Orion and King Arthur Read Free

Its teeth closed around me. I was going to be crushed to death, just as I had been all those long eons ago.
    But the monster suddenly howled and dropped me. It turned to face Beowulf, bleeding, battered, buthacking at the beast’s flank with the fury of a berserker.
    As the brute turned away from me, I scrambled to my feet and thrust my sword into its neck, angling it upward to find the brain or spine.
    It collapsed so suddenly that it nearly smothered Beowulf. For long moments we both stood on tottering legs, gasping for breath, spattered with our own blood and the monster’s, staring down at itsenormous carcass.
    Then Beowulf looked up and grinned at me. “Help me take off its head,” he said.
    4
    It was pearly pink dawn when we staggered out of the cave. Beowulf carried the monster’s gigantic shaggy head on his shoulder as lightly as if it were a bit of gossamer.
    We blinked at the morning light. Icy waves lapped at our ankles.
    Beowulf turned to me, his cocky grin gone. “Orion, I toldHrothgar before all his thanes that I would kill the monster myself, with no one’s help.”
    I nodded, but said nothing.
    Suddenly his broad, strong face took on the expression of a guilty little boy’s. “Will you go on ahead and say that you searched for me, but could not find me? Then I can come later with the beast’s head.”
    I glanced down at my bloody arms. “And my wounds?”
    “Say you were setupon by wolves as you searched in the night for me.”
    I smiled at his stupid pride, but said, “Yes, I will do it.”
    “Good,” Beowulf said. He dropped the monster’s head and sat on a rock. “I will rest here for a while. I could use a little sleep.”
    So it was that I returned to Hrothgar’s fortress and told the king that I had searched for Beowulf to no avail. All that long morning and well pastnoon we waited in growing gloom. Unferth said confidently that the monster had killed Beowulf.
    He was considerably disheartened when the hero of the Geats finally arrived—with the monster’s shaggy head on his wounded shoulder.
    That night the feasting at Heorot was without stint. The torches flamed, the mead flowed, the thanes sang praises of Beowulf, and the women vied for his merest glance.Hrothgar’s bard began to compose a saga. The king promised the British captives that they would be ransomed and returned to their dank, dreary island.
    Only Unferth seemed unhappy, slinking in the shadows and glaring at me.
    Queen Wealhtheow sat on her throne, smiling graciously at the uproarious celebration. Long past midnight, the king and queen left the mead-hall. Warriors and even churls pairedoff with women and strolled off into the darkness.
    At last timbered Heorot fell silent. The torches were extinguished. The hearth fire burned low. I was left alone, so I stretched out on the earthen floor next to the fading embers and willed myself to sleep.
    I dreamed, yet it was not a dream. I was standing in another place, perhaps a different universe altogether. There was no ground, no sky,only a silver glow like moonlight that pervaded everything. Wealhtheow stood before me, but now she wore a formfitting outfit of glittering silver metal. Anya, the warrior goddess, she was. In another time, a distant place, she was worshipped as Athena.
    “You did well, Orion,” she said in a low silken voice.
    “Thank you.”
    “Your wounds?”
    “They are already healing,” I said.
    “Yes, acceleratedself-repair was built into you.”
    I wanted to reach out and take her in my arms, but I could not.
    Instead, I asked, “Can we be together now?”
    In the deepest recess of my memory I recalled a time, a lovely woodland filled with tame, graceful animals that we called Paradise, when we were together and happy. The other Creators, especially the jealous Aten, had torn her away from me.
    “Not yet,my love,” she said, with a sadness in her eyes that matched my own despair. “Not yet.”
    “At least, can I know why I was sent to Heorot?