by Darren Shan
Cal and I gawp at him with horror, until Inez laughs. “You two would believe anything,” she snorts.
Kurtis grins. “You shouldn’t have given the game away. I could have strung them along for ages.”
“Cal might have attacked you,” Inez says, and Kurtis’ smile slips.
“It was just a joke, big man,” he says uneasily as Cal glares at him.
“I’ve seen people beheaded,” Cal says heavily. “There’s nothing funny about it.”
“No,” Kurtis says. “There isn’t. I’m sorry. The joke was in poor taste.”
Cal blinks at the apologetic duke elect, not sure how to respond.
“Tell you what,” Kurtis says. “Let me make it up to you. We’re planning all sorts of celebrations, but one of the main events is a grop match.”
“I love grop,” Inez exclaims.
“Who doesn’t?” Kurtis grins. “You’re a gropster, aren’t you, big guy?”
“I can take or leave it,” Cal sniffs.
“Come on,” Kurtis purrs. “The size of you? You can’t tell me you weren’t a star blocker back in the day.”
“I played a few games in my time,” Cal says, blushing modestly.
“I bet you were all-conquering,” Kurtis presses.
“I won more often than I lost,” Cal admits, his blush deepening. Then he says shyly, “They called me the Demolisher.”
“Excuse me,” I interrupt, “but what are you talking about?”
“Grop’s a sport,” Inez says.
“The fastest and bloodiest of sports,” Kurtis says enthusiastically.
“It’s not that bloody,” Inez says.
“It is in Ruby,” Kurtis says. “Anyway, we’re staging a match in Tranquillity Park. It’s going to be a showpiece, our finest players against some of the Merged’s best.”
“There were matches like that in the old days,” Inez says. “They were a regular fixture. Teams from every realm competed.”
“So I’ve heard,” Kurtis says. “They’d stopped by the time Noah and I got here.”
“Things got out of control,” Inez says. “The games grew more and more vicious, and the fighting started spreading to the crowds.”
“Sounds like the perfect afternoon’s entertainment,” Kurtis murmurs.
“Are you going to renew the tradition?” Inez asks.
“I doubt it,” Kurtis says, “but it’ll be a fab one-off. It will give people something to focus on other than the vote, and hopefully convince locals that they needn’t be concerned. When they see that our first priority is grop, they’ll realise life under our rule isn’t going to be the nightmare that some are predicting.”
“It’s a good idea,” Inez says. “I’ll look forward to the match, though I imagine it will draw a huge crowd, so getting close to the pitch might be a challenge.”
“That’s one of the things we’re working on,” Kurtis says. “It’s also why you won’t have to wait for some action.” As we stare at him blankly, he leaps to his feet. “We’re having a trial match today. We’ve invited a local team to join in.”
Inez gets up excitedly. “It’s going to be starting soon?”
“Within minutes,” Kurtis says, “and it’s nearby. I was going to suggest you and I check it out, but since Cal and Archie are at a loose end, why don’t you all come?”
Inez is thrilled. “You don’t mind if my friends join us?”
“Not at all,” Kurtis says. “Any friend of yours is a friend of mine.” He grimaces as Cal and I look at him dubiously. “Look, we’ll never be the Three Musketeers, but I’m happy to put our differences aside if you are.”
Cal and I share a questioning look.
“I haven’t seen a grop match in a long while,” Cal says.
“I don’t even know what grop is,” I tell him.
“I’d like it if you came,” Inez says.
“OK,” I smile. “I’ll come check out your grop, but I’ve got to warn you, I’m football all the way.”
“Football’s for the Born,” Kurtis says dismissively. “Now that you’re Merged, it’s grop till you drop.”
I’d like to tell him I’m not Merged, to see the smug look vanish, but that would be a bad move. Instead, as we set off, I ask him if he’s read The Three Musketeers.
“No,” he says. “I died before it was published. Besides, I never learned to read. There wasn’t a call for it when you were a pickpocket of corpses.”
