Grendel (9 page)

“Hmm,” I said. It was not unusual, of course, to hear them contradict themselves, but I would have liked it if he’d stuck to one single version, either that they would know and sing his tragedy or that they wouldn’t. So it would have been in a poem, surely, if Unferth were a character, good or evil, heroic or not. But reality, alas, is essentially shoddy. I let out a sigh.

He jerked his head up, shocked. “Does
nothing
have value in your horrible ruin of a brain?”

I waited. The whole shit-ass scene was his idea, not mine.

I saw the light dawning in his eyes. “I understand,” he said. I thought he would laugh at the bottomless stupidity of my cynicism, but while the laugh was still starting at the corners of his eyes, another look came, close to fright. “You think me deluded. Tricked by my own walking fairytale. You think I came without a hope of winning—came to escape indignity by suicide!” He did laugh now, not amused: sorrowful and angry. The laugh died quickly. “I didn’t know how deep the pool was,” he said. “I had a chance. I knew I had no more than that. It’s all a hero asks for.”

I sighed. The word “hero” was beginning to grate. He was an idiot. I could crush him like a fly, but I held back.

“Go ahead, scoff,” he said, petulant. “Except in the life of a hero, the whole world’s meaningless. The hero sees values beyond what’s possible. That’s the
nature
of a hero. It kills him, of course, ultimately. But it makes the whole struggle of humanity worthwhile.”

I nodded in the darkness. “And breaks up the boredom,” I said.

He raised up on his elbows, and the effort of it made his shoulders shake. “One of us is going to die tonight. Does
that
break up your boredom?”

“It’s not true,” I said. “A few minutes from now I’m going to carry you back to Hrothgar, safe and sound. So much for poetry.”

“I’ll kill myself,” he whispered. He shook violently now.

“Up to you,” I answered reasonably, “but you’ll admit it may seem at least a trifle cowardly to some.”

His fists closed and his teeth clenched; then he relaxed and lay flat.

I waited for him to find an answer. Minutes passed. It came to me that he had quit. He had glimpsed a glorious ideal, had struggled toward it and seized it and come to understand it, and was disappointed. One could sympathize.

He was asleep.

I picked him up gently and carried him home. I laid him at the door of Hrothgar’s meadhall, still asleep, killed the two guards so I wouldn’t be misunderstood, and left.

He lives on, bitter, feebly challenging my midnight raids from time to time (three times this summer), crazy with shame that he alone is always spared, and furiously jealous of the dead. I laugh when I see him. He throws himself at me, or he cunningly sneaks up behind, sometimes in disguise—a goat, a dog, a sickly old woman—and I roll on the floor with laughter. So much for heroism. So much for the harvest-virgin. So much, also, for the alternative visions of blind old poets and dragons.

Balance is everything, riding out time like a helmless sheep-boat, keel to hellward, mast upreared to prick out heaven’s eye. He he! (Sigh.) My enemies define themselves (as the dragon said) on me. As for myself, I could finish them off in a single night, pull down the great carved beams and crush them in the meadhall, along with their mice, their tankards and potatoes—yet I hold back. I am hardly blind to the absurdity. Form is function. What will we call the Hrothgar-Wrecker when Hrothgar has been wrecked?

(Do a little dance, beast. Shrug it off. This looks like a nice place—oooh, my!—flat rock, moonlight, views of distances! Sing!

Winter soon.

(whispering, whispering. Grendel, has it occurred to you my dear that you are crazy?)

(He clasps hands delicately over his head, points the toes of one foot—
aaie!
horrible nails!!—takes a step, does a turn:

Balance is everything, tiding out rhyme …

It will be winter soon.

Midway through the twelfth year of my idiotic war.

Twelve is, I hope, a holy number. Number of escapes from traps.

[He searches the moonlit world for signs, shading his eyes against the dimness, standing on one shaggy foot, just slightly bloodstained, one toe missing from an old encounter with an ax. Three dead trees on the moor below, burned up alive by lightning, are ominous portents. (Oh man, us portents!) Also trees. On a frostbitten hill in the distance, men on horses. “Over here!” he screams. Waves his arms. They hesitate, feign deafness, ride away north. Shoddy, he observes. The whole chilly universe, shoddy.]

Enough of that! A night for tearing heads off, bathing in blood! Except, alas, he has killed his quota for the season. Care, take care of the gold-egg-laying goose! There is no limit to desire but desire’s needs. (Grendel’s law.)

The scent of the dragon. Heavy all around me, almost visible before me, like my breath.

  I will count my numberless blessings one by one.

I
. My teeth are sound.

I
. The roof of my cave is sound.

I
. I have not committed the ultimate act of nihilism: I have not killed the queen.

I
. Yet.

(He lies on the cliff-edge, scratching his belly, and thoughtfully watches his thoughtfully watching the queen.)

Not easy to define. Mathematically, perhaps a torus, loosely cylindrical, with swellings and constrictions at intervals,
knobbed—that is to say, a surface generated, more or less, by the revolutions of a conic about an axis lying in its plane, and the solid thus enclosed. It is difficult, of course, to be precise. For one thing, the problem of determining how much is queen and how much queenly radiation.

The monster laughs.

Time-Space cross-section:
Wealtheow.

