Grendel sits alone at the place where the old forest ends and the scrubby land slopes away toward the deep, rocky chasm dividing the moors from the walls and gates of Hrothgar’s fortifications. Overhead, the moon is playing a game of tag with stray shreds of cloud, but the creature has learned not to look to Máni for aid. There may yet be giant blood flowing somewhere in Grendel’s veins, but he is a gnarled and mongrel thing, a curse, impure, and time and again the Jötnar have shown they have no love for him. Never have they spoken to him or answered his pleas, never once have they deigned to offer the smallest deliverance from his torment. He crouches beneath the trees, clutching his aching head, his pounding ears, wishing there were any way to drive the ruinous noise of men from his skull and yet not break the covenant with his mother. But he has come this far already, pain-wracked and driven from the safety of his cave beyond the fell marches. He has come so near the mead hall and the homes of men that he can smell them, can almost taste them, and so has he not already broken his promise?
And here below boughs and boles grown as rough and knotted as himself, the change begins again. And perhaps this is all he’ll ever get from the giants, this hideous transformation that overtakes him when rage and hurt and hate are at last more than he can bear. No vow between mother and son the equal to a fury so great it can dissolve his will and warp muscle and reshape bone, so complete that it can finally make of him something yet more monstrous. A grotesque parody of his giant-kin, perhaps, some trollish joke between the gods who have warred always with the Jötnar.
“I would keep my word,” he groans, wishing his mother were there to hear, wishing she were there to help and lead him safely back to the cave and the edge of her pool. “I would be true, Modor. I would…” but then the pain has become so great he can no longer think clearly enough to fashion words. And still their song jabs and cuts and mocks him from that mismatched scatter of stone and thatch perched upon the high sea cliffs.
Her sister was from Norway,
She cost me twenty groats!
She showed me there was more ways
Than one to sow my oats!
At the edge of the forest, Grendel gnashes his teeth and covers his ears as his skeleton creaks and his joints pop. The pain and rage fester inside him like pus beneath infected skin, and like an infection, his body bloats and swells, growing quickly to more than twice its size. Some magic he will never understand, some secret of his curse, and soon his head is scraping against the limbs that only a few minutes before hung so far above his head. If only it would not stop here, if only he might keep on growing until he stood so tall that he could snatch the disinterested moon from out the night sky and hurl it down upon the roof of Heorot. There would be silence then, silence that might last forever, as much of forever as he needs, and never again would the bright eye of the moon taunt him from its road between the clouds.
Very soon, the change is done with him, having made of Grendel something worthy of the fears and nightmares of the Danes, and he stands up straight, bruised and bleeding from the speed and violence with which he has assumed these new dimensions. He glances back toward home, his gray-blue eyes gone now all to a simmering, molten gold, and he peers through the highest branches and across the tops of trees. From this distance and through the mists, he cannot make out the entrance of his cave, but he knows well enough where it lies, where his mother sits coiled in her watery bed with eels and kelp to keep her company. And then Grendel turns back toward Heorot and the voices of the men and makes his way swiftly across the moors.
“Doesn’t someone know some other song?” asks Hondshew, wishing now he’d bothered to think up a few more verses. He’s seated at a bench with the other Geats, and though the singing has finally stopped, they’re all still smacking their fists or empty cups against the tabletop, making as much racket as they can.
“Huh-how can huh-he suh-suh-sleep through this?” asks Olaf, and nods toward Beowulf, who hasn’t moved from his spot on the floor.
“I don’t think he’s really asleep,” whispers Hondshew.
Wiglaf stops banging his cup against the table. “Why don’t you go ask him and see?” he asks Hondshew.
“You’re not singing,” mutters Beowulf. “And I don’t recollect complaining that I’d had my fill of your pretty voices.”
“We’ve been through the whole thing three times now,” says Hondshew. “Maybe this Grendel beast, maybe he don’t mind Geat singing as much as he minds Dane singing, eh?”
Wiglaf grins and points a finger at a wiry, gray-haired thane named Afvaldr, though no one ever calls him anything but Afi. “Don’t you know a ballad or three?” he asks, and Afi shrugs his bony shoulders and keeps whacking his fist against the table.
