"
"Nay," said Grey Dick, seating himself again upon the grass, "there is
naught to choose between us in this round. What next, your Grace?"
Only Hugh, who watched him, saw the big veins swell beneath the pale
skin of his forehead, as they ever did when he was moved.
"The war game," said the King; "that is, if you will, for here rough
knocks may be going. Set it out, one of you."
Then a captain of the archers explained this sport. In short it was
that man should stand against man clad in leather jerkins, and wearing
a vizor to protect the face, and shoot at each other with blunt arrows
rubbed with chalk, he who first took what would have been a mortal wound
to be held worsted.
"I like not blunted arrows," said Grey Dick; "or, for the matter of
that, any other arrows save my own. Against how many must I play? The
three?"
The captain nodded.
"Then, by your leave, I will take them all at once."
Now some said that this was not fair, but in the end Dick won his point,
and those archers whom he had beaten, among them Jack Green, were placed
against him, standing five yards apart, and blunted arrows served out
to all. Dick set one of them on the string, and laid the two others in
front of them. Then a knight rode to halfway between them, but a little
to one side, and shouted: "Loose!"
As the word struck his ear Dick shot with wonderful swiftness, and
almost as the arrow left the bow flung himself down, grasping another
as he fell.
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