Beowulf by Robert Nye

Beowulf by Robert Nye

Author:Robert Nye [Nye, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-80764-9
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2011-09-28T04:00:00+00:00


VIII

REVENGE

In the heart of the night, in the darkest dark of the darkness, something stirred from the fen. It was shaped like a snake, a snake as black as jet, long and fat and hissing, but it moved across the marshy ground faster than any snake that ever was, because it had tentacles that pulled it through the mud as quick and slick as a knife going through butter. Its flesh was greasy. It had red lips and hanging breasts. It dribbled green bile and gobbets of blood.

The wind in the grasses, which had whispered at Grendel’s coming, held its breath icily as this new horror slithered on toward hall Heorot. The rats ran away, tails lashing, eyes blind with panic. The owls forgot to ask their Who? Who? Who?

The creatures of the fen knew who—and they were frightened.

A long, long time ago She had come from Her bottomless pool to join with the murderer Cain. The fen shook then with unnatural storms as it witnessed their loathsome em-bracings. The moon dripped blood, and the strict stars collided in their courses. A bolt of lightning struck Cain dead for the horror of what he had done. But She lived on. She was too much a part of death to ever die. She was neither older nor younger than She had been in the beginning. What She was could never be destroyed.

A werewolf howled on a crag.

A cloud of white vampire moths hovered above Her grisly head.

She had no name.

She was She, She, She …

Grendel’s Mother!

Unferth knew.

Unferth knew that Something was coming.

Not even his boil or his silver trinket or his long black cloak could comfort his hands this time. They twitched with a life of their own. His thumbs pricked. His fingers itched. The veins in his sweaty palms were hard and swollen and painful.

Half-moaning, half-humming, he sat and watched the sleepers in the hall. He despised them all. Stupid Hrothgar, he thought. Stupid Hrothgar, ugly Wealhtheow, murderous Beowulf. They were only people, silly creatures of flesh and blood, mortal trash. He hated them.

Unferth longed for he knew not what. Something vast and dark and terrible. Something that would recognize him as a cut above the merely human. Something that would press him to Its hideous heart and make him welcome as Its own.

He was terribly alone. He did not belong here, in the torchlit hall littered with cups and harps, the debris of celebrations he had taken no part in. He belonged out there in the night, the fatal darkness, the imperishable black. For day, he thought, did not really kill the dark. It was always there, out there in the fen, living on in the veins of the children of Cain. Beowulf believed he could put a stop to it simply by slaying one monster. What a fool! He, Unferth, knew better, knew that good and evil were locked in such an endless contest that the death of just one of the powers of darkness was of no significance whatsoever.



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