In they hacked them,
out they hurled them,
bears assailing,
boars defending.
Stones and stairways
streamed and darkened;
day came dimly –
the doors were held.
102
Five days they fought
few and dauntless;
the doors were riven,
dashed asunder.
They barred them with bodies,
bulwarks piling
of Huns and Niflungs
hewn and cloven.
103
(Atli spoke then
anguish mourning:)
‘My friends are fallen,
my foes living,
my kith and kindred
cloven-breasted.
I am wealth-bereaved
and wife-cursed,
of glory shorn
in the grey of years.
104
Woe and wailing
in my wide kingdom!
Where I feasted long
are fell serpents.
The proud pillars
are purple-stained
in the builded halls
that Budli reared.’
105
Then Beiti spake there
bale devising,
the king’s counsellor –
he was cunning-hearted:
‘Accursed is become
thy carven house!
Better loss of little
than to lose thy all.
106
Fire still may tame
these fell serpents,
thy pillars be the pyre
of these proud robbers!’
For the ruin and wrack
wrath seized Atli;
that shame he shirked not,
shorn of glory.
107
Flame-encircled
fearless Niflungs
in riven harness
redly glinted.
Iron-bolted walls,
ancient timbers,
creaked and smouldered,
cracked and tumbled.
108
There hot and smoking
fell hissing embers,
and plashed and sputtered
in the pools of gore.
Reek was round them,
a rolling smoke;
dank dripped their sweat –
the doors were held.
109
Their shields they raised
over shattered helmets;
they stamped the brands
on streaming floors.
Blacktongued with thirst
blood there drank they;
fell one by one
on the ways to hell.
110
Out burst the brethren
blackhued, grisly,
boars bleeding-tusked
at bay at last.
The Huns grasped them
helmless, shieldless,
bare and bleeding,
with broken swords.
111
As hounds affrighted
Huns were crying;
they were rent and riven
by reeking hands.
