We bid him to yield.
Alive shall he be taken
That freedom loved best;
But the heart shall be riven
From his lady’s breast.
When Oleg the Warden heard this, he asked Bride Bridekins:
“Are you afraid, lovely maiden?”
“I am not afraid,” she smilingly made answer. “I put my trust in the Grey Wolf and his Mate, in your twenty gallants and twenty orphans, and most of all in the knight Oleg the Warden. And besides that I have two brave bridesmaids—the Turtle Dove and the Slender Swallow.”
Oleg the Warden smiled, and already the wedding guests had lightly sprung to their feet. They seized their warriors’ weapons, both gallants and orphans, and stood by the windows of the soot-blacked castle stringing their good bows with silken cords as they waited for the princess and her army. But that army was so mighty that neither Oleg the Warden, nor his wedding guests, nor the soot-blacked house were able to withstand it.
The first to fall were the Grey Wolf and his Mate; for they jumped the stockade and the moats and rushed straight at the Emperor’s army to tear out the proud princess’s eyes in the midst of her army. But a hundred maces rose in the air; the soldiers defended the proud princess, the Eagle and the Grey Goshawk had their pinions broken, and then the heavy horses trampled them into the black earth.