Chapter 68: An Empty Man

Thorfinn dreams of clawing his way up a cliff he must not fall from, but grasping hands drag him down, and he wakes screaming in the barn. Einar reports that he cried out names in his sleep, Askeladd and Father, though Thorfinn recalls only the fall. The dream leaves him certain there is something vital he has forgotten and is afraid to remember. Out in the fields, one farmhand admires how well their wheat is coming in and privately concedes the slaves may be better workers than he assumed, while another grumbles that letting slaves do a proper man's fieldwork will upset the natural order of things.

While repairing Sverkel's roof, Thorfinn finally tells Einar who Askeladd was: the ruthless Danish warrior who killed his father, the man he chased across battlefields for ten years bent on revenge. He never got it, he says, because someone else killed Askeladd before his eyes. Einar reasons that losing his purpose of vengeance is what left Thorfinn so lifeless, but Thorfinn admits the deeper wound is that he no longer hates Askeladd at all, and without that hatred he is empty, knowing nothing but war and wanting nothing for himself. Sverkel, overhearing while teaching them to cast a fishing net, tells Thorfinn that emptiness is no curse: a man who is empty can be filled with anything, and if he wishes to be reborn, being empty may be the best possible start. The next morning, mulling those words and wondering whether people can truly change, Thorfinn is reassured by Einar that no one would ever guess he was once a warrior and that he is already in the midst of a change for the better. Their conversation dies when they reach the field and find their sprouted wheat completely destroyed.

Thorfinn's recurring nightmare of falling from a cliff intensifies, and he speaks aloud the names of Askeladd and his father in his sleep. He recounts to Einar his ten-year quest for revenge and confesses that the disappearance of his hatred has left him hollow. Sverkel reframes that emptiness as the precondition for rebirth. A resentful farmhand voices hostility toward the slaves' success. The chapter ends on the shock of the ruined wheat field, undoing weeks of labor and hope.

The installment is central to Thorfinn's psychological rebuilding, articulating the theme of the hollow man who can be remade. Askeladd appears only in flashback and dream imagery. Sverkel's fishing lesson doubles as a lesson in renewal, and the destroyed crop sets up the confrontation of the following chapters. The events were adapted in Episode 32 of the anime.