A crud yet majestic structure was stationed on the faraway horizon. Its design appeared as ancient and taboo as anything I had ever examined. Despite the ominous presence of its framework jutting purposefully from a craggy earth, I moved toward its shadow as if summoned by a nameless force. As I crossed an infertile landscape, this shelter loomed larger, showing evidence of a workmanship that must’ve required hundreds of loyal builders. The dwelling’s timbered exterior seemingly provided an impenetrable barrier from the frigid elements and whatever else dared to call this desolate domain its homeland.
Within twenty paces of the fortress’s gable, my breath collided with a dank, metallic odor. It mixed with what could’ve only been described as the putrefied remains of human beings. The cruel air swirled with a bitter tinge of decay. At first, I saw no visible bodies upon my approach along a cobblestone trail, but makeshift graves desecrated the rocky soil in almost every crevice along the cliffs. The evidence of an unmitigated horror soon presented itself in a gory outbreak. A few fragments of animal or human bone were strewn about the landscape, as if planted to ward off rogues and barbarians. Whatever terror had occurred here didn’t transpire long before my arrival. Something wicked had defiled this shelter, and I had every expectation to discover its source.
The remnants of annihilation, coupled with the reek of death, fluttered like Charon’s cloak as I neared the lodge’s massive walls. In the fading sunlight, this stronghold’s golden-laced beams gleamed as if dipped and preserved in a honey-colored lacquer. The vacancy of it all caused a shiver to ripple over my shoulder blades, yet I sensed that I wasn’t here alone. Within a few seconds, I estimated my placement at the threshold to the grandest and most infamous of all the mead halls in the annals of Anglo-Saxon lore. Despite the obvious signs of abandonment and bloodshed, the foreboding image of Heorot couldn’t be easily mistaken.
Once a safe haven for the embattled warriors of Danish fields, I recognized that this great hall now only cast a shade of its former grandeur. I surmised the better half of twelve winters had already passed, leaving faint echoes of the merrymaking lingering in the atmosphere. By now, all of the mirth had dried from this domicile as surely as the red gore that stained Heorot’s edifice. Here, of all habitats far and near, King Hrothgar’s once-unrivaled meeting place sealed its doors until the curse subsided.
Before entering the mead hall with no resistance other than a wind channeled from the nearby sea, I suspected to find one man who lacked the humility to permit his greatest achievement to wither. This old, aforementioned king hunched crookedly on a gilded throne. A blaze from a hissing fire illuminated his shadow on the tenebrous walls. The pungent odor of rot and mold encompassed him like uninvited blight. He appeared as diseased and forlorn as his monumental shelter.
I walked toward the proud and pious Dane, bowing contritely to gesticulate my subservience to his rank regardless of the direness at hand. Hrothgar raised an eye toward me that glimmered briefly, revealing a trickle of hope that his pleas for assistance had finally been sung in the proper hero’s company. Regrettably, I was not the man he had yearned to set eyes upon. As I kneeled by the firelight, Hrothgar’s fingers combed through his grizzled beard. He then brushed the residue of ash from his scarlet robe and stood from his throne as if rising to his feet for the first time in many moons.
“The scops have sung of a great Geat’s arrival,” Hrothgar whispered. The king’s morbid expression matched his tone perfectly as he continued to study my physicality. “Forgive me if I insult you, strange drifter, but you don’t appear to be the hero who the bards spoke of so favorably.”
“I’m not that man,” I declared. “Rest assured, King Hrothgar, I haven’t ventured here to outshine Beowulf’s resplendent glory. That engagement still hasn’t been altered.”
“He must come soon,” Hrothgar murmured. “The carnivorous claws of Cain’s creation have impaled this land like scalding daggers. The spirits of my dead disciples cry with each new moon. This shelter of splendor cannot withstand anymore misery.”
The king motioned toward a bronze goblet positioned on a table beside his throne. He poured the cup’s contents hastily through his curled lips, seemingly oblivious to the syrupy liquid as it dissolved within his wiry whiskers. After he consumed the mead, he raised his chalice toward the smoky air and mumbled an inaudible prayer. Eventually, his attention swayed back to me.
“Tell me, selcouth wanderer,” Hrothgar continued, perhaps slightly encouraged by his intoxication. “Who in this land or any other have sung of your praises?”
“None that I know, sire.”
“It’s unfortunate that you’ve come here now. Aren’t you aware of Heorot’s blight? It’s a tragic song voiced by all who ever put story to verse.”
“I’ve heard what all the others have been taught,” I answered.
“And yet you still come without a chronicle of valor to impart?”
