Dominicus rubbed his head, whole arm going over as if he could find some hidden patch they hadn’t shorn down nearly to the skin.
He hated it. His head felt cold. His scalp felt things it should never feel, like a light breeze. Short black bristles stood out and if he moved his hand right they felt a bit prickly but if he moved it the other way they smoothed right down only to pop up again immediately.
Oh, he hated it.
Especially because he couldn’t stop touching it. From watching other cadets also so afflicted, he knew he looked especially stupid running his hand over his head all the time. Like a cat with honey stuck to its elbow, all his grace was gone.
Not that he much minded or attended to his grace, but, Mother of the Prophet, he felt its absence.
Why they did it at all was mysterious, why now even more so, but by this time they were all so miserable with their new ‘haircuts’ (were they not better labelled ‘shearing’?) and so used to being berated for asking questions above their station nobody thought to do anything but wonder. Miserably wonder.
Adding to the disorientation was the fact that Dominicus could tell he was being avoided. He wasn’t sure why. He might have to ask Fachtna, an idea which he hated, because Fachta was a sneaking little back-room dealer, which was also why it was a good idea.
Thanks to the bracketing, they would have a break of a week, at least, before their next match. The arrangement of which victorious teams would face each other was usually put at a bit of a delay until the full set of first-round winners was complete, but general practice was to avoid pitching teams that had recently won directly into the next bracket. As the circle of victors grew smaller, such fast turnarounds became inevitable – and as with everything at the Academy, just because something was generally recognized as good practice, didn’t mean great effort would be expended to make it done.
This thought exacerbated Dominicus’ disgruntlement. What was the good practice of hacking off all of their hair?
After the initial excessive joy, Ruaridh’s delight at Doninicus’ teams’ unexpected victory (it seems everyone more or less knew Bannamorga was stupid) had cooled considerably. Other than reddening deeply, however, he avoided even lightly Cogadh-related talk now, which, as Cogadh consumed most of their lives not already consumed by trying to survive classes, meant that they didn’t talk much. Feichín, facing his own upcoming match, had disappeared into preparations with his team. Hal would be also preparing, although he mostly talked to Hal about sparring – combat tips, as they mostly met to practice what they had learned in class.
Another reason for his misery: today was Long Swordplay.
If that weren’t bad enough, after Long Swordplay they would have Groups, which was almost certainly going to be adjourned for Cogadh team practice, meaning he would have his first meaningful confrontation with his team since their victory. Teä and Wynn had been eager to lose themselves in celebration, and avoid any blowback from their ‘treachery’ to the team. Other than swift exchanges of smiles and victorious gestures, they hadn’t interacted much with Dominicus outside of class, which was how things had been before the match, too.
Dominicus thought ruefully that perhaps he could have gone to a celebration, if he had let himself be invited (he even thought it possible he would be invited, which was something), but for some reason the thought filled him with horror. He had yet to attend any Ainjir celebration that his status as a First Year didn’t put him mostly in the position of cleaning up after. He knew some big days were coming, but obscurely, as the calendar was different (Founders’ Day, for example, was one the other First Years insisted even the Academy wasn’t so grim as to keep them from, though some other more minor celebratory days given to upper years had already passed them by. But when was Founders’ Day? Did he know? More importantly, did he care?).
It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy celebrations. Love of the Prophet, he missed the taste of brandy, or even the small wines he shared with his little siblings on days of celebration (so they could toast one another as equals, even though Dominicus’ age and position earned him the right to more fortified liquors). It had disappointed him immensely to learn that the most they got with dinner was watered beer, which was gross until habit and the extra strength it provided overcame his disdain for the taste. He was a great celebrator. He loved a party.
He stopped rubbing his head (again) and frowned in his slow walk towards the open field in which they would hold Swordplay. The mats weren’t out, thank God. If the mats were out he could count on spending most of the lesson getting the breath beaten out of him again and again. The mats were only barely softer than the ground, so beaten was the compacted hay and grass or whatever filling kept them stupidly square and made them nominally ‘safer’ for practice throws.
God, he hated Swordplay.
Why was the idea of going to a party so upsetting?
Ah, but to focus on Swordplay was the more important task. He had to fortify himself to be infuriated and do nothing about it. The very thought of it made him mad, and he diverted back to wondering why it wouldn’t be perfectly nice to go have whatever poor drink the other First Years could scrape up and celebrate something for once.
