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 innocence of his wife, began to repent of his error, and hastened to release the slandered lady.
But meantime Bikk rushed up, declaring that when she was on her back she held off the beasts by awful charms, and could only be crushed if she lay on her face; for he knew that her beauty saved her.When the body of the queen was placed in this manner, the herd of beasts was driven upon it, and trod it down deep with their multitude of feet.Such was the end of Swanhild.
Meantime, the favourite dog of Broder came creeping to the king making a sort of moan, and seemed to bewail its master's punishment; and his hawk, when it was brought in, began to pluck out its breast-feathers with its beak.The king took its nakedness as an omen of his bereavement, to frustrate which he quickly sent men to take his son down from the noose: for he divined by the featherless bird that he would be childless unless he took good heed.Thus Broder was freed from death, and Bikk, fearing he would pay the penalty of an informer, went and told the men of the Hellespont that Swanhild had been abominably slain by her husband.When they set sail to avenge their sister, he came back to Jarmerik, and told him that the Hellespontines were preparing war.
The king thought that it would be safer to fight with walls than in the field, and retreated into the stronghold which he had built.To stand the siege, he filled its inner parts with stores, and its battlements with men-at-arms.Targets and shields flashing with gold were hung round and adorned the topmost circle of the building.
It happened that the Hellespontines, before sharing their booty, accused a great band of their men of embezzling, and put them to death.Having now destroyed so large a part of their forces by internecine slaughter, they thought that their strength was not equal to storming the palace, and consulted a sorceress named Gudrun.She brought it to pass that the defenders of the king's side were suddenly blinded and turned their arms against one another.When the Hellespontines saw this, they brought up a shield-mantlet, and seized the approaches of the gates.Then they tore up the posts, burst into the building, and hewed down the blinded ranks of the enemy.In this uproar Odin appeared, and, making for the thick of the ranks of the fighters, restored by his divine power to the Danes that vision which they had lost by sleights; for he ever cherished them with fatherly love.He instructed them to shower stones to batter the Hellespontines, who used spells to harden their bodies against weapons.Thus both companies slew one another and perished.Jarmerik lost both feet and both hands, and his trunk was rolled among the dead.
BRODER, little fit for it, followed him as king.
The next king was SIWALD.His son SNIO took vigorously to roving in his father's old age, and not only preserved the fortunes of his country, but even restored them, lessened as they were, to their former estate.Likewise, when he came to the sovereignty, he crushed the insolence of the champions Eskil and Alkil, and by this conquest reunited to his country Skaane, which had been severed from the general jurisdiction of Denmark.At last he conceived a passion for the daughter of the King of the Goths; it was returned, and he sent secret messengers to seek a chance of meeting her.These men were intercepted by the father of the damsel and hanged: thus paying dearly for their rash mission.
