With the echo of that statement still ringing back from old shields for miles around, Munin grandly picks up his left claw and half-lurches, half-flaps from the smeared old helm he’s been hogging toward a white spear (Hugin thinks) thrusting out of a pile of armor.
“The bright helm to the…thigh bone!” Munin chants. The he lurches right, towards and insect mound covered with dark shapes that normally swarm through dead flesh like it was mulch. “The thigh bone to the…beetle mound!”
Hugin follows Munin around the field of the dead, staying one hop behind.
“The pearly ring to the…scarred sword!”
“The red scarf to the…letter home!”
“It’s piiiink,” Hugin cawed. But softly. Because, deep inside, he knows, knows beyond all shadow of a doubt (and Hugin, there’s a raven who can doubt), that if he interrupts Munin, they’re going to have to start all over again.
“The icy horns to the…golden shield! And here’s the memory of Baldur!”
Munin is standing o’er a shield bearing the sign of the golden disk of the sun. He lifts his beak up high in the air and strikes it down on the shield, which lets out a bell-like peal, a terrible, iron sound, and the memory of Baldur falling to the ground, pierced by Loki’s mistletoe spear (but thrown by an innocent hand) gasps over his soul like the wind that howls over the body of a coward.
Hugin can see Munin opening and closing his beak, but he (thankfully) can’t hear a single noise out of that overblown peacock.