“We’re fucked,” Wynn said – quietly, softly, the way one observed the shape of a cloud or oncoming rain.
“They fucked us,” was the theme of what Orga and his friends were shouting as he raged about the clearing. Surely he said those actual words at some point. More or less.
Teä sat on the ground, staring up at Dominicus, chewing on his lip. A few of the other cadets milled rather miserably between the two groupings, pacing or picking grass morosely. Eire stood – the cadet who was his semi-constant backup fidgeting behind him – smack in the middle, watching Orga’s group without looking like he was watching Orga’s group.
Teä kept taking in a breath, resettling his position, drawing free his well-chewed lip, all as if he were about to ask something only to fall silent again. Wynn was looking squint-eyed into the low blue horizon between the treetops, like a man confronting his mortality.
He nodded curtly, assured his previous assessment of the situation stood. “We’re going to lose. I guess we ought to confront it.”
Dominicus sat on the ground, staring at the dirt, observing and thinking. He had already gone through his initial grief as he stood before the chalked announcement of the forthcoming Cogadh matches. He recalled the cold plunge of his stomach upon reading it and had been getting angrier and angrier with himself about it for hours.
For one, it was wasteful: what good did it do him? What did it tell him or teach him or anyone? Look at how much energy they were expending despairing!
For another, it was precisely the sort of stupid reaction all of those idiots who spent all their time posturing about rank and politics worked so hard to inculcate in everyone else.
It was, however, going to be... a challenging match.
“...and it’s all your fault!” Orga finally sprung towards the invisible dividing line between Dominicus’ side of the clearing and his. Eire moved smoothly to stop him (he was very willing to be stopped, for all that raging).
“They fucked us because you didn’t act right,” Orga said, pointing viciously down at Dominicus. “You fucked everything up – you broke the rules! You made us all look stupid! You made us a target! They’re after us now, and it’s your fucking fault!”
Maybe half of that was a reasonable accusation to level at Dominicus, if one wanted to waste words levelling it.
“You know,” Wynn said, “it was good to win the one.”
“We wouldn’t even be in this position if we had all stuck to my plans!” Orga shouted.
“Yes,” Dominicus said, irritation getting the best of hi, “we would have lost much earlier.”
Orga now made a serious effort to cross the barrier and have a go at Dominicus, but his friends joined Eire in holding him back. Eire looked at Dominicus, annoyed (what right did Eire have to be annoyed with him? Should Dominicus be attentive to what Eire thought he should be doing? No such agreements had been made or intimated (a very small voice, himself-in-himself, remarked that replacing despair with a foul mood wasn’t any better)).
“You think we’re going to lose?” Teä asked, his words, or perhaps his gravity, drawing everyone’s attention to him.
Dominicus said nothing for a moment.
He didn’t want to think they were going to lose. He didn’t like accepting that premise. It was likely they would lose. It was going to be very hard to win. These were not the same as thinking they were going to lose.
What was the method for approaching a difficult problem?
“We know too little,” he said.
Into the quiet that followed, one of the other cadets whispered, “So we’re dumb and we’re going to lose?”
“No,” Dominicus said (they weren’t all dumb), “but... we should not admit defeat until we know all that we can know about the situation. We need to know more.”
“Know more about what?” Wynn asked, the exchange of glances with Dominicus and Teä making clear his concern that they would be letting others into their extra fighting practices.
Of course not. They would learn nothing from Orga and his friends, even in teaching them. Also, Dominicus doubted Orga and his friends would even want to attend, or to seriously approach the work – and it was work. They would invite no one else in until they were assured of their own skills.
“If there is more to know, we need to know it,” Dominicus said, which didn’t help anyone else at all.
“Do you have a plan?” Teä asked, nervously tapping a knuckle against his chin under a reddening face.
“Fuck his plan,” Orga said – he had been talking through this, they just ignored him, but now he clearly addressed them. “What plan is going to do anything against a team that’s just better than us?”
“I do not,” Dominicus said, ignoring Orga still.
“Our plan should be to salvage our dignity in the loss,” Orga growled.
