After gazing for a moment in speechless sorrow at his lifeless favourite, Wotan turns a wrathful glance upon the treacherous Hunding, who, unable to endure the divine accusation of his unflinching gaze, falls lifeless to the ground.  Then the god mounts his steed, and rides off on the wings of the storm in pursuit of the disobedient Walkyrie, whom he is obliged to punish severely for his oath’s sake.

The next scene represents an elevated plateau, the trysting spot of the eight Walkyries, on Hindarfiall, or Walkuerenfels, whither they all come hastening, bearing the bodies of the slain across their fleet steeds.  Brunhilde appears last of all, carrying Sieglinde.  She breathlessly pours out the story of the day’s adventures, and implores her sisters to devise some means of hiding Sieglinde, and to protect her from Wotan’s dreaded wrath:—­

   ’The raging hunter
    Behind me who rides,
    He nears, he nears from the North! 
    Save me, sisters! 
    Ward this woman.’

The sound of the tempest has been growing louder and louder while she is speaking, and as she ends her narrative Sieglinde recovers consciousness, but only to upbraid her for having saved her life.  She wildly proposes suicide, until Brunhilde bids her live for the sake of Siegmund’s son whom she will bring into the world, and tells her to treasure the fragments of the sword Nothung, which she had carried away.  Sieglinde, anxious now to live for her child’s sake, hides the broken fragments in her bosom, and, in obedience to Brunhilde’s advice, speeds into the dense forest where Fafnir has his lair, and where Wotan will never venture lest the curse of the ring should fall upon him.

   ’Save for thy son
    The broken sword! 
    Where his father fell
    On the field I found it. 
    Who welds it anew
    And waves it again,
    His name he gains from me now—­
    “Siegfried” the hero be hailed.’

The noise of the storm and rushing wind has become greater and greater, the Walkyries have anxiously been noting Wotan’s approach.  As Sieglinde vanishes in the dim recesses of the primeval forest, the wrathful god comes striding upon the stage in search of Brunhilde, who cowers tremblingly behind her sisters.  After a scathing rebuke to the Walkyries, who would fain shelter a culprit from his all-seeing eye, Wotan bids Brunhilde step forth.  Solemnly he then pronounces her sentence, declaring she shall serve him as Walkyrie no longer, but shall be banished to earth, where she will have to live as a mere mortal, and, marrying, to know naught beyond the joys and sorrows of other women:—­

   ’Heard you not how
    Her fate I have fixed? 
    Far from your side
    Shall the faithless sister be sundered;
    Her horse no more
    In your midst through the breezes shall haste her;
    Her flower of maidenhood
    Will falter and fade;
    A husband will win
    Her womanly heart,
    She meekly will bend
    To the mastering man
    The hearth she’ll heed, as she spins,
    And to laughers is left for their sport.’