Mainly he spoke of his bravery and how well he had died, albeit after suffering the way he had. ‘The Norns spun a dark skein for our brother Halldor,’ Sigurd said, to which many murmured agreement, ‘but in the end he died as we all hunger to die, amongst our brothers, with a good sword in our hands. Even the Spinners cannot always cheat us of this right.’ We made a pyre for Halldor and laid him on it with the things he would need on the other side of Bifröst, the Rainbow-Bridge, and in one hand the corpse gripped his sword and in the other it grasped the Týr carving Sigurd had given him at the end. But even in death poor Halldor could not shrug off his ill-wyrd, for as soon as we had lit the sea-smoothed white driftwood beneath the corpse, the pitch-black clouds overhead began to spill stinging rain, with streaks of lightning and cracks of thunder loud enough to flay the skin from a man’s bones. For a long time the wood just steamed and even when a flame defied the deluge it did nothing more than singe the corpse above it.
