When night-routing dawn at last gave them escort, the envoys to the Cobreni set out, men trained and eager with a daring knight at the head of them. The road led past farms and orchards no less worth the work than those Sir Clovis saw before, and the hands were about more than earlier that they might make use of the kind earth since less fear had they then that too much of thriving would bring too much of robbery upon them. Just as archers desiring to test their bows and their aim bring down the birds whose plumage pleases the eye most so that the cloud-wandered fields above are left to duller wings, so too had the country come under the cautious who avoided the greed of false lords and prideful knights set over them by a king heedless of right.
The Cobreni liked to live in hillier land where there was less of grain and more of animals whose coats fit men as well as themselves, and women better. So the Aequinians said. The envoys spoke of a village, Cobrena it was called, and left a better road for a worse one that wended among those sheep-feeding hills and clung to them, goat-like. The worse road yielded wholly to the earth and grass, untiring foes, ere the travelers reached what had before been the end of it, so that the envoys went on with no guide to their steps but what some of them recalled from courteous trips long ago when the Cobreni bade them visit as friends.
But no noble hosts who desired to guard their names lived there still, but only sheep that bleated as the men walked near them. Those hooved grazers were able to do nothing themselves, but they had over them a shepherd, ceaseless in his watch and peerless in his hearing, who listened to their cries and took them as calls for aid. He ran toward the strangers, and as he did, he bellowed words even the deaf might hear, for so masterful was his voice. “You thieves, you enemies of peace, how bold you are! The hours of night are not enough for all the wickedness you plot. Now you come in the day, and under the all-judging sun, I will do for you myself to prove what a mistake it was for you to covet my sheep.” What that shepherd said was no boast meant to be heard by others in the village square who would never learn whether the feats he claimed were true or otherwise. For just as men take maps as sure guides even knowing the mapmakers have never traveled the routes shown there any more than they have themselves, so do they often believe much else they have no cause to deem worthy of belief. But that man was broad enough for the work he planned to do, and tall, and sure in his handling of the staff that he held so far as Sir Clovis judged, who knew of such things.
That knight, not at all unused to seeing masterful men and incapable of being mastered himself, spoke words even and calm. “Before you come against us and make some mistake, I will tell you we are no stealers of sheep or aught else. I am Clovis of Salisville, and rather than mutton we would have your name and where Cobrena is.”
“As for Cobrena, I know it. But it is gone now, and we hate robbers all the more for that here. We know this also, that not a one of those bandits named himself such but rather styled himself 'Sir' or 'Count.' They told us that when they came with the resolve that our houses, all of them, must be burnt down for fear wealth was hid there which ought to be taxed. So then, you see what your word means here, though I confess it may be hard for you and unfair. I would say you were honest men if I trusted my eyes to judge what the Lord alone can. Because of that, I will leave off from killing you as well as I am able.”
The knight who heard that was not a man to advise others to dare every contest while shunning trials himself, but instead was glad at a chance to go against the shepherd, who was larger than he in his frame. “If you want that, why make it hard by the use of weaponry? Put down your crook while I do off all these my arms, and in the wrestle you will learn we are not such men as served that king who is dead. Neither will my friends aid me, and I will ask for little when I win. A few words it will not pain you to give are the prize I like.” So saying, Sir Clovis threw off the mail and plain shield his hosts had given him, gave his spear and the brigand's dagger he kept to Renato Partanus, and rushed to the fight.
Like land-guarding cliffs and the surging sea that strain against each other, one striking with waves that fall away when they reach the wall of rocks, defeated, and the other that drops from time to time as its counterattack great boulders from above which sink and do nothing, so too did those two men, each full of might, struggle each against the other, a right arm over the left and a left under a right. They grunted, they grappled, and did more to the ground in making furrows than to the other by all the throws that they tried.
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Sir Clovis did not bear it that an untrained shepherd should match him, who never herded sheep or owned them and had his knightliness alone to earn him fame. He planted himself and set every part of him to the task of lifting his foe, and he did, but one of his feet only, and an inch at that.
The other man made it his task to give better for good but raised the knight a like amount and no more. He tried then to throw Sir Clovis to the left and down, but that knight did not like to meet the ground unless to regain his wind after the win and baffled the shepherd by his skill. The two wrenched each other left and right over the hill so that the envoys had much to do to keep up with the pair. They viewed the contest with favor and were cheered by the thought that they had, that their fathers and grandfathers always had praise for the Cobreni in sport of that kind. More than that, the bravery of that shepherd and his art in speech hinted they had found in him a son of that noble family they came there seeking.
What changed the contest from one of standing men to a struggle on the ground was a rock, large, more of it under the earth than above it. The shepherd knew of the rock and avoided it, but Sir Clovis stepped on it with his ground-grinding boots that were made to slip thereby so that he fell. Then the shepherd saw victory and had only to seize it, he thought, but he lacked the skill for it. He dropped to his foe that he might use such holds as could not be withstood, but the knight, more practiced, gripped with his legs, his knees high up, turned him, and took the upper place whereupon his grappling won him the prize of renown which belongs to the winner when strong men wrestle.
“And so,” Sir Clovis said when he rose, though he ceased from speaking again, for his wind was spent. He gathered it again to say more. “And so I will leave off at that and have those words I wanted before. What is your name, and what of your father and mother? Were the both of them giants, or one only? I think it must be both for their son to be so strong as you and hard to throw. I nearly had the loss, though a knight against a shepherd.”
The other man panted as well but rose from the state of dogs to say, “I believe now that you are a knight, an honest one unlike the robbers who judge a spear, a cap, and a shunning of honest work make them such. For I never lost before or had a sheep taken from me, except that it was at night, with me asleep, nor was I overcome at any other time. My father and mother named me Caecilio, and I beg you to believe neither a giant, for if you try to dig them up as proof, we must fight once more.”
That was what the envoys hoped to hear, for they were sure Aemilio, who was the son of Caecilio Cobrenus, had a son in turn that the shepherd before them was. They mingled joy and grief then, that to their woe the Cobreni had dwindled to a single man whose father died before he told him of the glory of his family and what it had sworn along with Aequinium's best, but glad that the last of them had such might in his limbs, and scorn for the wicked, and a face plain and honest with a mouth that made speeches full of cleverness.
They said nothing of that at first however, but Renato Partanus asked this of him. “Is there among your goods, Caecilio, whatever you might own, a slab, well painted? Some rays of the sun may be on it that fall on a man holding forth to the people, who look on him with awe as he deserves for his merit and the good he has done them.”
Caecilio answered him this. “I have it in my hut to eat off it, after the thieves took by way of a tax all that I owned but for a few things I left on this hill. I tell you this now, since I want not to lie and give hope that there is some feast waiting in my home that I hid till now, that I own one bowl only, and no plates save for that odd picture.”
The envoys were glad then and asked to see it, which was the piece of mural as they guessed. On the way they told him of his family, his city, and most happy of all, the news that the rule of their wrong-doing king had ended in no way any ruler hopes for his own. Hearing that he agreed to go back with them, and in Aequinium they had such a welcome as does the spring when long-slumbering flowers and grass rise from the cold ground to greet it. The people made much of Caecilio Cobrenus and chose him for their commander in battle against brigands and stubborn lords who were of this mind, that it were wrong to change their ways when their king died and right to carry on as before. They wished as well to add to the mural with what had happened since it was broken apart, asking Sir Clovis for that cause to stay there in honor while he was painted, and he agreed to that.