Black line drawing of a snarling wolf head pierced by a dagger, with a Winter is Coming banner and snowflakes, shown as a tattoo design.

Wolf head and dagger with Winter is Coming banner

Traditional · Black and grey · Flash

A black outline drawing of a snarling wolf's head, with a dagger running through its lower jaw and a banner above reading WINTER IS COMING. Snowflakes are scattered around the wolf and dagger. The work is linework only, with no shading or fill, on a light background.

Traditional Wolf Dagger Banner Lettering Snowflake

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain has been coming sideways across the market since eight, and by ten the tarpaulin over the cutlery stall is sagging like a wet sail. You have spent the morning wrapping blades in oilcloth for customers who never look at them. Your uncle used to say nobody buys a knife on a wet day unless they already mean to use it, and he was right about most things, which is why his stool is still under the trestle, and why you still sit on it.

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A woman in a green oilskin lifts the old dagger from the velvet tray, the one with the pommel carved like a snarling head. The crossguard is freckled with rust you never bothered to scrub, because the card tied to it is in your uncle's hand and says NOT FOR SALE TO THE IMPATIENT. She turns it so the grey light finds the words cut into the brass: WINTER IS COMING. She laughs, not kindly. "Doesn't look like it's going anywhere," she says, and then, more quietly, "Something's been taking lambs off the top field. My boy sleeps in the byre now with a lamp lit."

You tell her the blade was made to be carried, not swung at shadows, and that a man who hunts in the dark usually finds only his own fear. She argues. The rain argues too, drumming on the tarpaulin until you have to raise your voice. In the end you do not sell her the dagger. You fold a length of oilcloth around it and press it into her hands, and you tell her to take the lamp from the byre and walk the top field herself, slowly, before she decides what needs killing.

When she has gone, the rain thins, then stops. You look up and see the first flakes drifting down over the stalls, too early and too few to settle. One lands on the bare trestle and stays there, white and perfect, not melting, while the wet cobbles steam around it.