Chapter 65: At the Old Master's House

With Sverkel's horses and plow, the two clear an astonishing amount of ground in a single day. Einar marvels at how much Ketil has invested in the estate, noting his ten plows, and explains to a wide-eyed Thorfinn how far a horse and plow outpace a hand hoe. Amused at how everything about farming strikes his companion as brand new, Einar teasingly likens him to a wide-eyed infant. When rain drives them to Sverkel's house, they walk in on the tail end of a fight between the old man and Ketil, who worries about his father collapsing alone in the fields and wants him to stop the heavy work. Sverkel refuses, saying he would gladly die out there, and Ketil rides off frustrated.

Sent to wash their soaked clothes in the next room, the pair are startled to find Snake fast asleep clutching a book. He springs awake at the smell of cooking and immediately trades insults with Sverkel over dinner, before waving Thorfinn and Einar over to eat their fill. Between jabs, Snake explains that the guards fend off thieves who slip in at night to steal livestock and crops, and warns that with only fourteen men they could never repel a real organized force of fifty or more. Sverkel counters that Ketil buys safety by paying King Harald a heavy tribute twice yearly, though Snake notes the king's soldiers sit days away in Hjørring. The old man dismisses it all, calling an oversized farm a magnet for disaster and mocking his son for chasing ever more wealth out of fear of losing what he has. Once the rain clears, the guests leave, and the following month, in October, Thorfinn and Einar begin scattering seed across their fields.

Thorfinn continues his crash course in farming, awed by the plow and the leverage it gives them. The rift between Ketil and his father comes into the open, with Ketil pleading in vain for the old man to give up backbreaking labor. Snake is revealed to frequent Sverkel's home, and over supper he lays out the farm's dangerous shortage of fighting men. Sverkel delivers his verdict that the estate has grown too large for its own good, planting doubt in Thorfinn's mind. By October the two slaves have moved from clearing land to sowing their first crop.

The chapter opens Volume 10 and deepens the strange, affectionate bickering between Snake and Sverkel, which the story frames as warmer than the real father-and-son bond between Sverkel and Ketil. Thorfinn silently registers that Harald is Canute's elder brother, tying the farm's fortunes to the larger political story. The material was adapted in Episode 30 of the anime.