one Kristni, a king of the Romans, who sought to dispute with Odin himself.
This Kristni was a magic-worker, who clad his followers in white linen
instead of byrnies, and gave them runes in place of swords, and sprinkled
them with witch water. Biorn did not like what he heard of the warlock, and
longed for the day when his father Ironbeard would make an end of him.

Each year before the coming of spring there was a lean season in Hightown.
Fish were scarce in the ice-holes, the stock of meal in the meal-ark grew
low, and the deep snow made poor hunting in wood or on fell-side. Belts
were tightened, and there were hollow cheeks among the thralls. And then
one morning the wind would blow from the south, and a strange smell come
into the air. The dogs left their lair by the fire and, led by the Garm the
old blind patriarch, made a tour of inspection among the outhouses to the
edge of the birch woods. Presently would come a rending of the ice on the
firth, and patches of inky water would show between the floes. The snow
would slip from the fell-side, and leave dripping rock and clammy bent, and
the river would break its frosty silence and pour a mighty grey-green flood
to the sea. The swans and geese began to fly northward, and the pipits woke
among the birches. And at last one day the world put on a new dress, all
steel-blue and misty green, and a thousand voices woke of flashing streams
and nesting birds and tossing pines, and the dwellers in Hightown knew that
spring had fairly come.

Then was Biorn the happy child. All through the long day, and through much
of that twilight which is the darkness of a Norland summer, he was abroad
on his own errands. With Grim the Hunter he adventured far up on the fells
and ate cheese and bannocks in the tents of the wandering Skridfinns, or
stalked the cailzie-cock with his arrows in the great pine forest, which in
his own mind he called Mirkwood and feared exceedingly. Or he would go
fishing with Egil the Fisherman, spearing salmon in the tails of the river