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.
10
The Death of Grendel
The kindly night takes Grendel back, one of its own come wandering, broken and lost, and for a time there is only the pain and confusion. No direction or intent, no destination, but only the need to put distance between himself and the one who called itself a bear, though it was not a bear. The man who is not merely a man and claimed to be the wolf of the bees and so a bear. The one who answered him all in riddles.
For a time, Grendel thinks he might lie down in the mists and die alone on the moors. It would be a soft enough bed for death, and the mists seem to have become some integral part of him, a shroud unwinding from his shriveling soul even as it winds so tightly about him. It would release him, and yet also would it hold him together, these colorless wisps curling soundlessly up from the tall grass and bracken. It would conceal him, should the Bee Wolf come trailing hungrily after, still unsatisfied and following Grendel’s meandering footprints and the blood he dribbles on leaves and stones. He would only be a phantom, there on the moorlands, nothing that could ever be wounded again, for even the sharpest swords pass straight through fog and empty air, doing no damage whatsoever, and no hateful human voice can injure that which cannot hear.
But then Grendel finds himself once more beneath the ancient trees, though he knows at once he is not welcomed by the forest. It wishes no part in his demise or decay and tells him so, muttering from the boughs of towering larches and oaks, beech and ash. If you fall here, say the trees, our roots will not have you. We will not hide your bones. We will not taste you, nor will we offer any peace. And they speak of some long-ago war with the giants, with the dragons, too, and to them Grendel’s blood stinks of both. They remind him of the wood that he has so thoughtlessly splintered on other nights as he raged and made his way down to the dwellings of men. He will not now be forgiven those former violations.