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Skjaldmóðir
by Michael Z. Williamson and Jessica Schlenker

The Martial Art of the English Language

There are many translations of the Old English epic, “Beowulf.” The language is significantly different from our own. While with care, we might puzzle out some of its gloss, an Old English speaker would grasp little of Modern English with all its influxes. Also, words and definitions have changed with time.

Grendel’s mother is described as a “Hag,” which has a different meaning in modern context. Originally, a “hag” was a supernatural being near a swamp, that killed men; a powerful supernatural entity. The word has changed until it means “ugly old woman,” but that’s a modern definition.

Grendel’s mother is also repeatedly referred to as a “lady,” a person of status. That’s an odd dichotomy to parse against “hag.” Also, having defeated Grendel, and later a dragon, why is a hag mother mentioned as a worthy adversary? The terms in the original show respect and awe. Translations in other languages present differently than modern English tellings. Supernatural, but worthy, not ugly and contemptible. At the same time, it’s a common dramatic tool to denigrate the opposition, to uplift the status of the hero.

Our story was first published in the “Fantastic Hope,” anthology by Laurell K. Hamilton and Will McCarthy. I had an idea for the summary and ending. Jess is a fantastic collaborator with a broad knowledge of history and in this case some relevant sciences also. She added some amazing character, and we swapped back and forth until it was done. It was well received.

Recently I was studying up on English language history and etymology. We’ve been given vocabulary, borrowed it, stolen it, from almost every language we encountered. I joked that the curse of invading England is that you’re forced to become English, so don’t do it. The Romans, Saxons, Angles, Geats, Normans, Danes, Norse, all invaded, left people behind, along with their language elements, to incorporate into the existing Celtic, Gaelic, Pictish and other roots. Truly, it is a mess. Fundamentally, though, it’s still a stripped down, simplified Germanic language, with other stuff overlaid for color. There are linguists who dispute this, but I maintain they are wrong.

I got to wondering how the story would read if only Old English and Germanic-sourced words were used. I started in, and it was quite a task. Modern English is such a concatenation of everything above, and then recent additions from dozens of other languages. Words like mesa, sushi, robot, gung ho, banjo, tango, moccasin, tomahawk, kangaroo, taboo, avatar, bungalow, coach (horse drawn), bandana, bamboo, pistol, tycoon, tempo, gong, rattan, okra, caravan, boondock, intelligentsia, tattoo, breeze, stevedore, pastrami, taiga, tundra, czar, glamour, slogan, ski, saga, tsunami, ammonia, camel, arroyo, cockroach, tornado, smorgasbord, fez, shaman, bard, druid, bagel, schmuck, polka, ramen, typhoon, and thousands of others are all recent additions (within the last couple of centuries in most cases) where English just took the existing word, shrugged, and used it. Sometimes we even pronounced and spelled it correctly.

Jess and I even found some vocabulary that were loanwords from Old French, who got them from Old English. I found one that was a loanword from Latin, who’d gotten it from the Germani. I went to work on a back translation, if you will.

I passed it back to Jess, and we had a couple of actual linguists review it. Hopefully we didn’t miss anything, but if we did, it’s all on me. However, I think we managed to accomplish what we intended. This version definitely has a different feel and delivery. To me it’s more primal, coarse, and impactful.

So this isn’t Old English, or Proto-Germanic. It is modern English. The words we used, however, all derive from those languages, even if the words changed over time or concatenated later to cover new expressions. After all, modern readers have to be able to access it, and this is a retelling for the present.

You’re welcome to enjoy both versions and compare the presentation.

Go here to read the original version.

Skjaldmóðir, revised version

My son was called a monster.

Perhaps, he was even born a monster through no shortcoming of his own, merely a plaything of the gods’ whims.

I did not see him so. I knew him best as my sweet boy, bringing me bunches of newly opened spring flowers, or asking I tell him the stories my mother told me as a child.

Perhaps I brought it down on him, through my own deeds, in the years before his birth. But I had taken up a spear to stand for my kin; surely the gods would not wreak us for that?

Not all landholding families are wreathed in wealth untold. Most, in fact, are more like my own was: farmers, herders, stewards of the earth. There may be some wealth earned in fighting, swapped for blood, limbs, or lives. Mostly, though, a little is earned through deal and trade, swapping work and sweat for enough to live on.

