Balin rides through the Wasteland, receiving rebukes for causing such death and devastation; but as the days pass he finds himself in fairer countryside and at last arrives at a castle where he is compelled to fight with its resident defender. This defender is his brother Balan, who has earned this role against his will by killing the previous occupier of the position, in a situation that is reminiscent of that at the Sacred Grove of Nemi, as described by Sir James Frazer in "The Golden Bough". It recalls, also, the duty that Sir Yvain acquires after defeating the Knight of the Fountain in Chrétien de Troyes' "Yvain, the Knight of the Lion", and one that Sir Tristram briefly assumes in Malory's "Le Morte d'Arthur". Neither brother recognises that his opponent is his brother: Balan being in unfamiliar and disguising red armour with an unrecognisable shield; Balin having been persuaded just before the battle to swap his own shield for a better one immediately before the duel. The brothers mortally wound each other, Balin outliving Balan only by a few hours. They are "buryed bothe in one tombe."