“It’s ridiculous, we should be getting a delay for our match – it’s not like it would disturb the roster, we’re so early in,” Maylor stalked to the edge of their meeting spot, taking the knuckle he had been nibbling on out of his mouth to swipe a low-hanging sprig of leaves before replacing the knuckle, turning on his heel, and heading back the other way.
Maoilin – going by Lin now – twisted up his face in disgust. “A joke, I assume.”
He didn’t realize it was only nerves – not that knowing it was nerves would have made him any nicer about it. It was only the second week of the First Year contest, and their first match as a team, both more than enough reason to be nervous. It was why, instead of just the team gathered together in the little clearing in the early hours of the morning, other cadets also lingered in the mist, many of the ones he could see part of the loose circles of Prep cadets coalescing under Lin’s leadership.
Lin hadn’t been the obvious choice for leader of a centralized core of Prep cadets; plenty had social standing exceeding his, particularly in noble circles. Lin, however, had vision, and an uncompromising approach to consolidating power. One was either in, or out, and while the braile-breith cadets were beneath their notice, to be out and be a Prep cadet was to be a target. Along with the self-regard of pedigree, being noble came with practice at bowing under the right yoke.
Also, however much they disliked it, pulling as a team: it was not just Cole’s team’s first match, but the first match under such a ‘high-ranking’ personage in the Prep cadet group.
“But,” said Neese hopefully, “d’you think they would?”
Not that they had real ranks yet. They were still self-ranking. Theories abounded as to why, but Cole (and Lin) thought it practical. The first matches of the First Year class had been teams with a majority of cadets in the other half of the class; this week was Cole’s half. They would be ranked once enough of each class had been seen – otherwise Cogadh would lose its most serious measure of success and failure.
“We’ve got an injured team member,” Maylor said, seizing another low branch and shaking it. “For reasons NOT having to do with the tournament,” he said into Lews’ objection, which had only gotten as far as an open mouth. “We deserve some consideration.”
“This is pathetic,” Lin said.
“An argument could certainly be made,” said a wiry, brown-haired cadet still possessed with the rangy appearance of the until-recently underfed (perhaps that was just his natural build). He stood at the edge of the group, and completely ignored Lin (Cole had no idea who he was, but felt inclined to him already).
“The question is whether you wish to appear as ones who would make it.”
“Surely it should have been done ages ago,” said Lews, “if it was going to be done at all.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lin snapped.
“I’m not saying we should do it!” Maylor cried out in frustration. “Just that we deserve some consideration for circumstances, is all.”
A low-grade babble erupted in the group as some considered the severity of the beating (“it seemed quite bad”; “it couldn’t have been that bad”; “the Fourth Years got involved”; “what did the medics say?”) and the time for recuperation (“well, if it had been only a few days ago”; “seems to be doing fine in classes”; “you know, since it was an unsanctioned injury the ollamh took it easy”; “the ollamh never ‘take it easy’”) and the pros and cons of arguing for reprieve for the sake of Cogadh.
Cole wasn’t worried.
Both in reality, and as his guise: he wasn’t worried about any of it.
He would have preferred meeting his team alone, but even that didn’t worry him: they would have time to themselves at the edge of the field. Given the crowd, he had arrived late and paused, unseen at the edge of a set of concealing bushes, to try to get a feel for the mood of his team, but at this point, Lin, exercising admirable restraint with what was, essentially, Cole’s party, looked on the edge of perishing – or more likely, exploding and taking them all with him – of sheer disdain. Cole could’ve stood to hear more of their mood, but wasn’t about to let Lin have free rein in setting it.
“Oh, it’s not as bad as all of that,” he said loudly as he pushed through the branches.
And it wasn’t. Bits of his body were still purple-ish at points, like badly marbled paper, but his face had finally rid itself of the last splotches of ugly, bloody-brown. Now, there were just the sickly yellowish parts, which made the pale parts look worse, all of which made him look less beaten than sickly, much to his disgust.
