End Of The Sagas: A Hero Beyond Measure

At the center of his psyche a horse's head fills completely the place of consciousness. Its mouth is stretched open, halfway through a thunderous NEIGH! its eyes colored bright red from the fire in its brain, and its mane tossed in a wind swept by the rhythm of its beating legs. Flames shoot forth from the horse's throat or from its mind - I cannot tell. I only witness. There are so many things I cannot speak about my master. I play perforce a traditional role, that of the hero's companion and chronicler. I am qualified because I have stood on the same ground at the same time and breathed the same fresh or fetid air as he did for these twenty years. Whether I saw the same reality of experience and the same sequence of events, whether I suffered the same wounds in service of our tribe - that I cannot judge. It is for our people to judge. But, you, Lords of Estate, listen to me now. I know, dread Lords, what you say against me: 'Vassal, you describe in your accounts not the hero of our sagas in the honored past. You present a man, a mere man, a slow deliberative man. Vassal, you give us a reduced figure, not the hero of the tales and adventures we know in our hearts' hold, in our minds filled from childhood with our tribe's glory, in the chanting of our poets at night-long feasts.' It is right that you, Lords of high renown, appeal to hearts and minds. But it was I, vassal, subaltern, foot-soldier, who have preserved his heroism in the sagas for the ages. It was my heart that bled for him in those last adventures. It was my mind that shaped the character of those last chronicles. It was my action that fulfilled those last tasks, when the weight of WYRD doomed him. I exchanged places with him, myself the warrior in fierce combat, he doing what he could sheltered under my shield. But he rallied as only the greatest of warriors can rally: in the final months his sword was always covered in our enemies' blood! I saw his eyes glittering with wild joy, even when death claimed its hollow victory against his body. I saw the sinews of his heart burst from excess of his will. And when he could no longer be himself, no longer be a hero or a villain, no longer a warrior or a murderer, no longer a lover or a rapist, when he could no longer choose between the righteous role and the wicked role, when he was no longer the Name within the Man, when he was just a standing shroud awaiting burial, but still possessed of martial glory, I led him to his final field of battle, at dawn on a mist-covered hill above the enemy host. I roped him to a rowan tree, placed his sword, ENDURABLE, in his grip, and stood with him as the sun burned away the mist, and his enemies trudged up the hillside, rank on rank. At his command, I withdrew. Words were not spoken, tears were not shed. I left him. I withdrew to a safe distance, in a stand of poplars. I pressed my body against the hard ground and forced myself to listen to the last hours of his life. He roared and bellowed against WYRD, against the cowardly gods and helpless goddesses, against the light of day bleeding away to nightfall. But never did he curse his enemies. He challenged them to come within the compass of his sword. And come they did, rank after rank, all eager for the glory of killing him, oblivious of the certainty of death. Theirs and his. Such is the working through of WYRD. I heard the terrible slash of sword against flesh, moans of the dying, tumbling of the dead. Then I heard his Death Chant. The end was upon him. A silence fell across the land, just as the sun's orb vanished behind the treeline. Nothing could penetrate that heavy silence, not even the cheers of his enemies. They pounded their shields with swords to no avail. The earth was not listening to them. The sky was dark with roiling clouds, cut across with red gold shafts. I saw his spirit mounting cloud after cloud, scaling the sky as if born to that realm. He mounted higher than any god, and kept ascending ever higher. In the deepening darkness, he was a torch, a flame, then just a point of light, shining with intense brightness. Then even that disappeared behind the clouds. And ever since we have struggled to live lives worthy of his memory.