433
You wake with a start, hearing your name being called…
At first light, flanked by your storm-warriors, you walk the length of the hall – the floor-timbers booming under your determined footfalls – for an audience with the King.
“Did you pass the night peacefully, my lord?” you ask the white-haired Hrothgar. “Such an urgent summons this morn has unsettled me. After all, as they say, when someone wakes you before cockcrow it is never to share good news.”
“The Woe-Bringer has come again to Heorot!” Hrothgar wails. “And this time it has taken Aeshere! He was my closest counsellor; we stood shoulder to shoulder in battle.”
“Who is this Woe-Bringer of whom you speak?” you ask the King, appalled. “Has Grendel returned? Was tearing off his arm not enough to kill that fell-fiend?”
Recalling the savage wound you dealt the Dane-killer, your gaze goes to the rafters of the hall, where Grendel’s arm once hung, for it does not hang there now.
“No, it was not the hell-spawn Grendel. Another bloodthirsty monster entered my hall and committed murder within its walls. A terrible visitation, she sought vengeance for the killing you perpetrated here not two nights past.”
“She?” you gasp in disbelief.
“That’s right,” confirms the King sorrowfully. “Revenge was her motive, but in furthering her son’s blood-feud, she has gone too far!”
Hrothgar’s roar of rage echoes from one gabled end of Heorot to the other.
“So the monster has a mother?” you snarl, feeling the King’s anger and despair as deeply as you would your own.
“Aye, an outcast, a dweller in dread waters and cold currents, a begetter of evils, a sea-hag. But now the fiend’s dam, in her savage grief, has stolen away the brightest and best of my company!”
“Tell me where this mother of monsters makes her home and I will put an end to her as I did her ogre-ish offspring!” you declare, ever the hero.
“I have heard it said, by subjects of mine – those that live beyond the palisade of my king’s seat, in the fell-country – that they have seen such a pair of monstrous wayfarers, the monster and his dam, haunting the northern moors. Those country folk have known the exile from old by the name Grendel, and though they know his dam by sight as well, they know not who, or what, sired the monster.”
“I do not need to know who sired the brute,” you growl, “only where the monster’s mother – Aeshere’s abductor – can be found.”
“The region in which she dwells lies beyond the bounds of my kingdom and is shunned by men. None claim sovereignty there. It is a region of wolf-fells, wind-picked moors, and treacherous fen-paths. The fiend’s lair can be found where a torrent of water pours down dark cliffs and plunges into the earth, in an underground flood. There the mere lies, overhung with black, crag-rooted trees, hoary with frost.
“I have heard it said that an uncanny sight can be witnessed there at night, akin to a blazing fire in the water! And no man knows how far down its bottom lies. It is also said that a stag, pressed hard by hounds, will hide within that forest, but if the dogs persist, the deer will sooner die than risk swimming across those waters to save its life.
“The wind there can stir up wicked storms that whip the whirling waters higher, ’til they climb the clouds and clog the air, so that the skies seem to weep.”
“Be not afeared, your majesty,” you tell the King. “I will travel to this haunted place and rid you of your second demon, as I rid you of the first. I swear it!”
“Seek then, if you dare!” declares hoary-haired Hrothgar. “I shall reward the deed, as I did before, with gifts from my treasure-hoard. If you return again.”
“We must all expect to leave our life on this earth,” you tell the King, “just as we must strive to earn some measure of renown before death seeks us out. After all, daring is the thing for which a warrior will be remembered.”
“The gods be praised that you sought our shore, brave Beowulf!” cries the King.
If you are to hunt down the monster Grendel’s kinswoman, you will need to set out as quickly as possible, for fear of her escaping you or causing more harm elsewhere. But Hrothgar’s talk of the gods makes you consider that it might be wise to ask them for help in your killing-quest, before setting out.
• If you want to set out straightaway, without delay, turn to
468.
• However, if you wish to pray at the shrine that stands outside the hall first, turn to
454.