It had proven an aphrodisiac, to a certain set, as had the spread of his fame, so he had no complaints (or none he would air). The reason for the beating had been thoroughly smothered by the drama of the tale – Cole bravely sacrificing himself against four-to-six (some idiots said eight, but nobody believed them) Second Years so Niall could run for help, Niall’s fortuitous return (entirely fictititous – it took Niall almost a week to even show his face in front of Cole again) with the group of Fourth Years – in some tellings even an ollamh or two got involved – always a nameless one, of course (versions with a Councilmember never went far, the circumstances clearly having been inflated).
The clearing held even more cadets than he had guessed would come – reaching beyond the restrictive circles of the Prep cadets.
Cole smiled wider.
“Of course not,” Lin said. He meant, ‘of course the wounds aren’t as bad as all that,’ but critiques of Cole in this atmosphere were reputationally dangerous. He pivoted by adding, “I doubt they would delay match for a broken bone – the schedule is immutable.”
“They might,” said Ardghal, looking meaningfully at his own arm.
The gaggle of cadets, arrayed from comfortable leans against a tree to standing uncomfortably in the middle of a bush, seemed ready to break into another debate, but Cole’s team remained focused.
“Are we ready?” asked Taig, uncrossing his arms, gaze on Cole as level and hard as steel.
A more admirable test of readiness Cole himself could not have conceived: most of the team looked at him.
By that measure, they were ready.
As he walked, gaze fixed on the ground in front of his feet and not much farther, Dominicus stretched his fingers out spasmodically, like a particularly bad juggler. He was also a particularly bad juggler of his thoughts on this occasion, so he hardly noticed he was doing it, except that it meant he wasn’t chewing on his thumb, which was really his only goal. It wasn’t something he thought about doing, but an instinct towards avoiding the proximity of delicate fingers and teeth.
His mind was startlingly blank – it didn’t need to have anything in it. He passed through the grass – rising, falling, cut, grown wild – with steady steps, on his way to his Cogadh team’s meeting place. They had agreed to meet there because they had yet to dissect the last set of matches, and because they feared ejection as unworthy from the Prep cadets’ pre-match meeting.
Now Dominicus knew their choice of spots was perilously close to a place the Quartermaster’s – Quartermaster Ghent’s – officers passed through regularly, on behalf of the gardeners, who like elves, never wished to be seen at work.
Dominicus wasn’t totally certain what elves were like, but that was how Ghent had explained it. At the time he had wondered whether to be called like elves was strictly complimentary, but it seemed beside the point and a distraction to ask at that moment. It hadn’t even been the point that Dominicus’ team was unknowingly on the breach of trespass, which seemed of no concern to Ghent at all, except that it meant he heard the idiotic chatter of what he enthusiastically described as the dumbest group of cadets he had ever encountered. This, he somewhat insultingly elaborated, included the group of straw sparring dummies dressed up in cadet uniforms one year as part of a training exercise. The dummies, at least, could follow orders to hold still and refrained from injuring themselves.
He said it with many more interjections of words Dominicus had once assumed to be of supreme rudeness – so many that Dominicus had started to look uncomfortable – both because that was HIS idiot team and the rudeness – after which Ghent had begun to both describe and accentuate everything he spoke of with some allusion to penises.
That was worse.
Also, Ghent reminded him uncomfortably of his mother (not that they were at all alike – they were not – except that both had a marvellous ability to achieve feats of language unparalleled in anyone else Dominicus had ever met. Even Catillia admired that about their mother).
Dominicus entered the wood. Whether through repeated passages or absence of mind, the path seemed very clear.
Things had become tense back in his dormitory room since Ruaridh and Feichín had their fight, so the few times since he had conversed with Ghent provided much-needed relief. Certainly, when Dominicus had returned and seemed content not to make anything of what Ruaridh had said, a thin blanket of conviviality had returned and made their day-to-day interactions seem much as they had been. This gave Ruaridh the comforting sense that he had been right all along, and though this false security on Ruaridh’s part might have annoyed Feichín, he was only too happy to pretend as if nothing had happened at all.
Something had indeed happened. But they, and his dormitory life in general, were so far down the list of priorities – a new list – he saw no reason to disrupt this new normality, for all that they all might feel its fragility. Important in its own right, the status of his living situation was downstream.
He headed upstream now.
