Confessor (13 page)

With or without tie-breaking play, when the game was over the losing team was brought out onto the field and each man was flogged. A terrible whip made up of a bundle of knotted leather cords bound together at the handle end was used to mete out the punishment. Each of those leather cords was tipped with heavy nuggets of metal. The men were given one lash for each point by which they’d lost. The crowd enthusiastically counted out each lash to each man on the losing team kneeling in the center of the field. The winners often cavorted around the perimeter of the field, showing off for the crowd, while the losers, with bowed heads, received their whipping.

With such bitter rivalry between teams the flogging always ended up being a grim sight. The players, after all, had been selected specifically for their belligerent brutality, not merely their skill at playing.

The crowds who watched the Ja’La games expected bloody matches. The female camp followers watching from the sidelines weren’t in the least bit put off by the blood. If anything, it made them all the more eager to catch the attention of favorite players. To the people of the Old World, blood and sex were inextricably linked—whether it was a Ja’La match, or the sacking of a city.

If there wasn’t much blood during the game the crowd could get riled, believing that the teams weren’t really trying hard enough. Kahlan once saw Jagang order the execution of a team because he thought they hadn’t fought hard enough. The teams who had played on the bloody field after the executions had thrown themselves into the match.

The more brutal the players were—from the crowd’s standpoint—the better. Legs and arms were frequently broken, as were skulls. Those who had previously killed an opponent in a Ja’La match were well known and widely acclaimed. Such men were idolized and entered the field at the beginning of games to the wild cheers of the spectators. The women seeking to be with the players after a match strongly favored being with such dominant men.

To the Imperial Order, the Game of Life was a blood sport.

Kahlan moved up close behind Jagang as he stood near the edge of the field at midpoint. The game had already gotten under way while they had still been back at the construction site.

The royal guards flanked Jagang’s sides and guarded his back. Kahlan’s own special guards surrounded her close enough to be sure she didn’t try to wander away. She suspected that the heated emotions of the fans, as well as their drinking, held the potential for more than a little trouble.

Still, Jagang, despite the show of force by his guards, was a man who did not fear trouble. He had won rule by brute force; he held on to it by being absolutely ruthless. There were few, even among the largest of his guard, who were his equal in sheer brawn, to say nothing of his skill and experience as a warrior. Kahlan suspected that he could easily crush a man’s skull in one bare hand. On top of that, the man was a dream walker. He could probably have strolled alone among the meanest of drunken soldiers and had nothing to fear.

Out on the field the teams came together in a great crash of bone and muscle. Kahlan watched the point man as he lost the broc when hit from both sides at once. On one knee, he held a hand over his ribs as he panted, trying to catch his breath. He wasn’t the man she was looking for.

The horn blew, signifying the end of that turn of play.
The fans of the other team cheered wildly at the failure to score. The referee walked the broc to the other end of the field and gave it to the point man on the other team. Kahlan let out a silent sigh. That wasn’t him, either. As the hourglass was turned over the horn blew again. The point man and his team started their run downfield. The opposing team started their run to defend their goals.

The crash of flesh was horrific. One of the players screamed in pain. Jillian, behind the wall of guards and unable to see much of what was happening on the field, still shrank from the sound of the screams. She pressed herself all the harder against Kahlan. Play continued even as the fallen player was dragged from the field by the referee’s assistants.

Jagang, having seen enough, turned and started off toward the next Ja’La field. The men in the crowd, all pushing and shoving as they tried to see the game, parted for the emperor leaving their game. The crowd was huge, even though in such a camp it constituted only a small fraction of the men.

The construction of the ramp continued despite the games. Most of the men working on it would have plenty of time, once their shift was over, to see other games that were to go on throughout the day and evening. From what Kahlan could gather from bits of conversation, there were a lot of teams contending for the right to eventually play the emperor’s team. The tournaments constituted a welcome diversion for men with nothing to do but endure endless days of working and the interminable siege of the People’s Palace.

