Friends of Lady Trembelle Seult tended to say that she had 'one of those faces'. One of those faces, to be more specific, that had made Count Victor Von Carstein become utterly mad with his love for her, spending five hundred-and-twenty years of his undead life living as a hermit in the Wraythsdoum peaks before finally throwing himself off the cliffs into the raging torrent below. One of those faces that had been responsible for so many duels amongst the younger male vampires at the Strigoi Academy – Trembelle invariably shaking her head in irritation at the sight of such posturing, and retiring to the library to read about caging techniques – that a permanent pile of ash developed in the university's barren quadrangle and was eventually used by the groundsman to fertilise his roses.
One of those faces, to be brief about it, that was pale, and sweet, and had the darkest of smiles lingering about it. A face, if you wanted to be poetic, that would make the fiercest hunter of the walking dead plunge a stake into his own heart rather than harm a snow-white hair on her head.
Currently, however, this same face was marked by a severe frown as Trembelle leant forward, jabbed a slender finger into the tablecloth, and snapped,
"What do you mean, you don't get it? It's not hard. Look, I'll explain it again."
She shifted the pepper pot forward. Salt-shaker back. Various glasses and items of cutlery, jammed point first into the wood, formed complex patterns over the table. Her dinner companion, a nervous, balding vampire by the name of Sebastian Vraiklitz, made a sort of harrumphing noise designed to indicate, as politely as possible, that perhaps, if she really didn't, um, mind, it might be the right time to introduce a new topic of conversation.
Trembelle, completely failing to pick up on this, continued,
"Eleven players on each team. Some are built for hitting, others for running, some for throwing…and one ball. This, er, napkin clasp. One team kicks into the other team's half, and whoever gets their hands on the ball has to run it into the opposition's endzone, as marked by the edge of the table. So far, so simple."
"So, um, simple," Sebastian murmured.
A waiter lurched forth out of the shadows of the restaurant and attempted to fill the wine glasses with a thick crimson liquid. Trembelle waved him away.
"Not now, dammit," she snarled, "we're using them. So – let's try to imagine the opposition have the ball. You can hit them at any time, any place – as long as they're on their feet. If you foul them on the ground, you're liable to get sent off. If you can knock down the ball-carrier, you're on the right track. But his team-mates will be trying to keep him protected. So what do you do? How do you stop his progress, while watching every gap in your defence in case he passes, even defending yourself against attacks from all sides?"
Sebastian gazed down at the debris scattered across the tablecloth. He was certain he'd heard a couple of giggles from one of the other booths, shrouded in darkness. Why the hells hadn't anyone told him that Trembelle Seult was a sports nut?
"I really, um, couldn't say," he managed. "I, um, hear Lady Genevieve is having a masked ball tonight in Middenheim – perhaps we could, ah, fly over and attend, um, together-"
Trembelle let out a short, bestial snarl.
"You're hopeless," she said. "Where's the bloody maitre'd?"
Sebastian, remembering his cue, began to snap his fingers and gaze vaguely around over his right shoulder.
After a few seconds, the waiter limped back out of the shadows. He was a very respectable-looking old zombie, his last few white hairs slicked back into a delicate-looking widow's peak.
"Sir?" he asked. "Ma'am?"
Trembelle gestured at her creation.
"What's that?" she said, sweetly.
The waiter stared sombrely down.
"That would be the Tomolandry Third Defensive Manoeuvre, ma'am," he replied.
Trembelle chuckled to herself and clapped her hands together.
"Bravo," she said. "Honestly, Sebastian – how can you not get this?"
Sebastian smiled, weakly.
"I'm, ah, afraid I don't really see the appeal," he murmured. "And you say…mortals die in the service of this sport?"
"Oh, not just mortals," Trembelle said, delightedly running down names on her fingers. "Pieter Von Draf was killed in '61 – took an orc's boot to the face. Then there was Duke Henri Essentrot in the infamous Three-Ogre Crunch of '84, Alain Gerbarcht, impaled on his own teammate's helmet…"
"Eriss Von Carstein," said the waiter, "choked on the ball, '86."
Sebastian glared at him until he shambled back into the darkness.
"You see," he said, eventually, "this is what I simply cannot, um, get my head around. People die…in service of a sport. They allow themselves to lose their very, ah, immortality…for the sake of something as trivial as a game. Does that not seem, um, wasteful to you?"
Trembelle gave him a funny look. Over the centuries, she'd seen her brethren and mortals alike toss away their lives for the sake of wars fought over some pathetic, worthless scrap of land, over petty political positions - even for the love of another creature who rarely deserved the sacrifice. As far as she was concerned, there were few better ways to die in this peculiar old world than in attempting to make the tricky Reikland Punch-Leap-Catch double-switch.
"Yes," she said. "Wasteful. I expect you're probably right. Shall we get the bill? That amuse bouche filled me right up."
