Sickly blows in sickly dare came the fists that made fissures in skull beneath bruised skin. For this was combat, bloody and primitive all the worst ways a human can endure and inflict.
Combat 101, was the same as Genocide 101, sort out who is "them" and "us," then get on with killing "them" before "they" have a chance to slaughter "us." For at it's root it is tribal thinking - albeit on political, religious or ethnic grounds. And new combat was coming, society was obsessed with "them" and "us" divisions, we could only be thankful that there were so many divisions the killing had been stalled by the confusion of who stood with who. Heaven help us if two "sides" ever emerge.
Each stood upon that hallowed ground, the defenders and attackers same, fighting for survival each in their own way. Time ticked by as time does, neither accelerating nor flinching, for the allotted moment when combat would commence. And though the poet may find noble intent in either battalion, the reality is pain and excruciating deaths of screaming souls, of hell made at human hand.
The combats came of greed, of cold minds that wanted with hungers they'd never sate. For them no newborn was deserving of either breath nor milk and they never gained it was they grew. And so, as with these feeble cold ones, they who extol the philosophies of ice, they simply stack the battle in their favour and get on with the slaughter.