It was a long trek through the cheering, shouting, booing men watching the game the emperor was leaving behind. Making their way through the muddy, filthy, reeking camp, they eventually arrived at the next Ja’La field. An area had been roped off for the emperor and his party of guards. Ja
gang and a number of officers who had joined him talked at length about the teams who were about to play. Apparently, the game they’d left was between lesser-ranked teams. This game, though, was supposed to be between men who were for some reason expected to offer a better show.

The two point men were just arriving at center field to draw straws to determine which team would get the chance at first play. A hush fell over the crowd as they waited. The point men both drew a straw from a bunch the referee held out in his fist. The two men held up their straws. The man with the short straw cursed. The winning point man held the straw high as he cried out in triumph. His fellow players and the crowd favoring his team sent up a thunderous cheer.

The long straw gave him the choice of taking the broc on the first play or giving it to the man who had pulled the short straw. Of course, no team ever gave up their chance to be first to score a point. Scoring first augured well for their prospect of victory.

From what Kahlan overheard from the soldiers and guards around her, it was believed by most that the Game of Life was won or lost by that very first draw of a straw. That straw, they believed, revealed what fate had in store.

Neither point man was the one Kahlan was looking for.

As the game started, it became obvious that these men were better than those playing in the last game. The tackles were wild efforts. Men threw themselves through the air in desperate attempts to make contact—either to take out the point man or to protect him. The point man, besides running with the broc, used its weight to help knock a man out of his way. As another man closed on him, he heaved the broc with all his might at close range. The blocker grunted with the weight of the impact of the broc and fell. The fans rooted and hooted. One of the wing men scooped up the broc and tossed it to the point man as they charged across the field.

“I’m sorry,” Jillian whispered up to Kahlan while the guards, officers, and Jagang all watched the game, some of them commenting on the players.

“It wasn’t your fault, Jillian. You did your best.”

“But you did so much. I wish I was as good as you and then—”

“Shush, now. I’m a captive, too. We both are no match for these men.”

Jillian smiled just a little, then. “I’m at least glad to be with you.”

Kahlan returned the smile in kind. She glanced at her guards. They were caught up in watching the excitement of the game.

“I’ll try to think of a way to get us out of this,” she whispered.

From time to time Jillian peeked out between the big men to try to see what was happening on the field. When Kahlan noticed Jillian rubbing her bare arms and that she was beginning to shiver in the cold, she wrapped her cloak protectively around the girl, sharing her warmth with her.

As time wore on, each team scored a point. With the game tied, time almost out, and both teams unable to gain much of an advantage, Kahlan knew that it might last quite a while in overtime play until a winner was decided.

It didn’t take as long as she’d thought it would nor did it need to go into overtime. The point man of one team was tackled low from behind while at the same time another blocker, in a coordinated attack, flew in from the front, hitting him square in the chest with a lowered shoulder. The point man went limp and hit the ground hard. The tackle looked like it might very well have broken the man’s back. The crowd went wild.

Kahlan turned Jillian’s face away and pressed it in against her instead. “Don’t watch.”

Jillian, on the edge of tears, nodded. “I don’t know why they like such cruel games.”

“Because they are cruel people,” Kahlan murmured.

Another man was designated point man as their fallen leader was carried away to a deafening roar of satisfaction on the one side, and angry yells on the other. The two sides of onlookers seemed on the verge of combat, but when play swiftly resumed they were quickly caught up in the fast-paced action.

The team who had lost the point man fought desperately, but it soon became apparent that they were fighting a losing battle. The new point man was not the equal of the man they’d lost. When the last regular play of the hourglass was finished they had lost by two points—a resounding victory for the other team. Such a point spread, as well as eliminating the opposing point man in such savage fashion, would add greatly to the winning team’s reputation.

Jagang and the officers looked to be pleased with the results of the game. It had proven to have had all the elements of brutality, blood, and ruthless triumph that they believed Ja’La dh Jin should have. The guards, intoxicated with the murderous ferocity of the play, whispered among themselves, going over what they had liked best about some of the more violent clashes. The crowd, already worked up by the game, was excited all the more by the ensuing whippings. They were fired up, eagerly anticipating the next game.

As they waited, they began a rhythmic chant, impatiently urging the next teams out. They clapped their hands in time to their monotone cries for action.

