Slumrat Rising

Chapter 96: You'll Never Walk Alone

“So this is a little different than what you have seen before. That was lower-league stuff- basically zone invasion where players try to move the ball through the other team’s zone to reach a scoring location. This is a little different- still zone invasion, but you see how there are sloped walls on either side of the pitch? With the markers on them? You hit the other team’s marker. You get a point. First to twenty-one wins.”

The markers were quite narrow, Truth noticed. Since you were only allowed to touch the immensely heavy, immensely dense rubber ball with your hips, elbows, and head, scoring would be hard. Especially since hitting the ball with your head was a great way to get a concussion.

“The rules can change a bit if things go… wrong. But it is very rare.”

Truth looked out across the stadium. Blinding lights shone down on the narrow pitch, and color-coded fans screamed and waved scarves or flags. And some-

“Are they shooting spells at each other?!” He demanded, alarmed.

“Basically harmless, but yes. Burst of light and smoke. It’s dramatic looking but actually pretty friendly. Quite fun if you are in the mood.” Jember explained.

“And if things aren’t friendly?”

Etenesh just pointed to the balconies. It took Truth a moment, but it was depressingly obvious once he thought about it. Just drop things on people you disagree with. Drop something heavy.

“Ah.”

“Well, hopefully, it won’t get that bad,” Jember reassured him. He was not particularly reassuring. Truth was not happy to be here, but he would have been a great deal more unhappy to let the cousins go by themselves. So here he was. Guarding bodies that were determined to do unwise things.

Truth tried to pick out what they were saying. Mostly it was an undifferentiated roar, but every now and then, a chant would be picked up by thousands of voices and sweep across the stadium.

“Lamb for dinner?” Truth muttered. The Birdies were chanting with immense enthusiasm and intent. The Brickies delivered their critique via a barrage of spells, blinding and deafening anyone caught in the middle of it. The cousins winced.

“Well, I could have lived without you hearing that,” Jember muttered. “Definitely not the chant that you would want representing your country. It’s sectarian and definitely calculated to start fights. It involves… you know what? Do you really want to know?”

“Not unless it’s likely to become relevant.”

“It won’t. And if you really want to know, I’ll tell you, but it’s embarrassing, so I’d rather not.”

“Fair enough.”

The game was fast and surprisingly intense. The hip jutting continued to look ridiculous to Truth, but it rapidly stopped looking silly. From up here, he got it. This was about throwing your whole body into something. Each contact hurt. The ball was heavy, and as strong as the players were, it moved damn fast. It was always in motion because you lost points if it hit the ground.

Advertisements drifted over the stands- spirits of light and air, persuading people that they really wanted to buy their new chariot from Gezza, or that sexy, interesting people drank Vurm. A twisting cloud of purple gas snaked its way along the glass in front of the luxury boxes. It would stop and turn into a beautiful man or woman, whispering something to the people in the boxes. When it reached Truth, he just pointed it to the next box.

“Aww. Don’t you at least want to hear what I’m offering?” It murmured. The tone of the voice shifted, testing to see what he would react best to.

“I’m broke, and these two are students.” Truth’s voice was bone dry.

“Enjoy the game.” It was gone before the sentence ended.

“Ads are getting worse and worse, I swear.” Truth muttered.

Etenesh and Jember were glaring at him. “What?”

“How could you out us like that? Now everyone will see the ads avoiding our box. It’s embarrassing!”

“Nobody will care.”

“They absolutely will-”

Truth pointed to a section of the stands. Hands were being thrown, people getting muscled down towards the railing. Golems dropped in from the roof, wading in with batons, breaking up the fight and hauling away the guilty looking.

“Game’s been going for, what, ten minutes?” Truth asked.

“Damn. Well. Not too bad, I guess.” Jember tried to stay positive, but Etenesh just sighed and shook her head.

The game on the field was pretty chippy too. The players would block each other hard to try and foul their play on the ball or force them to lose a point by letting the ball drop. One of them seemed to be making that his full-time job, not even making a play on the ball when it passed near him.

“Who’s the prick?”

“Gionne. Five-year veteran with the Brickies. Every year people say he’s getting cut, but he’s still here. You can see why.” Etenesh spoke quietly. “He’s brilliant. Even when you know what he’s up to, people focus more on him than the other three people on the squad. Look- Brickies just scored on a chump shot that Reffe should have blocked.”

Looks like Reffe was taking it personally, too, judging from the body language. The crowds were howling, screaming in outrage or with victorious laughter. More fights were breaking out in the stands. Reffe stuck out his tongue at Gionne, waggling it and chopped towards his groin with both hands. Gionne seemed to that that personally, and Truth wondered if a fight would break out.

The ball came sailing towards Reffe. He made a play on it, bouncing it to another Birdie, then running up the field. The Birdie bounced it straight back towards Reffe- who got knocked into the dirt by Gionne, who had stopped suddenly behind him. The ball hit the dirt just beside Reffe, who got up swearing and jabbing his finger at Gionne. Gionne spread his arms wide and appealed to the crowd. “I had stopped. He ran into me.” Truth could read the body language.

The spells in the crowd were changing. Still mostly the rockets of color, but mixed in were some more subtle, dangerous curses. Bits of stone were getting thrown around. Or dropped. The fights got bigger and nastier. It wasn’t a riot yet, but it sure felt like it was headed that way.

