My head canon was that he was shot by an archer, tried to run and successfully hid but succumbed to his injuries. That’s the only (in my mind) reason why his attackers would leave his belongings on/near him, especially his valuable axe
My personal speculation is somewhat different. I think it is unlikely that he was travelling alone. If the skirmish involved multiple people on both sides and neither side was able to completely eliminate the other on the spot, the action could have rapidly moved away from that location. In addition, the area of the skirmish, including his body, was quickly covered in snow afterwards. In this bad weather probably no one returned to the site in the following days, and if someone did, everything would have been hidden under a blanket of snow.
Hm that certainly sounds plausible, I’m curious if other items would be nearby that could have been dropped by the other combatants? Or maybe items that were attributed to being on his person were in fact from that scuffle (such as the broken arrows). It’s always fun speculating and talking about this with others, had to jump on the opportunity to share my theory haha
