scabbard

Flashing his club as a sword, he targeted the hole as the bull and completed the routine by wiping the imagined blood off the blade and returning it to an invisible scabbard with a flourish.

Slowly, she drew a sword from her back, where it had been held in place by a scabbard shaped out of her own hair.

Their leader Meir Simcha, who walked round the outpost armed with a large machete in a leather scabbard, said that unlike other Israelis they had not been surprised by the Hamas assault on 7 October.

The sword is in a scabbard covered with 2,600 pearls and the ceremony is a symbolic show of mutual respect between two historical powerbases, the monarchy and the City of London.

He also found worked wood in an adjacent niche that turned out to be parts of the swords' scabbards.