The Duel
A Willerby Story
Every New Year’s Eve, Mike and Shaun chose a sport or game and the following September they competed at it.
The victor won bragging rights. The loser bought the drinks and chose the next event.
Their rivalry was more than a decade old and. They’d gone through running swimming, tennis, golf, squash, cycling and even – in a couple of more sedate years – chess and scrabble.
Until recently, results had been even, but Shaun was now on the wrong end of a three-year losing streak.
It bothered him – so much so his wife Nicola had banned him from talking about it outside of set agreed times and then for not longer than five minutes at a time.
“I can cope with the weird,” she said, “but you going on and on about it is just so boring.”
The previous year Mike had won at bouldering, pipping Shaun by a hairsbreadth when he managed an unseen V4 problem on his third and final attempt when he hadn’t even got close on either of his previous two.
The year before that, Shaun lost at high jump by five centimetres and the year before that one he lost their deciding pool frame to an impossible shot Mike claimed was deliberate, but Shaun was certain was blind luck.
“Maybe we should call it a day?” Mike said to Shaun in the Green Man after their bouldering competition. “Neither of us are getting any younger.”
“Not a chance,” Shaun replied, shaking his head, “you’ve only suggested it because you won. No. We go again.”
“Suit yourself,” Mike said, grinning and spreading his arms, “but if change your mind and decide you don’t fancy it this year just say. No shame, no judgement.”
Shaun scowled at him.
“I’ll let you know what it’ll be in here on New Year’s Eve.”
…
“Are you serious?” Mike shouted over the bells and the pub drunks chorusing Auld Lang Syne. “Is that even a real thing?”
“It is,” Shaun said, passing Mike a leaflet, which had a drawing of two men in puffy trousers with crossed swords on the front. “There are agreed tournament rules and a whole structure. There’s a beginner’s course starting Wednesday next week in Beckworth leisure centre.”
Mike scanned the leaflet for a minute or so.
“So, it’s basically fencing then?”
“I think they guys who do it would take offence at that,” said Shaun. “Fencing is more a sport, and this is more like a proper fighting system. The organisation its part of – Historical European Martial Arts – does all sorts. Rapier, staff-fighting, cutlasses and even dagger.”
“Cutlasses sounds fun.” Mike said.
“Yeah, I thought that too,” Shaun said, “but this is what they’re doing on the beginner course, and I figure we need to start with the basics.”
Mike grinned. “Well all right,” he said. “Longsword it is. Whatever happens it’s certainly different.”
…
The sessions lasted two hours, from seven to nine, and always began with the instructor – a tall steel-haired man in his early fifties – showing the class the original manuscripts from which the lessons were taken.
“It’s not always easy to work out what they meant,” he said at the start of the first beginner’s class. “These masters were writing for people who’d been playing around with swords since they could walk, and what was obvious to them just isn’t as obvious to us. We experiment and try things out to see what it was they want us to do, but even when we’re pretty sure we’ve got it right there’s always a good chance we haven’t.”
The first lessons – in an echoey hall used mostly for badminton in the day – covered the basics of how to stand, how to hold the plastic training swords, and how to move, cut and thrust.
The fundamentals were simple enough but once the lessons progressed to more advanced parrying and counter-attacking both Shaun and Mike struggled, and in the free-sparring in the last fifteen minutes often found they’d forgotten what they learned and were really just hacking at each other and their more experienced opponents, who found it easy enough to evade their brutish lunges, break their guards and land powerful hits that hurt even through their mesh helmets.
“It’s like anything,” their instructor told them. “You’ve got to practice – the more you do at home on the cuts and moves the more natural they’ll feel and the more likely it is you’ll do it right under pressure. Take club swords home if you like – just remember to bring them back.”
Both did and both practised regularly in their gardens to the hilarity of their families, and until around April they remained evenly matched.
Then, to Shaun’s disgust and frustration, Mike began to pull ahead. His oberhaw and unterhaw cuts became cleaner and faster and his footwork nimbler and more precise. In the sparring sessions he landed more and more clean hits on Shaun who began to feel clumsy and silly in comparison.
The instructor noticed too and was impressed – choosing Mike to demonstrate particularly good form and structure to the rest of the group and encouraging him to attend the regional sparring events the most accomplished fighters from a range of different clubs competed at.
“I don’t understand how he’s doing it,” Shaun said to Nicola in one of their agreed five-minute slots after the TV went off and before bed. “He doesn’t have any more time than I do so he can’t be doing enough training to have got that much better than me without help.”
