Margit worked the latch-bar of the gate, which was socketed in the bony pit of what must be an adzehorn skull. With its broad-bladed prongs removed—for tools perhaps?—and the flesh long gone, the skull looked bald and vulnerable, as homely as a cattle skull.
Bleeding and cowed, Grendel runs back to the marches to die. Is that the end of the story? Well, of course not. The poem would be a rollicking good tale even if that were the end, but it wouldn't be an epic.
