ir uncle, contending that they had as good a right to the
throne as he. The king demolished their strongholds in Germany with
engines, blockaded or took several towns, and returned home with a
bloodless victory. The Hellespontines came to meet him, proffering their
sister for the promised marriage. After this had been celebrated, at
Bikk's prompting he again went to Germany, took his nephews in war, and
incontinently hanged them. He also got together the chief men under the
pretence of a banquet and had them put to death in the same fashion.

Meantime, the king appointed Broder, his son by another marriage, to
have charge over his stepmother, a duty which he fulfilled with full
vigilance and integrity. But Bikk accused this man to his father of
incest; and, to conceal the falsehood of the charge, suborned witnesses
against him. When the plea of the accusation had been fully declared,
Broder could not bring any support for his defence, and his father
bade his friends pass sentence upon the convicted man, thinking it less
impious to commit the punishment proper for his son to the judgment of
others. All thought that he deserved outlawry except Bikk, who did not
shrink from giving a more terrible vote against his life, and declaring
that the perpetrator of an infamous seduction ought to be punished with
hanging. But lest any should think that this punishment was due to the
cruelty of his father, Bikk judged that, when he had been put in the
noose, the servants should hold him up on a beam put beneath him, so
that, when weariness made them take their hands from the burden, they
might be as good as guilty of the young man's death, and by their own
fault exonerate the king from an unnatural murder. He also pretended
that, unless the accused were punished, he would plot against his
father's life. The adulteress Swanhild, he said, ought to suffer a
shameful end, trampled under the hoofs of beasts.

The king yielded to Bikk; and, when his son was to be hanged, he made
the bystanders hold him up by means of a plank, that he might not
be choked. Thus his throat was only a little squeezed, the knot was
harmless, and it was but a punishment in show. But the king had the
queen tied very tight on the ground, and delivered her to be crushed
under the hoofs of horses. The story goes that she was so beautiful,
that even the beasts shrank from mangling limbs so lovely with their
filthy feet. The king, divining that this proclaimed the inn