The Tale of Two Warriors

They'd heard rumors that a longship was sailing south along the shore, and they'd heard it might land near their village of Molore. They'd heard it carried a band of robbers looking for homes unprotected. And though no one had seen the danger and rumors often fly, the old woman caught the village warrior by the arm near the chapel when the sunshine was bright.

"Fight for me?" she asked the strong man when the birds were singing sweet. Her cottage stood along the shore aways from the village proper. But all these years no harm had come to her or her milking cow, her livelihood of butter and cream. She asked him just like she'd asked him to mend things in her home: the thatch, a shutter, the hinge on her door. And he replied as he had many times before.

She does not mean it, he thinks. And nor do I for that matter. No ships have ever come to our shores to plunder a single home.

But the very next evening she sees a ship in the west, sailing beside a red setting sun. She looks out her shutters and shudders to hear the drum, the sound telling the paddlers to paddle for shore. 

Then the old woman comes again to him, to his door in the middle of supper. "Fight for me!" she begs, and he sees the terror in her eyes this time. Perhaps too, he can hear the drum beating down by the shore.

He does not answer. He may be wounded. He may be killed. He may make himself a man marked for revenge. He has his own house to tend and guard. And if he leaves it, he may lose it for the sake of this old woman and his vow. But he has a sword hung on the wall by the door and it's sharp for he keeps it so with a whet stone by the fire. And he has a shield in a crate under the bed for he is the village warrior, the best man in the town. How could he not defend the old woman as he might a young maid?

So he unhooks his sword and takes up his shield and runs to the old woman's house as the boat drives into the sand. The looters, there are five, jump down with greedy smile and they fixate on that man, and that cottage where the cow feeds in the garden. 

He does not know if he alone will best so many, but he catches the woman by the arm at her door and asks her to do the same. "Pray for me," he begs and she knows what he means. She sees the fear in his eyes and can feel his pulse beating in his grasp. 

She does not answer for she too must count the cost. For just as he is the village warrior, she is the village prayer. And unlike modern times where prayers are muttered in work, her prayers are all consuming on bended knee and eyes pressed shut. And if she kneels and closes her eyes, refuses to defend her own home, who will close the shutters and who will bar the door? Who will smother lighted arrows that fly through window onto straw-strewn floor? And if her eyes are shut, will she see the looters come? How will she block any blows that they might throw upon her frail frame? 

But she has a God she worships at the chapel every day, and a faith she hangs her hopes upon for her breath and food and life. So while he fights with sword, she'll fight on bended knee with eyes closed and ears refusing to give in to the sounds of war. Though she hears her warrior cry and the sound of sword on sword, she remains on the floor and begs her God to be their protector and power. 

And when the last scream falls silent and her knees are as stiff as ice, she crawls from her cottage to see what has happened outside her house on the beach. There in her garden lay ill-willed men and collapsed from exhaustion is her warrior on the sand. She gives him a drink and raises his head. He sees the battle has been won that day, and thanks the old woman for fighting with him in the fray.