“Some reconciliation match.” Truth aimed for levity and missed.

“I… really hoped I would never watch a match like this,” Etenesh said sadly. “It’s supposed to be a sacred game. Literally sacred. But now-” She cut herself off. Reffe had raised his right hand high, three fingers in the air. The rest of the Birdies followed suit. Then the Brickies did the same.

“I’m so sorry, Tommy. I may be feeling miserable, but I wanted you to enjoy the game. Pitz is really special to me. You shouldn’t see it like this. More proof that we are a nation of the dead inside.” Etenesh sounded exhausted, hollowed out. Despairing.

“What’s going on?” Truth asked. The woman in white, the old lady who had dropped the ball at the start of the game, flew down and conferred with the teams. There was pointing, shouting; the old lady was having none of it. She conferred directly with Raffe and Gionne, both of whom didn’t shift their stance.

“Dame Berhane is trying to get them to reconcile,” Etenesh said softly. Berhane grasped Raffes's head and pressed a kiss to its crown. She did the same for Gionne. “She failed.”

Berhane pulled a long stone knife from inside her robe. The crowd went nuts. The fights stopped, and even the endless spell war stopped. Everyone was on their feet and cheering, yelling their hearts out. Berhane plunged the knife into the pitch. Spells under the soil were triggered. The sloping sides got taller and steeper. The ends of the court were sealed off. From the sides of the sloped walls, two stone rings emerged. The rings were only a little larger than the ball.

The crowd didn’t let up cheering for a second. They got louder if anything.

“You know, this may be it. This may be the moment the country dies.” Etenesh said. “Levelers and Pure Nation fanatics, and now their teams have called for the hoops. What should be the holiest of rituals, a game to honor God, is now just a proxy fight for street gangs. What a shame. What a shame.” Etenesh slowly pressed her palms to her eyes, refusing to watch anymore.

“You only see it in the top league. It used to be almost mythical. Even in my lifetime, it’s gone from being a once-a-decade thing to a few times a season. People are just…” Jember drifted off, trying to find the words. “Anxious. Scared that if they don’t fight back against every little thing, then they will lose something. Nobody feels like they have anything they can afford to lose.”

Truth nodded. He remembered exactly what that felt like.

“Once the hoops go up, the usual scoring stops. There are no breaks in play until one side or the other puts the ball through one of the hoops. If nobody scores in half an hour, both teams are put to death right on the field. If one side scores, they win, and the other team is put to death. If a player dies on the field, their team loses, but nobody else dies. Of course, all the usual rules apply, so just murdering someone would see everyone exterminated.” Jember explained. Then sighed.

“The rule was kept on the books because it was religious, originally. Hundreds and hundreds of years, and nobody used it. But now? Not even the first time this season.”

The players were smashing the ball at each other now, not even trying to score. The ball weighed about three kilos. When driven with the full weight and strength of a grown adult, the impact crushed flesh, organs, and bones alike. They were determined to cripple each other before delivering the fatal blow and scoring.

The crowd encouraged them. Truth only heard bits of the chants now, references he didn’t get but whose meanings were clear. The mob wanted blood. Was howling for it. Jember slowly pressed his palms over his ears but not able to tear his eyes away from the pitch.

Truth watched their faces in the scry. The players were hearing the crowd. He could see it dawning on them- this wasn’t just about saving face anymore. Or finally sticking it to the other pricks. He could see the realization making them sick, even as their bodies were pushed well past the breaking point.

It was subtle and fast. But Truth’s eyes were sharper than most. Raffe and Gionne’s eyes met. And Gionne nodded. Just fractionally. But he nodded.

The ball crossed the pitch. A Birdie passed it up to Raffe, who feinted toward a Brickie before smashing his hip into the ball with furious strength. Driving straight for the hoop. At the very last second, Gionne jumped up and put his head between the ball and the hoop. Three kilos of brutally dense rubber, flying as hard as a professional athlete could drive it. The blow smashed his head open. The back of his skull opened up on the stone hoop. Gionne was dead before he hit the ground.

The whistle blew, sharp and loud. The crowd momentarily silenced. People weren’t quite sure what had happened.

On the pitch, Raffe quietly knelt down and pulled out the stone knife. In plain view of thousands, he walked over to the dead Gionne, and dipped the stone knife in the still-warm blood. He knelt next to the body. Lifted the knife. And cut out his own eyes. He drove the blade into his ears, then cut off his own tongue. None of his teammates tried to stop him. Nobody said anything. When he was done, Raffe laid the stone blade on the ground in front of him.

There was silence in Old Mek’elle. Then, from the crowd, a Birdie started singing. The whole section picked it up, then the whole damn crowd was singing. Etenesh burst into tears, palms still pressed to her eyes. Jember was crying, too, silently, as the fans put their arms around each other’s shoulders and sang. You could see the venom leaving the stadium, a twisting streamer of hate flying away into the blue sky. It took him a while, but he figured it out. One of the lines from the song was written in iron over the gates at Old Mek’elle. And Old Mek’elle was the Brickie’s home stadium.

For one moment, they were all fans of the beautiful game. And that was enough. Truth watched the crowd, stunned by the change in them. Haunted by the thought that Siphios had two fewer heroes.