Chapter 8

Now the king's sisters searched the battlefield. Svanhvit found Hromund wounded and sewed his belly together, and searched his wounds. She sent him to a healer named Hagall. Hagall's wife was very cunning. They took him in and healed his wounds. Hromund discovered that this household was very knowledgeable.

The man often went fishing, and one day when he was at his fishing he caught a pike, and when he came home and cut it open he found in its mouth Mistiltein, Hromund's sword, and took it to him. Hromund was glad at that, and he kissed the hilt of the sword and was instantly well.

There was a man in King Halding's host who was called Blind the Evil. He told the king that Hromund was alive, healthy, and living with the farmer Hagall and his wife. The king said that this was false, that they would not dare to keep him in ignorance. But he told Blind to search for Hromund.

Blind went with some men to Hagall's house and asked if Hromund was concealed there. Hagall's wife said he would not find him there. Blind searched carefully and could not find him, because the woman had concealed Hromund in her boiling cauldron. Blind and his fellows departed, but after they had gone some way, Blind said:

"That was not the journey I foresaw. We must turn back."

They did so, went back and found the woman. Blind said she was crafty, and she had concealed Hromund in the cauldron.

"Look there and take him, then," she said. But she said that because as soon as they had left she had dressed Hromund in women's clothes and set him to grind corn and turn the quern. And as soon as they came there, the maid turned the quern. They searched all around, but again they found nothing, and so they went away.

But as they were heading off, Blind said that the woman must have magically seen them and he thought that Hromund must have been the one who turned the quern in women's clothes, "and I see she has outdone us. I can do nothing against that woman, since she is so cunning." They wished her evil and went back to the king.