The spot was as good as any: relatively clear, just a couple of bushes to avoid, a slight roll to the ground to account for, some rocks to be wary of. The Midraeic raised his sword, and Cole brought his hands up, starting a steady rotation of their opposing stances in hopes he might use the rotation to make up for his disadvantage.
But The Midraeic’s grip was bad. His whole form, actually. Like Cole wondered what he had been doing in Swordplay class for so long to still be so bad – a stance like that would get someone in his class beaten.
As if reading Cole’s thoughts, The Midraeic halted, forcing to Cole to halt, and steadied himself. It didn’t make that much of a difference to his stance, Cole thought.
But thinking wasn’t quite what Cole did in these moments – not when he was truly focused on succeeding. Cole cast the bolt of his mind out again, and charged.
The Midraeic’s face flashed displeasure, but he hadn’t any time to really feel it. Cole covered ground fast, even without surety about how he would strike an armed opponent. He only hoped to beat the reach, really, and he did.
Clumsy form translated to clumsy strikes, and The Midraeic hauled back to take a swipe at Cole like swinging an axe rather than a sword. Cole could block, forearm held out meet the Midraeic’s foolishly two-handed grip on the sword at the wrists, while his other elbow struck for the bottom of the Midraeic’s jaw.
Tits, he was fast!
The Midraeic practically hurled the sword away by losing his grip the same moment Cole stopped the blow, twisting wildly to blunt the impact of Cole’s elbow to his face. That didn’t mean, however, he was out of control – Cole felt the way his right hand, no longer holding the sword, twisted to try to seize Cole’s wrist.
Haunted by joint-locks, Cole sprang back rather that press his attack and risk being seized, but also felt the discombobulation of The Midraeic being willing to throw away the advantage of a sword so soon in the fight.
And now The Midraeic took control, as they had both backed away from one another, starting their circling again – rotating Cole away from the thrown sword, and himself towards it.
Well, that wouldn’t do. Cole hadn’t even seen where it had landed, but he could spot the shaking of the bush it had passed through.
He just darted for it.
The Midraeic, caught totally unprepared for the complete abandonment of all proper form, flailed limbs at him as he passed. He didn’t succeed, and Cole felt himself in the clear, until he heard heavy footsteps and then felt an impossible amount of weight on his back.
He had fucking thrown himself on Cole.
They tumbled to the ground. Both frantically pushed away from each other in a mess of disorganized limbs, rolling on the ground to come up to their feet panting.
Cole felt a spike of irritation, unexpected and unbidden, that he didn’t have time to give into because the Midraeic immediately tried to punch him. Cole dodged and countered, and the Midraeic dodged and countered, and they closed, both pressing in rather than be driven back, and...
Fuck, they were in the practice bout again.
Cole struck anyway, and the Midraeic seized Cole’s left wrist in his left hand and, crouching to get under Cole’s guard, elbowed him in the stomach (at least it wasn’t a choke). A punch set for The Midraeic’s face, despite all of Cole’s devastating intention and angular advantage, was blunted by his opponent’s raised arm. That raised arm easily snapped out to hit the inner elbow of Cole’s still-trapped left arm, sending up a shock of numbing pain.
Only pain and not irreparable injury because Cole was able to angle his arm to bend instead of break. He dropped into a cold sweat – impossible to tell if The Midraeic really appreciated the hardness of that blow, but also not a matter to hesitate on. Cole implemented his own hard move, and let go an unrestrained punch to the Midraeic’s face.
Cadets hit each other in the face all the time – that wasn’t the choice Cole made – but usually with a certain amount of restraint, for self-preservation as much as anything else (broken bones, even hand bones, could mean falling weeks behind as they recovered). Especially when, as The Midraeic was, unable to mitigate the force of the blow.
He just... took it. His cheek seemed to puff immediately, something very weird happened to time as Cole’s surprise let him watch the way the skin reacted to a developing contusion – it was almost like he could see it pale as blood was forced out, redden and swell as it came rushing back in, breaking bonds of vessels and readying a purpling he could imagine in the not-too-distant future.
Rather than dwell on this, however, Cole hauled back to try again, strategic mind a little dulled by ‘what the fuck’.
