Barrowbell Tournament

The Barrowbell Tournament — the Count's Champion's Tournament, held annually at Barrowbell — was the most extravagant aristocratic social event of the Gilmoran calendar. The tournament's list-field events drew professional jousters from across the Five Duchies; the parties before and after drew the entire Gilmoran upper nobility and any visitor to the Cotton Country who could secure an invitation. The associated Champion's Ball was, by Gilmoran society's reckoning, the social fixture of the year.

Minalan's presence at the Tournament was deliberate political provocation. By this point he was Count Palatine of the Magelaw and a fixture of the Anguin court; the Gilmoran chivalry, particularly Castali partisans like Count Anvaram, had grown openly resentful of the magelords' gradual absorption of Gilmoran territory. Minalan attended with Terleman, Mavone, Astyral (Count Anvaram's great rival), and a contingent of senior magelords, in plain sight, on what amounted to a state visit.

Sir Larvone, the Red Lion

Sir Larvone the Valiant was twenty-two, broad-shouldered, blue-eyed, and the youngest son of a powerful knight-banneret in central Gilmora. His brothers and sisters had taken the family's titles and best estates; Larvone had been left with one small holding and a knighthood, swapped his estate for a tournament panoply, and gone to make his name on the jousting circuit.

His chosen device was a red lion. He had been trying to style himself the Lion of Gilmora or the Red Lion to improve his betting odds. He was, by Mavone's account, fourth in the overall lists of the Champion's Tournament — not bad for a young knight, enough to earn a purse and a place in the Champion's Guard. He was a partisan: his family were sworn to Count Anvaram and he strongly favoured Castal's claim to Gilmora.

The Champion's Ball

The duel did not happen on the list-field. It happened in the buttery entrance to the Champion's Ball, where Terleman had been having a perfectly ordinary conversation with a comely young Gilmoran noblewoman when Sir Larvone took offence — whether to the conversation, the woman's attention, or simply to the warmage's presence in his class's social space.

Larvone aggressed verbally. Terleman, who has no patience for jousters and active contempt for Gilmoran chivalry over their failure to defend their own lands during the invasion, gave back as good as he got. Two or three exchanges in, Terleman cast aspersions on heavy cavalry as a class. Larvone, honour-bound, slapped him with his sleeve in the formal Gilmoran challenge gesture.

Terleman replied by boxing the young knight's ears with the flat of his hand hard enough to knock him off his feet.

You were the one who challenged me. I just responded in kind.

— Terleman, after the slap-and-box exchange

The duel at the buttery

Larvone tried to negotiate the formal terms — a few days for affairs to be put in order, the list-field as the proper venue, lances as the proper weapon, his second to settle the details with Terleman's second. Terleman declined every concession:

Your horse didn't challenge me. You did. There's no reason to tire your poor steed further, after it hauled your useless arse back and forth across the list field all day. We settle this here and now, and we use our personal weapons. Hells, you can use whatever weapon you wish.

— Terleman, refusing to wait or move venues

Minalan, watching from a few feet away, called out the only restraint he wanted his Lord Marshal to honour:

Terleman, don't burn him alive!

— Minalan, setting limits

The Gilmoran nobility ringed the impromptu duel-circle. Sir Larvone, expecting a chivalric exchange, found himself in a brutal close-quarters fight with a professional warmage who knew exactly which of the chivalric forms could be used against a man trained on them. Larvone was tournament-skilled; Terleman was battle-skilled. There is a difference.

Within minutes Larvone began letting his guard slip around an obvious unimportant area, hoping to let Terleman score a face-saving scratch and end the matter. Terleman hates that:

It took only a few moments for the look of arrogance on the Red Lion's face to transform into one of concern. As some opponents do in such a situation, Sir Larvone began to let his guard slip around some obvious, but unimportant area of his body, hoping to let his opponent scratch him enough to consider the duel finished. What he didn't know is that Terleman hates that sort of thing.

— Of the duel

Terleman beat the young knight bloody. Larvone declared at one point, in fury and humiliation, "It is no folly to defend the honor of the chivalry!" Terleman declined to comment. The duel ended with Larvone defeated, his red lion device publicly disgraced, his fourth-in-list standing destroyed, and his face a study in concern.

The political wager

The magelords had quietly placed substantial bets on Terleman's outcome with the Bondsmen of Ifnia's Coinbrothers in advance of the duel. Astyral, who had specifically stationed himself in the betting line and made a point of placing wagers among the Gilmoran knights who favoured Castali dominance, collected approximately seven hundred ounces of silver from his fellow nobles. Most of the bettors were sworn vassals of Count Anvaram. Astyral made the political point clean:

It will support the idea amongst such folk that hope exists for the Anchor-and-Antlers to return -- along with the Alshari laws and customs the Castali replaced when they won the province. That hope, alone, will be enough to encourage them to cooperate with us. Thankfully, almost all of the knights we wagered with favored the Castali cause. Now they'll be seven hundred ounces of silver the poorer for it.

— Baron Astyral, after the duel

The duel was the talk of the Barrowbell Fair for days. The insult paid to Gilmoran chivalry, compounded by Sir Larvone's humiliating defeat, was the subject of every dinner-party in the Cotton Country for the rest of the season. The story spread far and wide, augmented in a hundred unlikely ways before week's end.

Larvone afterward

Sir Larvone the Valiant did not recover his career. The Gilmoran society took to calling him the Kitten of Gilmora in mockery; the gaudy red lion on his shield became an object of public ridicule. The proud knight turned to drink — rarely a productive combination with chivalric pride. The Lion of Gilmora vanished from the tournament circuit within a year.

The political consequences

The Tournament accomplished exactly what Minalan had wanted:

• The Gilmoran chivalry's public confidence in its own martial superiority was punctured in the most public possible way, in front of its own social peers.
• Count Anvaram's partisan network in the Cotton Country was financially diminished by the wagers paid to the magelords.
• The hope that the Anchor and Antlers — the Alshari ducal device — might return to Gilmora was openly discussed among the cottonlords and their tenants for the first time, undermining the Castali assumption of permanent dominance.
• Terleman's reputation in Gilmora was, paradoxically, enhanced; the magelords had demonstrated they could not be safely insulted at table.

The Tournament was the soft-power prelude to the harder politics of the Restoration that followed. By the time Anguin was wedded to Rardine, much of the Cotton Country was already quietly aligning itself with the Alshari claim. The duel at Barrowbell was where that alignment publicly began.