Chapter 20: Ragnarok

In a warm farming village near Bath, ninety miles west of London in November 1013, Thorfinn dreams of a boyhood far removed from Iceland, living among his family in a gentle land of rolling fields. In the vision his father urges him to abandon his hunger for revenge, then falls under a hail of arrows as raiders descend. The boy wakes screaming in a hay filled barn, where four of his crewmates are pinning down a gagged Englishwoman. Invited to take part, Thorfinn silently meets the captive's eyes, gathers his blanket, and walks out, leaving the men to grumble that he always looks down on them.

Passing the rest of the crew as they drink and feast, he overhears their complaints. The men cannot fathom why Askeladd keeps them picking off tiny hamlets while the main army has long since marched north to the Danelaw, and the season's plunder has been thin. Bjorn voices a darker thought: after a decade of bleeding England dry, with the English king fleeing his throne and Denmark all but victorious, there may be no next year of raiding at all. He allows that Thorkell still grips London, yet warns the giant is Nordic and could switch sides at any moment. When two men, Ake and Tore, come to blows over an insult, Bjorn shrugs it off and tells a bystander to inform Askeladd only if someone dies.

Thorfinn climbs to a hill crowned with old ruins and finds Askeladd already seated there. Told to excuse the rowdy crew, the boy coldly rejects the familiarity, reminding Askeladd that he is no member of the band and promising to one day cut his throat. Askeladd calmly replies that time favors the young, that even the mightiest man must age and die, and points to the crumbling stones around them. They were raised not by the Saxons but by the Romans who ruled Britannia before being wiped out five centuries earlier, a people he calls more advanced than any now living. Tossing Thorfinn an old Roman coin, he argues that the age of man is quietly growing old, the Saxons who erased the Romans now being erased in turn. He notes the Christian belief in a final reckoning two decades away, which Thorfinn names as Ragnarok, and declares that the sun is rising on humanity's twilight.

A lone rider then appears, one of their own side. Mistaking the small band for the main host, he reveals he serves under Ragnar in Prince Canute's company. Askeladd learns that Thorkell has burst out of London with five hundred men, shattering the siege and running down all but four hundred of Canute's four thousand strong force before taking the prince captive. The survivors are hunting for the main army to regroup and free their lord, and the messenger begs Askeladd's hundred to help. Bjorn defers the decision, and Askeladd, refusing to fade quietly as Ragnarok nears, abruptly strikes off the rider's head. To the horror of his stunned crew, he orders the body and horse buried, then rallies everyone with the promise that they alone will rescue Canute, face Thorkell, and claim the whole reward for the heir to the Danish throne. As the men roar their approval, Bjorn asks whether any plan lies behind the bravado, and Askeladd answers only that they may as well raise some hell in the world's dying hour.

Thorfinn's recurring dream reframes his lost home as the warm, fertile country of his family's final days rather than Iceland, tying his grief to the memory of Thors being cut down. His refusal to join the assault in the barn underscores the moral distance he keeps from the band.

The rider's report delivers the chapter's turning point: Thorkell has smashed the Siege of London, gutted Canute's army, and captured the prince. Askeladd's sudden execution of the messenger seals his decision to seize the captive heir alone, setting the crew on a collision course with Thorkell and steering the wider war toward the band's own ambitions.

Titled ラグナロク (Ragunaroku), the chapter was published on March 25, 2006 across forty pages and falls between chapters 19 and 21 within the third collected volume.

Its material was adapted into the tenth episode of the television series. Askeladd's musings on the Romans of Britannia and the coming Ragnarok give the installment its heavy end of an era mood, framing the political upheaval of the English campaign as one civilization giving way to the next.