III
As I lay soft wrapt in sleep in my cold tomb, I heard the eagle call in the midst of the night.
He summoned his brood and all the birds of the heavens.
He said to them in calling:
“Rise you quickly upon your two wings!
It is not of the rotten flesh of dogs or of sheep; it is of the flesh of Christians that we will be eating!”
“Old sea-crow, listen; tell me—what do you hold there?”
“I hold the head of the Chief of the Army; I wish to have his two red eyes.
I tear out his two eyes, because he has torn out thine own.”
“And you, fox, tell me—what do you hold there?”
“I hold his heart, which was false as mine is;
The heart which desired your death, and long ago plotted your death.”
“And you, tell me, Toad, what do you there, at the corner of his mouth?”
“I, I am put here to await his soul in passage:
It will remain in me as long as I shall live in punishment for the crime he has committed against the Bard who no longer lives between Roc’allaz and Porzguenn.”