“I have no accomplishments that you’d find worthy to this cause.”
Hrothgar paced closer to me, directing two eyes that appeared pilfered from the embers of the fire pit beside us. He proceeded to gulp the last traces of lava-colored liquid from his cup before forwarding a spiteful laugh that rebounded against the gold-encrusted rafters overhead.
“You carry no weapon or courage to this house of pain,” he said. “Have you completely ignored the scops both far and near? Did they not yet sow a seed of trepidation at your soul’s core?”
“I have nothing to fear,” I insisted. My reply must’ve sounded unnaturally naïve to this war-ravaged overseer. How could I proclaim such a bold thing? Even through the eyes of a novice, the presence of death tainted every fragment of this grand abode. “I know of the slaughter that has reduced your hall’s occupants to its present state,” I continued.
“And yet you still claim to dread nothing from within this hall?”
“I’ve never fought neither monster nor man, sire.”
“Then you must recognize that men much braver and brawnier than you have perished in this hellish realm. Is that not so?”
I nodded to acknowledge what couldn’t be refuted. Perhaps this grim king had already surmised that I represented no challenge to Grendel’s predatory pursuit of mortal flesh and blood. I could not fault him for his honest opinion. Hrothgar leered at me with a sadness consuming his brow; it was as though he looked at me with the same disenchantment he cast upon a thousand men who pledged commitment to his plight.
“What is your name, strange wanderer?”
I uttered my name, which brought no distinct reaction whatsoever from Hrothgar’s hardened countenance.
“And you are the son of what man, Corbin Cobbs?”
“A man far more ordinary than you,” I responded. “I’ve come to Heorot by no single command or calling, sire. My homeland is far removed from Danish shores, and I can’t even claim to possess the power to tame the terror that haunts this hall.”
Surely, my confession must’ve discouraged Hrothgar, for he soon reverted to an apathetic stupor. The goblet coddled between his fingertips slipped from his grasp and clanked against a straw-covered floor. He then retreated in his stance and shrank like a dejected spirit onto the sanctuary that was his throne.
“My kingdom has grown visibly desolate,” he announced drearily. “The most courageous warriors, heralded from heaven to Earth, have succumbed like meek maidens when confronted by evil’s edifice. I’ve witnessed the mutilation of God’s handpicked creations, shredded asunder from this province in the most horrible agony conceivable. And yet I’ve prayed for this sheath of darkness to lift its inky vestment from my domain. But the scent of rot remains pungent and ever-present. Now you see me as a forlorn king, Corbin Cobbs, no more deserving of mercy than the Christian God’s betrayers. And yet still I sit upon my throne, waiting in sustained anguish for a hero who shall one day rescue Heorot from its enduring and unwarranted sorrow.”
Hrothgar’s declaration left me with little to rebuttal. I wished I could’ve offered him
more than what I had come to say, but this was not my battle to win.
“Your hero will be here soon,” I assured the king. “Those who hail from Geatland shall not fail to find this place. I can promise you that much.”
“But if you haven’t a desire to vanquish the monster of the moors, why do you make yourself visible to this ill portion of the world?”
I had no fail-safe response to relay to the king, but it became evident that my purpose for this visitation was not solely designed for Hrothgar. The knowledge I sought couldn’t be imparted by any other source than the giver of strife.
“With your kind permission, sire,” I resumed casually. “I ask you to grant me a favor of staying one night in this hall as your guest.” Naturally, Hrothgar appeared perplexed by my request. He knew better than anyone of the abhorrent horrors that unfurled here after nightfall. His eyebrows knotted curiously, resembling a silver pelt nestling across his forehead.
“Did you come to Heorot to die, Corbin Cobbs?”
“I hope that isn’t the outcome.”
“Yet you wish to slumber where death’s cold claws rise and clutch at all that sniffs the air.”
“With respect to your superstitions, grand king, there is a time when every man must combat his fears. That moment for me is now.”
“Ha,” scoffed Hrothgar. “What sort of rival do you present with neither sword nor shield to fortify your approach? If you can bear it, survey this blood-sodden hall with scornful eyes. Do you not detect the remnants of tattered flesh and marrow sullying the very foundation you stand upon? The baleful beast has no clemency for those akin to Adam.”
“My methods are different from the others who’ve come here before me,” I said, determined to persuade the king of a gallantry that I never practiced beforehand. Despite my feral boast, which was still far tamer than anything Beowulf might’ve uttered, I noticed that Hrothgar’s disposition remained unaltered.
