Ben Bova - Orion and King Arthur

Everyone shouted approval, especially the British captives. There were an even dozen of them: eleven young boys and girls, none yet in their teens, and a wizened old man with big, staring eyes and a beard even whiter than Hrothgar’s.

The monster roared outside again, and silenced the cheers.

Beowulf strode to the patched-up door of the mead-hall, Unferth’s sword in his mighty right hand.

“Let no one follow me!” he cried.

No one did. We all stood stunned and silent as he marched out into the dark. I turned slightly and saw that Unferth was smiling cruelly, his lips forming a single word: “Fool.”

2

“Orion.” Queen Wealhtheow called my name.

She stepped down from the royal dais and walked through the crowd toward me. The others seemed frozen, like statues, staring sightlessly at the door. Hrothgar did not move, did not even breathe, as his queen approached me. The Scylding thanes, Beowulf’s other companions, even the frightened British captives—none of them blinked or breathed or twitched.

“They are in stasis, Orion,” Wealhtheow said as she came within arm’s reach of me. “They can neither see nor hear us.”

Those infinite gray eyes of hers seemed to show me worlds upon worlds, lifetimes I had led—we had led together—in other epochs, other worldlines.

“Do you remember me, Orion?”

“I love you,” I whispered, knowing it was true. “I have loved you through all of spacetime.”

“Yes, my love. What more do you remember?”

It was like clawing at a high smooth stone wall. I shook my head. “Nothing. I don’t even know why I’m here—why you’re here.”

“You remember nothing of the Creators? Of your previous missions?”

“The Creators.” Vaguely I recalled godlike men and women. “Aten.”

“Yes,” she said. “Aten.”

Aten had created me and sent me through spacetime to do his bidding. Haughty and mad with power, he called me his tool, his hunter. More often I was an assassin for him.

“I remember … the snow, the time of eternal cold.” But it was all like the misty tendrils of a dream, wafting away even as I reached for them.

“I was with you then,” she said.

“The cave bear. It killed me.” I could feel the pain of my ribs being crushed, hear my own screams drowned in spouting blood.

“You’ve lived many lives.”

“And died many deaths.”

“Yes, my poor darling. You have suffered much.”

I remembered her name: Anya. She was one of the Creators, I realized. I loved a goddess. And she loved me. Yet we were destined to be torn away from each other, time and again, over the eons and light-years of the continuum.

“This beast that ravaged Heorot was not a natural animal,” she told me. “It was engendered and controlled by one of the Creators.”

“Which one? Aten?”

She shook her head. “It makes no difference. I am here to see that the beast does not succeed. You must help me.”

Deep in my innermost memories I recalled that the Creators squabbled among themselves like spoiled children. They directed the course of human history and sent minions such as me to points in spacetime to carry out their whims. Many times I have killed for Aten, and many times have I died for him. Yet he brings me back, sneering at my pains and fears, and sends me out again.

I am powerless to resist his commands—he thinks. But more than once I have defied his wishes. At Troy I helped Odysseos and his Achaeans to triumph. Deep in interstellar space I led whole fleets into battle against him.

“Has Aten sent me here, or have you?” I asked her.

She smiled at me, a smile that could warm a glacier. “I have brought you here, Orion, to help Beowulf slay both monsters.”

“Is Beowulf one of your creatures?”

She laughed. “That bragging oaf? No, my darling, he is as mortal as a blade of grass.”

“But why is this important?” I asked. “Why has your enemy used these beasts to attack Heorot?”

“That I will explain after you have helped Beowulf to kill the second monster.”

“If I live through the ordeal,” I said, feeling sullen, resentful.

“My poor darling. I ask so much of you. If I could do this myself, I would.”

Then she kissed me swiftly on the lips. I would have faced an entire continent filled with monsters for her.

3

The tingle of her lips on mine had not yet faded when the others around us stirred to life once again. And Wealhtheow was somehow back on her throne, on the dais beside her husband, aged Hrothgar.

Her husband. The thought burned in me. Then I realized that one of the men in this timbered mead-hall was one of the Creators, in disguise, controlling the monsters that killed Hrothgar’s warriors. Why? What was the purpose of it all?

That was not for me to know. Not yet. My task was clear. The king and queen left the mead-hall, heading back to Hrothgar’s fortress. The others milled about for a while, then started back through the frigid winter night also.

It was easy for me to slip away from them and start down the rocky trail that led to the sea. The moon scudded in and out of low dark clouds. In its fitful light I could clearly see the spoor of dark blood that the dying monster had left from the night before. This was the track Beowulf was following. I hurried along it.

The blood spoor ended at the sea, where the waves crashed against the craggy headland. Our longboat was still tucked up on the rocks, I saw, its mast stored along the deck. No one guarded it. There was no need. The boat was under Hrothgar’s protection; no Scylding would dare touch it.

Bitter cold it was, with a wind coming off the sea that sliced through my chain mail shirt and chilled me to the bone despite my conscious control of my blood circulation.

The rocky cove stretched out to my left. In the moonlit shadows I thought I saw caves in among the rocks at the cove’s far end. The den of the monster, perhaps.

A growling roar, like the rumble of distant thunder, came across the icy wind. I raced across the rocks toward the caves.

The second cave was the monster’s den, half awash with the incoming tide, dimly lit by phosphorescent patches of lichen clinging to the rock walls.

Female this beast may be, but it was even bigger than its slain offspring, glowing faintly white in the dimly lit cave, snarling at Beowulf as it reared up on its hind legs. Even mighty Beowulf looked like a pitiful dwarf next to its enormous size.

He was already bleeding from shoulder to waist, his chain mail shirt in shreds from the beast’s raking claws. He clutched Unferth’s sword in both hands and swung mightily at the monster, to no avail. It was like hitting the brute with a tress of hair.

The monster knocked Beowulf to his knees with a blow that would have crushed a normal man. His sword blade snapped in half. And I realized that Unferth had given Beowulf a useless weapon. Crafty Unferth with his glittering snake’s eyes was the other Creator among the Scyldings.

I ran toward the beast and again the world seemed to slow into dreamy, languid motion.

“Beowulf!” I shouted. “Here!”

I threw my own sword to him. It spun lazily through the air. He caught it in one massive hand and scrabbled away from the monster on his knees.

I circled around to the side away from Beowulf, trying to draw the brute’s attention before it killed the hero of the Geats. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a gleaming horde of treasure: gold coins and jewels heaped on the dank cave floor. Swords and warriors’ armor, spears and helmets were strewn in profusion. Whitened bones and gape-mouthed skulls littered the cave floor. The monsters had brought their kills here for many years.