“Not a one,” answers Afi. “You must be thinking of Gunnlaugr. Now, he had a pair of lungs on him, old Laugi did. You could hear him all the way from Bornholm clear across the sea to the Fårö-strait when the mood struck him. Why, once I—”
“A shame the dumb bastard went and drowned in Iceland last winter,” sighs Hondshew.
“Aye,” says Afi. “A shame, that.”
“Beowulf, I do not think the frican beast is falling for it,” Wiglaf says. “Maybe—”
“—that’s because you’ve stopped singing,” replies Beowulf, not bothering to open his eyes.
“I think I’ve strained my damned windpipe already,” says Hondshew. “What if Wiglaf’s right? What if this Grendel demon’s decided to sit this one out, eh? Here we sit, howling like a pack of she-wolves in heat, making complete asses of ourselves—”
“Shut up,” Beowulf says, and he opens his eyes. “It’s coming.”
“Wot? I don’t hear—” begins Hondshew, but then there’s a deafening thud, and the great door of Heorot Hall shudders in its frame. And for a long moment, the Geats sit still and quiet, and there’s no sound but the fire and the wind around the corners of the hall. All of them are watching the door now, and Wiglaf reaches for his sword.
“It’s here,” whispers Beowulf. “Draw your weapons.”
But the silence continues, the stillness, the crackling from the fire pit.
“What the hell is he waiting for?” hisses Hondshew.
And then the mead-hall door is hammered thrice more in quick succession—Thud! Thud! Thud! Dust sifts down from the rafters, and chains rattle.
“Guh-guh-Grendel,” stammers Olaf. “He nuh-nuh-knocks.”
There’s a smattering of nervous laughter at Olaf’s grim joke. Beowulf is sitting upright now, watching the door intently, his entire world shrunk down to that great slab of wood and rope and iron.
“Ah, that is no monster,” snorts Hondshew, getting to his feet and drawing his enormous broadsword from its scabbard on his back. “That must be my plum, Yrsa! She’s ready for me to taste her sweet fruit!”
There is more laughter from the thanes, bolder than before, and Hondshew bows, then turns and stumbles across the hall until he is leaning against the barred door.
“Hondshew,” says Beowulf, rising to one knee. “That might not be the wisest course of action.”
“Ah, you’ll see,” laughs Hondshew, and then he calls out through the door, “Patience, my lovely! Give a poor fellow a chance to find his pecker!”
Now Wiglaf stands, his own sword drawn, and he looks anxiously from Beowulf to the door. “Hondshew. No—”
“You drunken idiot,” mutters Beowulf.
“Nah, you just don’t know her the way I do,” chuckles Hondshew and then he raps three times on the door with his knuckles. “She’s a demon all right. I’ll grant you that. One of Loki’s own whelps, I’d wager.” And Hondshew presses one ear against the door. “Are you listening, my plum? Are you ready for another go?”
The thanes have all stopped laughing, and the hall of King Hrothgar has fallen silent and still again. There is a faint scrambling noise from the other side of the door, and then the wood creaks and pops and the hinges strain, and the whole thing bulges slowly inward as some titanic force presses upon it from without.
Beowulf is about to order Hondshew to move away from the doors, when the huge crossbar snaps like a twig. A rain of splinters and deadly shards of the fractured iron brackets are blown out into the hall, and Hondshew is thrown high into the air and sails by over Beowulf’s head to land in a heap on the far side of the room. But there’s no time to see whether or not he’s been killed. The doors of Heorot have swung open wide and hang crooked now on buckled hinges, all those chains dangling broken and useless from their pulleys. Beowulf stares awestruck at the hideous thing standing in the doorway, framed by the night, its scarred hide glistening a wet and greenish gold in the firelight.
“Wiglaf,” he says calmly, though his heart is racing in his chest.
“I suppose,” says Wiglaf, “this means the old man wasn’t exaggerating. Right about now, I bet you’re wishing you’d left your armor on.”
The monster roars and takes another step into the mead hall, advancing on the thanes. Steaming drool leaks from its mouth and spatters the floor. It swipes at the air with taloned hands and glares directly at Beowulf.
