Black and grey shaded dagger tattoo with scrolled crossguard on a person's ribs, with a white top lifted to show it.

Dagger tattoo on the ribs

Traditional · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A shaded black and grey dagger sits upright at the centre of the torso, with a pointed tip, a faceted grip and a crossguard that curls at the ends. The blade uses light and dark grey shading to suggest facets, with a chevron detail near the guard. The plain white background of the skin and the lifted fabric keep the focus on the tattoo, and a partial tattoo outline is visible at the left edge.

Traditional Ribs Dagger Blade Knife

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The blacksmith's widow at Hollin Ford had one thing of her husband's that the moneylenders wanted, and it was a dagger he had never sold. It hung on a nail above the hearth with its grip wrapped in old linen, and the curled crossguard caught the firelight like a pair of ram's horns. When the winter came hard and the bread ran short, she took it down and carried it to the town of Brask, where the lamps were lit early and the streets smelled of tallow.

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The moneylender, a thin man named Oswin Pell, turned the blade over in his soft hands and laughed. The steel was grey, not black, and the faceted edges looked to him like a child's drawing of a blade. He offered four shillings. She said nothing and put the dagger back in its linen. Then she sat on his step until the lamplighter came round, and when he asked her what she was waiting for, she told him she was waiting for the night to decide what the knife was worth.

That night a carter passing through told Oswin about a lord in the hills who paid well for work that could not be sold in the market. By morning Oswin had gone up the road to see for himself, and he came back with a face the colour of tallow and a purse the weight of his own grief. The widow had never gone near the lord. She had only let the light do its work on the blade, and the chevron near the guard had pointed the way.