After a hard year, with every nearby kinry stretched thin, raiders came, bringing war to our homes. Mayhap they thought we hid the wealth reckoned of us, but it madeworth not. We fought for our lives, and I did my best to lay on as much scathe as I could to save our home. But we were overwhelmed, and we fled to save the youngest. The raiders wreaked whatever they sighted. I still hope they kept some of it, rather than burned everything not laid in gold or silver. But they did not crave the land itself, and we met the still smoking wreckage of our home unbeset. The cows but one were missing. On a charred spit we saw the scorched leftovers of the one other.

We rebuilt, as my father’s kin had done before and given will have to again. A middling handgeld was offered for me, the eldest girl, by friends of my father’s. Unspoken was the knowledge the offer was made to help in the building of our new house, as his friends had been spared the wreakage. Thankfully, I knew the son, and even liked him. We played together often enough as bairns.

My new husband assisted in righting my family’s homestead, before we onwent to our own forthcoming. My lord’s father gifted him a small comeup of land from their holdings, for us to build a home and to till. Being only the two of us, we both learned with the sword daily, and one of our first goals was to buy sturdy leather and shield for us both, and a ringbyrnie for him. I did not wish to be caught unweaponed and unshielded to raiders if I could help it.

I quickly became with child, a sheenful little girl, who did not last through her first year.

When I bore our son, Grendel, we saw at once his head was slightly misshapen. But he had strong lungs, and he was healthy. To me, that was enough. I could not bear to lose another. His birth was hard, and although we tried again, he abided our only onliving child.

It became tellable, over the years, that my Grendel was strange, besides a misshapen skull that worsened as he grew. Great, and less limber than he should have been, he did not know his own strength. He harmed sundry of his playmates on befall, and I hark back to his frightened, bewildered uttering as I spelled that he had done that.

“But Momma, I didn’t mean to.”

I would foresaek him I knew, I understood, and wared him to be more careful. My lord spent time working with Grendel, minding to teach him how to hold his strength more abiden.

Then the day came, where, amid dreadful thunder and rain, Grendel anonly howled in bedeviln, and fell to the ground, writhing and clawing at his eyes. It took both my lord and I to pin his arms before he did stern scathe to himself. After a while, his body limpened and he only sobbed hushly.

I asked, “Grendel, my love? What’s wrong?”

“Monsters are eating my head,” he answered, his cry shaky through the tears.

My lord shifted him to his bed, and I made a haeldrink for the smarting. It took both of us to steady Grendel’s hands so he could grip the cup himself.

The twithe time it happened he wasn’t home, although it was another frightful storm. He knocked a playmate cold when they tried to help, and he had to be beaten down by sundry adult men. My boy, barely nine, could no longer be trusted to play with children his tide. I kept him home, and close even then. Closer still when the skies looked doomy.

By his eleventh year, we had little choosing but to bind him to his bed when the weather would start to wend. He did not like it, but he understood. I sat with him, minding to keep him lull during the worst, singing old songs and telling stories. A haeldrink at the first tremors helped keep him calmer, but at the worst, he still writhed and howled as if devilsick.

The rages started soon after that, rages he could not spell out afterwards.

I spoke with everyone -- my elders, my lord’s elders, the wise woman Edda, everyone. No one had inklings which helped sooth my loved son’s smarting or fits.

But in between the bad days, Grendel acted ever much the young boy he truly was, by turns sweet and waining, headstrong, helpful, and even sometimes surly. He soon nearly matched his father in height, and outmatched him in strength. The day the inn caught fire, it was Grendel who bolded the billowing liegbryne to hold open the fallen doors so that folk could get out. Had he not done so, more would have been lost. His burns healed, but the smarting wounds never altogether faded, the ones on his forehead and cheek outright of them. The townsfolks’ distrust grew as the twist the burns on his aspect did not lessen with time.

The next plant-tide, raiders came again, and my lord fell warding the hamlet.

We buried him next to the sister Grendel never knew, and were embittered.

It would oftrightly be understood that a lay worsens when one’s husband dies, but I did not awatch the quickness with which the hamlet turned on me . . . us both. Sickwilled by the scathe caused to his fairness by his own bold actions, bound by the fear of a fit that none had witnessed in sundry years, only heard, our neighbors and other townmen took to actively spurning Grendel, and I overheard much wicked, untrue claver. Had they truly forgotten the marks over his cheeks were from sparing their sons and daughters when they could not? The wild tales they made of mad deeds with my Grendel painted as the wretch, beggared belief.

