Black and grey realism tattoo of plate armour covering a shoulder and upper arm, with an eagle emblem on the upper plate and a figure with lettering on the pauldron.

Plate armour shoulder piece with eagle

Realism · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A tattoo of layered plate armour wraps the shoulder and upper arm, with rivets, straps and overlapping plates rendered in fine shading. An eagle emblem sits on the main plate, and a hooded figure with scrolled lettering is set on the rounded shoulder plate. The piece is shaded in black and grey on smooth, lightly lit skin against a red background.

Realism Shoulder Upper arm Armour Eagle Figure Lettering Rivet

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You have been riveting the shoulder plate since the first bell, and the forge at Scarrow Bottom has grown too hot for the lead smoke to settle. Master Hobb wants it finished before the carts come down the valley road, because the man who ordered it pays in silver and has no patience for a dent. You cut the eagle yourself, two heads turned apart as if each has seen a different danger, the way Hobb showed you on a cold plate your first winter.

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The figure came last. You were told to scratch a pilgrim with a lantern, stooped on a ladder going down into the dark, and to letter a line beneath him in the old hand. Hobb said the words belonged to the customer and you were not to ask what they meant. You copied them anyway, stroke by stroke, driving each curl into the steel so the scroll would catch the light of a lamp held low.

On the third evening the customer came for it, coughing into his sleeve and stamping mud from his boots. He turned the plate over in his hands and ran a thumb along the lettering until it stopped where your graver had skidded. He said nothing about the slip. He paid in full, then asked you to walk him up to the adits, because he wanted to see where the lead came out of the hill.

At the top of the shaft he set the plate on the spoil heap, face up to the sky. The cage rattled up empty, and for a moment the lantern light slid across the rivets and the pilgrim's hooded head, and you understood that he had never been going down at all. He was climbing back out, one careful rung at a time, and the man beside you had already stooped to lift him.