Continuing to highlight Robert Nye’s Beowulf: A New Telling. Today features Chapter II: A Hall Full of Blood. Be sure to catch the first chapter’s highlights, if you didn’t last week.
I’ve also got a pexels collection where you can check out all the photos (and more) that I’ve gathered for this chapter’s moodboard.
Page numbers listed herein may not match the page numbers in yours.
- 4: Hrothgar had a backbone that would bend to no man. He was bold and fierce, with red hair, a jutting jaw, and eyes like naked swords.
- 5-6: At last Heorot was finished. It stood tall and firm on the edge of the misty fen. By day, it towered above men’s heads like a second sun, so bright were its walls and roofs. By night, the torchlight blazing from its high windows, it was like a huge sentinel who did not sleep. Everyone agreed that the king had built a wonder.
- 6: Poets sang at the feast, and the guests had so much to eat and drink that some of them could hardly walk. Hrothgar gave every man present a ring from his treasury. The music of the harp and the happy shouting of the warriors echoed out across the dark fen and drowned the crying of birds that flew in the night.
- 6: Only the king’s bodyguard, thirty of his toughest fighting men, remained in the hall itself. They were supposed to keep awake and watch for enemies, but, as it turned out, they were all so weary from the feast that they soon slept too.
- 7: Soon hall Heorot was a palace of snores.
- 7: Horses with no heads and with hands instead of hooves loomed out of the fog. Black bats flew there, with wings like coffin-lids. Rats as big as dogs swarmed about in packs, killing and eating anything that got in their way.
- 9: “Bit quiet, isn’t it?”
“Nothing strange about that. The place is so big. Nice day, though. Hear the larks singing? Tell you what, let’s take the couches out in the sun and give them a bit of an airing. Good idea?”
No answer.
The servant looked at his fellow. The first servant’s face had gone white. He pointed waveringly at the stair.
Both men started shaking with fright.
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- Homework (links in this piece):
- HFE productions.
- archive.org ― Robert Nye’s Beowulf: A New Telling (read online for free).
- Britannica:
- Jimquisition:
- Merriam-Webster:
- Fen.
- NASA.gov ― New Planet Is Largest Discovered That Orbits Two Suns.
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