After this Theodoric married the eldest of the nine fair princesses of Drachenfels, for the love of whom he had fought with the strong man Ecke. The name of Theodoric's wife was Gudelinda. Two of her sisters were married to two of Theodoric's men, namely, to Fasold, and the merry rogue and stout warrior, Dietleib,[165] whose laughter-moving adventures I have here no room to chronicle. And the mother, Bolfriana, who was fairest of all the race, was wooed and won by Witig. But this marriage, which Theodoric furthered with all his power, brought ill with it in the end and the separation of tried friends. For, in order to marry Bolfriana and receive the lordship of her domains, Witig was obliged to enter Hermanric's service and become his man. And though Hermanric promoted him to great honour and made him a count, this was but a poor amends for the necessity which, as you shall soon hear, lay upon Witig, to lift up his sword against his former master.
[Footnote 165: Some of these adventures remind us of the story of the kitchen-knave as told in Tennyson's Gareth and Lynette.]
Now, Hermanric, as has been said, was sovereign lord of Rome and of many other fair lands beside: and all kings and dukes to the south of the great mountains served him, and, as it seems, even Theodoric himself owned him as over-lord, and he was by far the greatest potentate in the south of Europe. For the Emperor himself then ruled only over Bulgaria and Greece, while King Hermanric's dominions included all that lay west of the Sea of Adria.
Till this time Theodoric and his uncle, Hermanric, had been good friends. The young hero had visited the older one at Romaborg, and they had fought side by side against their enemies. But now came a disastrous change, which made Theodoric a wanderer from his home for many years; and this was all the work of that false traitor, Hermanric's chief counsellor, Sibich.[166] For Sibich's honour as a husband had been stained by his lord while he himself was absent on an embassy; but instead of avenging himself with his own right hand on the adulterous king, he planned a cruel and wide-reaching scheme of vengeance which should embrace all the kindred of the wrong-doer. Of Hermanric's three sons he caused that the eldest should be sent on an embassy to Wilkina-land[167] demanding tribute from the king of that country, and should be slain there by an accomplice; that the second should be sent on a like embassy to England, and sailing in a leaky ship, should be swallowed up by the waves; and that the youngest should be slain by his father in a fit of rage provoked by the slanderous accusations of Sibich. Then he set Hermanric against his nephews, the Harlungs, sons of his half-brother, Aké; and these hapless young men were besieged in their Rhine-land castle, to which Hermanric set fire, and issuing forth, sword in hand, that they might not die like rats in a hole, were captured and hung by their enraged uncle on the highest tree in their own domains. So was all the family of Hermanric destroyed except Theodoric and his young brother Diether: and against Theodoric Sibich now began to ply his engines of calumny. He represented to Hermanric that Theodoric's kingdom had for some time been growing large, while his own had been growing smaller, and hinted that soon Theodoric would openly attack his uncle. Meanwhile, and in order to test his peaceable disposition, Hermanric, by Sibich's advice, claimed that he should pay him tribute for Amalungen-land.[168] When Theodoric refused to do this Hermanric was persuaded of the truth of Sibich's words, and declared that Theodoric also should be hanged, "for right well do both he and I know which of us is the mightier".