“I think it fancies you,” Wiglaf says.
“Save your wit,” Beowulf replies without taking his eyes off the beast. “I fear we’ll have need of it when this is over.”
And then Már, the thane standing on Wiglaf’s left and the youngest in the party, lets out a piercing howl, a crazy whoop that comes out more terror than battle cry, and he charges the creature. Wiglaf grabs for his cape, but the boy is too fast for him. So is Grendel. Before Már’s ax can land even a single blow, the creature is upon him, plucking Már up in one fist like a child’s toy. The beast snarls, its thin lips folding back to expose sickly black gums and yellowed eyeteeth long as a man’s forearm; Már barely has time to scream before he’s bitten in two. There’s a sudden spray of blood and gore, and the severed body falls twitching at Grendel’s feet.
Meanwhile, Beowulf has climbed atop one of the long banquet tables and is moving very slowly and deliberately toward the creature. Wiglaf is shouting commands, and other thanes have begun to close in on the monster. But Grendel only sneers and laughs at them, a gurgling throaty laugh like the sea rushing in between two stones, then drawing quickly back again. It lunges forward and grabs hold of another of Beowulf’s men, a heavyset Geat named Humli, clutching him in both its clawed hands. Humli makes to slash at its face with his sword, but Grendel slams him headfirst into one of the ceiling beams, then tosses the lifeless body into the fire pit. A third thane charges, but is simply swatted away with the back of Grendel’s left hand and sent crashing into the mead vat. The vat spills and pours out into the fire pit, hissing violently and sending up a dense plume of steam and ash. The air stinks of mead and smoke and charred flesh.
And now Hondshew rushes screaming from the shadows of Heorot, bloody and battered, his armor hanging askew and his eyes bright and frenzied. He rushes toward Grendel, his heavy broadsword raised above his head. Hondshew vaults easily over one of the overturned tables, and the monster growls and stoops to meet its attacker. Hondshew’s blade finds its mark, plunging into the creature’s skull, but Grendel only snarls and grins furiously back at the Geat, still holding tight to the hilt of his sword and dangling several feet above the floor.
“Screw you, you ugly bastard,” Hondshew snarls back. “Here I was expecting to meet a proper demon, and all we get is a wee hedge troll.”
Then the monster seizes him about the chest with one hand and with its other reaches up and snaps the broadsword’s blade cleanly in half, leaving seven or eight inches of steel embedded in its cranium. The broken sword clatters uselessly to the floor.
Hondshew gasps and spits in Grendel’s face.
The beast laughs at him again, then squeezes, and the green-branch snap of Hondshew’s collapsing rib cage is very loud in the hall. Then Grendel’s jaws open and snap shut again, decapitating the thane.
“That’s four good men you’ve killed this night,” whispers Beowulf, still moving silent and unnoticed toward the monster. “By Heimdall, you’ll not have another.”
But Grendel is too busy gnawing at Hondshew’s mangled, headless corpse to notice that the Geat stands now but an arm’s length away. Beowulf glances at Wiglaf and points to the monster’s groin, then makes a stabbing motion. Wiglaf nods, and Beowulf turns back toward Grendel.
“Enough!” Beowulf shouts, and Grendel looks up at him, its chin smeared dark and sticky with Hondshew’s blood. It blinks and narrows its golden eyes, surprised to find that one of the men has managed to get so close.
“That one’s dead,” Beowulf says. “Put him down and have a go at me now.”
Grendel casts aside what remains of Hondshew and, bellowing angrily, slams one gory fist down upon the table where Beowulf is standing. The Geat is fast and sidesteps the attack, but the impact sends him catapulting up into the rafters. Cheated and confused, Grendel roars and hurls the ruined table toward the smoldering, half-extinguished fire pit.
“My turn now,” says Wiglaf, who has crept in close behind Grendel, and he slides quickly between the monster’s legs and slashes at its groin with his sword. But the blade shatters harmlessly against the brute’s leathery hide.
“Beowulf, the bastard has no bollocks!” exclaims Wiglaf, staring up at the jagged scar where a scrotum ought to be. “He’s a fucking gelding!”
