"Good morning," cried the Count, leaping from his horse. The Beg returned his salute with a solemn obeisance; the Prince turned his back upon him.
"Let us go into the forest to find a nice clear space," said Tököly; and off he set in silence, leading the way, while the soldiers followed at some distance, leading the horses by the bridles.
After going about a hundred yards they came to a clear space, surrounded by some fine ash-trees. The Prince signified to the soldiers to stop here, and, without a word, began to take off his dolman and mantle and tuck up his sleeves.
It was a fine sight to behold these men—all three of them were remarkably handsome fellows. The Prince was one of those vigorous, muscular shapes, whom Nature herself seems specially to have created to head a host. As he rolled up the flapping sleeves of his gold-embroidered, calf-skin shirt, he displayed muscles capable of holding their own single-handed against a whole brigade, and the defiant look of his eye testified to his confidence in the strength of his arms, whose every muscle stood out like a hard tumour, while his fists were worthy of the heavy broadsword, whose blade was broadest towards its point.
Feriz Beg, on discarding his dolman, rolled up the sleeves of his fine shirt of Turkish linen to his shoulders, and drew from its sheath his fine Damascus scimitar, which was scarce two inches broad, and so flexible that you could have bent it double in every direction like a watch-spring. His arms did not seem to be over-encumbered with muscles, but at the first movement he made, as he lightly tested his blade, a whole array of steel springs and stone-hard sinews, or so they seemed to be, suddenly started up upon his arm, revealing a whole network of highly-developed sinews and muscles. His face was fixed and grave.
Only Emeric seemed to take the whole affair as a light joke. With a smile he drew up his lace-embroidered shirt of holland linen, bound up his hair beneath his kalpag, and folded his well-rounded arms, whose feminine whiteness, plastic, regular symmetry, and slender proportions, gave no promise whatever of anything like manly strength. His sword came from a famous Newcastle arms manufactory, and was made of a certain dark, lilac-coloured steel, somewhat bent, and with a very fine point.
"My friends," said Emeric, turning towards his opponents, "as there are three of us in this contest, and each one of the three must fight the other two, let us lay down some rule to regulate the encounter."
"I'll fight the pair of you together," said the Prince haughtily.
"I'll also fight one against two," retorted Feriz.
"Then each one for himself and everybody against everybody else," explained Tököly. "That will certainly be amusing enough; in fact, a new sort of encounter altogether, though hardly what gentlemen are used to. Now, I should consider it much nobler if we fought against each other singly, and when one of us falls, the victor can renew the combat with the man in reserve."