Bova, Ben Twice Seven

Archiwum

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Hrothgar turned to his queen, Wealhtheow, sitting beside him on the dais between the royal torches.
She was as beautiful as a starry spring night, her raven-dark hair tumbling past her shoulders, her lustrous
gray eyes focused beyond the beyond.
Wealhtheow was a seer. Gripping the carved arms of her throne, shuddering under the spell of her
magic, she pronounced in a hollow voice, "The monster is really dead. Now its mate has come to claim
vengeance upon us."
Hrothgar turned as white as his beard. His thanes, who had been sloshing mead and singing their old
battle songs, fell into the silence of cold terror.
The captives from Britain huddled together in sudden fear in the far corner of the hall. I could see the
dread in their faces. Hrothgar had planned to sacrifice them to his gods if Beowulf had not killed the
monster. For a few brief hours they had thought they would be freed. Now the horror had returned.
I turned to gaze upon the lovely Queen Wealhtheow. She was much younger than Hrothgar, yet her
divine gray eyes seemed to hold the wisdom of eternity. And she was staring directly at me.
How and why I was in Heorot I had no idea. I could remember nothing beyond the day we had
arrived on the Scylding shore, pulling on the oars of our longboat against the freezing spray of the tide.
My name is Orion, that much I knew. And I serve Beowulf, hero of the Geats, who had sailed to far
off Daneland to kill the monster that had turned timbered Heorot, the hall of the stag, from King
Hrothgar's great pride to his great sorrow.
For months the monster had stalked Heorot, striking by night when the warriors had drunk
themselves into mead-besotted dreams. At length none would enter the great hall, not even stubborn old
Hrothgar himself. Until Beowulf arrived with the fourteen of us and loudly proclaimed that he would kill
the beast that very night. Beowulf was a huge warrior, two ax handles across the shoulders, with flaxen
braids to his waist and eyes as clear blue as the icy water of a fiord. Strength he had, and courage. Also,
he was a boaster of unparalleled brashness.
The very night he came to Heorot with his fourteen companions he swaggered so hard that narrow
eyed Unferth, the most cunning of the Scylding thanes, tried to take him down a peg. Beowulf bested
him in a bragging contest and won the roars of Hrothgar's mead-soaked companions.
After midnight Hrothgar and his Scyldings left the hall. The torches were put out, the hearth fire sank
to low, glowering embers. It was freezing cold; I could hear the wind moaning outside. Beowulf and the
rest of us stretched out to sleep. My shirt of chain mail felt like ice against my skin. I dilated my
peripheral blood vessels and increased my heart rate, to make myself warmer, without even asking
myself how I knew to do this.
I had volunteered to stay awake and keep watch. I could go for days without sleep, and the others
were glad to let me do it. We had all drunk many tankards of honey-sweetened mead, yet my body
burned away its effects almost immediately. I felt alert, aware, strong.
Through the keening wind and bitter chill I could sense the monster shambling about in the night
outside, looking for more victims to slaughter.
I sat up and grasped my sword an instant before the beast burst through the massive double doors of
the mead hall, snarling and slavering. The others scattered in every direction, shrieking, eyes wide with
fear.
I felt terror grip my heart, too. As I stared at the approaching monster I recalled a giant cave bear, in
another time, another life. It had ripped me apart with its razor-sharp claws. It had crushed my bones in
its fanged jaws. It had killed me.
Beowulf leaped to his feet and charged straight at the monster. It rose onto its hind legs, twice the
height of a warrior, and knocked Beowulf aside with a swat of one mighty paw. His sword went flying
out of his hand as he landed flat on his back with a thud that shook the pounded-earth floor.
Everything seemed to slow down into a dreamy, sluggish lethargy. I saw Beowulf scrambling to his
feet, but slowly, languidly, as if he moved through a thick invisible quagmire. I could see the beast's eyes
moving in his head, globs of spittle forming between his pointed teeth and dropping slowly, slowly to the
earthen floor.
Beowulf charged again, bare-handed this time. The monster focused on him, spread its forelegs out
as if to embrace this pitiful fool and then crush him. I ducked beneath those sharp-clawed paws and
rammed my sword into the beast's belly, up to the hilt, and then hack sawed upward.
Blood spurted over me. The monster bellowed with pain and fury and knocked me sideways across
the hall. Beowulf leaped on its back, as languidly as in a dream. The others were gathering their senses
now, hacking at the beast with their swords. I got to my feet just as the brute dropped ponderously back
onto all fours and started for the shattered door, my sword still jammed into its gut.
One of the men got too close and the monster snatched him in its jaws and crushed the life out of
him. I shook at the memory, but I took up Beowulf's dropped sword and swung as hard as I could at
the beast's shoulder. The blade hit bone and stuck. The beast howled again and tried to shake Beowulf
off its back. He pitched forward, grabbed at the sword sticking in its shoulder and wormed it through the
tendons of the joint like a butcher carving a roast.
Howling, the monster shook free of him again, but Beowulf clutched its leg while the rest of us
hacked away. Blood splattered everywhere; men roared and screamed.
And then the beast shambled for the door, with Beowulf still clutching its leg. The leg tore off and the
monster stumbled out into the night, howling with pain, its life's blood spurting from its wounds.
That was why we feasted and sang at Heorot the following night. Until the beast's mate roared its
cry of vengeance against us. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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