“Yet,” Dominicus said, if just to head off any suggestion that Orga should start formulating a plan. The less time Orga had to put thought into planning, the better.
“Great,” Eire said, “so we neither have a plan nor time to perfect it.”
Dominicus didn’t like Eire (well, said the tiny voice – right now he didn’t like much of anyone). He was, however, a very useful weathervane. Dominicus could tell his point was not being understood.
“That is a foolish way to proceed,” Dominicus said. “We should never be planning for the next bout, but the bout after that. That is the only thing we have time to prepare for anyway.”
“Rubbish,” Orga scoffed furiously. “We don’t even know if there will be a bout after the next – we know less about that than about this. What kind of nonsense are you talking?”
“The only thing we have sure knowledge of is the next bout,” Eire said, agreeing with Orga without taking on the mental burden of having to actually say he agreed with Orga. Still, he had a kind of pitying curiosity in his voice, like something must be wrong with Dominicus if Eire had been forced to agree with Orga.
Teä and Wynn, however, knew what Dominicus meant; they had perked up.
“We will need to divide tasks,” Dominicus said. “We will need to meet much more regularly.”
“We already meet as much as every other team! Cogadh is a self-contained competition. We’re supposed to show off what we’re learning in classes, not add to our classwork! As if anyone has time for this,” Orga said, with a gesture as if throwing away something noxiously spoiled.
He turned on his heel and walked to the other side of the clearing again. Not everyone went all the way over with him. They looked over their shoulders, walking slowly.
Dominicus could use them. The more people they had the less taxing and the more fruitful their information gathering could be.
But he mistrusted them. He didn’t know them – he didn’t know their powers of observation, their weaknesses, their reliability. Using anyone he wasn’t sure of threatened the quality of the information he might receive back.
But maybe it was worth it. Maybe a show of faith would do him some good. Maybe he could use more friends...
A pain started at the center of his chest.
He pushed it down. They needed the extra eyes.
“First, we will need to know the other team’s schedule, then we will need to observe as much of the members’ activities as we can, and meet daily to discuss our findings.”
He hesitated, not wanting to make promises he couldn’t keep, but at the same time, why doubt? It was, after all, what should fill his time. “By endweek we will have a plan.”
“Right,” Orga, who apparently could have entire conversations saying unfriendly things and still listen in to other people’s conversations, “by endweek, with no time to practice. What good is it?”
Maybe, had his day been going better, or had his heart not hurt so badly a moment ago, Dominicus would have had something gentler, or cleverer, to say to this. As it was, he only grunted, and turned to Wynn, Teä, and, he supposed, Eire, to begin their planning.
“This Cogadh will not be a self-contained competition,” he warned. “We will show off what we learned in class, so don’t fall behind.”
Eire frowned in disbelief, looking at their teammates and then back to Dominicus.
In lieu of punching him in the face, Dominicus, not realizing he was glowering at them, growled, “You will do better.”
It was so early great patches of the ground still stood soaked in darkness. As the First Year dormitories were in the west, those not blocked by the main buildings’ shadows got a taste of early sun – the particular blessing of the First Years, he supposed.
Dominicus stumbled up the hill in the rosy-yellow half-light – or maybe it was grey? It was half gone to shadow, either way, really too early to be doing anything. The stumbling was partially the light, partially that he was abysmally sore. There had been some need to drag the mats out for Swordplay, so in addition to being hit with the wooden practice swords he had been thrown to the ground repeatedly. Everyone had, but he had the additional pleasure of demonstrating. Now that his face had healed to the point that only moderate powdering was required to dim the bruise, Ollamh Corin had returned to the old patterns of torment.
Dominicus was also pushing himself. He was trying to figure out what muscles he needed to work to get better at Swordplay without the guidance of actually learning anything in class. He spent time at the rock field, trying all kinds of strategies of lifting or throwing or positioning, but was getting close to a hysterical frustration as it became clearer and clearer that if he didn’t understand the movements it would do him no good. He could work on his grip for all time but a skilled opponent seemed always able to find some fine twist or point of pressure to make him drop his weapon.
Not that he ever got to hold his weapon for any length of time. His whole job was to be made to drop his sword and then get hit or pushed to the ground. That was his role; his fury at it nearly blinded him in class.