“So how do you know about it?” I ask him.
“I’ve seen it performed on stage,” he says. “It’s a popular show in Ruby, though I think our version differs from yours.”
“How so?” I frown.
Kurtis winks. “In ours, Cardinal Richelieu and Milady de Winter are the heroes.”
10
THE WARM-UP GAME IS being held in a field surrounded by houses. There’s only one entrance, a wide alley between a couple of buildings.
The pitch is about ninety metres long by thirty metres wide. People are packed round the touchlines, a dozen bodies deep in many places.
“We’re lucky we didn’t leave it any later,” Kurtis says as we squeeze our way along to a space down the sideline.
There’s an odd-looking tree in each corner of the pitch, no branches or leaves, with a discoloured spot high on each, six metres or more up the trunk.
“The trees are grown by gropmeisters,” Inez explains as we wait for the teams to take to the pitch. “They also make the grop — the ball. It’s a modified mushroom cap, very fragile. Oh, here comes the gropmeister now.”
A woman marches to the centre of the pitch and yodels shrilly. As the crowd applauds, the players hustle forward. There are sixteen on each team, a mix of men and women, some tall and sturdy, others small and wiry.
“That’s our lot,” Cal says, nodding towards what must be the Merged team while he claps heartily.
“You can have up to twenty players on a team,” Inez says. “They usually base it on the size of the pitch. Most are roughly the same as this, but they vary. On the smaller pitches, they might only use ten or twelve players. On the biggest pitches they’ll use all twenty.”
“They should have no more than eleven players for a pitch this size,” Cal says disapprovingly. “It’s going to be too cluttered.”
“We like clutter in Ruby,” Kurtis says. “We thrive on the ruckus.”
“The number of players in action changes over the course of a game,” Cal says. “You might drop players to spread the play, or add more if you want to clog up the pitch, and your opponents can never have two more or less than you.”
“So if one team drops to nine players, the other team must field between seven and eleven players?” I surmise.
“That’s right,” Cal says. “The adjustments are an art form. You have the option of changing after each score – the team that scores gets to decide, although if they don’t make any changes, the opposing captain can tweak the numbers – and that alters the shape of the game. It’s how a team with only five really good players can sometimes overcome a team where all fifteen are strong.”
He starts to tell me more about the tactics, but the gropmeister yodels again and produces an oval-shaped ball. She passes it to the captain of the Merged team and all the players retreat to the corner of the pitch nearest us, while the SubMerged players gather in front of the tree in the diagonally opposite corner. The gropmeister withdraws to stand in the crowd.
There’s a long pause, the anticipation of the crowd mounting quickly and thickly. People are muttering, “Come on!” “Let’s do them!” “We can win this thing!” Many are trembling, eyes alight, fingers flexing anxiously.
Then, when it feels as if everyone’s going to scream with frustration, the captain of the Merged team lobs the ball high into the air and catches it as it falls. While it’s in the air, every single person around the pitch – except for me, since I wasn’t expecting it – roars at the top of their voice, “GROP!”
And it’s game
on.
11
THE MERGED PLAYERS advance. They pass the grop from one to the other, although mostly it’s kept between the smaller members, while the larger participants move ahead to block attacks. Up the other end, the SubMerged players jog forward and spread out. The two teams meet in the middle of the pitch...
And it’s mayhem! The players lash into one another, punching, kicking, elbowing, headbutting.
“They’re going to kill each other,” I gasp.
“No,” Kurtis chuckles. “We draw the line at that.”
“It’s about the only line that is drawn in grop,” Inez says as a young woman spins and launches a karate kick at an older woman’s head, knocking her out.
“Nice shot,” Cal grunts as the downed SubMerged player lies stiff as a corpse.
“Is she alright?” I whimper — it looks as if her neck was snapped.
“She’ll be fine,” Kurtis says, showing little regard for his compatriot, scanning the teams, trying to work out where the grop is.
