Then lo, a fearful wonder, for as very wolves they grew
In outward shape and semblance, and they howled out wolfish things,
Like the grey dogs of the forest; though somewhat the hearts of kings
Abode in their bodies of beasts. Now sooth is the tale to tell,
That the men in the fair-wrought raiment were kings’ sons bound by a
spell
To wend as wolves of the wild-wood, for each nine days of the ten,
And to lie all spent for a season when they gat their shapes of men.
So Sigmund and his fellow
rush forth from the golden place;
And though their kings’
hearts bade them the backward way to trace
Unto their Dwarf-wrought dwelling,
and there abide the change,
Yet their wolfish habit drave
them wide through the wood to range,
And draw nigh to the dwellings
of men and fly upon the prey.
And lo now, a band of hunters
on the uttermost woodland way,
And they spy those dogs of
the forest, and fall on with the spear,
Nor deemed that any other
but woodland beasts they were,
And that easy would be the
battle: short is the tale to tell;
For every man of the hunters
amid the thicket fell.
Then onwards fare those were-wolves,
and unto the sea they turn,
And their ravening hearts
are heavy, and sore for the prey they yearn:
And lo, in the last of the
thicket a score of the chaffering men,
And Sinfiotli was wild for
the onset, but Sigmund was wearying then
For the glimmering gold of
his Dwarf-house, and he bade refrain from
the folk,
But wrath burned in the eyes
of Sinfiotli, and forth from the
thicket he broke;
Then rose the axes aloft,
and the swords flashed bright in the sun,
And but little more it needed
that the race of the Volsungs was done,
And the folk of the Gods’
begetting: but at last they quelled the war,
And no man again of the sea-folk
should ever sit by the oar.
Now Sinfiotli fay weary and
faint, but Sigmund howled over the dead,
And wrath in his heart there
gathered, and a dim thought wearied his
head
And his tangled wolfish wit,
that might never understand;
As though some God in his
dreaming had wasted the work of his hand,
And forgotten his craft of
creation; then his wrath swelled up amain
And he turned and fell on
Sinfiotli, who had wrought the wrack and
the bane
And across the throat he tore
him as his very mortal foe
Till a cold dead corpse by
the sea-strand his fosterling lay alow:
Then wearier yet grew Sigmund,
and the dim wit seemed to pass
From his heart grown cold
and feeble; when lo, amid the grass
There came two weazles bickering,
and one bit his mate by the head,
Till she lay there dead before