Bertie is trounced

Stein lived at a good half-hour’s trot from Nothelm, and so he did not spend as much time with his friends Eadwyn and Bertie as he would have liked. Aside from young Tryggve, who shadowed Eirik all over land and sea, Malcolm had always been his closest friend, at least in terms of trots.

But Malcolm was married now and expecting a baby, and Eirik and Tryggve were gone, perhaps never to return for more than brief visits. Meanwhile neither the King nor Sir Sigefrith nor Sir Malcolm nor Sir Aengus had bothered to acquire new squires, and they themselves were all busy with their families.

Stein was growing very tired of being the only young bachelor of gentle birth within a forty-​​minute ride, and he was beginning to think that it was time for him to return to Norway, or perhaps join Eirik and Tryggve on the Isle. It would indeed take “something fine” to tempt him to stay in the valley and swear an oath to King Sigefrith. A fine house, fine horses, a fine wife, perhaps… though he did not know where the latter, at least, was to be found.

If Stein had spent more time at Nothelm over the years, he might have known this Anson as more than a name. He knew only that he was the sometimes sweetheart of Bertie’s sister, and that he was not fit to associate with young gentlemen such as he and Eadwyn.

But he recognized the face as soon as he saw it, and he suddenly wondered whether it had been wise to allow Bertie to come talk to him.

He recognized the face because he had seen it on several occasions on Saturday afternoons at the smithy, where the fights were held. He recognized the face because he had twice lost money betting against the boy when he was going up against older, stronger, bigger men, and Stein had sworn to himself that he would not be fooled a third time. Just then he was thankful no one was taking bets.

“Do you think we should take his sword from him?” Eadwyn murmured to him.

“Are you certain we should let him do this at all?” Stein whispered.

Eadwyn shrugged. “He has to.”

Just then Stein was thankful his older sister was married, his youngest sister was six, and his middle sister was hundreds of miles away.

“Anson!” Bertie barked. “I should like to have a chat with you.”

“How are you gentlemen?” Anson bowed.

“What have you been doing to my sister?”

Stein glanced over at Eadwyn, who was looking dubiously at the sheathed sword he had confiscated from Bertie as if he was thinking he ought to have let his friend keep it.

“Bertie!” Anson laughed. “I’ve been walking out with your sister since she was ten, and you’re just now getting around to asking me what I’ve been doing to her?”

“Let’s just say I’ve been told I should ask.”

“Told by who?” Anson cried angrily.

Stein noticed the way the boy was casting quick glances left and right, up and down, and he wondered whether he was seeking an escape route.

“Never mind who!” Bertie shouted.

“Who? I have the right to know who’s accusing me, don’t I? So I can ‘have a chat’ with him later, after you’re finished ‘having a chat’ with me?”

“It’s not a him, so you can just forget about ‘who’ and tell me ‘what’!”

“I see! And what do you think I did?”

“You impudent little shit! Don’t make me say it!”

“Aha, I think I see,” Anson laughed and took a discreet step closer to the stall by which he stood. “Do you know what you’re calling your sister, Bertie?”

Bertie was momentarily confounded.

“I didn’t do anything your sister didn’t let me do,” Anson growled, “so you just chew on that for a while.”

“You little – ”

“On second thought, perhaps I should ‘have a chat’ with you, after what you tried to imply about my girl. Eh, Bertie? Care to say it out loud so I can stuff it back down your throat?”

“You – ”

Stein looked over at Eadwyn in time to see his friend roll his eyes. Bertie had learned to swing a sword from the Duke himself, but he had never been trained to fight with words, and it seemed he was being trounced.

“Just tell yourself I didn’t do anything she didn’t like, Bertie!”

Bertie swung at him, but that appeared to be precisely the reaction that Anson was expecting. He ducked Bertie’s fist, and then he pulled himself up onto the top of the stall door and from there leapt onto Bertie’s back. Stein found this to be an interesting innovation in the art of the fistfight, but unlike those Saturday afternoons at the smithy, here there were no rules.

Bertie staggered nearly to the door beneath Anson’s weight, howling at Eadwyn and Stein to get the creature off his back, but there was only one rule for Eadwyn and Stein as concerned this affair of honor, and that was that they were not permitted to interfere.

Finally Anson slipped off of Bertie’s back, and they swung at each other for a moment before Bertie somehow managed to grab Anson’s head between his elbows and hung on. Bertie was significantly taller and heavier than Anson, and at last Stein began to feel that a bet against Anson might not have been misplaced after all.

“Don’t you touch my sister!” Bertie growled along with other, less coherent threats and execrations. “Swear it! Swear it!”

But Anson, whose face was indeed pressed into Bertie’s heavy wool cloak, only flailed his arms as if in a panic.

“Swear it!”

“Bertie…” Eadwyn cautioned.

Fights to the death were not so hastily improvised, and it seemed to Stein that they were not to be organized at all without proof of the villain’s misdeeds. Furthermore, he thought there would be little glory in dispatching one’s opponent by suffocating him in one’s cloak, and he hoped that Bertie would realize this before it was too late.

Bertie did seem to worry after enough unanswered commands to swear it, and he let go of Anson’s head.

If the boy had been suffocating, he possessed remarkable powers of recuperation, for he immediately drew back his arm and delivered such a punch that Bertie’s head flew backwards and Bertie’s body followed along after it.

Stein held his breath until Bertie sat up again, which was long enough for him to have grown light-​​headed.

“If you loved your sister,” Anson panted, “you would ask her what she wants before coming here and asking me what I did. I’ll tell you what I swear: I love your sister, and I would marry her in an instant, and I swear it before these two witnesses. So I don’t mean her any dishonor.”

“You know,” Eadwyn said after Anson had gone, “he never did say he didn’t touch her.”

“Clever boy!” Stein said. “And he never said he did.”

“You know what I think?” Eadwyn asked him.

“What?”

“I think I’m glad my elder sister is married, and my littlest sisters are too young, and my middle sister is miles away.”