The page sent to investigate the dismal clouds hanging over the route returned with his report too late to save his master the trouble of mounting but comfortably in time to avert disaster. "Your Lordship, please stop! The rain is a very flood, and the storm barons smite the wetted earth with their terrible bolts!"
"What of it, if barons have their trifling sport? We who have higher duties are not dissuaded from touring our lands by that." Saying that, Count Fandeghen rode forward. He dismissed his retinue, but no other concession did he make.
The tempest did not prove the page a liar, nor did it dissuade the count. The missiles of the storm barons struck the ground closer and closer, and never did he honor them with his attention till his steed forced the issue, for it shied when a bolt came too close for its animal courage to bear. The rider wrested his horse back to placidity, but he himself was wroth. He dismounted and declared this.
"The fright you caused my beast will have its consequence, vassal!" He stretched his great bow and loosed a shaft upward to the bolt's originating point. The roar which followed was not thunder. Soon the wounded storm baron appeared and gave notice of challenge by raising his furious mace.
The battle ended this way, that Count Fandeghen was too much for any baron of whatever realm. He pinned his foe to the ground and made of him a prisoner. The ransom the count gained was seven talents of silver, for that baron's bolt forked seven times, and a fulgent lance difficult to withstand on the battlefield. If you go to the current count and ask to see it you will be refused, for the grandson of the man who won it gave it as a gift to a knight who did him great service, and that was well done.
Finis
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