Aquila

A swing or thrust carries energy that depends on the wielder's strength and the weapon's mass, so dense metals hit harder but tire you sooner. To cut armour, that energy must exceed the armour's cut resistance × the size of the hole × its thickness. An edge softer than the armour it meets rolls over and the cost soars. A blow that fails to cut still arrives as blunt force: plate spreads it, mail barely does, padding drinks it. Sound plate bridges a blow to its edges and passes little on until it is dented. Gaps in armour are found mostly from the flank and rear, so one foe in front finds few and three around a man find many. A struck limb also recoils, so only part of the swing lands, and flesh over a bone cushions blunt force: a thigh soaks up far more than a shin. Whatever reaches the body cuts skin, fat and muscle in turn, opens vessels, breaks or severs bone, and can reach the organs beneath.

Every fighter has nerve. It is tested when a friend falls nearby, when a grave wound lands, and when a lone fighter is surrounded. Numbers, friends at the shoulder and better kit than the enemy help; pain and blood loss hurt. A fighter goes from steady to wavering to breaking, and then runs for their own edge of the field, inviting free blows on the way. The routed may rally, and a side with no one left willing to fight has lost. A kill heartens the killer and those who see it.

Armour also springs. A layer gives by its strain at yield — its yield strength divided by its stiffness — over whatever length of it bends, and the energy that takes is returned when it springs back. Spring steel gives more than twice as far as iron and so drinks far more of a blow; mail can only bend a ring's width and stops almost nothing; padding simply crushes. Past that a metal takes a set, and the dent presses into the flesh beneath.

Not every enemy is a man. Every creature is built from the same plan at its own size: lengths by the cube root of its mass, bone cross-sections by the square of that, blood by mass outright, and organs by volume. So a bear's femur is nearly three times a man's in section and its 23 litres of blood take far longer to spill, while the same gash means proportionally less to it.

Every weapon fights at a distance of its own. A spear wants a hex between the two of you; a sword wants the next hex; a dagger wants no distance at all. Fighting inside your own measure costs you 15, or 35 if you are two bands in, and the weapon can no longer be used to turn a blow. A man with a dagger must therefore buy his way in: closing costs four action points, invites a free blow from whatever he is walking past, and can still be shrugged off. Walking into a weapon's measure, or out of it, invites that blow too — but a fighter has only one such blow to give each round, so a point can be baited before it is passed — but once inside he strikes at +7, finds half again as many gaps, and the shield between you is worth less than half. Only a lunging cut reaches out from there, at −10. A step in any direction loses the grip.

A fighter may hold instead of acting. Holding steps out of the order: the rest of the round goes by and the ones who held act after it, slowest of them first and quickest of them last, so speed buys the last word rather than the first. Up to four unspent points are kept back while holding, and are spent the moment a blow comes — three to turn it aside with the weapon, if the weapon can reach the line it comes down, or two to give ground so that it lands badly. Whatever survives becomes points again when the held turn is picked back up. Points not held are simply lost at the end of a turn.

A man is turned somewhere. He faces where he last walked or struck, and turning otherwise costs a point. Three hexes lie to his front, two at his flanks and one at his back; a blow from the flank finds him at +6 and halves what his weapon can turn aside, and one from behind finds him at +16, turns nothing aside at all, and goes hunting for openings at a third again the rate. Nothing about a man is round, either: a chest is 320mm across and 210 front to back, so a point driven at the breastbone has a hundred millimetres less to cross than one driven at the ribs, and what it reaches on the way in depends on the side it came from.

A guard is not armour but a statement: which lines are shut and which are being offered. vom Tag holds the sword up and back and favours the blow that falls; Ochs keeps the point at his face and shuts the high line; Pflug holds it low and forward and shuts the body; Alber drops the point altogether, opens everything, and answers with a free blow any attack it invites and survives. A guard is kept until changed. Striking carries a change for nothing; taking one without striking costs a point.

The manuals do not stop where the swords do. Inside the measure a man can be taken hold of and thrown, which is a contest of strength, skill and the weight each of them is carrying. A man on the ground fights at −20, turns nothing aside, is −15 to defend, and offers half again as many openings to anyone standing over him; he cannot walk, and getting up costs four points and a free blow from anyone still holding him. A man whose legs will not both bear him — a bone broken, a muscle cut through, the spine hurt — goes down and does not get up at all, and neither does a beast left with fewer than three. This is where an armoured fight ends: not with a cut through the plate, but with a knee on the chest and a point in the visor.

Edge hardness decides what a blade can bite into. Cut resistance and dent resistance are what armour offers against edges and hammers. Density decides weight, for good and ill.