mightier man than Gudrun's. Gudrun retorts by revealing the secret that
it was Sigurd in Gunnar's form, and not Gunnar himself, who rode through
the flame, and in proof thereof shows her the ring taken by Sigurd from
Brynhild's finger. Pale as death, Brynhild goes quietly home: Gunnar must
die, she says in wrath. Sigurd tries to pacify her, even offering to
desert Gudrun. Now she will have neither him nor another, and when Gunnar
appears she demands of him Sigurd's death. In spite of Hogni's protest
Gunnar's stepbrother Gutthorm, who has not sworn blood-friendship with
Sigurd, is got to do the deed. He is given the flesh of wolf and serpent
to eat in order to make him savage. Twice Gutthorm goes to kill Sigurd,
but cowers before the piercing glance of his eyes; at last he steals upon
Sigurd asleep and thrusts his sword through him. The dying Sigurd hurls
the sword after the fleeing murderer and cuts him in two. To Gudrun, who
wakes from sleep by his side, he points to Brynhild as the instigator of
the crime, and dies. Brynhild rejoices at the sound of Gudrun's wailing.
Gudrun cannot find relief for her grief, the tears will not flow. Men and
women seek to console her by tales of greater woes befallen them. But
still Gudrun cannot weep as she sits by Sigurd's corpse. At last one of
the women lifts the cloth from Sigurd's face and lays his head upon
Gudrun's lap. Then Gudrun gazes on his blood-besmirched hair, his dimmed
eyes, and breast pierced by the sword: she sinks down upon the couch and
a flood of tears bursts at length from her eyes.

Brynhild now tells Gunnar that Sigurd had really kept faith with him on
the wooing journey; but she will live with him no longer and pierces
herself with a sword, after foretelling to Gunnar his future fate and
that of Gudrun. In accord with her own request she is burned on one
funeral-pyre with Sigurd, the sword between them as once before.

Atli,[1] king of the Huns, now seeks Gudrun for wife. She refuses, but