There on the silver sand, with the roar of the sea echoing about them hollow like the echo in a vast shell, he with one arm locked about her and the other straining at her dagger wrist, she striving always with fang and claw to come at his heart, they reeled and trampled to and fro, as two nights since he had reeled and trampled to and fro with Grendel in the darkened hall of Heorot.
Long and bitter was the struggle, but there was a strength in the Sea-Hag that had not been in her son, and Beowulf could not overcome it. Some weapon he must have, and as he fought he snatched desperate glances about him in search of one. Here and there ancient weapons hung on the rock walls of the cavern, and amongst them the light from the roof fell upon one sword, a huge sword, dwarf-wrought perhaps for giants in the far-past days, for it was so long in the blade and broad in the grip that no mortal man save Beowulf could have wielded it. Seeing it, his heart leapt up with fresh hope, and gathering all his strength and cunning he gave way before the Sea-Hag’s onslaught, then swerved and sprang sideways past her, to snatch it from the wall. His hand closed over the hilt, and with a triumphant battle-shout he whirled around and brought the blade down upon her in a flashing swoop of fire.
It shored through hair and hide and bone, and Grendel’s Dam dropped without a sound, her hideous head all but smitten from her shoulders.
Beowulf stood still, panting from his struggle, and looked about him, while the magic blade dripped red in his hand. Far off at the water’s edge, the light from the upper world showed him the gigantic body of Grendel lying outstretched, dead, and he strode towards it across the stained and trampled sand. Here at last, it seemed, he had a blade that could pierce the flesh of Grendel and his kin, and raising it once more with a mighty effort he smote loathsome head and loathsome body asunder. Blood streamed out into the water in a murky crimson flood that the sea sucked under and out through the mouth of the cave. And as Beowulf stood gazing down at the dead monster, the thick dark blood dripping along the blade ate into it and melted it away like ice in the warmth of a fire, until nothing was left but the wondrous gold-wrought hilt in his hand.
Then Beowulf stooped and twisted his free hand in the snaky hair of the severed head, and with the sword hilt still in the other, dived down to the cave mouth and triumphantly up through the water that was now clear and bright; up and up towards the daylight far above him.
Meanwhile the Geats and Danes had waited all the long-drawn day, watching from the deserted walrus rocks, and as the sun began to wester, they beheld a great gout of blood that came bursting up from the depths as though the sea-hole itself were vomiting blood. They crowded to the brink, staring downward with eyes that strained in their heads, but it was a sight to shake the boldest heart, and as the moments lengthened and brought no sign of Beowulf, the hope that they had clung to all day dwindled and grew thin like the red stain washing seaward on the waves.
At last Hrothgar stirred with a heavy sigh. ‘It is over, then, and we shall not see him again, Beowulf who was as a son to me,’ and he turned away to the rocky gloom under the trees where the stream came down. ‘Come, there is nought to be gained by biding longer in this place.’
And sadly, like warriors straggling back from defeat, his thanes followed him as he set his face to the long upward climb.
But Beowulf’s Geats remained, almost as empty of hope as those who followed Hrothgar, but faithful to their lord, who had bidden them wait for him. And hardly had the wave-roar engulfed the last sounds of the departing Danes, than Waegmund sprang up, pointing. ‘Look! Look! The creatures are all making out to sea! It is as though they fled for their lives!’ And another of the little band took up his cry. ‘Look! Look at the water! It is clean and clear!’ and as they slithered and stumbled forward to the outermost edges of the weed-slippery rocks, shouting to each other while the great walruses swam away, they saw far down through the water that was clear now as green crystal, the longed-for shape of Beowulf springing up towards them.
Eager arms reached down to aid him ashore as he broke surface, scattering the white foam from his shoulders; and then he was among them, stretched, spent, upon the rocks, drawing the free air into himself in great gasps like a runner at the end of a hard-won race, while they thronged about him to loosen off his helmet and stare with awe and wonder at the blind snarling head that he had flung down beside him, and the huge bladeless sword hilt he still clutched in his hand.
