“Get back in the fight,” I growled,uselessly, but I believe the fact that I was pointing thespatha in his face got my messageacross.
This was all the time I spent, and nowTincommius was a dozen paces ahead of me, forcing me to break intoan all-out run to catch up, counting on him being forced to slow abit as he skirted the roaring fire, where a dozen townsmen werefrantically dipping leather buckets into one of the barrels in adesperate attempt to contain the blaze. I caught up with him justas he was skirting the burning houses, and even essentially pressedup against the wall, the heat was so intense that afterward Idiscovered all of the hair of my right arm had been singed off. Inthe dark, when one is trying to look beyond a source of light,especially of the size of this fire, it is practically impossibleto determine what is taking place on the other side. I bring thisup because this was why both Tincommius and I plunged headlong intothe kind of fight it would have been better to approach morejudiciously to pick a spot where we could be of use. Although I hadclosed the gap, Tincommius was still a couple of paces ahead of me,so he had to confront a Brigantes spearman who had seen him comingfirst. Even for an experienced warrior, it is next to impossible torespond appropriately when forced to go from a run at full speed tostanding and fighting, and Tincommius did not even try. Aside fromtwisting his torso to get past the spear thrust from his opponent,he did not slow down, slamming into the Brigantes’ shield with allof his weight and sending the man reeling backwards.
My initial intention was to helpTincommius, but not only did he not need it, my arrival had alertedthe comrades of this Brigantes warrior, one of them chargingdirectly at me with a bellow, his spear held at shoulder height,signaling his intention of an overhand thrust. In the eyeblink oftime I had, I saw that this was a beardless youth, brave butinexperienced. Because of the distance between us, he had moved hisshield out from in front of him to pick up speed, clearly intendingto bring it back just before he launched his thrust, which isalways when a warrior is at his most vulnerable. It is a goodmaneuver, and it can be very effective because his enemy is forcedto choose between trying to dodge the spearpoint plunging at him orbrace himself for the impact of a broad wooden shield smashing intohim. Unarmored and unencumbered with a shield as I was, the wisething for me to do was to use my superior maneuverability to dodgeto one side or the other in an attempt to outflank him as hismomentum carried him past me. However, as my mother Giulia haspointed out more than once, nobody has ever uttered my name and“wisdom” in the same breath, unless it is to comment on my lack ofit, which I suppose is why I took a step forward instead of toeither side. What I do know was that I was counting on my size andstrength, if only because I have done so all of my life going backto boyhood, and in this moment, there were two practical effects.The first was that my stepping forward threw off the timing of thisBrigantes youth—I doubt he was more than seventeen—and mostimportantly, it brought him within range of my spatha in the fraction of an eyeblink before hewas going to move his shield in front of him. It ruined his aim sothat his spear punched into the empty space where I had been,although I did have to lean slightly to the right to avoid it,which led to the second effect, the two of us colliding bodilytogether as he essentially killed himself by running onto the pointof my spatha. I had thrown myleft hand out so that my palm hit his chest when there was stillabout a half-arm’s length between us, and while I had braced myselfby moving one foot backward and bent my knees, I still slid back ahalf-step. I did not keep him from running all the way up to thehilt of my spatha out of anysense of mercy but so that I could essentially steer his body awayfrom me as I withdrew the blade. As far as the factthat I did not perform the standard movement of twisting or rippingthe blade across his body—as I recall, he was only wearing boiledleather with iron rings sewn to it—I suppose was because his eyesnever left mine as I killed him, wearing an expression that I haveseen more times than I can easily count. It is a look that everyvictorious fighting man has seen at some point, one of disbeliefmore than pain, the sudden shock that comes with the realization byyour foe that he is drawing his last breaths, and more thananything, the lingering question; why did you do this to me? Inthat moment, I barely noticed; indeed, I was already preparing forthe next Brigantes to attack even as my blade slid from his bodyand
