It was a strange scene, Robin thought. If the fool slipped, if he fell, there was an end of him; the wolves would instantly devour him.
But in the middle of the gorge, Yegof turned and sat down upon a stone, and the five wolves sat around him in the snow.
Then the fool, raising his sceptre, addressed them, calling each one by name, and they replied with mournful howlings.
"Ha, child, Bléed, Merweg, and you, my old Siramar," he cried, "here we are once more together! You have grown fat; you have had good cheer in Germany, have you not?"
Stretching his arm, after a moment's pause, over the moonlit valley, he continued:
"Remember ye not the great battle?"
One of the wolves howled plaintively as if in reply; then another, and at last all five together.
This lasted full ten minutes, the raven the while sitting motionless on its withered branch. Robin would have fled, but dared not.
Still the wolves howled, and the echoes of Blutfeld replied to their chorus, until at last the largest ceased, and the rest followed his example. Yegof spoke again:
"Ay; 'tis a sorrowful story. There runs the stream that overflowed with our blood; but others fell too, and for three days and three nights their women tore their hair. But how the accursed dogs triumphed in their victory!"