The behandling slowly extended to me, as well. Shunned and spurned, I could not trust to my bonda’s brother for help, and my own kin were overreached already. My husband’s brother did not have the uprightness he had, and I broke his nose after a namely lewd saying followed by a hinting that my son be “rid” for my “own good.”

The distrustful mutters and hateful glances wore on my kindfeeling son, and the fits of rage began to rise. We afound that he could no longer abide music beyond my singing. Horns or other singing caused him noteworthy smarting, and he became more and more unbearing to loud sounds in whole. He grew still taller, a full head above any man near the shore, and then inches more. The lay unbearish, I began to search for a spot to forego us. Grendel needed room and hushness, where he need not hear the unwhispered lowspeak of “Monster!” that followed him.

Grendel was nigh eighteen when I was called to the hamlet about him.

Upon therecoming, I nigh saw he was bound and beat, and rather addled.

“What is the meaning of this?” I asked, beckoning at my son.

Angry cries came at me, but Hrothgar raised his hands for stillness. He made known. Grendel had been led on, and in his rage, killed an erstwhile playmate of years past. Weregild must be rendered, but the happenings and Grendel’s father’s bold warding in the name of the king meant it would only be straight outcasting.

I bitterly reminded the king of Grendel’s own bold actions, and that he still bore the scars and smarting. The angry muttering of the gathering turned to guilty stillness at the telling.

Hrothgar settled up to this, and dealt Grendel some leeway for gathering our ownings.

My husband’s brother wedged himself into the lawthing, and tried craving that all of my ownings be yielded to him for the breaking of his nose long before. Hrothgar merely snorted, as the man’s behaving was well known, but let he could lay ownership to the land we lived on.

We were given just a few days’ time to depart. I softly thanked the gods I had seen fit to be ready, and there was little left in our home to outtake. I had even outtook the small herd of sheep some weeks before, to an old forsaken hut by the swamp, and built them a working fence, with Grendel’s sturdy help. We would not be thoroughly bereft, and I would be well fit to keep us clothed.

My husband’s brother stood on steering us to see I did not take “too many dear goods” he “was owed,” and I ask-called other witnesses. The look he gave me made it clear he begrudged I had forestalled his true bent.

Grendel, dear Grendel, abided, addled and bewildered at what was happening. But he followed me hushly and did as I bid.

The bastard raged when he took in the mostly emptied homestead. The witnesses only snickered. Edda gave me a weighing look. She had known I was worried about Grendel, and had warned me to ready for such a need. I gave her a bitter smile.

The last of our ownings were easily outtaken from the house. While the bastard snarled at us, one of the other witnesses stood between he and me. “Do not give me wherefore to fight on her behalf,” he warned. “Your deeds are loathe to me as it is.”

I was grateful for the meager shielding, although I would have liked it more had the man ever stood up for Grendel or I these past years.

Grendel carried what I told him to, in a bundle that awed the watchers. I carried the rest, with also my bow. We left. I entrued we were not followed.

The salt marsh reeked with rot and mold, but it held life enough. Only the old wise woman Edda came here of free will, for the herbs which could be gathered nowhere else, but were needful to ply her trade. She would gield me for gathering those in her stead, in goods I could not make or find on my own.

The sheep fared well enough, learning to find the drier areas with eatable grass. The wool kept us in clothing, lambs gave some food, and milk for cheese. Other foods, Grendel and I found in the swamp. He learned which plants were safe readily enough, and he hunted large game with his club. Faster game, I snared or hunted with bow.

It was not an easy life, but it was fair and still. The hearth kept us warm and I had a small pot and a broad pan. The hut was made soft and homey with furs and hides. And upmost of all, I had my son.

We used the nearby cave for a shelter for the sheep, and to store some goods. Grendel liked to be there, as it was so cool and still.

He still had to be bound when the worst storms hit, but he seemed just a bit better here. The fits were fewer, and I hoped for the day they ended. Sadly, that was not to be.

Edda brought word that Hrothgar sought to build a new great hall at last, to again the one which had burned down. At first, this did not bother me at all. It shortly became clear that the stead and building of the hall were to bring sorrow to my Grendel.

The first frolic, filled with song and horns, and the deep thud of mugs being beat against boards, rolled like a dull thunder at our faraway hut. It was too much for Grendel, and I had to wrestle him into yielding, binding him to keep him from begetting himself wounded.