Dominicus spent a lot of time learning things he didn’t want to learn. Since deciding it was greater betrayal of his father to not try his best at all the Academy tried to teach him than it was to demur on the premise a Skola wouldn’t need to know how to use a halberd anyway, he had put greater effort into attending to his combat classes, rather than just surviving them. This effort had not translated into a less begrudging sense that this was all very useless, doubly so when the ollamh seemed not to want to teach him at all.
His instinct was to wrest whatever knowledge the ollamh was hesitant to give him from his hands (and, as he sometimes thought just before asking the Prophet for guidance for his sinful heart, cudgelling the ollamh to death with it and standing with arms raised triumphant over his corpse). He resisted this instinct like he resisted the urge to fling his bowl at the wall every time he discovered a bit of the sausages that had haunted their meals for weeks now at the bottom of his soup. Or to cry every time he had flatbread with not the right amount (the amount his mother put on it) of garlic on it. Or to tell one of classmates one of their ideas was stupid when it might just be culturally-induced stupidity.
He wavered, in other words. In Quartmaster Ghent’s words. The Quartermaster had, in the passing moment they had run into one another some days after the match, congratulated him on his immensely stupid plan working. It was difficult to decipher if the congratulations was insincere (it seemed very sincere) or if the accusation of stupidity was exaggeration (it seemed very measured). Ghent had asked him if he was really ready for the consequences of succeeding – another puzzling way to put things – and suggested that if he had made a decision to excel, he needed to not waver (a foolish assertion, as Dominicus was, if anything, determined and unwavering... that is, once he had made a decision. He was still here, after all, when he could have made himself so unworthy as to be expelled already – some of their classmates had already departed under such circumstances...
Well – but, then, that wasn’t really a decision to excel. He hadn’t really decided to excel. He had first decided to survive and perhaps escape attention, and that hadn’t worked, and then he had gone through much angst to decide to actually stay and excelling was part of that. Well – but, that still wasn’t really a decision to excel. Sure, he had implied as much to Ruaridh, mostly out of a stubborn sense that he had been insulted by the implication he couldn’t, but his standards of excelling weren’t going to be the same as those marked by this idiotic Ainjir institution. He followed the path his God set for him, as the Prophet had before him, out of duty to his father, his family, his people – that didn’t mean had to achieve the marks set by the Academy. In fact, those might be totally opposed to his own marks...
Certainly, there were things about the Ainjir way of life he would never give in to. Or adapt to, is what he meant to think. Or... well, now he wasn’t certain what he meant exactly. Anyway, the less he gave in to Ainjir things the better off he was, probably, even if it was very lonely. And maybe a little miserable. It wasn’t like being grateful to God for the moments in which life was lived excluded misery – much of it was miserable – the Prophet was killed, for God’s sake!
The Prophet drank wine with his enemies, though. His classmates weren’t his enemies. Not exactly. They weren’t going to kill him. Maybe the ollamh would. The Swordplay ollamh certainly seemed to try. Anyway, he wasn’t going to drink wine with that clownish fuck even if the Prophet came down and served the glasses. Eha, all right, well, maybe then – but for no less.
Maybe the suggestion was that he hadn’t really made a decision, or didn’t know the nature of the decision he had made. He didn’t like this thought at all. Less than the party thoughts).
“Blood, you look ready to kill someone,” a cadet beside him murmured.
They had started the class while Dominicus was thinking. On principle, he rarely listened to whatever opening blather Ollamh Corin graced them with, as it was both meaningless and rarely applied to him on the few occasions it was meant to be practical and helpful. The pattern of class was, for him, depressingly consistent.
They arrived and usually, on their own time, stretched, unless wrangled into setting up or retrieving equipment. They were called to order, and lined up in squares with each cadet at least arm-length apart, feet positioned slightly apart with the dominant foot forward (one was encouraged for one’s dominant foot to be the right foot by Ollamh Corin’s attention and disgust with left-footed leads). Their hands were clasped behind their backs, elbows out, a position which easily began to ache the longer he droned on, as one was neither totally resting one’s shoulders nor exactly exerting them to maintain the right ‘winged’ appearance. Various forms of cheating – gripping belt loops or trouser tops with thumbs, or for those so gifted, resting supportive fingertips against the tops of particularly round butts – could only be discerned if Ollamh Corin started to pass behind them, and so were freely employed except on those occasions when he walked through the spaced squares, talking and talking.
