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  “And I am sorry I mentioned that you murdered your brothers…they were hasty words.”

  Wiglaf snorts. “The truth spoken in haste remains the truth.”

  Beowulf holds the sword Hrunting up before him, admiring the ancient weapon, the runes worked into its iron blade.

  “You know, Unferth,” he says, “if I track Grendel’s dam to her lair, I may not return. Your ancestral sword might be lost with me.”

  Unferth nods once and folds his arms. “As long as it is with you, it will never be lost.”

  And now Beowulf turns to face Wiglaf. “And you, mighty Wiglaf. Are you still with me?”

  “You are a damned fool to follow this creature back to whatever fetid hole serves as its burrow,” he says, instead of answering the question put to him.

  “Undoubtedly,” replies Beowulf. “But are you with me.”

  Wiglaf laughs again, a laugh with no joy or hope to it. “To the bloody end,” he says.

  “And where are we to seek the demon?” Beowulf asks the king. At first Hrothgar only shrugs and scrapes the blade of his sword across the floor, but then he clears his throat and raises his head to look Beowulf in the eyes.

  “There is perhaps one living who knows,” says Hrothgar. “A man from the uplands. I have heard him speak of them, Grendel and its mother, and he has told stories of the places where they dwell. Unferth, he can take you to speak with this man.”

  “Will you stay behind, my king?” asks Wealthow, still standing at the window, speaking with her back to the room and all assembled there. “While Lord Beowulf once more seeks his death that your kingdom might be saved, will you stay behind with the women and children and the old men?”

  Hrothgar coughs and wipes his mouth on the back of his right hand. “I am an old man,” he says. “I would be no more to Beowulf than a burden. And I doubt there remains a horse in all my lands with the heart and strong back needed to bear me across the moorlands. I am sorry, Beowulf—”

  “Do not apologize,” says Beowulf, holding up a hand and interrupting Hrothgar before he can finish. “It is not necessary, my lord. In your day, you fought wars, and you slew dragons. Now your place is here, with your people. With your queen.”

  At this, Wealthow shakes her head and mumbles something under her breath but does not turn from the window.

  “For my part,” continues Beowulf, “I’d rather die avenging my thanes than live only to grieve the loss of them. If the Fates decree that I shall ever return to my homeland, better I can assure my kinsmen that I sought vengeance against this murderer than left that work to other men.”

  “A fool throws his life away,” says Wealthow very softly, and Hrothgar sighs, shaking his head.

  “All those who live await the moment of their death,” Beowulf says, turning toward the Queen of Heorot Hall, wishing that she would likewise turn to face him, wanting to see her violet eyes once more before he takes his leave. “That is the meaning of this life. The long wait for death to claim us. A warrior’s only solace is that he might find glory before death finds him. When I am gone, what else shall remain of me, my lady, except the stories men tell of my deeds?”

  But she does not make reply, and she does not turn to look at Beowulf.

  “We should not tarry,” says Wiglaf. “I’d rather do this thing by daylight than by dark.”

  So Hrothgar bids them farewell and promises new riches upon their return, coffers of silver and gold. And then Beowulf and Wiglaf follow Unferth from the bedchamber and back down to the muddy stockade.

  13

  The Pact

  They find the uplander of whom Hrothgar spoke tending to his horse in the stables, not far from the village gates. He is named Agnarr, tall and wiry and old enough to be Beowulf’s own father, and his beard is almost as white as freshly fallen snow. Only by the sheerest happenstance did he escape the slaughter of the previous evening, having business elsewhere in the village, and now he is readying for the hard ride back to his farm. At first, when Unferth asks him to tell all he knows of the monsters and the whereabouts of their lair, the man is suspicious and reluctant to speak of the matter.

  “Are these days not evil enough without such talk?” he asks, and lays a heavy wool blanket across the back of his piebald mare. The horse is nervous and snorts and stamps her hooves in the hay. “You see? She knows what visited us in the night.”

  “If these days be evil,” says Beowulf, handing Agnarr his saddle, a heavy contraption of leather and wood, “then is it not our place to make them less so?”