I was not lucky in holding him the next time, and he ran deeper into the swamp. I feared him lost, but he came back a day and a half later, worse for the wear. He brought me a deer he had caught during the fit, but he could not tell me where he had woken up from it.

The next time I failed to halt him. He stunned me while we fought, and I could not follow. I heard the shouts of anger and screams of fear from where the party had been. He came whither, with a few small wounds. He was distraught to learn he had laid me up, and haltingly told what he could hearken of what happened in the hamlet.

“I went into the hall, where the noise hurt most,” he said. “The door was blocked, but I forced it.”

The door fastened with a whole wooden beam, and he’d broken it. Oh, my son, what a warrior you could be, if only the devils didn’t scathe you.

“They slagged me and I fought them all. I hearken back men hitting me, and me throwing them.”

That unraveled his black eye and bruised knuckles. He’d fought them all, all at once.

“I just wanted them to hush! My head spun, and stabbed, and I felt sick. I hearken one man broke over the table when I threw him.”

The man probably had a broken back and was dead. Oh, Grendel, no.

Edda told me more. Grendel had killed one man and crippled two others, one of whom would never chew food again after his jaw was smashed. She looked fearful herself. “I may not be let to bring you any more goods, if this happens again.”

“I am undertaking to stop him,” I trothed. “There seem to be some songs that are worse than others, ones that he runs to instead of from.”

She asked which ones seemed to anger him worse, and drove him towards the hamlet instead of away. I answered as best as I could. She would try to allay them for less of those, or some kind of beckonhand to me, so I would have time to ready Grendel and bind him.

It was the best we could do. As the dwellers had turned their tales of him into a troll or something even worse, it even worked for a while. She swayed them that maddening him forethence was not helpful to their own frith. I owed her much.

Then came the day Edda breathlessly brought word about a wayfarer, Beowulf, who boasted he would end their “troll” worry once and for all. She chided hard to forbid the townmen from cheering on the madness, but she did not win. Hrothgar planned for a huge spree befitting such a ‘hero,’ even that very night, in part to draw Grendel in. I gave her what would be one last hug.

“You have been the only kith I have had besides Grendel these last years. Thank you.”

She grasped me also. “I hope this madness can be outdone. Your Grendel is not owed this.”

“I also hope.”

When Grendel came back later, I tried to allay him to settle down early. I even gave him the soothing haeldrinks, which would most often ease the fits. I couldn’t bear to tell him they were setting a trap for him, and he would not settle for storms that didn’t exist. At length, I did tell him.

“But, Momma, why?”

“They think you a monster, and want you dead.” I stroked his cheek. “You are my beloved son, and I want you alive. I beg you, let me do what I can to keep you from their trap.”

He yielded, and let me to bind him to his bed. I made him as restful as I could, and then set about doing everything I could to block out all sounds from outside of our walls. Every nook, every gap, I stuffed full of scraps of cloth and hide. The only light left was one of our few candles, sitting on the hearth. Even the smokehole was as blocked as I dared risk.

It almost worked. I misreckoned how keen this “hero” was for a win against an unwretched man gossiped into a monster. The large horn, which should only have been blown in times of raiders, sounded, and Grendel screamed in scathe. Thrice it blew, and the third time, Grendel shuddered and snapped his bindings.

I fought with him, trying to keep him home, with me, safe, alive. He grabbed me and flung me wide, and broke the door down. I fell to the floor and wept.

It took long, far too long, to soothe myself, but I steered myself to rise and shake off the worst of the grief-fear. Whatever the outcome, my boy would be wounded, and I set steeping a brew of elderberry and cicuta for pain. I readied swathings, and a dear few drops of honey to help against blight. I scrubbed and heated the fire iron, to sear any deep wounds.

Then I prayed to uncaring, blithe gods, that Grendel would come home to me, in wellbeing enough I could care for him, heal him, and take us elsewhere as soon as may be.

A hollow bellow of anger and hurt, alongside catcalls and jeers, decried such prayers. The hateful townmen would only be cheering so were it Beowulf who cried out in such a manner. Grief fought with rage, but I took small gladness in the boos-and-hisses. Either Grendel had scored a fair hit, or had escaped. Many shrieks of fear cried, followed by a welter of hushed calls. The faraway cries faded, and I reckoned that Grendel had, at the least, fled. The darkness of the night meant I dared not try to find him, or risk losing him utterly. I waited.