He only attended to Dominicus if some aspect of setting up for the day was particularly onerous or awkward, in which case Dominicus was sure to be called upon to accomplish it. Dominicus only attended to him if called upon.
It kept things easy. Which was not a decision to excel.
“Galen!” Ollamh Corin called him to the front, scuffing at the ground with his foot to make sure of the arena was set, “Time to demonstrate failure.”
Light laughter passed through the class, as it always passed through the class. It didn’t even make Dominicus mad anymore. Except today.
“Go back and get a sword, you little idiot,” Corin barked as Dominicus obediently ran up to stand opposite him at the front of the class. “This isn’t your barbaric Grappling class. We’re not going to hug each other to death.”
It was easier to pass over this laugh, as Corin disdained Grappling, though Dominicus couldn’t help but suspect he disdained it all the more vocally in their classes because he had heard that Dominicus was good at it. It was also easier to ignore being derided about not getting a practice sword, because, as Dominicus had learned, there was no right way to do this. If he ran to get a sword first, he was berated for being too eager and not properly attending to the importance of the bare forms. If he didn’t, then he was berated as he had been just now, even if all he did for the next twenty minutes was stand idly by holding both swords while Ollamh Corin demonstrated the forms unarmed.
Dominicus was berated for taking too long to retrieve the swords, not holding them properly when he arrived, not picking the right swords, not following instructions for how to stand to be demonstrated on – a task which an armless dummy or tree would have performed admirably in this lesson – and used as the example for the foolish mistakes one could expect in response to this manoeuvre from an idiotic opponent.
This was all easily ignored, as Dominicus could do something like switching off his Ainjir ears, and instead contemplate prayers in Midraeic he hadn’t had time to contemplate lately. He only had to catch the odd instruction, which was easy, as it was barked in a decided different tone than the scathing insults, delivered more sardonically.
Well, usually.
Today, Dominicus was troubled. He remembered with some fondness – because it meant insulting him was not the focus of the lesson – the way Ollamh Corin had gone over some of the better demonstrations of sword techniques from the previous week’s Cogadh matches. Dominicus hadn’t picked up a weapon, and Teä and Wynn hadn’t had a chance, but that didn’t mean that the others hadn’t in their successful match. It was one of the few ways Dominicus learned anything from this class, and one of the few times cadets were recognized for their successes. Even if it was only through praise of other First Year cadets, such praise was very thin on the ground.
If to punish him, Ollamh Corin was refusing to praise the Cogadh teams, then Dominicus was going to have trouble not getting mad.
“Ready!” Corin shouted, not waking Doiminicus from his usual reverie, so much as reminding him that, with a place to channel his anger, it would be harder to manage.
Maybe that wasn’t the case. Maybe he was reading the situation wrong. Maybe...
The tip of Corin’s wooden practice sword poked roughly into his side, just at the middle of his ribs.
“And admirable demonstration of how to lose, but not one in service of the technique we’re learning today, Galen. We could go slower, but I’m not sure it would be swordplay then.”
This was all rubbish. Nothing Corin said about his performance had any meaning, because he never bothered to teach Dominicus how he should perform. It still hurt to get poked with a practice sword, though, so Dominicus at least tried to avoid having that happen too often.
They re-set to Corin’s command. Dominicus barely heard the laughing of his classmates anymore, as he flailed through trying to take as few more injuries during the demonstration as he could. Corin spoke fluidly throughout, like a soup-seller barking his wares while stirring the pot, only instead of singing out at each particularly succulent piece driven to the surface by his ladle, he insulted Dominicus.
They re-set frequently, which gave Dominicus his only hope of learning anything, as through the process of elimination he gradually assembled some kind of defense acceptable enough to drive each re-set further apart.
It was torturous. And stupid. And Dominicus hated it. And he learned nothing. And it hurt to get hit, over and over again, sometimes in the same place. The precision with which Corin could strike him was mocking. He could be teaching excellent Swordplay, so balanced was his form, so accurate his blows. Instead, he beat Dominicus in a roundabout, agonizing, monotonous way.
