'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,[83] 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 wed, 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