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Hrut was of the bodyguard of King Harald, Gunnhild's son, and was much honoured by him, chiefly for the reason that he approved himself the best man in all deeds of manly trials, while, on the other hand, Gunnhild, the Queen, loved him so much that she held there was not his equal within the guard, either in talking or in anything else.
Now, if Gunnhild's sons should learn that you are living in Holmgard they would offer a rich reward to the man who should compass your end. You will be wise, therefore, if you breathe no word of your kinship with Triggvi Olafson.
But I told him of Dame Gunnhild's words, and begged him to seek her and speak with her, for she might hide him also for a while if he would not leave the place altogether. So we left our home, and that was the last time I set eyes on our hall at Bures.
Olaf asked Thorgils if he had heard the name of their new master. "No," answered Thorgils. "Nor can I guess why it is that he has bought us. All that I know is that he is a Norseman, and that he is very rich." "I can only think," said Olaf, "that he intends some treachery by us, and that he means to take us west over sea and deliver us into the hands of Gunnhild's sons."
"Our abbot told him, but he knew already, having had word from Colchester in some way. He had heard before we as it seems." That was doubtless Gunnhild's work, for I came to know afterwards that in the long years of trouble she had made a chain of friends who would pass word to her from every point whence trouble would come.
He told how Queen Astrid, leaving her two daughters at Ofrestead, had fared east away into Sweden, and of what privations she had borne for her son's sake, and of how, still pursued by her enemies, she had at length taken safe refuge with Hakon Gamle, a friend of her father's. "But even here," continued Sigurd, "Queen Gunnhild's enmity followed her.
In Thrandheim the folk are dying for lack of corn and fish, and in Halogaland the snow has lain over the valleys nigh until midsummer, so that all the livestock have been bound in stall and fed upon birch buds. Men lay the famine to the account of Gunnhild's sons, who are over greedy of money and deal hardly with the husbandmen.
"She and the lady Hertha took boat it was but three days after you had gone. All the men had fled as she bade them, but her brother came and helped her with the boat. They went into the mere, and that was the last we saw of them." Now I remembered to have heard of Gunnhild's brother, but I had never seen him. "Where does her brother live?" I asked. "I know not.
He had made her an offer of marriage, after she had been an householder for but a little while, but Melkorka refused him flatly. There was a ship up by Board-Ere in Ramfirth, and Orn was the name of the captain. He was one of the bodyguard of King Harald, Gunnhild's son.
"Now very soon Astrid heard that Gunnhild's sons were pursuing her with intent to kill her, so she let herself be hidden on a little island in the midst of a certain lake. There on that island her son was born, and she had him sprinkled with water and named Olaf, after his father's father."
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