Lose Next War

Now a long time passed, with King Hrolf and his champions staying put peacefully in Denmark like this. No one attacked them. All his tributary kings remained obedient to him and paid him tribute, and so did Hjorvard, his brother-in-law.

Now it happened one time that Queen Skuld spoke with King Hjorvard, her husband, and said, with a heavy sigh, “It doesn’t seem right to me that we should pay tribute to King Hrolf and be oppressed by him, and it can’t carry on like this, with you being his underling.”

Hjorvard says, “It’ll be best for us to bear it like the rest of them, and leave things calm as they are.”

“You’re a spineless weed,” she said, “putting up with sorts of shames that are done to you.”

He said, “It is not possible to struggle with King Hrolf, as no one dares raise a shield against him.”

“You’re so spineless, the lot of you,” she said, “there’s no pith in you, and no one gets anywhere unless they take a chance. It won’t be known till it’s tried, whether King Hrolf and his champions can be hurt. But the way things have gone now,” she said, “I doubt he’ll have victory against us, and it doesn’t seem so out of the question to have a go and see, and even if he is bound to me by the bonds of kinship, I won’t protect him, and that’s why he’s always at home, because he suspects it himself, that victory will elude him. I shall now propose a plan, if you’ll listen, and I won’t spare any tricks in trying to succeed.”

Skuld was a powerful sorceress, a great galder-being, descended from elves on her mother’s side, and King Hrolf and his champions would pay for that.

“First I’ll send men to King Hrolf and ask him to let me pay no tribute for the next three years, and then pay up all in one go, all that I owe him. Now I think it most likely that this trick will work, and if this goes according to plan, we should sit tight.”

Now the messengers go between them as the queen instructed. King Hrolf agrees to this arrangement, to delay the tribute as asked.

[...]

King Hrolf leapt from the high-seat, now that he’d drunk for a while with all his champions. They leave the good drink for then, and are outside in an instant, all except Bodvar Bjarki. None of them saw him, and they thought that very strange, and they supposed it not unlikely that he was somewhere else, captured or killed.

And the moment they’re out, a tremendous battle breaks out. King Hrolf presses forward himself with the standards and his champions beside him on both sides together with all the garrison, which amounted to no small number, although they counted for little in a fight. Hard blows could be seen there, to helm and hauberk. Many a sword and spear could be seen in the air, and so many dead, they covered every inch of the ground.

Hjalti the Gallant said, “Many’s the byrnie now slit and many weapons broken and many a helm destroyed and many’s the brave rider dashed from his steed, and our king is in fine spirits, for he is now as glad as when he drank ale so deeply and strikes always with both hands, and he is most unlike other kings in battle, for it seems to me he has the strength of twelve kings, and many a doughty man has he killed, and now King Hjorvard can see that the sword Skofnung bites, and now it rings loud in their skulls.” The nature of Skofnung was such that it sang aloud when it tasted bone.

Now the fight grows so fierce that none can withstand King Hrolf and his champions. King Hrolf strikes with Skofnung, it seemed a marvel, and they make such inroads into the army of King Hjorvard, and the enemy fall in heaps.

[...]

After this urging from Hjalti, Bodvar gets up and goes out to the battle. The bear has disappeared from the army now, and the battle was starting to go against them. Queen Skuld had used none of her tricks while the bear was in the ranks of King Hrolf, sitting there in her black tent on her seid-stand. Now the situation changes as suddenly as dim night coming after a bright day. Now King Hrolf’s men see coming out of King Hjorvard’s ranks a monstrous boar. It looked no smaller than a three-year-old ox and was wolf-grey in colour, and an arrow flew from each of its bristles, and it went through the king’s retainers like nothing on earth, felling them by the dozen.

Bodvar Bjarki ploughed into them now, hacking two handed, his only thought to do as much damage as he could before he fell. And now they fall in heaps before him, one on top of another, and both his arms are bloodied to the shoulder, and he felled so many, the dead were stacked all about him. He stormed on as if he was insane. But however many men he and Hrolf’s other champions kill, from the army of Hjorvard and Skuld—it’s incredible but—their numbers aren’t a bit diminished, and it’s as if the champions are doing nothing, and they can’t recall encountering anything so strange before.