He thought maybe if they weren’t doing spear work in Weapons class he would have lost his mind. Or possibly injured someone irrevocably in Grappling class. He was still good at Grappling. Others were catching up, but he had a facility that meant he could typically win a bout if he went about it right. Or got really made and risked hurting himself or someone else.
This shamed him. His fury in Swordplay shamed him. The burden was heavy. He was not proud of his capability in Grappling, and he was not proud that he so casually seemed able to commit true harm. He should be ashamed, and he was ashamed, and it clashed badly with his understanding – theologically – that to feel deeply was no sin. It put him right back in the chair between his father and mother, listening on the one side to the teachings of restraint, of deprivation, of asceticism, calm, and purity, and on the other to honesty, forthrightness, confrontation and understanding, expression and acceptance.
He only felt so because he was like a dead leaf, spiralling to the ground. Something had come unmoored.
He had somehow, in dedicating himself to his father’s mission to prove the Midraeic people were as worthy as Ainjir, as capable of serving Ainjir as the people who named themselves for the nation, he was losing his grip on being Midraeic at all. Like sweaty, sore fingers slipping from a lip of smooth, square metal, he could not force the hold, and the more he tried to secure his grip the more things were shoved under his hands, of greater importance, of higher priority, of more near and desperate concern. He had to withstand an oral examination in Tactics class; he had to read an additional chapter of Ainjir history ahead of his classmates to keep narrowing his deficit of knowledge; he had to keep up his visits to the rock field and move slowly at it, so as not to injure himself; he had to practice to understand what he had not fully grasped about weapons handling; he had to meet with Cogadh team, drill movements at Stands, wash dishes every other meal, take his turn to maintain the baths, take his shifts working under the groundskeepers or quartermasters officers – study, sleep, eat...
Choke down a fury he was almost too tired to feel and lie face-in-the-grass in Swordplay or bathed in the heat of embarrassment in Ancient Languages – face a sea of staring, mocking, pitying, judging, tired, pale, light-eyed faces.
He was starting to think that the Ancient Languages Ollamh, Hammerlyn, hated him, though for reasons he couldn’t divine. He did well in Tactics, Foundations, but he could see the fatigue now in his classmates when anything particularly difficult came up, and he dove into the discussion. Something cutting always seemed to be waiting for him in Ancient Languages; the fatigue in his classmates hurt more than he wanted to acknowledge.
Even better, then, to get up before sunrise in the fug of night’s last dream-farts and leave his dormitory to traverse a torturous field of pits and stone. He had volunteered for this aspect of their spying campaign (or, information gathering as he learned his teammates wished to call it – except Wynn, Wynn was very happy to spy). With all his complaints as hazy in his head as the morning light around it, he had no regrets. He could think of few miseries as severe as waking in the cold room to awkwardly prepare for the day, staring at roommates who refused (or withheld) acknowledging one another.
Something had changed very much with Ruaridh. There was more they didn’t seem able to talk about than that they could. Feichín, already struggling with his classes, had faced defeat with his Cogadh team, meaning he was not up to his usual annoyingly staunch insistence on mediation. Things had gone icily silent. Even Fachtna had distanced himself from their cadre, seeing quite clearly something was amiss and (perhaps wisely) bowing out of socializing too nearly until it was fixed.
They needed to have a fight.
But Dominicus found himself unwilling to start it.
It felt very precarious. He wasn’t sure why. Tension ate at his gut. He had written a letter to Catillia (on to everyone, naturally, but he had ventured to actually ask his eldest sister for advice, which he usually avoided doing as her advice was always correct and disastrous – nothing so embarrassing as asking Catillia directly for advice, and to have to put it down in text! It would live forever!).
And having written it all down, refused to think of it, or her reply. If he thought of it, something terrible would happen.
Dominicus reached his perch at the top of a little hillock. It wasn’t terribly well-disguised, but with this light and at this hour, it didn’t need to be. He wove to stop and plopped down in the grass, happy to no longer be free to contemplate his own thoughts.
