Brian was continually in movement. But Jim noted with approval that he contrived to handle his retreats in such a fashion that they moved around in a circular manner, and Verweather was not able to drive him back against the wall at either end of the courtyard. But when he looked at the King and the Prince to see if they had also noticed these pluses, he saw no sign of it in their faces at all.
"Hit him, Sir Brian!" shouted the King, thumping an arm of his chair with his free hand. "Carry it to him, man!"
Even as the King spoke, Brian struck two lightning blows, coming so close together they almost seemed a single blow—one full-arm, and one half-cocked. They stopped and staggered Verweather, but then Brian was back to his circling and dodging again.
"Neville Smythe knows he cannot stand to match him," said the Prince to his father. "Verweather is wearing him down—aptly is he named!"
Jim longed for the presence of Dafydd, with whom he could compare notes on the fight. But Dafydd, being only an archer, had automatically not been invited. Jim glanced over at where the women stood—as indeed everyone but the King was doing. Angie's face was expressionless. But Geronde's was fierce.
The first furious interchange of blows had slowed down sometime since, and the two fighters were circling each other warily, striking out mainly with the hope of drawing the other off balance, or causing him to expose himself for a moment from behind his shield. There was plenty of strength plainly left in both of them, but both were keeping it as much as possible in reserve for an all-out effort when the opportunity might present itself.
There were occasional quick flurries of exchanged blows, but these were not the supreme effort that would come later, when one or the other showed signs of tiring, or some other indication of vulnerability—usually invisible to the watchers, or at least to Jim.
In short, this bout had reached what Jim had always considered the almost boring middle stage of such encounters. So far neither man seemed to have taken any kind of a serious blow.
But now, abruptly, after what had seemed no more than another minor flurry, as they drew apart to sword's lengths, a small trickle of blood could be seen coming down the side of Brian's face. It became more than a trickle, running down just past the outer edge of his right eye. He ignored it.
"I thought these weapons were supposed to be dulled," said Angie's voice, clear in the tense stillness, otherwise unbroken except by the ring of iron on iron. "Didn't that include the points, too?"
The watching men all glared angrily in her direction, and even Geronde looked sharply up at her. Nobody answered. There was, Jim noted, also a bright scratch on the side of Brian's helmet, stretching down to the trickle of blood on his face. Theoretically, even a blunted point could scratch, if it scraped past lightly but at the right angle.
Or it could be that a blow on Brian's helmet had been heavy enough to cause the scalp beneath the steel to begin bleeding—which did not, Jim told himself, bear thinking of. Still, for a little while he watched Brian's movements closely, for fear he should see some sign of a new slowness or weakness in Brian's actions. But he saw none. And the trickle thinned, stopped.
For the first time when watching such a fight, Jim found himself able to observe with what was almost a trained eye. In many hours of working out with Brian—usually in the forest, safely out of the sight of people in the castle—Jim had actually learned a great deal of what Brian had tried to teach him. But knowing what he should do and having a body and hands that would do it—and as automatically as the fingers of a concert pianist, when he thought of music, would cause it to sound from the instrument before him—were two different things.
But that practice had made Jim familiar with Brian's fighting movements—and very aware of how helpless Jim, himself, would be, faced with an enemy of Verweather's ability. That awareness was what had caused him to accept almost humbly the truth in Sir Harimore's statement at the Earl of Somerset's Christmas party last year, when Harimore had said bluntly that it would be foolish for someone as inept as Jim to try to face him, sword in hand.
Now Jim was only too aware of how right that had been—and probably always would be. Like Brian, Harimore seemed to have been born with a weapon in his hand. And there were many others, even if their skills were nowhere close to that of Brian, Harimore or Sir John Chandos, who could dispose of Jim with ease. From the moment Jim had begun to realize that, he had gone back to trying to learn more from Brian—who never tired of teaching the use of arms—and it was the result of those lessons that had him now watching the actions and conditions of the two fighters before them as intently as the Prince and the King did.