“Obviously, Cogadh isn’t all,” Corin said, as Dominicus wincingly bent over his knees, taking deep breaths both to catch his breath and to try to draw out some of the pain from repeated blows to the exact same bruising spot. “Perhaps had some Swordplay been involved, it would not have been so close to a miserable draw.”
“Good swordplay, that is,” Corin corrected himself, before calling again, “Set!”
He was almost done. This last put-down was obviously meant to reassert Dominicus’ place, as final statement. He had come to learn to read them well over the weeks.
But now, Dominicus was furious.
He put the pain out of his mind, closed his mouth and drew in a chest-expanding breath as he re-set to the starting position. He met Corin’s eyes over their crossed swords, something he rarely bothered to do, instead trying to observe whatever he could about stances before Corin’s next punishing blow. If Corin noticed any difference, he gave no sign, simply called the start as usual.
He had an advantage, in that he knew exactly when the call would come, as he gave it. That – and his disdain for Dominicus’ learning – meant that he often started to move just slightly before the call, letting the breath that sounded it and the breath and accompanied his first motion be one and the same. If he ever thought about this as a mistake, the only thing he had done about it was to get sloppier.
What it meant, though, was that Dominicus started before Corin started, and that while he usually held back to try to learn what Corin was trying to do, he was equally able to begin with an immediate counter. Which was what he did this time.
He wasn’t good at counters – he wasn’t good at anything – but getting hit with the point of a wooden practice sword hurts. Instead of demonstrating his attack, Corin barely turned the tip of Dominicus’ sword fast enough that it was a glancing blow to his side instead of a stab to his middle (he was, in fact, a very good, very nimble swordsman – this could not be denied, even if he was an enormous bastard). Dominicus got the satisfaction of seeing him take a hissing breath of pain in through his teeth before the flat of Corin’s sword smashed into his jaw and nearly sent him to the ground.
There was nothing really about Swordplay in that; he taught them to treat their wooden weapons like real ones, using the tip to slap someone across the face was not an approved manoeuvre. He did it because he could.
“Nearly lost your head to that one, didn’t you,” Corin said, rage masked quickly by sardonic disdain. “Not that it would cost you much – even less now most of you look like molded bread.”
Dominicus glared. He had been lucky not to lose any teeth, and hesitantly pushed his tongue at them to make certain he wasn’t going to. Something deep in his ear ached along with his jaw, and he suspected the swelling would make sleeping on his side a challenge.
“I suggest you refrain from illegal moves” that wasn’t illegal – Dominicus wasn’t skilled enough to do anything illegal with his sword “or stupid acts of desperation. It really only makes you look wretched in addition to deficient.”
“One last time to try to get it right, before we really must move on to something more profitable than trying to teach this animal to walk on its hind legs.”
Sure, that was something Corin had more or less said before. When he was really exceptionally displeased to ‘have to’ ‘teach’ Dominicus.
But then he said, “Not even your god managed to do that.”
Even Dominicus – who could hardly hear anything but the furious pounding of his own blood in his ears – could tell the laughter at that from the class wasn’t nearly as certain as it was a bit nervous. Nobody had yet gotten great results from mocking Dominicus’ religion directly to his face, although they didn’t realize that was rarely what made him angry.
Corin learned fast, and after they set this time, made his call to start and his first strike one motion. He also tried something completely different, moving his sword out and around, like he was going to pass entirely around Dominicus’ sword and return that mid-section strike for a more successful one of his own. It would have definitely hurt – right the space under the middle of his ribs – he would have been down for the remainder of class, or perhaps even the day.
Had his body been there.
But it wasn’t. Dominicus wasn’t a good swordsman, but he was fast. He performed an ungainly twist, wrenching his body around to bring both hands onto the hilt of his outstretched sword and drive the whole damned thing down into Corin’s wrist – or forearm, or elbow, or whatever he ended up hitting – like a woodsman swinging an axe. It had no wind-up, so it wasn’t very powerful, but it really didn’t have to be, and anyway, he let go of the Godforsaken sword immediately afterward, closed the distance between them, and because he hardly expected he would ever get another opportunity, took an extra agonizing second to fix his stance and draw back his arm as Corin reeled from both the blow and the unexpected closure and punched his ollamh directly in the face.
Corin seized the back of Dominicus’ collar with his left hand, until this moment politely tucked behind his back, but while he was readying a blow of his own – which with a wooden practice sword still in his hand might have broken something vital – Dominicus collapsed the ollamh’s elbow with a blow from his own and punched him the gut with his left hand while he had the opening.
