He replied: "Högni will marry me to Hild his daughter as soon as I like to ask him, and then I shall be as well married as he."
"Your honour will be impaired," said she, "if you ask Högni for a marriage alliance. If, as you profess, you lack neither courage nor valour, you would do better to carry off Hild by force, and put the Queen to death by taking her and laying her down in front of the prow of your warship, and letting it cut her in two when it is launched."
The wickedness and forgetfulness contained in the ale which Hethin had drunk had so got the better of him that there seemed to him to be no alternative, and he had not the slightest recollection that he and Högni were 'foster-brothers.'
Presently they parted, and Hethin went back to his men. This took place in the late summer.
Then Hethin ordered his men to get ready the warship, saying that he intended to go home to Serkland. Then he went into the ladies' bower and took the Queen and Hild by either hand and led them out. Hild's clothes and jewels were also taken. There was no-one in the kingdom who had the courage to do anything; for they were afraid of Hethin and his men—he glowered so fiercely.
Hild asked Hethin what his intention was, and he told her. She besought him to think better of it, adding:
"My father will marry me to you if you ask him for me."
"Ask for you?" echoed Hethin; "I will never do that."
"And," she continued, "if you really must carry me off, even so my father will make it up with you. But if you do anything so wicked and unmanly as to put my mother to death, my father will never make it up with you. I have had a warning in dreams that you two will fight and slay one another. Yet I am afraid that there must be something still more terrible in store. It will be a great sorrow to me if I have to be the means of exposing my father to the ruinous effects of magic spells; nor shall I have any joy in seeing you in difficulties and toils."
Hethin replied that he cared not at all for the consequences, and that he would do as he had threatened.