Since it had stopped raining, Kahlan pushed the hood of her cloak back off her head. Dark clouds scudded low over the Azrith Plain, adding to the suffocating feeling of being closed in. The thick, murky overcast suggested that the first damp, cold day of winter would offer no chance of sunlight. It felt like the whole world was gradually descending into a cold, numb, everlasting gloom.

When they reached the edge of the Ja'La field, Kahlan rose up on her toes, looking over or around the shoulders of the guards, trying to see the faces of the men already in the thick of play. When she realized that she was stretching in order to see the game, she immediately lowered herself back down. The last thing she wanted was for Jagang to ask her why she was suddenly so interested in Ja'La.

She wasn't really interested in the game, but she was interested in seeing if she could spot the man with the gray eyes, the man who had deliberately tripped and fallen in the mud so as to hide his face from Jagang-or maybe Sister Ulicia.

If the rain didn't return, it was soon going to be hard for the man to maintain a muddy face to hide his identity. Even with rain and mud Jagang would quickly become suspicious if the point man for Commander Karg's team walked around all the time with a muddy face. Then the man would find that the mud, rather than hiding him, only attracted Jagang's suspicion. Kahlan fretted about what would happen then.

Many of the men watching the game cheered and shouted encouragement when the point man for one of the teams made it into the opposing team's territory. Blockers rushed in to prevent the man from gaining any more ground. The onlookers roared as the players toppled one another while other men scrambled to protect their territory.

Ja'La was a game in which men ran, dodged, and darted past one another, or blocked, or chased the man with the broc-a heavy, leather-covered ball a little smaller than a man's head-trying to capture it, or attack with it, or score with it. Men often fell or were knocked from their feet. Rolling across the ground without shirts, many were soon left slick not just with sweat, but with blood.

The square Ja'La fields were marked out in a grid. In each corner was a goal, two for each team. The only man who could score, and only when it was his team's timed turn, was the point man, and even then he had to do so from within a specific section of the grid on the opponents' side of the field. From that scoring zone, an area running across the width of the field, he could throw the broc toward either of the rivals' goal nets.

It wasn't easy to score. It was a throw of some distance and the goal nets weren't large.

To make it all the more difficult, the opposing players could block the throw of the heavy broc. They could also knock the point man back out of the shooting zone-or even tackle him-as he tried to score. The broc could also be used as a kind of weapon to knock interfering players out of the way. The point man's team could try to clear the opposing players from in front of a goal net, or they could protect him from blockers so that he could try to find an opening in one net or the other so that he could make a shot, or they could split up and try to do both. Each strategy for each side had its advantages and disadvantages.

There was also a line far back from the regular shooting zone from where the point man could attempt a throw. If such a shot went in, his team scored two points rather than the usual single point, but shots were rarely wasted at such a distance because the chance for interception was so much greater, while at the same time the chance of making such the shot was negligible. Such attempts were usually made only out of desperation, such as a last-ditch effort by the team that was behind, trying to score before time ran out.

If the opposing team tackled the point man, then, and only then, were his wing men allowed to recover the broc and attempt to score. If any attempt to score missed the net and the broc went out of bounds, then the team on offense got the broc back, but it was returned to them on their own side of the field. From there they had to start the running attack all over again. All the while their timed turn with the broc continued to run down.

On a few squares on the field the attacking point man was safe from the threat of being tackled and having the broc stripped away from him. Those squares, though, could easily become dangerous islands where he could become trapped and unable to advance. He could, though, pass the broc to a wing man and once on the charge get it back again.

On the rest of the squares, and in the regular scoring zone, the defending team could capture or steal the broc in an attempt to prevent the attacking team from scoring. If the defending team captured the broc, though, they couldn't score with it until their turn of the hourglass, their turn at attack, but they could try to keep possession in order to deny the team whose turn it was a chance to score. The attacking team had to get it back if they were to score. Fights over possession of the broc could get bloody.

An hourglass timed each team's turn of play-each side's timed chance to score. If an hourglass wasn't available, other timing means, such as a bucket of water with a hole in it, could be used. The rules of the game could in certain instances be rather complicated, but in general they were very loose. It often seem to Kahlan that there were no rules-other than the major rule that a team could score only during their timed turn.

The timed-play rule prevented any one team from dominating the possession of the broc and kept the game moving. It was a fast-paced, exhausting game, with constant back-and-forth play and no real time to rest.

Because it was so difficult to make a point, teams rarely scored more than three or four points in a game. At this level of play the concluding gap in the final score was usually only a point or two.

A prescribed number of turns of the hourglass for each side made up the official time of the game, but if the score was even at the end of those turns then play continued, no matter how many more turns of the hourglass were needed, until one team scored another point. When that finally happened the other team then had but one turn of the hourglass to try to match the point. If they failed, the game was over. If they made the point, the other team got another turn. The extended play went on in that fashion until a team scored without an answering point within the one-following-play rule. For that reason, no Ja'La dh Jin game could ever end in a tie. There was always a winner, always a loser.

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.