And now Wealthow turns away from the window, her hands clasped so tightly together that her knuckles have gone white. “Yes, my dear husband,” she says. “Pray tell, where is Grendel’s sire?” But as she speaks, her eyes go to Beowulf, not King Hrothgar.

“Gone,” says the king, then wipes at his mouth and glances up at Beowulf. “Grendel’s father is gone, faded like twilight, not even a ghost. He can do no harm to man.”

“Beowulf, he has already lied to us once.”

“I never lied to you,” snaps Hrothgar, his face gone red, his cloudy eyes suddenly livid, and he raises his sword. But Wiglaf easily bats the blade aside, and it clatters to the floor.

“Nay, I suppose you did not,” he says. “You merely neglected to mention that once we’d slain her son—”

“Stop,” Beowulf says, and he lays a firm hand on Wiglaf’s shoulder. “You will not speak this way to the King of the Danes.”

Exasperated, Wiglaf motions toward the window, toward the sea beyond. “Beowulf, please. Think about this. It is time we took our leave of these cursed shores. We have done what we came here to do.”

Before Beowulf can reply, there are loud footsteps in the hallway outside the bedchamber, and Unferth enters the room. “Beowulf,” he says.

“What now?” Wiglaf asks Hrothgar’s advisor. “Have you come here to gloat, Ferret Kinslayer?”

Unferth takes a deep breath, disregarding Wiglaf’s taunt. “I was wrong,” he says. “I was wrong to doubt you before, Beowulf, son of Ecgtheow. And I shall not do so again. For truly yours is the blood of courage. I beg your forgiveness.”

“Clearly, there is to be no end to this farce,” sneers Wiglaf, and he turns his back on Unferth.

“Then I accept your apology,” Beowulf says quietly, and Wiglaf laughs to himself. “And you must forgive my man Wiglaf, as we have seen many terrible things this morning, and it has sickened our hearts.”

“If you will take it,” Unferth says, “then I have a gift,” and he turns to his slave, Cain, who has been standing just behind him. The boy is holding a great sword, which Unferth takes from him.

“This is Hrunting,” Unferth says, and holds the weapon up for Beowulf to see. “It belonged to my father Ecglaf and to my father’s father before him.” The blade glints in the dim lights of the bedchamber, and Beowulf can see that it is an old and noble weapon. Unferth holds it out to him.

“Please,” he says. “It is my gift to you. Take my sword, Beowulf.”

Beowulf nods and accepts the blade, inspecting the ornate grip and pommel, gilded and jeweled and graven with scenes of battle. A prominent fuller runs the length of the sword, lightening the weapon. “It is fine, and I am grateful for your gift. But a sword like this…it will be no fit match for demon magic.”

“Still,” says Unferth, “Hrunting may be more than it seems. My father told me the blade was tempered in blood, and he boasted it had never failed anyone who carried it into battle.”

“A shame he cannot speak of its might from personal experience,” Wiglaf says, and Beowulf tells him to be quiet.

“Something given with a good heart,” Beowulf says to Unferth, “that has its own magic. And it has a good weight to it, friend Unferth”

“I’m sorry I ever doubted you.”

“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.

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?”