Chapter 69: Provocation

Studying the wrecked crop, Einar recognizes that the wheat was not merely flattened but deliberately torn out by the roots so it could never recover, and only the jealous farmhands would do such a thing. Eerily composed, he sets off to confront them, and when Thorfinn objects that slaves cannot raise a hand against free men, Einar declares he means to kill them regardless. Thorfinn restrains him, warning that the culprits will simply feign ignorance and that any brawl would see the slaves punished. Grabbing Thorfinn by the collar, Einar demands to know how he can stay so calm, spelling out the ruin: their best soil wasted, no seed left, and a fresh debt owed just to plant again. Thorfinn answers, shaking, that as a man who once lived by destroying and plundering, he has no standing to feel outrage; if the farmhands deserve death for this, then he deserved it a hundred times over. He urges Einar to remember that nothing good ever comes of revenge.

The two fetch Pater, who agrees to examine the field for evidence and counsels them not to lose heart, recalling his own days of unjust torment as a slave and the few decent people who made it bearable. On the walk back Einar shares that Arnheid, as Ketil's favorite, has no arrangement to buy her freedom and appears to have given up on it entirely, which fuels his hatred of slavery: the liked are never released, and the hated are torn down. On the road they meet the laughing farmhands, who play innocent and then sneer that slave-grown wheat would be too filthy to eat anyway. Einar cocks his fist, but Thorfinn strikes first, breaking the man's jaw with a single blow, then stands stunned and appalled at his own reaction. A full brawl erupts; distracted by Thorfinn's shock, Einar is caught out, and a shovel to the back of the head sends Thorfinn reeling. As he blacks out, he glimpses the weeping English mother from his childhood and his father Thors trying to speak to him, then feels himself plunging into the rocky abyss of his nightmares.

The farmhands are confirmed as the saboteurs who uprooted the wheat. Thorfinn refuses to condemn them, judging himself no better after a lifetime of violence. Pater agrees to investigate and offers hard-won encouragement drawn from his own enslavement. Arnheid's hopeless position as Ketil's favorite is revealed to Thorfinn. The confrontation erupts into violence when Thorfinn instinctively breaks a farmhand's jaw, betraying the very vow of peace he is trying to keep, and the chapter ends with him knocked unconscious into a vision of Thors.

The chapter sharpens the contrast between Einar's righteous anger and Thorfinn's refusal to claim moral high ground, and Thorfinn's reflexive punch marks a painful relapse into his old nature. The closing images of the English mother and Thors carry forward the guilt threaded through his dreams. The material was adapted in Episode 32 of the anime.