Seemingly forever later, I heard hurt weeping and a fretful, “Momma?” in the dark. I ran to the bawling to find my son, wretchedly scathed and missing an arm. I shouldered up under his good arm and helped him the last length home. Once there, I took stock of the wounds.

The arm was no clean cut of a sword, but instead showed forebodings of having been mostly torn off. The stump was a ragged, oozing mess with dripping blood and jutting bone. I did not, could not cry, not while Grendel looked at me with fearful eyes. “Will I be alright, Momma?”

I lied. So help me, I lied to him. Had I spoken the truth, I would have been helpless to ease his scathe. “As alright as I can make you, my love,” I said. I set about doing what I could. The state of the arm was such that searing was nigh undoable, and the swathings I had readied were not enough. Once I had it cleaned and wrapped, I helped him drink the brew. I settled him as best as I could.

I pressed a kiss to his forehead, and he asked me for a song. I did so as a short time more wouldn’t shift what was to be. He, thankfully, fell asleep into a restless, hurtful slumber. I drew my cloak around me, and gave him one last worried look, before slipping out of the hut to walk to the hamlet.

I could spare no standing. Perhaps Edda knew some herbs, and I would beg and belittle myself before Hrothgar for the slightest of kindness. Grendel and I would withdraw to the cave and scrape by as we could.

The hamlet was busy, and I drew near carefully, hood hiding my cheeks for the little good it would do. All of them knew me. Even the dogs knew me, though they did not out me. They were still trustworthy.

There was much worriment at the great hall, and I watched from far behind the crowd, hidden behind the hawthorn bushes.

I saw what they did and my head spun. Was this real and not some awful dream?

Grendel’s arm hung from a nail above the hall’s broad doors. A token to hate and fear.

I overheard Hrothgar announce, “They will sing of this deed for a thousand years.”

And that’s when the rage took me.

I could perhaps forgive Beowulf for killing Grendel. It had been the fairest fight of all. Grendel did only what gods had made him to do. But Hrothgar talked smugly of the deed, of the killing of my poor, darling boy. He bragged of it with blood tokens.

Hrothgar would not boast of the killing of a beloved dog, taken over by the madness. Yet he would boast of the killing of my son.

Any man would call bloodfeud for his son, his brother, his father for that shame. My son had none of those to call out this monster for his words. He had only me.

I would stand for him.

I turned for home to make ready.

I heard shouts, and knew I’d been seen.

I ran. There was nothing else I could do.

The shouts became jeers and my breathing wracked with sobs. I’d sworn a blood oath, and now I ran.

One voice stood out. That was Aeschere. Years ago, Grendel had beaten his son hard enough to wound his eye, and he’d never forgiven. He followed me, though my lead was good and my legs stayed strong. I hoped he’d slow and give up, with nothing but richly shaming slights, but while he slowed, he didn’t stop.

I squished along the high ground and onto the spit where my hut stood. He was some steps behind and I had just time. I barred the door, caught my breath, and took a drink of water, followed by a mouthful of cheese. Then I set about readying.

Aeschere was a mouthy sort, and I knew he was undertaking to madden me to come out, rather than break in himself. If I thought that would be the end of it, I’d stand his slights through gritted teeth, but once he grew bored, he’d try to draw others with him. He wanted a fight with an old woman, and I would make sure he had it.

When we fled years before, Grendel carried a hefty crate for me, unhindered. It was in the back of the hut, next to my bed, where it served as a board, a chair, and a stowing chest. I swept garb and pouches off it, opened the lid, and dragged out the clothes within to dump them on the ground. I wanted what lay beneath.

I pulled my lord’s byrnie from the chest. It was darkened with age, but its rings were well-wrought and it would ward me. I no longer had the underpadding. It was long since used for bairn cloths. My smock and a winter kirtle of thick wool would have to do. It was only for one fight.

The armor was snug. I was not a young girl anymore. It wore well enough, though tight on my chest, and dragged a bit on my hips. I grabbed the tails and wrenched hard, bursting the three lowest rings at the split, and then it shifted as it should.

I took the time to pull the bedspread around my boy, and check the swathings, which were soaked through with dark blood. I carefully bound another wrapping over them, knowing it would bring about little. Lacking a wonderwork from the gods who’d never seen fit to give me scraps, his time in this world grew short. He moaned and twitched, his wracked shoulder aware of every waft of air, the mattress, even my nearness. I kissed his forehead gently, from above, and went back to my task.