  The old man takes the saddle from Beowulf and stands staring indecisively back at Unferth and the two Geats. “Have you seen the tracks?” he asks. “They are everywhere this morning. I do not doubt the spoor would be easy enough to follow back across the moors.”

  “There is the forest,” Unferth says, “and bogs, and many stony places where we might lose the trail.”

  “Are you Beowulf?” asks Agnarr. “The one who took the monster Grendel’s arm?”

  “One and the same,” replies Beowulf. “But it seems I did not finish the job I came here to do. Tell me what you know, and I may yet put an end to this terror.”

  Agnarr stares at the Geat a very long while, his hesitancy plain to see, but at last he takes a deep breath and then begins to speak.

  “It is an ancient terror,” the old man sighs, then saddles the mare. “In my day, I have glimpsed them from afar, the pair of them, if indeed they be what troubles the King’s hall. They might be trolls, I have supposed, or they might be something that has no proper name. The one you fought, Grendel, and another, which looked almost like a woman. It moved like a woman moves. It had breasts—”

  “We know what they are,” says Unferth impatiently, and he glances toward the stable doors. “We would have you tell us where we might find them.”

  “As I have said, I cannot say for certain that it was she who visited Heorot last night and did this murder. I only know what I have seen.”

  “Where?” asks Beowulf a second time, more brusquely than before.

  “I am coming to that,” replies Agnarr, and he ties a heavy cloth sack onto the saddle, looping it through an iron ring. “I just wanted to be clear what I know and what I do not know.”

  The old man pauses, stroking his horse’s mane, then continues. “These two you ask after,” he says, “they do not live together, I think. Not many leagues from here, east, then north toward the coast, and past the forest, there is a tarn. Deep, it is. So deep that no man has ever sounded its bottom. But you will know it by three gnarled trees—three oaks—that grow above it, clustered upon an overhanging bank, their roots intertwined.” The old man tangles his fingers tightly together to demonstrate.

  “A tarn beneath three oak trees,” says Beowulf.

  “Aye, and the roots of those trees, they all but hide the entrance to a grotto. The tarn flows into that fell hole in the earth. I could not tell you where it reemerges, if indeed it ever does. For all I know, it flows to the sea or all the way down to Niflheim. And another thing, I have heard it told that at night something strange happens here. They say the water burns.”

  “The water burns,” says Wiglaf skeptically. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

  “It is only what I have heard told,” replies Agnarr, shaking his head. He frowns and glares at Wiglaf. “I have not ever seen that fire for myself, nor have I any wish to do so. This is a foul place of which you have me speak. Such tales I have heard, and the things I’ve seen with my own eyes. Once, I stalked a hart across the bog, a mighty stag,” and the old man holds his hands above his head, fingers out in imitation of the rack of a stag’s antlers.

  “Three of my arrows in him, three, and yet still he led me from the forest and right out into the marches. With my hounds, I tracked him as far as the tarn and those oaks. It was winter, you see, and we had great need of the meat, or I never would have followed him to that place. The hart, it might have escaped me then. It had only to plunge into th
ose waters, where I could not follow it across to the other side. But it dared not. It knew about that place, whatever dwells there. Rather than face the tarn, it turned back toward my dogs and me and so found its death.”

  “You spin a good yarn, uplander,” mutters Unferth, and he gives the man two pieces of gold. “Perhaps you should have sought your fortune as a scop instead of a farmer.”

  “Do not mock me.” Agnarr frowns and pockets the gold. “You ask, so I tell you what I know. Seek you the merewife if you dare, if you think her your killer, seek her in her hall below the tarn. Perhaps she’ll even come out, to meet you,” and the man points at Beowulf. “The foreign hero who slew her son.”

  “You have told us what we need to know,” says Unferth. “Now be on about your way.”

  “So I shall, my good lord,” replies Agnarr. “But you take care, Geat. That one, Grendel’s dam, the merewife, they say her son was never more than her pale shadow.” And then he goes back to loading bags onto his saddle, and his piebald horse whinnies and shuffles about in its narrow stall.

  “He’s mad as a drunken crow,” mutters Wiglaf, as the three men leave the stables, leading their own ponies out into the dim winter sunlight. “And you’re mad as well, Beowulf, if you still mean to go through with this.”

