Footsteps in Time by Sarah Woodbury

riding and her
feeble attempts to learn Middle Welsh.
    David, on the other hand, continued to
make great strides towards becoming a man as understood by the
Welsh of the thirteenth century. For him, life in Wales was a real
life role-playing adventure. His friends at home would have been
falling all over themselves to experience it with him—that is until
they realized the swords were sharp and a real war was coming, one
in which David might well play a part.
    Except for the daily ride, Anna
usually saw him only at meals. However, one day in early January,
she heard a commotion in the great hall. Anna hurried in and saw
David and another boy standing before Prince Llywelyn. Bevyn
accompanied them, along with the grizzled older man who’d first
taught David to fight on the way north from Cilmeri.
    The other boy, who was more
than two years older than David as well as bigger and burlier, had
a black eye and a swollen nose. It was unlike David to get into a
fist fight, but it looked like that was what had happened. Bevyn
and the older man spoke calmly to each other. David stood unmoving,
staring fixedly ahead with his feet spread and fists clenched. He
was doing some of the breathing exercises he’d learned in
karate.
    Prince Llywelyn, standing
straight with his hands clasped behind his back, looked from one
boy to the other. He spoke to David, who replied. Prince Llywelyn
then put a hand on David’s shoulder, leaned down, and looked him in
the eye. Whatever he was saying, he enunciated so clearly that had
Anna known enough Welsh she could have read his lips. At last, the
two boys gripped forearms in sort of a handshake, and the group
broke apart.
    David spotted Anna leaning against the
wall and walked over.
    “ What happened?” she
said.
    He half-laughed. “I was in a fight.
Can’t you tell?”
    Anna looked him up and
down. “No, I can’t. The other guy sure looks like it,
though.”
    “ Fychan and I were
fighting with wooden swords,” David said. “I won fairly. No one has
ever defeated him before, and he was mad about it, I guess. He
shouted at Bevyn that I cheated. I tried talking to him, but he
wouldn’t listen, so I turned around and walked away. Next thing I
knew, he jumped me!”
    “ Uh oh.”
    “ Yeah. He caught me
off-guard, and I went down on one knee. His arms were around my
shoulders, but I threw him off and turned to face him. I heard
someone shout at us to stop, but I was seeing red, and I think he
was too because he rushed at me. He believed he could overpower
me.”
    “ Let me guess,” Anna said.
“He took a swing at you, you blocked his arm, kicked him in the
groin, and when he doubled over you came up into his face with your
knee.”
    “ Pretty much,” David said.
“I was so mad I was ready to hit him on the way down too, but a
couple of the guys pulled me off.”
    “ So what did Prince
Llywelyn say?” Anna said.
    “ Fychan was in the wrong,”
David said, “so there wasn’t any question that I had the right to
defend myself. But Bevyn was concerned that I let my temper get the
better of me, and the knee in the face was unnecessary.”
    “ It was, especially since
you had people calling you off before the fighting
started.”
    “ I know,” David said. “Then
Prince Llywelyn said that a leader couldn’t afford to allow anger
to affect his decisions, and that I needed to understand that there
was a time for making an example of a man, and a time for showing
mercy. He didn’t object to the way I’d conducted the fight, but
that I’d done it while hot, instead of cold. A leader has to be
cold in order to mete out true justice.”
    “ A leader, huh?”
    “ You caught that too, did
you? I’m not sure what to make of that.”
    Anna knew. Her brother was going to
succeed in this world even more easily than in the old one. She’d
feared that no one would appreciate David’s talents, but it seemed
that here, stripped of the trappings of modern society and with
over seven hundred