With – apparently – no such problem, The Midraeic swept a foot between them, putting his back to Cole, free arm sweeping upward to catch Cole’s bent left elbow and force it towards Cole's own ribs, as if Cole were a child flinching away from a fire.
This fucking form. These fucking moves. Cole felt his weight shift as The Midraeic took control of his body away from him.
Graceful and studied as the last time they had fought, there was little Cole could do but admire the form of it as it happened, which he hated. The Midraeic's arm under Cole's forced Cole's elbow skyward. Dipping under Cole's arm like a dancer, The Midraeic took the entirety of Cole's balance in one hand. For a moment, Cole faced the sky, body arced backwards to keep The Midraeic from pulling his shoulder loose of its moorings, left arm a frame through which he could see only the black of the back of The Midraeic's head. The Midraeic, like a lazy fisherman, cast his arm forward and Cole fell hard, with his back to the ground, knocking the breath from his lungs.
He could not continue to be surprised in this Fate-Fucked match.
The fall may have taken his breath, but it didn’t take his brain.
Cole tucked his head down towards his chest as he fell, right hand palm-up over his left ear. The Midraeic's knee came down on Cole's head – ‘what the fuck’ – and Cole pushed himself free like a grape popping from pinched fingers. Still going for the joint-lock, the Midraeic pulled back on Cole's left arm, as avoiding The Midraeic’s skull-crushing knee had Cole almost putting himself into a joint-lock without The Midraeic’s help.
This was stupid – Cole was no longer thinking – pushing against the ground as if running on his side, Cole threw himself into a ball half-tangled around The Midraeic’s feet. Using the Midraeic's leg as a hand-hold, Cole was able to pull and hold himself in proper orientation with his elbow again at the cost of significant grass strains and scraping his cheek against painfully against the dirt as he imitated a sowbug. With whatever force remained from his scrambling, Cole swept his leg out into the world’s most laughably soft kick at whatever he might hit on The Midraeic’s body.
Offensive laughability aside, between the kick and the pulling on his leg and generally not having a place to put his weight that wasn’t Cole’s unsteady body, The Midraeic lost his balance. He rolled with Cole’s blow and gave up the lock –
And like fuck Cole was going to let him.
With a failed submission, the smart thing to do would be to create distance enough to try again, but every time Cole had let him get distance to try again Cole had lost the bout, so this time Cole flung himself – in as much as a sowbug-shaped person could fling anything – and got enough of a grip on the back of The Midraeic’s uniform to draw him back and get more of grip and then...
Cole rolled furiously – whole bodyweight put into it, legs bracing weirdly against the ground for purchase. He half-dragged The Midraeic down on top of him, kept rolling – both flailed, faces were struck and lips bled and eyes got dirt in them and buttons tore loose and it was all mostly by accident as, ape-like, Cole climbed over his enemy and seizing the front of his jacket at first reasonably-oriented opportunity, headbutted him.
“Landica!”
The Midraeic’s hands went to his nose, which started to let out a gentle trickle of blood (like punches, it was smart to pull your headbutts in as much as possible, and Cole had – not just out of politesse but training, because the ollamh called headbutting an old Midraeic term that somewhat loosely implied it was sheepfucking in reverse and thus not looked favourably upon). This gave Cole the opportunity to seize his forearms, and throwing his body down, use his more considerable weight on every possible point of contact to hold The Midraeic down.
The Midraeic shook his head now that he couldn’t use his hands to clear both the blood and tears running across his face, and small droplets of red spattered the grass. He felt briefly for openings to try to shift Cole’s weight, but there were none. Finally, he settled back, like a cat, snapping his head to the side one last time with a furious snort, glared balefully up at Cole.
It was fascinating.
It was stupid.
The Midraeic’s right hand found a divot in the dirt and slipped out of Cole’s grip so Cole got punched (rather weakly, no space for wind up) in the face. He blocked the next one and the struggle started again. Cole relinquished his grip on The Midraeic’s left arm, entangling The Midraec’s right in the course of stopping another punch, and laid down for a choke with his forearm across The Midraeic’s throat.
It was fair, after all – he had used chokes before.
