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.