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The referee at center field announced the score, one for the champions—Jagang’s team—and two for the challengers.
But then, before the referee had finished with the announcement and the hourglass was turned over, Richard saw him turn to something on the sidelines. It was Jagang. He was in the area that had been roped off for him. Nicci was at his side. Kahlan stood back a short distance. Jillian was with her.
As everyone waited, the referee went to the sideline and listened to the emperor a moment. He nodded and returned to center field, where he announced that the second score was ruled to have gone in after the horn blew, so it didn’t count. The score, the referee announced in a loud voice, was tied.
Part of the crowd yelled in anger, while others screamed with joy at their fortune.
Richard’s men started shouting angry objections, disputing the call. Richard strode in front of them. The noise of the uproar of the crowd was so loud that he feared his men wouldn’t be able to hear him, so he pulled a thumb across his throat, cutting off their objections.
“You can’t change it!” he yelled at them. “Settle down! Focus!”
They stopped protesting but they weren’t happy. Richard wasn’t, either, but he knew that he couldn’t do anything about it. It had been the order of the emperor, after all, that had reversed their goal. Richard was going to have to alter his plans.
“We need to stop these men,” he said as he paced in front of his team. “When it’s our turn again, go to play two-five.” He showed them first two fingers, then five. Men nodded. “You can’t stop what just happened, but you can stop them from scoring. Then we can run our play and get back what was taken unfairly. Stop fixating on what’s done and over and put your minds ahead to what we must do.”
His men all nodded as they formed up, preparing for the other team’s charge. They were still angry but now they were ready to focus that anger on the other team.
The charge by the emperor’s team was sloppy. They were still caught up in the jubilation over their reversal of fortune. In a bone-crushing impact their point man was shaken by a coordinated block. Richard was proud of his men for the way they turned their anger around and made use of it.
In the furious struggle after the collision Johnrock came up with the broc. He tossed it to Bruce when the men chasing him got close. Bruce in turn passed the broc to Richard. Richard ran up the field and, to the delight of the crowd, used all his strength to throw from the two-point line. The broc went in. It didn’t count, of course, but the crowd roared as if it had. The cheers shook the ground. It was vindication for the stolen goal. It was as close to snubbing his nose at Jagang as Richard could come.
Their supporters in the crowd started chanting, “Four to one! Four to one! Four to one!”
The score was still officially one to one, but in the view of those who were cheering it was now four to one.
On their next charge, when the point man for the emperor’s team ran into the scoring zone and threw the broc, one of Richard’s men leaped up high and managed to deflect the broc just enough to cause it to go wide and miss the goal. When the horn blew, the score remained one to one.
On their first play, Richard was almost to the scoring zone when he was tackled. The man caught his legs in a viselike grip. As Richard hit the ground, he tossed the broc in Johnrock’s direction. Johnrock scooped it up just before a man on the other team was able to grab it.
Johnrock reached the scoring zone and threw. From the ground Richard watched as the broc went into the net, scoring a point.
Johnrock, overjoyed, waved both hands high in the air as he jumped up and down like a boy. The crowd loved it. Richard couldn’t help smiling as he untangled himself from his tackler, who delivered a painful punch in Richard’s back just before parting. Richard didn’t take the bait. He knew better than to let himself be drawn into a fight when the broc wasn’t in play.
As he caught up with Johnrock and they ran together back toward the starting zone for their next run, Richard clapped his wing man on the shoulder.
“You did good, Johnrock,” Richard yelled over the cheering.
“I brought us glory!”
Richard couldn’t help laughing. “Glory,” he agreed as he again clapped Johnrock on the back. “And a point that counts.”
As they formed up while waiting for the referee to deliver the broc, all of the men shouted their congratulations to a beaming Johnrock. He pumped his fist, eliciting a mighty team shout, before he took his usual place at Richard’s right. Bruce took his left wing. The blockers formed a wedge heavily weighted out ahead of Johnrock. The play was meant to draw the defenders to the left side, where the defense was weakest.
As they charged up the field, the emperor’s team started going to Richard’s left, as he wanted, but at the last moment they hooked and crashed through the center of the heaviest part of the wedge. Such a tactic would not stop Richard or get them the broc. They were after something else. Richard knew there was going to be trouble when tacklers leaped over the forward blockers.
“Johnrock!” Richard yelled. “Cut right!”
Johnrock, instead, dropped his big shoulder into the teeth of the attack. Three tacklers dove low. The fourth hooked an arm around Johnrock’s neck. A fifth man, racing at full speed, hit him from the side, applying force to the fulcrum at Johnrock’s neck.
Richard felt
like he was in a dream and couldn’t make his legs move fast enough.
Even as he was running with all his strength, he could hear bone break.
CHAPTER 33
Her heart heavy, Kahlan watched as Richard knelt beside his fallen right wing man. The horn blew. The men from Jagang’s team quickly left their victim slumped on his side to return to their end of the field to be ready to defend.
“Is he dead?” Jillian asked.
Kahlan circled an arm around the shoulders of the girl pressed in against her left side. “I’m afraid so.”
“Why would they deliberately do such a thing?”
“It’s the way the Order plays Ja’La dh Jin. Killing is a means to get what they want.”
Kahlan could see the tears in Richard’s eyes as his men hooked their arms under his and dragged him back away from the body. If he didn’t go back to play immediately he would be ejected for delaying the game. Referee’s assistants quickly set to work dragging the lifeless form of the big man off the field.
Kahlan could hear Jagang, half a dozen paces ahead of her, chuckle.
Nicci, at his side, briefly glanced back over her shoulder. Kahlan didn’t quite know what to make of the liquid look in her blue eyes. It seemed part sadness for Richard, part bottled rage, and, somehow, part warning to Kahlan.
Kahlan hadn’t been able to speak with Nicci again since that night after she had been so terribly hurt. Ever since Jagang had made his bet with Commander Karg he had been moody and short-tempered.
Last evening, as Nicci waited in the bedchamber and Kahlan waited in the outer room of his tent, he’d met outside with some of the members of his team. Kahlan hadn’t heard everything, but it had sounded like he had given them orders that he wanted them to see to it that the point man for Karg’s team didn’t cause them any trouble.
Kahlan had had a sleepless night, worried that Richard might not live to see morning. What ever had been planned had Jagang in a lusty mood for Nicci. Kahlan and Jillian had been ordered to stay where they were on the floor in the outer room. He wanted to be alone with his Slave Queen, as he called her.
