Love me, and I shall weave you riches beyond imagination. I shall make you the greatest king of men who has ever lived.

And now Hrothgar, son of Healfdene, grandson of Beow, turns to face him, and the old king bows, but only very slightly, and there is another deafening cheer from the hall. Then Hrothgar turns away and walks back toward the door leading to the anteroom behind the dais and then to the balcony beyond.

Queen Wealthow, feeling a sudden chill, a peculiar unease, turns to watch her husband as he takes his leave of the celebration. But she tells herself that whatever disquiet she feels is only a natural reaction to Hrothgar’s startling abdication and nothing more. She watches him pass through the fire-lit anteroom and out onto the balcony, and Wealthow tells herself he needs some time alone, and so she keeps her seat and does not follow him.

Out on the balcony, the north gale whips at the old man’s beard and at his robes, the breath of a giant to fuel high white waves. He faces the sea, and at his back lies his home and wife, all his lands, his kingdom and everything that he has ever done. All brave deeds and every act of cowardice, all his strengths and weaknesses, his victories and defeats. All he has loved and hated.

“Enough,” he says. “I will go no farther.” But the wind takes the words away and scatters them like ash. Hrothgar reaches up, removing the circlet from his head, that crown of hammered gold first worn by his great-grandfather, Shield Sheafson. He sets it safely in the lee of the low balustrade, so the wind will not carry it away.

“I will not see Ásgard,” he says. “It is not meant for the eyes of men like me,” and then Hrothgar steps over the balustrade and lets the abyss take him. Perhaps he hears Wealthow screaming and perhaps it is only the wind in his ears.

And in the instant before the fall has ended and he strikes the rocks, Hrothgar glimpses with watering eyes something slithering about beneath the fast-approaching waves, something plated round with glittering scales, a gilded woman with the sinuous tail of an eel, the unmistakable form of the merewife.

And only seconds later, Wealthow stands at the edge of the balcony, staring down at his body shattered there on the sea-licked granite boulders far below. By the time Beowulf reaches her side, by the time Unferth and Wiglaf and others from the hall have seen for themselves that Hrothgar is gone, she’s stopped screaming. She has stuffed the knuckles of one fist into her mouth and is biting down on them to choke the sound in her throat.

And then all the sea appears to draw back, gathering itself into a towering, whitecapped surge, a wave high enough to reach the fallen king’s body. It rushes forward, a crashing, frothing shroud for a broken corpse, and when it retreats, it takes Hrothgar away with it, and he passes forever from the eyes of man. Then the waves are only waves again, and the wind is only wind.

Wealthow takes her hand from her mouth. There’s blood on her knuckles, tiny wounds born of her own teeth. The wind is freezing her tears upon her cheeks. “He must have fallen,” she says, knowing it’s a lie. “He was drunk, and he must have fallen.”

Unferth has put one arm protectively about her shoulders, as though he fears she will follow her husband over the ledge. But now he sees the circlet lying where Hrothgar set it, and he releases her and stoops to pick it up. It seems unnaturally heavy in his hands, this dull ring of gold that might have been his, that he might have worn had Grendel’s assault upon Heorot never begun. If he had been the man who slew the monster and its mother. But it is so very heavy, heavier than it has any right to be. Unferth turns to Beowulf and Wiglaf and the thanes who have shoved their way through the anteroom and out onto the balcony. They are all watching him, wide-eyed and silent. Unferth holds the crown up so all can see, and he looks Beowulf in the eye.

“All hail,” he says, and swallows, the words sticking like dust in his throat. “All hail King Beowulf!”

And he places the golden circlet on Beowulf’s head, glad to be rid of the crown. In years to come, he will recall the way it felt in his fingers, the weight of it, the peculiar sense that it was somehow unclean. For a time there is only the howling of the winter wind, the waves battering themselves against the rocky shore. But then Wealthow turns and looks upon her new king.

“You wear it well, my lord,” she says, forcing a smile, and she pushes her way through the crowd, back toward the shelter of Heorot Hall. By the time she’s reached the throne dais, the thanes have begun to cheer.

And so the skein of years unwinds, the lone white eye of the moon trailing always on the heels of Sól’s flaming, wolf-harried chariot—day after day and year after year, season following season as it ever has since the gods raised Midgard long ago. And even as the passage of time is constant, so are the ways of men, and so it is that on this cold day in the month of Frermánudr, but two days remaining before Yule, Beowulf, King of the Ring-Danes, sits astride his horse looking out upon the battle raging where the sea touches his land. Thirty years older than the night he killed Grendel, this Beowulf, and greedy time reckons its toll upon all things under Midgard, even heroes and the kings of men. His hair and beard are streaked with the frost that stains any long life, and his face is creased and wizened. But he might easily be mistaken for a man ten years younger, if only because his eyes still burn as brightly and his body is still strong and straight. He wears the scars of a hundred battles, but he wears them no differently than he wears the golden circlet that once crowned King Hrothgar’s head.

Wiglaf, son of Weohstan, sits upon his own mount to Beowulf’s right, and together, from this small bluff at the end of the moorlands, they watch the men fighting down on the shore. The Frisian invaders made landfall in the night, but in only a few hours Beowulf’s archers and swordsmen, his thanes bearing axes and spears, have driven them back to the beaches. The Frisian force is in tatters, and there can be no hope left among them of victory. Even retreat seems unlikely, unless the man who commands these warriors should deign to call back his hounds. From the start, the Frisians were too few and too poorly trained to succeed in this attack, and any man still left alive among them will be fortunate to escape with his skin.

Beowulf shakes his head and shuts his eyes, wishing to see no more of this shameful, bloody scene.

“This is no longer a battle, Wiglaf,” he says. “It’s slaughter.”

Wiglaf, also marked by age and also yet a strong man, nods toward the battle.

“The Frisians want to make themselves heroes, my lord. They would have the bards sing of their deeds.”

“It’s going to be a short song,” sighs Beowulf, opening his eyes again.

“Aye,” says Wiglaf. “But can you blame them? Your legend is known from the high seas and the snow barriers to the great island kingdom. The whole world knows the lay of Beowulf and Grendel. You are the monster slayer.”

Beowulf shakes his head again and laughs, but there is not the least trace of humor in the sound.

“We are the monsters now,” he says, making no effort to hide his disdain and self-loathing. “We are become the trolls and demons.”

“They come to find the hero,” says Wiglaf, and he points to the handful of Frisian invaders who have not yet fallen.

“The time of heroes is dead, Wiglaf. The Christ God has killed it…leaving mankind nothing but weeping martyrs and fear…and shame.”