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I love those auld pulp sword and sorcery books o` the fifties and sixties...when I was a wee lassie I used tae love the covers, some o` the later ones had pictures o` fit looking barbarians fighting off weird and wonderful monsters wi` axes and swords, and some were done by wha` I now ken are famous artists, like Boris Vallejo and Frank Frazetta.
Onyway, this is a wee story that can never dae justice tae all those fantasy books that fed a growing imagination and ruined it, maist likely, forever mair....


"She had no grace...knew this because others told her so. A clumsy girl she was, watching others dance like swans, move with fluid beauty, while she knocked her belongings over, bumped into people, who, irritated with her, shoved her rudely out of their way. No grace. No beauty.
Watching children play she saw their own dance of grace, an unselfconscious, youthful thing that had long since deserted her. Watching the dancers at the summer fete she saw the twining of their bodies in the music of love and envied that, sitting alone, wide eyed at the spectacle of it all.
In the lives of the clan, grace and beauty were prized. "Touched by the gods", folks were called who had been favoured by grace and beauty. And they were marked as that, as favoured, and treated with respect earned only by the way they looked, the way they moved, and the clansfolk flocked to them when they spoke, and basked in the glow of who they were.
So she lived her life in the shadow of the others, a plain and unmarked woman, and her days were filled with the work of the clan, her people, the essential work of cooking and spinning and weaving the cloth which the clansfolk wore, tilling the strips of land for winter crops, herding the kye down from the hills and sitting at the milking, morning and night.
And she saw the graced ones did no work, but sang their days long and played with one another as they raced the ponies around the township, and danced the dance of love among the stooks at the harvest dances. Charmed lives, they led, the ones blessed with grace.
And she watched folks flock to them, and bask in their glow, and mimic their ways.

The riders struck in the night. Whooping and hollering their rage, they fired the thatch of the crofthouses and slaughtered the kye and the ponies with poison tipped bolts from blackened crossbows. In the fire of the ruined township the folks were herded and penned like the slaughtered cattle, but for a few who hid from sight and sought ways out of the township to run and get help.
But she never ran. Watching the enemy riders, she counted twice until she was sure of their number, of where they all were, and of how they were led...she marked the leader and his group, for had she not had practice, watching those who led and their sycophants?
Under the burning thatch of the smithy she found a blackened, hot-hilted sword and a small throwing axe.
Running swiftly and quietly behind the mounted enemy, she reached the smouldering remains of the wattle coop and hunkered down. Marking the second in command, she threw the axe at his back and was rewarded by the sight of him pitching from the saddle and the ensuing panic of the other men trying to control their whinnying ponies, startled at the sudden attack.
Amid the panic she ran onward to the safety of a ruined hut and watched as the men of the enemy whirled around, seeking the attacker, and saw two of them ride down the wattle coop, reining the ponies to trample it into the dirt.
And at the edge of the circle of her herded clansfolk she watched the leader whirl his own pony around and around, seeking, searching...and that is when she chose to step out into the firelight and walk toward him.
With a shout he stayed the hand of his warriors who would have shot her with their poisoned bolts. She had relied upon this, upon his curiosity, his arrogance......
She stood before him, a small woman, ragged and dirty and dragging a mans sword beside her. Looking up at him, she issued a wordless challenge in the frank and angry eyes.
Laughing, he dismounted and handed the reins of his pony to another warrior who took up the laughter, as did they all.
She could see behind him, as he strode to her, the remains of her people, shivering, dirty, wounded, the graced ones among them, looking with disbelief at her own stupidity.
She took her gaze from them and appraised the chief before her. A big but slight man. Muscled, lean, not so different from the men of her own clan, different only in ornament, in the cut of his skins and the paint of his own skin.....but in his eyes she saw the expectation of her death.

All grew quiet as all watched, expecting her to die quickly. And in her own heart she knew she faced her death.
But this was to be her moment of grace......
Raising the sword, she felt it become part of her, an extension of will and memory and all she had watched of the menfolks at their training for war lodged in behind her eyes and she met the chieftans sword and did not feel the jar of steel ring her bones like to shatter them, did not feel the force behind his sword arm as she parried and danced with grace the sword dance, a whirl of muscle and steel and the song of blood ringing in the ears and in the heart.
And in a moment the sword she bore pierced his chest and she watched with a bloody, mad grin on her face as his eyes looked into hers and clear disbelief lived there....
Placing one foot on his stomach she kicked and he slipped free, dead, of the blade.
Breathing heavily, she turned to her people, not seeing the graced ones, not seeing favoured ones, seeing only those of her blood as they watched her with fear and terror in their eyes.
Slowly, the sword once more dragging the earth, she turned round to meet her death, and gave once more the warriors mad grin as she danced the battle dance and entered the gateway to the Underworld at the hand of the enemy."