Page:The Nibelungenlied - tr. Shumway - 1909.pdf/344

286 fell thick and fast upon them, but with their shields they turned it from them to the ground. Both the heat and the smoke did hurt them sore; in sooth, I ween, that nevermore will such anguish hap to heroes.

Again Hagen of Troneg spake: “Stand by the sides of the hall. Let not the firebrands fall upon your helmet bands, but stamp them with your feet down deeper in the blood. Forsooth it is an evil feast which the queen doth give us here.”

In such dire woes the night did wear away at last, and still the brave minstrel and his comrade Hagen stood before the hall, a-leaning on their shields. More scathe they awaited from those of Etzel’s band. Then spake the fiddler: “Now go we into the hall. Then the Huns will ween, that we all be dead from the torture that hath been done us here. They’ll yet see us go to meet them in the strife.”

Now spake Giselher of Burgundy, the youth: “I trow the day dawneth, a cooling wind doth blow. May God in heaven let us live to see a liefer time, for my sister Kriemhild hath given us here an evil feast.”

Again one spake: “I see the day. Sith we cannot hope for better things, so arm you, heroes, think on your life. Certes, King Etzel’s wife will come to meet us soon again.”

The host weened well, that his guests were dead from their toil and the pangs of fire; but yet within the hall six hundred brave men, as good as any knight that king ever gained, were still alive. Those set to guard the strangers had well seen that the guests still lived, despite the damage and the dole that had been done both to the lordings and their men. In the hall one saw