After that he stood for a while as if in thought, and broke out at length: "We will see if this man can sing a death song as did Ragnar our forefather." And with that he waited no more, but strode out into the courtyard, we following.

And I feared what I should see; until I looked on Beorn, and though he was yet alive, I saw that he was past feeling aught.
They bore him out of the village to a place just inside the trenched enclosure, and there were old stone walls, such as were none elsewhere in the place, but as it might have been part of Burgh or Brancaster walls that the Romans made on our shores, so ancient that they were crumbling to decay.

There they set him down, and raised a great flat stone, close to the greatest wall, which covered the mouth of a deep pit.
"Look therein," said Ingvar to me.
I looked, and saw that the pit was stone walled and deep, and that out of it was no way but this hole above.

The walls and floor were damp and slimy; and when I looked closer, the dim light showed me bones in one corner, and also that over the floor crawled reptiles, countless.
"An adder is a small thing to sting a man," said Ingvar in his grim voice.

"Nor will it always hurt him much.