One of the teams emerged from the crowd at the far end of the field on the right. By the way they cheered, the crowd recognized a favored team. Each player raised a fist over his head as they strutted in a circle around the field,
showing off for their fans. Men in the crowd, as well as the women camp followers, cheered the team they knew and supported.

One of Jagang’s guards standing not far in front of Kahlan commented to the man next to him that this team was more than merely good, and he expected that they would badly maul their foe. By the hooting of the crowd, most onlookers seemed to be of the same mind. Apparently, this was a popular team with the kind of hostile reputation the men of Imperial Order liked and remembered. After the previous game, the mob of soldiers was aroused and eager for blood.

The vast crush of soldiers all stretched, craning their necks to see the other team as they finally made their way out through the crowd on the left. They emerged in single file, no fists raised, no show of bravado.

Kahlan stared in surprise along with everyone else. A hush fell over the crowd. No one cheered.

They were too astonished to cheer.

The men, all without shirts, marched in single file out from the middle of a thick knot of grim guards, all with arrows at the ready. Each man in the column making his way toward the center of the field was painted with strange red symbols. The lines, whorls, circles, and arcs covered their faces, chests, shoulders, and arms.

They looked like they had been marked in blood by the Keeper of the underworld himself.

Kahlan noticed that the man at the lead had designs drawn on him that, while similar, were slightly different. In addition, he alone had twin lightning bolts on his face. Starting from the temple on each side, in a mirror image of each other, the top part of each bolt zigzagged over the eyebrow, the center lobe of each lightning bolt passing over the eyelid, with the bottom of the zigzag slashing over the cheekbones, finally terminating in a point at the hollow of each cheek.

Kahlan found the effect viscerally frightening.

Glaring out from the raptor gaze at the center of those twin lightning bolts were penetrating gray eyes.

It was hard to make out what the man looked like beneath the distraction of lines. The strange symbols, and especially
the lightning bolts, confused the features beneath. Kahlan suddenly realized that he had found a way to hide his identity without the mud. She didn’t let so much as a smile slip onto her features. While relieved, at the same time she wished that she could see his face, really see it, see what he looked like.

He was not as big as some of the other hulking players, but he was still a big man—tall and muscular, but not muscled the way some of the thick, heavy, bull-like men were muscled. This man was built in a way that was all the right proportions.

As she stared at him, Kahlan suddenly feared that everyone might see her transfixed by the man. She could feel her face flushing.

Still, she stared. She couldn’t seem to help herself. This was the first time she’d really gotten a good look at the man. He looked exactly the way she somehow knew he would. Or maybe it was that he looked just the way she dreamed he would. The cold first day of winter suddenly felt warm to her.

She wondered who this man was to her. She made herself rein in her imagination. She dared not daydream about things that she knew could never be.

While the other point man laughed, the man with the gray eyes waited before the referee, his cutting gaze fixed on his counterpart.

She had known the instant she’d seen the painted designs that it would be viewed by these soldiers as empty bravado. The painted designs were the sort of visual statement that, if not backed up by a man of the right nature, would in such circumstances be the worst kind of presumption, the kind of provocation that would bring him brutal, if not lethal, treatment.

Hiding his face was one thing, but this was altogether something else. He was putting himself and his team at
great risk by making such a proclamation in paint. It almost seemed that the lightning bolts were meant to insure that no one could miss that he was the point man, as if he meant to direct the other team’s focus and attention to him. She couldn’t imagine why he would do such a thing.

Following their point man’s lead, the team that wasn’t painted had all started laughing. The crowd, too, had joined in, laughing, hooting, and calling the painted men, and in particular the point man with the lightning bolts, names.

Kahlan knew without a doubt that there was no more dangerous mistake to be made than to laugh at this man.

The painted team stood as still as stone, waiting while the crowd went into a riot of laughter and mockery. The other team shouted insults and taunts. Some of the women camp followers threw small things—chicken bones, rotten food, and even dirt when nothing else could be found.

