Hakon was perversely thrilled that Ajax didn't give up and that he fought his way out of the hold, instead. He didn't enjoy having a chunk of flesh missing from his finger or from having a few toes out of alignment, but it was easy enough to put them back to where they were supposed to be. Normally, he'd be concerned about burning vitessence like this, but in a week's time there would be more souls for the torch to absorb, and if that failed, he could always go to a house of healing and engulf any that were beyond help. He gave Ajax an approving smile.
"Good job, Ajax. It's easy for men like me to talk about honor in a fight -- we have advantages over men like you. The first thing you must do is ignore any call for such nonsense, because it will get you killed, and the same men who demanded a fair fight will use your corpse to wipe the mud off their boots."
He hadn't actually taught Ajax how to fight dirty, so it was evident he'd picked these tricks up from someone else. This was good. He had more knowledge of this than Hakon had thought.
"Those sorts of tactics may not work on people who have sufficient training to push through injury and ignore that they are hurt," Hakon said, implicitly answering the question of if Ajax had truly 'won' or not without drawing attention to the fact, "but most of the people you will encounter in a fight have not been trained to withstand injuries and endure pain. If you can surprise them, you can create opportunities for yourself. Then you capitalize on those opportunities until at least you are safe again. Whether that's because you've found an ally to help you, because you've incapacitated your opponent, or because you've fled the scene will depend on what else is going on. And you surprised me -- I didn't know you had it in you."
"So, if you feel like you know how to break a choke hold, we should probably work on, ah, actual grappling." Hakon said, trying to keep his tone even. "Andros has told me that it's common in Teos to wrestle, so perhaps you are already familiar with doing this for sport. Even if you've just seen it done, though, it will help. Attackers are unlikely to do this to you unless they are bigger than you such that they think they can easily overpower you at close quarters or because they don't feel they have any other option. In either case, there's a heightened amount of danger, here, because you're fighting against someone who likely has physical advantages against you, or someone who has the strength of desperation on their side, which can be a scary thing to behold."
"So, when you're ready, I'm going to tackle you to the ground, try to lock an arm or leg, and then stop when you submit. I'll do it twice to each limb, so you can get a sense of how it happens and what it feels like. It hurts, and you have to be able to work through the pain, or you're sunk. Once you get a sense of what it feels like, I'll start doing it half-speed so you can get a sense of how to break the holds. If you wish, you can also practice drawing your knife during such engagements. It ups the ante significantly to have a short range weapon like a dagger in play when grappling, but it doesn't necessarily mean you'll win just because you're armed and your opponent isn't. Especially if you're facing off against someone with weapons training, they might be able to take the knife off of you and use it against you, so don't rely on it to keep you safe."
Talking about the use of edged weapons in close combat helped him calm down a bit about the prospect of grappling with Ajax. He wasn't proud of it, but the thought of it was rather exciting. He didn't want the boy to think he was doing this for impure reasons, but so far his body was not as onboard with that message as the rest of him.