Finally dropping the practice sword, Corin seized Dominicus’ left arm in a punishing grip, in part simply to try to hurt him, and in part because the blow to his gut had been enough to briefly wind him, and he could stop Dominicus’ attack and lean on him for support. This meant when he tried to strike, it was with his left hand, and despite the advantage of build and muscle, Dominicus was able to largely block the blow with a folded arm.
Maybe it was that – the block indicated the fight wasn’t over – or maybe it was the violent fury in Dominicus’ eyes, but Ollamh Corin seemed to realize he was Ollamh at that moment, and spun Dominicus around into some kind of variation of the paralyzingly painful joint locks Dominicus had observed the Third Years practicing. He forced Dominicus down to his knees, wrenching his arms up behind him until Dominicus thought they might be pulled from their sockets, pushing Dominicus’ head down with a painful arc in his neck.
“You,” Corin said, voice shaking with anger poorly disguised, “take him to the Quartermasters’ office. Relate exactly what you just saw.”
He shoved Dominicus down and away, nearly rolling him across the ground. “I’ll see you out those gates yet,” he muttered.
Ignoring the pain in his joints and back – which the sharpness of suggested ignoring wasn’t the best move – Dominicus stood.
“The teams did good,” he said, which in his head, made a lot of sense.
It didn’t to anyone else. But by then, he and his escort were walking away, and Dominicus was only worried about not weaving too much as he walked.
Dominicus realized he had never actually been punished yet. Few of the First Years had. They had once seen one of the Fourth Years, at a distance, get actually whipped, though not very much. It didn’t seem to take very much. One of the Second Years had been taken out and beaten several weeks in a row. In both cases, for what, Dominicus never knew.
He sat nervously on a hard stone bench, greatly worn, in a dark stone hall, outside an unassuming wooden door. He supposed he hadn’t needed medical treatment (maybe he could USE medical treatment, but he didn’t NEED it, he supposed) so this time they had just gone directly to the office. It was not where the Quartermaster lived, Dominicus now knew, but some kind of reluctantly-accepted base of operations in the cluster of Academy buildings itself.
Boredom was fighting with anxiety. His witness had come and gone from within the room protected by the wooden door. He had heard nothing, the witness had said nothing to him. Nothing had been asked of him. He hadn’t even seen who was in the office. The witness had left, having a day to get on with.
Dominicus only vaguely feared he no longer had one to get along with.
He simply had no idea what his punishment would be. He feared far more some horrible disfigurement than something as prosaic as being kicked out. Plus, for all the disdain he held for this place, he still somehow felt to do so for so little a transgression was beneath it. He felt it wasn’t so great a transgression, but only because, he regretfully acknowledged, certain logics of the place made sense to him.
If he could strike an ollamh, during practice combat, then it spoke more to the (lack of) skill and attentiveness of the ollamh than to any misbehaviour on his part. If it weren’t practice combat, then the situation might be different. One might argue – he felt Corin surely would – that ‘demonstration’ was no practice combat, but having been so brutally struck in the face with a move not being demonstrated that day, it stood to reason this was more combat than demonstration.
It might mean he didn’t deserve expulsion, but, naturally, it didn’t mean they wouldn’t hurt him for doing it. Potentially a lot.
While he was sitting, he heard an off-kilter pace before the Quartermaster’s officer he had met before – the one-legged one – came around the corner into the short hallway. He stopped on seeing Dominicus, then walked over and set himself down on the bench beside him.
“Choke somebody else out?”
Dominicus wasn’t sure what to do.
“Punched an ollamh.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” the man said, going deliberately through the steps to make himself more comfortable and dab at the moisture gathering under his twisted eye. “Was in combat class?”
“Yes,” Dominicus said.
“Who?” the officer asked.
“Corin.”
The officer snorted, perhaps in shock.
“Ollamh Corin,” Dominicus corrected quickly.
He realized the officer was stifling a laugh. “That at least makes sense.”
They sat in silence a moment.
“Who’s in there?” he asked, tipping his head towards the door.
“I do not know,” Dominicus answered.
“Do they know you’re out here?”
“I... the witness...” Dominicus glanced at the door, then hopeless back at the officer, whose expression was unmoved. “I do not know.”
