Battle Prose: The finale, for-now-le

Thilmann had always sneered at apocalyptic portents. Comfort blankets, he thought. The warming wool of fire and brimstone and an end to all that is and will ever be, pulled up over arrogant fools, shivering from just having come to terms with their own mortality, afeared they’d miss out on the important parts. It is the ultimate comfort, he always said, to believe that you’ll tie with creation at the finish line, celestial mechanisms sputtering out in time with your own squishy innards. And yet, he could not help himself sensing finality on the wind. Louder even, it seemed, than the goading arena crowd about them.

Not that he’d ever outright deny anyone the playful little lies and distractions they needed to drag themselves from sunup to down. He’d met too many learned men who decried fate’s bread and circuses even while they voluntarily gorged and giggled and blinded themselves to creation’s indiscriminate, idiot tyranny with self-spun stories about what really mattered, as if matter itself would mould to their beliefs.

And what were his violent little band but troupe and audience both to to this Grand Guignol, this grizzly theatre of mercenary work they had convinced themselves stood alongside the farmer, or the baker, or the mother, or the teacher, in the ostensible good it brought to this land? Shanking people was fun to do and it was fun to watch and it got them paid so they could get liquored up and eat well and sleep warm and have the energy to go shank more people the next day over. There were no sacrifices made here. Every discomfort and danger was one they willingly brought on themselves. It’s not that they had a talent for violence, as men often told them. The nasty little truth was they had no talent for anything else.

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It was probably somewhere through the second paragraph of navel gazing elevated to the status of extreme sport that Thilmann got himself stabbed in the thigh by not paying attention to the fight. Jason of Stathingham sighed and shook his head and Rumjugs, having developed a nervous tick every time Jason’s head moved on account of the man’s inexplicably potent fondness for headbutting things, just stood twitching.

Jason was slain before they’d even had a chance to form ranks. Flailed to giblets. He’s headbutting God now, thought Rumjugs, letting a tear fall and mingle with the sand. He brought down his axe hard on his opponent’s neck, sending the man’s severed head caterwauling. The crowd erupted as it landed, like a volcano made of rowdy dipshits.

Thilmann thrust his spear repeatedly at the surviving gladiator, achieving little more than chipping his shield and hurting his elbow a little tiny bit, not really enough to mention honestly but I suppose you can stick it in there if it helps paint a more complete picture but really his elbow was pretty great actually, better than ever maybe, maybe the best elbow in the world, if you were keeping track. The next blow destroyed Thilmann’s head armour. Visibly destroyed it, I should add. No point narrativising it.

And that was Thilmann’s final act in this world. Mythologising his own elbow. None of us were quite sure how Rumjugs survived, but of the three brothers that walked into the arena, he was the only one that returned.

A slideshow of images began to overtake the remaining band’s senses. Sentimental music floated on the wind from nowhere in particular, perhaps from the arse of a nearby goat. The images continued. The time they’d all decided to stop paying Rick Nipples for a bit, just to see what would happen, and he’d called them traitors and skinflints and cowards and left and they’d laughed until they pissed themselves. That time they’d stolen ham from terrified children and then were approached by a distraught woman whose grandfather had fallen down a well, to which Terry had replied “Well, good luck with that”, and they’d laughed until they pissed themselves. That time Thilmann had demanded they stopped pissing themselves so much because the laundering bills were getting astronomical. How they’d laughed! Laughed until they pissed themselves…

As for me? I’d already left by this point. I’d formed a real kinship with these hopeless bastards, but a wandering scribe’s only true loyalty is to a good yarn, and after six chapters, I’d gotten tired of writing “Jason Of Stathingham’. Also, with Thilmann dead, I couldn’t help but feel that same sense of finality that had so haunted the man. He’s where our story began, after all. It was always going to end badly for Thillmann The Braggart. Badly is the only way he would have liked it n’all.