Chapter 17: Combat Competition

As I watched Finger Roberts walk away, I felt a frisson of excitement. I knew that the combat competition wasn't 'real' in the sense that we were fighting real battles, but it was as close as I had been to real combat in a long time. Describing the atavistic thrill to someone who hasn't experienced it is impossible, but while combat is the most terrible thing that I had ever experienced, at the same time it was the most exciting. When I was honest with myself, the lure of combat was what had drawn me to War World in the first place. I had needed no other reason. I had searched for the adrenaline high in other places; skydiving, base jumping, para-gliding, riding a super-bike insanely fast and various other risky undertakings, but none had provided quite the same level of fear and excitement.

Finger Roberts had explained the rules of engagement to us a few days before, so we knew what to expect. We would essentially be fighting each other full out, but the swords and daggers we were using would be blunted so that the only injuries that we could inflict or sustain would be a lot less serious than could be expected in normal combat. We had already experienced, on an almost daily basis, the ability of our bodies to heal almost any injury, so that wasn't as much of a worry as it would have been under what were previously normal circumstances.

All around me people were busy warming up. I placed my kit in a pile on the ground and the rest of the finger lined theirs up next to mine. We sat on our kit, ready to watch the action.

Each Finger from the hand was numbered. We were number five, so would go last.

Finger one from our hand moved out into the center of the parade-ground and stood waiting. A few minutes later a finger from one of the other hands moved out to join them. Both fingers had six warriors so I guessed that their finger leaders would be fighting with them. Finger Roberts had discussed this with us and told us that he thought that we had progressed far enough to be able to fight as a unit without him leading us. He had told us that he thought that if he fought with us, there might be some question of where our ability was coming from, whereas if we did it on our own, there would be no doubt that it was our own abilities.

The two fingers had formed up in formation facing each other. Fist leader Ryon was acting as the referee, and he inspected all the weapons and then told them to begin.

I watched the fight with great interest. It was my first chance to see someone else in action. It was immediately apparent to me that neither of the two fingers had truly bonded as units as they were not fully coordinated. More importantly, they were slow. Both fingers started out the fight with the five 'novices' on each side in line abreast with their finger leader standing behind them and coordinating the battle.

Watching the fingers fight made me quite nervous; not that I thought that we would have any trouble though, in fact, quite the opposite!

"[Finger Roberts?] I called.

"[Yes Cy?]"

"[Finger, I think there is going to be trouble. We are going to blow these guys away!]"

"[Yes. Be careful when you fight. Expect the unexpected. OK?]"

"[OK.]"

I mulled over that for a while. Eventually I decided that it meant that once they saw how capable we were, they might throw some curve balls at us. I figured that was OK; I thought we should be able to handle whatever happened one way or another. We had discussed and war-gamed a whole host of scenarios for what could happen to a finger in combat, and we had practised our immediate action drills to counter each scenario.

From the look of the battle going on at the moment, neither finger leader was willing to risk anything out of the ordinary. Maybe they thought it best to just let the two sides get some feeling for fighting against live opponents.

The morning passed slowly, with the various combinations of fingers called up to fight. The system was that the finger that won the battle got to stay in the center and fight the next finger to be sent out, so some fingers were getting to stay out for three or four fights. None stayed for longer that that; mostly because they had lost members who were busy recovering from injuries.