I'm going to read you the first appearance of Grendel's mother. She has come towards Hiorat Hall. Her son has fled the hall dying and come home.
And she has emerged from her home to get revenge, but also just on a wave of grief. And part of what I wanted to do in this translation was really get into her sorrow, because her son has just been murdered. And she is coming out to get justice. And I think that sometimes in translation, this is, she's just powered by monstrosity.
And here I think there's a very good reason if your son was murdered, that you might come trying to get justice from the world. And any of us would. So I wanted to portray her that way. So this is just a short section when she arrives at Carrot Hall to get a little revenge. There was another chapter.
An Avenger lay in wait, counting sordid seconds until the latest hour, her heart full of hatred. Grendel's mother, warrior woman, outlaw, meditated on misery. She lived ill-fated, sinking beneath cold currents to her kingdom under country.
Her line linked to extinction since Cain crossed swords with Abel and fled, murder marked, to make his home in wastelands, solitary and silent. From Cain came more misery, a legacy of lost souls. Grendel was one of those.
Banished and blasted. He'd found a waker among the dreamers, a battle amid the beds, and wrestled the warrior who'd woken into war. Beowulf saw himself as God's gift, Grendel as a goner.
He used his strength to slay the intruder, trusting in his father to protect him, as he always had. He bled the hellion, and Grendel fled piecemeal. No heaven for him, no honey, only rushing through a haunted hall to die in his own mausoleum.
Now his mother was here, carried on a wave of wrath, crazed with sorrow, looking for someone to slay, someone to pay in pain for her heart's loss. She found the path and made her way to hear it. Ringdanes were dreaming there, a murdering herd of sleepers, drooling, drunk, their feast killing them.
They were the cream of the crop. But soon they'd be chaff, scythed from swordsmen into skeletons. She was the one to do it. The horror wasn't muted by the measure of women's strength against men's brawn. Both can hold slaying swords glazed with war and score the boar crests from war helmets, warming them with blood.
In Urethal, hard-honed blades were yanked from over benches. Shields shouldered to cover blinking sleepers waking bareheaded, bare-chested, stunned by her arrival. She moved swiftly, knowing she had only moments to sift men for her vengeance and remain among the living. She tore a warrior from his bed and dragged him, defenseless, to her pen.
This was Hrothgar's best friend, most adored on the land between the two salt seas, warrior and retainer. She slew him, sleeping.