Black and grey realism tattoo covering a full back, showing a mounted knight with a raised sword, a shield, a horse, a cross and a city skyline, with the subject's back to the camera.

Mounted knight with raised sword across a full back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large back piece shows a mounted knight in armour, sword raised high, on a rearing horse with a bridled head. A shield bearing a map-like pattern sits beside the rider, and a tall cross stands in the misty city skyline behind, with more armoured figures and a fleur-de-lis at the lower edge. The work uses soft, smoky shading and fine detail in the armour and horse, all in black ink and greys.

Realism Back Horse Sword Shield Cross City Fleur-de-lis Armour

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bells had rung since noon and the east gate was still barred. From the wall the men of Hallow Cross could see the dust of riders coming up the valley road, a long grey smear under the mist. Nobody in the town knew their banner. Wenna the baker said the riders were hungry, and hungry men took bread before anything else.

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Sir Edric went out alone on the grey mare, his sword raised high, because that was how the old tale said a defender rode. Nobody had the heart to tell him the old tale had been written by men who were winning. He stopped beside the stone cross on the ridge. Below him the riders stopped too. Their captain was a thin man with a shield painted with hills and rivers, a map of country none of them had ever walked.

Edric asked what they wanted. The captain said the well at Saltmere had gone bitter and their children were sickening. He pointed at the painted shield on Edric's arm, where the Hallow ran blue down from the hills. Edric looked and saw that his father had painted the river over a hundred years ago, before the mill dam was built, and the water no longer reached the valley road.

They spent the afternoon with chalk on the flat stone by the gate, tracing the old channel with their fingers. By dusk a child from each town was carrying a cracked jug up the hill to share the spring. The sword hung on the gatepost all that summer, and the map on the shield was repainted with the river running the way it used to.