“You will never tire of reminding me of that, will you?” says Beowulf.
“Nay,” replies Wiglaf, forcing a smile. “The painfully obvious amuses me no end.”
“The tarn the old man spoke of,” says Unferth, mounting his pony. “I think I know this place.”
“You’ve seen it?” ask Beowulf.
“No, but I have heard stories. Since I was a child. I have heard there is a lake, somewhere on the far side of the wood, which was once known as Weormgræf, the dragon’s tomb.”
“I hope we’re not off hunting a dragon now,” says Wiglaf, gripping the saddlebow and pulling himself up. “I should have thought an ordinary sea troll was nuisance enough for one day.”
“There is a story,” continues Wiglaf. “It is said that Hrothgar’s grandfather, Beow, was plagued by a fyrweorm, and that he tracked it to a bottomless lake across the moors, where he wounded it mortally with a golden spear. The dying dragon sank into the lake, which steamed and bubbled from its flames, and was never seen again. The story says that the waters still burn at night, poisoned by the fyrweorm’s blood.”
Beowulf is still leading his pony by the reins. They are not far from the gates and guardhouse now. “You think Agnarr’s tarn is Weormgræf?” he asks Unferth.
“Fire on water,” replies Unferth, and shrugs. “You think perhaps that’s a coincidence? Or maybe these lands are fair teeming with combustible tarns?”
“We shall see for ourselves soon enough,” says Beowulf, and before long they are outside the gates of Heorot and riding swiftly across the moors toward a dark and distant line of trees.
It is late day by the time the three riders at last find their way out of the shadow of the old forest beyond the moorlands and begin searching for some way across the bog. A low mist lies over everything, and the air here stinks of marsh gas and pungent herbs and the stagnant, brackish water. The ponies, which gave them no trouble either on the moors or beneath those ominous trees, have become skittish and timid, flaring their nostrils and shying away from many of the pools.
There are flocks of crows here, and Beowulf wonders if they are perhaps the merewife’s spies. She might have other spies, as well, he thinks, for there must surely be some vile magic about her. No doubt she may command lesser beasts to do her bidding. The crows circle overhead and caw loudly, or they watch from the limbs and stumps of blighted trees that have sunk in the mire.
“It is hopeless,” despairs Wiglaf. “We will not find a way across, not on horseback. The ground here is too soft.”
“What ground,” says Beowulf, looking out across the marches. “There is hardly a solid hillock to be seen. I fear you are right, Wiglaf. From here we will have to continue on foot.”
“I am not so great a swimmer as you,” Wiglaf reminds him. “I’m no sort of swimmer at all.”
“Don’t worry. I will not let you drown,” says Beowulf, who then turns to Unferth. “Someone should stay behind with the horses. There are wolves about, and bears, too. I’ve seen their tracks.”
“I’m actually very good with horses,” says Wiglaf, and Beowulf ignores him.
Unferth gazes out across the bog, then back toward the dark forest, not yet so very far behind them. Beowulf can see the indecision in his eyes, the fear and also the relief that he has gone this far and will be expected to go no farther.
“I would not have it said I was a coward,” Unferth tells Beowulf. “But I agree it’s no use trying to force our mounts across that dismal morass. They might bolt. They could become mired and drown.”
“I could drown,” says Wiglaf.
“Then you will wait for us, Unferth,” says Beowulf, as he slides off the back of his pony and sinks up past his ankles in the bog. “Ride back to where the forest ends and wait there. Do not let the ponies wander or be eaten, as I do not fancy walking all the way back to Heorot.”
Unferth takes the reins of Beowulf’s pony. “If you think that the wisest course,” he says.
“I do. I will carry Hrunting, and so men will say it was the sword of Unferth that cut the demon’s head from off her shoulders.”
“Aye,” mutters Wiglaf, dismounting with a loud splash. “His sword, if not his hands.”
“I think there’s already a fish in my boot,” moans Wiglaf, and kicks at a thick tuft of weeds.
“If you do not return—” begins Unferth.
“Give us until the morning,” says Beowulf, frowning at Wiglaf. “If we have not returned by first light, ride back to Hrothgar and prepare what defenses you may against the return of Grendel’s mother. If we fail to kill her, we may yet succeed in doubling her wrath.”
“And there’s a cheery thought,” adds Wiglaf.
And without another word, Unferth pulls back on his pony’s reins, and soon he is leading the three ponies back the way they’ve come, toward the western edge of the bog. Beowulf and Wiglaf do not linger to watch him go, but press on eastward, locating what few substantial footholds they can among the thickets of bracken and the tall clumps of grass. Often their feet drop straight through what had seemed like firm earth, swallowed up to the knees by the mud and muck. Then much effort is required to struggle free of the sucking, squelching peat, only to find themselves hip deep a few steps later.
To take his mind off the possibility of drowning or the slimy things that might be waiting in the wide, still pools, Wiglaf talks, as much to himself as to Beowulf. He first relates what he can recall of a saga he heard from one of Hrothgar’s scops—how a Danish princess, Hildeburh, married Finn, a Frisian king, and how much grief and bloodshed inevitably followed. But then Wiglaf forgets exactly how the tale ends—though he knows it has something or another to do with Jutland—and so switches to the daring feats of Sigurd Dragonslayer and his sword, Gram, and how, by tasting the heart’s blood of a slain fyrweorm, Sigurd came to know the language of birds.
“If I but had the heart of a dragon,” says Beowulf, “then perhaps I could learn what all these blasted crows are squawking about.” And he points at three of them perched on a flat stone at the center of one of the pools.
“Oh, that’s easy,” replies Wiglaf. “They’re only telling us we are imbeciles and fools, and that we will taste very good, once the maggots find us and we’ve ripened a day or three.”
“You speak birdish?” asks Beowulf, stopping and peering ahead into the fog.
“No,” says Wiglaf. “Only crow. And a little raven. It is a skill peculiar to the doomed sons of fishwives.”
At that moment there is a sudden gust of sea-scented wind, one of the few the two Geats have felt since beginning their long slog across the marches, and it briefly opens up a gap in the mists before them.
“Look there,” says Wiglaf, pointing north. Only fifty yards or so in that direction, the bog breaks off, as the land grows abruptly higher. And there is a steep bank at the edge of a steaming tarn, and atop the bank grow three enormous oaks, their gnarled roots tangled together like serpents slithering down to meet the water’s edge. There is a dark gap in the roots, and even from this distance, Beowulf can see that the water is flowing sluggishly into the gap and vanishing under the bank. Before much longer, they’ve reached the nearer shore of the tarn and can see that there is an oily scum floating on its surface, an iridescent sheen that seems to twist and writhe in the fading daylight.
“Dragon’s blood?” asks Wiglaf.
“The old man spoke true,” Beowulf replies and then begins picking his way along the edge of the pool toward the bank and the opening in the tree roots.
“A damn shame, that,” sighs Wiglaf. “I was starting to hope he’d made the whole thing up.”
Beowulf is the first to gain solid ground, a barren hump of rocky soil near the entrance of the cave. There is still a patch of snow here, blackened by frozen blood. The corpse of one of Hrothgar’s men lies half-in the tarn, half-out, mauled and stiff. It has attracted a hungry swarm of fish and crabs, and one of the crows is perched on its broken back.