“I have nothing to tell,” he said, “except that the valorous Asmund at Bjarg is now dead.”

Some of them said that a worthy bondi had left the world and asked how it happened.

“A poor lot befell his Valour,” he replied.  “He was suffocated by the smoke from the hearth, like a dog.  There is no great loss in him, for he was in his dotage.”

“You talk strangely about such a man as he was,” they said.  “Grettir would not be much pleased if he heard you.”

“I can endure Grettir’s wrath,” he said.  “He must bear his axe higher than he did at Hrutafjardarhals if he wishes to frighten me.”

Grettir heard every word that Thorbjorn said, but took no notice as long as he was speaking.  When he had finished Grettir said: 

“I prophesy, Slowcoach, that you will not die of the smoke from the hearth, and yet perhaps you will not die of old age either.  It is strange conduct to say shameful things of innocent men.”

Thorbjorn said:  “I have nothing to unsay.  I never thought you would fire up like this on the day when we got you out of the hands of the men of Mel who were belabouring you like an ox’s head.”

Then Grettir spoke a verse: 

“Too long is the tongue of the spanner of bows.  Full often he suffers the vengeance due.  Slowcoach!  I tell thee that many a man has paid for less shameful speech with his life.”

Thorbjorn said his life was neither more nor less in danger than it was before.

“My prophecies are not generally long-lived,” said Grettir, “nor shall this one be.  Defend yourself if you will; you never will have better occasion for it than now.”

Grettir then struck at him.  He tried to parry the blow with his arm, but it struck him above the wrist and glanced off on to his neck so that his head flew off.  The sailors declared it was a splendid stroke, and that such were the men for the king.  No one would grieve, they said, because a man so quarrelsome and scurrilous as Thorbjorn had been killed.

Soon after this they got under way and towards the end of the summer reached the south coast of Norway, about Hordland, where they learned that King Olaf was in the North at Thrandheim.  Grettir took a passage thither with some traders intending to seek audience of the king.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

GRETTIR FETCHES FIRE—­THE SONS OF THORIR ARE BURNT

There was a man named Thorir dwelling in Gard in Adaldal.  He was a son of Skeggi Bodolfsson, who had settled in Kelduhverfi, on lands extending right up to Keldunes, and had married Helga the daughter of Thorgeir at Fiskilaek.  Thorir was a great chief, and a mariner.  He had two sons whose names were Thorgeir and Skeggi, both men of promise, and pretty well grown up at that time.  Thorir had been in Norway in the summer in which Olaf came East from England, and had won