The Midraeic managed to block the choke – barely, awkwardly, but now they sat with faces inches away from one another, panting with the effort of maintaining and fighting the weight of Cole’s upper body, other arms twined in mutually unrelenting grips.
The Midraeic finally spat something Cole found utterly incomprehensible. Almost pretty, but it seemed to be laced with vitriol that made it clear it wasn’t complimentary.
Cole could have let out some choice words of his own – defended his actions, which in another situation he would have decried as too severe; taunted The Midraeic with the fact that he was going to be taken down by the same sort of moves he used on others; simply gloated about regaining his honour in combat – but that was all really rather beneath him. And it wasn’t exactly what Cole wanted to say, or to feel.
So he just... grinned.
“Caput stercoris,” The Midraeic hissed.
Cole grinned wider. “Was that a surrender?”
“Eha, fut’e t’ipsum.”
“Maybe that was.”
The Midraeic glared at him. Or maybe not. Maybe that was just how he looked.
No. That was glaring.
“Come now,” Cole said consolingly, “it’s all fair and above board. Surely you know the Ainjir terms?”
If such were possible, Cole might have thought he saw physical steam rising from the heat of anger touching The Midraeic’s face.
But then he took a deep breath – difficult in the position they were in, with the struggle against Cole’s choke – and cleared his expression.
Cole waited, but nothing happened.
“It was obliging of you to drop your sword – you could summon that up again and surrender. Save us both time.”
“What good is surrender unearned,” The Midraeic said, obviously still annoyed but matching Cole’s light tone.
Cole chuckled – rather in spite of himself, actually. It was hard to tell if he was seriously (jokingly?) bantering, and everything Cole had heard indicated The Midraeic wasn’t one for bantering. Or talking. Everyone said he talked in class, but if you didn’t talk in class you were going to be striped for silence instead of stupidity.
He had nice voice. Deep and sure despite the obvious strain of basically holding Cole’s upper body weight one-handed. And he had the sort of accent people paid good money to have whispered in their ears, which obviously didn’t hurt. If Cole could speak like that, he would be drowning in it.
Ah, but Cole was already drowning it, and it wasn’t that fun. Nice, of course, but not always fun. He hadn’t meant for his thoughts to go there – it was probably the proximity, which in a normal bout wouldn’t have mattered except The Midraeic, despite having absolutely no chance at this point, was stubbornly making them hold it.
So he ventured.
“If this doesn’t suit your conditions for surrender, then I wonder what I might do to earn it?” Cole said, half-idly.
There was a little noise – a little falter in the hold keeping Cole up – but The Midraeic gamely retorted with: “Try winning.”
Cole chuckled again, and gave a little more attention to bringing his forearm down across The Midraeic’s throat. What he thought might be a nice demonstration of how close he was to ‘winning’ backfired somewhat, in that the minute he altered his position at all, The Midraeic started to working to free one of his other limbs, meaning Cole had to abandon the effort to clamp down again.
“It’s just waiting, then,” Cole said, not bothering to keep his light irritation out of his voice. “You can’t hold this up forever.”
To emphasize, Cole rocked his weight forward, earning a sharp set of breaths between gritted teeth as The Midraeic kept himself from getting choked out.
Silence fell. They stared at one another. Cole obligingly tilted his head so he didn’t sweat directly on to The Midraeic’s face, and the Midraeic graced this moment of consideration with a glance away, but then stared at one another in silence some more.
“You can’t be serious,” Cole said.
The Midraeic stared at him.
“Your team is not going to win.”
The Midraeic stared at him.
“You can’t expect me to surrender?”
The Midraeic stared at him. Then he said, “You could.”
Cole scoffed. Took a brief survey of his limbs to make sure there wasn’t some key weakness he was missing. Sighed and let his weight fall back onto the Midraeic’s straining arm.
They could hear birds.
“Do you always stare like that?” Cole asked.
A flash of something – maybe puzzlement? – passed through The Midraeic’s eyes, but he said nothing.
“It’s unnerving, you know.”
“Maybe that is it the purpose,” The Midraeic said.
“Well, it doesn’t do any good to tell me, then, does it?”
“Certainly it does,” The Midraeic said.
The birds again.
