With that he sprang up away from the board, and made them catch his horses, and rode home.
Then Lyting said to Grani Gunnar's son, "Thou wert by when Thrain was slain, and that will still be in thy mind; and thou, too, Gunnar Lambi's son, and thou, Lambi Sigurd's son. Now, my will is that we ride to meet him this evening, and slay him."
"No," says Grani, "I will not fall on Njal's son, and so break the atonement which good men and true have made."
With like words spoke each man of them, and so, too, spoke all the sons of Sigfus; and they took that counsel to ride away.
Then Lyting said, when they had gone away, "All men know that I have taken no atonement for my brother-in-law Thrain, and I shall never be content that no vengeance — man for man — shall be taken for him."
After that he called on his two brothers to go with him, and three house-carles as well. They went on the way to meet Hauskuld as he came back, and lay in wait for him north of the farm-yard in a pit; and there they bided till it was about mideven (1). Then Hauskuld rode up to them. They jump up all of them with their arms, and fall on him. Hauskuld guarded himself well, so that for a long while they could not get the better of him; but the end of it was at last that he wounded Lyting on the arm, and slew two of his serving-men, and then fell himself. They gave Hauskuld sixteen wounds, but they hewed not off the head from his body. They fared away into the wood east of Rangriver, and hid themselves there.
That same evening, Rodny's shepherd found Hauskuld dead, and went home and told Rodny of her son's slaying.
"Was he surely dead?" she asks; "was his head off?"
"It was not," he says.
"I shall know if I see," she says; "so take thou my horse and driving gear."