The blade arrives first. Yet under the lamps, the scoring box can remain dark when an attack lacks priority, a verdict that makes fencing less a race than an argument conducted at speed. That refusal is the sport's sharpest lesson. A touch is not merely contact; in foil and sabre, it is contact granted status by right-of-way.This is no quirk. The referee reads a phrase d'armes: attack, parry, ripo...More