Now Grendel growls and pivots about, swatting at Wiglaf. But the thane manages to get his shield up in time to block the blow and is only sent tumbling backward across the floor toward the open doors of Heorot Hall and the cold, black night waiting beyond. The beast grunts and rubs at its crotch, then charges toward Wiglaf.
“So, is that why you’re such an arsehole,” Beowulf shouts down at Grendel from somewhere among the rafters. When the monster pauses to peer up into the gloom, Beowulf drops onto its back and immediately slips an arm around Grendel’s throat and beneath its chin. Locked in the stranglehold, the beast shakes its head and gurgles breathlessly, then lurches forward, almost sending Beowulf toppling forward and over its scabrous head. But Beowulf holds on tight, pulling himself up until his face is near to one of Grendel’s enormous deformed ears.
“Oh no!” shouts Beowulf. “No, it’s time I finished what Hondshew started, you filthy fucking cur!”
And now Grendel screams and claws at its head, screaming not in anger but in pain, and Beowulf realizes that at last he’s found the creature’s weakness. Something he should have guessed before, the reason the merrymaking of the Danes never failed to bring its wrath down upon them.
“Oh, was that too loud!” he shouts directly into Grendel’s right ear. “Should I perchance whisper from here on out?”
Grendel wails and shakes its head again in a desperate, futile attempt to dislodge the Geat. The monster spins blindly about and smashes headlong into a support column. But Beowulf hangs on, and with his free hand, he punches viciously at the creature’s aching ear. Beowulf feels his chokehold loosening, and so he squeezes tighter.
“It’s shrinking!” shouts Wiglaf from the doorway. “Beowulf, the bastard’s getting smaller!”
“Full of surprises, aren’t you,” Beowulf growls loudly into Grendel’s ear, then punches it again. And now Beowulf can feel the gigantic body contracting and convulsing beneath him, that throat growing the slightest bit smaller around so that he has to tighten his grip a second time. “Neat trick!” shouts Beowulf. “Do you do somersaults, as well, and juggle cabbages? Can you roll over and sit up and fucking beg?”
“Whatever it is you’re doing,” yells Wiglaf, “keep doing it!”
“Listen to me, Grendel,” Beowulf calls out into the monster’s ear. “Your feud with Hrothgar ends here, this night!”
In a final, frantic attempt to dislodge Beowulf, Grendel hurls itself backward toward the smoky, hot maw of the fire pit. But Beowulf guesses the creature’s intent and jumps clear, catching hold of one of the lengths of iron chain still hanging from the ceiling. Grendel goes down hard on the bed of soggy ash and red-hot embers, and it shrieks and rolls about as putrid clouds of yellow-green smoke rise in thick billows from off its searing skin.
“Guard the door!” Beowulf shouts to Wiglaf and the remaining thanes. “Don’t let it past you!”
“And just how the hell do you propose we do that?” Wiglaf shouts back. “We couldn’t keep it out. How do you think we’re gonna keep it in?”
“I’m sure you’ll think of something,” Beowulf says, speaking half to himself now, and he hangs from the chain, watching as Grendel flails and rolls about in the spilled mead and sizzling coals and the stinking, moss-colored smoke. It’s plain to see the creature’s the worse for their encounter, but he knows it might yet escape Heorot alive and slink back through the mists to its den, only to heal and return some other night, and this fight will have served no end but to redouble its hatred and murderous resolve.
Beowulf climbs the chain, pulling himself up hand over hand, then clambers out onto a broad rafter beam and kneels there. Below him, Grendel howls and paws madly at the collapsing edges of the fire pit, managing at last to haul its scorched and blistered bulk free of the wide bed of glowing embers. And to Beowulf’s amazement, he sees that its shrinking body has been so reduced that Grendel now stands not much taller than a very large bear. The beast shakes itself, sending up a sooty cloud of ash and sparks, and then it stops and rubs roughly at its eyes, glancing from the thanes to Wiglaf standing alone and unarmed before the open doors.
“I do apologize for the inconvenience, Sir Grendel,” Wiglaf says nervously, speaking to the monster as he quickly scans the hall for Beowulf. There’s no sign of him anywhere. “I’m afraid you’ll just have to endure our hospitality a bit longer.”
