Bent put his horn to his lips and blew. ‘Cease!’ he roared. He turned to Cuddy. ‘Kanny’s still down range!’ he shouted at the master archer.
Cuddy grinned. ‘I know
The two snickered as Kanny came from behind the central target, running as fast as his long, skinny legs would carry him.
The archers roared with laughter.
Kanny was spitting with rage and fear. ‘You bastard!’ he shouted at Cuddy.
‘I told you to work faster,’ Cuddy said mildly.
‘I’ll tell the captain!’ Kanny said.
Bent nodded. ‘You do that.’ He motioned. ‘Off you go.’
Kanny grew pale.
Behind him, the other archers walked up to their places, and began to loose.
The captain was late to the drill. He looked tired, and he moved slowly, and he leaned on the tall stone wall surrounding the sheepfold that Ser Hugh had converted to a tiltyard and watched the men-at-arms at practice.
Despite fatigue and the weight of plate and mail Ser George Brewes was on the balls of his feet, bouncing from guard to guard. Opposite him, his ‘companion’ in the language of the tilt yard, was the debonair Robert Lyliard, whose careful fighting style was the very opposite of the ostentatious display of his arms and clothes.
Brewes stalked Lyliard like a high-stepping panther, his pole-arm going from guard to guard – low, axe-head forward and right leg advanced, in the Boar’s Tooth; sweeping through a heavy up-cut to rest on his right shoulder like a woodcutter in the Woman’s Guard.
Francis Atcourt, thick waisted and careful, faced Tomas Durrem. Both were old soldiers, unknighted men-at- arms who had been in harness for decades. They circled and circled, taking no chances. The captain thought he might fall asleep watching them.
Bad Tom came and rested on the same wall, except that his head projected clear above the captain’s head. And even above the plume on his hat.
‘Care to have a go?’ Tom asked with a grin.
No one liked to spar with Tom. He hurt people. The captain knew that despite all the plate armour and padding and mail and careful weapon’s control, tiltyard contests were dangerous and men were down from duty all the time with broken fingers and other injuries. And that was without the sudden flares of anger men could get when something hurt, or became personal. When the tiltyard became the duelling ground.
The problem was that there was no substitute for the tiltyard, when it came to being ready for the real thing. He’d learned that in the east.
He looked at Tom. The man had a reputation. And he had dressed Tom down in public a day before.
‘What’s your preference, Ser Thomas?’ he asked.
‘Longsword,’ Bad Tom said. He put a hand on the wall and vaulted it, landed on the balls of his feet, whirled and drew his sword. It was his war sword – four feet six inches of heavy metal. Eastern made, with a pattern in the blade. Men said it was magicked.
The captain walked along the wall with no little trepidation. He went into the sheepfold through the gate, and Michael brought him a tilt helmet with solid mesh over the face and a heavy aventail.
Michael handed him his own war sword. It was five inches shorter than Bad Tom’s, plain iron hilted with a half-wired grip and a heavy wheel of iron for a pommel.
As Michael buckled his visor, John of Reigate, Bad Tom’s squire, put his helmet over his head.
Tom grinned while his faceplate was fastened. ‘Most loons mislike a little to-do wi’ me,’ he said. When Tom was excited, his hillman accent overwhelmed his Gothic.
The captain rolled his head to test his helmet, rotated his right arm to test his range of motion.
Men-at-arms were pausing, all over the sheepfold.
‘The more fool they,’ the captain said.
He’d watched Tom fight. Tom liked to hit hard – to use his godlike strength to smash through men’s guards.
His father’s master-at-arms, Hywel Writhe, used to say
Tom rose from the milking stool he’d sat on to be armed and flicked his sword back and forth. Unlike many big men, Tom was as fast as the tomcat that gave him his name.
The captain didn’t strike a guard at all. He held his sword in one hand, the point actually trailing on the grass.
Tom whirled his blade up to the high Woman’s Guard, ready to cleave his captain in two.
‘Garde!’ he roared. The call echoed off the walls of the sheep fold and then from the high walls of the fortress above them.
The captain stepped, moved one foot off line, and suddenly he had his sword in two hands. Still trailing out behind him.
Tom stepped off-line, circling to the captain’s left.
The captain stepped in, his sword rising to make a flat cut at Tom’s head.
Tom slapped the sword down – a
The captain powered in, his back foot following the front foot forward. He let the force of Tom’s blow to his blade rotate it, his wrist the pivot – sideways and then
He caught the point of his own blade in his left hand, and tapped it against Tom’s visor. His two handed grip and his stance put Tom’s life utterly in his hands.
‘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
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.
