Mercedes Lackey: Changes

Lobbing balls was a lot faster and easier than an occupation, and your ten points could easily be negated by what they did at your goal while your team held them off while you occupied.

The third was to steal the opponent’s flag and get it back to your tower. That was fifty points and pretty much game-ending, because you had to get the flag back to your home base in order to make the score, and it was pretty harrowing to have an entire team bearing down on you while you tried to do that. Foot generally guarded the goal and the flag, although game-winning ploys had, in the games past, been engineered by one of the Foot sneaking close enough to the opposing team’s flag to snatch it.

The Foot obviously didn’t use mounts, and the Companions were as much a part of the team as the Herald Trainees who rode them, but the Rider units, now—that was where much of the uncertainty in Kirball came from. Mags didn’t know horses, didn’t understand horses, but obviously they weren’t Companions. They could be pressed and harassed in ways the Companions would just shrug off. Many of them didn’t like being crowded into the fence around the field, nor the close quarters in a scrum. None of them liked being rammed, although by this point they had become somewhat inured to it.

Not West team’s ponies, though. Like North, the West team’s Riders were all rich enough to have a mount for each quarter. Unlike North, these were all tough, hardy little mountain ponies, smart and fast, and, if Mags was any judge, as insanely happy to play the game as their owners. They were almost as good as the Companions, in his opinion. Sometimes it seemed to him that all they lacked was Mindspeech. And he wasn’t altogether sure some of those ponies didn’t have that, as well. The scrum didn’t bother them the least bit, they played football with zest, they’d nip in along a fence and scuttle like weasels, and they had no problem with forcing a collision.

What they lacked was sheer size; bigger horses and Companions could ride them down or bowl them over—there were no fouls in Kirball, since it was, at bottom, training for war. The size disadvantage might be the main reason why the other teams hadn’t immediately swapped out their mounts for similar ponies.

You couldn’t use trained warhorses for this, though; warhorses would be downright dangerous on a Kirball field. They were trained to use hooves and teeth in defense of their riders, and while Kirball was designed to be rough, it wasn’t supposed to be lethal.

Mags looked up and down the field, which was entirely surrounded on all four sides by spectators. There were the Trainees from all three Collegia, of course, shoved up tight against the fences in clots of gray, light green, and rusty red. In among them were the Whites of full Heralds—mostly the teachers here, since summer meant that the Heralds were out in the field in force—the sober forest-green of Healers, the scarlet of Bards, and the dark blue of the Guard. But far outnumbering those colors were the colors that were not uniforms. There were parents and siblings of those Trainees of all sorts who could make the journey here, Guards out of uniform, and up on some elevated viewing stands, nobles of all ranks and ages in all their finery as well as those who were not nobles but merely wealthy. Scuttling about and hoping not to be noticed were the pages and squires attached to the Court, who probably should have been at some duty or other, and carefully avoiding anyone’s eyes were servants in palace livery other than that of the Guards who were doing the same. Then there were the townsfolk, invited up for this day so that they could see for themselves what the Trainees of the Collegia were about—all craning their necks from behind the rows of Trainees and teachers and nobles and family.

Behind them were the Companions, of every size and shape and age; bonded or not, they were here to see the game.

And mounted up and trotting or striding in and out of the crowd were the players of the other two teams, telling all and sundry how the game was played—and how it should be played.

Glancing at them, Mags felt the nervous sweat start up all over again.

The South Grays were himself, Pip, Gennie the captain, and Halleck. The South Riders were a mix of young nobles and townsfolk who were also taking classes at the Collegia. Jeffers and Meled were two of the latter, Reese and young Lord Wess the former. Their four Foot were all young Guardsmen, though when the teams had been started, two of them had been thought too young to join the Guard proper. Corwin, Danvers, Holly, and Beales. All four were young for the Guard, young enough to be kept here at Haven for a year or two to get in some serious training while living at home before being sent out to a Guard garrison somewhere else. Sixteen was generally the youngest that the Guard would take, and the youngster had to be a very mature sixteen at that. Eighteen was preferred. They were all only sixteen, and the Captain of the Guard here very much approved of Kirball as fine training for them.

They had relief players now, too: two Foot and one Rider. The Herald Trainees, however, had now concluded that while it might be a fine thing to be a Kirball hero, it was also a lot of work, and you had better be at the top of the athletes to play. So the sixteen Grays who were on the four Kirball teams had no relief players.

On the other hand, Kirball had aroused enough interest among the nobles that now all the Riders had four mounts, one for each quarter, presented to them by noble patrons. Jeffers’ father had presented him with carte blanche to pick a fourth mount for his birthday. Somewhat to his shock, Jeffers had passed by all the big, handsome high-breds that had been offered him and had chosen a second little cob as like to his scrappy favorite as a twin. The others hadn’t had a choice; three nobles had presented them with mounts they deemed suitable. Still, none of those (literally) gift horses had been utterly wrong for the game, and if they were not outstanding, they were certainly good enough for an “easy” quarter.

The first quarter had started off quickly, no matter what Gennie said. There had been nothing “slow” about it. West had nipped in as soon as the game was on; one of their Riders had snatched the ball and made a dash for the goal and got it in. The rest of the quarter had been running up and down the field, over the obstacles, with no one getting a clear advantage until right at the end, when Gennie and Pip had taken clear control of the ball and had traded it back and forth until Halleck got into good position, and he had bunged it in to tie the score.

“Strategy, strategy,” said Gennie. “We can’t tire out those ponies, but we can make them, their Riders, and maybe even their Trainees lose their tempers and get grumpy. And we can wear out their Foot. So let’s leave off trying to goal for this quarter and do that. Pip and I will harass the Foot, make them guard their flag; Mags and Halleck, you and the Riders play some hard football with their Companions and Riders. Don’t be afraid to get bruised, but don’t knock anyone over, either. Not yet, anyway.”

Pip raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that going bit hard for an exhibition? We might upset some parents.”

Halleck snorted. “Not as long as there’re no broken bones or broken necks. People like to see some danger as long as everyone walks away from it.”

Corwin nodded. “Maybe you didn’t hear it over the noise, but me old man was shouting at me from sidelines, telling me to break some heads. He don’t mean it literally, but he’d have been the first one on his feet shouting hurrah if I’d pulled someone down.”

“No broken heads, but no easy quarter of it either,” Gennie told them. “If we’re given the gift of a goal opportunity, take it, but otherwise, we concentrate on giving them a hard time, and not letting them score on us.”