Excerpt: I Would Rather Be Anywhere Else Than Here Today

As suddenly as it had started, the fight stopped as a small man slipped out of it holding something vaguely round and football-sized. Moxy didn't care to speculate about what manner of animal the ball had been extricated from, but watched the man making a break for the inn at the opposite end of the town to the baker's. The man moved surprisingly quickly given the state of the road, but the people he'd broken off from were close behind and gaining fast. Moxy reckoned he was trying to make it to the inn before being hauled to the ground by the mob, and at this rate it was a toss-up. He couldn't make out the exact nature of what people in the mob were shouting, but it didn't sound pleasant.

A man who had been trying to herd a pig into his garden looked up to see the passing gathering, thought for a moment and ran over to join it - or so Moxy presumed, before he launched himself feet-first at one of the vangaurd, catching him just behind the knee and knocking him into the mud with an anguished yelp. Moxy noted with some amusement that the man who'd drawn the foul was a dead ringer for Chic Young and made the immediate and correct logical leap that he'd deserved it. Pig-man calmly got back to his feet, strolled back towards his garden and resumed herding.

The runner had about a hundred yards to cover, a distance that - on a good surface, using modern equipment such as shoes, Moxy would have expected him to cover in twelve to fifteen seconds, tops. On this ground, it was going to be more like a minute, even with a bloodthirsty throng at his heels. After all, they were running under the same conditions - minus the ball, of course. Sixty yards, and he was visibly tiring, the road getting deeper and wetter the further down the gentle slope he went. It was a struggle just to watch him trying to pull his feet out of the ground; the squelches were more or less drowned by the whoops of the pursuing group, who were providing their own squelchy noises as well.

Forty yards, and the fore-runners of the group were almost within touching distance - if they had thought to bring pitchforks, the breakaway guy would have been toast (soggy toast, but toast all the same). One made a headlong dive for his heels, but the ground was unforgiving of such heroic manoeuvres and he fell comically on his face before his back was trampled by the others. Moxy worried for a moment about him drowning, but he dragged himself out of the mud immediately and rejoined the back of the group.

Twenty yards, and a man stepped out of the inn - whether an innkeeper or a goalkeeper, Moxy wasn't sure. He was huge compared to the others - Moxy wasn't a tall man, five foot nine or so if he remembered not to slouch, but (presumably due to poor diet and three and a half fewer centuries of evolution), the locals seemed to be a good six inches shorter on average - the man was easily six feet tall, and - although apparently gaunt and skeletal of features - carried a good deal of weight in muscle. He was sparklingly bald and, unlike everyone else Moxy had seen so far, clean as a whistle. His tunic was jet black. Not moving, he stared intently at the runner, who was alternating between watching his feet and stealing glances at the gaining mob. Moxy, who had played rugby at school, remembered his coach's advice: "If you've got the ball, you've got everything you need - you're an artist, you don't look back." He hadn't picked up the reference at the time, but had later wanted to go back and wave a severe finger at the coach. There was no call for that kind of thing.

Ten yards, and the pack was practically within touching distance - one made a grab for his tunic, but mindful of the trampling his teammate had received a moment before, didn't break stride. The runner wasn't looking back now, his attention was firmly on the big man, looking for a way around or through him. Surely he wasn't going to try to charge and knock him over? The man was three times his weight. Even if the runner didn't know about the principles of momentum, the slightest bit of common sense would tell him that was impossible.Five yards. Slip through his legs? There wasn't any room between the man and the narrow doorframe to go around. There weren't any windows. It looked for all the world as if the runner was about to get crushed between the man and the following crowd, one of whom he'd just palmed off, another of whom hadn't quite got a firm enough grip on his tunic.

The man in the doorway watched with a wry grin, waited until the last possible moment before putting two fingers into his mouth and blowing a shrill whistle. "Offside," he said, authoritatively, and calmly took the ball off of the protesting runner.