The point of the sword was coming in fast at my middle with a hundred and seventy pounds of thrust behind it, so I had little time to do anything but react. I hopped back on both feet like a matador and brought my own rapier over the top with force in a circular parry. His point was knocked out of line and missed me by three inches. It was enough. Before he could recover from his deep lunge I sprang off my left foot into a demi-lunge of my own intending to drag my rapier blade along his belly.

Obviously, he had a different program planned.

He lunged with his right leg forward, with his left leg unusually far back, and his left hand held out to the side in what I thought was sloppy form. Wrong! He smoked me again. As I placed my weight on my forward leg going for the belly cut, he dropped onto his left forearm and, using his left leg as a brace, kicked out with his right to sweep my exposed front leg from underneath me.

Bang! I landed with my full two hundred fifty pounds on my right hip. My sword went flying and he was on me.

"Where the hell is that in Agrippa?" I asked as I pulled off my fencing mask. Tom De Dannin removed his mask, laughing so hard he had to pull out his inhaler and suck some air.

"I stole that move from the Jackie Chan movie we saw last month in Chinatown," he said. "You ought to know it. I think I'll call it the Tom D. Trip!" He grinned, that infectious Irish grin of his again. I had no choice but to laugh at myself and accept his proffered hand to again stand on my feet.

Just another of our weekly workouts in the schoolyard in Bay Ridge. Tom, aside from the legitimate fencing training he'd had, was a scrapper with bits and pieces of four martial arts under his skinny belt and a lot of bar fights behind him. I always tried out my choreographic ideas with him and often profited from his knowledge. It was worth limping home every once in awhile.

"You just don't have the killer instinct, Eric," he said as we walked back to the Gatorade and our gear. He picked up his rapier he'd named Courage, flourishing it to heighten my shame and set down the theatrical one he had used to beat me. "All this theatrical stuff has taken off your edge, besides warping your mind."

"Another fall like that and it'll warp my back. Ow!"

"No pain, no gain." he said.

"I like the one about 'Get my stunt double' better! Remember all my adventures are fake!"

"Stunt double in a pig's eye," Tom said as he adjusted his ratty black beret so that his "Free Ireland" pin was positioned over his right eye. "You realize that most of the wimp actors can't handle the genuine article in even a staged fight." He slashed the air with his sharp-edged Courage, making an ominous 'swash' sound. "It'd make you nuts to see some stunt man screw up a fight you know you can do a thousand times better!"

"Well, all this stuff is gonna come out in better choreography for some of those 'Wimp actors' at the Renaissance Faire this year," I said. "I'm gonna blow that artistic director's socks off. I'll give 'em a little taste at the Cloisters next week, then, come August ... !"

"Best showcase for your fight choreography yet, huh?" He swilling down the last of a Coke he'd left by our gear.

"Yeah, people notice the choreographer on this one. I've been assistant two years running. Now, with Steve gone and him putting in a good word for me, it's my show. Joust, human chess match and the Highwayman scenes. Like a living resume."

"Don't let it go to your head, big guy," he said. "I can still kick your butt in a real fight."

"I'll fight you anywhere, any time," I said with a Sergio Leone pause. I surveyed his skinny five ten frame from my lofty six foot six. "Anytime ... as long as it's choreographed, and I'll look good whipping you."

He laughed hard and then got a serious, almost dreamy look on his face. "We were both born at least five centuries too late, man." He sat with his back against the wall of the handball court, a cigarette dangling almost magically from his bottom lip.

"Sometimes, I think I was born in the wrong century, too," I said, taking a big gulp from the Gatorade bottle, "but then again, I kind of like antibiotics and color TV."

"Don't be a total hairbag, man," he said affectionately. His voice still had a Baltimore twang that his years in New York had barely softened. "I know neither of us would have made it in Sparta--asthma and all the allergies we got--but, hell." His blue eyes sharpened focus on some place other than a schoolyard in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. "Don't you feel it sometimes, Eric, especially at a Medieval Society event or a Renaissance Faire? Like you're just gonna walk around a corner and be home, with a sword on your hip, living by your wits and skill in a world where our word means something, and so does the next guy's. Honor, chivalry! Where there just might be a dragon over the horizon, or at least, a dragon ship."

I laughed. "And you say Jillian is the poet in the family."

"I'm Irish," he said grinning his ten-dollar smile. "Rhyming and roguishness come with the genes." He pushed off the wall and to his feet, at the same time filching the Gatorade jug out of my hand. "Let's get this stuff inside and get some pizza and Coke."

I picked up the masks, bokkens and rubber knives. Tom grabbed the epee-bladed stage swords, a towel we used as a cloak and his Courage. Even though the blade on Courage was sharp, he always brought it along to practice solo forms and as a good luck charm.

"Coke?" I said, "So much for flagons, dragons and wild boar."

As we crossed 36th Street he said, "It'd be a fair trade. Nowadays, Arthur, Chuhulain, and Siegfried's only chance to be heroes would be to give up a seat on the 'R' train to an old woman."

"Yeah, no Beau Geste for us, no ballads. If we make it to Avalon, it'll be by Public Transit."

"It'd be a dull place to go," Tom said. "I always hoped for Valhalla--Irish blood not with standing."

"Well the way things are going in the world," I said more than a little serious, "we might just be around for the Viking version of the big bang: Ragnarok."

"I hope not." He pushed against the wrought iron and glass foyer door. "Who'll build the funeral ships for us and put the pig at our feet for our Viking funeral?"

"Be a bitch to hitch hike to Valhalla, huh?"

"Damn, straight!" He laughed. "Especially considering I never learned to swim!"