This is the Duke of Urr’s gauntlet.
It weighs twenty pounds and has four big spikes, one for the knuckle of each finger. The Duke of Urr has used each of these spikes five-hundred-and-twelve times each, except for the littlest one, which has been used an extra five times to pick the noses out of people’s heads.
It has the last of the Duke of Urr’s baby teeth sewn into its palm, for luck and protection.
This is the Duke of Urr’s helm.
It has a narrow slit for vision that wraps around most of its front, and you can just barely see his eyes in there when he wears it. They glisten red because of all the reflected light from the fires. His eyes are brown.
The top of it looks a bit like a crown, but beaten black without a gleam of shine. It is showy, but will not gleam in the night-time, until the fires start.
This is the Duke of Urr’s banner.
It is his three hundredth. The others caught fire and burned on the pole as he fought underneath them. They do that because he lights them as the first arrows fly, to show his enemies that he does not care if they know where he is and to fill his men with reckless courage. At the end of each battle, he plants the charred pole in the body of the enemy commander and has a new one made, with the skull of his adversary topping the shaft.
It is a red field, with a dark horse rampant. The pitch makes its borders black.
This is the Duke of Urr’s best dagger.
It is very long and very thin and it has been well oiled and carefully stored for many years. The Duke loves it very much. He has owned it since he was a young boy, when it was given to him by the big stupid man who threatened him with it. His grip was lazy, his thoughts arrogant, and his surprise paralyzing.
There is a bluntness at the blade’s tip that the Duke has never had repaired. The big stupid man’s breastplate had been nearly as well-made as the blade. But not quite.
This is the Duke of Urr’s mind.
It is a long, dark, broody thing that simmers and lays low when nothing of interest is occurring. The moment something interests it is the moment it rises up in a lather, already angry without knowing why. If it were a creature it would be fire and malice and frightfully sharp-edged.
It is quiet at the moment.
This is the Duke of Urr’s horse.
It is a large horse, a trained warhorse. It has trampled several men to death recently, but it did not particularly enjoy it or dislike it.
There is nothing much special about it.
This is the Duke of Urr’s latest conquest.
It was a small kingdom, but not a quiet one. Just another one of the little fiefs-grown-boisterous that riot and wrestle with one another that sprung up in the wild bits of the world. The castle has been plundered liberally. The king has been thrown into his moat, headless.
The peasants haven’t really gotten involved.
This is the Duke of Urr’s sword.
There is no count of how many people it has killed; its notches and nicks and chips are beyond counting, beyond polishing, beyond repair. The little groove near the mid-point marks the head of the man who granted him the title of duke. The dent on the pommel is the crushed skull of his uncle, whose blade it was before him. The wear and tear on the crossguard shows where it was used to crush a man against a wall in a hilt-to-hilt struggle and drove right through his body.
It is still very, very sharp.
This is the Duke of Urr’s arm.
It is mostly scars, and the scars have somehow become muscles. It is as thick and muscled as a blacksmith’s, though it swings the sword rather than the hammer by habit. In practice, it has swung hammers, swords, axes, knives, daggers, chairs, tables, limbs, and once a throne with the lord still sitting on it.
The first scar is from when the Duke fought with his older brother at age maybe-five. It runs from elbow to armpit.
This is the Duke of Urr’s tattoo.
It runs from the backs of his ears down to the base of his spine, curving and weaving and forcing its way through folds of muscle and rippling forests of hair and the criss-crossing-hatching of scars. Red and green and black and anger, all woven together by an old, old, old woman who said she was a witch and never spoke of any payment.
It is impossible to tell what it looks like.
This is the Duke of Urr’s latest victim.
He is a servant who yesterday was a prince, and who raised a hand – with a knife in it – to the Duke as he feigned to fill his wine cup, which was made from a skull. The skull had been inside a king’s skull the day before.
The servant’s head should not be pointing that way.
This is the Duke of Urr’s stomach.
It is full, and is currently working away at its supper. Supper contained some roast pork, and pork that maybe hadn’t been roasted as long as it should’ve been. The Duke would’ve noticed it by the smell, maybe, but assassinations, even ad-hoc ones, make him hungry enough to not be put off his meal.
There’s a lot of dead meat in that pork, but there were a few little tough living things, too.
And that is the Duke of Urr in his whole and his parts, here and now and for the last time all in one place. Because his stomach will be the somewhat uncomfortable death of him in five weeks and four days.
“Some Things,” copyright Jamie Proctor, 2012.