Behind the door, well covered in dust, were my other needs. A thick leathern hat with a string to tie it, a light but sturdy shield strengthened with iron strips and rawhide edging, and my lord’s sword. I drew it from the sheath and looked it over.

There was some small amount of brown bloom, that should be tallowed and scoured before it turned to rust. There was no time for that now. My foe awaited, and I had a blood oath to fulfill.

I stood and breathed deeply, relearning the weight of armor, and learning the heft of this sword. When I heard him speak as he circled around to the lee again, I pulled the door and stepped out.

“Hello, Aeschere,” I said, with a sweet lilt that didn’t hide my anger. “Would you care to dance?”

The look in his eyes told me he hadn’t reckoned a fair fight. He clutched and reached for his sword, stuttering as he did so. He almost said something, perhaps to allay me, perhaps to mislead. But his mind caught up and grasped it was worthless.

He dropped, raised his sword, and waited for me to strike in anger. Oh, Aeschere, this was not my first fight, nor quite my last. I only smiled, with a flick of tongue on lips to tease him. He shifted and froze, and I stamped my foot. That startled him and I laughed.

“Fearful, are we?” I asked, taking a half step forward.

He took the bait.

I am not small, but he was taller. But women steady better with sword forward and shield at a slant, while men raise the shield forward and the blade back. He skipped forward to where he could just reach me with his greater height, reckoning I could not do in kind.

But that put him a foot into my reach and I struck, throwing out my hand and whipping my wrist. I swung my sword low and it bit into the hide sheathing his thigh. It did not cut through, but the hit staggered him. His blow stumbled and skipped off my shield, and I pressed at once.

He struck back with a stiff swing that cut a deep nick into the hide edge of my shield, and we scrabbled around, swapping blows to little clout. He was hurt but little, but he was startled and scared. He thought to overpower me, to break and shame me, and perhaps rape me. Once met, he dare not back down from a mere woman, even if it meant a fight in sooth. And if he were to lose?

His blood-rage brought him in hard and fast, with a blow that half-cracked my shield and dented the boss. I grunted and powered into it, trying to get my sword tip under his shield and to his belly. I outwitted him, but it was a soft thrust and didn’t pierce. He backed away fast, and I flicked the tip up, catching his bare forearm. Skin parted and blood flowed. I pressed again, and my next thrust just barely cut his breast under the hardened hide.

This is the true heart of fighting, not the great endings of the sagas. Two warriors cut at each other until one is weakened enough to yield, flee or die. Neither of us could give or run. In his recklessness to make a name, he settled that one of us would die this day.

His next blow broke the other part of my shield and strained my arm, the shock jarring my elbow. My hand went numb, and pain blazed from elbow to shoulder. But he overreached with his weakened arm, and I hacked it, cutting flesh and bone so blood gushed freely.

Growling in pain, it almost seemed he’d flee, but he knew how that ended. He dropped his shield and swapped his sword to his left. Now unshielded, he nevertheless had a weapon on my unwarded side. And he was angry and hurt.

It was all I could do to raise the half-shield in my wounded arm, shriek in pain as his sword crashed down, and drop under the onslaught. That put me low, and I drove my point up into his belly. Blood and gall spilled, and I smelled the stench of cut innards. As my cry of pain withered, his rose, knowing he was dead.

Death would not come at once, though, and might take days. His sword was still live, as was the hand behind it.

I clutched the scraps of my shield just as he struck. Through the slivered wood and the ring shirt it felt like a blow from a club, driving the wind from me. Spots before my eyes told me I had no time. All I could do was strike again, this time cutting his thigh. That staggered him back and to the ground, where he sought to rise and squealed, and then again.

I drew in sips of air, then breaths, and my eyes cleared. Taking in a deep draught of damp swamp fog, I staggered around his fallen body. I was a widow and a woman. There had been no worthiness given, and I gave none back. I batted his sword arm aside, raised my own, shouted a war cry, and chopped.

I would come back to this. After I saw to my son.

I leaned the sword against the wall, stumbled through the hut, and into the small room. Before I opened the door, I knew it.

Grendel’s life had slipped away while Aeschere and I fought. The man had won that much, forestalling me being at my son’s ending, and thwarting Grendel my soothing. Oh, how I burned.