“There is someone helping him,” Nicola said. “Some big guy with big hair and big beard wearing baggy trousers and a funny leather jerkin thing. “They’re out behind Sharp’s farm by one of the shortcuts most evenings. I’ve seen them from the track.”
Shaun sat up so fast he spilled his tea.
“What? Why didn’t you say?”
“Say what? I just assumed he’d got one of your nerd-friends from the club to come down to help him out. Is that not allowed? I didn’t even know you didn’t know until just now.”
Shaun began to reply but Nicola was already up and half-way down the corridor on the way to the bathroom. “Go and have a look yourself if you want,” she said over her shoulder. “They’ll probably be there tomorrow.”
“Can you ask Tammy if she knows anything about it?” Shaun called after her.
“Absolutely not.” Nicola said. “You boys can do this weird competition thing as long as you like if it keeps you both happy but we’re staying well out of it.”
Shaun brooded on what Nicola had told him overnight and the next day. Her description did not match any of the instructors at the club, but it was a good fit for someone else – the 14th century master pictured on the manuscript they worked from.
“Surely he wouldn’t have done that,” Shaun thought.
But he wasn’t sure, so the next evening while the kids were in the bath, Shaun snuck down the track and crouched behind a bush where he could see the field without being seen himself.
A short time later, Mike emerged from the shortcut with the man Nicola had described following just behind him.
“Liechtenauer!” Shaun hissed to himself. “I knew it.”
The two men went to the centre of the field where it was flattest and Mike settled into the spread-legged high-handed fighter’s stance, his plastic training sword held up by his ear in the ox-guard, the hilt up by his ear and the blade angled slightly down in a clean diagonal. Then he swung it out to the side at out at neck height before bringing it up past his head and finishing blade high above his left shoulder. Then, Mike cut down again, but this time Liechtenauer sprang forward, caught the blade on his wooden sword, stepped around and clonked Mike around the shoulders.
“Nein!” He shouted, then stepped back and demonstrated the full sequence.
If Shaun had been in the mood to see he’d have found the scene of the two silhouetted men dancing with their swords in the light of the setting sun beautiful, but he wasn’t.
“The dirty cheat,” he muttered to himself, “the dirty cheat.”
“You won’t believe what he’s done,” he said to Nicola as he burst back through the front door.
“I don’t care and I don’t want to hear about it,” she replied. “You’ve used up all your time this week and the kids are waiting for their story. And then it’s your turn to do the lunch boxes and the saint who did bedtime wants wine.”
…
The following week, the class was moving from the Liechtenauer System onto that of Joachim Meyer, a Freifechter who’d worked out of sixteenth century Strasbourg.
He – the instructor explained before the lesson began – had built on Liechtenauer’s work and introduced more feinting and flashier moves disapproved of as somewhat unchivalrous in the older master’s time.
“Meyer was seen as a bit rough-and-ready and trashy even in his time,” the instructor told them. “He gets around that by sort of saying ‘look, you shouldn’t really do these moves but if you were to do them, this is how you should.’ While Liechtenauer worked mainly for posh nobles Meyer’s style was to pitch up in a city square, beat up a few locals and then offer to show people his techniques for coin.”
Shaun took well enough to the new style but found even when he incorporated the feints, grabs and hammer-work with the hilt he was still nowhere near Mike’s standard.
“Pint in the Green Man?” Mike said as the class wound down.
“No,” said Shaun. “Busy day tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow then?”
“I’m busy all week, actually,” said Shaun.
…
Mayer’s works were impossible to order through the county library system and Shaun ended up paying more money than he’d ever admit to on Amazon for a second-hand manuscript that was the closet to the full works he could find.
Shaun opened it in his office at work and poured over the glossy prints while he ate his sandwiches.
The pictures of impressively bearded and moustached men in brightly coloured and striped puffy pantaloons and slashed tunics crossing swords were striking but were just frozen instants in time and impossible to work out.
The text was not much more help, reading more like poetry than instruction. One passage said:
“Item, in the attack take heed when you wish to sling in a High Cut or Wrath Cut; should he let you miss, do not overcommit to the slinging, but at once recover.”
Shaun could not even tell which of the pictures – if any at all – it went with.
He had expected this. The instructor had told them even at the time the manuals were designed to be a somewhat cryptic so that anyone who got hold of one still had to fork out for lessons with the actual master to make sense of them.
That night he would fetch his own master, just as Mike had done.
One that knew Lichtenauer inside out and had added his own dirty tricks.
He would get Mayer.
Mike deserved it for being a dirty cheat himself.
