Again the Hall-Sun said:  “Art thou also alive, O Egil the messenger?  Swift are thy feet, but not to flee from the foe:  Come up and stand with us!”

Therewith Egil clave the throng; he was not so roughly dealt with as was Wolfkettle, for he was a bowman, and had this while past shot down on the Romans from aloof; and he yet held his bended bow in his hand.  He also came up on to the dais and stood beside Wolfkettle glancing down on the hall-crowd, looking eagerly from side to side.

Yet again the Hall-Sun spake:  “No aliens now are dwelling in the Mark; come hither, ye men of the kindreds!  Come thou, our brother Hiarandi of the Elkings, for thy sisters, our wives, are fain of thee.  Come thou, Valtyr of the Laxings, brother’s son of Otter; do thou for the War-duke what thy father’s brother had done, had he not been faring afar.  Come thou, Geirbald of the Shieldings the messenger!  Now know we the deeds of others and thy deeds.  Come, stand beside us for a little!”

Forth then they came in their rent and battered war-gear:  and the tall Hiarandi bore but the broken truncheon of his sword; and Valtyr a woodman’s axe notched and dull with work; and Geirbald a Roman cast-spear, for his own weapons had been broken in the medley; and he came the last of the three, going as a belated reaper from the acres.  There they stood by the others and gazed adown the hall-throng.

But the Hall-Sun spake again:  “Agni of the Daylings, I see thee now.  How camest thou into the hard handplay, old man?  Come hither and stand with us, for we love thee.  Angantyr of the Bearings, fair was thy riding on the day of the Battle on the Ridge!  Come thou, be with us.  Shall the Beamings whose daughters we marry fail the House of the Wolf to-day?  Geirodd, thou hast no longer a weapon, but the fight is over, and this hour thou needest it not.  Come to us, brother!  Gunbald of the Vallings, the Falcon on thy shield is dim with the dint of point and edge, but it hath done its work to ward thy valiant heart:  Come hither, friend!  Come all ye and stand with us!”

As she named them so they came, and they went up on to the dais and stood altogether; and a terrible band of warriors they looked had the fight been to begin over again, and they to meet death once more.  And again spake the Hall-Sun: 

“Steinulf and Grani, deft are your hands!  Take ye the stalks of the war blossoms, the spears of the kindreds, and knit them together to make a bier for our War-duke, for he is weary and may not go afoot.  Thou Ali, son of Grey; thou hast gone errands for me before; go forth now from the garth, and wend thy ways toward the water, and tell me when thou comest back what thou hast seen of the coming of the wain-burg.  For by this time it should be drawing anigh.”

So Ali went forth, and there was silence of words for a while in the Hall; but there arose the sound of the wood-wrights busy with the wimble and the hammer about the bier.  No long space had gone by when Ali came back into the hall panting with his swift running; and he cried out: