Thorarin, fired at the reproach, rushed forth with his servants and guests; a skirmish soon disturbed the legal process which had been instituted, and one or two of both parties were wounded and slain before the wife of Thorarin and the female attendants could separate the fray by flinging their mantles over the weapons of the combatants.

Thorbiorn and his party retreating, Thorarin proceeded to examine the field of battle.  Alas! among the reliques of the fight was a bloody hand too slight and fair to belong to any of the combatants.  It was that of his wife Ada, who had met this misfortune in her attempts to separate the foes.  Incensed to the uttermost, Thorarin threw aside his constitutional moderation, and, mounting on horseback, with his allies and followers, pursued the hostile party, and overtook them in a hay-field, where they had halted to repose their horses, and to exult over the damage they had done to Thorarin.  At this moment he assailed them with such fury that he slew Thorbiorn upon the spot, and killed several of his attendants, although Oddo, the son of Katla, escaped free from wounds, having been dressed by his mother in an invulnerable garment.  After this action, more blood being shed than usual in an Icelandic engagement, Thorarin returned to Mahfahlida, and, being questioned by his mother concerning the events of the skirmish, he answered in the improvisatory and enigmatical poetry of his age and country—­

   “From me the foul reproach be far,
    With which a female waked the war,
    From me, who shunned not in the fray
    Through foemen fierce to hew my way
    (Since meet it is the eagle’s brood
    On the fresh corpse should find their food);
    Then spared I not, in fighting field,
    With stalwart hand my sword to wield;
    And well may claim at Odin’s shrine
    The praise that waits this deed of mine.”

To which effusion Geirrida answered—­

“Do these verses imply the death of Thorbiorn?”

And Thorarin, alluding to the legal process which Thorbiorn had instituted against him, resumed his song—­

   “Sharp bit the sword beneath the hood
    Of him whose zeal the cause pursued,
    And ruddy flowed the stream of death,
    Ere the grim brand resumed the sheath;
    Now on the buckler of the slain
    The raven sits, his draught to drain,
    For gore-drenched is his visage bold,
    That hither came his courts to hold.”

As the consequence of this slaughter was likely to be a prosecution at the instance of the pontiff Snorro, Thorarin had now recourse to his allies and kindred, of whom the most powerful were Arnkill, his maternal uncle, and Verimond, who readily premised their aid both in the field and in the Comitia, or popular meeting, in spring, before which it was to be presumed Snorro would indict Thorarin for the slaughter of his kinsman.  Arnkill could not, however, forbear asking his nephew how he had so far lost his usual command of temper.  He replied in verse—­