‘One,’ he said.
Tom laughed. ‘Brawly feckit!’ he called.
He stepped back and saluted. The captain returned the salute and sidestepped, because Tom came for him immediately.
Tom stepped, then swept forward with a heavy downward cut.
The captain stopped it, rolling the blade well off to the side, but as fast as he could bring his point back on line, Tom was inside his reach-
And he was face down in sheep dip. His hips hurt, and now his neck hurt.
But to complain was not the spirit of the thing.
‘Well struck,’ he said, doing his best to bounce to his feet.
Tom laughed his wild laugh again. ‘Mine, I think,’ he said.
The captain had to laugh.
‘I was planning to chew on your toes,’ he said, and drew a laugh from the onlookers.
He saluted, Tom saluted, and they were on their guards again.
But they’d both shown their mettle, and now they circled – Tom looking for a way to force the action close, and the captain trying to keep him off with short jabs. Once, by thrusting with his whole sword held at the pommel, he scored on Tom’s right hand, and the other man flicked a short salute, as if to say ‘that wasn’t much’. And indeed, Ser Hugo stepped between them.
‘I don’t’ allow such trick blows, my lord,’ Hugh said. ‘It’d be a foolish thing to do in a melee.’
The captain had to acknowledge the truth of that assertion. He had been taught the Long Point with the advice never use this unless you are desperate. Even then-
The captain’s breath was coming in great gasps, while Tom seemed to be moving fluidly around the impromptu ring. Breathing well and easily. Of course, given his advantages in reach and size, he could control most aspects of the fight, and the captain was mostly running away to keep his distance.
The last five days of worry and stress sat as heavily on his shoulders as the weight of his tournament helm. And Tom was very good. There was really little shame in losing to him. So the captain decided he’d rather go down as a lion than a very tired lamb. And besides, it would be funny.
So – between one retreat and the next blow – he swayed his hips, rotated his feet so that his weight was back, and let go the sword’s hilt with his left hand. Eastern swordsmen called it ‘The Guard of One Hand’.
Tom swept in with another of his endless, heavy, sweeping blows. Any normal man would have exhausted himself with them. Not Tom. This one came from his right shoulder.
This time, the captain tried for a rebatter defence – his sword sweeping up, one handed, coming slightly behind Tom’s but cutting as fast as a falcon strikes its prey. He caught Tom’s sword and drove it faster along its intended path as he stepped slightly off-line and forward, surprising his companion. His free left hand shot out, and he punched Tom’s right wrist, and then his left hand was between the big man’s hands, and Tom’s aggressive pursuit of his elusive opponent carried him forward – the captain’s left hand went deeper, and he achieved the arm lock, and twisted, in complete possession of the man’s sword and shoulder-
And nothing happened. Tom was not rotated. In fact, Tom’s rush turned into a swing, and the captain found himself swinging off Tom’s elbow and the giant turned to the left, and again, and the captain couldn’t let go without tumbling to the ground.
His master-at-arms had never covered this situation.
Tom whirled him again, trying to shake him off. They were at a nasty impasse. The captain had Tom’s sword bound tight, and his elbow and shoulder in a lock too. But Tom had the captain’s feet off the ground.
The captain had his blade free – mostly free. He hooked his pommel into Tom’s locked arms, hoping it would give him the leverage to, well, to do what should have happened in the first place. The captain’s sense of how combat and the universe worked had received a serious jar.
But even with both hands-
Tom whirled him again, like a terrier breaking a rat’s neck.
Using every sinew of his not inconsiderable muscles, the captain pried his pommel between Tom’s arms and levered the blade over Tom’s head and grabbed the other side, letting his whole weight go onto the blade.
In effect, he fell, blade first, on Tom’s neck.
They both went down.
The captain lay in the sheep muck, with his eyes full of stars. And his breath coming like a blacksmith’s bellows.
Something under him was moving.
He rolled over, and found that he was lying entangled with the giant hillman, and the man was laughing.
‘You’re mad as a gengrit!’ Tom said. He rose out of the muck and smothered the captain in an embrace.
Some of the other men-at-arms were applauding.
Some were laughing.
Michael looked like he was going to cry. But that was only because he had to clean the captain’s armour, and the captain was awash in sheep dip.
When his helmet was off, he began to feel the new strain in his left side and the pain in his shoulder. Tom was right next to him.
‘You’re a loon,’ Tom said. He grinned. ‘A loon.’
With his helmet off, he could still only just breathe.
Chrys Foliack, another of the men-at-arms who had hitherto kept his distance from the captain, came and offered his hand. He grinned at Tom. ‘It’s like fighting a mountain, ain’t it?’ he asked.
The captain shook his head. ‘I’ve never-’
Foliack was a big man, handsome and red-headed and obviously well-born. ‘I liked the arm lock,’ he said. ‘Will you teach it?’
The captain looked around. ‘Not just this minute,’ he said.
That got a laugh.
Harndon Palace – The King
The king was in armour, having just trounced a number of his gentlemen on the tilt field, when his constable, Alexander, Lord Glendower – an older man with a scar that ran from his right eyebrow, all the way across his face, cleaving his nose from right to left so deeply as to make most men he met wince – and then down across his face to his mouth, so that his beard had a ripple in it where the scar had healed badly, and he always looked as if he was sneering – approached with a red-haired giant at his back.
Glendower’s scar couldn’t have suited a man worse as he was, as far as the king was concerned, the best of companions, a man little given to sneering and much to straight talk unlaced by flattery or temper. His patience with his soldiers was legendary.
‘My lord, I think you know Ranald Lachlan, who has served you two years as a man-at arms.’ He bowed, and extended an arm to the red-bearded man, who was obviously a hillman – red hair, facial scarring, piercing blue eyes like steel daggers, and two ells of height unhidden by the hardened steel plate armour and red livery of the Royal Guard.
Ranald bowed deeply.
The king reached out and clasped his hand. ‘I’m losing you,’ he said warmly. ‘The sight of your great axe always made me feel safe,’ he laughed.
Ranald bowed again. ‘I promised Lord Glendower and Sir Ricard two years when I signed my mark,’ the hillman said. ‘I’m needed at home, for the spring drive.’
Sir Ricard Fitzroy, so indicated, was the captain of the guard.
‘Your brother is the Drover, I know,’ the king said. ‘It’s a troubled spring, Ranald. Alba will be safer if your axe is guarding beeves in the hills, rather than guarding the king, safe in Harndon. Eh?’
Ranald shrugged, embarrassed. ‘There’ll be fighting, I ha’e na’ doot,’ he admitted. Then he grinned. ‘I have no doubt, my lord.’
The king nodded. ‘When the drive is over?’ he asked.
‘Oh, I have reason to come back,’ he said with a grin. ‘My lord. With your leave. But my brother needs me, and there are things-’
Every man present knew that the things Ranald Lachlan wanted involved the Queen’s secretary, Lady Almspend – not an heiress, precisely. But a pretty maid with a fair inheritance. A high mark for a King’s Guardsman, commonly born.