‘Oh, it is good to see your faces again, my brothers!’ said Beowulf as soon as he could speak; and then looking about him, ‘But where are Hrothgar and his thanes?
Did they find the waiting over-long?’
‘They saw the wave of blood that boiled up from below,’ said Waegmund, kneeling beside him, ‘and their hearts told them that there was nothing more to wait for.’
‘That was the blood of the Sea-Hag, and Grendel’s blood that gushed out when I smote his head from his body lying dead down there,’ Beowulf said. ‘And you? Did you not also see the blood-wave?’
‘Aye, we saw it.’
‘But your hearts did not bid you lose hope?’
Waegmund bent his head. ‘As to hope, there was little enough of that left to us, but we were still your war-boat’s crew, your shoulder-to-shoulder men.’
‘And so you stayed,’ Beowulf said: And suddenly he laughed on a note that was like the song of victorious war-horns, and sprang up, holding out his arms to them. ‘And that is well, for see, it will take four spears at the least to carry the monster’s head back to Heorot!’
And so, with Grendel’s head upreared on four spear points in their midst, they turned to the gorge that led up towards the high moors, and leaving the sea-hole cleansed of evil behind them, set out on their triumphant way back to the settlement.
7. The Sail-Road Home
7. The Sail-Road Home
* * *
THE sun was sinking fast as they came down through the tilled land to Heorot, and their shadows stretched out sideways far across the young barley, and high on the gable end of the King’s hall the gilded antlers of the stag caught the last of the sunset and flared like a branch of many-forked flames. Folk came running to houseplace doorways as they passed, but the champions strode straight on to the King’s threshold and up through the hall, to fling the grizzly head down at Hrothgar’s feet where he sat sorrowfully in his High Seat.
‘Rouse up and be glad, Hrothgar of the Danes!’ Beowulf cried. ‘Look now upon the sea-spoil that we bring you.’
But Hrothgar, leaning forward in his chair, was already looking, as though there was nothing else in all the world to look at but Grendel’s severed head lying among the rushes at his feet. Then he raised his own head and looked at Beowulf and the triumphant Geats behind him.
‘I never thought to see you stand again in this hall, Beowulf son of Ecgtheow,’ he said slowly, and then, ‘The Dam also is dead?’
‘The Dam also is dead, but I could bring you only this one head for a trophy. One head, and the sword with which I smote it off. But see, only the hilt is left; the blood of the monster melted the blade away,’ and Beowulf held out to the King the huge sword hilt that was wrought all over with writhing golden serpents.
Hrothgar took and gazed at it in wonder. Then looking up again, he said, ‘So, there has been a great fight and many marvels here. Tell me now the story of all that has passed since you dived into the waves above the Night-Stalker’s lair.’
And so, standing proudly before the old King as he sat with the ancient hilt in his hands, Beowulf told of his fight with the Sea-Hag, making of the story a kind of triumph song as he went along, after the way of his people when there was a victory to relate.
When the song was ended, Hrothgar rose from his seat and flung his arms about the young champion’s shoulders, and could find no words to speak, because Aschere was worthily avenged and henceforth men might indeed sleep safely in Heorot the Hart.
That night the Geats and Danes feasted together as they had feasted the night before, and m
ore gifts were showered upon Beowulf and his sword-brothers, and the mead horns passed round and the fires leapt high, and the King’s bard woke the music of his harp. And when it grew late and the time for mead and harp-song was past, Geats and Danes together slept peacefully in Heorot until the first light stole across the moors and the cocks were crowing.
When the sun was up and the settlement busy about the new day, Beowulf sought out the King in his own place. ‘The thing that we came to do is done,’ he said. ‘Heorot is a safe sleeping place henceforth; and now it is time that I go back to Hygelac, my own King and House-Lord.’
‘My heart is sore to lose you,’ said Hrothgar. ‘But you must go back to your own House-Lord and your own people,’ and he rose from among the wolfskins of the bench where he was sitting, and held Beowulf at arms’ length and looked deep into his face. ‘I think that in the long years ahead, you will be such a sword and such a shield to your people as they may well have need of.’
