Then they went to seek the other dragon[6] in the cavern. He had fifteen heads, and was three times as strong as the first. The maiden whom this dragon had carried off showed Bruntslikos a sword, twice as heavy as the first. He could just move it, but not lift it clear off the earth. But she gave him wine to drink, and then he was straightway stronger. She too had greeted Bruntslikos, when he came, with the words, ‘How comest thou here, my beloved? Here must thou lose thy life, for my husband will kill thee.’
But he said, ‘To fetch thee am I come. Thy sister dear have I already fetched, and thee too I must help out of here.’
‘God grant thou may,’ she said, ‘then would I be thy bride.’
‘I have one already,’ he said, ‘thy sister; but all the more readily will I help thee out.’
Then came the dragon. He was still fifty miles away when he flung a hammer there weighing fifty hundredweight. When he was come, he said, ‘I smell human flesh here.’
‘But, dear husband, how couldst thou smell human flesh? Never even a bird comes hither, and yet thou wilt be scenting a mortal.’
‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ said he; and cried, ‘Brother-in-law! Why comest thou not out? What is it thou wilt of me? I fear thee not.’
Thrice he thus called him, but he would not answer. But at last he said to him, ‘I fear thee not. I must slay thee.’
‘Come, if thou art so strong that thou wilt kill me,’ answered the dragon, ‘then let us wrestle.’ [[154]]
They wrestled, and the dragon drove him into the earth to the waist. They settled that the dragon should draw him out again. He seized the dragon, and drove him into the earth to the neck. Then he grasped the sword, and cut off his fifteen heads; only the middle one held so firm that he could not sever it.