Facing the total annihilation of all the men in her family, Steinvor applied to the last penis in her household: Thorgrim, the Second Norwegian.
“What if I let you marry Gudrun?”
“My dead buddy’s ex? It’ll be a bit weird…”
“She inherits the farm,” pointed out Steinvor.
“Well, in that case.” Thorgrim thought it over. “Sure, Thorir foresaw his own death and told me that I’d certainly die if I didn’t leave Iceland, but on the other hand, I can also sleep with the person who’ll remind me most of him at every moment. But on the plus side, I’ll have a farm, which is more than I have back in Norway.”
It wasn’t a difficult decision, and soon Thorgrim had an Icelandic wife, an Icelandic farm, and Icelandic citizenship, such as it was.*
Njal shook hands with Gunnar and Kolskegg, looking from face to face. “I’m always glad to see you, but what did you do this time?”
When the Njalssons were shooed away, Gunnar spoke frankly. “I need support.”
“You’ll always have that,” smiled Njal. “Legal, emotional, or what now?”
“Both. I’ve killed a lot of people. Kolskegg and I, both of us. What are we going to do?”
“They attacked you, right?” Njal thought about it. “Morally, I can’t blame you for killing them – but legally, that’s still not cut and dry.”
Njal paced back and forth on his lawn, deep in thought. Finally he came back, well-doodled notepad in hand.
“I’ve come up with a legal strategy for you, but it’s not going to be easy. You know how you warrior types talk about the best defense being a good offense? The law is much the same. Are you ready for this?”
Gunnar and Kolskegg nodded.
“First is the easy part,” said Njal. “You need to dig up the bodies and document all the wounds, and their armour, and the weapons they were carrying. Everything. There has to be watertight evidence that those guys were ambushing you.”
“We can do that,” said Gunnar. “The neighbourhood is solidly behind us – I can get all the witnesses I want.”
“Good,” said Njal. “The next bit relies on who’s going to be prosecuting the homicide case – I’m going to take a wild guess and say ‘Starkad and Thorgeir.’ So what you need is dirt on them. Luckily, I have just the thing. Thorgeir got my cousin Thorfinna pregnant a couple of months ago, and that’s a full-outlawry offense. So I’m going to give you my power of attorney over her. Starkad was cutting down my trees last week, and I can prove it – I was going to let it go, but that’s also, technically, a full-outlawry offense. Always good to collect those against your neighbours, for exactly this kind of situation.”
Njal whipped a deck of cards out of his pocket, examined them, and shook his head. “Unfortunately – did you kill Egil?”
“Yes,” said Gunnar sheepishly.
“Then his brother Onund is going to be prosecuting you for that, and I don’t have an Onund.” He peered at his cards, considering them one-by-one, then selected one with gold-foil edging and handed it to Gunnar along with the ‘Seduction’ and ‘Illegal Logging’ cards.
“Give this to Tyrfng of Berjanes, and ask for his rare edition Onund in return. I hate to give it up – Tyrfing’s been coveting that case for a while – but it’ll get you what you need.”
Gunnar thanked him profusely.
“Oh, one last thing,” added Njal. “They’ll try to disqualify you from prosecuting, citing a conflict of interest over that fight with Thorgeir earlier. Tell them I said you could – I did the vellumwork at the Thingskalar Assembly earlier. Never hurts to be prepared, or psychic.”
A few days later, Gunnar and the Njalssons dug up all the bodies, documented the wounds on the proper forms, and filed them at the nearest Law Rock demanding retroactive outlawry for all the attackers. A few birds looked on with interest.
* It was the farm.
Saxo Dramaticus 