Chapter 19: The Battle of London Bridge

Determined to force a duel with Askeladd, Thorfinn corners the giant Thorkell on London Bridge and bets his life on beating him. Thorkell wants a clean man-to-man contest and waves his soldiers off, entering the clash empty-handed while the boy circles with his twin shortswords. Thorfinn slips the first swing and opens a cut across Thorkell's wrist, which only delights the big man. Grasping that a single connecting punch would end him, Thorfinn keeps low, darts between his opponent's legs, and lunges for the exposed face. Thorkell throws up his right palm to stop the blade, taking the point through his hand rather than his skull, then seizes both the hilt and Thorfinn's other wrist.

Gripping the smaller fighter, Thorkell swings him about like a limp toy. From his anchored ship, Askeladd watches the boy go down, writes him off as finished, and calls his crew to pull back. When Thorkell pauses to check whether the dangling Thorfinn still lives, the youth strikes, shearing two fingers from the unguarded hand and breaking loose. He rolls to the bridge's lip with a blade still raised in defiance. Impressed, Thorkell names him a warrior and demands his identity; hearing that this is Thorfinn, son of Thors, he reacts to the familiar name and moves to press further, but the boy pitches himself into the river before any answer can come. Thorkell forbids his archers from firing, waves his newly maimed three-fingered hand, and cheerfully vows to settle things another day.

Ashore, medics tend the battered Danish wounded, and Askeladd remarks to Bjorn that one gut-pierced soldier is beyond saving. King Sweyn, noting the city has not fallen, hears Floki argue that a patient blockade choking off supplies would starve London within a year. Unwilling to sink that much time into one target with autumn near and all of England still to take, Sweyn orders the bulk of his army west. He leaves a garrison of four thousand under his seventeen-year-old son Canute, framing the campaign as a chance to harden the boy. Ragnar objects that the untested prince cannot succeed with a fifth of a force that already stalled, but Sweyn dismisses the worry, blames Canute's softness on Christian teaching and Ragnar's pampering, and installs Ragnar as his second. Surfacing downstream, a bruised Thorfinn catalogs his wrenched shoulder, twisted ankle, and cracked ribs, curses the insane giant, then drags himself back to the column. Askeladd, startled he is alive, warns that the march to Wessex leaves no room for stragglers. Thorfinn resets his shoulder, limps on, and seethes that every last one of these men is mad, wondering aloud what anyone finds enjoyable about war.

Thorfinn wounds Thorkell's wrist and later drives a shortsword through the giant's blocking palm. Thorkell hurls the boy around, and Askeladd, believing him dead, orders a retreat. Thorfinn severs two of Thorkell's fingers to break free and leaps from the bridge, revealing in the exchange that he is the son of Thors. King Sweyn then splits his army, marching the main body toward Wessex while assigning the continued siege of London to Prince Canute, with Ragnar demoted to his deputy.

This installment closes out Volume 3 material and ran in the 2006-04 issue, released February 25, 2006, across roughly forty pages. Its Japanese title, Rondon Hashi no Shitō, renders the desperate struggle on London Bridge. The chapter is a pivot for Prince Canute, whose reluctant command of the siege sets up his later arc, and it corresponds to the material adapted in the ninth television episode.