Bodvar said, “Vast is the host of Skuld, and I suspect now that the dead move here and rise up again and fight against us, and it won’t be easy to fight with zombies, and however many limbs may be cloven, and shields shivered, helm and hauberk hacked apart, and however many chiefs we cut down, these dead ones are the grimmest to contend with, and we haven’t the power to combat this, but where is that champion of King Hrolf, who most questioned my courage and kept challenging me to come out, till I answered him? I don’t see him now, and I’m not one to criticise people.”

Then said Hjalti, “You speak true, you are no slanderer. Here stands that man, Hjalti by name, and now I have some work at hand, and it’s not far between us, and I’m in need of gallant lads, for all my armour is hewn away, foster brother, although I reckon I’m battling all out, and now I’m not avenging all my blows, but this is no time to hold back, if we’re going to stay in Valhall this evening, and we’ve certainly not seen the like of this before, though we’ve had enough warnings of what’s now come.”

Bodvar Bjarki said, “Harken to what I say: I have fought in twelve pitched battles, my daring never questioned, and never gave way to a berserk. I urged King Hrolf to visit King Adils, and we met a trick or two there, but that was nothing compared to this plight, and now there is something weighing down on my heart and I am not so eager to fight as before. I met King Hjorvard earlier, in the first encounter, and we came at one another, and neither of us cast insults at the other. We clashed with weapons for a while. He gave me a blow, which tasted to me of death, but I hewed off an arm and a leg, and landed another blow on his shoulder and sliced down through his side and back, but he reacted with not so much as a sigh, but just seemed so sleep for a bit, but I thought he was dead, and there can’t be many like him, and afterwards he fought not a wit feebler than before, and I couldn’t say what keeps him going. Here have many men assembled against us, nobles and commoners, who press from all sides, so that shields can hardly hold them back, but I can’t spot Odin here yet. I have a strong suspicion he’ll be lurking round here somewhere, dirty treacherous devil that he is, and if anyone could point him out to me, I’d squeeze him like any other miserable measly little mouse, and I’ll have some none too reverent sport with that nasty venomous creature, if I get a hold of him, and who wouldn’t have hate in his heart, if he saw his liege lord treated as we see ours now?”

Hjalti said, “It is not easy to bend fate, nor to stand against nature.”

And with that their talk was done.

[...]

King Hrolf defended himself well and warriorlike and with courage unrivalled in the tales of men. They pressed him hard, and he was encircled by elite troops of Skuld and King Hjorvard. Skuld has now come into the battle and wildly eggs on her rabble to attack King Hrolf, for she sees that the champions are not too near him, and this is what sorely grieved Bodvar Bjarki, that he was not able to help his lord, and the other champions felt this too, for they were now as ready to die with him as they had been to live with him, when they were in the bloom of their youth. Now the king’s bodyguard of retainers was fallen, and not one remained standing, and most of the champions were mortally wounded, and this was to be expected.

Master Galterus said that human strength cannot withstand such fiendish power, unless with the strength of God to aid them, “and one thing stood between you and victory, King Hrolf, that you had not the knowledge of your Maker.”

There came on now such a storm of spells that the champions began to fall, one on top of the other, and King Hrolf found himself outside the shield-wall and was near enough laid low with weariness. No need to spin it out with words: there fell King Hrolf and all his champions with good glory.

But what a slaughter they dealt out there, words cannot describe it. There fell King Hrolf and all his men, but for a few traitors who lived on with Skuld. In this way she took the lands of King Hrolf under her command and governed them, badly and for a short time. And Elk-Frodi avenged his brother Bodvar Bjarki, just as he promised him, as was told in Frodi’s Thread, together with Thorir Houndsfoot. And they received a mighty force from Sweden from Queen Yrsa, and it is said that Vogg was the commander of them. The whole host sailed for Denmark and came on Queen Skuld unawares. They seized her so she wasn’t able to bring any spells to bear, and all her rabble they killed, and tortured her in various ways, and the lands came back under the rule of King Hrolf’s daughters, then everyone sailed back to their own homes.

A mound was made for King Hrolf and the sword Skofnung laid beside him, and a mound for each champion, with their weapons too.

And here ends the saga of King Hrolf Kraki and his champions.


- The Saga of Hrolf Kraki and his Champions (Hrólfs saga kraka), Part 7, Chapters 47, 50, 51, and 52