By ill-fortune, Njal and Gunnar owned a wood between them, and when Njal and his sons departed to the Thing, Bergthora, Njal’s wife, ordered Swart her servant to cut her some branches for kindling fires from this very forest. These tidings reached the ears of Hallgerda, and she muttered with a grim face, ‘It is the last time that Swart shall steal my wood,’ and bade Kol, her bailiff, start early next morning and seek Swart.
‘And when I find him?’ asked Kol; but Hallgerda only turned away angrily.
‘You, the worst of men, ask that?’ said she. ‘Why, you shall kill him, of course.’
So Kol took his axe, though he was ill at ease, for he knew that evil would come of it, and he mounted one of Gunnar’s horses and fared to the wood.
He soon saw Swart and his men piling up bundles of firewood, so he left his horse in a hollow, and crouched down behind some bushes, till he heard Swart bid the men carry the wood to Njal’s house, as he himself had more work to do. He began to look about for a tall straight young stem with which to make himself a bow, when Kol sprang out of the bushes and dealt Swart such a stroke with his axe that he fell dead without a word. After that Kol went back and told Hallgerda.
And Hallgerda spoke cheering words, and said he need have no fear, for that she would protect him; but Kol’s heart was heavy.
Now Hallgerda had forced Kol to slay Swart, to bring about a quarrel between her husband and Njal, so she straightway sent a messenger to seek Gunnar at the Thing, and tell him what had befallen Swart. Gunnar listened in silence to the messenger’s tale; then he called his men around him, and they all went to Njal’s tent, and begged him to come out and speak to Gunnar.
‘Swart, your house servant has been killed by Hallgerda and Kol her man,’ said Gunnar gravely when Njal stood before him; and he told the tale as he had heard it from the messenger.
‘It is for you, Njal, to fix the atonement,’ he said at the end.
‘You will have work to atone for all Hallgerda’s misdoings,’ answered Njal, ‘and it will take all our old friendship to keep us from quarrelling now. But I have it in mind that at the last you shall win through, but after hard fighting. As to the atonement, as you are my friend and have no hand in this, I will fix it at twelve ounces of silver. And if it should come to be your turn to settle an award, I shall not expect to pay more than that.’