors protests that the terms have been broken, Askeladd replies that he wanted nothing but Thors's life. Understanding what his son's survival demands, Thors casts his sword into the sea. Askeladd grants him the victory in name, then signals the archers waiting above, who bury their arrows in Thors while Thorfinn, still pinned, screams.

Titled A True Warrior (本当の戦士, Hontō no Senshi), this is the fifteenth chapter of the series, its name drawn from Thors's belief that a real fighter has no need of a blade. It runs 20 pages and was released on September 28, 2005 in magazine issue 2005-44, collected in Volume 2.

The chapter is adapted within Episode 4 of the anime. Beyond Thors, Askeladd, Bjorn, and Thorfinn, it also features Ari, Leif Ericson, and Magni.