“Well,” he said, hefting himself up and retrieving his crutch from where it rested on the wall. He said nothing else, but swung open the door, walked inside, and closed it after him.
Dominicus should have tried harder to see in.
The wait seemed longer after that.
He didn’t see that officer again, or Quartermaster Ghent, or really anyone he recognized. He was eventually led out by a different Quartermaster’s officer, who kept an arm on his shoulder even while they passed a closet, from which he retrieved an awful, long, blackened stick of some kind. Then he was led out to a fairly non-descript part of the grounds close by, well sheltered by trees, in which several poles stood, and told to grab the iron ring hanging from one.
It was, indeed, very painful. But not public, as he learned Corin had demanded. And also not on bare skin, though the quartermaster’s officer who beat him mentioned the laundry must be part of the punishment. None of his welts bled particularly much, as, after all, the officer commented, it wasn’t like it was a serious punishment.
It was far more than Dominicus had ever experienced as punishment. Sure, he had occasionally been rapped with a wooden spoon – slapped, on the rare occasion he did something worthy – struck, yes, through accident or fear or simple reaction to something devastating, like little fingers reaching into a fire. He had also been in fights, which were an entirely different thing. But to be stripped of his jacket, made to stand (warned how to stand to best endure), to hold the ring, and even without what he imagined to be the torturous gaze of witnesses, struck – slowly, methodically, not quite enough to be rhythm except that pain became its own rhythm through expectation. That was something else. He hoped never to experience it again.
He would punch Corin again, if he could.
He returned to his classes as Groups were ending, contemplating the lesson the slow walk back also taught him, which was that beating was in itself only part of the punishment, which was why they had not strained themselves to make this one particularly rough. His back ached; already, his muscles jumped awkwardly if he moved them too much under the developing welts, which he only imagined would harden and hurt in their own ways. He would not rest well, would not be comfortable, and could not imagine that he would get any break from lessons, as they had barely even entertained the thought of sending him to the medical corps to make sure he wasn’t too injured. If he was so foolish as to earn a beating, then he could face his usual schedule with the lingering consequences.
He knew had to find his Cogadh team, and also faced the gradual darkening of mood that accompanied having to face them. He wasn’t sure what his reception would be, but it was hard to imagine it would be strictly good. That it should be didn’t really factor in.
Perhaps if he walked slowly enough he could miss Groups entirely.
Alas – he entered the clearing where the Cogadh team met. The first thing he saw was the standing circle of Bannamorga and some three of his usual party at one end. In the middle, Ergamuth and another cadet stood at the ready, on defense. On the ground lay Wynn, and sat Teä, blood leaking from his mouth.
“Your turn,” Bannamorga said, he and his three companions beginning their stride over to Dominicus.
“Wait!”
“What the fuck, Orga!”
Dominicus, surprising even himself, dropped the jacket he had been carrying (too worried it would hurt to put it on, even though it was chilly), put his fists up, and starting striding to meet them.
It annoyed him that Ergamuth and his companion got in the way, trying to tangle limbs and prevent the two parties (well, the party and Dominicus, all alone) from meeting.
“Teä and Wynn were bad enough but you can’t do this to all of us!” Ergamuth shouted.
“Fuck you – this is my team, and I can and SHOULD do what I have to to keep it going.”
“How the fuck is this keeping it going?” the other peacemaker said.
Then Dominicus surprised himself. “If this motherfucker wants to get his ass beaten before he learns to sit on it, I can do that.”
Some of the color drained from the Ergamuth and his companion. Teä, who had been trying to stand to do – something (who knew what he imagined he could do when he was hardly in any shape to protect himself). “He just got beat for punching Corin in the face, but yeah, start a fight with that guy, I’m sure it’ll go well.”
This was apparently news to Bannamorga and his crew – news travelled fast among cadets, but they had been distracted, after all, with their own idiotic intentions – and enough news to cause them to step back. Ergamuth and his friend could then focus on holding back Dominicus.
Teä took a few steps before falling back again a tree, to hold himself up. “We won, Orga. We fucking won. That should be enough.”
“WE didn’t win,” Orga growled, pointing viciously, “HE ruined my fucking plan and stole leadership.”
“Maybe he actually CAN lead,” Teä retorted, holding his head but no less angry, at the same time Ergamuth said, “He had a plan that worked with ours.”
