“I often wonder. What happened…”
“…to us?” asks Wealthow, finishing the question.
Ursula only nods, wishing she could take back the question, dreading the answer.
Wealthow watches her a second or two, then turns back to the stars. “Too many secrets,” she says.
And then, from somewhere across the moorlands, there is a low rumble, and at first Ursula thinks that it is only thunder, though there is not a single wisp of cloud anywhere in the sky.
“Did you hear—” she begins, but Wealthow raises a hand, silencing her. And only a heartbeat later, the southern sky is lit by a brilliant flash, a hundred times brighter than the brightest flash of lightning, brighter than the sun at midsummer noon. Ursula squints and blinks, her eyes beginning to smart and water.
It’s only the dream, she thinks. I’m still asleep, and this is only the dream, for after the white flash, a brilliant yellow-red-orange stream of flame erupts and rains down upon the homesteads beyond the gates of Heorot. The fire pours across the landscape like a flood, and the causeway rumbles and sways.
“God help us,” says Wealthow, and then she takes Ursula roughly by the arm and leads her back into the tower.
18
Scorched Earth
In his dreams, Beowulf has watched the fire fall, the sizzling gouts spewed forth from fanged jaws and splashing across the roofs and winter-brown moors. Everything become only tinder for the dragon’s breath, everything only fuel for the greedy flames. Sleeping, he has been shown the burning of homes and fields and livestock, has seen the outermost walls of the village seared and still the fire came surging forward, coming on like the tide, enveloping and devouring everything it touched. She has shown him everything, so much more than Beowulf could have possibly seen with waking eyes. He has seen the night split wide by this holocaust, and he has looked deep into the eyes of Death.
In the courtyard below the two grand towers of Heorot, King Beowulf stands and watches the stream of refugees fleeing the smoldering wreckage of the village, believing there may yet be some sanctuary to be found within the castle keep. But she has shown him everything, and he knows there will be no place to hide when next the sky begins to burn. The lucky ones have died in the night. Beyond the walls of the keep, an immense gray-black column of smoke and ash rises high into the sky to meet the winter clouds.
“By the gods,” whispers Wiglaf. “I have seen war, and I have seen murder and atrocities, but never have I seen such a thing as this.”
Beowulf does not answer, and he would shut his eyes if he thought it would drive these desperate, hurting faces from his mind. The freezing air reeks of smoke and brimstone and cooked flesh, and what snow still lies within the courtyard has been sullied with a thick covering of sticky black soot.
“I have even seen the work of demons,” says Wiglaf, “but this…”
“How many?” asks Beowulf, his mouth gone almost too dry to speak. “How many are dead?”
“I cannot say,” replies Wiglaf, shaking his head. “I have been all the way to the village gates and back, but…I just don’t know, my lord. Too many.”
The procession of the burned and bleeding, the broken and maimed, files slowly past, and most are silent, struck dumb by their pain or grief or the horrors they have witnessed. Others cry out, giving voice to their losses or injuries or dismay, and still others pause to look up into the face of their king. Faces slick with blood and fever and seeping blisters, faces filled with questions he does not know how to answer. Those who can yet walk stagger or shuffle or stumble along, but many more are carried into the keep by thanes or by the strongest of the survivors.
“It came out of the night sky,” a wide-eyed woman says. There’s a baby clutched tight in her arms, and Beowulf can plainly see the child is dead. “Our houses and farms, it burnt everything.”
He knows no words to comfort her. He has no words to comfort any of them. Wealthow is nearby, moving among the wounded, handing out wool blankets. The red-robed priest is with her, but he seems lost, and his lips mouth a prayer that seems to have no end. Beowulf wonders what consolation Christ Jesus and the god of the Romans has to offer, what salvation they might bring to bear against this wanton terror and destruction.
As much as any god watching on from Ásgard, he thinks. Little, or none at all.
Then Wiglaf takes hold of his shoulder and is saying something, simple words that Beowulf should understand but can’t quite wring the meaning from. And then he sees for himself and so does not need to be told—old Unferth in the arms of one of his guards, Unferth scorched and steaming in the cold morning air, his charred robes almost indistinguishable from his flesh. His beard and almost all his hair have been singed away, and there is only a crimson welt where his left eye used to be. The wooden cross still hangs about his neck, gone as black as the scalded, swollen hand that clings to it.
“My son,” murmurs Unferth, and so Beowulf knows that he is alive. “His wife and my grandchildren. All of them dead. All of them burned in the night. But not me, Beowulf. Not me.”
“You saw what did this?” Beowulf asks him, and Unferth grimaces, exposing the jagged stubs of teeth reduced almost to charcoal.
“The dragon,” replies Unferth. “I saw…the dragon. Your dragon, my lord.”
Beowulf glances up at Unferth’s guard. There’s a wide gash on the man’s forehead, and his face is bloodied, but he seems otherwise unharmed. “Did you see it, as well?” Beowulf asks the guard.
“I cannot say what I saw,” the guard replies. “But they are all dead, my sire, just as my Lord Unferth has said. I do not know how we alone escaped.”
“My son,” Unferth says again, then he coughs and there’s a sickening rattle in his chest. “Because that wretch Cain found the golden horn, yes? You had an…agreement with her. But now…now, you have the horn again, don’t you? Now…the pact is broken.”
“He is delirious,” says the guard, and Beowulf sees that the man is weeping now. “His reason is overthrown. I can make no sense of the things he says.”
“You have the damned horn,” snarls Unferth and a fat blister at one corner of his mouth bursts and oozes down his chin. “So the agreement is now ended…and my son…my son is dead.”
“What agreement?” asks Wiglaf. “Unferth, who said these things?”
Unferth’s remaining eye swings about wildly for a moment, then comes to rest on Wiglaf. “You must know…surely you know, good Wiglaf. Or has the King kept his secrets from you…all these years.”
“He is delirious,” the guard says again. “He does not know what he’s saying. Lord Unferth is dying, my king, and I should find the priest.”
“Sin,” sneers Unferth, and now that one eye, cloudy and bloodshot, glistening with pain, comes to rest on Beowulf. “Sins of the fathers. That’s the last thing I heard…before my family was burned alive, the very last thing I heard…before their screams. The sins, Beowulf. The sins of the fathers.”
“Who said this?” Beowulf asks. “Tell me, Unferth. Who said these things?”
“He did,” Unferth whispers, his voice shrunken now to hardly the faintest whisper, and Beowulf has to lean close to hear. “The pretty man with golden wings. He said it. You have a fine son, my king.” And then Unferth closes that mad and rolling eye, and Wiglaf points the guard toward the priest, still standing with Queen Wealthow and still muttering his futile pleas and supplications. When the guard has carried Unferth away, Wiglaf runs his fingers through his hair and takes a deep breath.