Marrow Lost

The blade of the sword was slick with blood, clinging to the white metal edge.  It was not chipped, though some still said that it was made of bone, even after the hundreds of years it had wandered the earth, changing masters when each successive wielder's luck ran dry.  The man who held it, back pressed against a moss-covered wall, was too tired to stand by his own strength.  Still, the sword tip stretches out toward his hunter, pulled forward by its own lust for blood as much as the strength of its master's arm.  Besides the two men, the ruined bridge and the clearing it sits in is empty and quiet.  The water that travels by beside them is content to babble on despite the scene playing out.  Blood spatters in the grass, mixed from both men, map the progress of the fight back through the undergrowth, traveling for hours before finding the road they had encountered each other on.  With a snap, the blade lunges forward, passing by its crude, iron relative to bury itself in its hunter's chest.  The man was not worthy, but the blade is content to drink in such a failure's life.  Satiated, it sleeps.

Its master collapses, dropping the hilt, gasping for breath.  He himself did not best some famous knight in battle.  He stabbed an old man riding a horse through a bad country.  Perhaps the old man had lived in overconfidence too long, perhaps his skills had degraded from his youth.  If he had recognized the symbol on the old man's cloak, he might have been too scared to approach, but the moon had been covered in clouds that night.  It would be months before rumors spread that the great rabid lion had died in some lost and forgotten province.  No rumors would spread for the thief that was emptying of blood as he hyperventilated on the ground.  None either for his former partner who lay with a hole in his chest.

Something between greed and hatred enters the thief as he catches sight of the sword.  It was the sword's fault, after all.  It yearned for combat, drawing him into it, refusing to rest until everything was dead.  He was not willful enough to control its urges, and it was too proud to acknowledge his weakness.  He loathed the thing, forcing him away from society more than he already had been ostracized.  With his last strength, he pushed the sword forward along the blood-slick grass and over the edge of the bank and down into the river.