The Weekly Mudcrab #117
Literary Corner
There was so much death in the world in my youth and in these seventy years I have found that the world is pain. A young child may die at the hands of a raider, be ravaged by disease, or a man such as I can live far beyond his time. The dark gods can corrupt and enslave as can the so-called gods of light. Zealousy is certainty in it’s truest extent. It Is so pure to know exactly what your purpose is in these shadowed lands. An assassin truest and incorruptible know that her life is meant to end the lives of others.
THE BLOOD looked slick and felt warm on Mastani's trembling, open palms. She had butchered small animals for her masters' dinner before, but a man's blood were completely different. And his wailing...that pitiful blood-curdling scream was something she had only ever heard in nightmares. But it wasn't guilt that the young Bosmer felt. Far from it, she had wished death upon her master many, many times before. It was something more base and banal than guilt. It was fear.
I have long since lost count of the years and yet I shall never forget the first night I saw her. It had been a bitterly cold and long winter and we were reduced to eating salted fish and most of the steading sleeping together in the great hall for warmth. But we had mead in plenty and it flowed generously. We sang and told stories to keep our spirits up and to distract us from the harshness of our conditions and the fear of what might be if the thaws did not come soon. As the skald of my people they looked to me each night to keep back the dark just as they looked to the Thane to keep the great fires at both ends of the hall roaring.