Grendel coughs, then snorts and bares his sharp yellow teeth at Wiglaf.
“My sentiments exactly,” sighs Wiglaf.
And now Beowulf spies another length of chain, only a few feet to his right and swaying to and fro like a pendulum. One end is looped fast about the ceiling beam, and the other is still wrapped about a large section of the shattered crossbar from the doors.
The other thanes have joined Wiglaf at the entrance to Heorot Hall, but Grendel is advancing on them. Even at hardly more than half its former height, the snarling beast remains a formidable adversary.
“You will have to take that up with my master Beowulf,” Wiglaf tells the monster, and accepts a spear from a thane named Oddvarr, replacing his lost sword. “You see, he makes the rules.”
“That’s right,” Beowulf whispers, crawling farther out along the beam. “Just don’t you dare let that fucker escape.” When he reaches the swinging chain, Beowulf lowers his body over the side, grips the metal links, and slides down until he’s standing on the suspended chunk of crossbar. Then he steadies himself and leans forward, setting all his weight against the swaying chain, increasing its arc and aiming it directly at Grendel’s head.
“Over here!” Beowulf shouts, and so the monster turns away from the open doors and the thanes blocking his way, moving more quickly than Beowulf would have expected. It has just enough time to raise one clawed hand and ward off the missile hurtling toward it. When the piece of crossbar makes contact with Grendel’s clenched fist, it explodes, reduced at once to mere slivers, and Beowulf dives for the floor and rolls away to safety.
No longer wrapped about the broken section of crossbar, the loop of chain slips unnoticed like a bracelet sliding over the creature’s knotty wrist. Grendel turns back toward the doorway and its path to safety, roaring as it rushes suddenly toward Wiglaf and the others. But then the chain pulls taut, cinching itself tightly about the beast’s wrist and jerking it backward.
“Glad you could drop in,” Wiglaf says, nodding toward Beowulf. “Will we be keeping it as a pet, then?”
And now Grendel, burned and frightened, weary of this battle that it’s clearly losing, lets out an earsplitting shriek and tugs fiercely at the chain, lashing it side to side like an iron whip. A second later, the ceiling beam splits and the chain pulls free. Grendel turns once more toward the open door, trailing the chain behind it. As the chain rattles past, Beowulf grabs hold of it, and so he too is dragged along by the retreating demon.
“Flank it!” shouts Wiglaf to the other thanes, and they move away to his left and right, leaving only him standing between Grendel and the sanctuary of darkness.
The chain bounces and catches about an iron post set into the floor of the mead hall, and for a second time, Grendel jolts to a stop, now only scant inches from the threshold of Heorot. Seeing their luck, Wiglaf presses his advantage and stabs at its face with his spear, aiming for those glistening golden eyes. But Grendel effortlessly bats the weapon away with his free right hand, knocking it from Wiglaf’s hands.
“You are definitely starting to piss me off,” grumbles Wiglaf. And now the four thanes on either side of the monster attack, but all their weapons prove equally useless against Grendel’s impenetrable hide.
“Hold him there!” calls out Beowulf, pulling against the chain with all his strength.
“I might have been a fishmonger, you know that?” Wiglaf calls back, right before he fails to duck one of the monster’s punches and is sent sprawling out into the night. There’s a loud and sickening pop, then, as Grendel’s left shoulder is dislocated, and it turns back toward Beowulf.
Beowulf swings the free end of the chain up and over another support timber, lashing it fast. The monster roars in agony and clutches at its shoulder. It struggles so savagely against its fetters that the beam is jarred loose, and the roof of the hall groans as thatch and mud fill rain down upon the thanes.
“Beowulf, it’s going to pull the whole place down upon our heads!” cries a thane named Bergr.
“That may well be,” replies Beowulf, “but it’ll not escape this hall! It will not survive another night to plague the Danes.” And now Beowulf sprints past his warriors to the doors of Heorot, where Grendel still strains to cross the threshold. Only the creature’s captured left arm is still trapped beneath King Hrothgar’s roof, and it moans and pulls against the chain encircling its wrist. The Geat gets behind the enormous door and heaves it shut, slamming it with all his might onto Grendel’s dislocated shoulder. The monster’s arm is pinned between the door and the iron doorframe, and its howls of pain echo out across the village and the farmlands beyond.