Entering their little clearing produced the usual momentary glances from his teammates, their eyes turned toward the noise and then immediately dismissing Dominicus’ arrival as inconsequential.
As usual, Bannamorga held court in the middle, arguing – or having a shouting conversation, the only volume at which he seemed inclined to speak – with one of his regular toadies.
“You saw that match–”
They had seen nothing; the set-up of the Cogadh field made spectating difficult and at any rate the stands had been filled with the Second Year class. All of them had heard the match from the descriptions relayed down from the observers in the stands.
“–Farfanli has a huge lead on us–”
At best an exaggeration. They were not officially ranked; Farfanli was not a Prep cadet, but of a noble family and thus trained to some extent, but neither mattered as his performance in combat classes was mediocre.
“–and he got his ass kicked by nobodies–”
Only partially true. Farfanli’s team had indeed gotten its ass kicked. But Farfanli was not even the best cadet on his team, which had defaulted to his leadership precisely because no one else was of his class. The other team, rather than being nobodies, was composed almost entirely of braile-brieth cadets, who had chosen their leader based on merit, and at any rate worked non-hierarchically by Dominicus’ estimation, based on the tactics he had heard described during the match. The existing social order of both teams had more to do with the result of the match than any deliberate planning. The braile-brieth team would work fine until it didn’t, having weaknesses which a clever opponent would already be planning to exploit.
“–basically half because some idiot tripped over flaws in the field–”
False. Indeed, one of Farfanli’s best fighters had fallen allowing an opponent to engage him in combat with an advantage, but he was hardly a central figure to their strategy and his loss had no meaningful effect on the outcome of the match. That cadet wasn’t an idiot, and had managed to nearly salvage an individual win, at least, by making it a close and hard-won fight. The pits in the field weren’t flaws. No feature of the field was an accident.
“–meaning we not only have to get better individually at combat, but be absolutely certain our best team members are out in front, right at the start.”
“That’s why the dumb fucker tripped – we should put the weak ones up front to take out any unforeseen difficulties and save our toughest guys until we’re sure they’ve got a clear shot.”
“Sacrificing any part of the team unless absolutely necessary is a bad bet – we’ll need everyone, or won’t know we need everyone until we do. And,” Ergamuth said evenly, playing his usual role of mediator, “This isn’t a helpful way to talk about the team or the plan.”
“Because it’s a dumb fucking plan,” said Dominicus, who hadn’t stopped at the edge of the group as usual, but strode into the center and now stood squared to Bannamorga and his friend.
Bannamorga scoffed, his friend gesturing towards Dominicus more in disbelief than concern or anger. They turned back to one another, prepared to ignore him.
“The point is–” Orga begun loudly.
“Your plan is bad, and if we listen to you, we’ll lose,” Dominicus said.
“The fuck did you say to me?” Bannamorga said, pushing the other cadet aside to get in Dominicus’ face.
Dominicus didn’t move.
“All of your plans have been shit and we’re going to lose if we waste more time listening to you.” Dominicus broke his stare with Bannamorga to glance around the circle of cadets slowly, but he wasn’t sure what for. It was a blank wall of Ainjir faces he could neither read nor take comfort from.
But really, it didn’t matter.
“I want to win,” Dominicus said.
This was a delicate situation. Bannamorga was an idiot who got by half on bluster, but he was also a decent fighter and not so much of an idiot he didn’t know victory against Dominicus wasn’t certain. Dominicus had beaten a few of the other rather handily, but not anyone Bannamorga couldn’t also defeat; mostly, he didn’t know enough about Dominicus’ skills to be certain.
But this was why he cultivated equally belligerent lackeys.
The cadet Bannamorga had been arguing with shoved his way between them and forced Dominicus back.
“You better watch what you’re saying, kneeler. I haven’t seen you coming out with any better ideas.”
“Every member of this team has come out with better ideas,” Dominicus said, puffing up the contributions of some of his teammates just a little. “You have not listened.”
“If you had something worth listening to, you would fight for it,” Bannamorga said, throwing this challenge out to the whole group.
“That is a stupid way to conduct strategy,” Dominicus said. “And a waste of effort. And a source of potential injury.”
