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“With eld I am listless and lamed--
I, the lord of the gold of the armlet:
I sit, and am still under many
A slight from the warders of spear-meads.
Though shield-bearers shape for the singer
To shiver alone in the grave-mound,
Yet once in the war would I redden
The wand that hews helms ere I fail.”
“Thy heart is not growing old, foster-father mine!” cried Halldor.
Upon that Bersi fell into talk with Steinvor, and said to her “I am
laying a plot, and I need thee to help me.”
She said she would if she could.
“Pick a quarrel,” said he, “with Thordis about the milk-kettle, and do
thou hold on to it until you whelm it over between you. Then I will come
in and take her part and give thee nought but bad words. Then go to Vali
and tell him how ill we treat thee.”
Everything turned out as he had planned. She went to Vali and told him
that things were no way smooth for her; would he take her over the gap
(to Bitra to her father's:) and so he did.
But when he was on the way back again, out came Bersi and Halldor to
meet him. Bersi had a halberd in one hand and a staff in the other, and
Halldor had Whitting. As soon as Vali saw them he turned and hewed
at Bersi. Halldor came at his back and fleshed Whitting in his
hough-sinews. Thereupon he turned sharply and fell upon Halldor.
Then Bersi set the halberd-point betwixt his shoulders. That was his
death-wound.
Then they set his shield at his feet and his sword at his head, and
spread his cloak over him; and after that got on horseback and rode to
five homesteads to make known the deed they had done and then rode home.
Men went and buried Vali, and the place where he fell has ever since
been called Vali's fall.
Halldor was twelve winters old when these doings came to pass.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. How Steingerd Was Married Again.
Now there was a man named Thorvald, the son of Eystein, bynamed
the Tinker: he was a wealthy man, a smith, and a skald; but he was
mean-spirited for all that. His brother Thorvard lived in the north
country at Fliot (Fleet); and they had many kinsmen,-- the Skidings they
were called,--but little luck or liking.
Now Thorvald the Tinker asked Steingerd to wife. Her folk were for it,
and she said nothing against it; and so she was wed to him in the very
same summer in which she left Bersi.
When Cormac heard the news he made as though he knew nothing whatever
about the matter; for a little earlier he had taken his goods aboard
ship, meaning to go away with his brother. But one morning early he rode
from the ship and went to see Steingerd; and when he got talk with her,
he asked would she make him a shirt. To which she answered that he had
no business to pay her visits; neither Thorvald nor his kinsmen would
abide it, she said, but have their revenge.