Free Grendel by John Gardner Page A

one red hour makes your reputation or mine!”
    I shook my head at him, wickedly smiling. “Reputation!” I said, pretending to be much impressed.
    His eyebrows shot up. He’d understood me; no doubt of it now. “You can talk!” he said. He backed away a step.
    I nodded, moving in on him. Near the center of the room there was a trestle table piled high with glossy apples. An evil idea came over me—so evil it made me shiver as Ismiled—and I sidled across to the table. “So you’re a hero.” I said. He didn’t get it, and I said it twice more before I gave up in disgust. I talked on anyway, let him get what he could, come try for reputation when he pleased. “I’m impressed,” I said. “I’ve never seen a live hero before. I thought they were only in poetry. Ah, ah, it must be a terrible burden, though, being a hero—glory reaper, harvester of monsters! Everybody always watching you, weighing you, seeing if you’re still heroic. You know how it is—he he! Sooner or later the harvest virgin will make her mistake in the haystack.” I laughed.
    The dragon-scent in the room grew stronger, as if my teasing were bringing the old beast near. I picked up an apple and polished it lightly and quickly on the hair of my arm. I had my head bowed, smiling, looking at him up through my eyebrows.
    “Dread creature—” he said.
    I went on polishing the apple, smiling. “And the awful inconvenience,” I said. “Always having to stand erect, always having to find noble language! It must wear on a man.”
    He looked hurt and slightly indignant. He’d understood.
    “Wretched shape—” he said.
    “But no doubt there are compensations,” I said. “The pleasant feeling of vast superiority, the easy success with women—”
    “Monster!” he howled.
    “And the joy of self-knowledge, that’s a great compensation! The easy and absolute certainty that whatever the danger, however terrible the odds, you’ll stand firm, behave with the dignity of a hero, yea, even to the grave!”
    “No more talk!” he yelled. His voice broke. He lifted his sword to make a run at me, and I laughed—howled—and threw an apple at him. He dodged, and then his mouth dropped open. I laughed harder, threw another. He dodged again.
    “Hey!” he yelled. A forgivable lapse.
    And now I was raining apples at him and laughing myself weak. He covered his head, roaring at me. He tried to charge through the barrage, but he couldn’t make three feet. I slammed one straight into his pock-marked nose, and blood spurted out like joining rivers. It made the floor slippery, and he went down.
Clang!
I bent double with laughter. Poor Jangler—Unferth—tried to take advantage of it, charging at me on all fours, snatching at my ankles, but I jumped back and tipped over the table on him, half burying him in apples as red and innocent as smiles. He screamed and thrashed, trying to get at me and at the same time trying to see if the others were watching. He was crying, only a boy, famous hero or not: a poor miserable virgin.
    “Such is life,” I said, and mocked a sigh. “Such is dignity!”Then I left him. I got more pleasure from that apple fight than from any other battle in my life.
    I was sure, going back to my cave (it was nearly dawn), that he wouldn’t follow. They never did. But I was wrong; he was a new kind of Scylding. He must have started tracking me that same morning. A driven man, a maniac. He arrived at the cave three nights later.
    I was asleep. I woke up with a start, not sure what it was that had awakened me. I saw my mother moving slowly and silently past me, blue murder in her eyes. I understood instantly, not with my mind but with something quicker, and I darted around in front to block her way. I pushed her back.
    There he lay, gasping on his belly like a half drowned rat. His face and throat and arms were a Crosshatch of festering cuts, the leavings of the firesnakes. His hair and beard hung straight down like seaweed. He