Chapter 56: Ketil's Farm

In late June of 1015, on his estate in southern Jutland, Ketil brings Einar together with Thorfinn and tells them to work as partners. Einar notes the smaller man's faint beard and decides he cannot be a child. Ketil explains that he owns the surrounding forest and will lend it to the pair, buying whatever crops they cultivate at a fair rate. Should their yields exceed what he paid for them, they can purchase their liberty, likely inside three years of hard work. Einar is moved and thanks him sincerely.

Ketil points them to Pater, a longtime servant who won his own freedom the same way, for guidance. Told to simply observe for the day, Einar instead grabs an axe and joins the clearing, reasoning that helping speeds his release. Thorfinn shows him to fell a distant tree so it drops toward the river, revealing that the logs will be floated downstream. When lunch arrives, the free workers sneer at Einar's slave face, shove a scrap of cheese and bread at him, and demand gratitude. Thorfinn steps between them, thanks the man, and defuses the confrontation before the workers hand over a tired horse and wander off to nap.

Einar wants to report the workers and urges Thorfinn to stand up for himself, but Thorfinn only explains their task of rafting the timber for use as building material. By dusk the two trudge home sore and hungry, and Einar insists they tell Ketil about the mistreatment. Thorfinn warns it would only worsen things. Einar argues the workers, half-enslaved themselves, abuse the slaves merely to feel above someone. When Ketil rides up and asks about his first day, Einar begins to complain but is struck silent by a beautiful light-haired woman seated in the cart behind him. Ketil calls him odd and moves on, and Einar admits he is starting to like the place.

Ketil introduces Einar to Thorfinn and lays out the arrangement: cultivate lent land, sell the harvest, and earn freedom within roughly three years. Einar meets Pater, a freed former slave now employed on the farm. The hired workers reveal their contempt for slaves through a meager lunch and demands for thanks, and Thorfinn quietly keeps the peace. Einar nearly reports them to Ketil but is distracted by his first glimpse of Arnheid.

The fifty-sixth chapter continues the Slave Arc within Volume 8 and was adapted in Episode 26. Its epigraph, drawn from Einar, captures his outrage at how the low-ranking workers scorn those beneath them. The light-haired woman glimpsed in the closing pages is later identified as Arnheid.