When he had said this, he gripped his hilt with both hands, and, fearless of peril, swung his shield upon his back and slew many.  Hadding therefore called on the powers with which he was allied to protect him, and on a sudden Wagnhofde rode up to fight on his side.  And when Asmund saw his crooked sword, he cried out, and broke into the following strain: 

“Why fightest thou with curved sword?  The short sword shall prove thy doom, the javelin shall be flung and bring forth death.  Thou shouldst conquer thy foe by thy hand, but thou trustest that he can be rent by spells; thou trustest more in words than rigour, and puttest thy strength in thy great resource.  Why dost thus beat me back with thy shield, threatening with thy bold lance, when thou art so covered with wretched crimes and spotted all over?  Thus hath the brand of shame bestained thee, rotting in sin, lubber-lipped.”

While he thus clamoured, Hadding, flinging his spear by the thong, pierced him through.  But Asmund lacked not comfort even for his death; for while his life flickered in the socket he wounded the foot of his slayer, and by this short instant of revenge he memorized his fall, punishing the other with an incurable limp.  Thus crippling of a limb befell one of them and loss of life the other.  Asmund’s body was buried in solemn state at Upsala and attended with royal obsequies.  His wife Gunnhild, loth to outlive him, cut off her own life with the sword, choosing rather to follow her lord in death than to forsake him by living.  Her friends, in consigning her body to burial, laid her with her husband’s dust, thinking her worthy to share the mound of the man, her love for whom she had set above life.  So there lies Gunnhild, clasping her lord somewhat more beautifully in the tomb than she had ever done in the bed.

After this Hadding, now triumphant, wasted Sweden.  But Asmund’s son, named Uffe, shrinking from a conflict, transported his army into Denmark, thinking it better to assail the house of his enemy than to guard his own, and deeming it a timely method of repelling his wrongs to retaliate upon his foe what he was suffering at his hands.  Thus the Danes had to return and defend their own, preferring the safety of their land to lordship of a foreign realm; and Uffe went back to his own country, now rid of an enemy’s arms.

Hadding, on returning from the Swedish war, perceived that his treasury, wherein he was wont to store the wealth he had gotten by the spoils of war, had been forced and robbed, and straightway hanged its keeper Glumer, proclaiming by a crafty device, that, if any of the culprits brought about the recovery of the stolen goods, he should have the same post of honour as Glumer had filled.  Upon this promise, one of the guilty men became more zealous to reap the bounty than to hide his crime, and had the money brought back to the king.  His confederates fancied he had been received into the king’s closest friendship,