‘That is as Wyrd decrees,’ said Beowulf, and he set his hands over the old man’s on his shoulders. ‘But this I know, that you have called me your son, and if ever you should need me, whether it be under threat of war or for any other cause, you have but to send me word, and I will come with a thousand warriors at my back.’
And Hrothgar bowed his head on to Beowulf’s shoulder and wept and they vowed friendship for all time between Geats and Danes, and spat and struck their palms together as men sealing a bargain.
Then Beowulf called his companions together, and they took their leave and set out once more along the paved road to the coast, some riding the horses that Hrothgar had given to their leader, some walking, all laden with treasures of gold and fine weapons, and their grey ring-mail sounding on them as they moved.
It was still early when, with a great company of Danes still about them, they came over the moorland ridge and down to the head of the fjord where their war-boat lay secure on the shingle above the tide mark, and the Coast Warden, sitting his horse beside her, looked as though he had never been away. To him Beowulf gave a sword with gold wires about the hilt, brother to one which he had given Hunferth; and then with the Danes to help them, they set rollers under the keel and, shouting and cheering, ran their boat down into the surf, feeling her grow light and buoyant and wake to life again as the lift of the water took her. They got the horses aboard and bestowed them with the rest of the treasure in the hollow heart of the ship below the mast, and springing aboard themselves they hung their round linden shields along the bulwarks and ran out the oars. And with Beowulf leaning to the steering-oar they brought her round and set her eager dragon-head seaward. The farewell shouts of the Danes grew fainter astern until their voices were lost in the crying of the gulls; and presently as they cleared the high nesses at the fjord mouth the open sea was before them and the wind came to fill their striped sail and speed them on their wave-road home.
Two days later, Hygelac’s Coast Warden, sitting his horse high on the cliffs of Geatland, saw, as Hrothgar’s Coast Warden had seen, a long war-boat running in to land. But this was no strange vessel, and he was watching for her already. At sight of her a shout of joy burst from him, and driving his heel again and again into his horse’s flank, he urged it at a gallop down towards the keel-strand below Hygelac’s Hall, crying out the news to all he passed on the way.
So when Beowulf and his sword companions ran their keel ashore, they found a glad throng of their own folk waiting on the tide line to greet them and give them their aid as they set their shoulders to the sides of the vessel and ran her far up the shelving strand, and help them to carry the treasure up to Hygelac’s Hall.
That night there was feasting and rejoicing in the royal Hall of Geatland, and Hygd the Queen poured the mead for the returned champions, and Beowulf, when they shouted for him to tell the tale of all that had passed since he sailed for Denmark, rose in his place and flinging back his head, made his triumph song of the slaying of Grendel and the slaying of Grendel’s Dam. And when the story was done, he called for the treasures that he had won to be brought out, and gave away to the King his House-Lord, and to the Queen and to his friends and kinsfolk everything save Hrothgar’s first gift-sword and the horse with Hrothgar’s saddle on it, which he kept for himself.
Then, as a man takes up a well-worn and familiar garment, he resumed again his accustomed place as chief among the warriors and champions of Hygelac.
8. The Fire-Drake’s Hoard
8. The Fire-Drake’s Hoard
* * *
THE years went by and the years went by, bringing as they passed great changes to the two kingdoms. In Denmark Hrothgar died and was howe-laid, and Hrethric his son ruled in his place. Hygelac fell in an expedition against the Frisians, and Beowulf, still his chief thane, avenged him worthily on the enemy’ and then, sore wounded himself, fought his way back to the seashore and the waiting war-galleys, and so escaped to carry the sad tidings back to Hygd the Queen. Heardred the King’s son was still only a boy, too young to lead his people in war or guide them wisely in peace, and so the Queen called together the Councillors and foremost chieftains of the land, and with their consent offered the gold collar of the Kingship to Beowulf in his stead. But Beowulf, true to his House-Lord, would have nothing to say to this, and so Heardred, young as he was, was raised to the High Seat with his mighty cousin to stand ever at his side as counsellor and protector.
Alas! It was all to no avail, for in his young manhood Heardred fell in battle as his father had done. And this time, when the Kingship was offered to him again Beowulf took it, though with a heavy heart, for he was the rightful next of kin.