The cadet – his name had to be Bon or something, Dominicus both couldn’t and didn’t care to remember – shoved Dominicus again, sending him back more violently. “A good cadet wouldn’t get injured, and a good cadet would fight for victory.”
“Then we shall fight,” Dominicus said, taking up his stance.
Bon laughed, looking back at Bannamorga, then folding his arms and facing down Dominicus again. “I thought fighting was stupid?”
“Well, you are stupid,” Dominicus said, “so it makes sense to fight you.”
Bon’s face reddened; he cast a glance back as if repeating his earlier movements, only instead of folding his arms, this time he tried to punch Dominicus in the face.
Dominicus slapped his hand aside and punched him in the nose. It had been his left hand, and just a quick jab, so it shouldn’t have been very hard, but being punched in the nose does hurt. Still, Bon made rather a show of it.
He charged. Dominicus stepped out of the way, seized his coat, tripped him, spun him back around and threw him to the ground at Bannamorga’s feet. They had all learned how to do that the first week. He should have landed better. Certainly it was nothing to cry out about.
Bannamorga stepped over his fallen friend – at first Dominicus thought he would join the fight and raised his fists – but instead he pulled one of his lackeys forward and threw him into Dominicus’ way. This fellow stumbled forward, so surprised he didn’t even raise his fists. Once he was steady – Bannamorga behind him pulling Bon to his feet – he gaped at Dominicus.
He could have chosen not to engage; Dominicus even gave him a little shrug, his own fists at the ready, to indicate his inaction was by choice. Alas, the fellow put his fists up, too.
He was not resolute. Or maybe had been too well trained to wait for the ollamh’s word. Either way, he put his fists up to no effect, because Dominicus just punched him in the face between them (being a lackey did not require the best and brightest applicants). Then his hands went to his nose (again – a reasonable reaction, if stupid), and Dominicus stepped in to lay him out (reasonably comfortably, if he, unlike his friend, had paid attention to how to fall).
Now Bannamorga decided to join the fight, proving he did have at least some notion of strategy. He went for a sucker punch to Dominicus’ middle that he only just avoided by twisting away. Pressing in to keep Dominicus off-balance, Bannamorga threw several powerful punches, to judge by the air felt in their passing. He must have some experience in street fighting, as this was not recourse to an Academy style, but a more natural albeit more controlled ‘end you before you end me’ approach. It reminded Dominicus of the fights back in his village, the rare few times they were allowed to escalate to actual combat.
In his village, perhaps, he would have responded in kind, but if he was going to do that, then what the fuck was he doing here?
He needed to get his footing, what Bannamorga kept pushing in to deny him, so the next forced, quick step back he turned into a pivot forward. Feet planted aslant to Bannamorga, Dominicus could only just catch his right fist instead of being beheaded by it. The positioning was all bad; he knew of no way to progress to a throw or lock from here – but he also knew he didn’t want to move his feet and risk giving Bannamorga, who both outweighed and out-muscled him, a change to take control. He also knew and had only a moment to react to the fact that Bannamorga was going to keep punching him. So Dominicus caught his left hand, too, though it meant taking a punishing blow to his side.
There really wasn’t anywhere else he could think to go from here. So he yanked down on both of Bannamorga’s arms as he threw himself forward, headbutting him in the face.
Blood flew instantly, though at first Dominicus wasn’t sure whether he had caught Bannamorga’s teeth on his scalp or just severely fucked up his opponent’s face. It didn’t really matter, because Bannamorga was now off-balance. Dominicus could move in and, in class-perfect form, throw him to the ground before locking him down.
His lackeys had stood back while it seemed their leader had the upper hand, but they now moved in and began to both try to pull Dominicus off and start beating him. Dominicus truly didn’t know where to go from here, except that to be on the ground for this would be bad – as would letting Bannamorga up.
Choking was against the rules, but then again, so was ganging up on another cadet, and as the Quartermaster’s officers had said – injury on account of pride was as bad as injury from ignorance. Arguably, if Bannamorga got injured because Dominicus was forced to choke him out before his buddies could beat him too severely because Bannamorga wouldn’t admit defeat then both ignorance and pride were really on Bannamorga’s account.
