Beowulf

by Caitlín R. Kiernan

“Will their wives and children be comforted with thoughts of valiant deaths and glorious Ásgard?” asks Wiglaf, turning away from the fire and looking toward the open doors of the horned hall. The pony snorts loudly. “I wasn’t asking you,” says Wiglaf, and he goes back to watching the fire. Hrothgar has promised that the ashes will be buried out along the King’s Road and marked by a tall menhir, with runes to tell how they fell in battle against the fiend Grendel. “Perhaps that will comfort the grieving widows?” he sighs. “To know their husbands lie in fine graves so far across the sea.” …but I would prefer that you might all have been here, you who have suffered his vile depredations, to see for yourselves the brute in the moment of his defeat. “He’s right, you know,” Wiglaf tells the pony, leaning forward and whispering in one of its twitching ears. “I am beginning to sound like an old woman.” But then he sits up and glances once more toward Heorot and Beowulf’s booming voice. “Be merciful, good Beowulf, and do not talk us straightaway into yet more glory. I would have mine in some other season.” The fire crackles and pops as the charred logs shift and crumble, sending another swirl of glowing brands skyward. And Wiglaf digs his heels into the pony’s flanks, tightens his grip on the reins, and gallops away toward the stockade gates and the bridge beyond.