Instead, he watched as half the class prepared for Stands. Twice a week these were now split-class exercises, with one half performing before the other half had to get up to do the same routines. They alternated which one went earlier than the other, so things were even, and the First Years’ class schedule so complicated as to render them all automatons who showed up and simply did them twice rather than be punished for missing their session. The smaller groups allowed more particular focus, so each cadet could individually be told that they stood like a Wulsh ship-tree, grown to make the ugly, crooked parts of the vessel.
Only a few of the cadets – their turn or not – roused themselves early enough to beat the call to Stands. His particular cadet of interest was one of those who could be relied upon to get up early. Also, to stay longer at practice. To be in the Library, studying after dinner. To be running on the track or lifting at one of the rock fields in whatever spare time he had. To be constantly, doggedly, focused on improvement. A top cadet, quite literally, constantly working as if there were more than a handful of ranks above his to achieve.
Dominicus had to find his weakness.
If he had any. He probably didn’t. Unlike the rest of the Prep cadets, who were the circle in which Dominicus’ target ran. They were a gaggle of single or select particularly well-honed skills set carefully atop a gaggle of weaknesses disguised and more than half supported by unearned arrogance. They were also inveterately together, as if being separated threatened their power (it did, but it grieved him to acknowledge that they probably knew that). He had had time to observe the whole group while on his little mission, and they didn’t impress him.
Ghent was right; there wasn’t really a reason the class rankings had fallen out the way they did. Dominicus didn’t understand how the decisions had been made – but he also had only been at his task of observing for a few days. The ollamh had weeks. And saw more. But still.
Dominicus’ Cogadh team was now a hub of observation, so he felt justified in his opinions.
Half of the top ten cadets spent most of their time sucking up to the top three or four. Of the top three or four, there was little evident in First that justified his position, except that the rest of them seemed afraid of his bitter tongue. He did, however, work extremely hard, and there were dark rumours of how difficult he was to beat in combat classes, or outsmart in academics. Fourth constantly probed for weaknesses above him, but once he found them, was easily rebuffed simply by his exploration being noticed by any of the other three. He was, then, a coward, and a manipulable one at that, overly conscious of how he appeared to the others and even somewhat unwilling to be as cutthroat as his rank demanded. Third was an idiot, and lazy, and seemed mostly there because the others thought he provided some aesthetic or social benefit.
Third was pretty, apparently, by the standards of the Ainjir, and Dominicus had heard he had some kind of special talent for poetry, the Ainjir attachment to which mystified him (Midraeic poetry was unmatched – of this he was sure – but Dominicus, who enjoyed a good song despite his mediocre singing voice, never really ‘got’ poetry without music in the same way he ‘got’ theology or philosophy. Catillia told him it was his primary failure before God, but she was a blaspheming harlot and better at both theology and philosophy and poetry than him, the witch, his best beloved sister (or, at least, she pretended to be better at poetry, because it annoyed him; he suspected she was tone deaf)).
Third could also be relied upon to do what he was told which, whatever his skill with stupid arts like poetry, conquered whatever appeal he might have offered Dominicus. That and winning a few notable bouts, Dominicus supposed, explained his retention of such a high rank with such a generally unimpressive performance.
Unfortunately, that was not the case for Second.
Brid Cruvcrudiach, called Aspen, who had all but demolished Feichín’s team in the last Cogadh round, was thoroughly skilled, even-tempered, a hard worker, and absolutely monstrously big, even for an Anjir. He should be First; Dominicus expected the chance to pit himself against actual First in an official capacity simply hadn’t presented itself, and Second was not the type of cadet to put any effort into unofficial contests, or even personal grudges. He appeared not to have any, and to as studiously stay out of them as he did, in fact, actually study. Second was, in all aspects, an ideal cadet.
Prophet Be Merciful in His Speech, he had probably a foot on Dominicus, both in height and width. His team was unstoppable in no small part because Aspen was unstoppable.
So yes, by endweek they would have a plan, and as the week had gone on, the observations had rolled in, and Dominicus life exploded into tiny shattered pieces, he increasingly realized that the plan would probably involve getting his ass kicked.
But that didn’t mean his team couldn’t win.