before him.
Then flight broke out throughout all the host.
Thorstein Hall of the Side’s son stood still while all the others
fled, and tied his shoe-string. Then Kerthialfad asked why he
ran not as the others.
“Because,” said Thorstein, “I can’t get home to-night, since I
am at home out in Iceland.”
Kerthialfad gave him peace.
Hrafn the Red was chased out into a certain river; he thought he
saw there the pains of hell down below him, and he thought the
devils wanted to drag him to them.
Then Hrafn said, “Thy dog (2), Apostle Peter! hath run twice to
Rome, and he would run the third time if thou gavest him leave.”
Then the devils let him loose, and Hrafn got across the river.
Now Brodir saw that King Brian’s men were chasing the fleers, and
that there were few men by the shieldburg.
Then he rushed out of the wood, and broke through the shieldburg,
and hewed at the king.
The lad Takt threw his arm in the way, and the stroke took it off
and the king’s head too, but the king’s blood came on the lad’s
stump, and the stump was healed by it on the spot.
Then Brodir called out with a loud voice, “Now let man tell man
that Brodir felled Brian.”
Then men ran after those who were chasing the fleers, and they
were told that King Brian had fallen, and then they turned back
straightway, both Wolf the Quarrelsome and Kerthialfad.
Then they threw a ring round Brodir and his men, and threw
branches of trees upon them, and so Brodir was taken alive.
Wolf the Quarrelsome cut open his belly, and led him round and
round the trunk of a tree, and so wound all his entrails out of
him, and he did not die before they were all drawn out of him.
Brodir’s men were slain to a man.
After that they took King Brian’s body and laid it out. The
king’s head had grown fast to the trunk.
Fifteen men of the burners fell in Brian’s battle, and there,
too, fell Halldor the son of Gudmund the Powerful, and Erling
of Straumey.
On Good-Friday that event happened in Caithness that a man whose
name was Daurrud went out. He saw folk riding twelve together to
a bower, and there they were all lost to his sight. He went to
that bower and looked in through a window slit that was in it,
and saw that there were women inside, and they had set up a loom.
Men’s heads were the weights, but men’s entrails were the warp
and weft, a sword was the shuttle, and the reels were arrows.
They sang these songs, and he learnt them by heart:
THE WOOF OF WAR.
“See! warp is stretched
For warriors’ fall,
Lo! weft in loom