And he saw things, accordingly, he would not have noticed a year before.
The most important of these was the fact, obvious now to Jim, that Brian was continually testing Verweather in what seemed an endless number of ways—even leading the taller man to demonstrate some of the advantage of his extra arm length and longer, weightier sword.
Verweather was clearly aware of this, and was almost certainly holding back for the final moment when they both began to tire, before using some of the more obvious advantages of his longer blade.
That time was approaching. Jim would have lost the fight from exhaustion alone, an hour or more earlier. But, in remarkable shape as these two were, they were flesh and blood—not metal automatons. Their testing strokes were becoming more perfunctory. They were not moving their feet around so much.
With a hollow feeling in his chest, Jim began to realize that it was Brian who was showing signs of tiredness more obviously. His footwork was undeniably slow now, and the point of his sword drooped slightly as he withdrew the weapon after a blow.
What was wrong with him, Jim wondered, almost frantically? He had never seen Brian tire so obviously, not even in his fight with the near-giant Bloody Boots, aboard the pirate vessel, years back. Now he was coming close to missing his latest stroke on Verweather completely. It was reasonless… unless that blood earlier had indeed signaled serious damage beneath his helmet, and only Brian's unbreakable will and years of habit with his weapons had hid the damage he had received until now.
The fight had been going on for nearly three hours—but suddenly now its whole pattern changed.
With no warning movement, Verweather suddenly let his shield slide off his arm to the ground. His near-bastard sword had a pommel large enough for both hands to close around, and he gripped it now in that two-fisted fashion and began to rain blows, with the full force of both arms and his shoulder and back muscles, on Brian's head and shield. At the same time he was taking advantage of the greater leverage of his longer blade from the safe extra distance of his longer weapon.
But then, to the astonishment of everyone, including Jim, Brian also dropped his shield. With an overlapping handgrip on the pommel of his shorter sword, he fought back.
Suddenly, he was the old, swift and sure Brian, apparently as fresh as the moment they had started the combat, he neither tried to block the overhand blows, nor dodge them, but stepped inside the circle of Verweather's swing, so that only the relatively light impacts of the upper part of the long blade could strike him—and began to hammer lightning two-handed blows horizontally at the lower body below Verweather's ribs.
The blunted edge of any sword could never have cut through a chain-mail shirt, but no stomach muscles beneath the chain mail could long endure the sort of hammering Verweather's were getting.
Verweather fell, struggling for breath a moment before he dropped into unconsciousness.
"Well struck! Oh, well struck, Sir Brian!" cried the King, now on his feet, age, heavy belly and wine cup alike forgotten, spilled unheeded to the sparse grass of the interior courtyard. "Prettily done, Sir Brian! You saw, my son! That is the sort of fate to risk if you go against a paladin!"
Jim felt a tugging at his arm and turned.
It was the Prince.
"Sir Mortimer seems oddly hurt, Sir James. Can you help with your magick?"
H
e certainly ought to be able to, Jim thought as he went with the Prince back to the center of the courtyard. There could be nothing wrong with Verweather but wounds, and it was only sickness magic could not touch. But when he got to the fallen man he found other hands had already stripped the knight of his armor and clothing, except his fourteenth-century variation of underwear. That was soaked—more than soaked—with blood.
"He's wounded?" asked Jim unbelievingly, for the blows with which Brian had hit him should not have drawn blood at all—let alone in this quantity.
"Something's broken inside him, my lord and Mage, I think," said a young man with all the clothing, speech and demeanor of a squire. He was kneeling on the other side of Verweather's fallen figure. "I can find no wound on his body, but he is bleeding badly, front and back."
Of course. Understanding jumped to Jim's mind even before the squire had finished. Possibly liver, or kidney hemorrhage. The squire was looking up at him with tears in his eyes. Jim would not have thought Verweather capable of inducing that kind of loyalty—until he remembered how easily tears came to the eyes of everyone—not only women, but men—in this period. Perhaps the squire thought it part of his duty to weep over his knight. But the youngster, as well as everyone else, was now looking at Jim expectantly, and with perfect faith.
