End Of The Sagas: A Hero Beyond Measure Poem by Daniel Brick

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.