The players on the other team called the man with lightning bolts the kind of names that caused Kahlan to absently cover Jillian’s ear with a hand, pressing her head to Kahlan’s chest. She wrapped her cloak around Jillian. She didn’t know what was going to happen, but she knew for sure that this game was not going to be a place for a girl.

The point man with the twin lightning bolts stood with an expressionless look that showed nothing of what he might be feeling. It reminded Kahlan of herself when she put on a blank expression when facing certain kinds of terrible challenges, a blank look that betrayed nothing of what was building inside her.

And yet, in this man’s calm demeanor Kahlan saw coiled fury.

He never looked her way—his gaze was fixed on his counterpart—but just seeing him standing there, seeing all of him, seeing his face, even though it was covered in painted lines, seeing the way he held himself, seeing him at length
without having to quickly look away…made Kahlan’s knees weak.

Commander Karg nudged his way in through the wall of guards to join Emperor Jagang at the side of the field. He folded his muscled arms, apparently not at all concerned about the uproar his team was causing. Kahlan noticed that Jagang was not laughing along with everyone else. He didn’t even smile. The commander and the emperor tipped their heads close together and spoke in words Kahlan couldn’t hear over the jeering, laughing, and vulgar insults being shouted by the crowd.

As Jagang and Commander Karg spoke at length, the other team took to dancing around the field, arms raised, the recipients of the mob’s esteem even though they had yet to score a point. They had become heroes without having done anything.

These soldiers, devoted to dogmatic beliefs, were motivated by hate. They saw any individual’s quiet confidence as arrogance, his competence as unjust, and such inequity as oppression. Kahlan recalled Jagang’s words:
“The Fellowship of Order teaches us that to be better than someone is to be worse than everyone.”

The men watching believed in that creed and so they hated men for appearing to proclaim with paint that they were better. At the same time, they were there to see a team triumph, to see men best other men. It was unavoidable that beliefs as irrational as those taught by the Fellowship of Order would produce endless tangles of contradictions, desires, and emotions. Shortcomings made evident by even the most basic common sense were plastered over with a liberal application of faith. Anyone who questioned matters of faith was held to be a sinner.

These men were here in the New World to eliminate sinners.

Order was finally restored by the referee calling for the
crowd to settle down so that the game could start. As the spectators quieted, to a degree at least, the man with the gray eyes gestured to the referee’s fistful of straws, inviting his opponent to draw first. The man drew a straw, smiling at his choice when it came out looking like it surely had to be a winning length.

The man with the gray eyes drew a straw that was longer.

As the crowd hooted their disapproval, the referee gave the broc to the point man with the painted face.

Instead of going to his side of the field to start his charge, he waited a moment until the crowd quieted a little and then graciously handed the broc to the other point man, forfeiting the first turn at an attempt to score. The crowd erupted in wild laughter at such an unexpected turn of events. They clearly thought the painted point man was a fool who had just handed victory to the other team. They cheered as if their team had just been victorious.

None of the painted team showed any reaction to what their point man had just done. Instead, they moved off in a businesslike manner, taking up their places on the left side of the field, ready to defend against the first attack.

When the hourglass was turned over and the horn blew, the attacking team wasted no time. Eager to score quickly, their charge was instantaneous. They all yelled battle cries as they rushed across the field. The painted team raced toward the center of the field to meet the charge. The roar from the crowd was deafening.

Kahlan’s muscles tensed in anticipation of a terrible collision of flesh and bone.

It didn’t happen the way she expected.

The painted team—the red team as the guards had already taken to calling them—deviated in their direction of charge, splitting in two and pouring to either side around the advance blockers, going instead for the rear guard. Such
an unexpected and amateurish mistake was a stroke of luck for the team trying to score. Following his blockers and wing men, the point man with the broc went through the gap the red team had left open, racing straight up the field.

In an instant both wings of the red team pivoted and the opening snapped closed like great jaws, tumbling the charging blockers inward. The painted point man charged right up the middle—toward the center blockers coming for him. Just as they were about to tackle him, he sidestepped one man and whirled around, slipping between two others.

Kahlan blinked in disbelief at what she had just seen. It looked as if he had squirted like a melon seed right through half a dozen men converging on him.