"Hm," Jim said. A wound was a wound, inside or out. His magic ought to work.
It did. Where Verweather's underwear had been stripped away, they could see the bleeding that had been oozing through the skin, stop abruptly. But the man remained unconscious.
For a moment Jim considered restoring the lost blood to Verweather's body, but he decided that by now that lost fluid could well have picked up all kinds of infectious matter—the shorts, for one, did not look particularly fresh or clean.
"He is mended!" Jim told them in a voice full of an authority he did not completely feel. "But I cannot give him back the blood he has lost. He must make that up himself." He knelt and felt for a pulse in the closest lax wrist.
"He must take to his bed for a week and do nothing but rest. In that time, he is to have no wine or strong liquid. Only water and perhaps a single mazer of small beer with his food—though he should eat as well as his appetite will allow."
"Damn!" said the Prince, in a vexed tone. "A whole week out of action?"
"That reminds me," said Jim, still being authoritative, "he is to have no excitement. I'm sorry, Your Grace, but these rules must be strictly obeyed if he is to live."
"There is no other thing to be done?"
"None."
"Ah well," said the Prince. "It was God's will, clearly—what are you looking about for, my lord?"
"Sir Brian."
"My—the King has taken him off to his royal chambers to celebrate. No doubt Sir Brian will have to fight the fight all over again in words, though he might rather be abed, himself."
The Prince laughed.
"Ah," said Jim. "Of course. Thank you, Your Grace. I merely wished to tell him that I must now get to my room for a couple of hours of solitary meditation, as I am required to do by magick law after such a working as I have made on Sir Verweather."
"Oh, of course," said the Prince. "May your med—meed—"
"Meditation, Your Grace. It may be I did not say it clearly. I beg your forgiveness."
"Meditation. No, no need. May your meditation go well, and we must not keep you a breath longer."
"Thank you, Your Grace. I bid you all good day. Sirs—be very gentle now with carrying Sir Verweather to his bed."
Amid a chorus of assurances, he went.
When he got to his room, Angie was already there. With her were Dafydd and Geronde.
"I was just leaving, James," said Geronde, rising as he entered.
"You don't have to."
"Yes, I do. I've got to go see if I can get Joan to pry Brian loose from the King before the King decides to keep him all day—awake or asleep! I'm much better now after talking to Angela, and Dafydd is just here, no doubt with matters of importance to discuss."
She did not wait for any protests, but was out the door almost before she had finished speaking.
"Had to work some healing magic on Verweather," said Jim, dropping into the chair Geronde had just vacated. "Sit down, Dafydd!" For Angie was sitting on the bed, leaving the other chair free.
"Thank you, James."
"Actually, Jim, I think I ought to leave, too," said Angie, rising.
"No, no," said Jim, hastily. "I just want to tell Dafydd about Brian's fight, since he couldn't be in the courtyard, and about the way Brian won it. I'd like you to be here, too, since you were there and saw what happened, too. In fact I would have liked Geronde here as well, but she was too fast for me, and probably what she aims to do is a lot more important, anyway. Sit down."
"Pray, stay with us," said Dafydd in almost the same breath. "But will you not take the chair?" Angie sat down on the bed again. "Thank you, my lady."
"Lady, nothing," said Angie. "To you, Angela. You know that!"
"Thank you, Angela." Gravely, Dafydd sat down in the chair. "But I must tell you, James, I had a good view of everything that passed in the courtyard—from an arrow slit in a wall behind the English King's throne, looking down. It was no more than I might have expected from Brian, yet my heart warms at the beauty of it. I have always been drawn to work well done."
"Now that's the thing," said Jim. "I understood more of what was going on today than I ever saw when two men were matched that way. You talk as if you believe Brian had it all planned out before the fight ever started?"
