he stave thereof rode he off another way in the wood with the
banner. When the King was told of this cried he: 'The Earl lives! Give
me my mail-shirt!' And rode he in the night to his ships. Now said many
men that the Earl had avenged himself. Then chanted Thiodolf:

'Steinkell's host who to the
Warlike Earl should help yield
(That brought the King to pass)
To hell, I ween, have fared.
But those who would better
The matter say,
Hakon fled because the hope of help
Therefrom but ill had proven.'

|| King Harald spent what was left of the night on his ship. In the morn,
when it was light saw men that ice had formed round the ships so thick
that it was feasible to walk round about them.

Then bade the King his men hew the ice and release his ships into the
lake, and so went the men and set to work to hew the ice. King Harald's
son Magnus steered the ship which lay lowest in the river-mouth and
nighest out to the lake.

Now when the men had almost chopped the ice away a certain man ran out
on it to the place where they were about to hew, and thereafter fell to
chopping as if he were mad and raving. Then said a man: 'Now is it again
as often before, no one is so good at giving a helping hand as Hall
Kodransbane; behold now, how he is hewing the ice.'

But the man of Magnus's ship who was hight Thormod Eindridison, when he
heard the name of 'Kodransbane,' ran to Hall and gave him his
death-blow.

Kodran was the son of Gudmund Elyolfson, and Valgerd that was sister to
Gudmund was the mother of Jurunn, Thormod's mother.

Thormod was a winter old when Kodran was slain, and never had he set
eyes on Hall Utryggson before this time.

By this, then, the ice was broken away even so far as the lake and
Magnus brought his ship out, & got under way forthwith, and sailed west
across the lake; but the King's ship which was the uppermost in the
channel came out the last. Now Hall had been of the fellowship of the
King and was very dear to him, and the King was exceeding wroth, so that
when he came latest into haven he found that Magnus had already helped
the murderer to the forest, though he offered atonement for him, would
he have gone against Magnus and his folk, had not the friends of both
brought about their appeasement.

|| King Harald fared up to Raumariki this winter, and to him was a large
host.

And he bore cases against the peasants for the keeping back from him of
dues and taxes, and for inciti