The night filled with the sound of clashing steel, the smell of woodsmoke and peat, the firelight coloring the blades and his challenger’s helm, and the quiet exultation of the spectators. Ranulf felt alive as he only ever did with a sword in his hand, each blow sending the thrilling shock up his arm to his shoulder, stirring his blood. How long he pressed the attack was impossible to say. For minutes or hours, he fought hard, engaged in the dance with an opponent who gave no quarter. Step and turn and thrust and heave – and still the boy stood without a scratch upon him.

It was like trying to fight a wisp of smoke, he thought sourly as he pulled back and circled to the left, using the night to conceal himself for the barest instant before lunging again. What the boy lacked in strength, he compensated for in speed and grace, and Ranulf began to understand why the men had welcomed this spectacle. For all his famed skill at tourney and war, he had rarely found the man who challenged him so completely. It was as if the boy had some magic that protected him. The blows fell hard enough to strike sparks in the smoky night, but none touched him.

He is as good as me. The thought sent a shock like ice through his veins, and he struck hard through the boy’s defenses at last, the edge of his sword biting into his opponent’s thigh and bringing blood. The boy, damn him, turned it to advantage, swinging his own blade down and across to strike the danger away and tangle the weapons together, throwing Ranulf off balance for the barest breath – long enough to deliver a strike to his right forearm with the flat of the sword. It hurt, but it was strange and lucky that the boy did not turn the blade to cut across Ranulf’s recent injury. He had no time to think of the fortune that spared him that, for his opponent wasted no time in pressing the attack.

He pushed himself as he had only ever done in the direst of circumstance, for the first time fighting against the fear that he may lose as much as he fought against his foe. He managed to back the boy against a tree, hemming him in, and Ranulf watched him struggle. They were both breathing hard, grunting with each blow, but he could not slow the boy down, nor pin him for long before he slipped away like a greased pig.