Long and gloriously he ruled, holding his people strongly and surely as in the hollow of his great sword hand. Fifty times the wild geese flew south in the autumn, fifty times the birch buds quickened in the spring and the young men ran the war-keels down from the sheds; and in all that time Geatland prospered as never before. But when the fiftieth year was over, a terror fell upon the land.
And this was the way of it.
Many hundreds of years before, a family of mighty warriors had gathered by inheritance and by strength in war an immense store of treasure, gold cups and crested helmets, arm-rings of earls and necklaces of queens, ancient swords and armour wrought with magic spells by the dwarf-kind long ago. A great war of many battles had carried away all this kinsfolk save one, and he, lonely and brooding on the fate of the precious things that he and his kin had gathered with such joy when he also should have gone by the Dark Road, made ready a secret fastness that he knew of, a cave under the headland that men called the Whale’s Ness. And there, little by little, he carried all his treasures and hid them within sounding of the sea, and made a death-song over them as over slain warriors, lamenting for the thanes who would drink from the golden cups and wield the mighty swords no more, for the hearths grown cold and the harps fallen silent and the halls abandoned to the foxes and the ravens.
When the man died the hoard was forgotten and lay unknown under the flank of the hill while the slow centuries went by, until at last a fire-dragon, seeking a lair among the rocks, came upon the hidden entrance to the cave and, crawling within, found the treasure. Because he had found it the fire-drake thought that it was his, and he loved it, heavy arm-ring and jewelled dagger and gold-wrought cup; and he flung his slithering coils about it, and lay brooding over it for three hundred years.
But at the end of that time a man who had angered his chieftain in some way and was fleeing from his wrath also found the hidden entrance among the rocks, and the golden hoard, and the dragon sleeping.
Now through all those three hundred years the dragon had been slowly growing, until from snout to tail tip he was ten times as long as a man is tall. Yet still he was not long enough completely to encircle the mound of treasure, and between snout and tail tip as he lay was a gap just wide enough to let through a man.
The fugitive saw the golden glimmer of the hoard, and even while his brain swam at the sight
it seemed to him that here might be a way out of his desperate plight. Creeping between snout and tail tip of the sleeping dragon, he caught up a golden cup, one great cup glowing like the sun with which to buy off his chieftain’s wrath, and, clutching it to his breast, fled back the way he had come.
Presently the fire-drake woke, and knew in the moment of his waking that he had been robbed. Blindly, in grief and fury, he snuffed about his beloved hoard, and knew by the smell that a man had been there. He crawled outside and padded about the entrance to the cave and among the rocks, and found man’s footprints; and when the dusk came down he spread his great wings and flew out in search of the thief.
Night after night from that time forward he flew out, filled with hatred, and seeking not only the thief but to wreak his vengeance on all men because it was a man who had robbed him. Far and wide he flew, from coast to coast of Geatland, wrapped in his own fiery breath as though in mists of flame. Houses, men, trees and cattle, even the King’s hall itself, shrivelled up as his angry breath blew upon them, and at each sunrise when he returned to his lair, he left the trail of his night’s flying marked in black and smoking desolation across the land.
Beowulf was old now, a grey warrior who had once been golden, but a warrior still. Also he was the King; and for him in the last resort was the duty and the privilege of dying for the life of his people. And so, as he had done so many times before, he made himself ready for battle. Well he knew that he would not be able to come to grips with the dragon as he had done in his youth with Grendel the Night-Stalker, for now he had to fight not only strength but fire, and his familiar war-gear would not serve him, for how long could a shield of linden-wood withstand flame? So he sent for the Warsmith to come to him in his sleeping quarters—now that his hall was no more than a blackened shell—and said to him, ‘Forge me a shield of iron, strong to withstand fire. And be quick in the forging of it, for the people cannot endure many more such nights of desolation.’ And he chose twelve thanes of his own bodyguard, amongst them Wiglaf, grandson of that Waegmund who had sailed with him for Denmark fifty roving-seasons ago, and bade them make ready to accompany him.