“We didn’t...” but Orga seemed to realize he was about to make a very stupid admission. “But he didn’t...” and that was even stupider.
“You’re still the leader,” Ergamuth said. “You took the cró.”
“Even if he told you to,” Teä muttered, but as this was unhelpful, everyone seemed to consciously decide to ignore it, and anyway, he slid down the tree to rest again.
“Fucking right I did,” Orga said, and the cadets backing him muttered their agreement. Since looking at Dominicus (who had finally stopped pushing forward, as it had finally occurred to him that his back really hurt, and getting his ass kicked would only make it hurt more) seemed to make him angry, he looked at Ergamuth. “And that’s what we’re all going to say. And keep saying.”
“I’m the leader of this team,” he addressed the crowd more generally, “and what I say goes.” He glanced back with disgust at Dominicus. “Sure, we won, this time. Next time, we work together.”
It took as much resolve as Dominicus had left not to point out that not only were he, Teä, and Wynn, who thankfully appeared not to be passed out as much as waiting for his bloody nose to clear before he sat up and risked getting blood on his uniform, the reason they won, but working together was Ergamth’s original idea. Instead, he walked over to his two teammates and joined them on the ground, hesitantly shadowed by Ergamuth, while the other cadet nervously retained his spot in the middle.
“We won,” Dominicus said, though it seemed a pretty hollow congratulations even to his ear.
“We’re in worse shape than ever,” Ergamuth said.
“Fuck,” said Teä, bringing himself around so that he could lie flat on the ground.
“It’s not going to take long for the others to realize Orga’s too stupid to come up with these plans,” Ergamuth said. “Honestly, the rumor is already going around, after you shouting that command at him by the cró. It’ll take work to quash what’s already out there. Even then, it’s not going to be a secret we can keep forever.”
“Who cares?” Dominicus asked.
“We care,” Ergamuth said, heat in his voice. “It’s unearned valour, and as soon as the rest of the class figures it out, they’re going to start taking it out on Orga – and probably some of us – and I can only imagine if it should get to the upper classes.”
“If they care,” Wynn said in a distinctly stoppered nasal voice.
“They’ll care,” Ergamuth said – he didn’t seem to be mad at Wynn for saying THAT though. “It breaks the larger set of rules that govern how cadets behave.”
“What rules?” Dominicus asked, something like panic in his chest.
“The unwritten ones,” Ergamuth said more gently, “that I don’t think they think they have to explain to anybody before they get here. Obviously, that’s not the case.”
Well, that was directed at Dominicus.
“Unwritten rules are stupid,” Dominicus said, with Wynn signalling weak agreement without getting up from the ground.
“It will make Orga less manageable than he already was,” Ergamuth said, and at Dominicus’ expression, made the conciliatory amendment, “which wasn’t very much. But he would have been manipulable. Now he’ll be suspicious of it, meaning everything will look like manipulation, and it’ll take twice as long to convince him of any suggestions. We’re screwed, even if we keep winning. Especially if we keep winning, which we have to do, because if we don’t then in addition to being losers we’ll make it all the more obvious that Orga was never in charge from the start, and the shame will come down on all of us who pretended otherwise.”
“You were gonna sacrifice us,” Wynn said. “You’ve been trying to manipulate Orga from the beginning, and you were gonna let him treat the rest of us like shit and shut us out if we didn’t join your ass-kissing club.”
“Yes,” Ergamuth said coldly, “for the greater good. But now that plan is out the window anyway. We have to have a new one.”
“Oh, it’s ‘we’ now, is it?” Teä muttered.
“I never pretended,” Dominicus said. “I never ass-kissed. I am not going to start.”
“You don’t have to,” Ergamuth said, “because you don’t matter. You were never going to matter. And now I doubt you’ll ever matter in the future.”
Dominicus wanted to be furious, but he could see that Teä looked sad (and furious, but mostly sad, and in pain). Wynn, on the ground, also looked sad. Ergamuth didn’t look combative, like he was trying to be insulting – like he had said almost everything, he seemed to be simply stating facts.
Dominicus didn’t want the facts – he knew that before he asked. But he asked anyway.
“Why not now?”
“Because now, instead of just dismissing you, they’re also becoming afraid of you.”
“I’m not afraid,” Wynn said weakly, unconvincingly, from the ground.
“You might have a concussion,” said Teä, unimpressed.
