Taking One for the Team Read Free Page A

thousand times, and he was right.  Raven learned a hell of a lot from the way Born anticipated her throws, the way the chains reached out and flicked the balls away.  By the time she'd scored a hundred lefty, everyone else was up, and she was a better wing than she'd been the day before.
    She got herself some porridge and greens from the communal pot, and the rest of them took the field for practice.  Raven was damn worn out; match one day, hundred goals against Born the next, so she sat and watched.  No question, Born was the best tower.  The lady tower—Katy—was pretty good too.  Left side was strong, but committed too quickly.  Could be he was hitting a little light because it was practice against his own runners, and fair enough.
    Then coach nodded Raven in for tackling work.   And it was damned hard work.  The runners weren't big, but they were all goddamn leaf-springs and concrete.  She'd hit, and she'd be the one who'd fall.  Before she'd gotten big enough to bowl over runners, Coach Langdon had worked on technique, so she had to fall back to that, trying to get leverage, hit the right place, pull them up and over.
    She was dead, by the time they packed up and headed out for Hold-Your-Cards, so naturally Coach made her jog behind the wagons.  Not that the old guzzlers made great time, and there were still potholes and landslides to avoid in between the occasional stretch of well-maintained road.  But they were still combustion engines, and she was still a tired wing.
    After a while, Born dropped out of the wagon he was on—Raven could hear the springs creak as he got off—and loped along beside her.   He didn't have a runner's build, not by a long shot, but he could still cover ground, eating up the miles with those long, heavy legs.  Even if Born could talk, Raven didn't have any wind for conversation.  But it was less lonely that way, just having him there with her.
    They got into Hold-Your-Cards near dark, and the next day practice was more an exhibition than a practice.  Raven's role was to help the runners look good, and that was easy as hell; just try tackling without good form, and they'd bounce her like a loose ball.
    And it Coach wanted her in as gold wing.  Ralf, the one she was filling in for, had taken a bad hit early in the season, and it hadn't healed right.  If they needed him, he was there, but he was going out in Drumlin—Katy'd got word from her cousins that they needed a coach, and she vouched for him.
    So it was helmet on, vest on, game on.
    Raven'd played against Hold-Your-Cards before.  Their runners and gold wing were a pack of quadruplets, and the way the ball moved between them was impossible to predict or stop.  When she told Coach about them, he'd nodded gravely, and set the bet so they had to win by forty because of that warning.  Seemed that someone in Miracle had warned them about Raven, and they'd thought her more of a threat than the quads, which put a little flush in her cheek, and spring in her step.
    Till she got the first chain across her chest from the Hold-Your-Cards tower, which left her struggling for breath and playing a little safer.
    But not much safer.  When she had an open chance, she took it.  Scored nineteen times on forty-one tries by the half, which was damn good.  Better than she'd ever done, mainly because of the team she was playing with.  A pass to a runner was almost as good as a score, so the towers had to keep watching them, not just the ball, and if she shouldered one of the Hold-Your-Cards runners into Born's range, or Katy's, or even Train's on left-side, damn good chance they'd get the ball loose with a well-aimed chain.  Which left Raven in a much better position to make a try than if she'd had to do a full tackle.
    Score was 53-29 at the half, and Raven got friendly smiles as the helmets came off, and the stormers took their water and salt biscuit.
    Coach didn't seem particularly impressed or disappointed.  Just kept