Beowulf (7 page)

‘My heart is sore to lose you,' said Hrothgar. ‘But you must go back to your own House-Lord and your own people,' and he rose from among the wolfskins of the bench where he was sitting, and held Beowulf at arms' length and looked deep into his face. ‘I think that in the long years ahead, you will be such a sword and such a shield to your people as they may well have need of.'

‘That is as Wyrd decrees,' said Beowulf, and he set his hands over the old man's on his shoulders. ‘But this I know, that you have called me your son, and if ever you should need me, whether it be under threat of war or for any other cause, you have but to send me word, and I will come with a thousand warriors at my back.'

And Hrothgar bowed his head on to Beowulf's shoulder and wept and they vowed friendship for all time between Geats and Danes, and spat and struck their palms together as men sealing a bargain.

Then Beowulf called his companions together, and they took their leave and set out once more along the paved road to the coast, some riding the horses that Hrothgar had given to their leader, some walking, all laden with treasures of gold and fine weapons, and their grey ring-mail sounding on them as they moved.

It was still early when, with a great company of Danes still about them, they came over the moorland ridge and down to the head of the fjord where their war-boat lay secure on the shingle above the tide mark, and the Coast Warden, sitting his horse beside her, looked as though he had never been away. To him Beowulf gave a sword with gold wires about the hilt, brother to one which he had given Hunferth; and then with the Danes to help them, they set rollers under the keel and, shouting and cheering, ran their boat down into the surf, feeling her grow light and buoyant and wake to life again as the lift of the water took her. They got the horses aboard and bestowed them with the rest of the treasure in the hollow heart of the ship below the mast, and springing aboard themselves they hung their round linden shields along the bulwarks and ran out the oars. And with Beowulf leaning to the steering-oar they brought her round and set her eager dragon-head seaward. The farewell shouts of the Danes grew fainter astern until their voices were lost in the crying of the gulls; and presently as they cleared the high nesses at the fjord mouth the open sea was before them and the wind came to fill their striped sail and speed them on their wave-road home.

Two days later, Hygelac's Coast Warden, sitting his horse high on the cliffs of Geatland, saw, as Hrothgar's Coast Warden had seen, a long war-boat running in to land. But this was no strange vessel, and he was watching for her already. At sight of her a shout of joy burst from him, and driving his heel again and again into his horse's flank, he urged it at a gallop down towards the keel-strand below Hygelac's Hall, crying out the news to all he passed on the way.

So when Beowulf and his sword companions ran their keel ashore, they found a glad throng of their own folk waiting on the tide line to greet them and give them their aid as they set their shoulders to the sides of the vessel and ran her far up the shelving strand, and help them to carry the treasure up to Hygelac's Hall.

That night there was feasting and rejoicing in the royal Hall of Geatland, and Hygd the Queen poured the mead for the returned champions, and Beowulf, when they shouted for him to tell the tale of all that had passed since he sailed for Denmark, rose in his place and flinging back his head, made his triumph song of the slaying of Grendel and the slaying of Grendel's Dam. And when the story was done, he called for the treasures that he had won to be brought out, and gave away to the King his House-Lord, and to the Queen and to his friends and kinsfolk everything save Hrothgar's first gift-sword and the horse with Hrothgar's saddle on it, which he kept for himself.

Then, as a man takes up a well-worn and familiar garment, he resumed again his accustomed place as chief among the warriors and champions of Hygelac.

T
HE
years went by and the years went by, bringing as they passed great changes to the two kingdoms. In Denmark Hrothgar died and was howe-laid, and Hrethric his son ruled in his place. Hygelac fell in an expedition against the Frisians, and Beowulf, still his chief thane, avenged him worthily on the enemy' and then, sore wounded himself, fought his way back to the seashore and the waiting war-galleys, and so escaped to carry the sad tidings back to Hygd the Queen. Heardred the King's son was still only a boy, too young to lead his people in war or guide them wisely in peace, and so the Queen called together the Councillors and foremost chieftains of the land, and with their consent offered the gold collar of the Kingship to Beowulf in his stead. But Beowulf, true to his House-Lord, would have nothing to say to this, and so Heardred, young as he was, was raised to the High Seat with his mighty cousin to stand ever at his side as counsellor and protector.

Alas! It was all to no avail, for in his young manhood Heardred fell in battle as his father had done. And this time, when the Kingship was offered to him again Beowulf took it, though with a heavy heart, for he was the rightful next of kin.

Long and gloriously he ruled, holding his people strongly and surely as in the hollow of his great sword hand. Fifty times the wild geese flew south in the autumn, fifty times the birch buds quickened in the spring and the young men ran the war-keels down from the sheds; and in all that time Geatland prospered as never before. But when the fiftieth year was over, a terror fell upon the land.

And this was the way of it.

