“These swords allow the men to move about much more easily,” explained Brenna. “Sam learned how to make them from a Frankish smith who stayed here a couple of winters. And he’s added some improvements of his own. See how quickly the men recover from a swing? You couldn’t do that with the old swords unless you had arms like Cú Chulainn’s.”

“And these have a sharper point,” said Clodagh. “More like a spear point. They can inflict a wound by stabbing, not just hacking. You can’t do that with the old ones; they’re simply too heavy for it.”

“Mm-hm,” I murmured. Living at Inis Eala provided a woman with an unusual breadth of knowledge.

Otter got under Spider’s guard and could have slashed him across the thighs, but made the blow a smack with the flat of the blade, demonstrating remarkable control. Some time later, Spider turned unexpectedly and delivered, not a knockout hit, but a delicate tap to Otter’s leather-capped head. Johnny called out to them to stop, and they did. Spider draped a long arm around his friend’s shoulders; Otter brought his blade up in a salute to Johnny and to the cheering onlookers.

Next up was Rat, who defeated the much younger Oran after a lengthy bout. Flidais, a wisp of a woman, screamed fit to scare the gulls from the sky, and once the battle was over her husband stepped over the benches to gather her up in his arms and give her a hearty kiss.

Gareth took on a big man whose name I did not catch and eventually won, though to my untutored eye the contest looked very even. Then a pair of others battled it out with heavy broad-swords, which restricted the combatants—well-muscled men, the two of them—to ponderous swings and lurching movements. It was dramatically clear how the new blades changed the manner of fighting.

“A broadsword like those can cleave a man’s skull in two,” explained Clodagh calmly. “Or hew off his arm or leg. But what makes them lethal also hampers the user. Once you start the swing, the whole weight of your body goes into it.”

“I see.”

“And that means,” put in Brenna, “that if your weapon comes down in the wrong place, your opponent can kill you while you’re still trying to retrieve it.”

Quite soon Johnny called a halt. The combatants were glistening with sweat and breathing hard as they came forward to acknowledge the crowd’s applause. When the cheering died down, Johnny stood to speak again.