My only reaction was one of total surprise. I couldn’t figure out what happened, but somehow I was flying through the air! The impact with the frozen ground was brutal, armor or no armor. I lay there, stunned for a moment, until I got my wits back.
I got up, shaken. The snow wasn’t thick enough to break my fall, but it was enough to hide my sword! I ran back to where the train wreck had occurred, but I couldn’t find my sword. My lance was shattered. I had no weapon except for the dagger I had taken from a thug in Cieszyn last spring.
Looking up, I saw my opponent had turned his horse and was coming back at me with his lance lowered. I drew my dagger and waited for him. There was nothing else I could do.
Anna circled around and saw my predicament. She raced back and attacked, not the Crossman, but his horse.
In seconds, she ripped a major hunk of flesh from his rump with her teeth and broke both of the stallion’s rear legs with her forehoofs. My opponent went down in a sad heap. The crowd of Crossmen started yelling “Foul!” and “Witchcraft.”
Apparently, Sir Stefan had done a lot of talking with them. I half expected a crossbow bolt in the back, but the marshals decided that I wasn’t responsible for my horse when I was dismounted, dumb animals being what they thought they were.
Anna ran back toward me and in passing she kicked my sword up out of the snow. It popped up like a golf ball hit by a nine iron and flew toward me handle first. I had to drop my dagger to catch it, but I didn’t need the dagger any more. At least I thought I wouldn’t.
Then she stood back and watched, supremely confident that I would win.
The Crossman was out of the wreckage in a hurry. His horse was screaming in pain, but he didn’t bother giving it an easy death. He came running at me.
“Take care of your horse!” I shouted at him. “I’ll wait here while you do!”
“I do that later! First I make sure I kill you dead this time!”
There was nothing I could do but meet him.
The bastard was good. He would have made an Olympic-grade fencer easily. Even swinging a heavy hand-and-a-half bastard sword, he was faster than I was with my light watered-steel blade. What’s more, he knew how to use a shield much better than I did.
He got one past my guard and slammed a blow into the left side of my head. It might have killed me had I been wearing my old helmet. As it was, it spun my helmet to the right about ninety degrees and bent the collar ring such that the helmet was jammed in that position. I couldn’t turn my head! Looking forward, I was blind! I could only see by looking over my fight shoulder!
I discarded my shield and fought him fencing-style. It was all I could do. You have to be able to look straight ahead to fight with sword and shield. A roar went up from the Polish side of the crowd, but I had no time to think about that.
He got blow after blow past my defenses, but Ilya had made me a fine suit of armor. Most of the time I barely felt them.
“Die, you hell-spawn bastard! What do it take to kill you? Wood stick in heart?”
I didn’t have the breath to spare to answer him.
It was his shieldwork that was stopping me from hitting him back. Every time I got a chance to strike at him, that damn shield was there. My sword had amazing cutting power, but it couldn’t do much when the whole edge was hitting the flat of that leather-covered plywood shield of his.
Okay, I told myself. Go for the shield! Chop that sucker to kindling! Focusing on the shield, and catching it on the edge, I took a few major chunks out of it.
Then I got the chance to swing a big one right down the middle. I took it. My sword went down through the center of his shield, then stopped halfway. And stuck.
I tried to pull my sword free, but it was stuck fast and he wasn’t about to let go of his shield.
To make matters worse for me, my sword was the only thing I had to block his sword. He wrenched his shield and my sword from my hand and swung his sword at me.
There was nothing I could do but step inside his swing and try to handle the problem karate-fashion.
There is a karate blow that is demonstrated slowly, but never practiced. You twist your opponent’s right arm with your left hand so that his arm is straight and his elbow is downward, then you strike upward with the palm of your right hand. Done properly, this breaks his right elbow. This wouldn’t have worked on me because the hinges on my elbow caps wouldn’t bend that way. But he was in chain mail.
For all his mastery of the sword and the lance, the Crossman had never considered the possibility of unarmed combat. It worked. His elbow gave way with a satisfying pop.
He dropped his sword and I quickly picked it up. He made no attempt to run away, as many men would. He just stood there.
I didn’t want to kill him, but this fight was to the death. No quarter was to be asked or given. If I didn’t snuff him, the freedom of a hundred forty-two children would still be in question. I took his sword and swung it with all my might sideways at his neck. He didn’t try to stop me.
His dying word was, “Bastard!”
He crumpled to the snow, and the emotional reaction of all that had happened hit me. My hands and legs shook, I could barely stand, and all my sphincters let loose.
Somehow, I was still alive!
The crowds on both sides were cheering and shouting, but they didn’t seem important, and I ignored them.
With both hands on my helmet, I managed to twist it around so I could look forward. Standing on his shield, with both hands I was able to pull out my sword. It was tightly wedged, and I think that it wasn’t the cutting that stopped my blade from going all the way through, but the friction on the sides. When I had it out, I could see that I had not only cut through half the shield, I had cut through half his left arm as well. He couldn’t have dropped that shield. Shield, sword, and arm were locked into a single unit.
I was pretty sure his neck was broken, but with so many children at stake I didn’t want to take any chances. I raised my sword and took his head off with a single blow. It didn’t bleed much. I guess he was already dead
My lance was lying shattered on the ground, and I reconstructed what happened. I had bought my lance a year ago, figuring it was a useless piece of paraphernalia. I bought the lightest one possible. Sir Vladimir favored a light spear, so he didn’t mention anything. But Sir Vladimir goes for targets like the eyeslit, and Anna had trouble reaching that high.
There was a gouge on his shield that must have been made by my lance. Anna had hit her target dead on, but on impact my spear shattered and his didn’t. I never had a chance to swing my sword; it was knocked out of my hand when I went flying. I wouldn’t have thought it possible to be knocked over the top of the waist-high cantle of a warkak, but that’s the way I went.
I went and decapitated his horse, which was still screaming.
The Polish crowd was cheering wildly, including, I suppose, even those who had bet against me. The Crossmen were shouting hoarsely in German, but I couldn’t’ understand them, except for more shouts of “foul” and “witchcraft.”
All I knew was that it was over and that I had won.
Then the German crowd opened up and four armed and armored horsemen wearing black crosses on their white surcoats charged me with their lances lowered.
FROM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SIR VLADIMIR CHARNETSKI
On the day of the trial, my fellow conspirators and I were all at our assigned positions. Tadaos was lying hidden on the roof of the windmill. Friar Roman was among the clergy, ready to cry out “An Act of God” and “A miracle” and such like. I was among the nobles ready to do the same.
Ilya was set to run out on the field and try to recover the gold-covered arrows, for we were sure that they could not stand close inspection. Surely God would use something better than gold leaf!