Chapter 67: Iron Fist Ketil

The two captured siblings wait in bindings for Ketil's ruling, the younger girl frightened and her shaking brother trying to reassure her. Nearby, Thorgil regales Olmar, Ketil, and Snake with tales of the battlefield, describing how warriors abandon all loyalty once combat begins and treating the post-battle looting and slave-taking as sport. He invites the eager Olmar to join him in England and presents a souvenir necklace, which the boy hurls away in horror upon learning the dried lumps on it are severed English ears. Thorgil then reveals to a stunned Olmar the family legend: their father was once so mighty that he shattered his own weapons and fought bare-handed, earning the name Iron Fist Ketil, a story still whispered among old warriors. Ketil chokes on his drink but says nothing, steering Thorgil off to rest.

Ketil turns to the children and gently draws out their names, Sture and Thora, and their story. Their mother lies sick at home with a baby, and their father Snorri, a tenant on Ketil's own land, never returned after leaving to sell vegetables the previous autumn. Ketil privately grasps that the man is surely dead and that no household would take in a sickly mother and three small children, and he sheds a tear he blames on something in his eye. Snake explains he tricked the boy into confessing by lying that Ketil's name was stamped inside every flour sack. Thorgil coldly proposes the customary penalty for theft, cutting off one arm from each child, and when Sture begs to spare his sister by taking both punishments himself, Ketil is sickened. Pater intervenes with a humane alternative: bind the family into service so they keep their home and land while working off both the stolen goods and Snorri's rent, with Pater himself teaching Sture the trade. Ketil embraces the plan but recoils at the addition of a beating. Impressed by Sture's offer to absorb his sister's blows, doubling his own to twenty, Thorgil asks to deliver the punishment and instantly strikes the boy far too hard, horrifying Ketil into taking over himself. That night, resting his head in the naked Arnheid's lap, Ketil confesses the truth: the Iron Fist legend is invented. He admits he fears war, violence, and his own son Thorgil, and pleads with Arnheid to remain at his side as the one person he can speak to honestly.

Thorgil relates the legend of Iron Fist Ketil to Olmar and lures the boy toward the battlefields of England. The captured thieves are named as Sture and Thora, and their missing father Snorri is identified as one of Ketil's tenants, likely dead. Snake reveals he extracted the confession by deception. Thorgil's demand to sever the children's arms is overturned by Pater's proposal to take the family into service instead. Thorgil's brutal single blow to Sture pushes Ketil to intervene. In the closing scene Ketil confesses to Arnheid that his warrior reputation is a lie and that he is afraid of violence and of his son.

The chapter is a pivotal character study, dismantling Ketil's public image and exposing the gap between the family patriarch's mild nature and the ferocity Norse society demands of him. It also cements Arnheid's role as his sole confidante, foreshadowing the tragedy of their relationship. Pater's mercy reflects his own past as a former slave. The material was adapted in Episode 31 of the anime.