Nicholas Browning

Love and Battle in the North

A man stood at the edge of custom,

As tall as a grave is deep.

His complexion a marbled stone,

With a fate he\'d come to meet.

 

Dawn\'s whisper swayed his onyx locks

And tempered his beard of flame,

While the sun rose ever higher on the shadow

As if to honor his presence within its glade.

 

Despite the bite of Winter\'s wrath

He stood among them proud and valorous,

They launched spears with heavy glares

But his spirit was nigh relentless.

 

They knew he roamed their far-flung wood,

Though his origins remained unknown.

He then unsheathed his lustered blade

And threw its skin down in the snow.

 

\"I\'ve come this day to partake in battle\",

It was said in their native tongue.

\"Worry not of what I\'ve to lose,

For whom I fear, there is none\".

 

Upon hearing words that could never be unsaid,

Those girded men had drawn their swords.

While their lasses looked on in anxious awe

As if frightful for the lives of their boys and men, -

 

The outlander strode ever forward

And in the passing of but a mere second\'s tenth,

Mystic arts apexed within a squall

With each swing relayed just what he meant.

 

The northern tribesmen clinging to life

Had by this incarnation, been bested.

He cast aside his shard of metal

Got on one knee, leaned down and bent.

 

In front of him a bonfire,

A constellation in the human form.

Her mane the color of starlight;

Frail as glass, forest-born.

 

He saw her when they were younger,

Bathing in the waters of the fjord.

He had known ever since what he would do,

And for her hand he\'d gone to war.