Long Paw scared him in a different way to Bad Tom. Tom could hurt him, but Long Paw could defeat him. Gabriel lost a beat in the circling as he understood some implications of this.

A matter of mind-set.

Something that applied to the contest with Ash, too.

He went over to the attack, throwing combinations: one-two, one-two.

Long Paw parried, but didn’t attempt a difficult counter-time attack; Long Paw prided himself on a clean kill, and never, ever allowed himself to be “doubled” in the company sparring.

Doubling being when both companions struck each other in the same tempo. Both dead, with real blades.

So he parried and retreated, parried and retreated.

Parried and parried and stepped off-line, waiting for Gabriel’s flurry to exhaust itself.

Gabriel, on the other hand, was well fed, newly married, and had just been cured of a disease that was eating his lungs. He’d seldom felt so fit.

He threw a triple: three blows. He cut a diagonal from his own left to right, descending: a reverso. Then he cut from his forehand: right to left, flat, eye-level. Mezzano.

Long Paw parried hard, and the edges of the two sharp swords cut into each other.

Gabriel was grinning in his helmet. He let go his left hand from the hilt and pivoted the blade on Long Paw’s blade . . .

Reached to take it at the half-blade on the other side . . .

And watched in appalled wonder as Long Paw reached between his hands and caught his own blade at the half, the point at Gabriel’s throat, a perfect counter-time.

“Shit,” Gabriel said.

“I’ve waited my whole life to do that to someone,” Long Paw gloated. “By the Blessed Virgin!”

He let out a loud whoop.

Cheers rang out.

Gabriel wilted, but no one seemed to be mocking him, and he got his visor open. Young Hamish was gazing at Long Paw with something like adoration. Veteran swordsmen came and pounded his back; the company was the kind of place where the counter to the punta falsa was known, discussed, and practiced the way priests examined the Trinity.

But never performed.

Gabriel shook his head and his eye was caught by a man sitting, filing nicks out of the edge of his sword.

It was Philip de Beause.

No one seemed to want to talk to a defeated emperor, so he walked across the turf to de Beause.

The jouster rose and bowed. “Majesty,” he said.

“Philip,” the emperor managed. He couldn’t stop himself. “You died.”

De Beause shrugged. “Oh aye. I did.” He looked away. “And not for the first time, my lord.”

Gabriel turned to find Tom Lachlan at his shoulder. “He doesn’ae like to talk about it,” Tom said.

Gabriel nodded. But de Beause shrugged. “I had an amulet,” he said. “An old thing. It broke, the last time. I suppose the next time I eat a lance, I’m done for.”