“Perhaps you require clarity on these cruel circumstances,” he mused. “The creature that devoured my men did so in quantities of thirty or more in one phantom swoop. Mercy is not a message it shall ever acknowledge. It feasts upon all that strays within range of its tenacious teeth, gnawing on entrails as it sneers demonically in the face of anything born to trumpet Christian hymns. Hear my words, intrepid traveler: purer pathways await those in search of heaven’s gate.”
“No one is going to die in Heorot on this eve, noble king. This is my oath to you. My only hope is to understand the bitterness churning in your tormentor’s heart.”
“Then you are already woefully misguided, because the tenant from hell you now speak of has nothing in its shapeless cavity resembling a heart. It only thrives to prey upon all those who are vulnerable. If you chose to venture farther into this territory, you will become its next sacrifice.”
My valor, however shortsighted, bounced off the king’s thorny crown as if it was crafted from rubber rather than gold. He had obviously heard too many tales of bravery before, and another unfulfilled promise amounted to little else but squandered time.
“If I should let you stay for one moon’s phase,” Hrothgar pondered, “how do you intend to survive longer than the scavenger of souls permits?”
“Tonight I am armed only with words,” I stated, increasing the likelihood that this king viewed me as more of a masochist than a slayer of sinfulness.
“Words!” Hrothgar bellowed, while simultaneously spewing his stomach’s yoke-colored contents onto the planks at my feet. “This enchanter of evil won’t be quelled by mere words. No man has yet lived to confront its malice more than once.”
“Too much violence has spawned the birth of this creation,” I argued. “It’s impossible to cleanse the blood from Heorot’s pillars until someone thwarts the monster through a method other than battle.”
Unsurprisingly, the fatigued king still cast no faith toward my reasoning. After all, he was born in an era and habitat where all mortal conflicts were resolved through warfare. To him, I must’ve truly looked and sounded like an interloper from another world.
“Tell me something,” Hrothgar resumed. “Do you stand before me and deny the savagery of mutilators? One does not just wag a tongue at the talons of terror and expect victory. By the good graces of my lord and savior, I’ve survived the assaults thus far. But without divine protection bestowed upon me by the Heavenly Father, you will not be as fortunate in your quest. Meanness multiplies like maggots on the limbs of tender wounds. Words without weapons shall never curtail Cain’s corrupter. Grendel crept from its mother’s wicked womb, and it will remain a blasphemous brute until its final gasp for air is drawn.”
Hrothgar couldn’t have stated the gravity of this plight any more plainly to my ears, yet I ignored his caveat as if I had something to earn far more priceless than any treasure attained through battle. Seeing that I demonstrated little fear at the prospect of succumbing to hasty demise, the king ultimately acquiesced to my modest demands. By his calculation, when he returned to the Heorot upon the next sunrise, I would have been vanquished from here in one form or another. Hrothgar neglected to offer me any further wisdom as he departed the hall, leaving me to wait in isolation for mankind’s most pernicious entity.
Heorot’s fading firelight provided a thin sphere of illumination throughout its interior, perhaps taunting me with flames that slithered against the walls like vipers. But as others had practiced before my arrival, I remained firm to the purpose at hand. Even without a formidable weapon to wield, I had clung to hope as religiously as these warriors worshipped their gods. But what service was hope when pitted against the most harrowing evil of all legend and lore? Grendel, the malicious assassin of the bogs, had never met his equal in combat, and Heorot became nothing more than its favorite feeding ground.
Even for a man such as myself, who had internalized the history of Grendel’s rancor, the mission seemed fraught with doom. No creature delved more deftly in the craft of killing humans than this demon, but a part of my being refused to acknowledge it as an indomitable force. A distinct vulnerability knitted in the fibers of every animal, but no sword or arrow could have pierced this membrane with enough accuracy to eradicate it from mankind’s conscious forever. In my mind, one strategy far surpassed all other efforts. The only permanent method to squelch terror was to comprehend its prime carrier’s motivation. In this way, I convinced myself that unlike any combatant before or since, I’d be able to communicate with Grendel.
I had come to learn that this insidious invader preferred the gloom of darkness before initiating its raids. As the scops heralded, Grendel only skulked from the shadows after his prey flooded their bellies with mead and their eyes with sleep. Once tuckered from the travails of existing in such a ruthless domain, the men became hapless targets to the monster’s ferocity. Oddly, those who feared dreams of death always found the bandit of life waiting for them in reality. But my eyes remained keen to this task, and if Grendel planned to dispose of me, it would have to do so while I was fully coherent to its presence.