  “You will never tire of reminding me of that, will you?” says Beowulf.

  “Nay,” replies Wiglaf, forcing a smile. “The painfully obvious amuses me no end.”

  “The tarn the old man spoke of,” says Unferth, mounting his pony. “I think I know this place.”

  “You’ve seen it?” ask Beowulf.

  “No, but I have heard stories. Since I was a child. I have heard there is a lake, somewhere on the far side of the wood, which was once known as Weormgræf, the dragon’s tomb.”

  “I hope we’re not off hunting a dragon now,” says Wiglaf, gripping the saddlebow and pulling himself up. “I should have thought an ordinary sea troll was nuisance enough for one day.”

  “There is a story,” continues Wiglaf. “It is said that Hrothgar’s grandfather, Beow, was plagued by a fyrweorm, and that he tracked it to a bottomless lake across the moors, where he wounded it mortally with a golden spear. The dying dragon sank into the lake, which steamed and bubbled from its flames, and was never seen again. The story says that the waters still burn at night, poisoned by the fyrweorm’s blood.”

  Beowulf is still leading his pony by the reins. They are not far from the gates and guardhouse now. “You think Agnarr’s tarn is Weormgræf?” he asks Unferth.

  “Fire on water,” replies Unferth, and shrugs. “You think perhaps that’s a coincidence? Or maybe these lands are fair teeming with combustible tarns?”

  “We shall see for ourselves soon enough,” says Beowulf, and before long they are outside the gates of Heorot and riding swiftly across the moors toward a dark and distant line of trees.

  It is late day by the time the three riders at last find their way out of the shadow of the old forest beyond the moorlands and begin searching for some way across the bog. A low mist lies over everything, and the air here stinks of marsh gas and pungent herbs and the stagnant, brackish water. The ponies, which gave them no trouble either on the moors or beneath those ominous trees, have become skittish and timid, flaring their nostrils and shying away from many of the pools.

  There are flocks of crows here, and Beowulf wonders if they are perhaps the merewife’s spies. She might have other spies, as well, he thinks, for there must surely be some vile magic about her. No doubt she may command lesser beasts to do her bidding. The crows circle overhead and caw loudly, or they watch from the limbs and stumps of blighted trees that have sunk in the mire.

  “It is hopeless,” despairs Wiglaf. “We will not find a way across, not on horseback. The ground here is too soft.”

  “What ground,” says Beowulf, looking out across the marches. “There is hardly a solid hillock to be seen. I fear you are right, Wiglaf. From here we will have to continue on foot.”

  “I am not so great a swimmer as you,” Wiglaf reminds him. “I’m no sort of swimmer at all.”

  “Don’t worry. I will not let you drown,” says Beowulf, who then turns to Unferth. “Someone should stay behind with the horses. There are wolves about, and bears, too. I’ve seen their tracks.”

  “I’m actually very good with horses,” says Wiglaf, and Beowulf ignores him.

  Unferth gazes out across the bog, then back toward the dark forest, not yet so very far behind them. Beowulf can see the indecision in his eyes, the fear and also the relief that he has gone this far and will be expected to go no farther.

  “I would not have it said I was a coward,” Unferth tells Beowulf. “But I agree it’s no use trying to force our mounts across that dismal morass. They might bolt. They could become mired and drown.”

  “I could drown,” says Wiglaf.

  “Then you will wait for us, Unferth,” says Beowulf, as he slides off the back of his pony and sinks up past his ankles in the bog. “Ride back to where the forest ends and wait there. Do not let the ponies wander or be eaten, as I do not fancy walking all the way back to Heorot.”

  Unferth takes the reins of Beowulf’s pony. “If you think that the wisest course,” he says.

  “I do. I will carry Hrunting, and so men will say it was the sword of Unferth that cut the demon’s head from off her shoulders.”

  “Aye,” mutters Wiglaf, dismounting with a loud splash. “His sword, if not his hands.”

  “I think there’s already a fish in my boot,” moans Wiglaf, and kicks at a thick tuft of weeds.

