A side note to Stormcrow

[Mark S]

This has been rattling around in my head for a while so I thought I'd let it out.



A Moment Of Weakness


Mark Shantz


I was born Johan Schwartz in a hamlet on what is now the eastern border of Germany. There I lived with my parents in the family home (not much more than two rooms) and there was where I learned my trade and eventually earned my living. It was a simple life but it was pure and we were happy.

My father was the town smith and spent his days pounding iron before the heat of the forge. Some of my first memories were of him glowing orange in the fires light. The sound of his voice singing in time with the hammer beats, weaving its magic into the metal, still fills my mind at times. I spent hours sitting in that shop just watching, taking it in.

By the time I was about six years old I had started working in that little forge. First gathering fuel and water and working the bellows, then sharpening axes and arrow heads, and finally, much later, making simple things like nails, hinges and buckles. I know, I don’t look big or bulky enough to be a smith, but hay, back then five-ten was pretty big!

That tutelage was my life, that town was my world. I don’t think I ever gave a second thought to what was beyond the surrounding countryside in those early days.

By the time I had seen sixteen years I was working alongside my father producing my own goods for sale and had married my love Maria. A year later she had bourn my one and only son Kurt. We lived all together in that same house, though now slightly expanded, and were only the happier for it.

That may sound strange now, but that was the way in those days. Families stayed together. Family was the most important thing back then. Family was survival.

Now, the duties of a town blacksmith were my our bread and butter, but it was not how we made the bulk of our earnings. My father had not just been a simple blacksmith, he was also a swordsmith, and it was this knowledge that set us apart. It was this knowledge that brought merchants to our little town’s market. This was what also brought noblemen.

It was just about the time when my son was beginning to watch my daily work, as I had done with my own father, that the Baron’s men came. He was gathering footmen to re-enforce his cousin in Poland. Hell-spawned invaders from the east, they said. Demon horsemen, they said. We were facing the apocalypse. We were fighting for our very souls. If we failed, all life would be forfeit.

So it was that myself and every other young, able-bodied man in the Barony was marched from our homes, from our sobbing families, from your lives, to lands unknown, to face this ‘unspeakable evil’. It only took until the first battle to realize the truth though. They were not demons. They were just men. Just men.

The Mongol Horde, I would later learn they were called. At the time we just called them the heathen enemy. Those of us that survived for any great length, that is. And there were far too few with that distinction. As you may know, this heathen enemy was very proficient at dealing out death.

Somehow I survived that first battle and many others like it over the next few years. Battles. Perhaps, ‘survived those routes’ would be a better way to put it. Slaughters maybe? I found myself feeling more in the role of a bandit than an royal warrior I had been told of.

I suppose I have my father to thank for my life once again. He was a man who believed that to truly know how to make something properly, you must know how to use it. To that end I had been raised not only beside the forge, but also drilling with weapons of all kinds. And chopping wood. Lots of wood. We made a lot of axe heads. I can’t say that I was anywhere near the skill of the regular footmen and knights but I was a hell of a lot better off than Ernst the baker’s son.

I was on a scouting mission one spring when I was finally caught. We had come across a small encampment, most likely advance riders to a larger force, and were trying to get a count of their numbers when their patrol rode up on us. I can remember thinking at the time that it would only be a matter of time before I went out like this. I was always getting sent on scouting missions. It was the hazard of knowing how to count past ten.

We didn’t stand a chance. Before I could even think, everyone around me was sprouting arrows. I, myself, was hit in the shoulder and thigh and dropped like a stone. I tried to stand again and draw my sword, though what good it would have done against a mounted enemy I don’t know. I was delirious with pain and rage. They had taken everything in my life from me, everyone who I had called friend, and now they were going to take me. All I wanted was to give some back, to see their blood. To wallow in their screams.

Everyone else was killed. Why they decided to take my alive I don’t know. What they wished to accomplish from the torture I don’t know. I couldn’t understand a word they screamed at me and if they knew the curses I hurled back, there was no indication. It went on for days I think. Though the pain and unrest and screaming, laughing, leering faces seemed to merge into nothing more than a blur.

It was in that camp, during that clear and beautifully warm spring , drenched in my own blood and filth, tied to the ground, watching my intestines spill from my body, that I saw my last sunrise and sunset.

I cursed their heathen blood that day and prayed damnation down on there Godless children. For those that had fallen beside me. For the entire villages of people I had seen slaughtered. For the children I had found headless. For my own son who I would never see again. For myself. I prayed to God above with all my righteous fury to see them all dead. I channelled all of my pain and ire at the heavens for this one last boon.

My life finally passed from my body in the twilight hours of the sun’s decent with one final gasp from a hoarse and broken throat. I remember standing over myself, watching with ever growing rage as mongrel dogs began tearing at my insides. I screamed at the bastard heathens with voiceless impotence as they strung me up and began to break camp.

I was dead. I was dead and my spirit screamed until it began to weep. And as I sobbed before my devastated corpse I began to feel a warmth and calm fall over me. When I looked up from my spectral hands everything was gone and I was surrounded by an utter blackness broken only by the source of that warmth and calm.

It was a man who I can only assume was our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, standing before a tunnel of glowing light (yes, I actually saw a tunnel). He said nothing, but simply smiled at me and held his hand for me to take.

I was blinded by my rage. I cried for some justice in this! I begged! Begged for him to send me back! Implored that I be given the power to send my enemies to hell where they belonged! I balled my fists and demanded his of our Lord.

Still he said nothing but beaconed me with his hand. His eyes were now pleading with me to come and I would have none of it.

Still I vented my anger and called for the powers of heaven and God All Mighty to grant me my death’s wish. Our Lord and Saviour’s face became saddened but he did not turn from me. He would only bid me forward.

“He won’t help you in this. But I can.” The voice came soothingly venomous from over my left shoulder.

I spun to confront this new, would-be benefactor only to meet blackness. Nothing. There was no one there.

“I have the power to grant what you seek.” Again the honey coated words spoke from my left shoulder. Again I turned. Again, nothing but the darkness. “I can bring you back to the world of the living. You will have strength and power enough to lay all of your enemies low before you.”

In a moment of weakness I agreed to something I never should have and I have been regretting it ever since.

The angels cried that night as I ravaged through the encampment. And their tears rained down in a vain attempt to wash away the flowing blood. So much blood.

When I was finished with the men, I started on their beloved horses.