By now I was behind the bear, and, smiting at its right leg below the knee, severed the tendon.  Down it came, still hugging Steinar.  I smote again with all my strength, and cut into its spine above the tail, paralysing it.  It was a great blow, as it need to be to cleave the thick hair and hide, and my sword broke in the backbone, so that, like Ragnar, now I was weaponless.  The forepart of the bear rolled about in the snow, although its after half was still.

Then once more it seemed to bethink itself of Steinar, who lay unmoving and senseless.  Stretching out a paw, it dragged him towards its champing jaws.  Ragnar leapt upon its back and struck at it with his knife, thereby only maddening it the more.  I ran in and grasped Steinar, whom the bear was again hugging to its breast.  Seeing me, it loosed Steinar, whom I dragged away and cast behind me, but in the effort I slipped and fell forward.  The bear smote at me, and its mighty forearm—­well for me that it was not its claws—­struck me upon the side of the head and sent me crashing into a tree-top to the left.  Five paces I flew before my body touched the boughs, and there I lay quiet.

I suppose that Ragnar told me what passed after this while I was senseless.  At least, I know that the bear began to die, for my spear had pierced some artery in its throat, and all the talk which followed, as well as though I heard it with my ears.  It roared and roared, vomiting blood and stretching out its claws after Steinar as Ragnar dragged him away.  Then it laid its head flat upon the snow and died.  Ragnar looked at it and muttered: 

“Dead!”

Then he walked to that top of the fallen tree in which I lay, and again muttered:  “Dead!  Well, Valhalla holds no braver man than Olaf the Skald.”

Next he went to Steinar and once again exclaimed, “Dead!”

For so he looked, indeed, smothered in the blood of the bear and with his garments half torn off him.  Still, as the words passed Ragnar’s lips he sat up, rubbed his eyes and smiled as a child does when it awakes.

“Are you much hurt?” asked Ragnar.

“I think not,” he answered doubtfully, “save that I feel sore and my head swims.  I have had a bad dream.”  Then his eyes fell on the bear, and he added:  “Oh, I remember now; it was no dream.  Where is Olaf?”

“Supping with Odin,” answered Ragnar and pointed to me.

Steinar rose to his feet, staggered to where I lay, and stared at me stretched there as white as the snow, with a smile upon my face and in my hand a spray of some evergreen bush which I had grasped as I fell.

“Did he die to save me?” asked Steinar.

“Aye,” answered Ragnar, “and never did man walk that bridge in better fashion.  You were right.  Would that I had not mocked him.”

“Would that I had died and not he,” said Steinar with a sob.  “It is borne in upon my heart that it were better I had died.”