“Perhaps,” Cole conceded.
The sounds of battle joined reached them. It was hard to tell exactly what was going on – it was all just shouts and rustlings and thuds – but Cole was unconcerned. The Midraeic seemed to be as well.
“This is a shit plan,” Cole finally said.
“It is not a plan,” The Midraeic said.
“How could it not be a plan?” Cole scoffed. “To keep me preoccupied until the match ends? Are you expecting your team to win? Without you? It’s just a waste of time.”
“Time is not wasted. My plan is to win,” The Midraeic said, as if that explained everything, or at least as if he was gifting Cole with some insight he shouldn’t be sharing.
“Balls,” Cole said.
The noises of battle hit a higher pitch. Neither of them could fully maintain the facade of being totally unconcerned, but neither gave a single inch.
The strain was getting to The Midraeic. Cole could tell. It had to hurt like blazes by now to keep such a consistent resistance going. The distraction of thinking of it meant that Cole missed a sweat drop that splashed down on the Midraeic’s cheek.
“Sorry,” Cole said, shaking his head off to the side.
The Midraeic made... some kind of noise. He didn’t look happy.
Cole returned to position. “You know, it’s kind of your fault, though – you should surrender.
He looked... less happy. Disgusted.
Cole, in that blank way that ideas came to him sometimes, observed, “Your eyes have a little green in them.”
The Midraeic’s expression visibly heated – not a proper blush, he was too dark for that, but a definite change of colour.
“Just a little,” Cole said, grin returning. “But it’s there.”
Finally, mercifully, The Midraeic stopped staring at him, muttering something in his own language.
Over the pitch of distant fighting, they heard a two note whistle – the signal on Cole’s team for imminent defence of the cró. One was bad, but then there was another, from a different point, and another, and another...
Cole couldn’t help it – he looked away.
With shocking intensity, The Midraeic started struggling again, almost unseating Cole with a twist of his hips at the same time a switched grip let him change the direction of pressure from Cole’s choking arm.
Cole shouldn’t be worried – this was exactly what he had trained his team to do, face a crisis without him – but...
With multiple calls, from multiple directions, surely they expected Cole could break off combat and come help? Or, surely they expected someone to be able to help – it was clear from the number nobody but him was left to come...
He looked back down at The Midraeic, who other that seemingly slightly relieved he was no longer holding the same painful point of resistance, appeared totally calm, and prepared to wait – prepared to meet Cole’s gaze with an impossible, implacable calm.
Cole relinquished the choke, pulled back, and tried to punch The Midraeic as hard as he could – he had to get him to relent somehow, get him to stop somehow, get a chance to get away somehow...
The Midraeic took only a glancing blow as he twisted his neck to get his head out of the path of Cole's fist. Faster than Cole could have thought, the Midraeic seized Cole's arm, his whole body lifting and rocking forward as the Midraeic raised his hips off the ground. Cole attempted to pull his knee up to prevent the coming roll, but the Midraeic had it trapped beneath his own. The Midraeic's defensive grips on Cole's arms had turned to vice-like holds.
The Midraeic rolled them both over, putting Cole beneath him. Cole locked legs around the Midraeic's waist, trying to latch arms on to drag him down, but the Midraeic's quick arms had already planted on Cole's chest, forcing them apart. Though his arms were shorter, the Midraeic had enough distance to keep Cole from getting a solid grip on his head. Assuredly swift, still Cole didn't switch focus swiftly enough; a hand on Cole's chest, another on his hip, and the Midraeic brought a knee up, twisted his hips and wedged Cole's grip with his legs apart to escape.
A strange symphony – Cole’s deteriorating control of the grapple and the increased sounds of panicked signals and shouts from the distant fight for the cró. Cole’s heart was suddenly beating loud, fast, and terribly in time with the thought that he was not ready to submit, he was not ready to retreat and try for distance, he was not ready to lose. Again.
The Midraeic, who had no such thoughts, no such pressures or restraints that demanded he dominate, he save face, he prove his place, slipped like a fish through Cole’s attempts to regain control.
Whatever Cole’s panic, he still felt ashamed when the thought ‘it’s not fair’ flashed through his head.
