Give me a child, Beowulf. Enter me now and give me a beautiful, beautiful son.
A cold spatter of blood strikes Beowulf’s forehead, and he opens his eyes again, then wipes it away and stands staring at the crimson smear on his palm.
“Find Hrothgar,” he says. “If he still breathes.”
“It was not Grendel,” Hrothgar sighs heavily. He sits alone on the edge of his bed, wrapped in deer skins and frowning down at his bare feet, his crooked yellow toenails. His sword is gripped uselessly in both hands, the tip of the blade resting against the stone floor. There are four guards standing at the entrance to the bedchamber, and Queen Wealthow, wrapped in her bearskins, stands alone at the window, looking out on the stockade.
“How do you know that?” Wiglaf asks the king, and Hrothgar sighs again and looks up at him.
“I know it, young man, because I have lived in this land all my life and know its ways. I know it because it is something that I know.”
“Fine,” says Wiglaf, glancing toward Beowulf. “But if it is not Grendel, then who is it? What is it, if not Grendel?”
Hrothgar taps the end of his sword lightly against the stone and grimaces.
“We would have an answer, old man,” Beowulf says. “They are carrying the bodies of my men from your mead hall, and I would know why.”
“Grendel’s mother,” replies Hrothgar. “It was the son you killed. I had…I had hoped that she had left this land long ago.”
Wiglaf laughs a hollow, bitter sort of laugh and turns away. Beowulf frowns and kicks at the floor.
“How many monsters am I to slay?” he asks Hrothgar. “Grendel’s mother? Father? Grendel’s fucking uncle? Will I have to hack down an entire family tree of these demons before I am done?”
“No,” says Hrothgar unconvincingly, and taps his sword against the floor a second time. “She is the last. I swear it. With her gone, that demonkind will finally slip into faerie lore forever.”
“And you neglected to mention her before now because…?”
“I have already said, I believed that she had deserted these hills and gone back down to trouble the sea from whence she came. I did not know, Beowulf. I did not know.”
“Listen,” says Wiglaf to Beowulf. “Let us take our dead and take our leave and have no more part in these evil doings. If he is not lying,” and Wiglaf pauses to glare at Hrothgar, “then Grendel’s dam has claimed her wergild and has no further grievance or claim upon this hall. We can sail on the next tide.”
“And what of her mate?” Beowulf asks Hrothgar, ignoring Wiglaf. “Where is Grendel’s father?”
And now Wealthow turns away from the window, her hands clasped so tightly together that her knuckles have gone white. “Yes, my dear husband,” she says. “Pray tell, where is Grendel’s sire?” But as she speaks, her eyes go to Beowulf, not King Hrothgar.
“Gone,” says the king, then wipes at his mouth and glances up at Beowulf. “Grendel’s father is gone, faded like twilight, not even a ghost. He can do no harm to man.”
“Beowulf, he has already lied to us once.”
“I never lied to you,” snaps Hrothgar, his face gone red, his cloudy eyes suddenly livid, and he raises his sword. But Wiglaf easily bats the blade aside, and it clatters to the floor.
“Nay, I suppose you did not,” he says. “You merely neglected to mention that once we’d slain her son—”
“Stop,” Beowulf says, and he lays a firm hand on Wiglaf’s shoulder. “You will not speak this way to the King of the Danes.”
Exasperated, Wiglaf motions toward the window, toward the sea beyond. “Beowulf, please. Think about this. It is time we took our leave of these cursed shores. We have done what we came here to do.”
Before Beowulf can reply, there are loud footsteps in the hallway outside the bedchamber, and Unferth enters the room. “Beowulf,” he says.
“What now?” Wiglaf asks Hrothgar’s advisor. “Have you come here to gloat, Ferret Kinslayer?”
Unferth takes a deep breath, disregarding Wiglaf’s taunt. “I was wrong,” he says. “I was wrong to doubt you before, Beowulf, son of Ecgtheow. And I shall not do so again. For truly yours is the blood of courage. I beg your forgiveness.”
“Clearly, there is to be no end to this farce,” sneers Wiglaf, and he turns his back on Unferth.
“Then I accept your apology,” Beowulf says quietly, and Wiglaf laughs to himself. “And you must forgive my man Wiglaf, as we have seen many terrible things this morning, and it has sickened our hearts.”
“If you will take it,” Unferth says, “then I have a gift,” and he turns to his slave, Cain, who has been standing just behind him. The boy is holding a great sword, which Unferth takes from him.
“This is Hrunting,” Unferth says, and holds the weapon up for Beowulf to see. “It belonged to my father Ecglaf and to my father’s father before him.” The blade glints in the dim lights of the bedchamber, and Beowulf can see that it is an old and noble weapon. Unferth holds it out to him.
“Please,” he says. “It is my gift to you. Take my sword, Beowulf.”
Beowulf nods and accepts the blade, inspecting the ornate grip and pommel, gilded and jeweled and graven with scenes of battle. A prominent fuller runs the length of the sword, lightening the weapon. “It is fine, and I am grateful for your gift. But a sword like this…it will be no fit match for demon magic.”
“Still,” says Unferth, “Hrunting may be more than it seems. My father told me the blade was tempered in blood, and he boasted it had never failed anyone who carried it into battle.”
“A shame he cannot speak of its might from personal experience,” Wiglaf says, and Beowulf tells him to be quiet.
“Something given with a good heart,” Beowulf says to Unferth, “that has its own magic. And it has a good weight to it, friend Unferth”
“I’m sorry I ever doubted you.”
“And I am sorry I mentioned that you murdered your brothers…they were hasty words.”
Wiglaf snorts. “The truth spoken in haste remains the truth.”
Beowulf holds the sword Hrunting up before him, admiring the ancient weapon, the runes worked into its iron blade.
“You know, Unferth,” he says, “if I track Grendel’s dam to her lair, I may not return. Your ancestral sword might be lost with me.”
Unferth nods once and folds his arms. “As long as it is with you, it will never be lost.”
And now Beowulf turns to face Wiglaf. “And you, mighty Wiglaf. Are you still with me?”
“You are a damned fool to follow this creature back to whatever fetid hole serves as its burrow,” he says, instead of answering the question put to him.
“Undoubtedly,” replies Beowulf. “But are you with me.”
Wiglaf laughs again, a laugh with no joy or hope to it. “To the bloody end,” he says.
“And where are we to seek the demon?” Beowulf asks the king. At first Hrothgar only shrugs and scrapes the blade of his sword across the floor, but then he clears his throat and raises his head to look Beowulf in the eyes.
“There is perhaps one living who knows,” says Hrothgar. “A man from the uplands. I have heard him speak of them, Grendel and its mother, and he has told stories of the places where they dwell. Unferth, he can take you to speak with this man.”
“Will you stay behind, my king?” asks Wealthow, still standing at the window, speaking with her back to the room and all assembled there. “While Lord Beowulf once more seeks his death that your kingdom might be saved, will you stay behind with the women and children and the old men?”
Hrothgar coughs and wipes his mouth on the back of his right hand. “I am an old man,” he says. “I would be no more to Beowulf than a burden. And I doubt there remains a horse in all my lands with the heart and strong back needed to bear me across the moorlands. I am sorry, Beowulf—”