all of Gunnar’s anger forth, like meltwater pouring off the glacier in spring. When the Vatna Hverfi men came up behind him, as had been planned in the case of such a verdict, Gunnar received his ax in his hand, but he could not have said who gave it to him, for his eyes were all for Bjorn Bollason, who had turned, and staggered, and was now running toward the pile of weapons, and Gunnar ran after him. In the crowd of men, with folk before him and after him, he never lost sight of Bjorn Bollason for a moment, nor felt his rage diminish for a part of a moment. Indeed, such rage as he felt in one moment was as nothing to what he felt in the next, and it was his fixed intention not merely to kill Bjorn Bollason, but to make him feel in his bones every ache and torment that Kollgrim had felt, and also that he, Gunnar Asgeirsson, had felt in the time since that death, every moment of fury and of grief. Could he visit upon the man, through blows, the sight of Birgitta Lavransdottir with her innards half showing through her self-inflicted cuts, and then, the sight of her lifeless corpus rolled against a stone by the side of the steading, the bird arrow jutting bloodily from her breast? Could he make the lawspeaker hear the sound of such screams and weeping as filled his steading and his ears for days on end at his return from the Thing field? She had needed no one to tell her the news, for it had come to her through her second sight, or through her maternal flesh, the news of Kollgrim’s death, and she had greeted him at the door to his steading as a madwoman might, undone by grief, twisted with the joint ill, yet standing, stiff with agony, to meet him. There were the others, too, not least Elisabet Thorolfsdottir, who tore the hair from her head, and Helga, who simply moaned and clutched her child to her breast, and Jon Andres, that man of peace, who planned, coldly, and step by knowing step, every move to this moment, the moment of crushing and destroying Bjorn Bollason and his sons. With that proud turn of the head, Gunnar could see and hear Bjorn Bollason say what he must have said, “He could be soaked with seal oil,” and it seemed to him that the fire in him would burn hotter and hotter until Bjorn Bollason lay still on the ground, unrecognizable, torn piece from bloody piece.
The Brattahlid men drew themselves up in a ragged line, their weapons raised, and the Vatna Hverfi men fell upon them with the full force of their speed, so that some men ran through the line and found themselves behind their adversaries, while others were stopped in their flight by the strength of the enemy. The Brattahlid men were much outnumbered, but in fact they were better armed, for the other men had left a few of their weapons, for appearance’ sake, on the pile. Now there was the sound of grunting and huffing and the fall of blows and the screams of injury, as men set to fighting in earnest.
At first, Bjorn Bollason hung back, in a kind of surprise. Indeed, he did not know how things had come to this pass, nor quite what to do about it. And his belly had grown so broad with the good Solar Fell meat that running from the judges’ circle to the weapon pile had shortened his breath and made him considerably dizzy. And then it happened that he was knocked down on his knees, and kicked in the head, so that he fell forward onto his face, and this surprised him so that it did not occur to him to lie still, as if dead, but he strove to arise again, and to turn and look at his attacker, for indeed, it surprised him that he, such a popular and lucky man, should be attacked at all. But as soon as he got to his knees again, a club fell, first on his shoulder, a glancing blow, and then on his back, and a pain seared through him, so that it seemed better to lie down, after all, but still he tried to turn over, to see who was afflicting him like this, but indeed, he could not turn over, until a hand grasped him by the hair and wrenched him onto his back, and he saw the face of Jon Andres Erlendsson, and behind him, the face of Gunnar Asgeirsson, and that was