Chapter 97: Emperor of Rebellion

Escorted past rows of the slain, Thorfinn and Einar approach the king while Einar scans the corpses for Pater; Thorfinn urges him to keep his eyes forward so grief will not sour the talks. Wulf lets the pair advance, warning Canute that the two unarmed men are far from harmless.

Four years have passed since the king and the former assassin last stood face to face, and Canute barely recognizes the battered youth who once scarred his cheek. Thorfinn offers a quiet apology for that old wound, admitting he was not himself then, and thanks the king for the leniency that spared his life after he raised a blade against royalty. Watching from the side, Wulf and Einar reel at learning this small, bruised man is the same Thorfinn Karlsefni who once held his ground against Thorkell.

When Thorfinn begs him to drop his claim on the estate, Canute refuses, laying blame on Olmar for cutting down ten of his soldiers. Einar counters that a hundred farm deaths already outweigh the offense and accuses the king of engineering the whole affair, branding him a robber dressed in a crown who has never once gripped a farming tool.

Reminded of his old vow to build an earthly paradise, Canute answers by commanding the tide itself to stop. The waves ignore him, and he uses their defiance to argue that suffering is God's design and that Vikings, as bringers of ruin, have forfeited any claim to happiness. His only path, he insists, is to marshal human strength and wage war on God for everyone heaven has cast aside.

Einar rejects the grand vision outright, demanding to know who will rescue the ordinary people the king butchers along the way. Worn down by rulers who once torched his fields and slaughtered his kin, he refuses to be another pawn in a king's game. Canute tells him to hate him freely, then confirms to Thorfinn that the farm is vital to his design and asks whether the young man now means to kill him, the sole remaining way to halt him.

Carrying the Japanese title Hangyaku no Teiō, the chapter ran in Volume 14 and reached print on September 25, 2013 across twenty-eight pages. Its events were later dramatized in the forty-sixth episode of the anime. Thorgil, Olmar and Brodd appear only within recollection.