Beowulf

by Caitlin R. Kiernan

  And in one of these caverns something huge and, to the eyes of man, ghastly crouches in the muck and gravel and a bright pool of moonlight leaking in through the cave’s entrance. It moans pitifully and clutches at its diseased and malformed skull, covering misshapen ears in an effort to shut out the torturous sounds of revelry drifting down like a thunderous, hammering snow from Heorot. For even though the mead hall and the tower on the sea cliff are only a distant glow, there is a peculiar magic to the walls and spaces of this cave, a singular quality that magnifies those far-off noises and makes of them a deafening clamor. And so the troll thing’s ears ring and ache, battered mercilessly by the song of Hrothgar’s men even as the shore is battered into sand by the waves.

  He offered us protection

  When monsters roamed the land!

  And one by one

  He took them on—

  They perished at his hand!

  The creature wails—a keening cry that is at once sorrow and anger, fear and pain—as the ache inside its head becomes almost unbearable. It claws madly at its own face, then snatches in vain at the darkness and moonlight, as if its claws might somehow pluck the noise from out of the air and crush it flat, making of it something silent and broken and dead. Surely, its ears must soon burst, and this agony finally end. But its ears do not burst, and the pain does not end, and the thanes’ song swells and redoubles, becoming even louder than before.

  Hrothgar, Hrothgar!

  We honor with this feast,

  Hrothgar, Hrothgar!

  He killed the fiery beast!

  “No more, Mother,” the creature groans, rolling its eyes and grinding its teeth against the song. “Mother, I can’t bear this. Only so much, and I can bear no more!”

  Tonight we sing his praises,

  The bravest of the thanes.

  So raise you spears!

  We’ll have no fears,

  As long as Hrothgar reigns!

  The creature clenches its great fists together and gazes up into the frigid night sky from the entrance of the cave, wordlessly begging Máni, the white moon, son of the giant Mundilfæri, to end the awful noise once and for all. “I cannot do it myself,” the creature explains to the sky. “I am forbidden. My mother…she has told me that they are too dangerous.” And then it imagines a hail of stone and silver flame cast down by the moon giant, falling from the sky to obliterate the hateful, taunting voices of the men forever. But the singing continues, and the unresponsive moon seems only to mock the creature’s torment.

  “No more,” it says again, knowing now what must be done, what he must do for himself, since none other will ever end this racket—not the giants, not his mother. If there is to be peace again, then he must make it for himself. And gathering all his anger and suffering like a shield, battening it close about him, the monster steps quickly from the safety of shadows, slipping from the cave and out into the shimmering, unhelpful moonlight.

  From his place behind the king’s throne, Unferth watches as the mead hall sinks ever deeper into drunken pandemonium. His own cup is empty and has been empty now for some time, and he glances about in vain for the slave who should have long since come to refill it. There is no sign of the boy anywhere, only the faces of the singing, laughing, oblivious thanes. There does not seem to be a single thought remaining anywhere among them, but for the drink and their women, the feasting and the baying of old Hrothgar’s praises.

  Hrothgar, Hrothgar!

  As every demon fell—

  Hrothgar, Hrothgar!

  He dragged them back to Hel!

  Wulfgar sits nearby on the edge of the dais, a red-haired maiden camped upon his lap. He lifts his cup to her lips and dribbles mead between her breasts, then she giggles and squeals as he licks it off her chest. Unferth frowns and goes back to scanning the crowd for his slave, that lazy, crippled whelp named Cain. At last he spots the boy limping through the crowd, clutching a large goblet in both hands.

  “Boy!” shouts Unferth. “Where’s my mead?!”

  “Here, my lord, I have it right here,” the slave replies, then slips in a smear of cooling vomit on the dais steps, and mead sloshes over the rim of the cup and spatters on the floor.

  “You’re spilling it!” Unferth growls, and he grabs a walking stick from Aesher, a sturdy, knotted length of birch wood, and strikes Cain hard across the forehead. The boy reels from the blow, almost falls, and spills more mead on the dais steps.