One of the bigger men on the red team, likely one of the wing men, went for the charging point man with the broc. Just before reaching him, though, he dove at him too soon, so that his diving block was too low. The man with the broc jumped right over him. The crowd cheered at how deftly their man had just evaded a tackle.

But the man with the twin lightning bolts also made a flying leap over his downed wing man, using his back like a step to launch himself. He met the other point man in midflight, hooking him with an arm and upending him in midair. The reversal of direction was forceful enough to dislodge the broc. As he came crashing to the ground the man with the gray eyes caught the loose broc while it was still in the air. His foot came down on the back of the fallen point man’s head, driving his face into the mud.

Kahlan knew without a doubt that he could have easily broken the man’s neck, but he had deliberately avoided doing so.

Blockers from every direction dove for the painted man who now had their broc. He pivoted, changing direction. They landed where he had been but he was already gone. They crashed down instead atop their own point man.

The red team now had possession of the broc. Even though they couldn’t score until it was their turn, they could keep the other team from scoring. For some reason, though, the man with the gray eyes charged across the field, flanked by his two wing men and half his blockers. They were formed into a perfect wedge as they crossed the field. When the painted men reached the scoring area on the opposite side of the field, the point man heaved the broc into one of the nets—even though it was not their turn and the point would not count.

He followed the broc, recovered it from the net, and then, rather than keeping possession in an effort to deny the other team an opportunity to score, he trotted back up the field and with an easy underarm throw tossed the broc back to the point man still on his knees spitting out mud.

The crowd gasped in confused astonishment.

What Kahlan had just seen confirmed what she had believed from the first moment she’d looked into the man’s raptor gaze—this was the most dangerous man alive. More dangerous than Jagang, dangerous in a different way, but more dangerous than Jagang. More dangerous than anyone.

This was a man too dangerous to be allowed to live. Once Jagang realized what she already knew—if he didn’t already know it—he might very well decide to have this man put to death.

The team with first turn took the broc back to their starting point on the right and, in a fury to redeem themselves and score a point that would count, charged across the field. Surprisingly, the red team waited rather than running to stop the advance as far away from their goal as possible. A mistake, it would seem, but Kahlan didn’t think so.

When the attackers reached the red team they threw themselves into the defenders. The red team abruptly bolted in every direction, evading the overconfident blockers. As
they ran, the red team came around and their own blockers formed into a crescent formation. As they raced across the field they scythed down the opposing wing men and blockers, as well as the point man. The big painted wing man stripped the broc from him, then tossed it as high as he could into the air. The man with the lightning bolts, who had already dodged, darted, and threaded his way through the line of charging men, came through at a dead run and caught the broc before it hit the ground.

By himself he had outrun all the men of the other team chasing him. When he reached the opposite end of the field he heaved the broc into the net in the corner opposite to the one he’d thrown it into the first time. The blockers dove for him but he effortlessly sidestepped and they crashed to the ground in a heap beside him. He trotted to the net and retrieved the broc.

“Who is that man?” Jagang asked in a low voice.

Kahlan knew that Jagang meant the point man with the lightning bolts painted on his face, the man with the gray eyes.

“His name is Ruben,” Commander Karg said.

It was a lie.

Kahlan knew that wasn’t the man’s name. She didn’t have any idea what his name really was, but it was not Ruben. Ruben was a disguise, just like the mud had been, just like the red paint was now. Ruben was not his real name.

She suddenly wondered what made her think such a thing.

She knew from the way he’d looked at her that first time their eyes had met the day before that he knew her. That meant that he probably had to be someone from her past. She didn’t remember him, and she didn’t know his real name, but she knew it was not Ruben. The name just didn’t fit him.

The horn blew, marking the end of the first play. The
hourglass was turned over and the horn blew again. The red team was already down at their end of the field, back beyond their starting point. They didn’t bother to give themselves the advantage of getting up to the sections of the grid where they were allowed to start their attack.

Instead, the man Commander Karg had said was named Ruben, already in possession of the broc, gave a slight hand signal to his men. Kahlan’s brow twitched as she watched carefully. She had never seen a point man use such hand signals.