I stood with Tristan and his guards as Bedwin made one last futile effort to stop the fight. No one doubted the outcome. Arthur was a tall man, but slender compared with Owain’s muscled bulk, and no one had ever seen Owain bested in a fight. Yet Arthur seemed remarkably composed as he took his place at the circle’s western edge and faced Owain who stood, uphill of him, at the east.
“Do you submit judgment to the court of swords?” Bedwin asked the two men, and both nodded their assent.
“Then God bless you, and God give the truth victory,” Bedwin said. He made the sign of the cross and then, his old face heavy, he walked out of the circle.
Owain, as we had expected, rushed at Arthur, but halfway across the circle, right by the King’s royal stone, his foot slipped in the mud, and suddenly Arthur was charging. I had expected Arthur to fight calmly, using the skills Hywel had taught him, but that morning, as the rains poured from the winter skies, I saw how Arthur changed in battle. He became a fiend. His energy was poured into just one thing, death, and he laid at Owain with massive, fast strokes that drove the big man back and back. The swords rang harsh. Arthur was spitting at Owain, cursing him, taunting him, and cutting again and again with the edge of the sword and never giving Owain a chance to recover from a parry.
Owain fought well. No other man could have sustained that opening, slaughterous assault. His boots slipped in the mud, and more than once he had to beat off Arthur’s attacks from his knees, but he always managed to recover his footing even if he was still driven backwards. When Owain slipped a fourth time I understood part of Arthur’s confidence. He had wanted rain to make the footing treacherous and I think he knew that Owain would be bloated and tired from a night’s feasting. Yet he could not break through that dogged guard, even though he did drive the champion clean back to the place where Wlenca’s blood was still just visible as a darker patch of soaking mud.
And there, by the Saxon’s blood, Owain’s luck changed. Arthur slipped, and though he recovered the falter was all the opening Owain needed. He lunged whip-fast. Arthur parried, but Owain’s sword slit through the leather jerkin to draw the fight’s first blood from Arthur’s waist. Arthur parried again, then again, this time stepping back before the hard, quick lunges that would have gored an ox to its heart. Owain’s men roared their support as the champion, scenting victory, tried to throw his whole body on to Arthur to drive his lighter opponent down into the mud, but Arthur had been ready for the manoeuvre and he sidestepped on to the royal stone and gave a back-cut of his sword that slashed open the back of Owain’s skull. The wound, like all scalp wounds, bled copiously so that the blood matted in Owain’s hair and trickled down his broad back to be diluted by the rain. His men went silent.
Arthur leaped from the stone, attacking again, and once again Owain was on the defensive. Both men were panting, both were mud-spattered and bloody, and both too tired to spit any more insults at the other. The rain made their hair hang in long, soaking hanks as Arthur cut left and right in the same fast rhythm with which he had opened the fight. It was so fast that Owain had no chance to do anything but counter the strokes. I remembered Owain’s scornful description of Arthur’s fighting style, slashing like a haymaker, Owain had said, hurrying to beat bad weather. Once, and only once, did Arthur whip his blade past Owain’s guard, but the blow was half parried, robbing it of force, and the sword was checked by the iron warrior rings in Owain’s beard. Owain threw the blade off, then tried again to drive Arthur down on to the ground with the weight of his body. Both fell and for a second it looked as though Owain would trap Arthur, but somehow Arthur scrambled away and climbed to his feet.