“Nothing Come Easy”

“Stalking out at dusk from Roedon,
trench gun slung across my back
Iron boots on broken flagstones,
scent of blood along the track

Gods who watch the black pine shudder
old as rust and winter’s edge
Why leave teeth beneath the heather
why let nightmares cross the hedge

‘Fore I hunted shadowed valleys
in the madness of my youth
Tracked the thunder in the hollows
never pledged my soul to truth

Never knelt before a council
never kissed the master’s ring
Never prayed for peace or pardon
steel’s the only song I sing

Roedon , Roedon , doomed old Roedon
crown me king of claw and mire
Let the sabers prowl the moorland
let the night catch fire with fire

Let the bones of friends and traitors
bleach beside the haunted fen
I have come to wake the monsters
I have come to hunt again

Dreams are fangs in distant darkness
flashing quick through fog and bone
Hope is hot brass in the barrel
roaring out across the stone

If the halls are cold behind me
and the moon rides high and red
I will find my mercy hunting
where the wild things are not dead

Wind may shriek through shattered towers
mother’s whisper of the slain
Let them talk of crowns and kinfolk
I have loosed the dogs again

I have gone to seek the hunter
where the saber-tooth still go
And the guns ring under starlight
old Roedon need never know”