Tourney of the Foxes: the Aftermath

Another Tourney of the Foxes has come and gone. For those not familiar with it, Foxes is an SCA event that takes place in the Shire of Vulpine Reach every year about this time. The highlight, for us rapier fighters, is a three-man team melee tournament. I'm happy to say that the team consisting of myself, Ysabel and our friend Feodor has won this every year for the past 6 or so. We were a bit nervous going into it this time and it was hard fought all around, but we managed to pull off yet another win. When we were called up in Court to receive our prizes, His Majesty issued a challenge to all rapier fighters to break our winning streak next year. Nothing like a royal bullseye painted on you to motivate you to practice harder.

Winning was nice, but there were some bad moments. Our first bout ended in a double kill between the last two persons left alive (myself and Dragonet), so we had to refight it. After that, we seemed to get our focus back, though. The next few fights went all right and we managed to beat the team that I considered the worst threat (Jack Marvell, Tristram and Reynard of Thor's Mtn.). The final bout, however, was ugly. We were up against Cillian and two members of his Red Sword Company. Cillian is a good fight and he has a lot of reach, which can cause problems for his opponents. The other two fighters were also good enough to be a problem, if we didn't handle them right. My plan was to split Cillian off and go defensive until Feodor and Ysabel could dispose of the other two, then swarm him once he was alone. I was taking a bit of a risk, because if my two ended up being the one's killed, I would be the one swarmed. Still, I have a lot of confidence in my teammates, so it was a calculated risk. The plan worked beautifully, except for one thing. After a couple of exchanges with Cillian, he managed to place his blade on top of my mask and apply pressure with the tip. Now, here's where it gets ugly. It felt to me like he was pressing down with the flat of his blade, which isn't a valid kill. Due to the fact that his point was pushing directly on the cloth of my drape and angled in toward my head, he thought it was a good shot and I should be dead. Having had time to run it over in my mind, I tend to agree with him, but at the time, I said "not good" after I'd backed out of it. By this time, my two companions had finished their business and came charging over. Now it gets even more ugly. Since I felt a bit bad about the disagreement over the shot, I backed way off, more or less taking myself out of the fight. Cillian ran around and engaged Ysabel, who seemed fine with taking him on alone (Feodor had backed off, too, waiting to see if she needed help), but a few seconds after they started trading blows, Cillian let out a yell and dropped his blades. He conceded the fight because he threw his shoulder out with a hard overhand shot. While that allowed us victory in the tourney, winning in that fashion left a very bad taste in our mouths. At this point, what is done is done and all I can do is offer an apology to Cillian for the bad blow calling. I hope the way things turned out won't keep Red Sword Company from coming back and challenging us again next year. After all, we wouldn't want to disappoint His Majesty, now would we? :)