  “You clumsy idiot,” sneers Unferth and hits Cain again. “How dare you waste the king’s mead!”

  The boy opens his mouth to reply, to apologize, but Unferth continues to beat him viciously with the stick. Some of the thanes have turned to watch, and they chuckle at the slave’s predicament. At last, Cain gives up and drops the goblet, which is empty now, anyway, and he runs away as quickly as his crooked leg will allow, taking shelter beneath one of the long tables.

  “Useless worm,” Unferth calls out after him. “I should feed you to the pigs and be done with it!”

  Hrothgar has been looking on from his throne, and he leans to one side and farts loudly, earning a smattering of applause from the thanes. “I fear you’d only poison the poor swine,” he says to Unferth, and farts again. “Doesn’t this damned song have an end?” And as if to answer his question, the crowd begins yet another verse.

  He rose up like a savior,

  When hope was almost gone.

  The beast was gored

  And peace restored!

  His legend will live on!

  Hrothgar grunts a very satisfied sort of grunt and smiles, surveying the glorious, wild confusion of Heorot Hall.

  “I ask you, are we not now the most powerful men in all the world?” he mumbles, turning toward Aesher. “Are we not the richest? Do we not merrymake with the best of them? Can we not do as we damn well please?”

  “We can,” Aesher replies.

  “Unferth?” asks King Hrothgar, but Unferth is still peering angrily at the spot where his slave vanished beneath the table, and doesn’t answer.

  “Have you gone deaf now, Unferth?”

  Unferth sighs and hands the birch walking stick back to Aesher. “We do,” he says halfheartedly. “We do.”

  “Damn straight we do,” mutters Hrothgar, as perfectly and completely content in this moment as he has ever dared hope to be, as pleased with himself and with his deeds as he can imagine any living man has ever been. He starts to ask Wealthow—who is seated nearby with her handmaidens—to refill his golden horn, but then his eyelids flutter and close, and only a few seconds later the King of the Danes is fast asleep and snoring loudly.

  Through the winter night, the creature comes striding toward Heorot Hall, and all things flee before him, all birds and beasts, all fish and serpents, all other phantoms and the lesser haunters of the darkness. He clambers up from the mire and tangle of the icy bogs, easily hauling his twisted bulk from the peat mud out into the deep shadows of the ancient forest. And though his skull still rings and echoes with the song of the thanes, he’s relieved to be free for a time of the moon’s ceaseless stare, shaded now by those thick, hoary limbs and branches that are almost as good as the roof of his cave.

  “I will show them the meaning of silence!” he roars, and with one gigantic fist shatters the trunk of a tree, reducing it in an instant to no more than splinters and sap. How much easier it will be to crush the bones of men, to spill their blood, he thinks. And so another tree falls, and then another, and yet another after that, the violence of each blow only fueling his rage and driving him nearer the true object of his spite. The creature’s long strides carry him quickly through the forest and back out again into the moonlight. Now he races across the moorlands, grinding bracken and shrub underfoot, trampling whatever cannot move quickly enough to get out of his way, flushing grouse and rabbit from their sleeping places. Soon, he has reached the rocky chasm dividing Hrothgar’s battlements from the hinterlands. He pauses here, but only a moment or two, hardly long enough t
o catch his breath, before spying a lone sentry keeping watch upon the wall. The man sees him, as well, and at once the creature recognizes and relishes the horror and disbelief in the sentry’s eyes.

  He does not believe me real, the monster thinks, and yet neither can he doubt the truth of me. And then, before the man can cry out or raise an alarm, the thing from the cave has vaulted across the ravine…

  “Did you hear that?” Unferth asks Aesher.

  “Did I hear what?”

  “Like thunder, almost,” Unferth tells him, and glances down at the fat hound lying on the dais near Hrothgar’s feet. The dog has pricked its ears and is staring intently across the hall at the great wooden door. Its lips curl back to show its teeth, and a low snarl issues from its throat.