As the hall’s untended fire gradually fizzled to ashy smoke, I sensed that my time in Heorot had not gone unwatched by its most menacing trespasser. Without pretense, an ursine-sized mutation slithered toward my position. Its eyes glowed like pellets of heated iron, studying me with the same curiosity in which I examined it. No bard or barbarian had ever lived to account for such a hellish image firsthand. It glared at me in demented glory, knowing that I possessed no talent to undermine its savagery. Even as its torso expanded before my eyes, I couldn’t report a definite shape to its foulness. It shifted and bowed with the room’s borrowed light, lending a mysterious aura to its overall repulsiveness.
The scops had wisely withheld any conclusive evidence of its shape. Grendel’s timeless curse relied on such obscurities. Even with the eddying darkness serving as its ally, the hideous ogre’s odor could not be contained. I likened it to a scent of stale death mixed with the marshy bog in which it was conceived. Cold, coagula
ted blood—no doubt the remnants of a human sacrifice—dribbled from a jaw laden with tarnished fangs. An orgy of growls, emitting from its elongated throat, sounded almost indefinable. It was a sickening cacophony, seemingly foraged from a source of unknown torment.
It was no exaggeration to proclaim that mortal men had neither the skill nor the proclivity to interact with this impious spawn. By some measure of undetermined fortune, I harnessed my thoughts to this task, and communicated in a language that remained decipherable only to us.
“Grendel,” I called forth, trying to conceal the trepidation tapering through my voice. “I’ve come to speak on behalf of the Danish king, the lord of this realm known as Heorot.”
The harbinger of hatred lurked toward me like a seasoned culprit. By all estimations, it could’ve consumed me in one greedy gulp if it so desired. But it seemed momentarily stupefied by my audacity. Its tunneled nostrils sniffed at the air, projecting sulfurous fumes within inches of my face. A man unprotected by his dreams would’ve surely fled and endured a thousand nights of terror, but I held staunchly at the hall’s midpoint as if Hrothgar’s divinity suddenly incubated me from any semblance of peril. Then, only after I had considered abandoning this dialogue, it settled in its stance and spewed forth its first detectable syllables.
“You said my name,” it hissed. “What else do you know of me?”
“Who in this ancient land has not heard of your pitiless deeds?” I asked. “The bards speak of your reputation in the same vein as anything that defies purity.”
“Heorot was never so chaste,” said Grendel, revealing gobs of oily mucous between its spike-shaped incisors. “But because you stand here unguarded, little the sparrow of Eden, I shall share what I perceive of Adam’s kind.”
“By evidence of this carnage, I’d guess that your abhorrence for us is already well established.”
“An uncontestable truth,” the beast affirmed. “Pardon me for not mutilating you upon sight, but I detected no weapon in your possession or vengeance in your eyes. Didn’t the pious king inform you of all that you should know of me?”
“I don’t intend to provide you with any nourishment to feast upon, Grendel. It’s clear that your gullet is already fully gorged with Hrothgar’s followers.”
“Then you disvalue your own flesh?”
“No. It’s not my bones and blood that I wish to forfeit. I simply can’t be persuaded to feel the repulsion that flows through your limbs.”
With its misshapen jaws clattering for ripened guts, Grendel grinned at me as if I lied as convincingly as its master. Surprisingly, rather than consume me with expeditious intent, it settled for a further exchange of words. I soon learned that it gazed upon me as more of an imbecile than an adversary. “Do you expect me to be more merciful toward you because of your misguidance? Tell me why I shouldn’t mince you to a fetid pile of rubbish right now?”
“Do as you do best,” I said. “But let me first deliver my uncensored thoughts. Surely, a predator as petrifying as you relinquishes nothing by granting such a request.”
Grendel leaned its scaly visage closer to me, gulping my expelled breath as if it was flavored by fear. Despite Grendel’s colossal dimensions, which readily explained its ability to shred mass quantities of men simultaneously, the creature moved as if its bulk hovered indiscernibly above the ground. It appeared almost tentative in its mannerisms, projecting something akin to mystification at the core of its pus-rimmed eyes.
“Your scent is unlike the others,” Grendel observed. The archfiend flicked its forked tongue at me like a serpent sampling its meal, nearly splattering me with slimy spittle in the process. I knew that I deliberately lacked the fragranced fright of its former victims, and this veneer, however thinly masked by my expression, vexed the great slaughterer of Saxons more than a devout prayer to the ethers.
“What land do you come from?” asked Grendel.
“None near this side of the Earth,” I stated.
“Why have you ventured to Heorot, frail sinner from Eden?”
My inclination to respond without pause sounded impulsive at best. “I wish to understand why you find it necessary to indiscriminately slaughter those who’ve done nothing to provoke you.”
