Getty 42v
The lance answers the sword of [Mounted 7], twice, and both answers attack the same weakness — a sword cannot beat what it cannot reach. [8] goes under the beat by striking the horse; [9] goes under it by couching the lance where no beat can find it.
This is the counter of the play that came before: this Master with the lance carries it low in order to strike the horse, either in the head or in the chest, because the companion cannot beat aside so low with the sword.
- He waits with the sword to beat your lance ([Mounted 7]).
- Carry the lance low.
- Strike the horse — either in the head or in the chest.
- The reason is purely geometric, and Fiore states it as the whole counter: the swordsman cannot beat aside that low. His guard is above the target.
- The horse is not a spiteful target but the reachable one: it stands in front of the man, below the line his sword can defend.
The verse's word for the outcome is guastar — to ruin. Unhorsing by wrecking the mount is a legitimate line of attack in this section, and the counters at [Mounted 11] and [Mounted 28] both return to it.
This is another counter of lance against sword: the man with the lance sets and couches (metti e resta) his lance under his left arm, so that his lance cannot be beaten aside. And in this way he will be able to strike the man with the sword with his lance.
- Same problem as [Mounted 8]: a swordsman waiting to beat your lance.
- This time keep the man as your target, and take the beat away from him instead: set and couch the lance under your left arm (metti e resta).
- Couched on the left, the lance crosses your body and lies against the far side from his sword — so it cannot be beaten aside.
- Ride on and strike the swordsman with it.
Two counters, one weakness. [8] moves the target below the sword; [9] moves the lance beyond it. Neither contests the beat — this section never answers a beat by beating back.
Glossological analysis
- metti e resta ([9]) — "sets and couches". Restare here is not "to remain" but to place the lance in the rest — to couch it for the charge (cf. the Morgan's in resta at [7]'s added paragraph, and the Pisani Dossi's participle arestada). A false friend worth flagging: the modern cognate would give "he puts and stays".
- arestada (PD, [9]) — couched, the same root; the verse's one-word version of the Getty's phrase.
- brazo stancho ([9]) — the left arm. Stancho is Fiore's ordinary word for "left" (beside sinistra), not "tired" — the modern Italian stanco is the false friend. Recurs at [Mounted 24], where the scholar comes up on the parte stancha.
- fora de strada (PD, [9]) — off the line, as at [Mounted 2]. Its reappearance here is pointed: the same phrase that named the short lance's goal on 41r names the thing the lancer is now preventing.
- guastar (PD, [8], [11]) — to ruin the horse; the verse family's standing verb for attacking the mount.
- sença nessun impaço (PD, [8]) — "without any hindrance"; impazo/impaço as at [Mounted 1], where the lance clears the shorter weapons de impaço. The section opens and continues on the same word: what matters is what is in the way.
Manuscript comparison
- The witnesses agree on the actions and disagree on where the text belongs. The Getty gives [8] at 42v-a and [9] at 42v-d; the Morgan gives the same two paragraphs at 4r-c and 4v-d, i.e. on the page before its own [7]. The prose is near-identical ("non po rebater cum la spada tanto basso" in both); only the position in the codex differs. This is the local looseness in the concordance described at Manuscript comparison §4D, and it is worse than usual here because the two prose copies foliate the mounted material in different orders altogether.
- The Morgan's swordsman answers back — and concedes. The paragraph the Morgan adds at 4v-b belongs to this quarrel: the swordsman insists that "if this one comes at me with his lance couched (in resta) to strike me, and not my horse, I will beat his lance aside and strike him without fail" — but he grants the rest: "the sword cannot defend low, past the horse's neck." Read with the Getty's [8] and [9], the Morgan turns the page into a genuine argument: the sword beats the lance aimed at the man ([9] fails), and cannot touch the lance aimed at the horse ([8] succeeds). The Getty prints both counters as victories and never reconciles them; the Morgan is the only witness that adjudicates.
- The verse family carries this page unusually well. The Pisani Dossi has couplets for both plates (30a-c, 30b-d), and both preserve the reasoning rather than just the boast: [8]'s "without any hindrance" is the Getty's "cannot beat so low" in one phrase, and [9]'s "so that you do not beat my lance off the line" states the purpose of the couch. Verse is not always the lossy witness here.
- The Paris has neither plate. Its Latin skips from [7] to [10], so the whole lance-against-sword counter-pair is absent from the Latin.
- Illustrations. [8] pairs the Getty (42v-a) with the Morgan (04r-d); [9] is shown from the Getty alone (42v-c, 42v-d).