But they came to a house on a day in the uttermost part of the woods And smote on the door and entered, when a long while no man bade; And lo, a gold-hung hall, and two men on the benches laid In slumber as deep as the death; and gold rings great and fair Those sleepers bore on their bodies, and broidered southland gear, And over the head of each there hung a wolf-skin grey.
Then the drift of a cloudy dream wrapt Sigmund's soul away, And his eyes were set on the wolf-skin, and long he gazed thereat, And remembered the words he uttered when erst on the beam he sat, That the Gods should miss a man in the utmost Day of Doom, And win a wolf in his stead; and unto his heart came home That thought, as he gazed on the wolf-skin and the other days waxed dim, And he gathered the thing in his hand, and did it over him; And in likewise did Sinfiotli as he saw his fosterer do. 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.