Cormac attacked, erred, and caught a stroke to the shoulder that was adjudged wounding. Indeed, he felt it through padded coat and mail. Unhappily, he was told he could use his buckler no longer. Cormac loosed it and sent the round shield spinning as though it weighed much less than its fifteen pounds; one man ducked, another tried to catch it, and a third succeeded. The second nursed a backbent finger.
Shield-less, Cormac gazed into the grinning face of Bress Long-arm.
Already the youth had noted that Bress did not fight as Forgall did, for Bress was excellent, and longer of arm; he was proud to use sword alone. Pride. And temper. Aye. Cormac’s youthful eyes narrowed to slits and his brain raced.
Now, against an unshielded opponent, Bress succumbed to over-confidence: pride in ability. He came boring in, covering himself well while he loosed a flurry of short strokes.
With his own sword Cormac batted away one, then ‘two and then three cuts. Realization was on him that he’d not be allowed to attack; Bress would keep him busy using sword as defense only, and certainly find the opening to strike a killing blow. Accordingly Cormac bashed away a short cut with all his might, so that his arm shivered with the impact. He came back high with his own blade, drawing Bress’s shield up-and whipped out a foot to kick Bress in the shin.
Bress lurched. His right foot skidded in the mud. The edge of his padded wooden blade, hard-swung, banged the side of Cormac’s helm-and further unbalanced the champion. Bress Long-arm fell into the mud with a great splash that spattered Cormac as high as his chin. He did not notice; his head rang from what be knew was a killing blow.
All about Bress and the youth standing over him lofted whoops of laughter. Bress’s great glower soon evaporated that noise. A judge’s voice called out: Partha mac Othna was dead of a cloven head, with helmet-steel in his brain.
“Over-ruled!” Bress bawled, from the muck. “Was the flat of my blade only!”
Cormac would have seen grins and winks directed his way, but he was watching his downed opponent. Pride and anger, Cormac mused. Those are Bress’s weaknesses. I’ll be remembering. But… now he wants me not “dead.” He belies his own stroke, so that he may rise and tumble me into this sludge!
He gave Bress that opportunity. Cormac made no move to attack the downed man who, in an effort to rise, slipped and splashed down anew. Cormac banged his blade against his own chest. All knew he could have struck Bress then, and won, in accord with Bress’s own altered rules. And Bress knew. It was enough. Backing two paces, Cormac assumed a position of readiness, though he bore no shield. He waited.
Bress began to come up, mud dripping from him. He was enraged and yet forced to take care lest he slip and fall anew. Every man stood watching as if ensorceled. Bress Big-foot would make much more of this…
Forgall’s shout made every-man jerk.
“Ho, what a fight! What a well-matched pair these be! I was telling you, Bress! Only yourself could have come to my aid a few days agone the way Partha did!”
Forgall came up grinning, holding up his dress plaide from the mud. His wide-open face showed only good cheer and delight. “But-it’s yourself was to be teacher this day, Bress. It seems the student has been at the giving of lessons!”
Hearty laughter leaped up all about and provided the wings on which tension fled. Bress muttered a few words about having slipped in the mud.
“I saw,” Forgall said smiling, looking fondly from Bress to Cormac and back.
“In truth was Bress struck the blows,” Cormac said. “He both wounded me and, in my thinking, slew me.”
“Och!” Forgall cried in delight. “What a pair of weapon-men!”
Bress did not acknowledge Cormac’s kind words. Nor dared he fault the recruit on his foot use. Was fair, and Forgall’s way of fighting, he offsetting his short-waistedness by such means; was the sensible way.
A rather startled Cormac tried mentally to examine his sudden revelation. Why, Forgall was more ingenuous than he! Had Forgall been Bress he’d have laughed; Forgall had no intention of rubbing salt into Bress’s figurative wounds with his words of teacher and student, for the captain was a good-natured weapon-man who respected those of equal and superior skill. To Forgall, it must be hardly conceivable that such as Bress and Partha did not love each the other.
Then, thinking on that, Cormac mac Art glanced up as a mucky Bress mac Keth slogged away, and the youth caught the other’s darkly vengeful look.
To Forgall, was all a game; he loved fighting, even to the death that day with the Picts. To Bress: exaltation of another was not to be tolerated-nor was defeat or minor humiliation. Cormac resolved to think hard on both men, and to attempt to mould himself accordingly.
Forgall took up a comanding position and shouted his news.
“On the morrow we march northward, for the Boruma time is upon us. The victors in to-day’s little combats are at their leave-to clean up and betake themselves wheresoever they will… you who won not must practice the more. For it’s your very lives are at stake, boys. Bress… Battle-leader… would ye be remaining with them?”
The request was that, a request and ultra-politely made; obviously Bress could not refuse. He nodded.
Cormac and those others who’d won their encounters returned to the barracks. Rather more than one of his fellows let him know how they had loved seeing Bress Lamfhada mac Keth put into his place: the mire. Cormac accepted their accolades in good fellowship and kept silent his total agreement.
He was nervous and thoughtful while he stripped and cleansed himself for he was much bespattered. Bad enow that Bress had disliked him on sight. Now the dislike had loped into a feeling beyond animosity.
After washing, Cormac pulled on leggings of white linen. Over them he drew the blue tunic Lugaid the Fox was happy to lend him, and he drew his boots up over his tight braecs. Next came the vest of black leather with its shoulder-broadening guards for upper arms and shoulders, and about his waist he buckled his weapon-belt, without sword or scabbard. He took a dagger of course, sheathed at his hip, but yesterday’s experience told him he’d be better off in Carman without a sword. He might draw it in anger. As for the dagger: that was after all an eating utensil.
Men were waiting for him; they wanted the suddenly-popular foreigner as part of their group.
Cormac remembered his desire to have his hair Leinsterishly trimmed, and made mention of it’.
“Och, Partha! If ye’d but said that afore; it’s I cut the hair of half the men here, and for a trifle. But now…”
Cormac nodded. “Perhaps this evening.”
“Absolutely! But come-let us go and find a good inn and empty its larder!”
The group of full dozen weapon-men, swaggering for they’d won this leave, left the camp. They went happily and rather boisterously along the road to Leinster’s gate, keeping to the grass alongside; the road was muddy and they’d had enough of that. A carter with loose red-grey hair smiled on them, and his youngish son and his daughter-who was older-turned and stared large-eyed at these fine heroes of King Ulad. Each received a wink or three; the boy grinned, assuming they were for him.
Just inside the gate sat a young slender fellow, red of hair and blue of eye. He was covered in a shapeless and threadbare mantle drawn on over a once-red tunic faded to the colour of dying red clover. In his hands a lute; on his lips a song. The words included mesca and mocci.