Farrell asked quietly, “Where does that leave chivalry?”
Matteo dei Servi and another student had begun to work out with their swords and shields, circling each other with the peculiar hitching stride that the combat master had employed. They carried the rattan blades well back and almost horizontal, at helmet height, and they struck over the tops of their shields in the rhythm of fencers, turn and turn about. John Erne snapped his fingernails sharply against his own sword as he watched them.
“A dead art form,” he said, “like lute music. As unnatural to the animal as opera or ballet, and yet nobody who puts on even cardboard armor can quite escape it—any more than you can escape the fact that your music believes in God and hell and the King. You and I are what they used to call witnesses, vouching with our lives for something we never saw. The bitch of it is, all we ever wanted to be was experts.”
Abruptly he turned his head and called to the two warily parrying students, “Single-time now!” They faltered for a moment; then the tempo of their fighting doubled, each man guarding against a cut as he delivered one. John Erne said, “There can’t be a dozen fighters in the League who haven’t been through this room. I have trained men to use the broadsword, greatsword, dagger and buckler, maul, flail, mace, the halberd, and the war axe. Some of my students could survive now if you dropped them back into Visigoth Spain or the Crusades.”
“So long as they didn’t drink anything,” Farrell said, and Lovita Bird added almost simultaneously, “Long as they could bring their cassette players.”
The combat master looked at them without answering. Matteo’s adversary aimed a sweeping forehand slash at his head, but Matteo caught it on his shield and moved in to strike where the man’s shield had swung away from the body to counterbalance the roundhouse blow. It sounded like someone jumping on a mattress. The student coughed and bent forward slightly.
John Erne called, “You are less by a leg, Squire Martin.” The young man stepped back, turning a gasping, angry face toward the three watchers. “It wouldn’t have cut through the armor. It has to cut armor.”
“Nay, of us two, who’s to be the judge of steel?” John Erne replied mildly. “You’re down a leg, Martin.”
The student shrugged and lowered himself to one knee, slow in the thick clothing. He crouched behind his shield, exposing nothing but his sword arm. Farrell expected Matteo to strike at that, but he chose to attack over the shield, punching blindly for the tucked-down head and almost compelling the kneeling man to cut at his shoulder. John Erne sighed faintly.
There was no need for him to call a wound; Matteo immediately dropped his shield, switched his sword from right hand to left, and came on more cautiously, trying to take advantage of his foe’s limited reach. But he was carrying the sword too high against a crouching opponent; when the logical swipe at his legs came, he had to jump back and launch the return blow while still off-balance. The effort brought his head down within range of a desperate lunge and strike, as his own sword whacked home on Squire Martin’s motorcycle helmet. John Erne shouted furiously, “Double kill!” and both fighters collapsed in proper style, rolling pitifully onto their backs. Martin, his faceguard knocked loose, rubbed at his runny nose.
“Dear God,” John Erne murmured. He stood up, twiddling his beard again. The ropy, boyish body had not slackened for an instant of the conversation.
Hamid said, “John. Tell the man why you won’t have anything to do with the League. You could have taken the whole thing over long ago.”
The parrot gaze moved from him to Farrell and back again, the face remaining as serene as a clock’s face. “I have a better League here,” John Erne said. He tapped his forehead just above the tail of one spiky eyebrow. “I like mine much better.”
Farrell watched him walk back to his students, eyes down, feet a bit pigeon-toed. The splotched polo shirt clung to his protuberant shoulder blades. He nodded the two fallen fighters to their feet and confronted the half circle of masked boys. Lovita Bird said, “That man is seriously crazy.”
Hamid folded his long legs under him and leaned back against the wall, his chestnut eyes looking very far away. “Might be this is what keeps him sane.”
“It’s strange,” John Erne was saying. “The one thing I really know about broadsword fighting you’ll all have to learn from someone else. The first man you face in the Whalemas Tourney will teach you that it’s very important to use your shield well and also that you don’t know how. You’ve gotten good enough with the sword, all of you, but your idea of shield work is peeking around an ironing board.” He sighed and shrugged, twisting his mouth. “One reason I try to avoid watching my students fight.”
A large, blond boy with a swagbelly like a laundry bag spoke up. “Sir Fortinbras—the one I’m supposed to be squire to—says a shield ought to be as big and light as you can manage it. Without making it so light it splits right off.”
“Sir Fortinbras hasn’t improved as a fighter in three years, for just that reason,” John Erne replied calmly. “No more has Raoul of Carcassonne or Simon Widefarer. Those kite shields they all use were made for men on horseback—they’re pathetic things to be dragging around in close work. They blind you exactly as much as they protect you, they throw your balance off just horribly, and they stop your technique right where it is. I could go through a field of those things with a butter knife. Foolishness.”
He jerked a forefinger at the Japanese student, who was scowling avidly at him over his folded arms. “Most of you probably feel a bit superior to the Ronin Benkei, watching him struggling with that manhole cover of his all this time. But the Ronin Benkei dances with his shield, very old dances of attack and defense called katas. He tells me that he does it twice a day. Can anyone here do that? Martin? Arnuif? Orlando? Can you dance with your plywood weapons?” They shrugged, grinning. The Ronin Benkei’s expression did not change.
“I’m embarrassed to admit that I can’t either,” John Erne said. He drew his own shield out of a frayed, green flannel bag that hung on the back of a chair. His shield was made of steel backed with leather, like the Ronin Benkei’s, but it was circular in shape and moderately convex. Two reinforcing steel bands crisscrossed it, surmounted where they met in the center by a heavy leather boss ornamented with a painted pattern of leaves and moons.
“We’re going to go on to the weapons pass,” John Erne announced. “The idea of the pass—unlike the overrun, which, as we know, is nothing much but crashing into your man in hopes of knocking him off balance—is to open up the side you’re after without leaving yourself vulnerable. You’ll see a lot of clever maneuvers like these at the Whalemas Tourney. Some of them will be aimed at you, so you’d better learn how to guard against them and how to do them yourselves.” He beckoned to the boy called Squire Arnulf. “Approach and have at me.”
Arnulf donned his saber mask, adjusted the long shield on his arm, and set himself to face the combat master. John Erne, standing indifferently straight and scuffing his feet, launched an artless, looping head cut which the boy picked off easily, raising his shield a few inches. For a moment, the shield’s arc blocked his vision; in that moment, John Erne did a stiff little dance step and rushed him, lashing like a scorpion into the sudden gap between shield edge and flailing sword as he went by. Arnulf swayed, and his sword arm rose to his featureless head. John Erne sprang back, no trace of triumph on his face, but only a puckered academic earnestness. “Now how did I do that?” he demanded.
Arnulf did not answer, but the Ronin Benkei shifted slightly to catch the combat master’s attention. “Your back leg,” he said. “You moved your back leg way around to your left for the first cut, and that lured his shield out of line, even before you got it up in front of his eyes. Then you threw your weight back and pivoted and went in.” His voice was very soft and uninflected.