Coronation

Wow. There was a nice little tourney at Coronation. It was on asphalt and a slope, which made for some difficult footing issues. It was, at his Majesty's whim, a bear-pit with value assigned to each fighter--1 point for a fighter without an award or rank or anything, two points for (squires maybe? not sure about two points), three points for members of the Order of the Tigers Combatant, four for a knight and five for a Ryoal Peer. Since I was the only knight or royal peer in the tourney, every body wanted to kill me bad.

I finished tied for first with Federach, an OTC whom I had double killed with in the first fight. Appropriately, his majesty gave him the prize (which annoyed my sweetie, who thought I deserved a prize too, not knowing that she's the only prize I really need--an no, she does not read this blog as far as I know).

It was a lot of fun. I was still out of sorts with the switch back to the bunny round, trying to figure it out. My leg is so much more vulnerable with the bunny round than with the center grip and my offence is so much better.

I killed with the edge and with the point. Probably my best fight was my second fight with Federach. He fights with a small scuta and normally his defense is incrdibly tight. I took his leg somehow and noticed that on his knees he points the bottom of his shield a bit forward. I scooped it up with the front corner of my bunny round and stabbed him in the armpit. If he'd had a heater I couldn't have done that, but the wide bottom of his scuta gave me something to hook.

My defense was a bit sloppy. Lucas at one point touched me with something that he later said was a ranging shot that he hadn't expected to land so he hadn't put power into it. A knight would have known better and taken my head off. Sloppy defense.

But I had a good time. It was fun.

But next week is la Prova Dura out in the West, which will be a real test of fortitude (fighting in Prova the week before crown is either going to be a terrible idea or a great idea, depending on how fast I recover: I suspect the former, if my recovery from Mudthaw and Birka are any indication).