  “If you do not return—” begins Unferth.

  “Give us until the morning,” says Beowulf, frowning at Wiglaf. “If we have not returned by first light, ride back to Hrothgar and prepare what defenses you may against the return of Grendel’s mother. If we fail to kill her, we may yet succeed in doubling her wrath.”

  “And there’s a cheery thought,” adds Wiglaf.

  And without another word, Unferth pulls back on his pony’s reins, and soon he is leading the three ponies back the way they’ve come, toward the western edge of the bog. Beowulf and Wiglaf do not linger to watch him go, but press on eastward, locating what few substantial footholds they can among the thickets of bracken and the tall clumps of grass. Often their feet drop straight through what had seemed like firm earth, swallowed up to the knees by the mud and muck. Then much effort is required to struggle free of the sucking, squelching peat, only to find themselves hip deep a few steps later.

  To take his mind off the possibility of drowning or the slimy things that might be waiting in the wide, still pools, Wiglaf talks, as much to himself as to Beowulf. He first relates what he can recall of a saga he heard from one of Hrothgar’s scops—how a Danish princess, Hildeburh, married Finn, a Frisian king, and how much grief and bloodshed inevitably followed. But then Wiglaf forgets exactly how the tale ends—though he knows it has something or another to do with Jutland—and so switches to the daring feats of Sigurd Dragonslayer and his sword, Gram, and how, by tasting the heart’s blood of a slain fyrweorm, Sigurd came to know the language of birds.

  “If I but had the heart of a dragon,” says Beowulf, “then perhaps I could learn what all these blasted crows are squawking about.” And he points at three of them perched on a flat stone at the center of one of the pools.

  “Oh, that’s easy,” replies Wiglaf. “They’re only telling us we are imbeciles and fools, and that we will taste very good, once the maggots find us and we’ve ripened a day or three.”

  “You speak birdish?” asks Beowulf, stopping and peering ahead into the fog.

  “No,” says Wiglaf. “Only crow. And a little raven. It is a skill peculiar to the doomed sons of fishwives.”

  At that moment there is a sudden gust of sea-scented wind, one of the few the two Geats have felt since beginning their long slog across the marches, and it briefly opens up a gap in the mists before them.

  “Look there,”
says Wiglaf, pointing north. Only fifty yards or so in that direction, the bog breaks off, as the land grows abruptly higher. And there is a steep bank at the edge of a steaming tarn, and atop the bank grow three enormous oaks, their gnarled roots tangled together like serpents slithering down to meet the water’s edge. There is a dark gap in the roots, and even from this distance, Beowulf can see that the water is flowing sluggishly into the gap and vanishing under the bank. Before much longer, they’ve reached the nearer shore of the tarn and can see that there is an oily scum floating on its surface, an iridescent sheen that seems to twist and writhe in the fading daylight.

  “Dragon’s blood?” asks Wiglaf.

  “The old man spoke true,” Beowulf replies and then begins picking his way along the edge of the pool toward the bank and the opening in the tree roots.

  “A damn shame, that,” sighs Wiglaf. “I was starting to hope he’d made the whole thing up.”

  Beowulf is the first to gain solid ground, a barren hump of rocky soil near the entrance of the cave. There is still a patch of snow here, blackened by frozen blood. The corpse of one of Hrothgar’s men lies half-in the tarn, half-out, mauled and stiff. It has attracted a hungry swarm of fish and crabs, and one of the crows is perched on its broken back.

  “This must be the place,” says Beowulf, and he curses and throws a stone at the crow. He misses, but the bird caws and flies away. Beowulf draws Hrunting from its scabbard and turns away from the dead man, toward the entrance to the merewife’s den.

  “Poor bastard,” says Wiglaf, when he sees the corpse. “Beowulf, you do not want to meet this water demon in her own element.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you want me to go in with you?”

  “No,” Beowulf replies. “I should do this alone. That’s how she wants it.”

  “Yes,” says Wiglaf, drawing his own sword and coming to stand at Beowulf’s side. “Which seems to me ample reason for me to go with you. You know that I will. You have but to ask.”

  “I know,” Beowulf tells him.