Dreff began to circle wide, moving to the right. Frix stayed put and pivoted slow, keeping his target front and centre. The Tel kept circling until his foot came down on a sturdy root, then launched forward in a flash. He landed well short of striking distance, slamming into the earthy path with his leading foot. A shear of dirt blasted into Frix’s face.
He stumbled backwards, blinded, and resisted the urge to swing. Instead, he focused on listening and turning his backwards stagger into a clumsy backpedal.
Dreff was almost too quiet though: a tiny crunch and a startled “oh!” from the crowd gave away the move—Dreff had sidestepped his way to the left and closed.
Still sightless, Frix launched himself to the right, putting some of his bodily momentum into a cudgel swing as well. His attack caught nothing but air, but the tip of Dreff’s blade nicked him along the left cheek. He felt a stinging scratch, then his foot caught something and he went sprawling.
Frix rolled through a reverse somersault, landed on his feet in a crouch, and tried to orient as his eyes watered away the dirt. Now Dreff was on him coming in direct, one arm looking to grab his head, the other angling the blade in for a deep stab.
Frix fell forward towards Dreff, batting the stab out of the way, trying to duck under the grab. This created a collision course with his face and Dreff’s knee, which was all too obvious in the split second before it quite purposefully slammed into Frix’s unscratched cheek.
A new blindness exploded, this one made of pain and white light. He heard himself make a terrible noise. In the awkwardness of his crouched position, he had nowhere to go but down, with Dreff standing right over him.
His instinct carried through the pain well enough—he rolled upward towards the sky as he fell inside the tangle of Dreff’s legs. Training kept his grip on the cudgel strong, and he used his rolling motion to swing a backhand upwards toward his opponent.
This time he hit something, but not very hard. Then he was on his back, kicking. But Dreff was way too experienced. A crushing weight hit Frix’s sternum, another knee came down to pin his cudgel wrist, an elbow or hand hooked into one kicking leg’s knee, and cold steel pressed against his neck.
Frix tried to cough. The dirt was still all in his face, in his throat, but the jab into his sternum had stunned his lungs. It was just like the bridge: all the wind knocked out of him. He tried to control the panic, succeeding halfway. He writhed on the ground, not trying to get away but only trying to move.
“I normally carve a nice ‘T’ into folks when I win like this,” Dreff was saying. Frix couldn’t care, he was still trying to cough. There was pain now too, throbbing in his head. He still couldn’t see much—he hoped the wetness on his face was blood and not tears. Off in the distance, people were making a lot of noise.
“Mossa would have a proper fit though,” continued Dreff. Finally, Frix’s diaphragm remembered how to work and he started hacking and wheezing. The air gave him some renewed energy, which he used to struggle under Dreff’s weight. It accomplished exactly nothing.
“So that makes it a win-win, wouldn’t you say? Our shoot-lead is entertaining when she’s upset.”
With the breathing problem now more or less fixed, Frix’s body decided it was time to really let him know about the pain. A wave of crippling fire bloomed in the cheek that had met Dreff’s knee. A distant, clinical part of his mind wondered if a bone was broken.
“I do think so.” Dreff was still talking about something.
Frix had not been paying much attention to the blade at his neck, but he noticed when the pressure disappeared. Dreff’s weight shifted a bit too, and Frix resumed struggling, trying to get in a good kick with his free leg, but the angles were all wrong.
There was a snapping sound; Dreff had cut away a strap on Frix’s tunic. He blinked and coughed some more, regaining enough vision to see Dreff bend before him, looking as if he was about to bite at Frix’s shoulder.
“Hey, what!” Frix managed.
But no bite came, only a ripping tug. Dreff had torn away a thick layer of roughspun fabric off of Frix’s chest with his teeth.
“What!” Frix coughed, redoubling his kicking efforts. His cudgel hand was completely numb now.
The shortsharp steel flashed in Frix’s face. Dreff slapped his uncrushed cheek with the flat part of the blade, pointing to the scratch from a moment ago.
“One!” the Tel called out.
Too late, Frix processed what was about to happen. “Hey! Hey!” was his only attempt at negotiation, then there were two deep, slashing sears on the left side of his chest.
“Two, three!”
“Match! Three small to one small!” cried the marksman.
Dreff stood, using Frix’s body to do so, forcing a lungful of air out of him and setting off another series of wracking coughs. Frix rolled away and up, steadied himself on one elbow, and put his hand to the fresh fire on his chest. It came away very bloody.
Then Callum was there, trying to hug him without hurting him. A bunch of dirty legs and feet filled the backdrop behind his brother as the jubilant and entertained reentered the arena.
“Face of a Bit, heart of a Tel,” Frix heard Dreff say. Frix looked up, Dreff winked and spat, then walked away.
“I’ll get some hedgemoss,” said Callum.
Frix sat up, concentrating on controlling all the pain as the battle fever wore off. The tingling numbness in his right hand helped to distract from the welling in his face, which helped distract from the burn on his chest. He got himself to his feet, picking up his cudgel. The crowd dispersed, giving him some distance, maybe out of respect. He caught Vebba’s eye, who looked away. The marksman offered a neutral nod and trekked back towards the river.
By the time Callum came back with some clumps of grey-purple hedgemoss, only a few people lingered in the area, occasionally throwing glances his way. Frix ignored them, and padded his bleeding chest with the moss, covering the mark. It would leave a fantastic scar.
“Wow,” said Callum, after a few moments.
“Yeah,” agreed Frix.
“I didn’t…”
“Not your fault, lil shoot. I was sloppy.”
“But if—”
“Don’t, Callum. It’s fine.”
They stood for a while, Frix leaning against a tree, keeping the moss applied with one hand, Callum standing, wringing his hands and avoiding Frix’s eyes. Eventually, one of the lingering people made their way over. It was one of Frix’s many cousins—second or third, he couldn’t quite remember in this moment.
“Um,” said the cousin.
“Hey Hobb,” murmured Frix.
“Hey. Hey Callum.”
“Hi,” said his brother.
“That was crazy—” started Hobb.
“Yeah. What do you need?” said Frix.
“I was supposed to come find you a while ago,” said Hobb, “uh… but then… anyway uh, Head of Root Ottrah of Bit has requested you.”
Frix squeezed his eyes shut. “Of course he has.”
“I can tell him that—”
“No, let’s go. Let’s just go.”
The three of them moved off in silence, towards the centre of camp. Frix couldn’t help but wonder what his great uncle would think of the big, bloody ‘T’ under all that moss.
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