Fortunately, their hearts weren’t much in the beating and the ones Dominicus had thrown about weren’t too eager to engage again. He did get a choke going, much to Bannamorga’s surprise, at least going by the way his eyes bugged out.
But then – the other cadets stepped in. They stopped the half-hearted blows and pulled the other cadets away. Teä was the one who grabbed Dominicus by the back of his jacket and shook him loose of Bannamorga, which only worked when he said:
“Come on, we won’t let him start, again.”
“Oh, yeah, good job,” Bannamorga spat, held back first by the others, and then – with much more of a display of effort – by his lackeys, “great show of how fighting is a waste.”
“If you will not hear, then you must be shown,” Dominicus said. “By your own measure, you should shut your mouth and listen to me – unless that one measure is not all of measuring?”
“Give it a rest, would you?” Ergamuth said – and, frankly, many of the others, both aloud and in the way they rolled their eyes or folded their arms.
“That wasn’t a fair fight!” Bannamorga shouted.
“I am aware – you cheated,” Dominicus returned, calmly.
“That’s– ...fuckin’–,” and the struggle renewed against the hands of his friends, holding him back.
“We can’t work as a team if we’re fighting each other!” Ergamuth said.
“Good fucking job enforcing that for the last month,” Dominicus shouted back.
Perhaps it was the volume, or perhaps it was that somebody other Bannamorga was yelling at Ergamuth, who played the voice of reason so often, but the struggling and sighing and muttering went quiet.
If this was the only chance to have their undivided attention, Dominicus was going to use it.
“This idiot has been wasting our time and getting us into fights for weeks,” Dominicus said, pointing at Bannamorga. “I do not give a shit about who on this team is the strongest, or the smartest, or has the best father or however you Ainjir pigs account for your rankings – I am not going to lose this contest because this particular pig stood in my way. If he will not be talked out of the road, then he must be shown the way, and somebody had to do it.”
Perhaps he should not have called them all pigs.
They did not seem wholly convinced of his argument. But he still had the floor for the moment.
“Any of you could have done it, but you did not, so I did it. Now, you at least have a choice – and you must choose. Choose to follow his way or choose something else, but choose, do not wait for choices to be made for you.”
All he wanted to do was call them idiot pigs again, so he ended things there.
The idiot pigs stood around dumbly, staring at him.
“I’ll agree to one thing,” Bannamorga said, pulling himself free of his friends and wiping blood from his face, “you better make your choice. Because I’m not listening to a fucking kneeler about Academy affairs.”
Bannamorga flicked his hand down, shaking the blood off into the grass, before turning on his heel, staking his claim at one end of the clearing. Two cadets peeled off to join him without hesitating.
“We need to stay together,” Ergamuth said, through gritted teeth.
“I’m sick of Orga’s shit,” Teä said. He didn’t move, but scuffed his foot at the blood in the grass before looking up. “Like he was going to give us anything good to do in the match anyway.”
“Yeah,” one of the smaller cadets scoffed. “I didn’t want to be Orga’s shit-catcher anyway.”
That left three, one of whom looked at Dominicus, the little cadet, and Teä, and turned to join Bannamorga’s three.
“Fuck,” Ergamuth said, then looked at Dominicus. “Was this some kind of plan?”
“No,” Dominicus admitted. He looked at the remaining cadets. “I had no plan past this.”
“Fuck!” Ergamuth reiterated.
The other cadet in their group looked pleadingly at Teä, who stood impassionate and still. He dropped his head and turned to join Orga.
Ergamuth angrily threw his hands out. “This is just fucking great – we need everyone. They don’t realize it yet, but we do.”
With that, he turned and walked over to Bannamorga, whose mocking laughter visibly grated on Ergamuth even as he joined.
Dominicus had already dismissed him, however. He faced his team.
“What are we going to do now?” the little cadet, whose name Dominicus was now going to have to learn, said.
“Nothing, is my guess,” Teä said, although this seemed to neither depress nor anger him. “There’s not enough of us to do shit.”
“Only one to threaten, two to take the cró, three to hold it,” Dominicus said, “and that is enough to end the game. We are enough. What we will do is win.”
“I fucking hate First Year matches.”