With my left arm scathed, I couldn’t even grant my son a fitting burial. Here he would stay.

I tumbled Aeschere’s sundered head, still wearing a look of shock and deep throe, into a sack, and slung it over my shoulder along with his shield. Little good it would do me, but it was better to have it, and my showing should rank.

I walked the long, dreary way back the way I’d run.

This time the crowd was silent, perhaps knowing no good would come of this.

They parted for me, afraid or athreat, it didn’t matter now. I trod forward, armed and girded, and stood before the hall, not looking at the grisly token, hung carefully as if a gem, which would only bring me woe.

“Hrothgar, I call you out. You have wronged a widow, and wronged an orphan living with a curse. You are unfit to lead. You lack the hand to hold your men, and let them run wild after a widow, with foul thought.”

I knelt and laid the sack down, grasped the bottom and pulled. Aeschere’s head rolled free, tumbling across the dirt as his nose, chin and backbone bumped. There were cries of shock and dread among the watchers, and I heard a shriek from his daughter. Part of me wanted to be kindly, motherly, but I choked that down and kept my heart hard.

I pointed and firmly said, “Beowulf, I call you out for killing a man with a cursed mind, knowing full well he had no kin to stand for him.

“Instead of a father or brother, you will meet me to feud. I call my son murdered, and I name you the murderer.”

There was stone stillness.

“Beowulf, if you are to be a man, you will meet me alone in the cave in the marsh, the only place my son could flee from his devils. One old woman should be no match for you. Not after you slew such a monster as a man crippled by headaches and madness.”

I turned my back and walked. I was half sure they’d kill me right there, but I was a woman, and whatever worthiness they kept let me leave unharmed. The only friend I had left made a wave toward me, but stopped when I shook my head sharply. This was not Edda’s fight, and she was the only hope our tale might be told with some lot of truth. I could not risk her as well.

There was no proud end to come, no frith. There was nowhere further to flee from the nearness of folk.

I returned to the hut, to kneel beside my sweet boy and beg the gods to meet him kindly. After all, it was they who chose him as a plaything for their games.

I downed the strongest of haeldrinks I had left, ones I reserved for Grendel’s worst days, to soften the hurt of my shattered arm and broken heart. I splinted my arm straight, at least giving me the grip to clumsily heft a shield.

No burial was possible, but I was able to drag the fittings close to the bed, dump out the little oil I had, and kick one weakened side of the hut until it sunk lower. The fire could take it from there. I sought an ember from the hearth, blew it bright, and watched the bloom dance merrily on the makeshift bier. That done, I left the dregs of my life to burn brightly with dark, sooty smoke, and walked to the cave. I brought my sword, Aeschere’s shield, this write-telling, and a crust of bread.

Now I see a body striding over the dunes and the brush, armed and ready. Far behind him are cheers at the thought of the death of a widow and her cursed son. I am bitter, with little to find light in, but there is one last mark in my tale.

I hope that Edda, the wisest and kindest woman I ever knew, will come looking, and think to check the spot where we stored the more witherable herbs in the cool cave. That is where I will leave this write-telling.

I take heart in one warm thought. My lord fell fighting, and feasts in the Valhǫll. Grendel was killed in clash, and has also gone before me to the great Asgarð. When this is over, I shall meet again with my love and my dearest son. What this world never gave me, the next will. I am calm within. Perhaps the All Father will even gift us the soul of my little daughter.

I will close this now. There are no more words to quill. The rest must be deeds.

My wits are not lost in my sorrow. I have no false dreams about how this will end. Beowulf is a skilled warrior, and I am only the mother of a monster. I was lucky once, and now half crippled.

But if they will sing of him for a thousand years, they must also sing of me.

END

Michael Z. Williamson is variously an immigrant from the UK and Canada, a retired veteran of the U.S. Army and USAF, a nationally best-selling and award-winning SF author and editor, and a consultant on disaster preparedness. In his free time, he is a bladesmith, a gunsmith, and a reenactor who favors the Viking era. He lives near Indianapolis with his wife, Jessica, their children, and a variety of animals that are staff or livestock.

Jessica Schlenker is a professional geek with an MS in information security and a BS in biology. Her interests include homesteading, gaming, and reading (and dissecting) scientific papers in various fields. She lives with her husband, Michael Z. Williamson, and their children, cats, and her various homesteading animals.

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