. . .

So when a pair of svart-smiths come, man and woman they, dressed in their panoply of red and black and armed for war, Vaenwode is eager to see them; he comes out, he plans to press his treasure back upon them, to say, “Here! I have your gold, take it, here is the wealth that I have bought with it, only leave me my self, my wife, my children, and whatever is not portable in my home —”

Their faces are bleak as they regard him. Hope dies before it speaks itself from his lips.

“We have come,” says the elder of the smiths, “to bind the wolf.”

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