The teistiméir for this year’s First Year Cogadh, an old Strategy ollamh named Carraig, yanked up his black robes in a way quite unbecoming his dignity, ripping them off his shoulders to toss them towards a corner of the room. A Tower servant – Cogadh was important (and burdensome) enough that its officials were granted space in the Tower itself – scuttled forward from the wall to bundle it up for cleaning and hanging.
“They could be worse,” said ollamh Beiyal, a judge, who had marched straight to the brandy decanter and poured himself a healthy glass before the entire team of four could even get in the room.
“Well, you get to sit,” Carraig said, throwing himself in to a well-stuffed, squeaky leather chair by the fire. He leaned over his knees and pulled down under an eye to emphasize his point. “You don’t have to view the idiocy up close.”
Ollamh Corin took up his own chair further away from the blaze and gestured for another servant to bring in food. The final two judges, one a rather young officer named Keoghvran, and another an ollamh with a distressing interest in the Capitol Guard, Mullin, found comfortable places to lean and their own drinks to mull over.
“I didn’t think they were particularly bad matches,” Mullin said, disregarding the potential he could torch his whole career and deepening the general suspicion as to his intentions.
“They are a particularly bad batch,” Corin said.
Ichtoran, the Council observer and by both age and rank far senior occupant of the room watched them all impassively.
“I don’t know about that,” Keoghvran said, regretting it before he even finished.
“You wouldn’t, would you?” Corin grunted. “The standards have slipped.”
“Dunno about that,” Carraig said, uncomfortable in the position of the defender of First Year cadets. “But they aren’t standing out, performance-wise, in the Cogadh.”
“It’s the second week,” Mullin pointed out to the pastry – brought by a servant on an enamelled tray – he was eating.
Before Corin could shit this idea into oblivion, Beiyal stood to retrieve a pastry for himself that he wasn’t even sure he wanted. “Some should be standing out quite early, but I would say that is usually more of a sign of the quality of the class than having no one stand out.”
“If that quality is bad,” Corin muttered.
Keoghvran elected to pretend he hadn’t heard. “They did show adaptation this week from last week.”
“We need to fix the stands,” Carraig grumbled. “How are they supposed to learn if they can’t see shit? Bloody gardeners have got too much rein – hair up their ass about their own ‘creativity’...”
“What’s there to adapt to?” Mullin said, second pastry in hand (judging was hungry work, pastries one of its few perks). “Even I’ll admit to that. At least four of those little buggers just fell down like they’ve never seen a hillock before.”
There were a variety of opinions on this – Corin continued to mutter about idiots; Beiyal suggest that, pedagogically, training them always on firm flat ground might be to blame; Keoghvran started to say something about how often regular soldiers fell down under his command but decided halfway through it was better for his career if he did not – but Carraig rose above them all.
“What say you, esteemed Councilmember?” he asked, jest in his voice that the others likely wouldn’t have dared. “I noticed you took some notes.”
Ichtoran smiled at his old friend. “Indeed, I would say, if you’re looking, some cadets have stood out from the crowd.”
“Oh,” Keoghvran said, stopping as if shocked everyone (except Ichtoran, who nodded to the servant as he got a pastry for himself) turned to look at him.
“One team today performed quite smoothly,” he said, casting a nervous glance at the Councilmember. “It’s rather something to have a team act fluidly under these conditions, when usually it’s clear there’s a leader directing the action, for good or for ill.”
“Last week a team won that effectively had no leader and no strategy,” Corin said.
“That’s luck,” Keoghvran ventured under the encouraging eyes of the other two judges. “We have been told the field is designed such that luck is a factor, as it will be in a real battle. This was coordination.”
“And the other team was led by a bloody idiot,” Corin grumbled into his drink.
“Doubly significant, then,” Mullin said. “Choosing to follow poor leadership, being a poor leader, or enforcing poor leadership – all reflect badly on a team.”
“Well,” Beiyal said, thoughtfully, “we haven’t given them many leads on that front. Usually, they’re Ranked by now.”
Before Corin could incriminate himself, Ichtoran nodded. “There’s a reason we haven’t Ranked them yet.”
Carraig laughed, putting his feet up closer to the fire. “And when you do, it’ll be a whole new war.”