That’s a concern for most of the crowd. Lots are roaring, wanting to know who has the ball. Finally a sharp-eyed boy shouts, “Over there!”
While a couple of decoys were trying to flank the SubMerged players, a thin man was sneaking through the middle of the fighting, along with an equally thin woman.
The man flinches when he realises he’s been spotted and makes a break for open ground, his partner darting along next to him. One of the SubMerged knocks down the man after he plays the ball to the woman, and she’s forced to look for someone else to pass to. As she’s doing that, another man grabs her arm. She tries to tear free but can’t. In a panic she throws the grop wildly towards a teammate. The man holding her swipes his free arm at it and the grop explodes in a shower of splinters. Play stops and all of the SubMerged supporters groan.
“What’s happening?” I ask as the gropmeister trots on with a replacement grop.
“If someone breaks a grop, it’s a penalty to the other team,” Inez explains.
“He shouldn’t have grabbed for it,” Kurtis growls. “It would have hit the ground and exploded, and then it would have been a penalty for us.”
At the same time that the gropmeister is advancing, several medics swarm onto the pitch and rush to the aid of anyone who’s been injured, including the woman with the damaged neck. A male medic tends to her. He lays his hands on her neck and rubs gently. A glow comes from his fingers and the woman moves. Seconds later she’s on her feet, and signals to the medic that she wants to continue.
“Most injuries can be patched up on the field of play,” Inez says. “Sometimes players have to retire from a game, but they usually prefer to play on.”
The gropmeister lays the grop on the ground where the original ball was shattered. She faces the nearest tree at the SubMerged end of the pitch and takes five strides towards it. When she stops, the largest man on the Merged team steps up next to her.
“That guy’s a chucker,” Inez says.
“Huh?” I reply.
She winks. “It’ll make sense to you in a minute.”
The chucker squints at the tree, then nods to one of his smallest teammates, a boy not much older than me. People murmur with a mixture of excitement and caution.
“They’re going for a point,” Inez says.
“It’s a long way out,” Cal says dubiously.
The boy picks up the grop and takes a few steps back. He studies his run-up, retreats some more, then takes a deep breath and runs towards the chucker. As the boy is approaching, the chucker stoops and sticks out his arms. The boy looks like he’s going to run straight into the man, but when he’s a couple of steps away he launches himself into the air. As he jumps, the chucker grabs him and throws, sending the boy flying high into the air, in the direction of the tree.
Everyone holds their breath. The boy sails through the air, holding the grop close by his side. Then, just before he runs out of momentum and falls to earth, he swings his arm up and around, and hurls the grop towards the dark spot on the tree.
He looks to have thrown too high, and the Merged fans wince and tut, while the SubMerged laugh and jeer. But as the grop travels further, it arcs down and hits the spot almost dead in the centre, exploding into a thousand dusty fragments.
There’s a massive roar, the Merged players and fans punching the air with delight, the SubMerged shaking their heads with disbelief.
“That was a play and a half!” Cal booms as the boy lands nimbly on his feet and hurries back to celebrate with his team.
“A lucky shot,” Kurtis grumbles.
“They all count,” Inez chuckles, giving him a comforting hug. “You’re riding for a hiding.”
“We’ll see,” Kurtis says, smiling begrudgingly.
The SubMerged are handed a new grop and get ready to restart. The Merged captain seems to consider dropping players but decides against it, and the SubMerged captain indicates that he’s happy with the numbers too.
“Our captain made a mistake,” Cal frowns. “Three of his team are nursing injuries that will slow them down in the next play.”
Whether he’s right or wrong, the captain organises his players and his counterpart throws the grop into the air.
“GROP!” everyone roars, and this time I join in.
And it all kicks off again.
12
I QUICKLY GET TO GRIPS with the basics. If a grop is broken and a penalty awarded too far out for a shot, the team opts to keep possession and the opposing team has to fall back fifteen paces.