“Your days of bloodletting are finished, demon,” snarls Beowulf, and he leans hard against the door.
“No,” moans Grendel. “Let…let Grendel…free!”
“It can speak!” gasps an astonished Oddvarr.
“Muh-maybe that wuh-was only Wu-wu-Wiglaf,” says Olaf.
“No! It’s only some new sorcery,” Beowulf snaps back at them. “A demon’s trickery that we might yet take pity on the foul beast.”
“I’m not…I’m not a monster…” comes the coarse, gravelly voice from the other side of the door. “Not the monster here! No man can kill me. No mere man. Who…what thing are you?”
“What am I?” laughs Beowulf and shoves the door hard with his shoulder, eliciting fresh screams of anguish from Grendel. Then Beowulf puts his lips to the door, almost whispering when next he speaks.
“You would know who I am?” he asks. “Well, then. I am ripper and tearer and slasher and I am gouger. I am the teeth of the darkness and the talons of the night. I am all those things you believed yourself to be. My father, Ecgtheow, he named me Beowulf—wolf of the bees—if you like riddles, demon.”
“No,” Grendel pants and whimpers. “You…you are not the wolf…not the wolf of the bees. You are not…not the bear. No bear may stand against me.”
“I’ve heard enough of this devil’s nonsense,” Beowulf says, speaking loudly enough that his men will hear, then hurls his whole body against the door. To his surprise, the iron frame cuts deeply into Grendel’s flesh. “So,” he says. “You do bleed after all.”
Grendel shrieks again, and the tendons joining its shoulder to its arm begin to snap, the bones to crack.
“Fuh-finish it,” says Olaf.
“Think you now, Grendel, on the thanes whose lives you’ve stolen,” says Beowulf, and he slams the door once more and Grendel yelps. Rivulets of greenish black blood ooze down Grendel’s snared arm and drip from its fingertips onto the floor.
“Think of them now…as you die,” and then with all the force he can muster, with the strength that gods may grant mortal men, Beowulf pushes against the door, slamming it shut and severing the monster’s arm. It falls to the floor at his feet, still twitching. The dark blood gushes from the ragged stump, and when Beowulf kicks at it, the hand closes weakly about his ankle. He curses and shakes it loose. The arm flops about on the mead-hall floor, reminding the thanes of nothing so much as some hideous fish drawn up from the sea and battering the deck with its death throes. And suddenly it goes stiff and shudders and is finally still. Beowulf leans against the door, out of breath, sweat and drops of the creature’s thick blood rolling down his face and his bruised and naked body. Later, in the years to come, there will be those in his company who will say that never before or since have they seen such a look of horror on Beowulf’s face. Cautiously, the thanes approach the arm, weapons drawn and at the ready.
And now there’s a dull knock from the other side of the door.
Beowulf takes a deep breath and holds one finger up to his lips, silencing the thanes. Slowly, he turns to face the door. “Have you not had enough?” he asks and is answered by the voice of Wiglaf.
“Enough for this lifetime and the next, thank you very much” replies Wiglaf, and Beowulf leans forward, resting his forehead against the door a moment. He laughs softly to himself, an embarrassed, relieved sort of laugh, and pulls the door open again. There’s a viscous smear of gore streaking the doorframe, and Wiglaf is standing there, shivering and staring back at him.
“It made for the moors,” Wiglaf says, stepping past Beowulf, “but I don’t imagine it will get very far. That was a mortal wound, even for such a demon.” He stands staring down at the severed arm as an exhausted victory cheer rises from the surviving thanes.
“He spoke, Wiglaf,” Beowulf says and steps out into the freezing winter night, wiping Grendel’s blood from his face.
“Aye, I heard,” Wiglaf replies. “There are tales of trolls and dragonkind that can speak. But I never thought I’d hear it for myself. You think old Hrothgar will keep his promise now you’ve slain his beast?” And when some moments have passed and Beowulf does not reply, Wiglaf turns and peers out the open doorway, but there is only the night and a few snow flurries blown about by the wind.