Caitlin Kiernan - Beowulf

Then, abruptly, the dragon banks and dips, diving headlong toward the bridge. The archers break ranks and scatter this way and that as the screeching monster bears down on them, and Beowulf can feel his hold on the ax handle finally beginning to slip. The gorge lies directly below him now, a precipitous, boulder-filled chasm leading down to the sea, and a fall that no man could ever hope to survive. But already his aching, sweat-slicked hands are sliding down the shaft, and he knows that only seconds remain before he loses his grip. When the dragon spreads its wings and glides over the trestle, Beowulf lets go of the ax, dropping only a scant five or six feet to the surface of the wooden bridge. He lands hard and rolls along the deck and is back up on his feet in time to see the dragon’s tail scraping along the walls of the gorge, digging ragged furrows in the earth and uprooting one of the small trees growing along the steep walls. The monster banks to the south, and Beowulf guesses that it’s turning, coming around for another pass at the bridge. The Danish warriors stationed on the bridge watch the great beast’s approach, as though they are too stunned by the monster’s proximity and Beowulf’s sudden appearance among them to do more than stare.

“Ready the wagons!” Beowulf shouts, and the sound of his voice is enough to startle the men from their awestruck stillness and get them moving again. More arrows are nocked by the archers, and several of the thanes roll two great wagons out onto the bridge. Inside one cart is a tremendous catapult, and in the other a crossbow, constructed after the fashion of a Roman ballista—a solid oak structure held together with iron plates and nails. At the back of the weapon, two thanes hastily work the twin winches, ratcheting the taut bowstring into the firing position. He might have no use for the religion of the Romans, but the son of Ecgtheow has learned much from their war craft.

“ Wait for him,” says Beowulf to his men, not daring to take his eyes off the dragon as it speeds back toward the bridge. When the creature is near enough that Beowulf can spot his axe still dangling from its talon, he gives the signal and the men in the wagons open fire. The bolt flies from the crossbow, but rebounds impotently off the dragon’s adamantine hide. But from the catapult is launched an enormous net woven of braided hemp and strong enough to haul a small whale from out the sea. Beowulf watches as the net arcs up and over the gorge, unfolding directly in the creature’s path. There is not time for the dragon to avoid the net, and a moment later its head, neck, and shoulders are ensnared, tangled in the weave.

A joyous cheer rises from the men, but Beowulf knows it is too soon to claim victory, and at once the dragon proves him to be right. With a single gout of flame, it effortlessly burns away most of the hemp, and as the beast soars by over the heads of the thanes, the ruined net falls away in a heap to lie smoking upon the deck of the bridge. Beowulf turns and watches as the dragon turns for another pass.

“Come on, then!” cries Beowulf, unsheathing his sword as the dragon wheels about in a wide arc. There is not time to reload the crossbow or the catapult, and the men who armed them make a dash for shelter. A few of the archers are still huddled there on the bridge, and they call out to their king, begging him to take cover while there is yet time. But Beowulf ignores their pleas and warnings. He will not cower and watch while this demon lays waste to his land, while it burns his keep and murders his thanes. The dragon turns back toward Heorot and the bridge, bellowing and spraying flame as it dives, and now Beowulf sees that this time it means to fly directly beneath the span.

“So it is a game,” he whispers, and as the thing races toward him between the sheer granite walls of the gorge, the King of Heorot Hall turns and vaults deftly over the bridge’s low railing, timing his leap perfectly so as to land on the monster’s broad and scabrous shoulders. Beowulf brings the blade of his sword down, putting all his weight behind the thrust. But when the iron blade strikes the dragon’s flesh it shatters like glass, and he’s left holding little more than the weapon’s hilt. The dragon flaps its wings once and rises from the gorge, and as it does so, it turns its head to glare back at Beowulf with furious amber eyes, eyes that shine and spark with a hateful, vengeful intensity.

“Are you ready to die , you filthy piece of shit ?” Beowulf howls, but the cold wind whipping past snatches at the words, and he hardly even hears the question himself. Before the dragon turns its head away again, Beowulf imagines that it tries to smile, some smirking expression on those toothsome, lipless jaws half-approximating a smile.

The dragon shrieks and whirls back toward the trestle a fourth time, banking so abruptly and with such force that Beowulf is almost thrown off its back. It opens its mouth wide and vomits an inferno across the timber bridge. The same thanes who only moments before had begged Beowulf to take cover with them are engulfed in fire, as are the two wagons. For some, death is instantaneous, but others somehow manage to rise and stagger a little ways through the flames before collapsing. Three or four men nearest either end of the bridge drop and roll in the snow banked high there, but this is no earthly fire that can be extinguished with melted snow.

Satisfied with the carnage, the dragon turns away from the blazing bridge, spying a ragtag troop of thanes retreating to the east along the cliff’s crumbling edge. Once more, the fading day is rent by the monster’s hideous shrieks, a sound to shame even the mighty cries of Odin Allfather’s ravens. It folds its wings against its ribs and drops from the sky, falling upon the hapless men. Some are crushed beneath its belly and the living bulwark of its chest, and others are impaled upon talons and snatched up in those jaws and flung screaming into the gorge.

When every one of the thanes is dead, the dragon looks back at Beowulf again with that same smirking grimace as before. But now Beowulf can hear the golden man’s voice, even though no voice comes from that slavering maw.

You see? it asks. You see how easily men die? You see how none may stand against me, Father?

“I will have your lizard’s head on a spike!” snarls Beowulf, and his head is filled with the golden man’s laughter.

Will you, Father? Will you do that? No, I think not.

And then the dragon is airborne again, pitching and rolling in an attempt to dislodge Beowulf. But the Geat king digs his strong fingers deep into the grooves between bony plates and scales and holds on.

Wiglaf has ridden hard from the edge of the forest and across the moors, but it is no small distance, and by the time he reaches the gorge leading back to Heorot, the bridge is ablaze, and the air reeks of burning human flesh. He yanks back on the reins, and his horse rears and kicks. To Wiglaf’s left, the ridge is scattered with the bodies of thanes who have simply been pulverized or torn asunder. The stone is smeared with blood and gore, and he can see where the monster’s talons gouged deep grooves into the rock itself. He spares a quick glance at the heavens, and there’s the dragon, maybe a hundred feet overhead. And there’s King Beowulf, clinging to its back.

“Well,” Wiglaf says to the horse, “at least it’ll make a fine tale…if either of us lives to tell it,” and he wraps the reins tightly in his hands. He starts to urge the horse forward, but just then there’s a low rumble from the bridge, a loud crack, and one side of the burning structure breaks apart and tumbles into the gorge. Only a narrow section of the deck remains, three feet wide at most. And all of it is on fire, the flames rising above the shattered bridge to form a whirlwind and a twisting pillar of black smoke and red-orange cinders.