From my interviews with High Shepherd Yan, originally of the noble Volody family of Pushta:
“The two foster-sons of Peter the Marshal, Michael Agrippa and Tristan Martel, were arguably the greatest swordsmen who ever lived. When Tristan’s feud with his foster-brother, Reikert the Marshal, erupted into open warfare, Michael made one last attempt to broker peace. By that time, Tristan’s brutal tactics and behaviors against non-combatants were already infamous, and I had only just heard news—I did not see it with my eyes—the great Immolation of the Marseels, but Tristan had ridden as fast as he could for the Great Temple, the seat of my see, arriving in the middle of a thunderstorm late at night. I did not oppose him as he entered. The poor boy, he was clutching his ears, muttering something about “the screams.” I thought it best, at the time, to leave him alone for a while, and did not speak to him. As he knelt before altar, Michael arrived. The two had been inseparable since childhood, even before they met the Marshal, and though I was aware that hot words had passed between them before, Tristan’s ire had always been directed first and foremost at Lord Reikert. Surely, I thought, his foster brother could soften his heart. And for the briefest moment, as the two began to speak, collapsing into a tearful embrace, I thought that peace would come at last.
Only Sir Michael himself knows exactly what words passed between the two of them. But whatever it was he said, Tristan stiffened. He shoved his brother away, began shouting as Michael tried to calm him down, then drew his black sword and charged with that hideous roar of his. I cried out for Tristan to stop, but my pleas fell on deaf ears.
Thus began perhaps the greatest and most terrible display of swordsmanship ever seen in Heimar. Tristan fought like a dragon, hammering Michael with savage blows as the young Costian desperately parried, dodged, voided, and counter attacked with lightning-fast thrusts. I followed them at a distance, shouting for them to stop the violence on sacred ground, but neither heard me, locked as they were in that deadly dance of steel. If only I had been more diligent to train with Peter the Marshal in my youth, I might have been able to intervene! Alas, I was helpless, and ran as fast as I could to find anyone who could help.
By the time I returned, both Tristan and Michael had disappeared. Michael had saved himself, escaping to the Isles, but at the cost of his right eye and two fingers on his left hand, his face forever disfigured by a wound that covered the right side of his face from his temple to his nose. Tristan, I later learned, had almost fallen to his death, but had been saved when my blind bell-ringer, Quentin, who was but a boy at the time, heard his curses and thrown him a rope and pulled him to safety. Many would argue that he should have pushed Tristan to his death, given what happened next. For Tristan had changed. Gone was the young hero who’d escaped kidnapping through enemy territory to warn Lord Peter that his heir was alive. Gone was the warrior who opened the gates of Lacona, the lone swordsman of Coreal. In his place arose the Black Knight, whose bloody Reign of Terror would only end where it began—at the altar of the Great Temple.”
Sound familiar? Three guesses what piece of fiction inspired this scene, and the first two don’t count. By the way, Michael is the figure on the left/facing the viewer, while Tristan is on the right/facing away from the viewer.
The folks at Beyond the Western Deep introduced me to the concept of “tent-pole moments”: key, central moments in a story that have always been an integral part of the story from its earliest drafts, and usually which mark key turning points in the story. For my fantasy world of Heimar, the duel between Tristan Martel, the Black Knight, and his best friend Michael is one such moment. It represents a point in the story when things go from bad to worse. Getting to this moment and it’s fallout will be key to fleshing out the story further.
A note on the setting: Heimarian religious beliefs are organized around worship of the All-Father and his son, the Prince of the Gods, who created humanity. Heimarians also believe in a host of lesser deities who have power and knowledge over various aspects of the natural world. The All-Father’s throne is spoken of as being “in” the sky, although recent works of Heimarian theology would like to start speaking of His throne as being “beyond” the sky or “above” the skies. Nevertheless, this traditional sky-ward direction of Heimarian religious thought affects the design of its religious structures—namely, they are open to the sky and built on the native ground. The central feature is an altar, a naturally flat stone placed in the center of six tall standing stones, representing the six regions of Heimar and—arguably—the Six Heroes of Heimar who first threw off the yoke of the Thrallic Empire, of whom Peter Dragonsbane is the most renowned. These can be found everywhere throughout Heimar, usually in places where the Prince of the Gods was seen or as commemorations of great historic deeds. Most castles, even the humblest, have one either within the walls or close nearby, and in larger castles and cities these may be shielded by walls of ornate masonry—these great structures are Heimar’s temples. The temples often have bell towers, usually six to mirror the stones inside, which ring at the three traditional markers of the day—matins, noon, and vespers. The Great Temple in the capitol city of Obundinn, where Tristan and Michael’s duel took place, has a partial roof, but is still open above the stone circle, for the All-Father to see through. Human bloodshed of any kind is prohibited explicitly by sacred tradition within the stone circle, and it is unanimously agreed that the wider temple enclosure also demarcates sacred space. Thus, to attack someone in a temple is considered a gross sacrilege, and to kill a human in a temple, no matter how justified, is one of the gravest offenses one can commit in Heimar, since the Prince of the Gods is specially invited to witness the destruction of a human, the first generation of which it is said he crafted by hand.
This drawing started as the tracing of a screenshot I took, and as I started fleshing out Michael to get the contours of his clothing I thought he turned out well, so I kept going. Tristan’s pose is based almost solely on the screenshot, but with Michael I not only moved him closer that his original was to his opponent, but I changed his pose. My interpretation of the characters is that Tristan’s style of fencing is similar to Fiore dei Liberi’s armizare (a fifteenth-century knightly martial art that included wrestling, dagger-fighting, swordsmanship on foot and on horseback, and the use of spears and polearms), while Michael’s style is inspired by the sixteenth-century Bolognese School of swordsmanship (represented by such figures as Achille Marozzo or Antonio Manciolino). Tristan’s preparation to strike isn’t exactly a guard, but we can assume that the cut started in Posta di Donna/“The Guard of the Woman;” meanwhile, Michael stands in the Bolognese guard Porta di Ferro Stretta/“Narrow Iron Gate,” which many Bolognese authors consider the best guard for defense in a real fight.
I was having trouble finding the horizon line, but I had a clear idea of the lighting in the scene and realized that the horizon line wouldn’t be visible anyway. So I shaded it in and decided to experiment with the lighting I could achieve with a pencil brush. The entire drawing was done using only the Pencil brush in Adobe Fresco and two rake brushes.
