“Let us go out,” said Asgrim, “there is no hope of help here.”

Then they went out to the booths of men of Modruvale, and asked whether Gudmund the powerful were in the booth, but they were told he was.

Then they went into the booth.  There was a high seat in the midst of it, and there sate Gudmund the powerful.

Asgrim went and stood before him, and hailed him.

Gudmund took his greeting well, and asked him to sit down.

“I will not sit,” said Asgrim, “but I wish to pray thee for help, for thou art a bold man and a mighty chief.”

“I will not be against thee,” said Gudmund, “but if I see fit to yield thee help, we may well talk of that afterwards,” and so he treated them well and kindly in every way.

Asgrim thanked him for his words, and Gudmund said—­

“There is one man in your band at whom I have gazed for awhile, and he seems to me more terrible than most men that I have seen.”

“Which is he?” says Asgrim.

“Four go before him,” says Gudmund; “dark brown is his hair, and pale is his face; tall of growth and sturdy.  So quick and shifty in his manliness, that I would rather have his following than that of ten other men; but yet the man is unlucky-looking.”

“I know,” said Skarphedinn, “that thou speakest at me, but it does not go in the same way as to luck with me and thee.  I have blame, indeed, from the slaying of Hauskuld, the Whiteness priest, as is fair and right; but both Thorkel foulmouth and Thorir Helgi’s son spread abroad bad stories about thee, and that has tried thy temper very much.”

Then they went out, and Skarphedinn said—­

“Whither shall we go now?”

“To the booths of the men of Lightwater,” said Asgrim.

There Thorkel foulmouth had set up his booth.

Thorkel foulmouth had been abroad and worked his way to fame in other lands.  He had slain a robber east in Jemtland’s wood, and then he fared on east into Sweden, and was a messmate of Saurkvir the churl, and they harried eastward ho; but to the east of Baltic side.[67] Thorkel had to fetch water for them one evening; then he met a wild man of the woods,[68] and struggled against him long; but the end of it was that he slew the wild man.  Thence he fared east into Adalsyssla, and there he slew a flying fire-drake.  After that he fared back to Sweden, and thence to Norway, and so out to Iceland, and let these deeds of derring do be carved over his shut bed, and on the stool before his high-seat.  He fought, too, on Lightwater way with his brothers against Gudmund the powerful, and the men of Lightwater won the day.  He and Thorir Helgi’s son spread abroad bad stories about Gudmund.  Thorkel said there was no man in Iceland with whom he would not fight in single combat, or yield an inch to, if need were.  He was called Thorkel foulmouth, because he spared no one with whom he had to do either in word or deed.