1.34

The Young Griffon

When I was seven years old I called upon Nikolas to face me in the marble octagon. He was exactly twice my age at that time, and his cultivation was exactly one realm above my own.

A Citizen of the fifth rank, challenging a Philosopher of the fifth rank. It was utterly absurd, and everyone involved had known it. Nikolas’ peers and his followers had laughed and urged him up. It was all a game to them, of course, a play fight between the elder and junior pillars of the Rosy Dawn. The gymnasiarch, a famously no-nonsense man, had evidently felt the same way, because he’d allowed it.

But when Nikolas gave in to the heckling and climbed up onto that marble stage, when he met my eyes and we clasped forearms, I knew he saw the truth of it. And though he asked me in a private whisper if I was sure, he did not hesitate to oblige me.

There was a reason I admired my cousin.

When the gymnasiarch gave the call to fight, my cousin came at me with the full force of everything he had as a cultivator, and I met him with the same force in turn. It was over in seconds.

I lost horribly, of course. The gymnasiarch was furious, and even Nicolas’ companions within the cult weren’t sure what face to show him. It was understandable. After all, my elder cousin had never treated them with the same ferocity that he had served me in those few brutal seconds.

But it was exactly what I’d needed. In that moment, as my face struck the edge of the marble octagon and two of my teeth were knocked into the back of my throat, as my right elbow loudly broke, I saw for the first time the difference between heaven and earth. And I knew, without a doubt in my heart, that it was not an impossible gap to bridge.

I never fought my elder cousin seriously again. There was no reason to. I knew myself and I knew him well enough to understand that I wasn’t ready, and before long my father bundled him up on a ship and sent him out into the world, leaving me to take on the role of young aristocrat in its full scope. But that was fine. I had gotten what I wanted.

The greatest men knew their limits better than anyone else.

The vagrant philosopher raised one hand against me, three fingers tucked in and two pointing up to heaven. A lecturer’s pose, as he prepared to educate me on the vast distance between us once more. Unfortunately for him, Romans make for horribly impolite students. Sol surged up from the ground behind the philosopher and tackled him, a furious grimace on his face made utterly vicious by his broken nose.

I struck the old man like a falling star, hammering his face with twenty blazing hands and using the instability that Sol had provided for me to knock him off his feet.

Gravitas hit me like a tidal wave, and this time I allowed it to wash me away in its current, flying backwards as if I was falling out of the sky. The philosopher’s counterpoint, something wordless and unseen, reached out for Sol in my place. I disdained that with twenty pankration hands, dragging my brother after me.

The entrance to the cave collapsed in on itself before we could make it fully out, an unfortunate coincidence I was sure. Gravitas struck the falling stone but was somehow dispersed, leaving us trapped inside. I planted my feet and pulled Sol up to stand beside me.

The vagrant philosopher snorted, annoyed, and brushed off his tunic as he stood. Without looking I reached over and gripped Sol’s nose, setting it back properly with a nauseating crunch. He cursed, and at the same time gripped a finger of mine that I hadn’t noticed dislocating and popped it back into place. Silver threads of lightning sensation shot up my hand, and we were good as new.

“Let’s try this again, old man,” I said gaily, shifting into a proper pankration stance. Fists loosely clenched in front of me, the majority of my weight braced on my launching foot. “My name is Griffon and this is Sol. Who do you think you are to lay your ragged hands on my brother?”

He appeared unimpressed, but he answered. “My name is Socrates. I am who I am.”

When I was seven years old, my elder cousin taught me what it was like to fight an opponent that I could not possibly overcome. I never forgot that lesson. And here, now, I reaped the bitter rewards of it.

With our companions it might have been possible. But alone?

Oh well. I hadn’t asked for it to be easy.

“Let’s exchange discourse,” I proposed.

“If we must.”

The three of us exploded into motion.

“I’ve asked the Roman already, but I’ll ask it again. What is it that you think you’re accomplishing here?” Socrates asked, parrying my opening combination with short, efficient chops and blocks. He turned sideways as Sol lunged past me with his bronze spear, avoiding it by a whisper.

