Argosy, September 1955 — page 95: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

93 MEMORY OF A FIGHT BY GERALD KERSH ES (said the old fighter, baring a gnarled arm and showing the company the various marks with which it was tattooed) oh yes, as you may see, I have served in several armies. And here are my badges. Look—here is the Fish, in green, pricked out when I signed on as amercenary for Carthage. And here, again, the 'T'wo Triangles in blue that I wore when I fought for pay on the Levantine Coast. The Triple Cross, in red, I got in Nubia. Came away with a helmet full of silver pieces; and all before I was twenty. Only one mark I hold sacred, though, and that is this one on my thigh. What they call my “ birth-mark.”’ You know I come from Scythia; I am one of the Huns. My name was a Hunnish name, but they got to know me as Crasnius, because I had red hair—it is white now, and not much of it to boast of. Where I come from, do you know, twins are sacred. As soon as twins are born in my Province, the midwife marks them each on the thigh, with a certain mark. The first to come out is tattooed with what, in our language, means Number One, the second, Number Two; but in such a way that the marks cannot be mistaken for the marks of any other twins. Also, they are ineradicable. ‘The midwife does it under the direction of a shaman, who devises the patterns or runes, which are always, by some peculiar formula, coloured purple... Oh, those old men! The secrets they know, them and the midwives—But what was I saying? Oh yes, I was a twin, and marked with my brother as such, which made me kind of holy. But when I was only eighteen, I killed the son of a Chief in a quarrel about a girl and, since I could not pay blood-money, took to my heels and followed the wars, hiring myself here and there until I became a boxer. That was when I was a foot-soldier in a Roman legion. There was a big Goth; we had words over wine, and he struck me in the face. In those days, as it seems to me now, nothing mat- tered. This big Goth, whose name I forget, went down, I assure you, like a tree; but he came up like a ball. comicbooks.conn