re Sinfiotli lay. And when the sky was shut out
from them with the turf and soil that was put over the pit, Sinfiotli
shouted to Sigmund: "I shall not die, for the queen has thrown down to
me meat wrapped in a parcel of straw."
And a while afterwards Sinfiotli shouted to Sigmund: "The queen has left
a sword in the meat which she flung down to me. It is a mighty sword.
Almost I think it is Gram, the sword you told me of."
"If it be Gram," Sigmund said, "it is a sword that can cut through this
flagstone. Thrust the blade against the stone and try."
Sinfiotli thrust the blade against the stone and the blade went through
the stone. Then, one on each side, they took hold of the sword and they
cut the great stone in two. Afterwards, working together, it was easy to
shift the turf and soil. The two came out under the sky.
Before them was the Hall of King Siggeir. They came to the Hall and they
set dry wood before it and they fired the wood and made the Hall blaze
up. And when the Hall was in a blaze King Siggeir came to the door and
shouted, "Who is it that has fired the house of the King?"
And Sigmund said, "I, Sigmund, the son of Volsung, that you may pay for
the treason wrought on the Volsungs."
Seeing Sigmund there with Gram, the great sword, in his hands, Siggeir
went back into his Hall. Then Signy was seen with her white face and her
stern eyes, and Sigmund called to her, "Come forth, come forth. Sigmund
calls. Come out of Siggeir's blazing house and together we will go back
to the Hall of the Branstock."
But Signy said, "All is finished now. The vengeance is wrought and I
have no more to keep me in life. The Volsung race lives on in you, my
brother, and that is my joy. Not merrily did I wed King Siggeir and not
merrily did I live with him, but merrily will I die with him now."
She went within the Hall; then the flames burst over it and all who were
within perished. Thus the vengeance of the Volsungs was wrought.
And Sigurd thought on the deed that Sigmund, his father, and Sinfiotli,
the youth who was his father's kinsman, wrought, as he rode the ways of
the forest, and of the things that thereafter befell them.
Sigmund and Sinfiotli left King Siggeir's land and came back to the land
where was the Hall of the Branstock. Sigmund became a great King and
Sinfiotli was the Captain of his host.
And the story of Sigmund and Sinfiotli goes on to tell how Sigmund wed a
woman whose name was Borghild, and how
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