The knife’s edge. The point of the spear. The sweet pulse of battle – this was it.
And then a figure burst through the foliage.
“Galen!” The cadet, shocked and out of breath, grasped the situation quickly. Swallowing down enough air to explain, he gasped out, “Orga fucked us!” That utter fucking bollocksing sack of shite fucked us! We were close,” an expression of pure agony swept over his face. “I’m sorry.”
The cadet disappeared back into the leaves, heading for The Midraeic’s team’s side of the field.
The knife edge turned the other way.
“Stercore ‘sus fili canis!”
Cole didn’t know what that meant, but he could guess at its severity by the way The Midraeic followed it up with a full-body wind-up to try to punch him. Cole narrowly avoided getting his skull rattled. He suspected he had been underestimating the strength in the Midraeic’s arms by a lot.
More importantly, he understood that the conditions of battle had shifted drastically. It was, perhaps, not true that The Midraeic faced the same social pressures Cole did, but it was true that he wasn’t immune to social pressures. The stakes now were that if The Midraeic didn’t win his fight with Cole, he would win nothing at all.
And he had warned Cole that he planned to win.
The punch had been a desperate, instinctual move, but some training managed to catch up to The Midraeic’s racing mind and he spiked his elbow into Cole's leg, a twitch of Cole's hips the only thing that kept him from getting his nuts knocked into nonexistence.
“Fuck!” Cole shouted – a somewhat dirty move? Maybe, but it really hardly mattered at this point.
He prevented a blow to his stomach by seizing the Midraeic's right hand. Jerking down, he was able to get a grip on the Midraeic's head with his left hand, and haul him down. The Midraeic lifted – Sweet Peace, did he lift! – Cole’s weight rested nearly all on The Midraeic’s neck, but with his legs still wrapped around The Midraeic’s waist, Cole managed to throw his weight to the side, bringing them both crashing to the ground.
The swift crunch of leaves and cracks of branches as cadets passed them, flashes of uniform between the trees – and then another set, stronger and louder.
The Midraeic twisted in Cole's grip, trying to create space between them, but, on his side, he had nothing to push against for leverage. Cole twisted, getting on top, using his legs to try to push The Midraeic’s face towards (into) the ground, taking a firm grip on his right arm and fighting to straighten it.
Cole had definitely been underestimating the strength of The Midraeic’s arms. Cole had the bigger build, but there was plenty left in those more slender limbs. And it must have hurt, Cole thought, to have his arm pulled and twisted like that, but he didn’t have time to think to do otherwise – and, frankly, for a shot to the balls, The Midraeic could take a little pain.
And, anyway, that wasn’t quite the point. The point was, The Midraeic and his buddies weren’t the only ones who knew joint locks they shouldn’t.
Cole got what he wanted: the Midraeic gave in to the pull, turning in Cole's grip to that they no longer faced each other, but the Midraeic's back was to him, Cole sitting on the small of his back.
Cole grabbed the back of the Midraeic's collar, pushed the Midraeic's right arm up next to his ear – all that was necessary to have the submission called.
Victory.
If anyone was watching. If the line judge could see. And there was a chance they couldn’t, but that wasn’t really what was on Cole’s mind. He was looking into The Midraeic’s face, his eyes, which said even now he was going to refuse to submit. Fury, or stubbornness, or both, or something else...
Cole torqued the Midraeic's trapped arm up, until the green-flecked eyes closed, and he could hear the pain in his labored his breathing, and finally until he was getting near causing actual damage to the joint.
He waited there a moment – at the point at which honor dictated he stop, and good sense dictated the Midraeic should submit.
The beating of the great drum, conveying Cole's team's victory by full submission, could be felt rising up through the ground, almost before the deep thrumming of drumbeats reached their ears.
Cole heard the sigh of defeat from the Midraeic's throat, felt it strangely deep by the close connection of their bodies. He felt suddenly like a child again before the unexpected communication of deep emotion rising from the hold of his thighs against the Midraeic's chest. He wanted to blush, but he didn't blush like that anymore.
Instead, the instant of the sigh, he pushed up just a fraction more on the Midraeic's arm, heard and felt the sharp cry of pain just as deeply, and received the submission he wanted.
That was victory.