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  Behold, the Warrior’s Pride

  A Flash Fiction Short Story by

  Mark Paul Jacobs

  Copyright © 2011 by Mark Paul Jacobs

  All rights reserved

  Cover design by Mark Paul Jacobs

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  The Yaakmen of Tyrie (The complete 5 part novel)

  Author’s note: I hope you enjoy this story as much as I enjoyed writing it for you. Please don’t be afraid to tell me what you think via reviews or my Facebook page. I’m eager to hear from you.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Behold the warrior’s pride…

  Beneath early winter’s darkened skies, the warrior crept through a snow-laden grove, his nostrils puffing warmth upon a gray beard gnarled with icy spit. He froze, spotting a stag poised motionless amongst the trees; its brown eyes alert, attentive—preparing to leap at the slightest hint of danger. He lowered his muscular frame and drew forth arrow. The stag offered him a flawless profile.

  The warrior’s eyes narrowed musing of the stag’s imminent death—a fate mercifully eluding him during thirty-six years in the king’s service. An exceptionally prolonged career for a man of his vicious vocation, and testament to the endless faces of fallen comrades who never reached his ripened age to collect a lifetime’s reward— permanent leave from his duties, a thousand gold coins, a parcel of rich farmland, choice livestock, and presumably, final peace.

  Yet, the warrior had survived— living past the day he was honored in a royal ceremony and bestowed the highest tribute when the humbled monarch breached royal decorum, bowing his head slightly to acknowledge the warrior’s unwavering loyalty and unflinching bravery. How bemused the warrior recalled the waves of hushed disapproval from the gathered nobles, and how proudly he marveled at the undeterred king who commanded all before him to honor the warrior without question, lest they be judged by their own devotion to the crown, or possibly lose their heads.

  The warrior drew his bow and released his arrow— the beast shuddering upon its gashing impact. He paused to watch the stag convulse before it fell to the snow, its life-force draining away to the forest’s floor. He sliced its throat, slung the carcass across his shoulders, and then turned for home.

  Upon crossing his stake, the warrior heard a great commotion in the distance. He flung the deer to the ground and surged forward with bow drawn and eyes darting. Turning suddenly, he glimpsed a huge bird with enormous wings unfurled, sailing away toward the forest carrying a lifeless sow in each of its bloodied talons.

  The warrior released his bow, but the arrow soared short. The bird screeched mockingly as it drifted above the trees, stirring the warrior’s blood to boiling rage. He sent another arrow skyward in hopeless desperation, but the thief disappeared—folding into in the hazy sky.

  The warrior threw his bow to the ground and released a deep, guttural roar— an ancient cry to battle, a tradition passed forth from the earliest of stalwart men who offered their lives to defend and conquer.

  Inhaling deeply, he snatched his bow and set forth toward the forest.

  The warrior strode steadfastly through the woodland, the tree’s snowy canopy passing like silent ghosts bearing witness to his anger. He recalled the battle of Augmem during the Phinaleddian war, leading his men to victory during a relentless snowstorm, and vanquishing his enemies caught defenseless as they huddled from the cold. He showed no mercy on that day; mercy was the providence of kings and clergy, not warriors, he mused. Warriors serve no other function but to serve and obey, and to kill.

  The ground sloped upward and he stopped to collect his breath. Fresh blood stained the snow beneath his boot. He glanced above the trees and upon a steep cliff, beholding a flock of great birds circling a gap set upon the mountain’s fold.

  He approached the cliff’s base and began to scale its slick, rocky face. Silently, he crept into the mountain’s gap and ducked behind a boulder. He glanced out and upon an eyrie constructed of evergreen boughs and browned grassy thatch. Upon the massive nest sat his enemy; its eyes closed and resting. He noticed fresh blood staining its crooked beak.

  The warrior smiled wryly and readied his bow.

  His heart raced, just as it always did when he readied to kill— like before any of the countless bloody battles he’d seen, and prevailed alive and triumphant. Kill or be killed was the warrior’s mantra carried into conflict. Presently, a vision of the battle of Anchorium unfolded before him— the rage burning within, following the loss of so many valiant men under his command. And finally the mindless slaughter he inflicted upon the innocent villagers on that bloody day— men, women, the old, the infirmed, the children.…

  The warrior inhaled deeply while the pig-thief lay directly in his sights.

  And sadly he could recall no other feelings— never a sense of his own innocence; not even in his shortened youth— at the age of fourteen he had taken his own father’s life, upon the bastard’s senseless beatings and unspeakable tortures bestowed on his mother, siblings, and himself. And then mercifully he was spared beheading by the king’s guard, but forced to pledge a blood oath to the king as warrior— a lifetime’s license to continue killing, yet now somehow justified beneath the kingdom’s banner.

  The warrior shook his head and lowered his bow. The distant, gruff voices of the veteran guards drifted through his deepest and darkest memories: Thus betraying not a born killer’s true nature, they explained at the time. Once a man has shown he can take another’s life, taking hundreds more would prove effortless— or so they calculated with brutal indifference.

  Now the warrior stood alone, stripped naked of any oath offered to mortal, monarch, or God. He held no illusions of the emotions he felt at this very moment; certainly he would kill again in defense or for subsidence. But something stirred within him— something hidden deep beneath his hardened exterior, perhaps since before his bloody career or even his pained childhood; something he did not quite recognize or understand, but for an instant feel its emergence and provide him— if only for a few labored breaths— unqualified clarity.

  Quietly, he slipped from the fold and back down the cliff.

  Light snowflakes cascaded from the afternoon sky as the warrior once again trod amongst his fields. He halted and raised his weary head, catching a drifting snowflake on the tip of his tongue.