Many hundreds of years before, a family of mighty warriors had gathered by inheritance and by strength in war an immense store of treasure, gold cups and crested helmets, arm-rings of earls and necklaces of queens, ancient swords and armour wrought with magic spells by the dwarf-kind long ago. A great war of many battles had carried away all this kinsfolk save one, and he, lonely and brooding on the fate of the precious things that he and his kin had gathered with such joy when he also should have gone by the Dark Road, made ready a secret fastness that he knew of, a cave under the headland that men called the Whale's Ness. And there, little by little, he carried all his treasures and hid them within sounding of the sea, and made a death-song over them as over slain warriors, lamenting for the thanes who would drink from the golden cups and wield the mighty swords no more, for the hearths grown cold and the harps fallen silent and the halls abandoned to the foxes and the ravens.

When the man died the hoard was forgotten and lay unknown under the flank of the hill while the slow centuries went by, until at last a fire-dragon, seeking a lair among the rocks, came upon the hidden entrance to the cave and, crawling within, found the treasure. Because he had found it the fire-drake thought that it was his, and he loved it, heavy arm-ring and jewelled dagger and gold-wrought cup; and he flung his slithering coils about it, and lay brooding over it for three hundred years.

But at the end of that time a man who had angered his chieftain in some way and was fleeing from his wrath also found the hidden entrance among the rocks, and the golden hoard, and the dragon sleeping.

Now through all those three hundred years the dragon had been slowly growing, until from snout to tail tip he was ten times as long as a man is tall. Yet still he was not long enough completely to encircle the mound of treasure, and between snout and tail tip as he lay was a gap just wide enough to let through a man.

The fugitive saw the golden glimmer of the hoard, and even while his brain swam at the sight it seemed to him that here might be a way out of his desperate plight. Creeping between snout and tail tip of the sleeping dragon, he caught up a golden cup, one great cup glowing like the sun with which to buy off his chieftain's wrath, and, clutching it to his breast, fled back the way he had come.

Presently the fire-drake woke, and knew in the moment of his waking that he had been robbed. Blindly, in grief and fury, he snuffed about his beloved hoard, and knew by the smell that a man had been there. He crawled outside and padded about the entrance to the cave and among the rocks, and found man's footprints; and when the dusk came down he spread his great wings and flew out in search of the thief.

Night after night from that time forward he flew out, filled with hatred, and seeking not only the thief but to wreak his vengeance on all men because it was a man who had robbed him. Far and wide he flew, from coast to coast of Geatland, wrapped in his own fiery breath as though in mists of flame. Houses, men, trees and cattle, even the King's hall itself, shrivelled up as his angry breath blew upon them, and at each sunrise when he returned to his lair, he left the trail of his night's flying marked in black and smoking desolation across the land.

Beowulf was old now, a grey warrior who had once been golden, but a warrior still. Also he was the King; and for him in the last resort was the duty and the privilege of dying for the life of his people. And so, as he had done so many times before, he made himself ready for battle. Well he knew that he would not be able to come to grips with the dragon as he had done in his youth with Grendel the Night-Stalker, for now he had to fight not only strength but fire, and his familiar war-gear would not serve him, for how long could a shield of linden-wood withstand flame? So he sent for the Warsmith to come to him in his sleeping quarters—now that his hall was no more than a blackened shell—and said to him, ‘Forge me a shield of iron, strong to withstand fire. And be quick in the forging of it, for the people cannot endure many more such nights of desolation.' And he chose twelve thanes of his own bodyguard, amongst them Wiglaf, grandson of that Waegmund who had sailed with him for Denmark fifty roving-seasons ago, and bade them make ready to accompany him.

There was a thirteenth of their company also, for the chieftain for whom the cup had been stolen had handed over the thief to Beowulf when he saw the evil that the theft had caused; and to him Beowulf said, quietly terrible, ‘You and you alone of all living men know in what place the Terror-that-flies-by-Night has his lair; and if you lead us to the spot, it may be that you shall continue among living men. Your chances shall be no better and no worse than those of my companions who come with me. But if you fail to lead us truly to the place, then you may escape the fire-drake, but assuredly
you shall not escape me!
'

So next morning the King put on his grey ring-mail sark, and sheathed at his side the ancient sword that had been his companion in every fight since Hrothgar gave it to him. And he took the heavy iron shield that was still warm from the anvil, and bidding the rest of his war-host to follow on behind he rode out with his twelve chosen thanes on his last adventure.

The cave below the Whale's Ness was more than two days' ride from the royal village, but they pressed on with desperate speed, by dark as well as by day, and on the next morning, having left the weary horses behind them among the trees, they came over a wooded ridge and found themselves looking down upon what must once have been a fair and pleasant valley, dipping to low sea-cliffs at one end and at the other running up to meet the high moors where the bees droned among the heather bloom. It was blackened and desolate now, a landscape of despair, fanged with the stumps of charred tree trunks. On the far side of the valley the blunt turf slope of the Ness upheaved itself and thrust its great head out to sea. And against the flank of the Whale's Ness the ground was tumbled and broken up into low cliffs and rocky outcrops over which a faint smoke hung.