…
Shaun waited until he was sure the rest of the family were fast asleep, then rolled out of bed and scurried to the bathroom where he had stashed his tracksuit and trainers.
Clutching the book and his plastic sword, he slipped out through his front door and down the street.
The short-cut – a nondescript dark opening - was behind a bench in a hedge between Jack’s Pool and the Green Man.
Shaun sat down, opened his book and, lighting the pages with his phone began to pretend to read.
After a couple of minutes, he marked his place in the book with a leaf, put it down and swung his sword up above his head in the oberhaw guard position. Then he stepped forward while cutting a diagonal from right to leave the way Lichtenauer said the stroke should be made, not the Mayer way, which said the cut should go straight down.
He repeated this a couple of times and then – just as he was going to pick up the book again – the figure of a man with a sword slung across his shoulder stepped from the hedge.
The man was of just above average height and was thick-set and powerfully built with a face ribboned with white scars and a sharp beard jutting out from his upturned chin. His hair was dark, thick and curly, his eyes lively and curious under the street lamp above the bench.
“Nein,” he said, shaking his head.
That was how Shaun’s first lesson began. There were many more over the next few months.
…
“You must be doing so much practising at home,” said the instructor to him a few weeks later. “You’re making so much progress.” He stopped and looked over at Mike who was making clean, efficient shadow cuts in the corner of the sports-hall. “You both are. To be honest I’ve never known anything like it. And you really aren’t training anywhere else?”
“Are you training anywhere else, Mike?” Shaun called over. “Getting any extra help?”
Mike paused and looked over. “No – you?”
“No,” Shaun replied.
Later, on the drive home in Mike broke the frosty silence by asking Shaun what weapons the duel would be fought with – plastic synthetics or the blunt steels that could only be used to spar with if both fighters were wearing full protective gear.
“Steels, obviously,” said Shaun. “Unless you’re scared to, in which case we can use the synthetics.”
“Not at all,” Mike said. “Steels it is then.”
There was never a question of going to the pub now, and neither said anything else.
When they arrived back in Willerby, they went to their houses without even saying goodnight or goodbye.
…
“He’s bought so much stuff!” Nicola said to Tammy over a glass of wine in the Green Man while their husbands were out training somewhere in fields on the edge of Willerby. “The armour is sort of scary – it looks like riot police gear.”
“So has Mike,” Tammy said. “This has got out of hand this year. It must be costing so much money but he’s taking it so seriously I don’t dare even ask about that.”
Just then Shaun came in through the pub door, his sword under one arm and his helmet under the other.
“Nic, you could have said you were going out,” he said, “can I have they key?”
As he was about to leave with Mike walked in too, also carrying his sword and helmet.
“Just getting some training in, eh?” Shaun asked him. “On your own?”
Mike nodded. “That’s right. And I assume you’ve been doing the same?”
“That’s right,” Shaun said. “Are you feeling confident about next week?”
“Yeah actually, I am.” Mike said.
Shaun nodded. “Where do you want to do it then?”
“I don’t mind,” said Mike. “In one of our gardens?”
“How about here in car park?” Shaun said. “Where everyone can see us. I mean, unless you’d rather it was more private?”
“You sure you want everyone to see it?” Mike asked him.
There was an icy silence.
“Quite sure,” said Shaun.
Although they didn’t know it Shaun and Mike were overhead by David and Mauve who were part way through the lamb biryani they were sharing as their Friday evening treat.
“There’s something going on here, isn’t there?” Mauve said.
“Yep, I think so,” said David.
“We should probably have spotted it but it’s easier just to let it happen now,” Mauve said, taking a forkful of rice and chewing thoughtfully.
“I agree,” said David. “Plus, honestly love, I just really want to see this.”
“Oh yes,” said Mauve. “We can’t miss it. Let’s get the word out and get a bit of a crowd down.”
…
Word about The Duel, as everyone called it, spread fast and the following Friday the Green Man was packed.
The village had – predictably – risen to the occasion and made an event of it.
The Tumulus Wrecks played Greensleeves, the Lincolnshire Poacher and other vaguely historically themed songs, and much of the crowd had gone with an informal fancy-dress medieval theme.
Even Sunny, the bear-like and usually taciturn landlord, had got into the spirit of things and was wearing a full Henry VIII outfit complete with a plastic crown and a comedically oversized codpiece.
Nicola and Tammy had dressed in flowing robes with gaping sleeve and were both wearing matching brightly coloured cloth headbands.
“It would be so much better if they were wearing proper armour,” Tammy said, looking round. “When they get here, they’re going to be the least history looking people out of anyone.”
