A Broken Blade
Meanwhile, up in the stands, Steve tilted his head.
"More one-sided than I thought."
"It is," said Bob, seated beside him.
On raw ability the second-years were clearly the better side. Even with Carl taken out of it, they hardly looked short of anything. The trouble was the tactics. Every attack had been narrowed onto Carl and Carl alone, and perhaps that was why the rest of the half kept wearing the same face, as if a single blow had been an insult he could not digest.
He cut. He burst. At the peak of his game he slipped three men, then four, as if they were nothing, and one pass would have sprung a score on the spot.
It was Park Jihoon who stepped in front of him.
You hardly needed to watch what came next. A pass was sitting right there. Carl did not take it. He drove into the defense anyway, and he even beat Jihoon cleanly, which would have been fine if the story ended there.
It didn't. A flash, a heavy impact, and Tennessee stopped him again.
"How many times is that?"
Had the boy sworn some blood feud? The moment Carl came face to face with Park Jihoon, he stopped making rational decisions.
"Feels like a bullring."
Show a bull the red cloth and it charges, easy as anything. Its whole mind locks on that scrap of red. It never once looks at the man waving it. Carl was exactly that. The instant Jihoon flickered red in front of him, he dropped his horns as if something had taken hold of him.
"Aaaah!"
And in that same heartbeat the spear named Tennessee went, without mercy, for the vital spot.
The other second-years could do nothing for him. Even when they managed to kill a phase with a penalty, the first-years were owning the scrum and handing the attack straight back, over and over.
"How long's he going to keep this up?"
Steve shrugged at Bob's question.
"Looks like the whole match."
"Even though they're obviously going to lose?"
"He's always been that way."
"Meaning?"
The sort who flew into a rage if the team won and his own part in it was small. Greed, given flesh.
"Team wins, he doesn't score. Team loses, he has the game of his life. Which do you think he picks?"
"Starting to look like he's already picked the second."
Of course he had. Carl was playing as if beating Park Jihoon were the same thing as winning, by a set of rules that existed for no one but him. For this stretch of the match his second-year teammates were nothing but extras hired for his benefit.
"That isn't rugby."
Bob's verdict sounded a little cynical. Steve's was colder.
"Bit late to act surprised. He was exactly the same last year. That boy has never played a minute of rugby in his life. It's simply the kind of creature he is."
"Even so."
"Hm?"
"I wonder if he's about to force something stupid, just because he can't stand it."
"Stupid?"
At Bob's question Steve shook his head at once, as if he would rather not finish the thought.
"Nothing."
He hadn't even run that long.
"Hahh. Hahhh."
His breath was jammed up under his chin, and the unpleasantness of it put a shine in Carl's eyes. His gaze was fixed on Park Jihoon and nowhere else.
A few businesses go well, and you think the world is yours?
That had been the whole of it on the walk down to the pitch. He had stepped onto the field ready to tear that damned arrogance to shreds. And yet here he was, the first half nearly gone, and attack after attack had died on him.
Didn't he say he'd never played until he enrolled?
Hadn't the boy done nothing but business until now? Then why? From a senator's son to the heir of a ducal house, why was every one of them looking only at him?
Carl said nothing. Perhaps the thing he had wanted, all along, was precisely that. Leadership people followed of their own will, without being bullied and without being frightened.
A shudder went through him. The trouble was that the thing he had wanted badly enough to die for happened to belong to Park Jihoon.
What if this world really is his?
The chill turned over into rage. He would smash it. If he could not have it, he would tear the very hand that held the world into strips.
That was when he began to drift along behind Park Jihoon.
Wherever the boy had learned it, he was strangely good at surviving a tackle. But however good he was, he did not have eyes in the back of his head. Carl kept waiting for the moment.
It came. Leo's pass floated out a little long, and Jihoon chased it, sprinting for the corner. Carl smiled and swung wide in a great half-circle, coming in on him. Plant an elbow on the spine and nothing else, and the boy would owe a wheelchair several months at least.
Think you're that special?
Then dodge this.
For a fraction of a second he was sure the merciless hit had landed square on Jihoon's spine. The sound that followed was ugly enough to chill the backbone, and up to that point Carl was satisfied.
Then he wasn't. The one who ought to have gone down was still on his feet.
...What?
The world spun. Carl's own back slammed into the ground.
What kind of picture was this? Pain poured like fire through his right jaw, as if to explain it to him. Damn it. A split second before he collided with Jihoon, someone had smashed him in the jaw.
Who?
Right then a fine-boned face pushed into his blurring sight.
Ten... Tennessee?
And why did the bastard look like three people?
Perhaps to wake him, Tennessee drew his hand back and began to pat Carl's cheek. Carl thought, at first, that it was patting. It was not. The shoulder was moving through far too great an arc, and the palm drove down without mercy, again and again. On a cheek already stiff with midwinter cold, each blow landed like a dash of ice water.
