Colour tattoo of a blue-hilted sword and a grey shield with a red crest and gold triangle on a forearm, in a neo-traditional style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sword and shield tattoo on a forearm

Neo-trad · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A large sword with a blue hilt and gold accents points down through a grey, bevelled shield with a red emblem and a gold triangle at its centre. Bold dark outlines and soft black smoky shading surround the shield, with orange swirls and blue and green shapes filling the background. The design is centred on the forearm and fills most of the frame.

Neo-trad Forearm Sword Shield Triangle Crest Swirl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The sword had been driven point first into the floor of the chapel at Ashcombe, and nobody in the village could say who had done it, only that it had been there longer than the oldest yew. Old Maud swept the flags around it every Thursday and never once touched the grip. Children dared each other to lay a hand on the blue hilt, and the bravest of them came back pale and said it had been warm, like a loaf fresh from the oven.

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Then the river rose in the spring of the bad flood, and the bridge at Wennick went under with three carts still on it. Tomas, the miller's boy, ran up the lane to fetch the priest and found the chapel door open. The sword stood where it always stood, though its point had lifted an inch clear of the stone. Behind the altar, on a hook where no shield had hung in living memory, a round shield of grey iron waited with a red bird worked into its face and a gold triangle at its centre.

Tomas could not lift the sword, so he lifted the shield instead and found it no heavier than a bread tin. He carried it down to the water and held it out over the brown current, and the flow went slack around the bridge posts. He led the carts across one at a time, and the old carthorse, which had never once been brave, walked over without looking down.

By morning the river had gone back to its banks. Tomas hung the shield on the mill wall, where the flour dust settled on it, and nobody ever asked him how he had managed it. The sword stayed in the chapel floor, and Maud still swept around it, though now she left a folded cloth at its foot, in case it wanted something to lean on.