“That is stupid,” Dominicus muttered, but Ergamuth ignored him, too.
“I would say there might be a way to turn that to your advantage, if I thought you were the kind of person who could do that sort of thing, but you’re not. So you’ve screwed yourself, too, make no mistake.”
“I make no mistake,” Dominicus said, and even to his own ear it sounded petulant. Maybe it was petulant. His back hurt. He was deeply furious on behalf of Wynn and Teä, who had obviously been ambushed. And while he believed his analysis of the situation, he was suspicious of Ergamuth – after all, for both Teä and Wynn to be so injured, it had to mean he had stepped in quite late to stop whatever fight had broken out. Dominicus didn’t like that, even if Ergamuth seemed determined to help them out now.
‘Seemed’
He was still working his plan of manipulation. He had just changed who he was bothering to manipulate.
“Let’s say for the sake of argument, you’ve been mistaken,” Ergamuth said in faux-conciliation, “and move on from there. We’re going to need a new plan, one that works in Orga and his unwillingness to work with us, and one that can get at least another win.”
Dominicus looked at Teä, who he found looking back at him (Wynn’s body was oriented the wrong way). He hoped, somehow, he conveyed in his look back that he wasn’t fooled by Ergamuth’s smooth talking, that Dominicus wasn’t ready to concede they needed Ergamuth at all, which Ergamuth was heavily implying – that he still thought they could do it alone if they had to. It was a lot, for a look. He would have to explain later.
“Winning is not a problem,” Dominicus said, tugging up a piece of grass to roll between his fingers, in lieu of punching anyone else in the face today. “Anyone who is afraid of me is a fool.”
“Very convincing,” Ergamuth said. “Come up with another winning plan, and it won’t matter whether they’re afraid of you or not. And let me worry about Orga. And don’t let it slip that it was your plan that won the match.”
“We won the match,” Dominicus said, but Ergamuth only nodded, as if this were merely a statement of agreement.
“Pack away another win, and then maybe we can work on softening your image.” After a slight hesitation, Ergamuth reached up to pat Dominicus reassuringly on the shoulder, but he should have followed his first instinct. His shoulder, being part of his freshly-beaten back, also hurt, and his expression reflected this.
“Fucking piss,” Ergamuth said to nobody but the air as he rose to begin his work bringing the ‘team’ back together.
“We won the match,” Dominicus repeated, once Ergamuth was safely out of earshot, to Teä and Wynn’s raised faces (Love of the Prophet did Wynn look bad – twin streams of dried blood running down both cheeks like fat tabby streaks). “Victory will be ours. They are unnecessary.”
He supposed, then, that that was a decision to excel: when he decided to win Cogadh. It couldn’t be helped that other things came with it – and he was going to make certain that the things that should come with it, did. He wasn’t going to lose this fucking stupid Cogadh, and he also wasn’t going to let his team lose, nor let him or them be roped to those lousy fucks who would lose for them, or let gratuitous assholes like Ollamh Corin ignore the fact that they had won. That was something like accepting the consequences of deciding to excel, though he suspected – was almost certain – there was more to it.
He would have to think it out later, when he felt less like more than half the people he met in a day deserved to die.
“If people weren’t already afraid of you, they would be now,” Teä said. “You’ve got a way with words.”
“Speaking of, please tell me about how you punched Ollamh Corin in the face,” Wynn said, settling his head back down. “Tell it to me like a lullaby. I’ll have sweet dreams.”
“Eh,” Dominicus said, with a shrug he instantly regretted, “It was combat practice. He hit me with a sword.”
“He is the Swordplay ollamh, Galen,” Teä pointed out. “Hitting people with swords is kind of what he does.”
“Yes, but...” Dominicus worked hard to find the words to explain it all correctly – could he fit in all the preceding angst? His thoughts about the Academy, the Ainjir, his fate, his God? That Ollamh Corin was an unremitting asshole? Should he try to explain the excelling thing? (It sounded really stupid, now that he thought about it).
“He deserved it,” Dominicus said.
“And the beating you got for it?” Teä asked.
“I deserved that.”
“Well, at least it’s all fair.”
“I would do it again,” Dominicus admitted sheepishly.
“Fucking madman,” Teä muttered.
“With a sweet, sweet lullaby,” Wynn said, and sighed with satisfaction.