(no subject)

[jholloway.livejournal.com]

There is a flaw within me.

I kneel each night in prayer before these saints – Martin, who gave up the sword to be a monk, Theodore. Michael, who teaches us that God too can have need of a sword. I pray they will guide me, keep me on the narrow path, guide my hand in service of the right.

I explain and explain and I feel as though I am speaking some language you do not speak. You will not hear me. I try my last: I know you will do us justice, although you do not understand. I listen to the jests of my clanmates and their plans and I hear the growling of wolves. And when I say that I am sorry there was no fight, it is part bravado and part confession.

The line is like the tide rolling in; from the time you see that ripple, the glint of the armour as they march, you can do nothing but wait. There is no further time for decision. And you raise your axe and pick out the shield you will splinter first, look across the field to find the eyes of the man you will kill.

Do not step in front of me, I would say, the rough wood of the helve rasping against my palms, and then I would draw in air to make that deep, hollow roar, the war-cry that sounds above the sound of combat. And with the roar would come that fierce joy, the elation that comes with splintering bone and spraying blood, the arc of the blade like a mathematician's chalk, perfect, leaving ruin and dead men in its wake.

And you lie to me and you call me fool and you offer me money and the beautiful purity of that line, severed limbs spiralling away from it fills my eyes and in my ears the war-cry roars in the dozen tongues of the armies I have fought in:

OUT! OUT! OUT!

And I rejoice in the thought of the axe blade reaping limbs and heads, making widows and orphans, seeking the breath-line that turns men to dead meat and Cainites to bitter ash.

There is a flaw within me.