The Dark-Named Sword

Ashel named his sword, haft and all,
and it answered to his hand with a silver song.
Blade and blood, death and darkness, brotherhood & beer, Ashel's sword could sing!

battle after battle, the song went on --Ashel's fame spread, and he was invited to feasting halls of great kings. He was given arm rings with jeweled snake eyes,
and his spear often brought down the Devil's boar or the Queen's hart.
And it seemed a sort of peace was in Ashel's hands,
so long as the haft of his dear-named sword was too.

yet peace is not love, and a sword blade is poor company on the cold nights when the rushes shiver on the floor and loneliness leaks through the thatch. Ashel took a wife,
golden-haired and thrush-browed, quick and strong, the daughter of a fighting man. Auri was a woman proud of her husband's silver-song, proud of the sword and swift with the oil. Ashel loved her fiercely and gently;
he lay awake beside her low breathing, pondering the two sides of the world. For Auri, she was fire and ice to him, the sun and the shade, the wine and the thirst. Somehow she was kin to his secret-named sword. There was life & death in both of them, one in his hand and the other in his heart.

battle after battle, the song went on --but among its silver notes crept a warmer tone, the gold of a girl's hair and the warm-orange tint of a hearth fire. Ashel's hand still knew the haft of the true-named sword, but now his eyes saw the blood leaking from men's bodies, and it seemed a steep price for the skald's glory-making.

Ashel lay awake many nights, pondering the two sides of the world. He saw the moon crest the northern hills, and heard the first mewling cries of his son's birth hour. Ashel felt his heart beat with bruising force; an intense longing for the silver days of his clear-named sword came over him, and Ashel reached for the weight of it to hold it once more. But instead the midwife placed Magne in his arms, the warrior-son Auri had hoped for. Ashel looked down at his small red son, and the silver-song was forgotten, and his heart bruised his chest with pride. There was life, life & life in the song now, and his sword hung quietly.

it was battle after battle that Magne asked for, story after story, and Asher growled and grinned his way through many hours, the silver-sword song a dim quiet thing in his mind. the days went on, and Ashel's was not the only gold-haired woman who swelled with child. The whole Skird Valley became settled, and peace grazed with the oxen in the new-fenced fields.
And yet the long-named sword did not forget the song, nor did the skalds lose their heart-hunger for a new tale.

Magne grew older, Auri wiser, and Ashel pondered the two sides of the world less and less, for were they not sitting beside him? His wife & her moon-ways and his son & his boyish wonder - the halves made a whole, and his long-named sword hung quietly.

winter came again, and after it a crow's rumor, barely winging over the muddy plains: tight-faces raiders, barbarians with strange eyes & swift horses. And soon the fences were broken,
Auri's heart was broken,
for Magne fought and fell. Ashel wept apart, and his heart was divided into the two sides of the world. Let the skalds sing his dead son's name -let the glory of his wolf-death glimmer on their lips, but for Ashel, there was a different song.
Both hands remember the feel of it - now he holds his dark-named sword, haft and all.

Blade and blood, death and darkness, pain and parting
it could still sing!
Ashel smiled - it answered to his hand with a silver-song.

battle after battle there was not, but there was one,
and of that
the skald's still sing - it is a long song and true,
woven through with golden-tints and deep ponderings
of Ashel
and his dark-named sword.