  “Truth be told, I can’t hear shit but for these damn fools singing,” says Aesher. “Ah, and the snoring of our brave king here.”

  Unferth reaches for the hilt of his sword.

  “You are serious?” asks Aesher, and his hand goes to his own weapon.

  “Listen,” hisses Unferth.

  “Listen for what?”

  The dog gets up slowly, hackles raised, and begins to back away, putting more distance between itself and the entrance to the hall. Between the throne and the door to Heorot, the thanes and their women continue their drunken revelries—

  Hrothgar, Hrothgar!

  Let every cup be raised!

  Hrothgar, Hrothgar!

  NOW AND FOREVER PRAISED!

  “Whatever’s gotten into him?” Queen Wealthow asks, pointing to the snarling, retreating dog, its tail tucked between its legs. Unferth only spares her a quick glance before turning back toward the door. He realizes that it isn’t barred.

  “Aesher,” he says. “See to the door—”

  But then something throws itself against the outside of the mead-hall door, hitting with enough force that the frame groans and splinters with a deafening crack. The huge iron hinges bow and buckle inward, and the door is rent by numerous long splits—but for now it holds.

  On his throne, King Hrothgar stirs, and in an instant more he’s sitting up, wide-awake and bewildered. The thanes have stopped singing, and all eyes have turned toward the door. Women and children and some of the slaves begin to move away, backing toward the throne and the far end of the hall, and most of the warriors are reaching for their swords and daggers, their axes and spears. Unferth draws his blade, and Aesher follows suit. And then a terrible, breathless quiet settles over Heorot Hall, like the stunned, hollow space left after lightning strikes a tree.

  “Unferth,” whispers Hrothgar. “Are we being attacked?”

  And then, before his advisor can reply, the door is assaulted a second time. It holds for barely even another moment, then gives way all at once, thrown free of its hinges, sundered into a thousand razor shards that rain down like deadly arrows across the floor and tabletops and bury themselves in the faces and bodies of those standing closest to the entrance. Some men are crushed to death or lie dying beneath the larger fragments of the broken door as a concussion rolls along the length of the hall, a wave of sound that seems solid as an avalanche, and the air blown out before it snuffs out the cooking fires and every candle burning in Heorot, plunging all into darkness.

  Wealthow stands, ordering her handmaidens to seek shelter, then she looks to the doorway and the monstrous thing standing there, silhouetted in silver moonlight. Its chest heaves, and its breath wheezes like steam from its black lips and flaring nostrils. Surely, this must be some ancient terror, she thinks, some elder evil come down from olden times, from the days before the gods bound Loki Skywalker and all his foul children.

  “My sire,” she says, but then the creature leans its head back, opens its jaws wide, and screams. And never before has Queen Wealthow or any of Hrothgar’s thanes heard such a foul utterance. The world’s ruin sewn up in that dreadful cry, the fall of kingdoms, death rattles and pain and the very earth opening wide on the last day of all.

  The very walls of Heorot shudder from the force and fury of that cry, and the extinguished cooking fires flare suddenly, violently back to life. Rising to the rafters, they have become whirling pillars of white-hot flame, showering bright cinders in all directions. From the throne dais, neither the doorway nor the monster standing there remains visible, the view obscured by the blaze. The hall, which but moments before was filled with song and laughter and the sounds of joyous celebration, erupts with the screams of the terrified and the maimed, with the angry shouts and curses of inebriated warriors as they scramble for their weapons. Behind the wall of fire, the creature advances, roaming freely now beneath the roof of Heorot.

  The four thanes nearest to the door charge the beast, and it immediately seizes one of them and uses the man as a living cudgel with which to pummel the other three, sending two of them crashing backward into chairs and tables. The third is flung high, helpless as a doll, and sails the full length of the hall, through the swirling tower of flame and over the heads of those still seated or huddled on the dais before his body smashes limply against the wall behind Hrothgar’s and Wealthow’s thrones.