Cut
A:

It was the second year of my raiding. The army of the Scyldings was weakened, decimated. No more the rumble of Hrothgar’s horsemen, riding at midnight, chain-mail jangling in the whistling wind, cloaks flying out like wimpling wings, to rescue petty tribute-givers. (O
listen
to me, hills!) He couldn’t protect his own hall, much less theirs. I cut down my visits, conserving the game, and watched them. Nature lover. For weeks, all day and far into the night, he met with his counselors, talking, praying, moaning. I became aware, listening to them, that I was not their only threat. Far to the east of Hrothgar’s hall there was a new hall a-building, its young king gaining fame. As Hrothgar had done, this younger king was systematically burning and plundering nearby halls, extending the circle of his tribute power. He was striking now at the outer rim of Hrothgar’s sphere; it was only a matter of time before he struck Hrothgar. The counselors talked and drank and
wept, sometimes Hrothgar’s allies among them. The Shaper sang songs. The men stood with their braceleted arms around one another’s shoulders—men who not long before had been the bitterest of enemies—and I watched it all, wringing my fingers, smiling rage. The leaves turned red. The purple blooms of thistles became black behind the people’s houses, and migrant birds moved through.

Then, from all corners of Hrothgar’s sphere of influence and from towns beyond—the vassals’ vassals—an army began to form. They came walking or riding, oxen dragging their wagonloads of shields, spears, tents, clothes, food. Every night when I went down to look there were more of them. Cartwheels tall as a man, with rough, square spokes. Big-hoofed gray horses spackled like wolves, that rolled their eyes and whinnied at my footfall, leagued with men as if strapped to their business by harness I could not see. Horns cracked out in the darkening stillness; grindstones screeched. The crisp air reeked with the aftersmell of their cooking.

They made camp in a sloping pasture rimmed by enormous oak trees and pines and nut trees, a stream moving down through the center, over steps of rock. Where the forest began, there was a lake. Every night there were new groups of campfires to push away the frost, and soon there was hardly a place to stand, there were so many men and animals. The grass, the withering leaves were full of whispering,
but the campground was hushed, muffled by their presence, as if blighted. I watched from my hiding place. They talked in mumbles or not at all. Message carriers moved from fire to fire, talking softly with the leaders. Their rich furs shone like birds’ wings in the firelight. Heavily guarded, the younger soldiers pushed through the crowd and, all night long, washed clothes and cooking ware in the stream until the water was thick with dirt and grease and no longer made a sound as it dropped toward the lake. When they slept, guards and dogs watched over them in herds. Before dawn, men rose to exercise the horses, polish weapons, or move out with bows in search of deer.

Then one night when I went down to spy, they were gone, vanished like starlings from a tree. I followed their trail—footprints, hoofprints, and wagon ruts cutting a wide dirty swath toward the east. When I came in sight of them, I slowed down, laughing and hugging myself; it was going to be a massacre. They marched all night, then scattered into the forest like wolves and slept all day without fires. I snatched an ox and devoured it, leaving no trace. At dusk, they formed again. At midnight the armies arrived at the antlered hall.

Hrothgar called out to him, glorious protector of the Scyldings, hoarfrost bearded: “Hygmod, lord of the Helmings, greet your guests!” Unferth stood beside him, his
huge arms folded on his byrnie. He stood with his head bowed, eyes mere slits, clamped mouth hidden where his mustache overlapped his beard. Bitterness went out from him like darkness made visible: Unferth the hero (known far and wide in these Scanian lands), isolated in that huge crowd like a poisonous snake aware of what it was. King Hrothgar called again.

The young king came out, well armed, leading a bear and six retainers. He looked around him, blond and pale, arms ringed with gold, a vague smile hiding his shock. The army of the Scyldings and all their allies stretched off in the darkness as far as the eye could see—down the slopes of the hill, down the stone-paved roadways, away into the trees.

Hrothgar made a speech, lifting his ashspear and shaking it. The young man waited like stone, his gloved right hand grasping the chain that led the bear. He had no chance, and he knew it. Everyone knew it but the bear beside him, standing upright, considering the crowd. I smiled. I could smell the blood that would drench the ground before morning came. There was a light breeze, a scent of winter in it. It stirred the fur on the men’s clothes and rattled the leaves around me. The bear dropped down on all fours and grunted. The king jerked the chain. Then an old man came out of the meadhall, went to the young king, just clear of the bear, and spoke to him.
Hrothgar and all his allies were silent, waiting. The young king and the old man talked. The retainers at the meadhall door joined in, their voices low. I waited. Hrothgar’s whole army was silent. Then the young king moved toward Hrothgar. A rumble went through the crowd, then fell away like a wave retreating, drawing pebbles out from shore. At last, very slowly, the young king drew out his sword, with his left hand—a sign of truce—and dropped it, as if casually, in front of Hrothgar’s horse.

“We will give you gifts,” the young king said, “splendid tribute in sign of our great respect for the honorable Scyldings.” His voice and smile were gracious. His eyes, slanting downward like the eyes of a fish, were expressionless as dried-up wells.

Unferth laughed, all alone in the silence. The sound rolled away to the darkness to die among trees.

Hrothgar, white-haired, white-bearded as the ice-god, shook his head. “There is no gift your people can give the Scyldings,” he said. “You think you can buy a little time with gold, and then some night when we’re sitting at our mead, you and all your brave allies will come down on us—crash!—as we tonight have come down on you, and no gift we can offer then will turn away your fury.” The old man smiled, his eyes wicked. “Do you take us for children that play in the yards with pets? What could we give you
that you couldn’t take by force, and at that time take from us tenfold?”

Unferth smiled, looking at the bear. The young king showed nothing, accepting the joke and the argument as if he’d been expecting them. He gave the chain another jerk and the bear moved closer to him. When he’d waited long enough, he looked back up at Hrothgar.

“We can give you such piles of treasure,” he said, “that I have nothing left to pay an army with. Then you’ll be safe.”

Hrothgar laughed. “You’re crafty, lord of the Helmings. A king shrewd with words can mount a great army on promises. The treasure you’d take by destroying my house could make all your swordsmen rich. Come, come! No more talk! It’s a chilly night, and we have cows to milk in the morning. Take up your weapons. We’ll give you ground. We haven’t come to kill you like foxes in a hole.”