Occasionally a player will shoot from a standing position, but the height of the whorl – the target on the tree – and the lightness of the grop work against that, and those shots are rarely successful.
The most common way of scoring, other than from a penalty, involves getting close enough to a tree for a chucker to throw one of his teammates into the air, and for that person to shoot from above the heads of their opponents. The person who gets thrown is called a hummingbird if it’s from open play, or a condor if it’s from a penalty. (The general term is bird.)
Scoring from a penalty is called a soar. Scoring from the air in open play is called a hover. And scoring from the ground is called a fluke.
There are many other terms, for plays and the players, but I don’t focus on those, afraid my brain might go into meltdown if I cram it with too much technical jargon.
Although the Merged started brightly, the SubMerged soon take control. They’re a proper squad, whereas the home team is made up of volunteers from various zones, most of whom have never played together before.
The SubMerged go six-two up and you can sense the expectations of the crowd dwindling away. They carry on cheering, but they can see this isn’t going to be a closely fought contest.
“How long does it go on for?” I ask.
“Twenty-six points,” Kurtis says. “That’s higher than normal for a friendly, but our people wanted plenty of time to analyse crowd patterns.”
Cal elaborates. “Matches are played up to a certain score. This first half will end when a team scores its thirteenth point. There’ll be a short break, then they’ll swap halves and carry on until one of them gets to twenty-six.”
The Merged team drags the score back to 6-3, but the SubMerged score almost instantly from the restart. One of the Merged players doesn’t get up after that. She snapped a bone in her leg in the last play, and even the skilled medics can’t instantly cure that. She’s carried from the pitch to a warm round of applause.
As the woman’s being taken off, the captain jogs to the sideline opposite ours and calls to the crowd.
“What’s he doing?” I ask.
“Looking for a replacement,” Kurtis says.
“Don’t they have substitutes?”
“We do,” he says, “but this was a last-minute thing for the Merged team. They’ll have to rely on help from the crowd.”
“How will a replacement be chosen?” I ask.
Cal shrugs. �
��The captain will ask for help, those who are eager to take part will state their case, and he’ll make a judgement call. It can be tricky, since sometimes people make wild claims. I’ve seen men as big as me swear that they’re a bird.”
“What about you?” I ask. “You used to play grop.”
“A long time ago,” he says.
“But you’re still in good shape, right?”
“I like to think so,” he smiles.
“Were you a chucker?”
“Sometimes,” he nods, “but mostly a blocker.”
“Will you volunteer if that position opens up?”
Cal tugs his moustache. “It’s been ages,” he mutters, “and I never enjoyed playing in front of large crowds.”
“But it’s against the SubMerged,” I remind him. “You’d get to tackle them.”
Cal stops tugging and his eyes light up. “Oh.” He looks out at the sea of players and smiles wolfishly.
“You’ll do it if the chance arises?” I press.
“If they’ll have me,” he says.
I beam at the gigantic Cal, then turn my attention back to the game. I’m still cheering for the Merged, but secretly I’m hoping the SubMerged will force one of our blockers from the field, because Cal’s built like a wrecking machine and I want to sic him on them. I’m sure he’d crack heads and snap bones like twigs, and that would wipe the smug grin from duke-to-be Kurtis’ pasty face!
It’s surely only coincidence, but play soon draws to a halt near where we’re standing. The SubMerged are up ten-four and the Merged captain looks dejected, but while he’s standing close to us, he casts an eye over the crowd, spots the huge Cal and cocks his head. Beside me, Cal gives a slight nod. The captain lets his gaze wander again but Cal’s smiling and I get the sense that a secret message passed between the two men.
Play resumes. The Merged have control of the grop, but then a pass is intercepted. The SubMerged break and two of their birds run into open space to shoot and score.
“Nearly half-time,” Kurtis beams. “I’ll get hotcats when play pauses.”