So Cormac stayed there for the night; and, awaking, found that some one was groping round the coverlet at his head. “Who is there?” he asked, but whoever it was made off, and out at the house-door, and Cormac after. And then he saw it was Thordis, and she was going to the place where the fight was to be, carrying a goose under her arm.
He asked what it all meant, and she set down the goose, saying, “Why couldn't ye keep quiet?”
So he lay down again, but held himself awake, for he wanted to know what she would be doing. Three times she came, and every time he tried to find out what she was after. The third time, just as he came out, she had killed two geese and let the blood run into a bowl, and she had taken up the third goose to kill it.
“What means this business, foster-mother?” said he.
“True it will prove, Cormac, that you are a hard one to help,” said she. “I was going to break the spell Thorveig laid on thee and Steingerd. Ye could have loved one another been happy if I had killed the third goose and no one seen it.”
“I believe nought of such things,” cried he; and this song he made about it:—
(67)
“I gave her an ore at the ayre,
That the arts of my foe should not prosper;
And twice she has taken the knife,
And twice she has offered the offering;
But the blood is the blood of a goose—
What boots it if two should be slaughtered?—
Never sacrifice geese for a Skald
Who sings for the glory of Odin!”
So they went to the holmgang: but Thorvald gave the spae-wife a still greater fee, and offered the sacrifice of geese; and Cormac said:—
(68)
“Trust never another man's mistress!
For I know, on this woman who weareth
The fire of the field of the sea-king
The fiends have been riding to revel.
The witch with her hoarse cry is working
For woe when we go to the holmgang,
And if bale be the end of the battle
The blame, be assured, will be hers.”
“Well,” she said, “I can manage so that none shall know thee.” Then Cormac began to upbraid her, saying she did nought but ill, and wanting to drag her out to the door to look at her eyes in the sunshine. His brother Thorgils made him leave that:—“What good will it do thee?” said he.