Grendel looked at me inquisitively, while its masticating fangs oozed curdled saliva onto the ground. This discharge pooled into a viscous puddle at my own feet. Despite the beast’s unorthodox nature, I suspected it had an intellect that few of its previous opponents had time to examine.
“It’s never difficult to find fault in those who aren’t like you,” the monster said. “But in regard to the inhabitants of this dominion, I’ve never had any qualms in my reasons for massacring them.”
“Are you now ready to share your warped philosophy with me, Grendel?”
The odious offspring gurgled hoarsely. Its throaty emanation sounded as though it was sated with all of this planet’s most vile plagues. I fully expected Grendel to pounce on top of me and gleefully desecrate this hall’s crossbeams with my innards. I covered my ears as its reverberating growls intensified, but it still delayed its attack.
“Because you present yourself so sincerely in this business,” it grunted, “I’ll let you speak a bit further before crunching your bones.”
“Then I command you to tell me why such a shade of blackness stains your heart?”
“Examine your own words,” it countered. “Why must a tangible explanation exist for every man’s murder? Isn’t it enough cause that those devoured souls were in fact the sons of Eden? There is only one element that allows me to thrive.”
“Tell me what it is,” I demanded.
“You already know the answer,” Grendel insisted. “Why not surprise yourself and guess where evil is allowed to linger most freely?”
I didn’t fancy myself as an interpreter of riddles, but Grendel’s unwavering candor left me with but one conclusion to express. “Evilness,” I whispered, “always blooms wherever it is permitted to exist unattended.”
Grendel appeared appeased by my terse response. It permitted me to stand deflated in its presence, almost as though it had disemboweled me without commencing a single swipe of its claws against my flesh. “I wouldn’t be here now, fledgling of Eden, if not for mankind’s perpetual greed and hatred. Since Heorot’s rancid souls have given me ample fodder, why should I not silence their misery forever?”
“You can’t judge men all alike, Grendel. The pure and impure subsist in every species.”
“But none as treacherous as the worst of your kind.”
“A hearty force will soon come to snuff your cruelty,” I said, hoping that my admonition wouldn’t change the battle yet to be fought between this foe and Beowulf. “In one form or another, a better fighter will always rise and be hailed the victor. It’s the way of history.”
“I shall anticipate this hero’s arrival with rapt eagerness,” Grendel snarled. “But even if your prophecy holds merit, do you truly believe that immorality will perish once I am terminated from this hall?”
My voice quavered at this prospect, but I knew precisely what the beast already surmised. The monster stationed in front of me was as powerful and interminable as the Danes who summoned it unwittingly from the swamplands. They may not have yet recognized their function in Grendel’s emergence in Heorot, and in this way the abominable offender had secured itself among their ranks. Even at the prospect of its own demise, Grendel voiced its domination.
“Since mankind’s inception, and long before this mead hall erected to pay homage to such villainy, I have always prowled upon this land. You see me as a hideous mutation, but the form in which I appear is inconsequential. You, and your cousins of creation shall always mark my terror. I flourish in the stitching of your souls, filching life like a poisoned wind, but always omnipresent. I am a gracious guest, of course, for I couldn’t aptly survive in this world without the hatefulness of those who’ve first imagined me. What mortal hero can ever hope to outlive his reflection? All men
are made to succumb to their own folly, vanity, and rage. In the end of things yet to come, I am nothing more or less than a manifestation of your untamed spirits.”
“By killing me, Grendel, you will nullify your own beliefs! I’m not like those who you’ve murdered beforehand.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” it mused. “But your eyes betray you, fragile one from Eden. Although your propensity to maim may still require some ripening, I sense the dark harvest is not far from your thoughts. Fortunately, I’m patient enough to let the seeds of sinfulness germinate.”
“What are you saying, you depraved troll? I’m a good man. I’ve never intentionally hurt anyone in my entire life. I won’t be corrupted by your lies.”
Grendel withdrew from me like a foggy apparition shrinking behind a burst of sunlight. It smacked its jaws jubilantly, almost as if it had examined a secret section of my soul and approved what hibernated there. What did it know of my past or future intentions? Despite my urgent pleas for it to speak with me longer, the infernal destroyer retreated silently into the hall’s shadows. What sad songs would the scops had sung if they witnessed the aftermath of such an exchange? As it was, I remained alone in the numbness of Hrothgar’s haunted shelter, bemoaning the misery that resided in the wake of my consciousness.
Chapter 13
7:09 A.M.
The Classic Crusade of Corbin Cobbs Page 12
