“So it is a game,” he whispers, and as the thing races toward him between the sheer granite walls of the gorge, the King of Heorot Hall turns and vaults deftly over the bridge’s low railing, timing his leap perfectly so as to land on the monster’s broad and scabrous shoulders. Beowulf brings the blade of his sword down, putting all his weight behind the thrust. But when the iron blade strikes the dragon’s flesh it shatters like glass, and he’s left holding little more than the weapon’s hilt. The dragon flaps its wings once and rises from the gorge, and as it does so, it turns its head to glare back at Beowulf with furious amber eyes, eyes that shine and spark with a hateful, vengeful intensity.
“Are you ready to die, you filthy piece of shit?” Beowulf howls, but the cold wind whipping past snatches at the words, and he hardly even hears the question himself. Before the dragon turns its head away again, Beowulf imagines that it tries to smile, some smirking expression on those toothsome, lipless jaws half-approximating a smile.
The dragon shrieks and whirls back toward the trestle a fourth time, banking so abruptly and with such force that Beowulf is almost thrown off its back. It opens its mouth wide and vomits an inferno across the timber bridge. The same thanes who only moments before had begged Beowulf to take cover with them are engulfed in fire, as are the two wagons. For some, death is instantaneous, but others somehow manage to rise and stagger a little ways through the flames before collapsing. Three or four men nearest either end of the bridge drop and roll in the snow banked high there, but this is no earthly fire that can be extinguished with melted snow.
Satisfied with the carnage, the dragon turns away from the blazing bridge, spying a ragtag troop of thanes retreating to the east along the cliff’s crumbling edge. Once more, the fading day is rent by the monster’s hideous shrieks, a sound to shame even the mighty cries of Odin Allfather’s ravens. It folds its wings against its ribs and drops from the sky, falling upon the hapless men. Some are crushed beneath its belly and the living bulwark of its chest, and others are impaled upon talons and snatched up in those jaws and flung screaming into the gorge.
When every one of the thanes is dead, the dragon looks back at Beowulf again with that same smirking grimace as before. But now Beowulf can hear the golden man’s voice, even though no voice comes from that slavering maw.
You see? it asks. You see how easily men die? You see how none may stand against me, Father?
“I will have your lizard’s head on a spike!” snarls Beowulf, and his head is filled with the golden man’s laughter.
Will you, Father? Will you do that? No, I think not.
And then the dragon is airborne again, pitching and rolling in an attempt to dislodge Beowulf. But the Geat king digs his strong fingers deep into the grooves between bony plates and scales and holds on.
Wiglaf has ridden hard from the edge of the forest and across the moors, but it is no small distance, and by the time he reaches the gorge leading back to Heorot, the bridge is ablaze, and the air reeks of burning human flesh. He yanks back on the reins, and his horse rears and kicks. To Wiglaf’s left, the ridge is scattered with the bodies of thanes who have simply been pulverized or torn asunder. The stone is smeared with blood and gore, and he can see where the monster’s talons gouged deep grooves into the rock itself. He spares a quick glance at the heavens, and there’s the dragon, maybe a hundred feet overhead. And there’s King Beowulf, clinging to its back.
“Well,” Wiglaf says to the horse, “at least it’ll make a fine tale…if either of us lives to tell it,” and he wraps the reins tightly in his hands. He starts to urge the horse forward, but just then there’s a low rumble from the bridge, a loud crack, and one side of the burning structure breaks apart and tumbles into the gorge. Only a narrow section of the deck remains, three feet wide at most. And all of it is on fire, the flames rising above the shattered bridge to form a whirlwind and a twisting pillar of black smoke and red-orange cinders.
Wiglaf takes a deep breath, then spurs his horse forward and together they dash through the flames and out across the remains of the bridge, even as more planks pull free and fall away behind them. Squinting through the heat and blinding glare, Wiglaf thinks he’s made it, that in only another second he will have gained the far side and Heorot. But the deck in front of him suddenly sags and collapses, plummeting into the gorge. He kicks the horse, driving his heels hard into its ribs. The terrified animal screams and leaps for the rocky edge of the gorge, carrying Wiglaf up and out of the flames.
Only just barely does the horse clear the chasm, landing at such an awkward angle and with such force that the animal’s legs buckle beneath it and its rider is thrown. Wiglaf slides from his saddle, tumbling ass over tit, and comes down hard on the stones sticky with mud and ash. There is a terrible, uncertain instant, then, as the horse’s hooves scrabble desperately at the slick rocks for purchase, and Wiglaf realizes that it’s off balance and slipping backward toward the gorge. But the son of Weohstan still holds the reins wrapped tightly in his hands, and with all his might he pulls upon them.
“Oh no you don’t, hross,” Wiglaf grimaces, as he strains and the leather straps begin to slice through his gloves; the soles of his boots skid across the muck, dragging him forward. “If I have to go chasing after dragons, than so do you!” The horse slips another inch toward a long fall and certain death, before it neighs and gives a mighty kick with its hindquarters. Wiglaf feels the reins go slack as the beast at last finds its footing, and soon his feet are once again in the stirrups and the horse is galloping along the crooked road toward Heorot.
After its attack on the bridge, the dragon soars back out over the moorlands. Beowulf has succeeded in pulling himself forward onto the creature’s spiny neck, and he lies there flat against its hide, contemplating his next move. The dragon twists its head madly from side to side, straining to see him, but Beowulf has found a blind spot.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’m still here. You haven’t lost me yet.”
Surely, Father, you cannot hope to win this battle, the golden man says, speaking from somewhere inside Beowulf’s skull. Here is the glorious warrior’s death you have always wanted.
“You will kill no more of my people.”
I will do ever as I please, the dragon replies, the dragon and the golden man, two faces and one voice for the same nightmare. And now the dragon is banking sharply once again, turning back toward Heorot.
“It was no accident Unferth’s slave found your hoard and returned with the horn,” says Beowulf, drawing his long dagger from its leather sheath.
There are no accidents, answers the golden man. The skein was woven long ago, Father. We only move like spiders along its threads.
Lying flat against the dragon’s spine, Beowulf can almost reach down to that soft, glowing spot on the underside of its throat, that one fortunate chink in its otherwise-impenetrable armor. He grips the dagger and stretches his arm as far as he may. Only another few inches and he could easily plunge the blade into the unprotected patch of skin.
What do you think you’re doing, Father?
“Something that someone should have done long ago,” Beowulf replies, and the dragon ripples the muscles along its neck. The sudden, violent movement almost throws Beowulf off, almost causes him to drop the dagger as he struggles for a better purchase on the beast’s knobby spine.
Look, Father. There’s one of your pretty women now.
Beowulf raises his head, his eyes watering from the wind, but he sees that they’ve almost reached the keep, and he also sees Ursula standing alone on the causeway connecting the two spires. Already they have come so close that Beowulf can see the terror in her wide eyes.