“Is Mike still at home?” Nicola asked.
“Yes!” Tammy said. “I tried to get him to come and at least have his tea here, but he’s gone off to a field somewhere for some last-minute practice.”
Nicola nodded. “Oh, that’s weird. Shaun’s snuck off somewhere too. They’re both taking it so seriously this year. It’s quite fun now, but mainly I just hope neither of the boys gets too badly hurt. Shaun’s got a half marathon booked in for October with a uni friend and it’d be a shame if he missed it.”
Sunny rang the last orders bell at eleven, just after Shaun and Mike were greeted by a great tipsy cheer from the pub, which then burst into a ragged chant of “Fight, fight, fight”, punctuated with the banging of pint-mugs on the tables and the clap of hands on knees.
“Fight for my honour, my love!” Nicola shouted, finding herself rather swept up by it all.
“For our children and our family name!” Shouted Tammy, punching the air, getting a good laugh from the assembled crowd.
“Carpark everyone, bring your drinks,” Sunny called. “I’ve put the floodlights on for photos.”
Sunny had done more than just put the floodlights.
He’d also marked out a ring of hay bales and twine and set an oil-drum brazier at each of its corners.
All eyes were on Shaun and Mike as they stepped over the bales and nobody, except David and Mauve, noticed the two bearded and scarred men at either side of the ring whose costumes seemed to fit them better than everyone else’s.
“Oh hello,” Mauve said. “They aint from either here or now.”
“Nope,” David agreed. “But you were right last week. Best just let it happen now. I checked with Nicola and Tammy and they say the swords are blunt. Plus, they’re wearing all that gear. It’ll probably be fine.”
“What are the rules?” Someone called, but nobody heard the reply because someone else shouted “to the death,” and this was picked up as another ragged chant.
“Oh goodness,” Nicola said to Tammy as their two husbands saluted each other with their swords, glinting and winking in the white pub security lights and the orange and red glow thrown by the braziers. “I’m actually quite nervous.”
Shaun and Mike stepped back, raised they swords and then the duel began.
It was – of course – farcical.
While the first few cuts they made looked competent enough, within seconds any semblance of technique broke down. The intricacies of the scoring were completely lost on the crowd who just wanted to see the men batter each other’s helmets and armour. When the swords met there were sparks, which drew cheers, oohs and ahhs and appreciative applause.
As the fight progressed beyond the first few strikes it became clear neither Shaun nor Mike cared about the scoring any longer and were instead just trying to force each other onto the concrete.
They staggered around wrestling inexpertly and at one point Shaun grabbed his sword by the blade and began hammering at Mike with the cross-piece and pommel as if his weapon were a hammer, shouting, “Liechtenauer didn’t teach you this did he! Have a bit of Mayer at you, you cheating dog.”
“Careful, Mike,” Tammy shouted to him, “you’re a middle-aged accountant not Sir Galahad.”
Shaun and Mike tired quickly and found themselves holding onto each other more out of fatigue than anything else.
“You cheat,” Shaun said to him. “You summoned Liechtenauer didn’t you?”
“How’s that cheating?” Mike gasped back. “It’s just good strategy. And anyway, you did the same. You got Mayer didn’t you?”
“Only after you cheated first,” said Shaun.
For a few more seconds they pretend-wrestled and then, having lost sense of where they were in the ring stumbled over one of the bales. They went down hard, winding them both.
“Bloody hell, I’ve done my ankle,” said Mike when he got enough breath back to speak.
“No more than you deserve,” said Shaun, gasping and heaving. He tried to get up then sank back down grimacing under his helmet. “Shit, I think I’ve broken a rib.”
“I’m taking my helmet off,” Mike said. “Don’t hit me again.”
“Only if you promise not to hit me again,” said Shaun.
Then they looked at each other and burst out laughing.
“Everyone thinks we’re ridiculous,” Mike said.
“Well, we are, aren’t we?” Said Shaun. “Let’s call it a draw.”
…
Everyone went home after that, agreeing it had been a good show and the best thing that happened in Willerby for quite some time.
In all the fuss nobody except David and Maude noticed the two ghostly-sword masters making their way arm-in-arm up the road, presumably to their short-cuts, bickering good-naturedly in archaic old-German.
Nicola drove the two men to casualty where they were patched up and sent home after a stern telling off from a harassed and grumpy nurse.
Jamal wrote it all up for the village newsletter as The Great Duel, deadpan and dry, as if it had been a major sports event, which gave everyone another good laugh and something to talk about for a few more days.
The next year – to everyone’s great disappointment - Shaun and Mike chose Monopoly.