Chapter 55: Slave

On a storm-tossed vessel, traders dump cargo to stay afloat and hurl a fevered captive overboard, mourning only the silver her death costs them. A man in a coarse tunic protests the cruelty, then realizes for the first time that slaves are treated as livestock, spared from casual killing only because they represent an investment. Once ashore, the human merchandise is scrubbed clean, fed to improve their color, groomed, and lined up for buyers. One customer gropes the tunic-wearing man, learning his name is Einar, that he believes himself around twenty, and that he has never fallen ill, before moving on in search of someone prettier.

Einar recounts fleeing several times, wrongly assuming that going unchained made escape simple. Hunger drives him to steal and he is recaptured, bound, and flogged while the scarred trader lectures the other slaves that they have nowhere to run and might earn freedom only through obedient service. Standing bruised in the market, Einar concedes the traders were right: with home distant and no rescue coming, acting the dutiful slave at least keeps him fed.

Leif Ericson inspects Einar, sighs, and reminds the trader he seeks a small blond youth called Thorfinn who resembles this man not at all. Certain the boy passed through this town, Leif presses for information, gets nothing, and departs. Soon a bearded buyer named Ketil purchases Einar for a little over the price of two cows and ships him to his farm in Jutland, arriving in late June. Ketil shows off his sprawling wheat fields and a stretch of forest he intends to convert into new farmland, then calls out toward the trees for Thorfinn, who emerges gripping an axe, his hair grown down to his shoulders.

Einar, a farmhand from Northern England, is enslaved and transported by ship to a slave market. After repeated failed escapes and a public beating, he resigns himself to servitude. Leif searches the same market for Thorfinn but leaves empty-handed. Ketil buys Einar and brings him to his farm in Jutland, Denmark, where he is introduced to Thorfinn, now a farm laborer.

This fifty-fifth chapter launches the Slave Arc and belongs to Volume 8. Its events were adapted in Episode 25. The opening epigraph comes from Einar, reflecting on how he surrendered his hope of freedom.