With onset of swords may bring thee right soon into such hard strait,
That I needs must help, though our kinsmen thereby met an evil fate.
For if we twain in battle were compassed by yon false crew,
Haply some two of their comrades, or four, or ever we knew,
Into the great hall rushing, therein might work such scathe
On our slumbering friends, that we surely should rue it unto our death.”
And again made answer Volker: “At the least let us do this then,
To cause them to know of a surety that we have espied yon men.
Then they, those vassals of Kriemhild, can nowise lie unto us
That they sought not to do to the King’s guests a deed most treacherous.”