  “My sword!” the king shouts, tottering to his feet. “Bring me my sword!”

  Still gripping the fourth warrior by a broken ankle, the monster pauses only long enough to gaze down at his half-conscious, blood-slicked face, only long enough that the man may, in turn, look up into its face and fully comprehend his doom and the grave consequences of his bravery. Then, having no further use of the man, the creature tosses him into the inferno of the fire pit. And the flames shine even brighter than before, seeming grateful as they devour the screaming warrior. Again the monster cries out, assaulting the air and the ears of everyone trapped in Heorot Hall with that booming, doomsday voice.

  Aesher takes Queen Wealthow’s hand and leads her quickly from the dais. When they come to an overturned table, he pushes her onto the floor behind it.

  “Stay down, my lady,” he says. “Hide here and do not move. Do not look.”

  But she does look, as she has never been one to cower or shy away from the countenance of terrible things. As soon as Aesher releases his grip on her, Wealthow peers over the edge of the table, squinting painfully through the glare from the pit. But she cannot see the beast or the thanes struggling against it, only their distorted shadows stretched across the firelit walls. Their forms move to and fro like some grisly parody of the bedtime shadow plays her mother once performed for her. She watches in horror as men are thrown aside and broken like playthings, their bodies ripped apart, skewered, impaled on their own weapons.

  “What evil…” she whispers. “What misfortune has brought this upon our house?”

  “Stay down,” Aesher says again, but at that moment another body is hurled through the roaring flames, igniting and passing mere inches above the queen’s head. She ducks as the dead and burning man lands in the midst of a group of women crouched together against the wall. The fire leaps eagerly from the corpse to the clothes and hair of the screaming women, and before Aesher can move to stop her, Wealthow grabs a pitcher of mead and hurries over to them, dousing the flames. Aesher curses and shouts her name, but as she turns back toward the sheltering table, a battle-ax slices the air between them, so close she can feel the wind off the blade. The empty pitcher slips from the queen’s fingers and shatters upon the floor. Then Aesher has her by the wrists and is pulling her roughly down, shoving her into the lee of the overturned table.

  “Did you see that?” she says. “The ax…”

  “Yes, my lady, the ax. I saw that it almost took your damned head off.”

  “No, not that. Did you see it hit the monster? It just…it bounced off. How can that be?”

  But now the creature has turned toward the table where she and Aesher are hiding, and toward the throne, as well, distracted from its attacks upon the thanes by the hurled ax. In one long stride it steps past the halo of the fire pit, and finally Wealthow can see it clearly, the thing itself
and not merely its shadow or silhouette. The monster stops to inspect the unscathed patch of skin where the steel blade struck it, then narrows its furious blue-gray eyes and bares fangs grown almost as long as the tusks of a full-grown bull walrus. It moves with a speed Wealthow would never have thought possible for anything so large, rushing forward and seizing Aesher in its talons, raising him high above its head.

  “Run, my lady. Run,” he cries out, but she cannot move, much less run. She can only watch helplessly as the creature sinks its claws deep into Aesher’s body and tears him in two as easily as a child might tear apart a bundle of twigs. His blood falls around her like rain, drenching the head and shoulders of the beast and spattering Queen Wealthow’s upturned face, sizzling and hissing as it spills into the fire pit.

  “My sword!” Hrothgar bellows, and at that the monster hurls Aesher’s legs and lower torso at the king. The gruesome missile misses its target and strikes Unferth, instead, knocking him sprawling to the floor. Disappointed, the beast drops the rest of Aesher’s body onto the overturned table, and the lifeless thane’s eyes stare up at Wealthow.

  Now I will scream, she thinks. Now I won’t ever be able to stop screaming. But she covers her mouth with both hands, forcing back the shrill voice of her own fear, certain enough that she’ll be the creature’s next victim without screaming and attracting its attention.