"I believe he knew what he wished to do before swords ever met," said Dafydd. "He is far more learned and skilled in swordwork than I will ever be, and I am not a man to say a thing is, when it only may be. But beyond what he wished to do, I believe he left the fine points of his fight for the fight itself, and how Verweather should prove himself to be, to decide, and trusted himself then to bring it to the end we all saw."
"Angie?" said Jim. "Were you that sure of him, too?"
"Anything but. My heart was in my mouth. Geronde might have been—she knows him better than anyone. But you always worry, with any fight like that."
"Then he did plan the whole combat," said Jim. "I suspected it, but I didn't know enough of swordwork—as you say, Dafydd—to be sure. Now, I'll ask him when we've got time to talk. I've got a lot to learn."
"What man does not?" said Dafydd, diplomatically.
"Now, don't you go fighting duels," said Angie to Jim. "It was hard enough on me watching Brian today."
"No. I can always plead the defensive-only law of the Collegiate of Magickians. But I've run into fighting before this, and there can't be much doubt I'll run into more unexpectedly from time to time. The more I can learn the better."
"What happens when you run into some wise old swordsman unexpectedly, then?"
"Wise old swordsmen usually don't do unexpected things. They're too sure of their own skills. I can beg off, surrender, or whatever. It's just the people that jump on me without warning that I have to worry about."
Angie did not look convinced. But she said nothing more—with an effort, Jim suspected—and mainly because Dafydd was there.
There was a scratching at the door.
"Come!" shouted Jim.
The door opened. A man-at-arms stood there—not the one on duty.
"I come charged with a message for you, my lord. The Lady Geronde sends to say that Sir Brian Neville Smythe is now back in their room, but is sleeping and should not be waked until further notice. But His Grace the Prince Edward of Wales may pay you a visit. No answer is requested."
The armsman still stood, however, in case Jim should have some word to send back with him.
"Good. Go," said Jim in the proper abrupt manner of his rank.
"I am away." Dafydd stood up as the door closed behind the messenger.
"You don't need to go just yet," said Angie. "The Prince may not even come at all."
"H
e will come," said Dafydd, moving toward the door, "and it is as well he does not see you and I, James, too often together. Also I have a wife, and a room of my own I am somewhat overdue in. But I thank you for your kindly thought, Angela."
The door closed behind him.
"He wanted to save me the embarrassment of having to order him out of the room, if the Prince showed up. This rank business is hell, sometimes."
"It certainly is!" said Angie.
Chapter Twenty-One
No invitation came from the King for them to have dinner with him.
"He's probably tired out himself, after the day's excitement. More excitement than he's had in days, around here," Jim suggested.
"It's half an hour to an hour before time to go down to the Great Hall, here."
He started to take off the cote-hardie.
"You keep that on," said Angie. "You might as well, now you've got it on. I'd like the Prince and the others to see you've got some good clothes."
"My arm itches and I can't get at it through this elephant-blanket material!"
"Ignore it. Be a man."
"I already am one," said Jim, annoyed. But he kept the cote-hardie on.
The restraint was not wasted. The voice of the man-at-arms outside the door came through the wood.
"His Grace the Prince of Wales to see you, my Lord!"
"More fuss and flummery…" muttered Jim. He went to the door and opened it.
"Your Grace!" he said. "How good of you to come by!"
"Not coming at an inconvenient time, am I?" Edward strode past into the room. "No, I see you're already dressed for dinner—ah, good eve to you, Lady Angela."
But this time Angie made no excuse to take herself out of the room and leave the two of them alone. She rose briefly from where she sat, smiling, curtsied and sat back down again.
"Will Your Grace take a chair?"
"No, no. I believe not. Think better on my feet, James. With poor Verweather laid up the way he is—ugly sort of wound that, inside a man—I am somewhat at a loss in my campaign to regain the goodwill of my father. Now, you people had been talking about the fact you might want to stay only three days—leaving the day after tomorrow. But doubtless it would not put you out too much to stay until he's on his feet again?"