Miles Cameron - The Red Knight

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 For good swordsmen, it’s not enough to win. They need to win their own way. Learn a man’s way, and he becomes predictable.

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 rabatter cut with both wrists, meant to pound an opponent’s blade into the ground.

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 under Tom’s blade.

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 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.