I feel the acid burn of adrenalin in my blood. The lights of the bonfire catch and shine off the blade of my sword. I can hear them singing in the distance, hear them celebrating the carnage to come on the morrow. If only they knew we would not be waiting that long.

I can hear the horses now, pawing at the ground with their hooves. See them snorting clouds of mist into the frozen air. I can see the steam curling off their flanks. It's funny how before you die, little things become much, much more important. Like the dew on the little flowers I crush underfoot as I creep toward battle. Like the woman I left behind tonight, the one in my tent, the one who was there when the messenger came to find me.

The one who bore my child.

I almost wish I knew her name. It wouldn't matter, to her or to me, but small comforts can be everything, when you know there is no tomorrow. I wonder what she will name her son, if he will be a warrior as was I, as was my father. I wonder if the man who sired me had these thoughts once, if I am more like him than I would dare admit.

I wonder if he wanted to cried too, when his captain gave the order.

"Take the men" he whispered to me past bloodflecked lips, "give them a glorious death, a death fit for warrior-poets. Don't let those state bastards have their way." I could hear the blood in his voice, bubbling up from some visceral wound in his chest. He would die this night, and in his last breaths, he had asked the same of me.

I left the tent, fear gripping my chest tight, and strapped on my bracers. The girl I had met when we passed through town a few scant months ago, the tavern girl who had shared my bed that one night, cried in her shawl. I felt a twinge in my heart, a missed beat in the steady pulse. I hated myself then, for doing to her child what had once been done to me. The bastard son of a bastard son. What life is that?

I turned my back on her, turned to my brothers, my companions, my friends, and said to them, "Once these were our lands. Once these were our homes. Once, no invader dared set foot upon this mountain. These things have changed. Now it is we who are the foreigners here! We have lost much in the past months. Friends. Family. Land. We have lost much, but we have not lost our dignity, nor our honor! These things I will not let them take from me, nor from you. I am not your captain. I am not your commander. I am a soldier, just like you. And as a soldier, I choose to take this fight to them! I will not cower like a rat waiting for them to kill me at their pleasure. I will die on my terms. I will die as a man of the Highland clans!" And with that I left the camp behind me. Many of the men followed, though we were outnumbered in the hundreds.

I can see the enemy now, though they cannot yet see me. Most of them are unarmed, a few even drunk. It would not be a grand battlefield, but it would be our battlefield. Even if we died this very hour, none could deny that this battlefield was one of our choosing.

I gave the sign, dropping over the low rise into the light of the fire with a fierce roar. My country-men followed, their shields high just as I had taught them. We slew the first dozen with almost comical ease. The next met us head on, meeting our warriors blade to blade. A wode raider in the darkness let loose his own animal howl, cutting through their ranks as only a berserker can. For my part, I held them well. I met my foe blow for blow, cutting and dodging as I had learned so long ago.

It seemed hours later that the last of us fell. He lay there in the mud, looking me in the eye. He was young, far younger than me. I was almost sorry - almost abashed - but tonight was a night for fighting, not regret. A moment of wrenching agony tore at me, but I would not look away. He shuddered, from the cold, or from fear I do not know, and then there was only the snow, falling softly in the dark of night. And then there was nothing.

I died there, in the forests of a town that was not my own, surrounded by the crippled and the dead, victims of a cause we never believed in. I died beside my men, weak and starved, outnumbered and alone. It was ignoble, it was sad, it was brutal and bloody and it meant nothing. But for all the world I would not have died anywhere but here, with my brothers in arms. Baptized in blood and fire, christened in battle, and dead in darkness.

A beautiful life.

A beautiful death.