This is assault.
Carl had never been more certain of anything. Stop. Stop it. The wretched voice kept slipping back down his throat before it could get out.
A little later his eyes began to find their focus. About the time the three Tennessees drew back together into one, a voice asked at his ear, soft as a whisper.
"You did that on purpose, didn't you."
"Don't answer. Whatever you say, I've already decided."
Carl swallowed dry.
"You've just laid a hand on House Grosvenor."
N-no. The one I went for was Park Jihoon—
The hand cracked across his face.
"You like fighting with your parents in the room, don't you?"
Carl shook his head.
"Isn't that why you dragged them into every little scrap?"
He shook it again.
"Go on. Try the same thing this time."
Another crack.
"I'll pull that precious department store of yours out by the pillars and the roots."
He shook his head, and kept shaking it, and then the last slap landed. Tennessee lifted his chin toward the referee.
"I believe he's come round."
Tennessee was sent off for two minutes, for driving his shoulder into Carl's jaw. After that he had claimed he was afraid the boy would black out, that he was only trying to wake him, and under that excuse he had cracked him across the face more than a few times. Two minutes was a generous call.
Not one of the second-years objected to the referee. They knew, a hundred times over, that Carl had been in the wrong.
Whatever the two of them had said to each other, I never heard it. After Tennessee was sent off, Carl turned on me and spat out something I couldn't parse.
"This is all your fault."
"Everything is your faaaault!"
Then he started to thrash like a madman. Every time he got the ball he simply drove at me, as if he meant to pour the whole day's fury onto my body. I was already outmatched, and Tennessee, the one who could actually defend, was not on the field.
"Nnh—"
Stopping Carl was close to impossible.
Sure enough, he sold a break to my right, and then, with a single change of direction, I had given him the lane. The one mercy was Jack arriving in cover before the road opened all the way. Even that didn't hold. One body-feint and Carl shed Jack as well.
I thought I was about to hand him his first score of the day.
"Check the other side!"
The shout came off the bench, huge. It was Tennessee. Noble face and all, he had never once raised his voice. In this moment he had decided to.
"Get round behind!"
I grinned. My defense might be lacking, but running a call was easy as anything. While Gary and James clung to Carl and grabbed at whatever cloth they could reach, I swung around behind him, just as Tennessee had said.
And just like that, Carl beat the pair of them in one go and found me in front of him.
If I broke, it was a score.
He never passes.
He wouldn't look for the kick either. Only the break, and then another break.
Left? Right? Or straight into me?
He exploded left. I moved to go with him.
"Charge!"
The word was barely out of Tennessee's mouth before Carl drove a shoulder into me. A body fight he had committed to, timed for the instant I bit on the fake. If I hadn't known it was coming, I would have gone straight over. I held my balance. Barely. He hit me again.
He wasn't trying to finish it. He wanted the gap: shove me back, then break through. Sure enough, into the half-step he had forced, his foot shot out first.
The line was under our noses. Whoever took even half a stride before the other had the overwhelming edge, and all I had left was the tackle.
I threw myself at his thigh. He had expected that. He drove down on my neck and at the same time fought my hands off, bursting to get clear. But I was not the soft touch he wanted. A neck trained in the scrum could take the weight of a whole body and still hold, and however desperately he tore at it, my arm stayed locked around that thigh and would not give it back.
That wasn't all. The thigh itself, fully roused, snapped the distance between us shut in an instant.
However fast he is. However far past ordinary schoolboy talent. He gave me the grip.
After that there was nothing left but his legs going loose and his body toppling backward. He flailed, grabbing for my hair, but by then he was already spread-eagled on the grass. He was still swinging an arm at empty air, still not understanding what had happened to him, when the whistle shrilled for the end of the half.
The tension broke all at once. Every breath I had been holding came out together.
I had stopped him. For the first time. With the tackle Coach Devon had drilled into me, I had thrown him to the ground.
The joy didn't last. I turned toward Tennessee.
"What's gotten into you? Calling the whole thing?"
"Better than watching you flail."
These days even the barbed answers were just cute. That was all.
"So why nothing on the last one?"
"You can manage that much on your own."
"And if I couldn't?"
The look he gave me said I would simply have to take the scolding. What else was there? I snorted.
Sevens doesn't last long, and the break between halves is barely two minutes, so what happened in that scrap of time was strange. Carl, who had been lying there in a daze, hauled his heavy body upright and left. He wasn't even heading for his own bench.
I was still staring after him when Tennessee supplied the rest.
"He's not coming back."
"What?"
"What are you going to do with a broken blade?"
His will to fight had already snapped, then. Amazingly, Tennessee was exactly right. Carl left the pitch like a man in flight, and he had not returned when the second half ended.
We had led 3–0 at the half. When it was over, the final score was 6–3, and the win over the second-years was ours.