“Here?” I caught a straight left punch with five pankration hands overlaid on one another, and swallowed back blood at the shockwave impact it sent through my soul. “I’m reminding an old man that experience is no substitute for vigor.”

“More deflection,” he said, catching a flurry of punches on raised forearms, protecting his temples and the sensitive juncture between his jaw and his neck. We each raised a knee at the same time, bone slammed against bone, and I winced as something in me cracked.

Sol struck out with the butt of the spear, catching Socrates in his kidney and forcing him back a step. The philosopher took the spear in the exchange and Sol didn’t fight him for it, instead adopting his own loose, roughshod boxing stance.

“Deflection,” Socrates said again, scornfully. He tucked the bronze spear – inexplicably, all ten feet of it – into a fold in his tunic and crossed his arms. “Doublespeak, half truths, and implication. You progressed to the second realm and think that people calling you Philosophers makes it true.”

Socrates tilted his head as if to urge us out the door, and in the eddies of his influence I felt the bare flicker of something crucial, something profound. I would have missed it entirely if I hadn’t been looking directly for it already.

I blinked, startled, as Sol reached both hands under my arms and pulled me bodily to my feet. At some point, somehow, I had been driven to my knees.

Lights flickered along the walls of the cave despite the lack of any readily seen source. Shadows danced across the stone, resolving themselves into vague shapes that I couldn’t quite decipher. Socrates advanced forward a step.

“All too often,” he said, “young men mistake sophistry for sophisticated thought. It is not enough to be convincing.”

And then he was abruptly gone. I frowned, wary, and glanced around. Sol did the same beside me, casting out with his riptide influence in search of the vagrant philosopher.

“It is not enough to win the argument,” an old man said, walking up to us.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Not now, grandfather,” I said, waving a distracted hand as I ran the incorporeal fingers of my violent intent across the walls of the cave, searching for a crack or a crevice, something the philosopher could have escaped through.

Wait.

Sol shook it off a moment before I did, reaching across my body to catch an uppercut that would have lifted me cleanly off my feet. I saw the tightly controlled agony in his face, heard the crack of his hand breaking. Socrates leaned back and kicked him into the far wall for his troubles.

“You see? Distraction is not enough,” Socrates said. “Whether in a fight or a conversation. You need fundamentals.” I inhaled sharply and closed to engage. I sought to enhance myself with the principles of my soul, but he countered each and every one as I invoked them, just as he had outside the bathhouse.

What remained was pure technique, and the conditioning of our bodies. Fundamental qualities.

“What is rhetoric if not the art of convincing others?” I countered, with words and with clenched fists. “A philosopher is above all else a wise man. And I say that a wise man knows what he wants. I say that a wise man knows the value of his time! Why shouldn’t I use the tools at my disposal to get what I want?”

I landed a blow to his ribs and took two on the chin for my troubles, but Sol came rushing in before I could be fully put down. He swung with quick and ugly intent. I could perfectly imagine him in a camp filled with rowdy soldiers, brawling and knocking out fellow legionnaires to blow off steam.

“A wise man knows what he wants,” Socrates repeated. “And yet when I ask you what you’re here to accomplish, you play glib and dance around it. What are you here for, boy?”

“I’m here for a challenge,” I said, and my heart sang the truth of it.

“Looking for a challenge, or looking to be challenged?”

I smirked faintly and whipped my body around with my right heel as the pivot point, striking at his temple with a roundhouse kick. The philosopher caught it by the ankle and slapped me across the face.

“Word games,” he scolded me. “Life isn’t a competition to see who can layer more meaning into a single phrase. Give me clarity.”

Sol latched onto the arm holding my leg and drove his shoulder up into Socrates‘ chest, pivoting and attempting to pull him over. Gravitas rocked the cave, scattering the shadow silhouettes on the walls and reforming them into orderly ranks. Toy soldiers marching across the stone.