ADVENTURE XXV
HOW THE LORDS ALL JOURNEYED TO THE HUNS
Now let us leave the tale of how they lived at Etzel’s court. More high-mettled warriors never rode in such lordly wise to the land of any king; they had whatever they listed, both of weapons and of weeds. The ruler of the Rhineland clad his men, a thousand and sixty knights,[1] as I have heard, and nine thousand footmen, for the courtly feast. Those they left at home bewailed it in after time. The trappings were now borne across the court at Worms; then spake an aged bishop from Speyer to fair Uta: “Our friends would journey to the feasting. May God preserve their honor there.”
The noble Lady Uta then spake to her sons: “Pray tarry here, good knights. Me-dreamed last night of direst woe, how all the fowls in this land lay dead.“
“Who recketh aught of dreams,” quoth Hagen, “he wotteth not how to say the proper words, when ’t would bring him great store of honors. I wish that my lord go to court to take his leave. We must gladly ride to Etzel’s land. The arms of doughty heroes may serve kings there full well, where we shall behold Kriemhild’s feast.”
Hagen counseled the journey, but later it rued him sore. He would have advised against it, but that Gernot encountered him with such rude words. Of Siegfried, Lady Kriemhild’s husband, he minded him; he
- ↑ a thousand and sixty. This does not agree with the account in Adventure XXIV, where we read of a thousand of Hagen’s men, eighty of Dankwart’s, and thirty of Folker’s. The nine thousand foot soldiers mentioned here are a later interpolation, as the Thidreksaga speaks of only a thousand all told.
